Vaka

• Build & height: a slight girl, about 1.55 m. Fifteen in the dream (her dream-self never ages); her body fell asleep at about ten and is about nineteen when she wakes (ch. 235, 339: nine years, three months and a night asleep).
• Face: tired, amused, freckled; the look of someone who has been awake for everyone else for years.
• Hair: two messy braids.
• Eyes: warm brown; gold when her lamp lights someone (everyone she lights gets the gold in their eyes).
• Clothing, layer by layer: In the dream: an oversized nightshirt, big snow boots, a moth-eaten scarf wrapped three times round her neck. Awake (Saga VI): a lantern-girl's coat too big for her (the ferry company's), over the nightshirt.
• Signature item: the lantern: in the dream a battered iron lantern on a pole with a steady gentle gold flame; awake, the little lamp from beside her bed, the one she held up to every dreamer on a sinking ferry.
• Movement: leans on the lantern-pole when tired (always); lifts the lamp with both hands when it matters. Awake: wobbly legs for the first chapters (Mingus props her up).
• Voice: dry, bossy, tired, kind: "You're new. You're doing it wrong. Hold still." Balloons plain, a little warm-edged.
• Variant looks: The Lucid's leader (dream: a hillside of dreamers in nightclothes with lanterns behind her) · Waking (ch. 339: on the cottage step at dawn, blinking at the sky) · On the 212 steps (panting, "He climbs these? Every day?").

She lights a dreamer. Whoever she lights knows they're dreaming (lucid): "The dream can't fool you, so you can push back. Not much. Don't get cocky. It's still his dream."

• Price: every person she lights adds a day to her sleep ("The Lantern costs my mornings."). She lit three thousand people in the dreaming and a hundred and forty on the ferry; she slept nine years.
• The ember: a glowing ember from her lantern held in a dreamer's palm burns if they forget they're asleep (Vigolas, Saga II; the ember is still in his palm in Saga VI, ch. 400).
• Lighting a keeper: awake, her lamp held to Hallbard's sleeping face lets him see in a dark room (he sees only what the Beam touches; ch. 339).

• Heartbeat technique: LOOK AT THE LIGHT: everyone who looks at her lamp at once is lit (Sömnen: "Everyone. Look at the light.": hundreds of mornings paid at once: "That's a year. Worth it. Go.").
• Burn cost: mornings of her own life spent asleep.

Her mornings. Nine years of them.

In the waking world her lantern is only a lamp: it guides, it doesn't fight. Her legs were weak for weeks after waking.

The iron lantern on a pole (dream) · the little bedside lamp (awake) · Hallbard, the keeper who logged her every day and talked to her across the water about the boats · Mörda, who lit her in her dream so she could wake (ch. 336–339) · Öde, with whom she writes down her hundred and forty ferry faces (ch. 340).

She doesn't fight. She lights the people who do, and leads them home.

• Wants: that nobody has a nightmare alone.
• Fears: waking up old.
• Humour: dry and bossy.
• Habit: saying "I'm fine.", which was her message to Hallbard through Kompis (Saga V).

• Hallbard: the giant keeper who logged "Vaka: asleep" every day for nine years; she wakes him back: "Hello, keeper. I'm fine."
• Kompis: carried her message ("she's fine") out of the dream (Saga V).
• Mörda: the nightmare-rider who, sleeping once, lit Vaka in her dream (ch. 336–339).
• Iskall and Öde: the lamp-bearer and the rememberer; three girls who keep people.

• "You're new. You're doing it wrong. Hold still."
• "Every time I light someone, I sleep one more day. That's the price."
• "Because when I was six, I had a nightmare and nobody came. So I decided someone should."
• "That's a year. Worth it. Go."
• "Hello, keeper. I'm fine." (ch. 339)
• "I've been asleep for nine years. I'm not missing this." (ch. 339)