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and all the scrapes and cuts from playing football were gone.
    Sam looked at his smooth fingers, and then turned wide eyes to May.
    This can’t be real. I’ve gotta be dreaming. Either that, or he would shortly be needing a psych ward. He’d play along until he woke up.“How?”
    “I’ve been studying for a long time, longer than most.”
    Time to start the charade .
    He put on his most perplexed look and played along. “But you’re so young.”
    She shook her head with a knowing half-smile. “I’m much older than I look. You will learn that, where we are going, looks can be most deceiving. By the way, most people feel the same when they find out. Unfortunately, you had to find out in a different way than most. I’m terribly sorry it had to happen this way.”
    Sam rolled his eyes. “This can’t be real.”
    “If that’s what you need to believe, that is completely acceptable. All I ask is that your ‘dream-self’ keep an open mind.”
    Sam snorted. “Whatever.”
    “Good.”
    “So where are we going, oh wise figment of my imagination?”
    “That,” she flicked her index finger, “is going to be a surprise, a place I don’t want to insult by trying to use words to describe it.”
    Sam touched the image of a horse-like creature with a long furry tail in the painting next to him. “So if magic is real, how do you do it?”
    “It’s not so much that you do it, it’s more that you use it. Magic is a wonderful thing, but tales of magic in your world don’t quite capture what it truly is. Where it comes from, in our society, we call the Veil.”
    Sam absentmindedly cracked his knuckles. “Why the Veil?”
    “You will learn that magic, or rather, what you perceive as magic, lies all around us like a blanket that we cannot see, but some can feel and even use it. We do not know why only some can access it and others cannot, and we assume we will never know, as we have tried for so long to figure it out. The world would be such a better place, for everyone, if all could use the Veil, but it just can’t happen. In our society, some things,” her face turned serious, “are just not to be tampered with.”
    “Don’t worry, I won’t tamper.” Sam humphed. “How can I tamper with something that isn’t real?”
    “Never mind that. What you will find interesting is that you are able to access the Veil.”
    “You’re telling me that’s what happened at the game?”
    Sam suddenly became aware that he was still wearing his football jersey. So much had happened, yet he had still not been able to change into regular clothes. This dream was too vivid, the details too precise.
    “That was the first time you were able to access the Veil, and with it, the wondrous properties and infinite possibilities it holds. Usually, the first hiccup is triggered by an intensely powerful emotion. In your case, I’m assuming it was the desire to win the game.”
    Sam was beginning to feel unnerved. This was getting too real.
    But it can’t be, can it?
    “But if this happens to everyone the first time, why have I never heard of anything like this happening before? It seems to me that thousands of people simultaneously freezing in place would be a pretty big deal.”
    May looked him up and down. “So, you’re not all brawn.”
    Sam gave a coy smile. “Okay, I’m going to put logic on hold for a minute and play along. Explain.”
    “You see,” she began, “most of our kind—”
    “You mean wizards?” Sam asked in the most sarcastic tone he could muster.
    “If you must, we prefer ‘sorcerers.’”
    “Wait, why?”
    “Because magic comes from a source .”
    Sam paused. “Are you serious?”
    “You see,” she started again, not confirming or denying, “most of our kind come from our kind. Two sorcerers,” she smiled, “always produce a child who will be capable of accessing the Veil. It is a strange phenomenon when two flathands produce someone with abilities.”
    “Flathands? The Lieutenant called