Keeper of Dreams

by Orson Scott Card

  The Quest

  There was no doubt about it—Mo knew her way around in this place. She half-trotted most of the time, even though there was scarcely a sign of a path to follow, and Enoch could hardly keep up with her. From time to time she would slow down and walk quietly, listening, watching. Enoch watched, too, until she said, “Look, Eeny, give me a break. Watch where you’re going so you don’t keep making so much noise. I’ll watch for danger.”

  “What kind of danger?” he asked.

  “The kind I’m watching for.”

  Just when Enoch was getting hungry, they came to an old apple orchard and had a meal.

  “I thought it was supposed to be spring here,” Enoch said.

  “So?”

  “So why are the apples ripe?”

  “Aren’t apples ripe in spring?”

  “Where do you come from, Mo, the moon?”

  “Farther. Chicago.”

  “You’re kidding. A big city, and you know your way around the woods like this?”

  “In the city you learn to walk soft, you learn to keep watching. It’s the same thing.” She threw a core at a tree trunk some thirty feet away. Right on target. “Besides, I’ve had a few months here to practice.”

  “Months? How long have you lived here in Dowagiac?”

  “Moved in about the first of December.”

  “Then how could you have been in here for months? You haven’t even lived in Dowagiac for three weeks.”

  Mo grinned. “A real mathematical wizard, aren’t you. Look at your watch.”

  It was five o’clock.

  “So what time did you come in here?”

  “I don’t know. We got to the store about four-thirty.” Suddenly Enoch jumped to his feet. “Dad’s looking all over the store for me.”

  “No he isn’t. Besides, I thought you wanted to get lost.”

  “My dad is looking for me. What do you know about it?”

  “He isn’t looking for you because exactly one second has passed since you went into that door. Or maybe since you crossed the abyss. I’ve never bothered to time it out. It doesn’t matter how many hours or days or weeks you stay in here. Come in at five, go out at five on the same day.”

  Enoch thought about that for a while. “You could live a whole life in here, and a whole other life out there.”

  “Right.”

  “If you like it so much here, Mo, how come you ever go back at all?”

  “Escape.”

  Enoch laughed. “Escape is coming in here. That’s escaping from reality.” It was a realistic thing to say.

  “When was the last time a squirrel jumped on your neck, genius? Where he bit you, how does that feel?”

  “A little stiff.”

  “This is reality, pinbrain. After a few days of this, sometimes even a week, it gets so I can’t stand it anymore, always having to watch out, always having to be quiet and careful. This is the real world here. This is life and death. Out there, that’s escape. Out there I’m a child, and they protect me.”

  Enoch spat a seed out of his mouth.

  “It’s life and death out there, too.”

  Mo looked at him for a few moments. “Maybe it is, for some people. But that doesn’t make this escape.”

  He nodded. She had got him thinking about things he’d rather forget. His own life in danger—that was easier these days, easier than other things.

  “I said something wrong, didn’t I?” Mo asked.

  “Sure, why not?” Enoch smiled. “It’s nice to know you can do something klutzy.”

  “Come here.” She led him to a cottage, a storybook place with a thatched roof and shuttered windows instead of glass. She went boldly inside, without knocking. The house was neat and clean, though poor. No one was there.

  “Do you know these people?”

  “No,” she said. “They’re all dead.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was my second time in this place. I came to ask permission to eat the apples. A knight never steals, you see. They had been murdered, a man and wife. It wasn’t nice. I buried them. My parents couldn’t understand why I came home with bloodstains on my dress. They were scared half to death.”

  “Who did it?”

  “The giants, I think. The little people say that they carry off children and raise them up to be slaves in their castles. I guess the parents objected to having their children carried off.”

  Enoch felt sick and angry, looking at the four small beds that the children must have slept in.

  “I wanted to get revenge. But when I stood over their graves, trying to think up a good oath of vengeance, a redbird came and stood on the woman’s grave. ‘No,’ she said. That’s all. Just ‘no.’ And then a bluebird came and stood on the man’s grave and said, ‘Free the king from the Castle of Contempt.’ ” Mo reached under the smallest bed, and drew out a sword. It was small and light, as if it were made for her young arm. It glistened in the light from the door.

  “That’s how I learned my purpose here. I’ve come back every chance I could, learned all I could. I got this sword from the treasure of the dragon Drast. It wasn’t such a big deal, though. It’s easier to steal from a dragon than you think.”

  “What about the king?”

  “I’ve found the castle, but I can’t get in.”

  “Too well defended?”

  “I’ve never seen a soul. I just can’t get in the door. That’s what I need you for, to help me get in.”

  “I’m not good at things like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Prying open doors.”

  “I already tried prying. Anything metal that I touch to the door turns into sand. Anything living that I touch to the door except my own skin turns to ashes. No fire, no heat. Just ashes. It’s a problematical door.”

  “Magic?” To Enoch’s surprise, he said something unrealistic and didn’t even feel embarrassed about it.

  “Of course,” she said. “But what’s the spell? I’ve said every magic word I could think of. I sat in front of the door eating apples for three days just talking and talking and talking, in hopes I’d accidently say the magic word.”

  “And I’m supposed to get you in?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “You’re going to be profoundly disappointed.”

  “Probably. But you’re in here for a reason, Eeny. You don’t get in here by accident. So why not figure maybe you’re in here to help me in my Quest?”

  “I hate it when you call me Eeny.”

  “Sorry.”

  He knew she’d keep on calling him that, though, until he had done something to earn her respect.

  “You in high school?” Enoch asked.

  “No. I’m only twelve.” She sounded like she thought twelve was a disgusting age to be.

  “Me, too,” said Enoch.

  She looked him over. “We are living proof of the fact that girls mature faster.”

  “How come I haven’t seen you in seventh grade, then?”

  “Because I haven’t been yet.”

  Enoch understood then. She had been cutting school every day and coming here. “And you said this place wasn’t escape,” he said.

  “I don’t go to school,” she said. “My father has an educational theory. He teaches me at home. He figures I’m going to grow up Christian if it kills me.”

  “It’s obviously working,” Enoch said.

  She looked at him with fire in her eyes.

  “I mean,” Enoch explained, “you risk your life to do good. That’s Christian, isn’t it?”

  “Not his way. Never mind. We’ve only got a few hours to go until dark. We need to get across Drast before nightfall.”

  From the orchard it was only a short way to a bare-rock mountain that rose sheer from a broad meadow. It was hard climbing at first, but Enoch soon got the knack of bracing himself against slight outcroppings and skinnying up furrows in the rock. The sun was bright and hot, and he was covered in sweat, but soon t
he slope began to level out, until gradually it became a flat, broad plain. It was only then, looking across the whole view, that he realized how regular this desert was, ridge after ridge like stone waves, with smooth plateaus in between, then another drop-off. “This Drast is a strange place,” Enoch said.

  “It isn’t a place,” Mo answered.

  Only then did Enoch remember that Mo had mentioned the name Drast before. It was the name of a dragon.

  “This is the same Drast?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she answered. “We’re walking on his back.”

  “Kind of big, isn’t he?”

  “Sizes are all mixed up here,” said Mo. “At least it keeps the giants away. They won’t mess with a dragon.”

  “So why are we messing with him?”

  “Us?” Mo laughed. “Do you ever notice the mosquito that bites you, until he’s gone?” She drew her sword and thrust it under a lip of rock. No, not a lip of rock—one of the dragon’s scales. Then she pried upward, and spat into the opening.

  “Are you crazy?” Enoch demanded.

  “It’s what mosquitos do, except I don’t eat anything. I like to think it gives him a little itch. To remember me by. You can see how I got away with the sword, though. I was so little he never even noticed me. The giants, now—he can see them. I like to think that when he flies out at night, he feels out of sorts because he’s itching where I scratched him. I like to think he’s so irritable that he kills a few extra giants, just to ease the itch.”

  They laughed about that for a while, then kept walking. The sun was getting low, and they didn’t want to be on Drast’s back when he took off for his evening flight.

  They spent the night in a cave. Enoch wanted a fire to frighten off wild animals, but Mo forbade it. Instead they took turns sleeping. Enoch felt silly sitting there with a sword on his lap, but at least he didn’t disgrace himself by falling asleep on duty.

  The next day they came to the Castle of Contempt before noon. “That wasn’t far,” Enoch said.

  “Things are quite conveniently located,” Mo said.

  Enoch laughed. “You sound like a realtor.”

  She only smiled slightly. “My father is a realtor.”

  “Oh,” Enoch said. “Dowagiac isn’t exactly a hot real estate market right now.”

  “I didn’t say my father made any money at it, did I?”

  Enoch looked at the castle. It wasn’t much. The walls weren’t particularly high; there was no moat; and there wasn’t a single soldier to defend the place. “Where is everybody?” Enoch asked.

  “I’ve never seen a soul here.”

  “Then how do you know this is the Castle of Contempt?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? No defenders, no moat, the walls are low—and still we can’t get in. Whoever built this castle figured we were too stupid or weak to get inside. And so far he’s been right. He has nothing but contempt for us.”

  “Our enemy?”

  “The builder of the castle, anyway. Come on, look at it and see if you can figure a way in.”

  Mo led him to the obvious place first—the door. Enoch looked at it. Solid hardwood, snugly set into the wall.

  “You can’t even get a sword blade in the crack.”

  Enoch didn’t hear her. He was too busy looking at the keyhole, a little odd-shaped keyhole on the right-hand side near the edge of the door.

  Mo saw what he was looking at. “You can’t pick the lock,” she said. “Everything turns to sand or ashes.”

  But Enoch had the key out of his pocket, and he did not hesitate to touch it to the keyhole. He half-expected the key to dissolve into sand, even hoped that it would.

  Instead, it fit snugly into the keyhole. He turned it in the lock. There was a clicking noise behind the door, and slowly, without either of them touching it, the door opened.

  “Where’d you get that key!” Mo demanded.

  “It’s the key to our new apartment in Arizona.”

  “Well, fry my eggs,” said Mo. “You really did it.”

  “And before lunchtime, too,” Enoch said, feeling very pleased. The key was good for something after all.

  The Battle to Free the King

  Enoch was perfectly happy to let Mo pass through the door ahead of him. She was the one with the sword, after all. “What happens now?” he asked.

  “How should I know?” she answered.

  “Where’s the king?”

  “If you see a king, tell me and then we’ll both know.”

  Enoch got the idea she wanted him to be quiet.

  The doorway led into a large courtyard, which was cluttered with bright tents with slack banners. Every now and then a breeze came by, and the banners made a halfhearted effort to wave. Otherwise, there was not a motion or sound except the scuffing of their own feet on the dirt.

  And then, suddenly, it began to rain. Not a cloud in the sky, not a clap of thunder, just a sudden downpour that drenched them immediately and turned the dirt to mud.

  Instinctively Enoch dodged toward one of the tents. “Wait!” cried Mo. Enoch thought she wanted him to wait up for her, which was silly. She could just hurry. He was going to get into a tent before he drowned.

  He was just opening a tent flap when she tackled him. Now he knew what the sportscasters meant when they said, “He took a good hit at the thirty-eight.” A good hit was when your mouth filled up with mud and your bones got scattered in odd places throughout your body.

  When he had cleared the mud out of his mouth, he asked the obvious question. “What did you do that for?”

  “You are too dumb to live,” she answered kindly.

  “Maybe you don’t know enough to come in out of the rain, but I do.”

  “What rain?” Mo asked.

  It had stopped raining. But the ground was still wet. “So it stopped,” Enoch said. “It was raining.”

  “Listen, Eeny. Around here, if it rains out of a clear blue sky, you don’t walk into the nearest shelter. You stand in the rain and wait for your enemy to make his move.”

  “You mean the rain was magic?”

  “The rain was water. It’s the tents that I don’t trust.”

  In answer to her suspicion, the tents all vanished at once, leaving the courtyard empty. Where the tents had been, however, the ground was dry.

  “The tents were real.”

  “Of course. Don’t you understand by now, Eeny? Everything here is real. This isn’t a TV magic show, where you know the magician is a clever fake. Around here, when he saws the lady in half, the guy doesn’t put her in a box and she really ends up in two pieces.”

  “Now I’m getting worried,” Enoch said.

  “You’re a real quick learner, Eeny.”

  The doors of the great hall stood open. Inside they could see a dim fire burning in the distance. Other than that they could see nothing. It was too dark inside and too bright outside.

  “Maybe,” Enoch said, “maybe the door is open because this is just where our enemy expects us to come in, and so we should go hunting for another door. Or maybe our enemy expects us to think that way, and so he opened this door so we’d be sure not to come in here.”

  “If we think like that, we’ll end up crazy or dead within five minutes. Come on, Eeny.”

  “I don’t have a weapon,” Enoch pointed out. “I’d be useless to you in a battle.”

  “Just start explaining something to whoever attacks you, Eeny. They’ll run away screaming, I promise you.”

  Mo led the way into the great hall. It took a few minutes for their eyes to become accustomed to the dark, but during that time there was no attack, not even a sound except the fire crackling in the cooking pit in the middle of the room. Most of the smoke rose to a hole in the roof; the rest filled the room, so that Enoch’s eyes burned. Over the fire, a pig was roasting on a spit.

  Around the outside walls of the great hall was a long, long table, and around the outside of the table was a long, long bench. On the bench were a couple of hu
ndred men and women, dressed in brightly colored clothing, with food on the plates before them, with wine in their cups—and each and every person was dead. Killed by the person on one side of them, while they were in the process of murdering the person on the other side.

  Enoch began to sing softly. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”

  “Can it,” Mo said. She walked to a table and touched the food on a plate. “Still warm,” she said.

  Enoch couldn’t think of anything to say to that. It was just as well, for the pig roasting over the fire took that opportunity to speak. “Hi. Would you like some ham? Help yourself.”

  It took a few moments to be sure who had spoken.

  “That’s right, it’s me. Harvey Ham, here. Peter Porkchop. Billy Bacon. You’d have to go a long way before you got a hunk of meat as nice as me. The carving knife is right over there.” The pig rolled its eyes toward a small table near the fire.

  Enoch, always obedient, started for the carving knife.

  “Hold still, pinhead,” said Mo.

  Enoch did as he was told.

  “When a pig invites you to a ham dinner, I’d suggest you think twice before you RSVP.”

  “I’m just being generous,” said the ham.

  “Thanks kindly,” Mo said. “We’re vegetarians, at least for the moment.”

  Mo led the way to the head table. There was a large throne there, but it was empty, and there was no food on the plate. “The king wasn’t in attendance,” Mo pointed out.

  “What would have happened if we had carved the ham?”

  Mo shrugged.

  “What if I had gone into the tent?”

  “Listen, Enoch, that’s why curious people make lousy knights. If you always have to find out what’ll happen if you do some stupid thing, then your career will be brief. It’s what you are willing to never find out that keeps you going in this business.”

  While Mo said this, she was busy looking around, poking at things on the table, studying the clothing of the nearest dead people.

  “What are you looking for?” Enoch asked.

  “I don’t know. A clue or something. The king is in here somewhere, but I don’t want to spend a year looking for him.”

  “You’re just going to get hungrier,” said the pig.