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me guide you, and together we will do wonders.
    There was only silence from her. I added hopefully, Perhaps we can find your father and with him . . . peace.
    The minutes went by and still Emily Jane said nothing. There were mere seconds left before she’d become fixed forever in this spot. In that moment she suddenly flamed brightly and jerked forward just a little.
    “I will ride,” she whispered with a new calm. And before I could communicate how pleased I was, she shot away with a speed that took my breath.
    From the start, she had been difficult to steer, always pulling against me, so now I feared the worst. But after that initial burst of speed, she followed my lead contentedly. We inquired about the whereabouts of her father from any ship or planet we neared, but in these faraway regions of the galaxies, very little was known. So we worked our way toward the great center of the Golden Age, to the Constellation of Zeus. It was a peaceful journey. And when wishes came, Emily Jane listened.
    She heard every kind of wish there was. Wishes for ponies and pets. Wishes for riches. Wishes for revenge on enemies. Wishes for love. Emily Jane came to understand all the things that people yearn for. In time she could see the difference between wishes that were worthy of being granted and those that were not.
    “People are often . . . confused,” she said tome one quiet night as we streaked through the sky. “They want what they don’t need, or can’t use, or won’t ever make them whole.”
    True. I was proud that she was learning.
    “I think all wishes are the same, really,” she continued. “Whether they ask for this, that, or the other, what they are really asking for is happiness.”
    And what do you wish? I wondered. What would make you happy?
    She did not answer for a while.
    The silence of a peaceful night in the deep oceans of space can feel almost holy. The vast darkness is dotted with stars that go on and on—farther than any light or thought can seem to travel. But they do. In that quiet solitude that wrapped around us, Emily Jane answered my question.
    “I wish to be washed clean of my old life. Tolet go of my tide of sorrows and find my way to a new shore.”
    This was a good and worthy wish. It was a wish I wanted to grant.
    But fate had other plans.

C HAPTER F OURTEEN

    Hope Becomes a Weapon Most Foul
    W e were leagues away from any planet, and no other wishes could reach us. And I began to think about Emily Jane’s wish. To answer her wish would take all my thought and wisdom. I must go into a sleepier trance to fashion an Answer Dream.
    It is during this trance that a Star Captain must let the star steer itself and be on the lookout for any trouble. Our travels had been peaceful for so long that I had no worries, and Emily Jane had always been up to the task of dealing with any attack.
    But there was a danger neither of us had foreseen.
    In all the time that Emily Jane had been trapped in her star, she had been dreaming one dream over and over: that her father would rescue her.
    Lord Pitch had decided that imprisoning the pirates was a worse fate than death, so the Dream Pirates were confined to a planet-size prison on the other side of the cosmos. But they could still detect a dream no matter how far away and faint it might be.
    They had heard Emily Jane’s dream.
    At first it had puzzled them. How could this be? The child of Pitch died in a raid years before, they thought. But every night they heard the dream again and again, and after a time they realized the dream was indeed coming from Lord Pitch’s daughter. So they hatched an awful plan.
    The Dream Pirates knew how badly the loss of his family had wounded Lord Pitch. And he wastheir one and only jailer. He guarded the single door into the prison that held them; it was such a grim and dark place. Made from giant plates of dark matter, it was a place where no being from outside could ever hear or feel any pirate who coiled inside. Only