Ginger was dreaming before she knew she had fallen asleep. One moment she was tucked beneath her blanket, listening to the wind brush softly against her window. The next, she was standing barefoot in a meadow she had never seen before. The grass was blue instead of green, tiny white flowers glowed like stars around her feet, and above her stretched the biggest rainbow Ginger had ever seen.

It didn't arch across the sky the way rainbows were supposed to. This one came all the way down to the ground. Ginger stared at it. The end of the rainbow rested just beyond the meadow, disappearing behind a hill covered with silver grass. Everyone knew there was supposed to be something at the end of a rainbow. Some people said it was a pot of gold. Ginger had never been completely convinced about that. Why would anyone leave a pot of gold sitting outside under a rainbow?

There was only one way to find out. She started walking.

At first, the rainbow seemed close. Ginger crossed the meadow, climbed the silver hill, and expected to find its end waiting on the other side. But when she reached the top, the rainbow had moved. Now it touched the earth beyond a forest of tall purple trees.

“You're not getting away from me,” Ginger said.

She hurried down the hill and entered the forest. The trees were strange and beautiful. Their leaves whispered to one another even though there was no wind, and round golden lights floated between the branches like lazy fireflies. Ginger tried to catch one, but each time she reached for it, it bobbed just beyond her fingers. “Fine,” she told them. “I have somewhere to go anyway.”

She followed the rainbow through the trees until the forest ended at the edge of a wide river. The water was so perfectly still that it reflected the sky, the clouds, and the rainbow above it. For a moment Ginger couldn't tell which rainbow was real—the one overhead or the one beneath her feet. There was no bridge, and on the other side of the river, the rainbow touched the ground again.

“How am I supposed to get over there?”

Something bumped against the riverbank. It was a little red boat. Ginger looked around for its owner, but there was no one. There were no oars inside it either, but when Ginger stepped aboard, the boat pushed away from shore all by itself.

“Well,” she said, sitting down, “that's convenient.”

The little boat carried her silently across the water. Halfway over, Ginger leaned over the side and looked down. Instead of fish, she saw tiny stars swimming beneath the surface. One shot past the boat with a silver tail behind it, and Ginger nearly fell overboard trying to follow it with her eyes.

When the boat reached the other side, she climbed out and continued after the rainbow. It led her across a field where enormous dandelions towered over her head, through a tunnel made entirely of clouds, and up a staircase that seemed to have been carved from moonlight. Still, every time Ginger thought she had reached the end, the rainbow moved farther away.

Eventually, she stopped. “This isn't fair!” she shouted.

The rainbow didn't answer. Ginger sat down on a moonlit step and folded her arms. She had crossed a blue meadow, climbed a silver hill, walked through a purple forest, sailed across a river full of stars, passed beneath giant dandelions, and climbed halfway into the sky. And she still didn't have a pot of gold.

Then Ginger noticed something. From where she sat, she could see everywhere she had been. Far below was the silver hill. Beyond it shimmered the blue meadow. The purple forest looked like a dark patch of velvet, and the river curled through everything like a ribbon of glass. Golden lights still danced among the trees, and the enormous dandelions swayed gently beneath the clouds.

Ginger slowly stood. She had been so busy chasing the end of the rainbow that she hadn't noticed where it had taken her.

Just then, the colors above her began to shimmer. Red slipped into orange, orange into yellow, yellow into green, until the entire rainbow seemed to loosen from the sky. One end floated toward Ginger and touched the moonlit stair.

Ginger stepped backward.

Suddenly, the rainbow wasn't something in the distance anymore.

It was a road.

Ginger put one bare foot onto the red stripe. It held her. She put down the other, and then she began to walk. Higher and higher she went, following the rainbow through the night sky. Clouds drifted beneath her feet. The moon hung so close she thought she could reach out and touch it. Stars crowded around her, and one of them zipped past her ear so quickly that Ginger ducked.

“Watch where you're going!” she called after it.

The star blinked twice, which Ginger decided was probably an apology.

At last, the rainbow began curving downward. Ginger could see its end below her now, glowing brightly in the darkness. This time it wasn't moving. Ginger hurried down the last stretch of rainbow and jumped from the violet stripe onto soft grass.

“There you are!”

There was no pot of gold. There wasn't even a pot. Instead, there was a small white bed beneath a familiar window. Ginger stopped. Someone was asleep beneath the blankets. She crept closer and saw red hair spilling across the pillow.

Ginger stared at the sleeping girl.

“Oh.”

The rainbow ended right beside her own bed.

The colors began fading behind her, one by one. Violet disappeared first, then blue, green, yellow, orange, and finally red. The strange world vanished with them until only Ginger's bedroom remained. She climbed beneath the blankets and settled beside the other Ginger—or perhaps into her. Dreams were funny that way.

Just before everything disappeared, Ginger heard something tapping gently against the window.

She opened her eyes. Morning sunlight filled her room. She sat up and looked outside. Rain still clung to the glass, but beyond it the clouds were breaking apart, and stretching across the morning sky was a rainbow.

Ginger jumped out of bed and pressed her nose against the window. She looked carefully at one end, then the other.

For just a second, she thought she saw a little red boat sailing through the air.

Ginger smiled.

Maybe she hadn't dreamed all of it.