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at the back of my mind, but I was more interested in the craziness in front of me than in worrying about what I needed to remember.
    I shook my head and sat up, hoping that would banish my hallucination. It didn’t work. Uncle Yvo was still on top of the clock, grinning crazily, but he didn’t seem to see me. He waved his arms, and I bit my lip as he blurred and then appeared to turn into a large owl. His arms were now wings, flapping wildly, but he seemed unable to fly, since he was just flapping his wings frantically. The clock struck the hour, but I couldn’t tell what time it was since its hands were whirling frenziedly, going so fast they seemed to be solid.
    I counted the tolling of the clock’s chimes, confused because it seemed to be thirteen o’clock by my count when the last bell faded away. The sudden quiet was broken when Yvo sprang from the clock with a loud whoosh of the beat of his wings and a burst of feathers. But I didn’t see my uncle fly off—the man just seemed to phase out of existence. I stared wide-eyed at the clock, wondering what I had seen, because as crazy as some of my Christmas Eve dreams had been, this dream was crazier than I had ever had before. I looked around, torn between wanting to run screaming out of the room and curling up in a ball denying I had ever seen what just happened.
    I was normal. I had undergone years of therapy to forget even the blurry memories of these dreams, and now I had just vividly seen my uncle transform into an owl and disappear. But not really an owl—I could tell it had still been Yvo. He had been hunched over before he spread his arms, turning them into wings midmotion as he stood up straight, his face turned toward me so I could see him clearly. And then he had gracefully dived off the top of the grandfather clock, as if he were an Olympic diver going for the gold, before he disappeared into nothingness.
    I wondered if I was having a nervous breakdown. I noticed the tree had gotten much, much larger, and it seemed the rest of the house had grown to match. Everything had grown but the sofa I was on. And then I shook my head and things went back to normal.
    I reached out for the nutcracker that had been beside me. I groped the sofa, wondering why the spot next to me was empty. Warm, though. It was as warm as if a person had just been sitting there and had gotten up. My flailing hand found nothing, and I twisted to see if he had fallen off the sofa. I hoped he hadn’t, because I didn’t want to break him. That would be a tragedy, because the figure looked like he had survived so much. And if he had survived Rik’s rough handling, I didn’t want to be the one to hurt him.
    I closed my eyes to the scene before me, breathing deeply and slowly, knowing I was seconds from hyperventilating. This couldn’t be real—I had been told over and over again throughout the years that the dreams I had told others about hadn’t been real. They might not be real now, but I was pretty sure they had to be. If not, my subconscious hated Christmas, and me, more than I thought.
    The nutcracker must have tumbled off the sofa—or he might have jumped off, because now he seemed to be a fully articulated figure. He was moving smoothly, as if his wooden limbs had become flesh, his wires metamorphosed into hair, his features softening but still heavy and powerful.
    The nutcracker was in some sort of outrageous sword fight with a multiheaded mouse in front of the tree. And all of the heads were wearing crowns, all different styles of crowns that managed not to fall off his heads even during the flips and jumps. I mentally dubbed the creature “Mouse King,” while wondering why I wasn’t screaming hysterically at the sight of a creature out of pulp horror.
    The moves the two of them were making made me think of one of those Chinese martial arts movies filled with the incredible leaps and thrusts. And they weren’t the only ones fighting. There were a lot of mice fighting with