Xander and the Dream Thief

by Margaret Dilloway

  Then I run into something—a sodden tree branch, hanging over the water. I grab hold and try to catch my breath.

  To my surprise, Jinx is waiting for me on the other end of it, her face as tense as a bowstring. “Come on, Xander! Climb up to me!” she hollers.

  I try to pull myself up the branch, but my rib hurts and my arms quiver too much. “I can’t.”

  “You can.” She shakes the branch gently. “Xander, don’t you dare give up on me now. I will never forgive you, do you hear? I’ll play my emo music all day and night unless you get over here.”

  I laugh a little, despite the pain. “How are you going to play emo music at me if I’m dead?”

  “I’ll find a way to reach you beyond the grave.” Jinx sounds so ferocious, I believe her. “Now get up here.”

  Forcing my arms to move, I slither up the branch. I hug it, pressing my cheek against the bark. The water’s trying to pull me back in. I’m so tired it’s hard to keep my balance. I’m in real trouble now.

  Then Jinx crouches above me, holding the nylon rope that we’d packed what seems like a million years ago. “Let go so I can slip this over you.”

  If I let go, I’ll drown. But I’m too tired to disobey her.

  Instantly, she throws the loop over me and tightens it as expertly as a cowhand lassoing a calf. The other end is tied around her waist. I grab the branch again, and she bends to help me get on my hands and knees.

  “Now follow me.” She crawls nimbly across the branch, holding on with her fingers and bare feet. I slip a couple times, but the rope keeps me steady and finally we make it to the bank.

  We flop onto the ground, breathing heavily. “How’d you find me?” My voice is weak. It feels like someone is stabbing me in the side every time I inhale.

  “I followed you, of course.” Jinx’s hands and arms are covered in red scratches. She holds up her forearm, grimaces, then plucks out a large brown splinter. “Monkeys can move pretty darn fast when they want to.” She’s covered in mud from head to toe. She gives me a brief smile. “Come on. Let’s go back and find Peyton.”

  We pick our way through the mud and the trees, following the river back to where we left Peyton. Annoyance and worry propel my legs. We’re losing so much time! Why can’t anything go smoothly? If only I’d remembered what Dad said about the rocks earlier! Why am I so slow with stuff like that?

  “Almost there,” Jinx says over her shoulder because, of course, no matter how fast I go, she is faster.

  “I’m going as quick as I can. Sheesh.”

  “All right.” She shoots me a look of mild annoyance. “I know.”

  But when we arrive back at the spot where Peyton should be, there’s nothing except a boy-size indent in the mud, and my helmet. Thank goodness I didn’t lose it—I don’t even know what it can do yet. Maybe if I’d kept it on my thick skull, I wouldn’t have gotten swept away. I pick it up and put it on my head.

  “Shoot.” Jinx kicks a rock straight up into the air. “Peyton!” she bellows.

  “Where is he?” My voice rises in panic and anger.

  “I don’t know.” Jinx’s tone matches mine. “I told him to stay put!”

  “Dang it! You should have stayed with him!”

  “Then you’d be dead!” Jinx yells, and we look at each other in silence, knowing that it’s true.

  I swallow. “I’m sorry. Look.” I point at the mud, where Peyton’s size-twelve shoe prints are rapidly washing away. “Let’s find him before all his tracks disappear.”

  We follow the footprints between thick trees and across other trails. Where was he heading? “How could he go so far when he couldn’t even move for us?” I wonder aloud.

  “Maybe he wanted to find us. Maybe he felt better.” Jinx shrugs. “Come on.”

  When the footprints fade completely, all we can do is keep walking in the same general direction. The sun breaks through the clouds, making the air suddenly summer-hot and instantly drying our clothes. Soon we’re sweating.

  This search reminds me of one time at Boy Scout camp in second grade. I wasn’t the most reliable of kids, always getting separated from the group on class field trips, but my dad figured, hey, it’s a fenced-in campsite. How much trouble could I get into?

  A lot.

  During a campfire session, I’d had to go to the bathroom. I could see where the building was, and I’d slipped away without telling anyone except Peyton.

  Except, of course, it wasn’t the bathroom.

  I got all turned around and ended up in a field on the opposite side of the building. I couldn’t even see the smoke from the fire because it was a cloudy night. So I started walking.

  And walking and walking and walking.

  Pretty soon I found myself sitting on a hollow log, bawling my eyes out. Then Peyton’s shiny eyes and shock of hair popped out from between the trees, followed by a flashlight beam—his dad, our Scout leader, was with him. “There he is!” Peyton had shouted.

  “How’d you find me?” I’d asked him.

  He shrugged. “You have melted marshmallow and chocolate all over your shirt,” Peyton had said. “I could smell you from a mile away.”

  At the time, I hadn’t thought much of Peyton finding me. Or connected it to his birdlike nature. But now I remember what we read about monkeys and birds the day when everyone lost their dreams. Both have a strong sense of smell. Birds have to follow scents in the air.

  “What do we do if we can’t find him?” Jinx bursts out.

  “We’re going to find him.” I’m the optimist now. I guess it’s the law—someone always has to keep acting brave so the group doesn’t fall apart.

  “But what if we don’t?”

  “We’re going to!” I snarl because I’m scared, too. “Jinx! How’s your sense of smell?”

  Her nose crinkles. Then her eyes light up. “Oh!”

  She gets on the ground, her palms flat against the dirt, and inhales deeply. “Ew! Dirt went up my nostrils.” Jinx raises her head, sniffs the air, and points. “That way.”

  We follow Peyton’s scent down into a vast valley that’s crowned by foliage in glorious Technicolor, as though packets of Kool-Aid had been sprinkled over everything.

  Jinx puts her face right into the dirt. “BO, soda, unwashed socks,” she reports with a shake of her head. “Basically, he smells exactly like you.”

  I snort. “I’d rather smell like unwashed socks than like a monkey.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “And how does a monkey smell?”

  “Like poop,” I say, and she gets all mock indignant and gives me a little shove. I shove her back, and we’re giggling like two little kids who have to be separated by the teacher. It’s such a relief to laugh that I start laugh-crying, and I have to turn my head away so Jinx can’t see it. Because she’d either think I’m unstable or feel bad for me, and I couldn’t stand either.

  We walk along the path, still scuffling with each other. Suddenly it gets frigid-cold. There are patches of frozen stuff that looks like pink Slurpee between the rocks and the trees and on the sides of the path. “What is that?”

  “Beats me.” Jinx scoops up a handful and puts it to her lips.

  I gasp involuntarily. “What if it’s pink snow because some monster pees pink? Or it’s blood?”

  Jinx grins at me, wiggling her eyebrows up and down. “It’s not like I haven’t tasted blood before.” She smacks her lips. “Yum. Cherry blossom.”

  “Cherry blossom?” I repeat dumbly, looking around the decidedly wintery landscape for a blooming tree. “What cherry blossom?”

  “The flavor.” She holds her hand out to me, proffering the snow.

  I taste it. Pistachio and vanilla with an undercurrent of cherry. “Not bad.” I grip her wrist and take a bigger bite. Ugh. I spit. Twigs and dirt in that one.

  Jinx lets the pink snow fall out of her hands and wipes her palms on her pants. “This bit may not be so fresh. But I have an idea.” She takes out a plastic bag and packs some snow int
o it, then presses it against my rib. I wince. “You have to ice that. It might be broken.”

  “Thanks.” I clamp it to my side.

  Just then, I hear the faint sound of a whinny in the distance, followed by a low murmur in a deep-ish voice.

  “Peyton?” I shout and run up over the small ridge.

  “Xander, wait a second!” Jinx calls as she follows.

  I stop, and she thuds into me.

  On the other side of the ridge, there’s a small gully. A herd of horses, about a dozen, mills about. They’re not as big as regular horses but not as small as ponies. They’re stocky, with short legs, and spotted in black and white and soft pink, maybe so they’ll be camouflaged in this environment, in the dappled pattern of shadows and light falling on the mountain.

  The horses nicker and whinny softly at one another.

  Sitting on his bottom in the middle of the herd, as if these wild horses don’t concern him at all, is Peyton, his backpack next to him.

  His eyes are half-closed, and he’s scratching the head of a horse while talking to it in soft tones.

  “Peyton?” I say, quieter this time.

  The smallest horse sees me and lets out a high-pitched squeal, its eyes rolling back in its head until I can see the whites. It jostles the other horses, who now spot me and similarly start freaking out, trying to get away, all going in the same direction but getting caught on one another’s hooves.

  Great. Stampede time.

  The biggest one rears, pedaling its shiny hooves through the air. Sharp hooves.

  Oh no.

  I take as many steps back as I can, but there’s nowhere for me to hide, really, just behind trees. The stallion’s nostrils flare, and it stomps the ground hard. Its hooves leave deep indentations in the soil, as if to say, Yeah, look what I did to the ground! That’s gonna be your skull!

  There’s no way I’m going to use my sword on these animals. I kneel, trying to think of what to do, how to act.

  The biggest one, who is as tall as my shoulder, looks at me with alarm. It neighs and stamps its front hooves. It nudges its way through the other horses until it’s face-to-face with me, blowing hot breaths of steam through its nose. Great orange-black eyes survey me with suspicion.

  I freeze. I’ve only had one interaction with a horse: a fat lazy one named Dodge that I rode at Boy Scout camp. It kept stopping to eat grass as I yanked pitifully at its reins.

  Well, what would I do if I were meeting a dog? One, let it smell me. Two, give it a treat. Inu, I could bribe with bacon. Or a Cheeto. Or anything, basically. What do horses like?

  I hold out my left hand in a fist, allowing the horse to get my scent. Then I slowly take a granola bar out of Jinx’s backpack and rip the wrapper open. Its big nostrils sniff the bar, and its lips curl away from its large white teeth, which remind me of those windup plastic teeth from a joke store. It slobbers all over my hand as it sucks up the bar.

  Jinx appears beside me, as silent as smoke. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to make friends,” I whisper.

  The horse turns away, as though I’d never offered it a treat at all, and makes its way back to Peyton.

  “Peyton!” I follow the stallion and try to go through the horses, but it seems like they’re standing shoulder to shoulder to block my path. They snort and glare at me like huge burly bouncers at a nightclub door.

  Then Jinx is in front of me, firmly pushing one and then the other out of the way, as though she’s some kind of Secret Service agent. To my amazement, the horses docilely step aside.

  “How’d you do that?” I ask her, trying not to look dumbstruck.

  “When you live among demons and animals, you pick up a few things.” She shrugs, patting the smooth forehead of the largest horse. “Show them you’re the leader.” She barges through the throng to where Peyton sits—thankfully not trampled.

  He’s still petting the foal, whispering soothing words into its ear. His backpack’s open, and granola bar wrappers are strewn about.

  “Peyton!” I kneel by my friend, weak with relief. His color is still that odd blue-green shade, not normal. He’s shivering but doesn’t seem to care. I dig in his pack for the down jacket, the kind that packs into the size of a folding umbrella, shake it out, and help him put it on. “Hey, buddy. Let’s get going.”

  Peyton focuses on me. It seems to take him as much effort to do this as it does for me to walk to social studies class on a warm spring day. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? Can’t isn’t in the vocabulary of Peyton Phasis. Not the Peyton Phasis I know.” This is the kind of pep talk he usually has to give me, when I don’t want to finish my math homework, or go to school, or do my social studies project. Why, Peyton must have given me seven hundred pep talks, a hundred for each year of school. I put my hand on his shoulder. “You can do it.”

  The stallion comes over and blows at my hair, no doubt looking for another granola bar. Jinx cups his muzzle, and he pushes it against her stomach.

  Peyton turns his face away. “Nope.”

  I put on his backpack. “Quit talking crazy.” I stand up, taking him under the shoulders and using every bit of my strength to force him to stand. The movement makes my rib ache, but I don’t care anymore. “We are going. Now.”

  Peyton reluctantly gets to his feet with my extreme assistance. He leans across the stallion’s back. The stallion nickers sympathetically, turning his head to gaze at Peyton.

  Jinx and I look at each other.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Are you thinking about climbing that tree over there?” Jinx asks with a mischievous grin.

  I have to snort. “No. That we use this horse to get us to the peak.”

  “Good.” Jinx gives me a funny look. “Which peak?”

  What?

  She points over my shoulder, to the left and then to the right, and I slowly turn, not wanting to see what I think I’m going to see.

  Yep. There are two peaks, each capped with pink-white snow. Two directions.

  And we have no idea which one we were just on.

  I yell as loud as I can, “I HATE THIS MOUNTAIN!”

  “Yeah,” Jinx says, “that’s definitely going to help.” She squints against the sun, looking at the peaks.

  “Well.” I wipe at my running nose. Cold always does that to me. “Yelling helps me keep my sanity. That’s something.”

  “We need to think this through.” Jinx squeezes her eyes shut, crosses her arms. “Step-by-step.”

  The horse neighs and stamps.

  “Do you know what we’re talking about?” Jinx pats his flank. “Can you understand?”

  He pushes his nose into her backpack.

  “He doesn’t understand. He just wants a treat.” I sit down where I am, ready to give up.

  “Stand up, Xander.” Jinx steps toward the peaks. “Which one should we choose?”

  “Who knows? We have no idea which direction we came from.” I look back in despair. Between the flash flood and the search for Peyton, we are good and lost.

  “Picking the right one is a fifty-fifty shot.” Jinx gives me a curious look. “You’ll have to choose.”

  “Me?” The last thing I want is to be responsible for yet another thing going wrong. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re Momotaro,” Jinx says, as if this explains everything.

  “Powerless Momotaro, you mean.” I get up, regarding Peyton, who’s still using the horse as a stand to prevent him from falling over.

  “I mean Momotaro.” Jinx grabs my shoulders and turns me to face her. “Don’t think. Just hold up a hand and point.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You’re thinking,” Jinx says, and she spins me in a circle. “Hand!” she yells, and I throw up my left hand automatically.

  But I’m not left-handed. Could this have actually worked?

  “Don’t stop and second-guess yourself
.” Jinx glares into my face.

  “Okay,” I say, with about a million times more confidence than I feel. “Let’s go.”

  We push Peyton on top of the horse and strap him on with bungee cords. The stallion paces nervously, but Jinx produces an apple for him.

  “A face apple? Jinx!” I shudder. “You’ve had that thing in your backpack this whole time?”

  “It’s no different than eating an apple with a bruise on it.” She tightens the cords around the horse. “Really, Xander. This isn’t our world. We have to do what works.”

  “I guess.” As I watch the horse gobble up the apple, I want to barf. “Just hang on and try not to fall,” I tell Peyton.

  I peer up at the mountaintop. Thankfully, I’ve chosen the peak that’s closer to us. “It’s not far. We’re practically there,” I say to Jinx and Peyton, trying to inspire them—and me.

  We start moving. The trail takes us through dozens of switchbacks and hidden places. It reminds me of waiting for a ride at an amusement park, where you think, Hey, the line’s pretty short, and then it winds around into a back room and through an underground tunnel and behind some stuff until you see there’s, like, five hundred people waiting. I hope I picked the right way.

  Jinx and I look at each other, and we both know what the other one’s thinking. She shrugs. “Well, we might as well keep going and see what’s up here before we try the other peak.”

  “Yup,” I say. So this is what it’s like when both of us lose hope. Not good.

  Finally, in late afternoon, we round a corner and enter a flat snowy clearing. I look around, huffing and puffing.

  I don’t know what I expected to see—neon lights proclaiming WELCOME TO FUDŌ’S SHRINE! would have been nice—but there’s nothing here except a few trees and a cliff with a steep drop-off.

  Wait.

  Behind a tree at the far end of the clearing, by the cliff, is some kind of structure. No big lacquered pieces or nicely wrought statues there. It’s small, wooden, and leaning to one side, but it’s a structure nonetheless.