Chapter 31: Homecoming

The Heartwood was silent. It felt like that smidgen of time after a party, when all the guests had gone home, and you were left alone in the quiet for one brief moment before realizing the cleanup was still waiting. Papers were everywhere, cookie crumbs littered the floor, and piles of books sat on every available surface. It was surreal.

The fire was low. Everything that needed doing was done, except for a little tidying up and for Allison to gather her things to go home. She paused in the hallway, leaned against the carved door behind her, and drew in a slow breath to steady herself. The air smelled of the heartwood itself, of sandalwood, paper, and beeswax. Nothing else. No sulfur. No ozone. No tarry chemical stink looming over the warmth. Just the cozy fragrance before the ooze came in and infected the air with its stench. It was as if the tree exhaled a deep, cleansing breath and swept all darkness from its halls.

She walked toward the study. Her footsteps were the only sound—soft, tired shuffling on the wooden floor, eager to go home but not really wanting to leave. The place felt peaceful and safe, a space she could settle into and make her own. It was a cozy little place to retreat to, away from the hustle of everyday life in the Overworld.

The hallway walls glowed with ambient firefly light as they flitted to and fro, drifting like candle flames. She trailed her fingers along the wood, feeling the grain and the faint warmth of the living tree. The pulse of magic hummed in its heartwood like blood in a vein.

The study welcomed her with the scent of sweet, buttery cookies and the fire’s embers, still glowing low and warm in shades of amber and orange. The lavender-infused firestarter had released its last gentle waves of scent hours ago, but the remnants still lingered in the air. The leather recliner still held a slight wrinkle on its seat from her body. The red flannel blanket was still crumpled where she’d left it. The coffee table showed signs of the research session: crumbs, damp rings on the ceramic, literature-themed coasters from teacups, and a few scattered pages in four different handwriting styles.

She stopped in the doorway, drew a deep breath, shut her eyes, and let the lavender’s lingering scent settle into the untouched corners inside her body. When she opened her eyes, she realized she was still smiling. The feeling from the lake had taken up permanent residence on her face; it showed no signs of leaving. She wasn’t sure she’d ever smiled this long in her life. Her cheeks ached almost as much as the rest of her body, but she didn’t care.

Allison spent some time looking around while gathering her things: her backpack from beside the chair—heavier now, thanks to Felipe’s covert dinner operation—her notebook, wallet, and that one random tube of lip balm that she swore she lost, then bought three more. She checked her jeans’ back pocket for the Spark Quill. It was there, warm and humming, brass familiar against her hip. She tucked it into the front pocket of her backpack for safekeeping through the portal, in case she landed badly again, because nobody wants a pent-tip stuck in their buttcheek.

As she was zipping up the backpack, she remembered the tome. She left it outside with Sol in her rush to get back to Spud. Thimble had reminded her, but she had forgotten and needed to confirm that Sol still had it.

She scanned the study for a firefly, lifting her gaze and spotting one circling a brass lantern near the ceiling. Allison raised her palm and moved slowly, copying Thimble's beckoning gesture so she wouldn’t scare it. The firefly paused its orbit, tilted its little head, and considered the request. Then it drifted down and landed on her nose. Its legs were tiny, almost imperceptible, a faint prickle against her skin. Its body was warm; the glow from its thorax pulsed softly, turning the edges of her vision gold. She went cross-eyed trying to look at it. She probably looked ridiculous, but she didn’t care.

“Hi,” she whispered. “Um, I don’t really know how this works yet. Thimble hasn’t taught me, but I’ll try if you don’t mind. Could you find Sol, ask if they still have the tome—I’m pretty sure they do—let them know I’ll be done soon, and then come back and tell me?”

The firefly's wings opened, closed, opened again. A single, deliberate pulse of golden light. Then it lifted from her nose and darted away, zipping through the study door and down the hallway with a purpose that suggested it understood every word. Allison froze, hand suspended in midair, lips parted in surprise.

“There’s no way that worked,” she said, laughing to herself and to the empty room.

She waited. Thirty seconds. A minute. The fire crackled. A log shifted, sending up sparks. She was about to give up and ask Sol herself when a golden streak zipped through the doorway and landed on her nose with pinpoint accuracy.

Pulse. Pulse-pulse. Pulse.

She didn’t speak firefly, but somehow—through the warmth and rhythm—she understood that it meant yes. Sol had the tome. It was safe. They were waiting for her at the hub and told her to take her time.

“Oh my cat,” Allison breathed. “It worked. It actually worked.”

The firefly pulsed once more and lifted off her nose to resume its orbit around the room with its friends. Allison laughed again. The sound bounced off the study walls and startled no one because she was alone in a treehouse in a magical dimension, and nobody was there to judge her for giggling at an insect. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. They were hot. Her eyes were wet with an overflow of joy she could only call giddiness. She wasn’t used to it. She hadn’t felt anything like that since she was small enough to believe magic was real, and the world was good, and wonderful things just happened.

It was the whimsy—sending messages by firefly—and it worked. Everything worked, just like Thimble said it would. Dreamspace knew her now, and she knew it. The connection was becoming as natural as breathing, she thought, slinging the backpack over one shoulder. She scanned the study—the fire, chair, blanket, crumbs, and warmth—and filed each image away as a precious memory.

“I’ll be back one of these days,” she said softly to the room, to the tree, to Dreamspace itself.

Then she walked down the hallway, through the Heartwood’s carved front door, and out into the golden light.

Her friends were waiting at the hub.

Sol stood by the portal, holding the tome in both hands. Their eyes were warm. Thimble sat on the mosaic’s edge, tail curled, a tiny sentinel keeping watch over a kingdom she’d helped save. Felipe perched on a cobblestone, trying to look casual and failing. His dark eyes tracked Allison’s approach. He had promised not to cry again, but he wasn’t sure he could.

“Got everything?” Thimble asked.

“Yep, everything.” Allison took the tome from Sol. Its heartbeat synced with hers—tha-thump, tha-thump—and she tucked it into her backpack. The weight grounded her. Warmth bled through the canvas against her back.

She looked at the portal. Its gilded frame gleamed in the late Dreamspace light. Through it, she saw her living room as it always was, with Spud snoozing on the couch, as if she had only stepped out to run a few errands.

“Okay,” she said. She turned to her friends. “Thimble said I just… relax, ground, and step through, knowing that it will let me in. Right?”

“Right,” Thimble confirmed. “The Dreamspace knows you now; It won’t fight you. Just breathe, feel the portal, and step through. Like walking through a door. Because that’s all it is.”

Allison looked at each of them, knowing she’d be back. Sol, golden-eyed, mechanically precise, patient. The one who always caught her. Thimble: small, fierce, wise. The bridge between worlds and keeper of secrets who cost her decades of silence, but helped her find herself again. Felipe: warm, silly, compassionate. He believed that food and a hug could fix anything, and he was right more often than anyone wanted to admit.

“See you next time,” she said. And meant it with everything she had.

“See you next time,” Thimble said.

“Come back hungry,” Felipe added, his voice only slightly wobbly.

Sol nodded. Their eyes dimmed briefly, that warm, almost-human gesture, and brightened again.

Allison faced the portal and rooted herself in the mosaic with a final deep sigh, attuning to the Dreamspace’s breath. She let the sense of home draw her forward.

She stepped through.

The crossing was nothing like before, just like any regular doorway, as Thimble had said. A slight compression, a flash of gold, an embracing warmth. Barely noticeable. Then, as quickly as she stepped through the portal, she stood in her living room on the other side, backpack on her shoulders, the afternoon sun warm on her face through the kitchen window.

She blinked and turned back just as the portal vanished, leaving her plain old, regular, white, nothing-special front door. She looked around. Everything was as it had been, yet a mysterious steaming mug of chamomile-lavender tea sat on the coffee table when she arrived. The TV played soothing ambient music. The clock read 2:47 p.m.

She’d left at 12:50. Less than two hours. An entire day’s worth of magic, ritual, battle, and transformation was compressed into a long lunch break. She felt like she ran a marathon. Her body ached, and her mind felt like mush. No more thoughts were happening for the rest of the day. She just knew it.

She checked the door again, fully turning around this time, hardly able to believe everything that had transpired that day, but the front door behind her was just a door again: white paint and a deadbolt. No golden frame, no shimmer, no portal. Just a door. But she felt it when she put her palm against it—the faintest warmth in the wood. She knew what was waiting on the other side: patient and accessible. She could open it again whenever she wanted. The Dreamspace would be there.

She set her backpack down. The tome’s heartbeat pulsed faintly through the canvas—tha-thump, tha-thump—and she let it. The feeling had become a comfort now, an invisible string tying her and her world to Dreamspace, a bond that would never come undone again.

And then Spud woke up.

The explosion was instant and total. He went from dead sleep to full-body hysteria in the time it took Allison to take one step toward the couch. He became a skidding, barking, fluffy white blur, launching off the cushion and running into her legs at 900 miles per hour.

“Oh... hey... ow... yes, hello. I’m home... ow, your nails—we need to cut those. Yes, I missed you too. Please stop licking my — Spud!”

He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. His whole body wagged, leaping and licking with joy and accusation: you left me; I waited so long. How could you do that to me? You are the greatest and worst human who ever lived, and I love you so much I might explode.

Allison dropped to her knees and let him do his worst. The licking was enthusiastic and thorough. The tail wagged so hard it stirred the air. She hugged him as tightly as he would let her without hurting him. She didn’t know if she would ever see him again, as she would be lost to another realm, locked out beyond the portal forever. She never wanted to let him go again.

“I know, buddy,” she murmured, rubbing behind his ears the way he liked. “I know. I’m home. I’m not going anywhere tonight. I promise. All of my outside peopling is done now. I’m all yours.”

He climbed into her lap — all fourteen years and seventeen pounds of him — and pressed his face against her neck, his body finally slowing from vibration to tremble to warm, heavy stillness. She held him. Breathed him in — sleepy dog smell and the faintly smoky, lingering scent of the incense she always burns to perfume the house. She felt the warmth of her fuzzy little puppy-guy, who had been napping in a sunbeam for the last two hours, completely oblivious to anything happening anywhere else in this world or any other.

“I love you, old man,” she whispered into his fur. “You have no idea what I did today. I’ll tell you later. But first, I need a nap. Let’s go upstairs.”

Spud sighed contentedly and bounded up the stairs after her. He didn’t care what she’d done today. She was home, and it was time to snuggle. That was all he cared about.

The evening after a good two-hour nap was simple, perfect, and normal.

She let Spud out, fed him dinner, then opened her backpack and found Felipe’s gift: a foil-wrapped package still warm (of course it was. Felipe’s food defied thermodynamics the way Felipe’s cart defied spatial logic). Inside: two large chicken tamales with green sauce in a little tub, a small container of rice and beans, and a churro wrapped separately in wax paper with a note in tiny, careful handwriting: 

For the best Sparkkeeper in two worlds. Eat every bite. ~F

And she did eat every bite. Far be it for her to ignore such carefully written instructions. The tamales were extraordinary; she expected nothing less. The churro made her do the wiggle; it was so good. It was the perfect meal to end a long, trying, exhausting, but truly wonderful day.

Then: lobster time. The shower was scalding, the way she needed it: hot enough to turn her skin pink, hot enough to feel like it was stripping away not just the physical residue of the day but the energetic residue too—the last traces of fear and doubt and exhaustion, running down the drain with the soap.

She toweled off, put on her softest pajamas, brushed her teeth, and worked the knots out of her hair. She probably missed a step or two in her routine, but after what today brought, who could blame her? She got the basics in. That was enough.

The bed received her the way the Dreamspace had received her writing—completely, without reservation, with the full-body embrace of a space she carefully designed to maximize her comfort and sleep. She pulled the covers up to her chin. Spud jumped up and performed his elaborate nesting ritual — three circles, a dig, two more circles, a huff—before collapsing against her leg in his usual spot behind the crook of her knees.

The room was dark. The house was quiet. Through a slight opening in the hastily closed bedroom drapery panels, the full moon’s light shone on the back wall behind her head. Somewhere outside, a car honked — blasting through the silence of the night, albeit briefly — and then the gentle silence of nighttime returned.

Allison lay in her bed, with her dog against her leg, a tamale in her stomach, and a tome in her backpack that shared her heartbeat. She closed her eyes. The smile was still there — smaller now, softer, but present—a warm ember in the dark. And she thought: I am Allison Marie Lewis. I am the Sparkkeeper. And I am going to sleep now, because even Sparkkeepers need a full eight hours.

She drifted slowly into sleep, dreaming of her day’s adventures. She wondered what awaited her the next time she stepped through the portal; she could only guess. No matter what they do, she knows her life will never be dull again.