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of Pride and Prejudice—a first edition, no less. Hands trembling, I open the precious volume to the title page, which simply says, “by the author of ‘Sense and Sensibility’.” What I wouldn’t give to take this treasure home with me, a real, impossibly new first edition. With my career prospects, however, a dream is about the closest I’ll ever get to holding one of these puppies in my hands.
    I open to the place Mrs. M has marked and read to her for hours. It’s the most fun I’ve had since this whole thing began. And now it’s time for bed. Strange, isn’t it, to end a dream in exactly the same manner in which I began it?
    That’s it! That’s all I need, this little bit of synchronicity. That’s what will bring me back to reality. I know now that when I close my eyes to go to sleep, I will wake up where I belong, in my very own twenty-first-century bed.
    I’m so pleased with that thought that as I kiss Mrs. M on the cheek and say good night, I nearly tell her how much I’ve enjoyed meeting her. But I decide not to. Not that I have problems lying, but I realize there is something truly fun about this playacting I’m doing, and I don’t feel like saying anything to spoil the moment. It’s harder to keep quiet when I say good night to Mr. M, because I really do wish I had more time to get to know him better.
    Within half an hour, I’m tucked snugly under the covers of Jane’s luxurious four-poster bed, and my eyes are getting heavy. Odd, I usually can’t go to sleep that quickly when I’m awake. I giggle at the absurdity of such a thought. I command my mind to focus and remember every detail, as I intend to write everything down in my journal as soon as I wake up back in L.A.

Seven
    I t’s dark in the room, and my mind is full of the dream.
    I can still feel the jagged softness of the grass soothing and slightly tickling my bare feet as I walked through the field. The moon in the nighttime sky was round and full and bathed everything in a silver glow. As I crossed a section of grass that was damp, I wondered whether I would catch a cold. That’s when I realized I wasn’t just barefoot, I was naked.
    I crossed my arms over my breasts and crouched down, scanning the landscape for observing eyes, for a place to hide, but I seemed to be all alone. I relaxed my muscles and stood; so what if I was naked? If no one was there to see me, why shouldn’t I enjoy a moonlight stroll without clothes?
    Soon I came to a miniature lake, more a swimming hole, really, its calm, mirrored surface reflecting the moon above. The water made me aware of how dry my mouth was, and so I knelt down to take a drink.
    And then I caught sight of my reflection.
    Looking back at me was the strange woman with the long dark hair and pale skin. The reflection smiled at me, and I felt my own face smiling. But inside my stomach was a chill.
    “Don’t be frightened,” the reflection said.
    “Don’t be frightened,” I said to the reflection.
    That’s all I remember. I lie here in bed, my heart pounding as I wait for the truth to unfold with the first glow of daylight coming through a gap in the curtains. I am not back in my apartment. I am still in the dream.
    But wait a minute. I just woke up from a dream. Last time I checked, it’s not possible to have a dream within a dream.
    Am I really asleep?
    A cold rock of fear settles on my chest. Dear God. I’m not going to wake up. I’m not going to wake up because I’m not asleep. My dream was a message, the reflection in the lake the messenger.
    I am here, in the past or in some other reality, living out someone else’s life.
    But how could this be? Am I actually inhabiting the body of a real, live person? And if this Jane person is indeed real and alive, then where is she now? If my own body isn’t sleeping and dreaming all of this, then what is it doing right now and where is it? Could it be that I’m living Jane’s life and my own simultaneously? If so, where is Jane?