“By changing dreams?”
I said, “Dreams begin all things, good and bad.”
The Book of Raines, chapter one. Leif would have been proud.
“You can’t control people like that,” said Callie.
“We do. We have for years.”
“Since the Warming?”
I nodded. “Because of the Warming. We can never allow it to happen again.”
“How many of you are there?”
“A few hundred. Not many.”
She glanced around us at the buildings, and so did I. Suddenly they seemed like props in one of the plays we had put on as kids—sticks and canvas, nothing more.
“It’s wrong,” I said.
She snorted. “No kidding.”
“That’s why I came. They told me to bend your dream, so you’d be a computer. But I wouldn’t do it. I wanted you to sing.”
“You broke the rules?” she asked.
“For a day. Then they found out and punished me. I’m banned from the dreamscape for a year.”
“For me?” She gazed at me thoughtfully. Then she looked off into the distance and smiled. “I remember that day. I wish all days could be like that.”
Of course, that was the problem. Her days couldn’t be like that—not all of them, maybe not any of them.
“The dreambenders will stop you,” I told her. “They’ll bend your dreams. If one of them can’t do it, another one will. If that doesn’t work, there are always the fixers.”
“The fixers?”
“When a dreambender breaks the rules like I did, the fixers take care of it. Leif is one of them.”
I pictured Leif’s face. His expression looked the same as it used to, but somehow it was different—tougher, harder. He had already been on my trail, and now, thanks to my brilliant moves, he was on Callie’s too. I had wanted to see her, and I had put her in danger.
I said, “They’ll be coming soon. I need to go.”
“That’s crazy,” she said. “You don’t know the City. They’ll find you.”
“Look, Callie,” I said, “where I come from we have three rules: ‘Never meet the dreamer. Never harm the dreamer. Always follow the Plan.’ I’ve broken two of them, and I don’t want to break the third.”
“You didn’t harm me,” she said. “You told me about the dreambenders. You’ve given me a gift.”
Gift. It was the word Dorothy and Arthur had used to describe my dreambending. The tall girl had used it when talking about Sal. What was a gift? If it hurt you, was it still a gift?
I climbed to my feet. “I’ll get you in trouble. You stay here.”
“And do what?” she said. “Go back to computing? Sit at a desk? Sneak away to look at the sun? Take off once a year to celebrate Freedom Day? What kind of life is that?”
“Maybe it’s a good life. The dreambenders think so.”
Her eyes flashed. “While they lounge on the grass, stealing people’s dreams.”
“They’re not like that.”
“Jeremy, you ran away from them. Why are you defending them?”
I met her gaze, then looked away. “I’m not sure.”
“You know,” she said, “I’ve always thought there was something wonderful beyond the City and, if I looked hard enough, maybe I could find it. You helped me see it. You pulled back the curtain. It was just one day, one glimpse, but it was enough. I need to see what’s out there. You could show me.”
Watching Callie, I could see why City people were never supposed to learn about the Meadow. They might start wondering. They might start hoping. And hope, as Arthur had explained, was strong.
“What about your family?” I said. “You can’t just leave them.”
“They’ll be sad. But they’ll understand.”
There was a look in her eyes. It was excitement and anger and determination all mixed together.
Callie was on a journey, and so was I. At one end of my journey was the Meadow, a place where I felt strong and sure. The other end was a mystery. It might be good. It might be bad. It was probably dangerous. But it was where I wanted to go. I was traveling down a path, away from home. Away from plans. Away from comfort, with a girl I didn’t know.
“Why are you staring at me?” she asked.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Look, I’m glad you’re trying to help me. I’m grateful. But knowing my dreams isn’t the same as knowing me. It doesn’t give you the right to make my decisions. That’s my job.”
She sat there for a moment, lost in thought. Then suddenly she stood up.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Between.”
17
Callie
We slept in Between that night. It was thrilling and frightening. I was used to buildings, and they were gone. Trees surrounded the clearing where we had slept.
I had dreamed about Between since I was little—all of us had. In the dreams, terrible things happened to people who went there. Trees crushed them. Vines grabbed them and pulled them under. Most of us had ventured inside once or twice, of course, just to say we’d done it. But the dreams were terrifying, so we learned to stay away.
It still scared me, but now I needed a place to think and time to do it. Between was the obvious choice. Besides, I was starting to think that maybe dreambenders had planted the nightmares. Maybe they were trying to keep me out of Between. That made me want to stay, at least for a while.
I shivered. Overhead, stars winked.
“There are more stars here,” I told Jeremy.
He lay next to me on the ground, gazing upward. He was relaxed now, in a way that he hadn’t been in the City.
“They’re just brighter,” he said. “The darker the sky, the brighter the stars. They’re the same ones though, no matter where you are. When I left the Meadow, it was one of the things that kept me going. The stars reminded me of home.”
I thought of my own home in the City. My parents were there. By now they had gotten my note. I had wanted to go with Jeremy, but not without telling them. The note hadn’t said much—just that I was safe and that, no matter what anyone told them, I was doing the right thing. They were worried, I was sure. But I knew they loved me.
I remembered the way Eleesha had thrown herself at the young man named Leif. She hadn’t hesitated, and I wondered why. Maybe it was because of what she had shared at the cemetery about her brother. Did it make us friends? But now, like Eleesha’s brother, I was gone. I had left her behind. I hoped she would understand.
When Jeremy and I had hurried from the courtyard, we had made our way to my house. I’d written the note, then we’d put clothes, a blanket, and some other things into a backpack and headed for the trees. There had been no sign of Leif, so far at least.
“I’ve never seen a night this dark,” I said, looking up into the moonless sky.
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
“You like it?” I asked.
He looked over at me, shocked. “You don’t?”
I said, “Darkness is scary. You can’t see anything.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “It’s when you see the most.”
I wondered what he could possibly mean, and then I remembered.
“Dreams,” I said. “You see dreams. What’s it like?”
He thought for a moment, then said, “What’s water like? What’s air like? They just are.”
“Do you like seeing them?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you like changing them?”
“I did. Now I’m not so sure. But sometimes it can help.”
“And who’s the judge of that?” I asked. I could hear an edge in my voice.
“We are, I guess,” he admitted. “Look, I know you don’t approve of what dreambenders
do. Sometimes I don’t either. But it can be a good thing. You should see what people dream—terrible things, awful things. Sometimes people get stuck in a dream and can’t get free. We help them.”
His face, strange and kind, was pale in the starlight. Watching him, I wondered what the other dreambenders were like. I had been thinking of them as meddlers, trespassers. But I could see that they saw themselves as helpers. They were taking care of us. Some of my neighbors in the City kept animals and called them pets. Maybe we were pets too.
“Can you look at a dream right now, while we’re lying here?” I asked Jeremy.
He shook his head. “I’m not allowed. It’s part of my punishment. They’d know I was there.”
“Are you allowed to dream?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, “but I don’t dream much. When I do, the dreambenders see them—yours too.”
A chill ran down my back. I pulled up the blanket, turned over, and closed my eyes.
Try not to dream, I thought.
When I woke up, we were surrounded.
There were six of them, led by a tall, lanky, dark-skinned boy with eyes that took in everything. At first I was frightened, but there was something about the dark-skinned boy that seemed familiar and reassuring. I studied the others, who included a one-legged boy and a girl with the skinniest dog I’d ever seen. They were just standing there, watching us.
I poked Jeremy and whispered, “Wake up.”
He opened his eyes.
“We have visitors,” I said.
Jeremy looked at the dark-skinned boy and smiled. “Hey, Sal.”
“You found her,” said the boy.
“You know these people?” I asked Jeremy.
“Don’t turn your back on them,” he said. “They might give you food.”
Next to Sal was a young woman who towered over everybody, and beside her were two people who looked alike except one was a boy and one was a girl.
“Food matters,” said the boy. “Sleep matters.”
The girl told me, “That means hello, glad to meet you. He’s Zack. I’m Deb. I’d introduce you to our friends, but we don’t know their names.”
Friends without names, I thought. What kind of place is this?
Jeremy turned to Sal. “How did you know we were here?”
“I didn’t. She did.”
Sal signaled, and the girl with the skinny dog stepped out from between the trees.
“She’s our lookout,” he explained. “She knows when people come and go. She’s always roaming around, out of sight.”
Sal eyed me, curious. Jeremy said, “Oh, sorry. This is Callie. Callie, these are some people I met.”
“You’re from the City,” said Sal.
“Is it that obvious?” I asked.
Deb said, “I like your blanket.” She knelt and ran her hand across the top of it. “It’s soft.”
My stomach growled. I said, “Could I have some of that food now?”
Sal led us beneath trees and over hills. His friends followed happily, while Jeremy and I labored along behind, huffing and puffing. The two of us led very different lives, but we had one thing in common: we didn’t get much exercise.
After what seemed like a long time, we arrived at a cave. Deb built a fire in front, and the others gathered around, all but the girl with the skinny dog, who slipped off among the trees. Sal went inside the cave and came back a moment later with a rough bowl full of berries, along with flowers and some gnarled, lumpy things that looked like bark. Jeremy took two of the lumpy things and handed one to me.
“Try it,” he said. “It’s good.”
I eyed it and decided it probably was if you were a beaver. I didn’t want to be rude though, so I nibbled the edge of it. Amazingly, he was right.
As I ate, Jeremy told me what little he knew about Sal and his friends, including the fact that they didn’t dream.
“So the dreambenders don’t know about them?” I asked.
“I guess not,” he said.
I asked Sal and the others how they spent their time, and they told me. As far as I could tell, their lives didn’t have a purpose or pattern. They ate. They slept. They explored the woods. They gathered food. Some days, they didn’t do anything.
I have to admit, it bothered me. In the City we always had a purpose. I was a computer. Everything I did revolved around that fact. I didn’t necessarily like it, but it seemed right, or at least it had before. We also had history. It made us who we were. Who were Sal and his friends?
How did they know if all they thought about was today? If I stayed in Between, would I end up like them? A part of me liked the idea. Maybe I’d get used to it. I could wander through the woods like Sal and his friends. I could be free.
When we finished eating, Sal went into the cave and came out holding a wooden object that he called a sound box. He sat down beside the fire, cradled the sound box in his lap, and ran his fingers across the strings.
Music came out. It was like singing but with a different voice. The voice was wise and good. It had colors—red, green, yellow. Sometimes the colors were bright. Sometimes they were soft and dark, like the forest at sunset.
I thought I had met Sal in the woods, but I hadn’t. This was the real Sal. You had to listen to know him. What I heard wasn’t ideas or plans or calculations. It was feelings and hopes. It was longing. It was pure emotion.
One melody caught my attention. It was sad but somehow full of joy. It seemed to be asking questions, and I wanted to answer. So I began to sing. There were no words, just a song that wrapped itself over, under, and around Sal’s music.
The others stared at me, but at first I didn’t notice. I had sung in the dream, and sunlight had washed over me. I felt the sunlight again. I was in the dream, but it was real. I stood up and walked toward Sal. He gazed at me, motionless except for the hand that kept strumming, strumming.
I stood before him, and music poured out of me. The trees vanished. The cave and the path collapsed, forming a tunnel to the clouds. Inside it were me and the music and Sal, or the part of Sal made of notes and phrases, the part I could feel.
There was no day or night, no hours or minutes. There was now, stretching forward and backward forever. I wasn’t Callie. I wasn’t a computer. I was the song, and the song was me.
18
Callie
Later, sitting around the fire, I asked Sal where he had found the sound box.
“In a tree,” he said. He told me about the day he had found it and how he had taught himself to play.
As he spoke, I looked around. Sticks, tools, and other objects were scattered on the ground. The cave entrance yawned, cool and dark.
I said, “What is this place?”
“Maybe Boogey lives here,” said Jeremy.
“Boogey?”
Jeremy smiled. “He’s not real. Where I come from, the adults make up stories about him to scare us and make us behave.”
“Stories matter,” said Zack. He glanced at Deb, worried. For someone who didn’t talk much, he said a lot. He had an odd way of expressing himself. Things “mattered”—food, sleep, stories. I think he meant they were important.
Deb told me, “Just because it’s a story doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
I thought about that one for a minute. At the computing center, they would say she was wrong. In Between, I wasn’t so sure.
“You tell stories?” I asked her. “Like what?”
Deb said, “The Tree That Kept Giving. The Day of Seven Suns. Moses and the Ark.”
“I know that one!” I said.
“The Music Place,” said Sal. “That’s my favorite story.”
Suddenly I was back at the Midway, looking over Pam’s shoulder at her painting. The Music Place. That’s what she had called it.
“Can we hear the stor
y?” I asked.
Deb looked around the circle. The others smiled. The tall girl nodded.
Sal played softly on the sound box, and Deb began the story.
“Once, before the Warming,” she said, “the world was filled with music. People sang as often as they talked. They tapped out rhythms on wood. They squeezed notes from metal pipes. They pulled strings tight and made them vibrate. Music was everywhere.
“Sometimes, on special days, groups of people would gather and make music together. Some would play, and the rest would listen. If the music was good, the listeners would clap their hands to show they liked it.”
I imagined a group of people like me but different. Some sang. Some held strange objects and used them to make music. I wanted to be there with them, to live in a world where music was as important as computing.
“There was a big building made for music,” Deb went on, “with tall ceilings and glittering lights.”
“The Music Place,” said Sal.
“What did it look like?” I asked.
Deb smiled. “It wasn’t like other buildings. The inside was wood. The outside was metal, with points and curves.”
I had seen the building in Pam’s painting. At the time I had assumed she’d made it up. Now I wondered.
“Is it real?” I asked her.
Deb glanced at Sal, and he looked away. As he did, the girl with the skinny dog came bursting from the trees.
“People are coming!” she said. “Run!”
I glanced at Jeremy. He knew who was coming, and so did I. It was Leif and the fixers.
Sal stowed the sound box, and we took off into the woods. The tall girl led the way, holding a sharp stick. The boy with one leg was behind her, leaning on Zack’s shoulder. Deb went next, with the food. Jeremy and I stuck close to Sal. Following behind, keeping watch, was the girl with the skinny dog.
The fixers scared me, and I could tell Jeremy was scared too. Leif claimed to be Jeremy’s friend, but I wondered what that meant.
I heard a shout. The fixers had reached the cave. We kept moving to stay ahead of them.
We had tried not to leave a trail, but we had left in a hurry. A few moments later, we heard them coming through the bushes. The sound got louder. They had found our trail and were catching up.
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