Don and his young wife head to bed, leaving their new kitten to rest in his bed. After they have gone, the kitten receives a visitor, a brown cat announcing an event to be hosted by a certain female cat of renown. They prowl their way to an overgrown grave yard, picking up others on their way until a gathering of many cats waits for the speaker.
In 1593, William Shakespeare leads his band of actors across the hills of Sussex, England. Among them is his son , whom his mother has forced Will to take on, given his recent bouts of absentia. They stop their caravan in the middle of the road, and Will meets with Dream on a nearby hill.
At the House of Mystery, Cain gives his brother Abel a gift. Before he can open it however, there is a knock at the door. It is Cain's pet gargoyle Gregory holding the weakened Dream Lord Morpheus aloft by his robes.
Urania Blackwell wants to die. Since she was changed into a metamorph, she has been alone, and dealing with the change to her appearance has been difficult. Her only source of social stimulation comes from weekly phone calls to Mulligan, her pension officer.
In his garden, Destiny unexpectedly meets the grey ladies. They warn that a king will forsake his kingdom, life and death will clash and fray, the oldest battle will begin once more, and all these things have their genesis in the garden. The fates disappear without further explanation, and Destiny looks in his book to learn more.
In his Ghost Castle, Dream calls forth all its inhabitants to hear him speak. He warns that he will be leaving soon, and may not return. He is going to Hell to offer forgiveness to his once mortal lover Nada, whom he wrongly imprisoned there out of pride.
Prepared to do battle with the hordes of Hell, if necessary, Dream makes his way through the front gates of Lucifer's domain. However, he finds the place strangely empty. Seeking out Nada, so that he can apologize and free her, he finds her cell empty.
Across the spiritual and otherworldly planes, gods and goddesses, angels and demons alike are all suddenly alerted to the recent abdication of Hell by Lucifer, and how the keys were passed on to Dream. In Asgard, Odin gathers together both Thor and Loki, and they make for the Dreaming. Elsewhere, the lords of Order and Chaos send emissaries to stake their own claim on the new real estate.
Thirteen-year-old Charles Rowland has been forced to stay at St. Hilarion's School for Boys over the holidays because his father has been taken prisoner in Kuwait by the Iraqi army. Fortunately, both the headmaster and Miss Gribble have stayed behind, and they can look after him.
The faerie emissaries Cluracan and his sister Nuala arrive late to the gathering at the Ghost Castle of the Lord of the Dreaming, Dream. He greets them amiably, and invites them to join the other visitors in the banquet hall. In the hall, the various visitors interact with one another.
The delegates from Faerie wake in the Ghost Castle, preparing to hear Dream's decision as to what to do with the key to Hell. Cluracan believes that they will not be chosen, and so has taken to drink and sex. His sister Nuala wonders what use she will have if not to be exchanged for the dream lord's decision in their favour.
In Hell, the angels Remiel and Duma watch as the damned and demons begin their return. In the Dreaming, Dream finally meets with Nada, the woman who chose death rather than to join him as his queen. He had been so vindictive at this rejection that he had condemned her to Hell for thousands of years.
In 1794, Dream visits with Johanna Constantine - a woman who had once attacked him as a demon five years previously. Today, he comes to her with a proposition. He requires a mortal agent to perform a special task for him, and in return, he will give her what is in his power to give her.
A woman named Rachel lies in bed at her house. Her withered, bony hand reaches out from the blankets to the nightstand where it grasps at a partially opened bag of sand. This is Dream's Sand Pouch – a mystical item that was stolen from him decades ago.
In the month of August, the dwarf Lycius is called to an audience with Caesar Augustus. Today, Caesar asks him to teach him how to appear to be a beggar, and then, they will go out into the streets as beggars, forsaking their nobility for just one day. Lycius shows Caesar how to appear boiled and blistered by rubbing soap on his body and covering it with vinegar.
At San Francisco in September of 1859, Despair taunts a man named Joshua who has fallen into her domain. She sees in him a potential for despair, and calls on Dream to help redeem him. Dream refuses outright, but his sister taunts him, and warns that his other siblings would expect him to comply.
In a certain dreamer's land, the inhabitants worry that their future is a gloomy one, as their dreamer has not visited in nearly two years. With her gone, the Cuckoos will likely kill them all. One of them, Martin Tenbones speaks up, announcing that he has the porpentine, and will seek out the dreamer in order to save their lives.
While examining the mysterious porpentine, a gem given to her by a friend from her dreams, Barbie is interrupted by her neighbour Hazel. Quickly, she hides the gem and then lets Hazel in. Barbie is taken aback when Hazel - an out lesbian - reveals that she thinks she might be pregnant.
Late at night, both Hazel and Foxglove wake from disturbing nightmares and hold each other in tears. Their dreams were so vivid that they seemed real. They are too scared to go back to sleep, so they both just sit there with the light on holding each other.
In The Land, Barbie and her companions struggle to cross an icy tundra, with no cover to hide them from the Cuckoo's black guard. If they make it across the plains, they will come to a dangerous forest, where the mysterious Tweeners and even the trees will pose a threat. Though she is surviving, Barbie is very cold.
In The Land, Barbie is surprised by the familiarity of all of the objects she sees in the house she grew up in, which happens to be the home of the Cuckoo, who poses a threat to The Land and all of its inhabitants. Barbie encounters a small blonde girl who claims to be the Cuckoo. Not only that, but she claims to be Barbie - an aspect of her that exists within The Land.
In what little remains of The Land, Dream informs Barbie that she can ask of him just one boon. She considers having him kill the Cuckoo, or to recreate the land, but ultimately she has to take more time to decide. Dream then turns to the three women who found their way there through witchcraft, and informs them that they will all be trapped there as punishment for entering a skerry without his permission.
A man from Poland tells his granddaughter Celeste the story of a young boy named Vassily from the old country, who encountered a Romany Gypsy peddler in the forest. He was kind to the woman, but his father found him and warned him against associating with outsiders. The boy could not help his curiosity, and returned to find her again.
Separated from his father and uncle, Marco Polo wanders the , trying to find his way back to the caravan. Eventually, parched, he collapses in the sand. He remembers that his mother once told him the legend that when he sleeps, the sandman pours magic sand into his eyes, and that is what he rubs out of them in the morning.
Dream's next task is to reclaim his missing helm. This will prove a most dangerous endeavour, as it means that he must pass the gates of Hell itself to find it. At the gates, Dream meets resistance from a guard named Squatterbloat.
One day, Lyta Hall puts her son Daniel Hall to bed while she talks to her friend on the phone. In sleeping, Daniel enters the Dreaming. On the steps of the House of Secrets, Daniel encounters Matthew the Raven and Eve, who lead him inside to take tea with Abel.
On a remote island in Greece, Andros Rhodocanakis is one of the last of a group of monks who protect the location of the head of Orpheus. Every spring day, he walks up a hidden path which leads to the grave marker of Johanna Constantine, lays a flower on it, and then checks in on Orpheus. As he now does this, his father and grandfather did so before him.
In the Dreaming, Dream is heartbroken over the loss of his most recent love interest. She has decided that she no longer loves him. As a result, he orders his servants to have her quarters erased, and that they never mention her again.
Bernie Capax is a lawyer, but he was not always so. He has been alive for at least 15,000 years. However, as he walks down the street, a brick wall collapses on top of him, and Death comes to him.
Somewhere in the North of Scandinavia, a Sami Alderman named Leib Olmai senses trouble after watching the Northern Lights. He checks the traps he set in each of the four directions, and finds that the trap in the south has been triggered. He transforms himself into a bear, and sends his shadow to return home in his place.
Ishtar stops by her coworker Tiffany's apartment, noticing that the girl still appears very sick after she spent the previous night vomiting. Ishtar has brought breakfast, but when she makes food for her friend, the smell of it causes her to vomit all over again. Meanwhile, Dream has allowed his sister Delirium to drive their car, and her poor driving alerts a local traffic patrolman.
In his place of hiding, Destruction - having given up his post 300 years ago - attempts the creative endeavour of poetry to limited success. His canine companion Barnabus is certainly critical. Destruction comments that he doesn't dream anymore, lest he give himself away to his younger brother.
In his hideaway, Destruction decides to practice the art of cooking, explaining to his canine companion Barnabas that even cooking is a method of creating. Barnabas has little enthusiasm or hope for Destruction's ability to create food, let alone art; he notes that the sculpture outside is little more than a block of marble with holes in it. Meanwhile, Dream and Delirium have decided to resume their search for their elder brother, though their list of leads is now essentially useless.
Over dinner, Dream and Delirium have little interest in the mortal food that their brother Destruction has made for them. Delirium explains the lengths to which she and Dream went to find Destruction, and Dream tells of how the rest of the family is; more or less the same. Finally, Destruction asks what they plan to do now that they've found him.
Keeping his promise to his son, Dream visits Orpheus in his temple. Though he is scared, Orpheus has asked his father to give him death. HE has lived for years as a disembodied head, protected by the family of Andros Rhodocanakis in the temple.
At Arkham Asylum, John Dee makes his escape. Naked, he wanders out into the street and, with a revolver, forces a woman passing by to drive where he wants. Scott Free wakes from a vivid nightmare of his past, growing up on Apokolips under the care of Granny Goodness.
Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, King of Baghdad, lives in a beautiful city of wonder, enjoying the pleasures of his harem, and occasionally sneaking out in disguise to experience strange things with his friends. However, during the month of Ramadan, he becomes listless, wanting none of the pleasures that city or palace have to offer. Finally, he descended deep into the lowest part of his palace, where he finds room after room of strange things.
Brant Tucker has volunteered to drive his coworker Charlene Mooney to Chicago for a sales conference. On the way, however, Charlene falls asleep, and Brant begins to experience dream-like hallucinations - or so he thinks. It begins to snow heavily in the middle of June, and suddenly a strange creature appears in the middle of the road, and he swerves.
At the World's End Inn, the faerie Cluracan tells his story to those assembled around the table. Once, long ago, Queen Titania had summoned him to send him on a mission to the Lords Carnal in Aurelia of the Plains, a beautiful and strange land. She warned that an alliance of the folk of the cities of the plains would not be good for faerie, and he is to prevent that from coming about.
At the World's End Inn, a sailor named Jim tells his tale: On his thirteenth birthday, Jim had run away from home and joined a sailing ship's crew to Singapore. Eventually, he found himself on a ship in Bombay under Captain Herbert Burgrave. One day, a gentleman had come to see the Captain.
While taking a break from the stories going around at the World's End Inn, Brant Tucker encounters a man who tells him yet another tale of a man from one of many different Americas. Prez Rickard grew up knowing that the pledge of allegiance meant more than just words to recite. He took initiative in all things, eventually setting right every clock in his home town of Steadfast.
Brant Tucker wanders downstairs at the World's End Inn to hear a tale from Petrefax, a denizen of the Necropolis. As a Prentice, Petrefax works under his master, Klaproth. One day, after having had a difficult time paying attention in class, Petrefax was required to provide an account of an air-burial for the class by the next day.
At the World's End Inn, the assembled demand to know of the innkeeper what the nature of the place is. She explains that it is merely a place between worlds. It is not a dream, nor a real place.
The Kindly Ones are drinking tea while talking about their duties, they read a fortune cookie that says that the oldest battle begins once more. Lyta Hall and Carla go to buy ice cream with Daniel Hall; once they arrive they talk about Lyta´s job offer. In the Dreaming, Matthew looks for Dream and encounters the three guards at the door, Mervyn, Nuala and Lucien.
Lyta and Carla talk with the police about the kidnapping of Daniel. Luke Pinkerton asks her a couple of questions and tells Carla to stay with her. On the Dreaming, Cluracan tells the gatekeepers that he is there to see Nuala, they tell him that he can pass and they warn him to keep to the path.
Loki and Robin Goodfellow plot about their kidnapping. Daniel Hall walks up to them with a phoenix feather in his hand and the two set him on the fire. Hob Gandling brings flowers to the grave of his latest love, Audrey, and tells her how much he misses her.
At a 24-hour diner, John Dee observes the regular patrons. Bette Munroe is a writer masquerading as a waitress - or perhaps the other way around. Judy is a young lesbian girl, of whom many locals do not approve.
The Sandman #60 is part of The Sandman. The Sandman is a dark fantasy comic book series written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics.