The two men and the woman stared at the building which would soon house families of all races, creeds and ways of life, people who would otherwise live only in the most wretched slums. The building stood like a young lady on the night before her entry into society. And the only light once Seward switched off the car would be what they carried with them.

Joseph Grandbanks thought on the work had tried to do here at the beginning of the 20th century. He was a kind, worried man who had a difficult time believing he had done good with his wealth. He would never see a dime of profit from this set of buildings he had financed and was helping to people, but he looked at the Carmelcita with a thrill starting in his tired heart, a tumbling lance of hope.

William Seward, who would have given much to outfit himself like Peary or Amundsen heading for the poles of the world and, with the confidence of an Englishman who is at home anywhere, push his way into the home of demons, turned the key to the Off position and the motor rumbled to a stop, the sudden silence hissing in their ears.

Carmen stared silently at the building. She felt elated, confident and surrounded by light as she had scarcely felt since she was a girl. Now, about to set foot in the magical building like a child exploring the ranch house where she was not supposed to be, she felt like that little girl she had been, about to step with the brave ignorance of a fool saint into a place where she might be whipped or might be given a cookie.

She could almost feel the presence of Fina, her first teacher, who had been old even when Carmen was very young. Tough as an old willow, full of scratchy wisdom: if she had been alive to hear about Carmen’s vision, she would have said, “So what will you do, heh?”

This building was her answer to Fina. This is what I have done. In my vision I saw demons issuing from this hillside like a hoard of Yoris. I saw that the building of a trolly tunnel under Twin Peaks would penetrate the demon realm. And I saw men and women of every race and way of loving holding them back. We built this home, we sought out the people of my vision. This is what I have done. Now let them try to issue forth!

In the dim starlight, Seward walked around to the car’s boot, fetched out a bulbous brown lantern, pumped it, struck a match which flared unnaturally bright and held the lantern up like a glowing star. His teeth gleamed as he grinned. “The intrepid adventurers, eh?” Carmen withered him with a glare and he sucked his moustache and was silent but twitched like an eager dog.

As she followed the two men up the stone stairway which switchbacked between baby trees which would grow tall in the years to come, she studied their auras. She had seen auras since she learned to pay attention as a girl; she saw them just as she saw missing teeth and broken toes.

Grandbanks’s aura surrounded him like a votive candle. That light had been dimmed by alcohol when first she met him but it had burned brightly since he gave himself into her hands. Seward’s was like a stained glass window or the strange light that shone on the pages of the first book she had learned to read.

“Ooof,” Seward cried good-naturedly. “I can drive an automobile but I cannot walk without tripping over my own feet.”

Carmen whispered, “Calladito,” deliberately using a word for “hush” that would be used on a much younger person. She wished to listen with her dream self. As a girl, she had held in casual hands the gift of guiding the dreams of her friends. There was something here and she needed to hear it, see it.

She laid a commanding hand on both of their shoulders to stop them. They turned and she held a finger to her lips. Seward’s flame steadied like a gas jet slowly adjusting as she closed her eyes.

But whatever she had sensed as they climbed the steps was still hidden from her. She released their hands and said to their worried faces, “We will enter. But this may be no child’s game. Stay close and be still.”

She walked quietly between them and they parted like the Red Sea to let her through. The glass doors were before her, gleaming in the lantern glare. She reached backwards for the key and one of the two men placed it in her hand without questioning her leadership. She slid it in, turned it and handed it back in one motion.

Carmen Pilar Ortega had not taken anyone dream traveling since she was a girl in the big bed with her playmates. Back then she had commanded their dreams, taken them on a flight to the strings of glowing pearls that were the lights of the big city they had never seen, to the wind-swept crying endless scalloped plain of the ocean that they had never seen.

She had seen much more of the world now. Whatever waited inside this building which they had made, she faced it and felt the heat in her hands build, as though she attended a birth and the mother were in pain. Her hands entered the dream time and her feet and her belly and all of her would follow. Now, in this moment, before she was beyond them, she held out a work-roughened hand to Seward and Grandbanks. Without question, they put their hands in hers. Seward took a breath as though to make a clever remark, and then let it out again. They felt the stillness of the night, the chirruping of a cricket and the nearness of the ancient stars.

“Open this place to us,” she commanded and one of the men pushed open the wide glass doors. She led them into the alcove which smelled of fresh paint. But with their hands in hers the two men caught scents from the future: bacon and buttered eggs, heaps of fried potatoes and a vase of freshly picked roses gracing a breakfast table.

Now that she was inside, she could put words to what she had sensed from outside. Something was happening in this building which was beyond anything they had planned. Should she turn and walk them out again, wait for the presence of all the people they had selected to pin this house to the good earth? Was that the voice of wisdom or cowardice?

Her eyes closed and she looked with inner eyes at the carpeted stairs to the second floor, the corridor before her which turned right almost immediately. Her hands pulled at the hands of the two men and then she came loose and found herself flying along the corridor. In a dream she swept around the corner and flew through a brown into a home with cabinets and ironing board and in the bedroom – a little door.

You are in danger, and those around you are in danger, the voice of her old teacher warned. But she was through the little door and into the corridors between the apartments before she could even try to stop.

She heard harsh voices and found herself deposited in front of a rock wall which looked almost like any other stretch of wall in a tunnel in a hillside … but it breathed. It was thin. On the other side … no! As she thought of the other side, she felt herself start forward.

In a moment she would be through that wall which needed to stand. She must not pass through that wall. She must not see what was on the other side.

Wild as a dove seeking someplace else to go, she flung herself into the endless corridors between the worlds and was lost.