by Nick Lake
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Not only is Mom no longer Shy Mom, but she’s being un-shy over there in LUKE’S TENT. WITH LUKE. UGH, I think. And then an image flashes in my mind of Luke’s double chin and I think UGH again, UGH X 10,000.
I die inside a little, that very moment. This is my mom, who has lectured me my whole entire life about being careful of men, about what they want, and how they get it, and here she is in Luke’s tent.
At the same time, I’m worried about her. I mean, I know how it is. I know how much more Luke weighs than her, even though she’s big. I know he could do anything he liked to her, hurt her, kill her.
Men are dangerous—I know that. Mom told me, but I watch a lot of TV, I could have worked it out for myself. I mean, the serial killer is never a woman, right?
So what is Mom doing putting herself in danger?
What is happening to her?
What is happening to me?
I think about those fairy tales Mom used to tell me, the ones about the changelings, where fairies would take a human child because they found it beautiful, and replace it with a fairy baby. Right now, though, it feels like Mom is the changeling, like she’s been taken away and replaced with some other mother, some simulacrum, some clockwork woman.
I lie there, and I think how screwed-up my life is, and I wish I could just be back in our apartment in Scottsdale, doing the same thing every day, living the old routine. I promise, I tell myself, closing my eyes. I promise, I’ll never complain about going to the Grand Canyon again, or college, or whatever, if I can just go back to my old life.
Then I open my eyes again and I look out the other window of the car and I see Mark standing there. Right out there, his feet on the pine needles. His eyes are kind of glowing. He is wearing the black jeans and white shirt he always wears, and he is smiling at me. I think about Mom, telling me how no one named Mark worked at the library. How no man worked there at all.
Blink.
Still there.
Of course, I say to myself—I’m dreaming. Mom isn’t really in Luke’s tent, doing whatever it is she’s doing with him. Mark isn’t really standing on the forest floor outside the car. Everything is totally fine! Apart from the little fact that the father I always thought was dead is after us, and evidently has the power to check hospital records. Which is totally not fine!
But since this is a dream, just like the hospital, and so it makes zero difference what I do, I open the car door gently and get out, banging my storm trooper CAM Walker on the door as I do, only when I walk my leg doesn’t hurt at all, which tells me it really is definitely a dream, to the MAX, because when Luke was driving it felt like someone was hammering nails into me.
Mark does not move, just keeps gazing at me with those glowing eyes as I approach. I’m on the other side of the car from Luke’s tent, so they couldn’t see me even if they weren’t, ugh, busy.
There are pine needles on the ground and it feels like floating, as I walk over to Mark. I move smoothly, despite the CAM Walker. I still have my sweatpants on, with a slit down the side to accommodate the enormous boot. Mark stays very still. I can see his breath, turning to vapor in the night air, as if something inside him is smoking.
I’m really close now—I could reach out and touch him, but I don’t really believe he’s there. I think this is a dream again, like the child in the hospital. Maybe every time I’ve seen Mark it’s been a dream, and I’m actually deeply mentally ill, maybe—
Mark reaches out and takes my hand.
Hello, Shelby, he says with his mouth.
Chapter 14
I touch Mark’s cheek, still convinced that this isn’t real.
He lets go of my hand.
How are you, Shelby? he says, in sign.
What?
How are—
I heard you, I say. But I mean … what? What the hell? What are you doing here? Mom said there was no one at the library with your name. Who ARE you?
Mark blinks his beautiful eyes and I see that they weren’t glowing, before, they were just reflecting the moon. You shouldn’t trust everything your mother says, he says.
I think of the coyote, saying there will be two lies and then there will be the truth. Was that the first lie then? Or was it … was it Mom telling me about Dad chasing us?
I hold Mark’s gaze. You’re saying she was lying?
I’m not saying that. I’m saying you shouldn’t trust everything she says.
I shake my head. I can’t deal with this.
I tried to save you, he says. Outside the library. I tried to pull you back from the car. But I wasn’t quick enough.
It’s okay, I say. It’s just my leg. Don’t worry about me.
But I do worry about you, he says.
Well, stop.
No, he says. It’s my job to worry about you. That’s why I came.
I close my eyes. I kind of hope when I open them he will be gone and I can go back to normalcy, but he’s still there, still VERY there, I can smell the warm scent of him, weirdly comforting. I don’t understand, I say. Why are you here exactly?
He smiles, but it’s a sad smile. I’m here to take you to the Dreaming, he says.
I’m not dreaming now?
No.
No?
This scares me somehow, though I don’t really know why. I mean, him saying it’s not a dream doesn’t mean anything; even if it were a dream, he’d probably say that. But there’s something disturbingly real about the pine needles and moss below my feet—my foot, I should say, because only one of my feet is bare, the other is encased in a massive white exoskeleton—about the breeze on my face, Mark’s cheek when I touched it, faintly raspy with stubble.
What the hell is going on?
Calm down, says Mark. It’s all right. I’m here to help you.
Why?
Because you need help.
I hold his gaze without looking away. His eyes are like tunnels into forever.
Take my hand, he says.
He holds out a hand to me, like it’s obvious to him that I’m going to do whatever he says, and maybe he’s right, because I take it.
We’re stepping sideways, he says. Through the air.
I don’t know how to—
We step sideways, through the air.
For a moment, I’m still a girl.
Then I disappear, slowly, a Polaroid picture in reverse, washing out of existence. I look down to see my hands fade away, then my arms, then my body.
I am nothing but electrons and empty space between them, eons of space. In my eyes are pinwheels, blazing against the skylike darkness that is everywhere and everything, and at the same time is just my mind, spooling out to erase the world.
Stars. Everything is Stars.
Chapter 15
When I open my eyes again, the world has come back. Or some world has come back, because I sense instantly that we’re not in the same place.
We’re in a forest, still, but it’s more forest. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like … like seeing a movie in 3-D. It’s just …more.
Or, okay, like when the first day of summer comes, and you forgot that the light could do that, flood everything, submerge it in brightness; except that here it’s night, and the stars are doing the illuminating, a trillion stars, glowing brightly like dust in the sky. The colors are more vivid than the forest I left behind, the leaves are more finely traced, more detailed. It’s crazy.
The cars have gone, and the gravel, and we’re in a tiny clearing and it’s just trees in every direction, and thorny undergrowth, and the light of the stars is very dim because of all the leaves above us, making a lace brocade of glow on the forest floor. I notice that the trees are kind of brown and sick looking.
Also, both my feet are on the ground. I mean, obviously. But in the sense that I am not wearing the CAM Walker anymore. I am barefoot, the cold forest floor beneath my skin.
Where are we? I ask. At least I think I do—but speaking is suddenly st
range, and it comes from the world outside me but also inside my head.
We’re in the Dreaming, says Mark. His voice is happening in my mind, not outside it; he’s no longer speaking with those graceful gestures of his. His voice is entering through my ears and into my head; it’s an experience I’ve never had before, not really.
I touch my ears. I … your voice is in my head, I say.
Yes, he says. It is called hearing.
I can … I can hear?
Yes, he says. In the Dreaming, yes.
I stare at him. It’s so beautiful, his voice, I can’t express it at all; it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced. I can hear it, loud and clear, rippling in the air, vibrating in my eardrums. Till now, all I’ve heard is static and faint sounds; now I’m standing in this weird forest and I realize that there are multiple strange sensations coming through my ears, that’s the only way I can describe it. Faint, scratching resonances, from the outside world, from the forest. I realize that as well as Mark’s voice I can hear some kind of bird calling, and insects crawling in the undergrowth, and the rustle of leaves in the moving air.
And then …
Suddenly …
I am crying.
Oh crap, I am crying, tears running down my cheeks like something has melted at the front of my mind and is leaking out.
Then I love the Dreaming, I say, and I don’t need to move my hands to say it, I just open my mouth and speak, and I hear my own voice in my ears, the voice of a stranger.
Good, isn’t it? says Mark. It’s a place of magic.
I know this already. I don’t just hear the forest, I feel it. Or maybe it’s better to say that it feels me and I just know it; I sense it, all around us; it coils; it can see in the dark.
Yes, I say. But, I mean, what is it? Where are we, really?
There was a time before time existed and that is called the Dreaming, and that is where we are, he says.
Oh, that clears it up, I say. Basically it’s a dream, right?
No, he says. It’s not a dream. It’s the Dreaming.
What I mean is …, I say. What I mean is, it’s not real. You’re not real. This place isn’t real. I’m imagining it all. Obviously.
The things you imagine are not real? he says.
Well, no, I say.
How do you know?
What?
A dream, he says, is real to you. While it is happening, you are not aware you’re dreaming, correct?
I guess. Sometimes.
So it’s a kind of reality. Just a reality personal to you.
I laugh. An illusion, in other words, I say. I mean, if my mom woke up, would I be gone from the car?
Mark shrugs. I don’t know.
Because surely that’s the test of whether something is real, I say. Whether more than one person experiences it. And according to Mom, you don’t even exist, so you don’t count.
I exist, he says.
Who says?
Me, he says, and smiles.
I roll my eyes, exasperated. Okay, I say. So we’re in some sort of dream that you insist is real, but what am I—
The Dreaming, he says. Not a dream.
Whatever, I say. The point is—
Then suddenly, the sound of the forest, the rustle and hiss and crackle all around me, gets suddenly louder. All of this is INSIDE my head, like Mark’s voice, something that has not yet ceased to amaze me. I glimpse fur, rushing toward us—foxes, badgers. And a clattering of wings as birds approach, hawks, beaks extended before them like weapons.
Mark hisses and squeezes my hand.
This is Shelby, he says in a formal but quick tone, his voice suddenly echoing slightly, as if we have entered an invisible cave of hard rock. And she enters the Dreaming on my sufferance, at my forfeit, and under my protection. I stand for her.
A tension drops out of the air.
The birds reach us, and bank steeply, and shoot up into the trees and disappear; the foxes are undergrowth again and can’t be seen. The forest is back to normal, which is to say, back to dying—because the more I look around me, the more I see that the leaves are blackening and shriveling, the undergrowth at our feet dry and thin. Everything looks diseased, or thirsty maybe, like it hasn’t rained here in the Dreaming for months.
You stand for me? I say.
Yes.
I stare at him. Who are you?
I’m Mark, he says.
Yeah right, I say.
He shrugs again, this is kind of his thing at the moment and it is getting super annoying. On the other hand, he is practically the only person apart from my mom I have ever spoken to, he was the only one I knew who could sign, and now I’m in this magical place with him and I can actually hear him with my ears and I love the sound of his voice.
What am I doing here, though? I say. What is the point of this? I mean, I know dreams don’t have to have a point, but still.
The Dreaming is suffering, says Mark. He reaches to his side and pulls a leaf from a tree. It is little more than a tracery skeleton—ribs, held together by a gossamer gauze of brown tissue. He blows on it and it scatters into dust.
Yeah, I can see, I say. Everything is really dry.
Dry and dying, says Mark. He indicates a flower that is bent over, most of its curled-up petals on the ground.
What does that have to do with me? I say.
Everything, says Mark.
What, why does—
But then there’s a high, plaintive howl, coming from somewhere behind us in the forest.
Alarm floods Mark’s eyes. We have to move, he says urgently, in a low tone. Wolves.
You can’t tell them you stand for me, like you said to the foxes and whatever?
He laughs a hollow laugh. No, he says. Wolves serve the Crone.
The Crone? I say.
An owl hoots.
Owls also serve the Crone, says Mark.
Who is the Crone? I say. What does this have to do with—
Quiet, says Mark. Just go.
This really doesn’t seem like the time for arguing, so I hurry behind him, and it seems like we go for hours, jumping over roots, twisting to avoid trees. Even though I haven’t been wearing the CAM Walker long in the real world, it’s extraordinary now to be without it, to glide through the forest, over the grass and moss and twigs, barefoot. It feels primal and free, and I would be enjoying it—the air in my lungs, the rhythm of the running—if it weren’t for the howls behind us, gaining. Getting louder.
Mark stops for a moment and frowns, deeply.
Then there’s another high-pitched howl, very close this time. I look where he’s looking, and see eyes glinting in the depths of the forest, and hear snarls. Deep, hungry snarls.
I have only been able to hear for less than an hour but those snarls speak to something very, very deep inside me, something older than I thought I was, and I realize it’s a human instinct from a million years ago, buried in my genes.
It says RUN.
Chapter 16
I start running. The forest flashes past, leaves and tree trunks strobing, like slowed-down celluloid film.
My legs piston along, my breath rasping in my throat; I don’t know when I last ran like this. I am gasping.
Then suddenly I’m not running but lying down, and I’m looking up at Mom and she is shouting, gesticulating wildly. SHELBY? SHELBY, HONEY? TIME TO WAKE UP.
Then I snap back into the Dreaming and I’m running again, flying over the forest floor, jumping to clear some roots, stumbling over a rocky section, then splashing through some sucking mud where a stream must have been—I can see its banks, though there is no water flowing.
I run and run, following Mark’s fleet, agile form, duck under some ivy and then—
Tree trunk.
I swerve left, miss the tree by inches, but there’s a root elevated above the mossy ground and I don’t notice it till my foot hooks under it and I go right over, smash my chin into the ground and do a clumsy roll, then lie there
winded on my back.
Mark appears above me, looking down at me with concern in his gray eyes. Shelby, rise and shine! he says.
Huh? I say.
Get up, he says.
Then again:
Get up.
What are you talking about? I say. Just then he disappears, as does the lacework of leaves above him, the tracer-fire of the brown vegetation, and instead in its place is the gray fabric of a car ceiling—is it called a ceiling in a car?—and the little light you can turn on, or set just to illuminate when the doors are open, and Mom is there leaning over me and—
Mark frowns as a wolf howls, close behind us.
You are flickering in and out of this world, he says.
What does that mean? I say.
Mark closes his eyes, then opens them again. It means you have to go, he says. I will be back for you. But you must get up and step through the air now.
On my own?
Yes.
But I don’t know how.
You do. You just don’t know that you do.
Oh, that’s helpful, I say.
He grabs my arm and levers me up into a standing position. Then he presses a knife into my hand.
Hold this, he says. Close your eyes. The knife knows who you are and knows its way back to the Dreaming, and so do you, deep down. Then take a step sideways. If you need to get back here, to me, you do the same thing—but from your side of the air.
I don’t know—
Yes, you do. But be fast. And remember, I will be back for you. We must rescue the Child within a matter of days, or your world ends.
Days? I say.
Yes, he says. Days. Now move. Step through the air. Do it.
And I do.
4…
Chapter 17
I’m in the car, under a blanket, where I started off. Mom is leaning over me, frowning. I look down and see that I’m shaking.
What? What? I say.
It’s morning, honey, she says.