Keeper of Dreams

by Orson Scott Card

  You are not really as small as the dragon I saw in this room. In all my dreams, the one thing I never felt was that you were small.

  But there was no answering thought. Only the gradually increasing light as Michael’s eyes became accustomed to seeing in the faint spill from the streetlights outside the window of the front attic room.

  Who built this room? There had been something, some mention now that Michael thought about it, of Gramps’s and Granny’s father having electric trains—was it him, then? Yet how did he ever get a dragon to come here? He couldn’t have made it. No man could make a living thing. The dragon was already alive, but it came here into the house and it has lived here all my life. I had the bedroom next to it. When I peered through the tiny slit in the keyhole, I was looking for the dragon.

  When I sat in the warm place, I felt the beating of its huge, invisible heart. I felt its life come over me like a dream. I dwelt in its memories. It healed my hand.

  What am I to this creature? A pet? A friend? A servant? A son? Its future prey?

  Michael ducked under the table and left the train room, closing the door behind him. He made his way back through the crawl space and emerged again in the bedroom of his childhood.

  He went downstairs into the room he had been sleeping in and took all the sheets and blankets off his bed and carried them up the backstairs to his old room. He knew he couldn’t sleep on the child’s bed there, so he spread them out on the floor. He went back down and gathered all his other things—not much, really, just clothing and his schoolbooks and a few toys and games and tools. It took only three trips, and he had moved upstairs again.

  Only then did he hear the noises of the kids bounding up the stairs to the second floor, the water running in the bathrooms, lots of chatter and laughter and a few complaints and whines. Now he remembered—there had been a dress rehearsal of the New Year’s play, As You Like It. They must have covered for him—he had a couple of smallish parts, being too young to compete for the leads in a grownup play. Granny must have thought he was sleeping and didn’t let anyone wake him.

  But now the rehearsal was over and everyone was going to bed and Granny would come looking for him, to see if he was hungry, to check on his hand.

  He went to the head of the back stairs and started down just as Granny started up.

  She looked down at the remnants of the bandage lying on the steps. “Why did you take it off?” she said. “That was foolish.”

  “It’s all better,” said Michael.

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Granny. “It takes days for the wound to fully close, even with the stitches.” She held out her hand. “Let me see the damage.”

  So went down a few more steps, and she came up a few, and he held out his hand to her.

  “Don’t be a goof, Michael,” she said. “Show me the hand that you cut.”

  “This is the hand,” he said, showing her the other as well.

  She held both his hands, palm up, in hers and looked from one to the other, then up into Michael’s eyes.

  “What were you doing here?”

  “I moved back into my old room,” he said. “I want to live in my old room again.”

  “The bed’s too small.”

  “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  “What happened to your hand, Michael?”

  “I guess it wasn’t as serious as you thought,” he said.

  “Don’t be absurd, I should know how deep it was, and even if it was only a scratch it couldn’t be healed like this. What did you do?”

  “I came up to the warm place on the stairs,” he said, “and I slept.”

  She looked in his eyes and perhaps she could see that he wasn’t lying or perhaps she could see something else, something that forbade her to inquire more. Maybe she could see the dragon’s eyes, just a glimpse of the dragon’s eyes, looking out at her.

  “I never came up here,” she said softly. “After I was a little girl, and Mother sent me up to fetch Father for dinner, and I knocked on the door of his train room and he didn’t hear me so I opened it.”

  “What did you see?” said Michael.

  “What did you see?” she asked him in reply.

  “Trains,” he said.

  “And?”

  “Lightning.”

  She shuddered. “What did Papa do in there, Michael?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “He must have been very talented with . . . electric things.”

  “He was just an ordinary man. Rich, of course. Theatrical. He owned a lot of playhouses back in vaudeville days. But none of that should have let him create . . .”

  “Weather,” said Michael.

  “You went inside,” she said.

  “It would be easier,” said Michael, “if you gave me a key. I won’t tell the other kids. I won’t let anyone in. But now that I’ve seen it, you can’t keep me out.”

  “It’s dangerous,” she said.

  “So is crossing the street.”

  “That’s an unbelievably inept analogy, Michael.”

  “I won’t die in that room.”

  “Papa was only truly alive there,” she said. “There were weeks when he hardly came out, and when he did, it was as though he was living in a dream. As though we weren’t real. Only the train room was real.”

  “I know what’s real,” said Michael.

  “I’ll talk to Herry,” she said. “To Gramps.”

  “I love you Granny,” said Michael.

  “Because you think I’ll give you what you want?”

  “Because you’re good,” he said.

  “If I were really good,” she said, “I would move out of this house and take you with me and never let you come here again. If I really loved you.”

  “I’d come back,” he said. “I grew up in the dragon’s heart.”

  Tears came to her eyes. “Papa talked about dragons. It was part of his . . .”

  “He wasn’t crazy,” said Michael. “They live in the fire. The fires under the earth are like home to them. And they fly the lightning. They soar into the storm and they search for the lightning and when they catch it just right they ride it down to earth.”

  “Don’t tell me any more,” she said. “You can’t have inherited his madness. None of Papa’s blood is in your veins.”

  “It’s not madness.”

  “The house does it. Letting you sleep in the attic, I never should have done that.”

  “He came to the house because he loves the lightning, and there’s so much electricity here. In the theater lights in the basement. And up here, in the tracks, the trains. That’s all. It’s not madness, it’s real. He came up out of the earth because all the electricity called to him.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because I’ve felt how he hungers for it. I felt it, too. That’s what called me into the train room. That’s what drew me, I know it now. He’s all through this house. It didn’t matter where you had me sleep. Once I felt his heartbeat here on the back stairs, I knew him, Granny.”

  “And when was that?” she asked softly.

  “The first day I came here,” he said. “When you and Gramps took me up these stairs and told me I would live here forever. I felt his heartbeat as we climbed the stairs. That’s how I knew that I was truly home. Because it was warm there. And I’d never been warm like that before.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what was happening to you?”

  “I didn’t know it myself until today. Until I said it out loud to you just now.” He bent down—for he was standing two steps above her—and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Granny. I’ll be safe here. I’ll be careful. Don’t be afraid for me. Look.”

  He held his hands out to her.

  “He healed my hand. It really happened. He’s looking out for me.”

  But even as he said it, he knew it was not true. Dragons don’t look out for human beings. Dragons don’t care.

  She pressed his hands against her cheeks. “God help us, Mic
hael.”

  To which he had no answer. If God helps us, he thought, he does it through other people. It was you and Gramps who took me in when I needed a home—but maybe it was God who made you my great-aunt and great-uncle. It was the dragon who healed my hand—but maybe it was God who brought me to the house where the dragon lives.

  Or maybe not.

  “I’m hungry,” said Michael. “Is there any dinner left?”

  “Yes,” she said, coming to herself again. “Yes, of course. I kept some of it warm in the oven for you. Shepherd’s pie.”

  “Nasty stuff,” said Michael, sliding past her, putting his arm around her, walking with her down the stairs. “I don’t know why you work so hard to poison us with stuff like that.”

  “I saved you half a pie because I know how you love it,” she said.

  “Only half? When I didn’t have lunch? What were you thinking?”

  “Don’t get smart with me.”

  “You want me to get stupid? I can do that.”

  “No you can’t,” she said. “It takes real brains to do that.”

  It was an old joke between them, but it felt far more meaningful now. Almost portentous. But then, anything they said would sound that way, now that they knew each other’s secrets. Some of them, anyway.

  The dragon gargoyle on the house at 22 Adams pours water out of its mouth whenever it rains, and it splashes on the cobbles of the garden and in a bad storm it can soak the shoes of whoever is standing at the door. The house is so unusual—gothic amid Victorians, the garden cobbled and bricked, and the torrent of boys and girls running in and out of the house at all hours—that people drive from all over town sometimes just to see the Old Dragon’s House.

  None of them guess that every night in the back room of the attic, the old dragon watches over the sleeping boy whose body is growing into one that someday he can use, someday he can wear, allowing him to emerge from the wiring of the house and bear a living body up into the sky, soaring once again on gossamer wings, his wyrmtail curling under him, seeking lightning in the storm so he can ride back down to earth. One ride per body, alas, for it burns up on the ride and shatters against the earth as the dragon within it plunges down into the earth.

  But then, one ride on a single bolt of lightning is enough to keep a dragon going for a thousand years.

  And the boy would love that moment, when it came.

  They always did.

  NOTES ON “IN THE DRAGON’S HOUSE”

  This story was almost the novel I did instead of Magic Street.

  The idea began with the dragon. I had signed on with Marvin Kaye to submit something to an anthology of longish dragon stories he was editing, and I wanted to come up with something other than the ordinary dragon.

  What I thought of was the idea that lightning striking the ground might be dragons. Or, rather, dragons might ride the lightning and derive their energy from it. What if dragons lived on electricity? Creatures that only rose up with thunderstorms and then rode the weather front for a thousand miles until the electricity dissipated.

  And then it occurred to me: Through all of history, lightning would have been pretty much the only thing that dragons could thrive on. But now we have all these houses that are virtual caves of electricity, room after room surrounded with wires.

  What if dragons became visible only when they went out to ride the lightning? Only nowadays they don’t have to do it at all, because they can live like drug addicts, sucking electricity out of houses and buildings.

  OK, I had my dragon. I had a house for him to live in. But who were the people sharing the house with him, and what would the dragon mean to them?

  The story grew in my head until I had almost too much material to work with. I pared down the history as much as I could—but still couldn’t resist a very slow beginning to the story as I gave a history of the house where the dragon dwelt.

  Once I got into the story, I liked the characters so well that there was no way I could get the story all the way to the ending I intended—a sacrificial riding of the lightning, a dragon with a boy on its back, forcing it to destroy itself and set the house, and the treasure in it, free.

  After all, it was going to be a book called The Dragon Quintet, not “Novel by Orson Scott Card, with four additional stories by these other writers.” I had to get “In the Dragon’s House” well ended at a respectable length.

  The result is that the story ends—and it does end—just when things were starting to get interesting. I put a novel’s opening on a novelette.

  But I didn’t worry, because I was going to write the novel, wasn’t I? I had a good contract with Del Rey to write another contemporary fantasy like Enchantment. And even though the idea for Magic Street had been stewing for many years longer, I was terrified of writing that book because every important character in it was African-American, and I knew I was going to blow it, even with the help of friends who had grown up in the upper-middle-class black community in Los Angeles.

  So I was getting started, ready to beat the deadline and turn in the novel version of The Dragon’s House, when my wife called to my attention the fact that the short story hadn’t come out yet, the anthology wasn’t finished, and my novel for Del Rey had a good chance of coming out before the anthology. If I used “Dragon’s House” for the novel, I would violate the exclusivity clause in my contract for the anthology.

  That is not a nice thing to do.

  So I turned around again and forced myself to swallow my fears and write Magic Street after all.

  Someday, though, I’ll have at this tale again and see if I can make it into the book I think it’s supposed to be.

  INVENTING LOVERS ON THE PHONE

  You want to know what Deeny’s life was like? It can be summed up in the sentence her father said when she got a cellphone.

  “Who the hell’s gonna call you?”

  Deeny said what she always said when her father, otherwise known as “Treadmarks,” put her down. She said nothing at all. Just left the room. Which was what ol’ Treadmarks wanted. But it was what Deeny also wanted. In fact, on that one point they agreed with each other completely, and since their relationship consisted almost entirely of Deeny getting out of whatever room her father was in, one could almost say that they lived in perfect harmony.

  In the kitchen, her mother was thawing fish sticks and slicing cucumbers. Deeny stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what possible dinner would need those two ingredients, and no others.

  “You’ve got a zit, dear,” said her mother helpfully.

  “I always have a zit, Mother,” said Deeny. “I’m seventeen and I have the complexion of dog doo.”

  “If you washed . . .”

  “If I didn’t eat chocolate, if I didn’t eat fatty foods, if I used Oxy-500, if I didn’t have the heredity you and Treadmarks gave me . . .”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call your father that. It doesn’t even make sense.”

  Come on, Mom, you wash his underwear. “It’s because everyone rolls right over him at work. I feel kind of sorry for the old guy.”

  Mother made a show of speaking silently, mouthing the words, “He can hear you.”

  “Come on, Mom, you know what a nothing he is on the job. He’s nearly forty and so far the only thing he ever accomplished was getting you pregnant. And he only did that the one time.”

  As usual, Deeny had gone too far. Mother turned, her face reddening. “You get out of this kitchen, young lady. Not that you deserve to be called a lady of any kind. The mouth you have!”

  Deeny’s hand was already in her pocket. She pressed the button on her phone. It immediately rang.

  “Excuse me, Mother,” she said. “Somebody actually wants to talk to me.”

  Her mother just stood there looking at her, a fish stick in her hand.

  Deeny made a show of looking at the phone. “Oh, not Bill again.” She pressed the end button.

  “Who’s Bill?”

  “A guy who calls
sometimes,” said Deeny.

  “You’ve only had that cellphone for a couple of hours,” said Mother. “How would he get your number if you don’t want him to call?”

  “He probably bribed somebody. He’s such an asshole.”

  “Deeny, that language just makes you sound cheap.”

  “Well, I’m not cheap. I’m priceless. You said so yourself.”

  “When you were four and used to sing that little song.”

  “That little song you made me rehearse for hours and hours so you could show me off to your friends.”

  “You were darling. They loved it. And so did you. I never saw you turn your back on an audience.”

  “Oh really?” said Deeny. Holding the cell phone above her head like castanets, she sashayed out of the kitchen, heading for her room.

  When she got there she flopped back on her bed, feeling sick and lost. It would be different if her parents weren’t right about everything. But they were. She was exactly the loser her father thought she was. And she wasn’t a lady, or darling, and she probably would be cheap, if she could get a guy to look at her at all. But when there are no buyers, what does it matter whether your price is high or low?

  Even though she tried to tune out everything Treadmarks said, he made sure she never forgot for a single day how tragically disappointing she was as a human being. It’s like he couldn’t stand for her to feel good about herself for a single second. An A in a class? “Study hard, kid, it’s a sure thing you’re never gonna have a husband to support you.” A new top? “Why didn’t you leave it in the store where it might get bought by somebody who can wear that kind of thing?” At the office on the days she helped out after school, she tried to do everything right but it was never good enough. And if she tried to talk to him, ever, about anything, he’d get this impatient, bored look and about two sentences in he’d say, “Some of us have things to do, Deeny, will you get to the point?”