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at dawn to find Tziga in the kitchen yard, his head held under the stream from the pump. ‘You can’t stay awake for ever,’ Chorley told him — though he could smell the spice of Wakeful in Tziga’s sweat, and see that his lips were stained mauve from the drug.
    ‘This dream isn’t anyone else’s,’ Tziga said. ‘It was for her. The best yet. The best I’ve ever caught.’ He raised his wet, white face and glared at his brother-in-law. ‘You can bury me with it,’ he said.
    By the next morning he was swaying and stumbling. He stumbled on the stairs and sat on the landing with his head hanging. Chorley followed him about. Tziga called him a vulture, and threw things at him. Grace sent the servants away and sat with the girls in the nursery. She read to them, sang lullabies and put them in their beds. She listened to the house. Rose’s bright, sleepless eyes regarded her mother through the white mosquito net around her bed. Laura poked her head out of her netting — sat veiled in it, like a little communicant. At sunset Chorley found Tziga holding himself up against a doorframe, on which he was rhythmically beating his head. Chorley inserted his hand between the bloodied moulding and Tziga’s oozing forehead. Then Tziga collapsed and Chorley picked him up. Tziga was light, worn thin by walking inland after the consoling beauties of the Place, by watching, by keeping himself awake. Chorley carried Tziga to his and Grace’s bed.
    Tziga woke in the morning — at the same time as a whole city block woke weeping with joy at a dream so powerful and beautiful that it altered each one of its dreamers for ever, a dream caught to carry a beloved, pain-racked woman into paradise. Tziga woke, weeping himself, and saw that Grace was beside him, andChorley beside her, looking over her shoulder with pouring eyes, and between them were the little girls, Rose laughing at her dream with nervous, puzzled delight, and Laura calling alternately ‘Mummy!’ and ‘Rosie!’ — as though she wanted to share some wonderful news but didn’t know who to tell first. Tziga could feel his dream echoing in the city like a thunderclap. He lay floating in breathing light. Grace cupped his wet face in both her hands, and Chorley’s hands covered hers.
    Tziga wasn’t good for much after that. He rested, and the bills mounted up. Grace, meanwhile, foraged deep into the Place, looking for wonders and novelties, overwriting one dream with another till she got something she knew she could sell at a very high price. Sometimes she would encounter dreamhunters who had abandoned their own plans in order to wait for her, dreamhunters who would offer to empty their heads for her. She was exhausted — so they might also offer to carry her out. They’d carry her out, and delete their own dreams, replacing them with what she had — not so that they could part from her and peddle their poor copies of her dreams, but so that they could act as amplifiers, dream in unison with her, lie down with her, share the dreamer’s bed and a small part of her fee. For, remembering with what force her presence in Tziga’s sleep had amplified his last dream, Grace was ready to accept these offers.
    Chorley was busy. He reorganised the family’s finances — budgeting and juggling due dates onpayments. He kept Tziga company — Grace had been very clear to him about this. ‘Tziga has to get well,’ she’d said. ‘He’s worth more than we are. He is the beauty of dreamhunting. He is the good of it.’
    Chorley had the girls to care for. Grace was clear on that score too. ‘Watch poor Laura. And you know, love, I can work, and work, and work, so long as Rose is happy.’
    Chorley did all that he had to — and he failed to notice things. He didn’t see the dubious looks people had begun to give him in the street. He didn’t hear the odd, stifled snigger in acquaintances, or see how an embarrassed, fastidious look would appear on the faces of certain friends