Dreamwalker

by Allyson James

  I rinsed my face and looked up into the mirror. Emmett Smith looked back at me.

  My scream took me off my feet. I jumped from the mirror and hit the wall behind me, a towel rod jamming into my back.

  Emmett was no longer the suave businessman in an elegant suit with designer glasses. His face was gaunt and skeletal, his gray eyes reduced to points of light in sockets.

  Threads of his brown hair clung to his head, and his lips were drawn and dry, like a mummy’s. His tailor-made suit hung on his bones, his hands shrunken and leathery.

  “Janet,” he said in a voice that was a throaty hiss. “You did this to me.”

  I whipped my head around and looked behind me, all over the bathroom, but Emmett wasn’t there. He was only in the mirror.

  Before I could speak, Mick was next to me, wide awake, not wearing a stitch. He stared at Emmett then gingerly reached out and touched the mirror with his broad finger.

  His fingertip met glass, nothing else.

  “Why does he look like that?” I demanded of Mick.

  Mick studied Emmett before answering. “It’s his true guise. What he covers with a glam.”

  Yes, I’d always felt something dark and gruesome in his aura, but I hadn’t realized he was death walking. I shuddered.

  Emmett’s black lips curled in rage. “Get me out of here—now.”

  I reached a tentative finger forward but, like Mick, felt nothing but cool glass. “I don’t know how you got in there. Are you saying you didn’t do this?”

  “It was me, sweet cheeks,” the mirror said. It sounded both triumphant and terrified. “He came near the hotel when you weren’t looking, so I grabbed him.”

  “Hold it, you told me Emmett hadn’t been here. Or did he come after that?” I knew in my heart he hadn’t. The shadow Mick and I had seen on the hotel must have been the mirror sucking him in.

  “I said he hadn’t come into the hotel,” the mirror answered in a small voice. “He was in the shed, trying to take the mirror I’m part of off your bike. He had another shard with him, and I used both pieces to encircle and trap him.”

  “Wait—he had a mirror shard?” I asked in alarm. “Where did he get that?”

  Emmett only smiled, his teeth brown and rotted. “Ask your sister.”

  “What?” I pounded on the glass. Emmett’s eyes flared, a scary sight. “What did you do with Gabrielle?”

  Mick had his hand on the mirror again, fire seeping from his fingers as though he sought to melt his way in.

  I yelled at the mirror. “If Gabrielle had a shard—if Emmett took it from her, why weren’t you screaming about it?”

  “I didn’t know,” the mirror said, voice tight with shame. “She must have stolen it when they moved me out to the sunlight. I was so distracted by that and by Flora making me hot and swirling that I didn’t know it had been taken, or that Emmett had it until he went to the bike shed. I was afraid you’d be mad at me, or try to come in after him, so I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know about Gabrielle either.”

  I remembered hearing a discordant clank when the mirror had become whole—was it the missing shard throwing it off balance? Or Emmett taking it away from Gabrielle—I had little doubt he’d wrested it from her.

  “I wouldn’t know how to come in,” I told the mirror. I demanded of Emmett, “Where is Gabrielle?”

  Emmett slammed himself into the glass. It was weird to see him do that, as though he stood on the other side of a clear window, yet Mick and I were transposed on him. Emmett’s gnarled hands flattened against the glass, and his mouth moved with the beginning of a spell. The glass started to smoke.

  “Go back into the dreaming, Janet,” the mirror shouted at me, rattling in terror. “Stay safe from him. Go there—hurry!”

  My eyes widened, even as I kept beating at Emmett’s image. “You mean you sent me dreamwalking?” I asked the mirror. “Why?”

  “To keep you safe!” the mirror yelled. “Micky could watch over you while you stayed safe from Emmett and learned how to fight him. Dream, Janet. Please.”

  I opened my mouth to command it to explain everything, but a spark sailed from the mirror to smack me in the middle of my forehead. The bathroom wavered, colors running like wet paint in the rain to become puddles of nothing.

  I collapsed into sleep as Mick had—one breath in, one breath out, then darkness.

  ***

  I awoke to someone poking me with a stick.

  I cracked open my eyes to see my familiar bedroom in Many Farms, dawn light eking in through the windows to cast shadows on the painted white ceiling above me. Grandmother stood next to the bed, tapping me with the end of her cane.

  When I’d lived in Many Farms, Grandmother hadn’t used a cane. She’d acquired that after I’d gone off to college in Flagstaff, and she’d developed bad arthritis in the joints of her left leg. Any suggestion of knee or hip replacement surgery had been met with a vehement negative—Grandmother had a horror of general anesthesia. She’d succumbed to have her gall bladder out long ago and vowed to never go under again.

  “What am I doing here?” I asked, my tongue feeling thick. Already the details of what had happened in the bathroom were growing dim.

  “That is a good question. I ask the same one for myself.” Grandmother spoke in the Diné language, and for the moment, I couldn’t remember English anyway. “Get up. I have something to show you.”

  I heaved myself out of bed. I was still in Mick’s long T-shirt I’d pulled on at the hotel, and I looked around for jeans to put on under it, but found nothing. I noticed that the room was barren, holding the bed and an old kitchen chair, nothing else. Not the bedroom I’d softened and made mine, which Gabrielle had taken over.

  “Where’s all my stuff?”

  “Not here yet,” Grandmother said. She looked at me in disapproval. “Your garment will have to suffice. We must leave. Now.”

  I didn’t question her. When Grandmother spoke in that tone, I moved.

  She led me out of the house through a back door at the end of the hall, one that was seldom used. It opened to an empty space near a storage shed. For a long time, no step had been attached here—the door had sat above the foot-high wooden foundation.

  Forgetting that, I stepped out into nothingness and flailed until I landed in the dirt. Grandmother didn’t comment, only waited for me to climb to my feet and help her down.

  She beckoned to me. We skirted the house around to the back, where the old sheep pens were. Grandmother took me down the length of the house and around the far corner, then stopped, easing back into the shadows.

  My dad’s old truck rattled up the dirt drive and pulled to a halt in front of the house. The sun, barely touching the horizon, lit up the dents in the dusty pickup—I’d bought my dad a new truck when I’d started making money from my photography. Pete Begay slid stiffly out of the driver’s seat, as though ending a long journey, and moved to the passenger side.

  I was struck by how young he looked. Dad’s face was smooth and handsome, his black braid holding no trace of gray, his movements, in spite of him apparently driving for hours, lithe.

  He opened the passenger door and pulled out a bundle, which cried out.

  My heart beat thickly. I started forward and was pulled back by the spindly hand of my grandmother.

  The door to the house banged open. A younger version of Grandmother bounded out without her cane, followed by my aunt Natalie, who looked as young as Dad.

  “What is that?” Grandmother demanded, pointing to the mound of blankets my father held. The squalling rose to ear-splitting levels.

  Aunt Nat put her hands on her ample hips. “Pete, what the hell are you doing with a baby?”

  “Whose baby?” Grandmother asked sharply. She sniffed, then drew herself up. “Where did you find it? Why did you bring it here?”

  My dad looked exhausted, bewildered, defeated, and grief-stricken as the child in his arms continued to cry. Grandmother reached out her hands. “Give it here
.”

  “No.” My father backed away. “She is mine.” He squared his shoulders, and for the first time in his life, faced down the women of his household. “This is my daughter. I have brought her home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  My mouth went dry, and I wanted to start bawling along with the baby. My dad and my grandmother squared off, she a shaman with old magics, my father with determination and love in his eyes. My grandmother came forward, Dad watching her in trepidation, but he stood his ground.

  Grandmother reached him and peered into the bundle. She studied the baby the barest instant before she took a sharp breath. “It stinks of evil. Peter, what have you done?”

  My father lifted the infant against his chest and gave his mother a belligerent glare over the blanket. “She’s hungry.”

  Grandmother fixed him with a hard stare. “You can’t keep her, Pete. She will bring danger and darkness upon us all. She should be taken to a shaman who will drive the evil out of her and raise her where she won’t hurt anyone.”

  “Mom’s right,” Aunt Nat said, though she’d hung back, as though fearful of approaching them. “There’s something wrong with her. I feel it.”

  “Best thing to make a clean break now,” Grandmother said firmly. “Give it to me. I’ll take it to the shaman right now, and you never have to see it again.”

  My father swung away, holding me close. “She’s not an it.” His voice was hard, harsh, a tone I’d never heard in him. “Stay away from her!”

  “Peter.” Grandmother tried to gentle her tone. “This is not your fault. She’s demon born, isn’t she? You were duped, I imagine. The babe might not even be yours.”

  My father took another two steps back, the rage of angels in his eyes. “She is not a demon. She is mine.” He raised me high, tiny Janet bawling in terror. “This is my daughter,” he announced to the sky.

  My younger grandmother’s mouth hung open. I saw clearly the indecision in her, the terrible worry about the evil lurking in this child warring with her love for her son. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she wanted to shield him, and she didn’t know what to do.

  Pete brought the baby down and cradled her against his shoulder. “There now,” he said. His voice shook—he had no clue how to take care of a baby. He began crooning a song in Diné, one I remembered him singing to me all my young life.

  The baby quieted. She sniffled, snuggling into her father’s arms as though realizing that here was her protector.

  “I am keeping her,” Pete said, looking straight at my grandmother. “I will raise her and teach her. If you do not want her living here, I will go away.”

  He stood in place like the mountain behind him, a single monolith glowing softly under the rising sun. Strong, immovable, unchanging.

  I think I loved him at that moment more than I’d ever loved him before.

  My grandmother heaved a long sigh. “Best come inside. It’s cold. I’ll find her some milk.”

  Pete, after a moment’s hesitation, followed her into the house. Aunt Nat stood aside as he passed, as though fearing to come too near him and the baby. Finally, they disappeared inside, and Aunt Nat shut the door.

  Before I could move, the world changed, not with the wavering undulations of a movie, but in a brilliant flash.

  It was winter, the ground dusted with snow. A cold wind blew, nothing blocking its path. My father emerged in a flannel shirt and fleece-lined jacket, a cowboy hat jammed down hard on his head so the wind wouldn’t take it.

  Something crashed inside the house, and then came my grandmother’s voice. “Janet Begay!”

  The door burst open. A small child rushed out, her tiny legs covered in thick winter pants, she just pulling on a hooded jacket. “Daddy!” She ran after my father, small legs pumping.

  Grandmother appeared in the doorway. “Get back in here! Let him go!”

  The child continued running after her father. Pete stopped, turned, and looked down at her, his face softening.

  Grandmother stood in the doorway, fists on her hips. Pete looked at Grandmother, looked at the little girl, and made his choice. He held his hand out to his daughter without a word.

  Small Janet grabbed the lifeline, trotting alongside him. When Pete paused to open the gate to the sheep pen, Janet planted her feet and leaned far to the side, using Pete’s hand as her anchor.

  As always, I thought, tears in my eyes. My father, my protector.

  Pete lifted me and carried me into the pens, me perching on his shoulder. My grandmother, in the doorway, shook her head, and ducked into the house.

  I leaned back into the shadows, cold now, and turned to the older version of my grandmother. “Why are you showing me all this?”

  “Me?” Grandmother asked in surprise. “I’m showing you nothing. This is your dreamwalking. If you are here, then this is something you needed to see.”

  “The mirror confessed it sent me into the dreaming, just before it knocked me out,” I said, half to myself. “Why is it showing me this?”

  “How should I know? I’m not an expert on magic mirrors. I don’t like them—annoying things. But they are good at reflecting. This one is reflecting things from your past, specific things. The why of it is up to you.”

  The fact that the mirror had instigated the dreaming had floored me. To keep me safe, it had bleated before I’d fallen unconscious. Whenever I had been out, it was true, Mick had been right there by my side. Emmett had come nowhere near me—even Emmett must have known it was futile.

  Maya, when she’d been thrust into the dreaming with me—I’d carried a mirror shard at the jail, which must have zapped her too—had been watched over by Nash. Drake, with Gabrielle in the dark near my saloon, protected by Gabrielle.

  I remembered that careening myself into Nash in my second dream hadn’t woken me up as I’d thought it would. Probably because I hadn’t been spelled—I’d been sucked into a reality made by the magic mirror. The mirror had been gone in that dream—because it could not be inside itself? Or had it simply reflected the fact that Cassandra had moved it in the waking world?

  Why had it thought I’d be safer in my dreams? Safe from Emmett reaching me with his magic? Or safe because I’d learn what he could do and how to fight him?

  I had no answers, although I’d take the mirror by its frame when I woke up and shake it until it coughed up everything.

  “Thanks,” I told my grandmother. I waved vaguely at the front door. “And thanks for letting Dad keep me. You could have stopped him.”

  “I know.” Grandmother looked uncomfortable. “I was afraid to. I was afraid that whatever demon had got its claws into him would destroy him if I sent you away. I didn’t understand what you were or what had happened to him. Easier for me to find out if you stayed where I could keep an eye on you.”

  I studied her, then I smiled, my heart lightening. “You did it from kindness, Grandmother. You didn’t want to upset Dad. You love him too much. Admit it.”

  Grandmother scowled at me, and I began to laugh. She so hated getting caught being nice.

  “There are other things you must see,” she said, a growl in her voice. She heaved herself up and began walking into the desert.

  ***

  I had no idea where we were going, but the scenery changed from desert to mountain within one step and the next. Ponderosa pines soared around us, blotting out the sky. The wind turned even colder, snow drifts piling up under the trees. A ribbon of black road stretched beside us, wet from melted snow and ice. The sign I could read a little way off read Whiteriver, 10 mi.

  A car burst toward us, going far too fast for the slim, winding road. The car slid sideways on ice, the driver frantically turning the steering wheel. The vehicle spun until it finally thumped into a snowy bank and stopped.

  I hurried forward. I had no idea whether these people could see me, but I felt a burning need to help them.

  A man, Native American, got himself out of the driver’s side of the car. He was yelling,
but his words were slurred. A woman, also Native American, emerged from the passenger side and hurriedly stumbled toward him through the ice and snow.

  The man reached into the backseat of the car and pulled out a bundle much the same as the one my father had held. This one too began to shriek and cry. I halted.

  “No!” the woman pleaded. “You can’t!”

  The man snarled at her then ran a few steps into the woods, holding the baby between his two hands as though it might explode.

  “You can’t do this. She’ll die!” The woman ran after him, sliding on the ice, catching up to his lumbering stride. “Give her to me. I’ll take care of her.”

  “You don’t want her. Her mother was a witch. This baby will grow up and kill you.”

  I went cold, and not because of the weather. Though the man and woman spoke a language I didn’t know, I somehow understood every word. I knew who they were, and the name of the baby the man was trying to abandon.

  He tossed the bundle down under a tree. The child’s wails grew, terror ringing in the still air.

  The woman rapidly stooped down and came up with the baby in her arms. She was crying, but she tried to sound comforting as she soothed the child. “Hush now, Gabrielle. He didn’t mean it. It’s all right.”

  “Anna,” the man said. “Put her down, or I’ll kill you.”

  The woman, Anna Massey, looked up at her husband with the same determination in her eyes my father had held in his. “Leave her alone. I will take care of her.”

  “She’s another woman’s child,” her husband snapped. “Do you understand that? A witch seduced me, an evil woman—she made me screw her. Again and again, until she got pregnant.”

  “That’s not the baby’s fault,” Anna said stubbornly, holding the child close. “We’ve tried for so long …” She trailed off, tears in her voice. “A demon didn’t leave this child. God did.”

  Massey stood looking at her, his hands on his hips. He was afraid, drunk, and angry at himself and at my goddess mother for luring him from his wife. I felt pity for him, but only so much—Gabrielle’s father had been an alcoholic and also a rather stupid man, petty and cruel out of ignorance.