We are reunited with Justin on Lukas’ Shroom. He lands on it with one of the jetpacks Joy has made permanent and that we leave on Bonny’s Revenge’s deck. We leave those exactly for occasions in which he wakes up while Joy is in another dream, and he needs to return to her quickly.
“Is everything all right?” Justin looks at Joy with concern.
“Dad, Red had a German accent.”
“What?”
“She means the Red Dragon,” Charlie says.
“What?”
“I asked Lukas to say ‘Dragon Father’.”
“What? Lukas?”
“He said, ‘Dragon Fotteh’, just like Red.”
“Joy. Stop. I don’t understand anything you’re talking about. Why are we talking about Red? Who’s Lukas? I was only gone for a couple of minutes, right?”
I explain what Joy means. How Lukas, the Dreamer in the weightlifting dream, has exactly the same accent as the Red Dragon, according to Joy, and how Lucas is German and lives in Leipzig .
“Okay…” Justin understands now but doesn’t know what Joy wants from him. “But you know Red didn’t meet Lukas. There’s no way she can leave my dream. The tunnels are too small.”
“I know that!” Joy stomps her foot. “Why did you dream that Red was German?”
Justin freezes. He clearly had never thought about that before. “She did have a kind of a German accent. I’ve never placed it exactly.”
“Why did you dream she had an accent, Dad?”
He thinks. “I don’t know. I don’t remember what I was thinking when I created her. That was years ago.”
“Think!” she demands.
He does. “I… I really don’t know. Maybe I needed her to seem foreign, like she comes from someplace far away? I’m not sure.”
“Think!” she demands again.
He does. For a long while. Then he says, “Okay. I couldn’t remember anything else. But I promise to keep thinking about it. Okay, Joy?”
Joy nods, satisfied for now.
“Shall we go to another dream?” Justin says. “Let’s go there!”
—Told by Grampa Walt