"Where will all the people live?" asked the soft, feminine voice.

"In new houses," Devin replied.

"How will you build them?"

"I can use humongous rocks!"

"Rocks?"

The question jolted Devin from his dream. He swiped his haystack hair out of his eyes. The dream was still close ... the voice, the houses, the rocks ... and he didn't move at first. He peeked out from under the blanket.

The room was empty.

Where did the voice come from?

He sat up and looked around. Nothing. No one. Just his room, the same as always.

He hunched down. Goosebumps.

The window above his bed was open. A warm breeze came in, smelling like the cherry blossoms out back. And then something else ... a rustle.

Maybe squirrels? Or a cat? Or a lion escaped from the zoo!

He listened. The rustle came again.

He got out of bed quietly and crept to the footboard. His Roy Rogers cap guns were on the chair where he'd left them. Grama had given them to him for his birthday. He unholstered one. It helped.

He had beaten the bad guys before, in his games. He'd do it again.

These caps will scare them off.

His heart pounded. He heard the rustling again and lifted his head up to the windowsill, just enough to see.

There.

Next to the cherry tree, someone was standing.

He pressed closer to the window. His breath fogged the glass. Something stepped out of the shadows below ... a hooded figure. His hand tightened on the sill. The other gripped the cap gun.

The figure turned toward him. Under the hood was a face.

Devin recoiled. He could barely see it in the dark, but he knew it wasn't a face like anyone he knew. Except in his dream.

Large eyes stared at him as if he was the strange one.

He thought it was a girl ... short dark hair with large, inky, oval eyes. She reminded him of his friend from down the street. Only Rosa's nose was bigger. The hood framed her face, and he could see she was shaped like a person. She turned her head. In the moonlight her nose was long. Her mouth was a thin line.

He thought she was pretty.

She tilted her head and smiled. He smiled back.

He leaned closer to the window. "Who are you?" he whispered.

No answer.

Sounds filled his head ... pretty sounds, like music. His body felt warm. The sounds were like a voice, but he heard them inside, not through his ears. It sounded like the voice from his dream. Was she an angel like his aunt had told him about?

Another figure came up behind the first one. Taller. Her eyes were different. They looked at him harder. They looked at him the way his mom looked at a stray dog near the yard before she called him inside.

A second voice came into his head. Deeper than the first. Cold. The two voices spoke together, but not the same way. The first voice felt like it was looking at him. The second one felt like it was deciding something about him.

He watched them. They were talking without moving their mouths. He didn't understand the words, but he could feel them. The tall one was not soft. She was thinking about him hard, and it was not a warm thinking.

Rocks.

The word came into his head in the tall one's voice. Not a question. Like she was turning it over.

Devin nodded, even though no one had asked him anything. "Humongous," he whispered through the glass. "You hollow them out."

He wasn't sure where that came from. He'd been thinking about it in the dream, and now the idea was here, awake with him.

The tall one went still.

He kept going, because she was listening, and because he wanted her to like him the way the small one did. "You'd need a lot of rocks. Big ones. And you'd have to make them smooth on the inside. I could help. I'm good at that kind of stuff."

The tall one looked at the small one. Then she looked at him for a long time. Longer than anyone had ever looked at him. He felt her thinking stretch across the space between them, pressing, measuring. He didn't move. He didn't understand what she was looking for, but he understood he was being looked at the way his dad looked at the lawnmower engine when something was wrong with it.

Then her thinking eased. Not soft. Not warm. Just ... set aside. Like she had decided to come back to it later.

She turned away from the window and joined the others in the yard. Three more stood near the cherry tree. Maybe four.

They looked at everything in the yard. Gretel's doghouse in the corner. The sprinkler was running in the other corner, making mist. His Slip 'n' Slide was in the middle of the yard. It still had water on it from yesterday.

More voices came into his mind. Some were soft and friendly, like his mom. Others sounded far away.

One voice was looking at him. Not with her eyes. With her voice.

His eyes drooped. His head rested on the windowsill.

When he woke up, it was morning. Birds were on the lawn, pulling worms out of the grass. Just like always.

Where did my new friends go?