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Sometimes he could. Sometimes he didn’t, it just depended on how far he was from his waking self. Tovah watched him sleep for a moment or two, then busied herself with making sure his room was clean and nothing was missing. The pajamas she’d bought for him were folded neatly in his drawer, which was good. Someone had nicked the last pair. The stack of books on the nightstand didn’t look as though they’d been touched. The bottles of shampoo and bars of soap lined up on his dresser were barely used.
    “Spider,” she said. “You’ve got to get up. C’mon.”
    His only response was the snort-whistle of his breath. This wasn’t surprising, but it was frustrating. Henry had been a patient in this hospital, on and off, for more than ten years.
    Tovah settled into the chair next to his bed, picked up the copy of The Pickwick Papers and began to read. Doctors had told her it didn’t matter so much what was read to him, just that somehow, someway, some stimulus reached Henry’s mind while he shut himself away from the world. The doctors—most of them overworked and frazzled, this floor one last stop before they moved on to something bigger and brighter—didn’t know that Henry wasn’t lacking in stimulation. Yet Tovah was sure the reading didn’t hurt. He never admitted to listening to her, but she was convinced the time she spent reading aloud to him somehow anchored him to the waking world in a way none of their drugs or psychotherapies could.
    The book served another purpose. It was so boring it usually put her to sleep within twenty minutes. It worked this time, too, her eyes drooping, and she slid a finger between the pages to mark her place. It helped, too, that last night she’d dreamed hard and strangely, that it had been almost too difficult to shape the club and the music. Last night’s dreams had worn her out.
    Tovah wasn’t quite asleep yet. She was aware of the chair beneath her, the hiss of the hot air pouring out of the vents, and the muffled sound of shouting coming from the hall. Aware, too, of the way her hair feathered over her face as it tipped forward and the feeling of dry paper on her fingers. A gray mist swirled around her, softening the edges of these sensations. Colors muted.
    And then, with a subtle shift, she lost sight of the hospital room and stepped forward, moving as though through water. She was there. The Ephemeros, land of dreams. Everything was bright and clear and fresh, and she tipped her face to a yellow sky with dancing pink clouds.
    “I wondered when you were finally going to show up.” Spider crouched on a large boulder.
    Today he represented in shades of gold and red, a spider in formal dress. His legs were longer today, his body less the squat, rounded shape of a tarantula and more like a garden spider. He held a small silk-wrapped package between his two front legs.
    “You’re not going to eat that now, are you?” Tovah grimaced, stretching, feeling her limbs work the way they were all meant to. She loved this part, the first few moments when she arrived. It was like magic, the small changes her body went through as she shaped herself. She controlled how she represented, but in those first few moments after she crossed over, sometimes she surprised herself.
    “It’s pastrami on rye!” Spider sounded offended. “What, you think I eat flies?”
    “You are a spider,” she pointed out.
    “And you’re a brunette,” Spider shot back. “Usually.”
    This was true. Tovah ran fingers through her hair, longer here where it didn’t matter if it got tangled. “Huh. Look at that.”
    She’d arrived with a definite auburn tinge to her tresses. She liked it. Where it had come from, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t bother changing it. Everything else seemed the same. She did a few deep knee-bends, enjoying the way her muscles worked.
    “You’re with me, ain’t ya? Over there?”
    Despite his claim he wasn’t consuming insects, Tovah turned her attention away