“I remember,” he whispered with a dry throat.
“If you die, Cade—”
“Tash—”
“Just listen! You never listen. If you die, Cade, let your spirit find its way to Dream. Wait for me at Sunflower Corner on top of Dandelion Hill. Remember the mulberry tree we planted there?” Cade remembered that too. He nodded. “We’re not going to die, Tasha.”
Her eyes were moist. Nurses walked outside the room, wheeling carts, but here they were alone. The curtains were closed, shielding them from the other beds, leaving them in a cocoon of sheets, bandages, white walls and green tiles.
“Someday we all die,” Tasha said. “But Dream lives forever. Our place.” She shut her eyes.
Cade sighed, looking down upon her. She was so pale, her black hair wispy, purple sacks under her eyes. How many times had it been now? Three? Four? His sister had been trying to kill herself since that day … that day of blood and fire, that day that left them alone in the world, scarred. The shrapnel had broken his body; it had broken Tasha’s soul.
“Meet me in Dream tonight,” she said, eyes red, crusty, as if she would cry but had no tears left. “Tonight we meet at Seashell Shore. Okay, Talon?”
Talon. He nodded, hands in his pockets. “Okay, Sunflower.”
Her eyes closed and she slept. Her chest rose and fell as the ceiling fan creaked, as nurses walked by, as the city outside bustled with five million souls flowing through gray streets. Cade turned away.
He marched down the hallways, scarred hands hidden in his pockets, head bent down, staring at the hospital floor. Green tiles stared up at him. He hated those green tiles. He hated his twin sister sometimes. He had to pause, drink from a water cooler, breathe, calm himself. Keep breathing.
He remembered the country they had fled. He remembered the day that had torn open his hands, taken their parents, taken Tasha’s joy and made her this shell of pain and memories.
“She wasn’t even there that day,” he whispered, jaw tight.
His fists clenched in his pockets. She wasn’t even there when the bombs roared, when the fire burned, when the blood and guts and limbs flew across the street. No. She had been at home that day, painting her landscapes, while he was burned and cut and—
Cade pushed the thought down, took deep breaths, and bit his lip so hard that it hurt. No, she hadn’t been there, but the shrapnel that filled him, that had ripped apart their parents, dug through Tasha nonetheless. When she cut her wrists, time and again, it wasn’t her razor blades that drew her blood. It was that old, jagged shrapnel.
Cade pulled his hands from his pockets, looked at their scars, and shoved them back in. He kept walking. Soon he was outside. He headed home. Meet me in Dream tonight, she had said. The only place that’s good. She would sleep at the hospital, where she spent so much of her time … after slicing her wrists … for visiting those doctors who loved big terms like “post traumatic stress disorder” or “clinical depression” … sometimes just to visit her friends. Dream. Where no pain or memories of distant wars can dwell.
Cade got on the subway, a rusty old train coated with graffiti, the floor a field of fluttering flyers and newspapers. The commuters crowded around him, jostling against him as the train swayed. Tracks screamed and the driver announced the stops in a voice so muffled, it was impossible to understand.
At his subway stop, beggars reached for coins and youths huddled smoking in corners. Cade avoided the main street and walked home through the cemetery. He moved past tombstones coated with ivy and flowers, and under maples and elms shedding their leaves for autumn. Squirrels drank from stone fountains and mausoleums of marble columns frowned. He always took this route, searching for the hawk Windwhisper, remembering. This was the place where they had first discovered Dream.
“Our place,” Tasha said to him every time, clutching him desperately, clinging as if he could save her from the abyss that forever gaped beneath her. “Where everything is good.”
He met Tasha there that night, as they had planned. He lay in bed, alone, his apartment silent and hot around him. The only sound was his pet hamster scurrying in his cage, racing through paper towel rolls. It took Cade an hour to drift off to sleep, but finally he was there again, their place. Seashell Shore. She awaited him.
And they were no longer Cade and Tasha, the refugees, the orphan twins. In Dream they were Talon and Sunflower, and she was happy, and he was unscarred and whole, no shrapnel inside him. Talon and Sunflower, prince and princess of the wilderness.
“Yalene, Talon!” Sunflower called to him in the language of dreams. She stood atop a mossy boulder that rose from the sea. Waves sprayed her feet and sunlight glowed around her. Feathers adorned her lustrous black hair, and she wore raiment of silk and gold. A silver helm topped her head, topaz bracelets encircled her wrists instead of bandages, and light danced in her eyes. Around her, green waves whispered over seashells and sparkling stones.
“Yalene, Sunflower,” he replied. He walked toward her, the sand caressing his feet. A band held his hair back from his forehead, and he wore a necklace with a stone talisman shaped as a talon, the stone that gave him his Dreamname. He carried a lyre over his back, and paintbrushes hung from his belt; here in Dream, they could make music and art as they pleased, for they lived in muse.
“I’m glad I chose Seashell Shore for tonight,” she said, the sun in her smile. Whales leapt in the distance behind her, and birds of paradise soared overhead. “I was considering Tropical Canopy, or maybe Fruit Forest, but you know what? I think Seashell Shore is my favorite among the places we’ve discovered so far in Dream.”
Cade helped her off the boulder, and they walked through the shallow water. Smooth stones glowed beneath their feet like jewels alight. “I like Seashell Shore too,” Cade said. “Someday I’d like to visit the birch forest in the west, where the faeries live. We’ll walk for as long as we can, and see what new places we find.”
“I’d like that too, Talon. But not this night. Tonight let’s swim!”
She splashed him, soaking him with sea water, and ran toward the depths. Soon she was swimming as dolphins somersaulted around her. Cade swam beside her through the sparkling waters.
“Race me to Coconut Island!” she said. They swam, laughing, until they reached an islet, seven coconut trees growing upon it. They lay on the sand, spent, and found a basket waiting beneath one tree. Inside were sandwiches and fruit, and they ate in the shade of the palms. Ahead across the water, above Seashell Shore, the mountains of Dream soared, verdant.
Dream. Our place.
“It’s almost time to wake up,” Cade said in a small voice, feet in the cool water, hands jingling seashells.
“No,” she said and clutched his shoulder, voice desperate, eyes haunted, fingers digging. “Don’t talk of the real world here. Here there are no Cade and Tasha. Here there are only Talon and Sunflower, prince and princess of the wilderness. Nobody can hurt us here, Cade. Nobody.”
Cade cracked open a coconut against a rock. “Okay. For a few moments more.”
She looked at him. “I’m so glad Windwhisper showed us this place, Talon. I wish I never had to leave.”
But then he was awake, lying in his bed.
He sat up. From outside came the sounds of trucks and sirens, and gray morning light slanted onto him, dim under the clouds. A garbage truck backed up outside his window, beeping like some great melancholy bird, filling Cade’s room with the smells of smog and rotten fruit. Cade tossed off his blankets and stood up.
The boiler was out again; he showered in cold, hard water. At least there are no arguments over the shower this morning, he thought. Not with Tasha away. Numb, he pulled on a golf shirt, brushed his hair, brushed his teeth. He ate a bagel on the subway, got to work late, and snuck in without the boss seeing. He spent nine hours typing, hunched over, typing and typing and telling himself, “Fourteen dollars an hour, just keep typing.” Scarred hands over the keyboard. Happy hour tonight, Cade? Not tonight.
Family thing. My sister, she’s sick.
Subway again, on his way home, the commuters jostling against him, newspapers and coffee cups tumbling around his feet, the train like a boat on waves. Like the waves at Seashell Shore.
Tasha was already home when he got there, wrists still bandaged. She sat alone by the window, her back to him, a silhouette against the city lights. She turned to face Cade, and for a moment her face was blank, her eyes lifeless. Then she forced a smile. “Hi, twin brother.”
“Hello, Tash. It’s good to see you back.”
And that was it.
That was all they needed. Prince and princess of the wilderness.
They ate mac and cheese in silence, and Cade drank four beers on the balcony, looking out over the gray city below, the millions of people scurrying down smoggy streets. Gray, the color of forgetting. He tried to forget. He spent every evening trying to forget. A siren wailed in the distance and dogs barked.
Tasha sat in the living room, knitting, a blanket pulled over her knees. Their mother had loved to knit. Cade could still see her in his mind—knitting in the rocking chair by the fireplace, humming old tunes, graying hair pulled into a bun. He barely remembered their parents anymore, the old country, anything before that day of fire, that day that broke their family. But he remembered the knitting. He remembered that.
“I’ll be at Sunflower Corner tonight,” Tasha said to him, passing by the balcony on her way to bed. “Meet me there.”
Cade sipped another beer.
That night he went into bed and found himself standing among sunflowers six feet tall. The flowers were like dinner plates full of seeds, bright yellow, their leaves green and wide. The sky stretched endless and blue above, ants ran along the brown crumbly earth, and swallowtails flew past him, leaving wakes of sparkling powder. The air smelled fresh like flowers and soil and health, and the sunlight glistened.
“Where are you, Sunflower?” he called, the talon stone glinting against his chest.
He heard her laugh ahead. “Find me!”
He ran between the sunflowers, sandals kicking up earth. He glimpsed purple and golden scarves, and heard his twin laugh, and he chased. They ran, playing, as they would as kids before the wars, for in Dream they could be as children reborn. Soon he reached Dandelion Hill, which rose like a huge bowl from the sunflowers, covered with swaying dandelions. He heard Tasha laugh, and he saw her running up the hill. He followed and caught her by the mulberry tree they had planted, her favorite place in Dream.
“Yalene, Talon, god of Dream!” She spread her arms to her sides, her scarves blowing, and leaned her head back. The breeze streamed through her hair, and her face was serene, smiling, her eyes shut.
“Yalene, Sunflower.”
They ate from baskets of fruit and breads, and walked among the flowers, and hiked until they reached Grass Sea, where rolling plains of grass swayed. In the distance grew misty forests, and beyond the trees soared cobalt mountains capped with snow.
Tasha inhaled deeply. “Dream. I love how it smells here.”
“It’s time to wake up soon.”
She punched his shoulder. “Stop it, Talon! Or I’ll kick your butt.” Suddenly she gasped. “Look!” She pointed to the sky.
Cade looked, shielding his eyes against the sun. The hawk glided beneath the fluffy white clouds, his shadow racing upon the grass. Windwhisper. Their guardian of Dream, the holder of its secrets and wonders.
“Do you remember when we first met Windwhisper in the cemetery?” Tasha asked.
“Of course.” He watched the hawk as it soared.
“He chose us, Talon. Remember that always. He chose us to be princes of Dream. He gave it to us, to be our place.”
Soon the hawk disappeared into the distance, and Cade woke up in bed. It was morning.
And so they forgot.
And so they escaped.
They ran through the forests of Dream, fleeing that day, that terror and blood, the shrapnel that still coursed through Cade. They swam through the sea, and climbed the flowery mountains, and ran across the meadows, never thinking of the world, their parents whom they had left buried behind in a far country. Dream was beautiful. The only place that’s good. The only place that matters. Talon and Sunflower, chosen by Windwhisper. And so they lived from dream to dream.
Until the beast arrived.
* * * * *
At first they only sensed the creature. It invaded as a whisper, a chill on the wind and a tingle up the spine. They were exploring Tropical Canopy, parrots and ferns around them, waterfalls trickling, when they suddenly shivered. The wind howled, but then the parrots chirped again, and sunlight fell between the trees and vines.
“What was that?” Cade whispered. “It felt … wrong.”
Tasha was pale. She bit her lip and shook her head vigorously. “Nothing. There is nothing wrong in Dream. There never will be.”
Cade looked around, but saw only sunlight, waterfalls, flowers and birds. Nothing. Just a cold wind.
But the next day, they saw tracks in the sand of Seashell Shore—smoking tracks, black and sticky, clawed and raising a foul stench. Cade knelt to examine them, but Tasha kicked sand over them, and kept kicking until they were gone. “This does not belong in Dream,” was all she said, fists clenched.
“What made those tracks?” Cade whispered. He could still smell them, a smell like old fire and blood, a smell like that day worse than any other. It’s as if that memory walks here, a living thing, Cade thought but said nothing.
Tasha squared her shoulders. “I don’t care. This is Dream. I won’t allow anything bad here.”
They kept playing, running, swimming, racing, laughing as children. The thing lived there with them, and they ignored it, refused to fear it; this was their world, endlessly beautiful and full of magic.
And yet the thing lingered.
Over time, they came to call this presence the Crunge, their beast of haunting, though how or when they first imagined its name, Cade did not know. Sometimes they only saw its tracks or droppings. Sometimes they spotted bits of its foul, oily fur upon trees or stones. Once Cade thought he glimpsed the beast, great and shaggy, walking between the trees, but when he looked again it was gone.
“I don’t care about this Crunge,” Tasha said, though Cade noticed that her knuckles were white around the spear she carried. “Talon and Sunflower are lords of Dream, prince and princess of the wilderness, and they can defeat any invader.”
Cade wore a quiver of feathered arrows over his back, and held a bow in his hand. Yet still, for all their weapons and worries, they swam in the seas, and ran through the forests and meadows, and ate among the flowers. Every night they visited their place, sometimes Beluga Beach, sometimes Butterfly Valley or Caterpillar Meadow, and whenever they saw smoking tracks, they turned the other way. They made music and they painted murals across the sides of cliffs and great boulders.
“I won’t flee that place!” Tasha said one morning, sitting in their kitchen, eating cereal before Cade had to leave for work. “It’s our special place, Cade. Remember that. I’m so happy there. It’s the only place I’m happy. Windwhisper gave it to us.”
Cade sighed and lowered his head. “I know.”
That night they met in Fruit Forest, where fruits of every kind grew. They ate pears, apples, apricots, kiwis, grapes, until they could eat no more. They lay upon a sunny knoll, watching the monarchs that flew above. Cade patted his belly, and Tasha wove flowers into a tiara for her hair.“When I die, my spirit is going to find this place,” she said, as she always said. “I’ll travel to Dream and be happy here forever.”
Happy here forever. Cade looked at the fluffy clouds, and his hands played with the grass. He opened his mouth to answer Tasha, and then a shadow fell upon them.
Oily fur loomed, a howl tore the air, and claws came down.
Tasha screamed and lashed her spear, but claws splintered the wood. Cade nocked an arrow, but saw only rotting fangs dripping saliva. And th
en he was awake in his bed, and he heard Tasha screaming in her bedroom.
He met her in the hallway of their apartment. She was pale and shaking, her hair tousled, her fingernails digging into her palms. Bloody scratches ran down her shoulder.
“Tasha, you’re hurt!”
She leaned her head against the wall, trembling. Cade rushed to her and held her.
“Cade,” she said, eyes huge and haunted, “we can no longer visit Dream.”
Tears filled her eyes. She spent the rest of the night weeping.
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