Thin Elderly protests, as they are advised not to touch living creatures, but allows her to do so. That night, Littlest decides she must touch the dog, seeking to derive fragments from him. Littlest and Thin Elderly then gather comforting fragments to help strengthen him after the nightmare. He cries out in his sleep, whereupon the woman calms him by reminding him of a happy moment in his past. That night, Littlest and Thin Elderly experience a Sinisteed at work. The caretaker, for her part, displays only kindness.Īt the dream-givers' Heap, Most Ancient reports that the Sinisteeds are gathering, intent on a particular victim. He displays his anger by acting contemptuous of his surrounding. His home, assigned as a mild punishment, is a dilapidated room at the woman's home.

The woman reveals that she is to take an angry 8-year-old boy named John into her household and must learn to deal with the troubles in his life.Ī young dream-giver named Strapping is introduced. Thin Elderly gladly discovers that Littlest has the 'gossamer touch' the ability to gather and bestow with great subtlety. On the way, Thin Elderly explains to be gentle in the touching, and not to delve, on the grounds that a dream-giver who picks up menacing fragments of the memory's 'underside' becomes a Sinisteed, a horse like creature, which are transformed dream-givers who inflict nightmares.

The next night, Thin Elderly and Littlest go back to the woman's house. The giving of dreams is called the bestowal. They then combine the fragments to become dreams, and give the dreams to humans, and sometimes pets. Through touching, they gather fragments such as colors, words, sounds, and scents. Littlest is part of a small sub-colony of dream-givers. Thin Elderly and Fastidious decide that Thin Elderly will become Littlest's mentor, while Fastidious is assigned to a modern house. She and her mentor, Fastidious, stealthily sneak into a woman and her dog's home and collect memories.Īt their home, the Heap, Fastidious complains about her curious student to Most Ancient. The book's omniscient point of view, Littlest One, affectionately called Littlest, is out on a dark night. Gossamer (2006) is a novel with elements of both fantasy and realism for young adults by Lois Lowry.

Gossamer by Lois Lowry