Xander and the Dream Thief

by Margaret Dilloway

  “Yes, of course. We all do.” He smiles at me, lines fanning around his mouth. “But with time and experience, you will learn control. What is appropriate and what is not. We are like doctors, the Momotaro. We say, first, do no harm.”

  “First do no harm?” I wrinkle my nose. “Um, isn’t that kind of the opposite of what warriors do?”

  “Ha. Do woodchoppers cut down every tree in the forest?” Ojīchan bends over and hands me the carving. “Take this.”

  I hold it in my hand, turn it over, and examine it.

  It’s a piece of burned tree. Carved into the blackened wood is a figure with a silver face, like a blade. Like the wraith version of my father from my nightmare.

  The carving expands, blowing up like a balloon, until the figure looms above me again.

  I gasp.

  The scenery fades and changes. Above me is Shea’s face, her eyebrows drawn together and her skin red with strain. Blue sky, trees blowing in the wind. Normal.

  I look around with my eyeballs only because I can’t move my head. I try to blink, try to talk, but nothing is working. Am I really that bad off? Finally, I manage to twitch my legs.

  “You had us worried, Xander,” Peyton says from someplace to my left. “Good thing I knew where to find you.” Inu whines next to him, and he’s probably licking my face, but I can’t feel it.

  “Look at these bite marks.” Dad lifts my arm. Auuugh! It hurts like he’s stabbed me. The people blur, the edges of my vision blacken again. I try to tell them about the scorpion and my symptoms, ask if they’ve called 911, but still no words will come out.

  “He’s really messed up,” Jinx murmurs. “I mean physically now, too.”

  Thanks a lot, Jinx, I want to say.

  “Oh, mo chroí, this is going to hurt.” My mother presses my bitten wrist. Her hands feel hot-sharp on my tortured skin. Imagine a needle going into an open wound. My arm flinches automatically, trying to get away.

  “Stay still,” Dad says in such a commanding tone that I freeze. He sounds far away now. My ears are ringing the way they did after I went to a too-loud concert.

  “Was it a rattler?” Peyton asks, his voice faint.

  “A rattler shouldn’t nearly kill you within two minutes,” Dad says. “No, this is oni.”

  My mother’s hand grows hotter and hotter. It feels like she’s holding my flesh against a red-hot barbecue grill.

  Don’t they know how painful this is? I scream with every bit of air in my lungs, and nothing comes out.

  Then my vision clears abruptly.

  My mother’s eyes are screwed shut, her face as white as sugar. Her hair billows about her head as though a hurricane is whipping up.

  My dizziness vanishes. “Shea, stop! It hurts.” My voice comes out like a bullhorn. Peyton and Jinx and Dad jump. Inu barks as though he’s glad.

  “Shea!” I yell again.

  Something inside her seems to click, a lighter being flicked on.

  She’s glowing blue-white.

  I look down at her hand.

  It shines like one of those glow sticks kids carry on Halloween. Underneath her hand, my skin shimmers, red as a lobster in boiling water. The searing heat goes up my arm and into my spine.

  Her teeth chatter, her eyes roll into her head.

  I try to wrench away, but Shea holds on tight. “Stop!” I say, not so much because of my pain but because I’m afraid that this is killing my mother.

  Dad clenches his jaw as he looks from my mother to me and back again. “One more minute, Xander. Can you take it?”

  Okay, I want to say, but then the pain reaches my brain. It’s like the worst ice cream headache I’ve ever had, times two thousand.

  I scream again in answer, and everyone can hear it. Canada can probably hear it.

  Dad taps my mother’s shoulder. “Shea, it’s too much.” His face contorts. She doesn’t move from me. Dad grabs both her shoulders, and now his fingers are glowing. With a shout of pain, he lets go, shaking his hands.

  Her whole body trembles like a flag in a storm.

  Oh my gosh, she’s going to die. “Stop, Mom!”

  At the sound of Mom, Shea releases me. She falls back onto the ground, Dad supporting her. Her skin is a horrible zombie-like blue.

  “Mom?” I want to crawl to her, but I’m not strong enough. “Is she breathing, Dad?”

  Dad lays his palm on her cheek. “Yes. Are you all right, Xander?”

  “I think so,” I croak. Peyton helps me sit up. Inu woofs and crawls into my lap. Oof. “Not really helping right now, Inu.” I try shoving off his 140-pound body. Inu thinks he’s the size of a teacup poodle, I swear. He whines and licks my face.

  “Have some water.” Peyton holds a bottle up to my lips. I gulp it down. “Dude, don’t scare us like that. It’s not even close to Halloween.”

  “Yeah, I did it on purpose,” I manage.

  I remember how I laughed when my mother got hurt, and I think about the wraith from my dreams. I’m sorry for it all. Sorry I even have these powers.

  Jinx appears, clutching a limp piece of rope in her hand. I blink. No, it’s a black-and-white snake. “Is this what bit you?” she asks. “I found it crushed between the boulders.”

  I shake my head. “It was a scorpion, not a snake.”

  “Those can’t kill you,” she says.

  “This one had a face.” I close my eyes again. “And a stinger and claws.”

  “Oni,” Dad says. “Without a doubt.”

  The sick feeling drains from my body as quickly as it came in. I take the bottle from Peyton and finish it off, wiping my mouth.

  “I’ll go have a look for the thing that bit you,” Peyton says.

  “It’s long gone, whatever it was.” Jinx steps in front of him, blocking his way.

  Peyton crosses his arms. “What’s the matter, Jinx? You protecting that oni like you protected your father?”

  Fire leaps into her eyes. “Go ahead and look all you want,” she says tightly. “I’m done protecting any oni, Peyton.”

  He steps around her, but he doesn’t go anywhere.

  I slowly get to my feet. My mother is bent into a twisted S shape on Dad’s lap, her mouth slack, her eyes glazed. Her skin is light green now, the color of bile.

  Instantly, I understand. She drew the deadly poison into her own body, absorbed it all.

  For me.

  Warmth floods over my body, then icy fear.

  Kneeling on the ground, I put my arms around her. Her skin is cold and inert, like a stone. “Mom?” My voice shakes, and I struggle to control it. “Are you okay?”

  Barely, she manages to nod. “You called me Mom,” she says in a low voice.

  I feel like I’ve been caught sneaking a peek at a present. “Um. Well, yeah, you are, aren’t you?”

  “Forever and always.” Her eyes refocus as she lifts her hand to touch my face. I let her wipe the sweat off my forehead. “I’ll never leave you again. You have my word on that.”

  It is almost as though her own words give her strength. She begins to sit up, and Dad lets her lean into him.

  “She’ll be fine, Xander,” he says. “It just takes a temporary toll.” He strokes her hair.

  Inu barks and pushes in between us to lick Mom’s face. I pat her arm. “I’m sorry I pushed you down.”

  She smiles. “Oh, mo chroí, you didn’t push me. I tripped.”

  That’s not true, but I don’t correct her. I stand up and brush myself off. Jinx looks at me, then glances away as if I’ve done something embarrassing. Or horrifying.

  I don’t meet her eyes.

  When we get home, Mom immediately retreats to her bedroom, her color still not quite right, her limbs a bit rubbery. I, on the other hand, feel back to normal, for the most part.

  “How was your hike?” Obāchan asks from her easy chair, where she’s working on a ridiculous green Christmas sweater for my father, with a goofy-looking reindeer stitched in the middle. She makes these every year. She does
n’t think they’re goofy, so we wear them without complaint.

  “Not great.” I tell her what happened.

  Obāchan makes a tsking noise. “Be thankful your mother was there.”

  I sink into the couch. “Obāchan, you’re acting like I sprained my ankle. It was an oni. Don’t we need to do something? Go hunt it down, at least?” I’m more than a little freaked out by the idea that various monsters could be hiding anyplace. One might be under my mattress next time.

  She flaps her hand at me. “Let’s not get too excited, Xander. The oni will periodically want to test you. Consider it a lesson.” Obāchan yanks out another length of yarn from her basket. Inu settles against her stockinged feet with a great sigh. “You want some chicken soup?” she asks. “I have a Crock-Pot ready. Help yourself.”

  I traipse into the kitchen, where Jinx is already getting out two bowls. I ladle soup into them.

  “You know you’re lucky, right?” Jinx picks up her bowl too violently, sloshing out liquid.

  I take out two spoons and hand her one. “Yeah, yeah. I could have died.”

  “No.” Jinx ignores the spoon and slurps out of the bowl. “You’re lucky because your mother loves you enough to sacrifice herself.”

  I open my mouth to tell her I know that, thank you very much, but before I can speak, Jinx turns and runs up to her room. The door slams.

  Yes, I’m lucky. And I do know that now.

  Before my mother helped me today, I’d never seen her fairy-ness. I had no idea how powerful and special it is. That she really is some kind of beacon the oni could have spotted when I was a defenseless little kid.

  I wonder if I’m a beacon, too. Or if I can heal people like she can. Next time someone gets hurt, I’ll try it out.

  Or maybe I got absolutely nothing from her.

  Neither my mother nor my father is a good artist. The best they can do is draw stick figures with eyelashes. Maybe their DNA combined in some completely new way to make my talents.

  I go into the living room and sit gingerly on the couch, being careful not to spill.

  Obāchan mutes Wheel of Fortune. “What happened to Jinx?”

  “Nothing happened to her, but I got bit by an oni. I don’t know why Jinx is so upset,” I say. “I didn’t do anything to her.”

  “She’s not mad at you.” Obāchan takes a sip of coffee from her mug. “She’s feeling hurt because her mother did what was easy, not what was right.”

  “That’s not my fault.” I spoon up a juicy chunk of chicken. Inu’s face appears next to my bowl, drooling. He watches me greedily. “Back up, Inu.” I push at his chest, but he doesn’t budge.

  “You’d better feed him dinner,” Obāchan says.

  I get up and go into the kitchen to mix up Inu’s canned food and dry kibble. He waits by his eating spot. As I bend to put his dish on the floor, I realize that I don’t even have a headache, which is pretty amazing, considering that I was poisoned earlier.

  “Xander?” Obāchan calls to me. “Think of what it’s like for Jinx, living here. Being the outsider. An orphan.”

  “I do,” I mutter. I clap my hands twice, and Inu sticks his nose into the bowl, chomping down. I go back into the living room. “She’s not an orphan, is she?”

  Obāchan’s needles clink as she shrugs. “Who knows? She might as well be.”

  Hmmm. That may be true, but Jinx doesn’t have to worry—she has us now. Inu reappears at my side and paws my leg. “You’re done already? Fine.” I throw him a piece of chicken. “I know I’m lucky,” I say to my grandmother, finishing my soup. “I don’t need Jinx to tell me.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I’m going to take that as a rhetorical question, Obāchan.” I sit back against the couch, watching the lady on TV touch the letters as she trots across the stage, and I stifle a pretty grand burp. “Thanks for the soup.”

  “You’re welcome.” Obāchan shakes out the sweater over her lap. “Ahhh. The reindeer’s eyes should be big, don’t you think?”

  “Bigger than his head,” I tell her.

  That night, before I go to bed, I use the baku charm. If ever a bad dream was going to show up, it would be tonight, after my near-death experience with that scorpion. I clench the charm tightly and say what my grandmother taught me. “Baku, come eat my dreams. Baku, come eat my dreams.”

  Once in my bed, I toss and turn, worrying about my mother. I hadn’t seen her again this evening—she’d gone into a deep sleep. What if she doesn’t fully recover, all because of me? If only I hadn’t used my power on Lovey. Then Jinx wouldn’t have confronted me, and I wouldn’t have run off….

  The next thing I know, I’m walking into a field of purple-tubed flowers, thousands of them hanging from green stems. The horizon is sunset pink. Pretty. This doesn’t look like a bad dream at all. I relax.

  Peyton sits on the ground a few hundred feet in front of me. The flowers are growing across his lap, covering him. His wings are back—those grand feathery things, more than six feet across, iridescent and golden, with greens and blues mixed in as highlights. He’s eating the blossoms like popcorn, throwing one after another into his mouth and crunching down. “Want one?” he asks me between bites.

  Then I realize what they are. Nightshade. Poisonous.

  “Stop, Peyton!” I try to run to him.

  He laughs, gets up, and flies to me. “You want one, Xander?” He shoves a handful into my mouth and down my throat, choking me.

  I push him back, and he shoots off like a Ping-Pong ball, landing hard on the ground on his back with a sickening crack, as if a dozen eggs had dropped onto a tile floor.

  Peyton! I cry without sound, and my dinner rises in my throat. I try to reach him, to reverse this dream, but I’m running in slow motion and can’t get to him.

  I stop trying. My fear and sadness disappear. My mouth tastes like I just ate a handful of my favorite jelly beans.

  I stand there watching my best friend writhe in pain, and I feel…I feel happy about it.

  A laugh comes out of me, the surprised delight of a little kid watching a magic trick.

  Oh no. I’m disgusting! I’ve never hated myself—or anyone—so much.

  The wraith appears before me. I look up at its blank silvery head. “You again?” I ask. “Why don’t you just do something to me and get it over with? I’m sick of this.”

  The ghost creature angles itself so its face is directly across from mine.

  I see me. A reflection in a dull mirror, my bedhead hair standing straight up, my eyes bloodshot, my teeth yellow and mossy from forgetting to brush tonight.

  My breathing goes haywire. I try to run, but of course, because this is one of those dreams, my feet are stuck, my muscles as cooperative as tangled marionette strings.

  Baku! I cry. Where are you?

  Suddenly a four-legged creature lumbers over the horizon. It’s smaller than Inu, with a long trunk that dusts the ground. An anteater—or maybe not exactly an anteater. For one thing, it’s got green fur—a color that definitely doesn’t exist in our current mammal kingdom. There are yellow whiskers over its eyes, and two short tusks coming out of its mouth on either side of its trunk. A mane of curly golden fur falls from its head over its short-haired back.

  It looks right at me, its eyes warm and kind, but I know I shouldn’t move, just like you shouldn’t move when a doctor’s stitching you up.

  It waves its trunk over Peyton with a noise like air getting sucked through a tube. As in a cartoon, Peyton folds in on himself soundlessly, and he vanishes into the trunk like sand into a vacuum.

  The baku sucks in the deadly flowers, and then the rest of the landscape, everything falling apart and away like dust. The creature continues around and around until it reaches me, and its trunk touches my face as softly as a cotton ball. Then there’s just darkness. I fall into a deep, peaceful, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, I race downstairs. For the first time since I came back from the island of monsters, I feel energ
ized. Like a new person.

  My grandmother sits at the kitchen table with a bowl of oatmeal in front of her. “And how is my favorite grandson today?” She smiles.

  “Wow, Obāchan, that baku charm worked great!” I slide across the tile and throw my leg over the top of the chair. “I’m as good as new. And you’re right, the baku’s not scary at all. I’m going to use it again tonight.”

  “Xander, you should only call the baku when absolutely necessary,” Obāchan tells me, stirring brown sugar into her bowl. “Don’t use it until you’re having the bad dream. Not before. Otherwise she could take all your dreams.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m not stupid, Obāchan.” I get up and pour myself a bowl of cereal. Last night, the baku took all my dreams, and I slept super well. I’d rather have dreamless sleep than nightmares. Her way makes absolutely no sense. That’s like telling someone with a bad heart to wait to take their heart medication until they’re in the middle of a heart attack. No way would a doctor do that.

  “I know you’re not stupid.” Obāchan blows on her breakfast. “But you don’t always think things through.”

  Luckily, I don’t have to argue any further because there’s a knock at the door. I run to answer it, but Jinx already has, though she’s still in her heart-printed pink pajamas. I laughed when I first saw those—they’re so not Jinx. She said she only got them because Target didn’t have any black ones.

  “Hold up. What’s the password?” She blocks the person’s entry by splaying her arm and leg across the door frame.

  “I’m bigger than you. That’s the password,” comes Peyton’s deep voice, and I see the looming shadow of his broad shoulders in the morning light. Peyton’s spending the day here and staying overnight. The day after tomorrow he’ll be leaving for that boot camp, where he’ll be for two whole weeks, so we’re hanging out as much as possible.

  “For the love of Pete, let him in already!” I nudge Jinx out of the way as Inu races in and jumps on Peyton like he’s been away at war.

  Peyton scratches Inu’s armpits as Inu tries to lick his face. “I’m here. Now the party can get started.”