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it, like a beaker of blood on a sunny windowsill. Worse, the letters on the wall began to do the same thing, shining out from the surface as if they’d been heated in a forge.
    Okay, Verity, you hit your head when you fell and this is some crazy dream. You have those all the time. Don’t worry.
    Things got even spookier when the letters on the wall began to move.
    I shrieked. Yep, like a girl. I admit it right here in front of the world. The only other time I’d ever made that sound had been when Eddie’d dropped a wriggling slug down my back. My heart bass-drummed and my head answered with a banshee solo. Not good. I preferred a dream that I could wake up from. Not this overheated nightmare.
    Just as I started to holler for help, not caring whether it interrupted the dress rehearsal or not, the letters stopped moving. They rearranged themselves into a shape that I knew well. One that I could understand.
    A sword.
    The same fiery molten-iron color as the letters that formed it, the sword had a yard-long single-edged recurved blade that swelled a little bit toward the end, looking like a willow leaf with a wicked point. Its crossbar swirled in an S-curve and twisted like a vine. At the end of the handle the large pommel, sort of resembling an acorn , seemed as big as my fist . The whole thing still clung to thewall, the way you see old relief carvings in museums. But somehow I just knew that if I grabbed it, I could snatch it right off.
    Real smart, Verity. Put your hand on a red-hot piece of steel. Dream or not, that’ll hurt.Only a lunatic would try that.
    So I did.
    It didn’t feel raging-lava hot, but warm, like bath water. The grip seemed to be birch bark but felt like supple leather. No, not leather…skin. Human skin.
    I yanked my hand back as if it had been burned after all. Glancing down, I saw that my palm looked fine. My imagination must’ve been affected by the fall, the tiles, the letters. And now I could smell a tangy odor, easy to recognize because everyone in Washington spent the summer with it.
    Sweat. A person’s sweat. Maybe from somebody who worked hard in a small space…like in a stone cavern under the ground.
    To top it all off, I felt a buzzing vibration. At first I thought it lay under my feet, or in the wall. Soon I understood that it just was. It came from everywhere around me at once, like the very air I breathed throbbed from a close lightning strike. I started to have trouble thinking straight . This must be what the grown-ups feel when they drink whiskey. Fearing that I might faint, I grabbed at the sword again. This time I ignored every sensation and clenched my fist around the sword hilt. With a wrench I hauled the glowing weapon free of the wall and crashed backward onto the tiles.
    Lying flat on my back, I could see that the candle had gone out. I could see that, in what should have been total darkness. Oh, this is a much better dream than the ones I usually have. Not only that, I could hear the Macbeth actors reciting their lines upstairs, as if I stood right beside them. Before now the stone chamber had blocked all sounds. I could also make out a slithering sound, like a snake on the move.
    My new sword, now a three-dimensional steel and gold object, had stopped glowing. It had no more weight to it than a silk handkerchief. Its grip felt exactly like I held the hand of a living person. I could even feel its pulse. Most upsetting of all, the blade had curled around my neck so that the point stared at me like a spitting cobra about to strike.
    “Hi, Verity!” said the sword in a pleasant cheerful voice.
     

4/ Jasper
    “If I turn into a giraffe and start bumpin’ my head on doorways, you’re in big trouble, mister.”
    A giant mouse squeaked and the sword clattered across the tiles. Mouse? Where’s the mouse? Is it Ernie? No, Ernie could never be that loud. Must be me . I skittered backward into a dark corner. Dark? Yep, couldn’t see a thing. But a second ago I had eyes like a