River of Dreams

by Jan Nash

  Her father was nowhere to be seen.

  THREE

  “You’re ten minutes late and I’m freezing,” Jed called out from fifty feet away.

  Finn checked her watch. He was right. She’d left her house on time. Being tired had really slowed her down.

  The dream had continued last night, though her father never returned and neither did Noah. Finn was left to wrestle with all her questions alone. Why didn’t her father help her? What made Noah attack him? Why was she in that box? And what was all that stuff outside?

  She’d watched the “movies” until she’d finally gotten so tired, she curled up in a ball on the floor and closed her eyes. The next thing she knew, her alarm was going off.

  “You should have left without me,” she told Jed.

  “And deny myself the chance to tell you that I finished the biology problem set and got a date for the winter dance.”

  “I’m impressed. I didn’t know you’d gotten up the courage to talk to Aileen, let alone ask her to the dance.”

  “It’s not Aileen.”

  “You love Aileen.”

  “I don’t love her. I think she’s beautiful. But there’s not a chance in hell that she’ll go out with me. Besides, is her mom really going to let her go to the winter dance?”

  “Probably not. So who is it?”

  “You.” Finn looked at him sideways. “Remember our pact? If we were thirty and unmarried, we’d get hitched?”

  “Yes. We’re not thirty. And a dance is not a marriage.”

  “No, but since we’ve known each other, there have been thirty-one dances. Two each year of middle school equals four. Five freshman year. That’s nine. None this year, but two each year at the tennis club since second grade, that’s another sixteen and gets us to twenty-five.”

  “I’m not marrying you when I’m twenty-five.”

  “Six dance lessons when we were nine. That’s thirty-one. I haven’t had a date to any of them. So, in the spirit of our pact, you should go with me.”

  “How late were you up figuring this out?”

  “Come on, Finn. I want to go to the dance, and I don’t want to go alone.”

  Finn knew there were at least a half dozen girls at school who were dying for Jed to ask them to the dance. He just hadn’t noticed.

  “It’s one night,” he continued. “And we’ll leave early if it’s painful.” Finn wasn’t in the mood to go to the dance, but Jed was her best friend, and she didn’t take his loyalty lightly.

  “Can I think about it?”

  “You know you’re going to say yes.”

  “Then give me a day or two so I can pretend I’m making my own decision.”

  “Take all the time you need.” He grabbed the backpack off her shoulder. Finn had long since stopped trying to convince him she could carry her own bag. The truth was it weighed a ton and the chances of her tripping on the sidewalk were a lot greater if she wore it. She was willing to sacrifice her independence if it meant she’d have fewer bruises.

  * * *

  Marcus Hahn was already sitting at their table with his lab book open when Finn entered biology class. It struck her as odd. Marcus was plenty smart, but he didn’t seem motivated to do any better than he needed to in order to get a football scholarship to college. When she sat down, she saw he was drawing X’s and O’s, which she knew were football plays because one of the few times she’d talked to him about something other than biology she’d asked him about it.

  “Hi, Marcus,” she said quietly as she slid onto her stool. He didn’t look up.

  “Hey, Phineas,” Marcus responded. She liked this nickname even less than her real name, but she’d never had the nerve to tell him.

  “Isn’t football season over?” He didn’t answer, just closed his lab book. They sat in silence while other students filed into the room. “I didn’t mean to make you stop,” Finn said, gesturing toward his book. “I was just asking. I really don’t know if football season is over.”

  “We lost in the sectionals two weeks ago.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She should just stop talking. She should just face the front of the classroom and wait for Mrs. Reynolds to start class. Today, for some reason, she couldn’t.

  “You love football, don’t you?”

  Marcus looked at her like she was crazy. “What?”

  “That came out stupid. What I mean is, the season’s over, you lost, yet here you are…” She pointed at his lab book. “I’m not sure what you call it.”

  “Diagramming plays.”

  “You’re sitting here diagramming plays, presumably for future football games. Which I guess means that you care about football more than I care about any nonliving thing in my life. And that’s good for you and not so good for me.” Marcus looked at her blankly. “Maybe it just means I need a hobby,” she said.

  Mrs. Reynolds stepped to the front of the class and wrote The Limbic System on the whiteboard. Marcus turned away, and Finn opened her lab book. Marcus Hahn, she thought, will definitely not be inviting me to the winter dance.

  * * *

  Finn carried her tray toward Jed, who’d found an empty table near the windows.

  “An apple and three packs of saltines?” he said as she sat down. “That’s a sad lunch. This spaghetti, on the other hand, is amazing. It’s crunchy and soggy all at the same time.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You are so lying. And I know that because one of the many things I admire about you is your appetite. But you’re not eating today, and you didn’t eat yesterday. And you’ve got these huge, dark…” He made a gesture near her face. “Circles.” He stopped gesturing and took another bite of spaghetti.

  “I’m not sleeping well.” Finn needed to talk to someone. “I’m having horrible dreams. Last night, it was my dad. He kept me trapped in a tiny room while all these weird images streamed by outside. The night before, it was Noah, and he was wrapped in kelp and needed my help. Of course, the dream was underwater. You know how much I love water.” She cut a piece out of her apple. “My whole life, I’ve remembered one or two dreams total. Now, I’ve remembered two in two nights, and they both suck.”

  Jed took another bite of pasta. Chewed it thoughtfully.

  “It is true that you hate water,” he said after he swallowed. “But that seems a little transparent as dreams go, so I’m going to say the water’s about your mom, who happens to be an expert on the stuff. You miss your brother, so you’d totally want to help him. And your father was a great guy who died tragically, putting your real-life hopes, at least temporarily, on hold. Put it all together and you’ve got some easy-to-translate dreams about the really sad things that have happened to you and your family. Hence that song I sent you. Did you listen to it?”

  “Not yet. You think these dreams are all about my family?”

  “Was Nana in them?”

  “Nope.”

  “Which makes sense because she is totally cool and doesn’t deserve to be trashed by your subconscious.”

  Finn smiled, watching as he took another bite of his spaghetti. “I’ve got to say, Jed, your lunch looks disgusting.”

  “Yeah, crunchy and soggy is totally gross. You just seemed down, so I was trying to be positive.” And with that, he took another bite.

  * * *

  When Finn got home, Nana was sitting in the living room with Rafe Newell. “Finn,” Rafe said. “You’ve had a growth spurt.” He attempted a smile, but it made him look more like a snake than a human being.

  Noah had studied martial arts with Rafe for a year before he went into the coma, but Finn hadn’t met him until afterward. When she did finally meet him, she had two strong feelings: a desire to freeze, followed by the instinct to flee. It might have been his sheer size. Rafe was at least six and a half feet tall and solid. Finn’s mom used to say some babies had “bones made of lead.” Rafe Newell seemed like a man made of lead. And,
even though she knew her brother loved him, he made Finn uneasy.

  She wanted to keep moving through the room but knew Nana wouldn’t allow it. So she stood by the arm of the couch and said, “Hello, Rafe,” with as little enthusiasm as she thought she could get away with.

  “How is school?”

  “Good.” Short and sweet was all he was going to get from her.

  Rafe dropped his smile. His regular face wasn’t any more comforting than his not-so-friendly smile. “Well, good to see you,” she lied. “I’m just going to grab a snack and start my homework.”

  “Don’t be rude, Finn. Rafe came to visit both of us.”

  Nana’s tone made it clear Finn didn’t have a choice, so she moved to the only spot available, the one on the couch near Rafe. As she sat down, Rafe reached for a necklace on the coffee table. At least, it looked like a necklace. It was a small yellow crystal on a shiny silver chain.

  “Your grandmother tells me you’ve been having a hard time sleeping.”

  Finn shot Nana a look. She had no business telling Rafe anything.

  “I remember when I was about your age, my dream life suddenly seemed very … real. Made my sleep a little unsettled.” She could feel him staring at her, even though her back was to him. “Is that what it feels like to you?”

  Finn didn’t care how much her brother liked Rafe. She was not going to open up to him. She turned back to him, ready to shut the conversation down, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the crystal on the chain. She followed his eyes.

  The charm … was straining to reach her, pulling the chain parallel to the floor. She started to say something, ask him how he was doing the trick, because it had to be a trick. But before she could, Rafe took the chain in his still-gloved left hand. The crystal collapsed, and the chain went limp. He dropped them both into a velvet bag.

  “It looks like Finn is already focused on what she needs to do tonight, Margaret. Maybe we should let her get to it.”

  Finn wanted to get away from Rafe, his questions, his weird necklace. She turned to her grandmother. “Can I go, Nana? Is that okay?” When her grandmother didn’t answer, Finn reached out and touched her arm. “Nana?”

  Rafe stood up. “I could use a glass of water.”

  Nana forced a smile on her face. “Will you get him some, Finn?”

  Spending any longer with Rafe was the last thing Finn wanted to do, but she led him into the kitchen and poured him a glass. He drank it in one swallow before quickly glancing into Noah’s room. “I sure do miss him,” Rafe said. And then, without waiting for Finn’s response, he headed back to where her grandmother sat waiting.

  * * *

  From her perch by Noah’s bed, she could hear bits and pieces of their conversation. It sounded like Rafe was pushing Nana to do something she didn’t want to do, and then, after a few minutes, Finn heard the front door open and close.

  She forced herself to focus on her limbic system science homework. If she finished it, she’d have only Fahrenheit 451 and some history to do tonight. It would take a couple of hours, tops. Then she could go to bed, hopefully get a good night’s sleep.

  “Finn, could you come here?” Nana called from the kitchen.

  Finn found her grandmother sitting at the table, her hands resting on a blue spiral notebook. Finn checked her phone. It was dinnertime. “Nana, you look tired. Why don’t I call and get us a pizza?”

  Nana pushed the notebook toward her. “I think you should look at this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Noah’s notebook.”

  “Noah kept a journal?” Finn had a hard time imagining her brother, a guy who loved Mountain Dew and video games, writing in a journal.

  Finn opened the notebook. It wasn’t what she expected. Instead of dated entries about school or girls or his favorite video game character, it was page after page of drawings and precise, almost manic, notations. Some drawings looked like maps. Others were monstrous creatures you’d find in fantasy novels. People were drawn as stick figures running, flying, fighting, dying. They reminded her of the movies she’d seen in her dream last night. And around all of it, there were lists: words, names, and dates, with arrows connecting one thing to the next.

  “Why are you showing me this?” Finn asked.

  “Rafe thinks it’s important.”

  Finn resented Rafe’s involvement, but she ignored the snide comment that popped into her mind and flipped through the rest of the notebook quickly until she got to the last page. Noah had drawn a maze. He’d put waves above it to show it was underwater.

  The maze had two openings, one at the top and the other at the bottom. At the maze’s center, there was a symbol: a triangle inside a circle in the middle of a square. At the top of the page, there was a drawing of a hummingbird. Noah had labeled the body red, the wings yellow, and the head green. It looked … fierce, unlike any hummingbird Finn had seen in real life.

  She’d seen it before.

  In her dream at school.

  * * *

  The tangle of kelp around her brother. Something struggling to burst free.

  The flash of red, yellow, green.

  It was a hummingbird. Fierce, not friendly. Just like the one Noah drew.

  * * *

  She pushed the notebook away.

  “What is it, Finn?”

  Her chest felt tight. She couldn’t breathe. Her mind was blank, and it took a minute to remember where she was.

  In the kitchen.

  Talking to Nana … about…?

  What?

  Noah.

  “Finn, what’s going on?”

  Why were the images from that dream stalking her? And how could Noah’s drawings, which she’d never seen, end up in her head? Finn saw the concern in Nana’s eyes. Obviously, there had been something wrong with Noah. Was there something wrong with her, too? She shook off the fear that was pressing at the edges of her mind. There had to be an explanation, but it took a moment for her to think of something that made any sense at all. Nana waited until finally Finn said, “Did you know that after Dad died, Noah thought he came back as a hummingbird?”

  Nana shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”

  “Noah would sit for hours in the yard or down at the park. Not doing anything, just sitting. We thought he was sad and left him alone. And then one night, Mom sent me to get him for dinner. He told me he wasn’t ready to come in. That he and Dad weren’t finished.”

  Finn remembered it like it was yesterday. Six-year-old Noah had taken her hand and walked her toward the honeysuckle bush at the back of the yard. As they got closer, a hummingbird launched itself into the early-evening sky. Until that instant, Finn hadn’t known those whistling sounds she heard sometimes were hummingbirds taking flight.

  When they couldn’t see the bird anymore, Noah turned to Finn and said, “Dad’s a hummingbird. He comes back to me all the time.” The way he had said it, it was as though their father’s being a bird was the most normal thing in the world. And here it was again all these years later. A hummingbird.

  “All this stuff in the notebook. Maybe … Noah never got over Dad dying.”

  “This isn’t grief, Finn. These are dreams. Other people’s dreams. Your brother had a … gift. He was like a shaman. He could go into other people’s dreams and help them. They’re called Dreamwalkers. Your brother was a Dreamwalker.”

  Finn looked at her grandmother, trying to figure out what the joke was, but Nana looked completely serious. Finn headed to the stove. “Why don’t I make you some tea?”

  She turned on the flame under the kettle. Behind her, Finn heard Nana stand up and walk to the living room. She came back with the Driscoll family tree that hung over the piano. Ending with Finn’s great-grandfather Patrick, it traced the family back twenty generations. Nana set it on the counter. “See how some of them are framed in clouds?” She looked at Finn to make sure she was paying attention. “They are the known Driscoll family Dreamwalkers. For more than six hund
red years, at least one per generation. Twenty-two boys and girls, revealed around their sixteenth birthdays.”

  “Nana, I don’t know what you expect me to say, but—”

  “I’m not making this up, Finn. Look at the notebook.”

  Finn pointed to the open page. “It seems crazy.”

  “You saw Noah, Finn. Every day. You talked to him. Did he seem crazy? Like anything was wrong with him?”

  No. In the months before his coma, Noah was calm, confident. Alive.

  “These are dreams, Finn. Other people’s dreams. Your brother had the gift, or the curse. At this point, it’s hard to know.”

  The kettle started to whistle. Finn turned the burner off and looked at the notebook. She stared at a drawing of a small man dwarfed by a spiky-headed monster. It looked like something from a horror movie or nightmare. Still … how could what Nana was saying be true?

  “Noah was only fourteen when he started showing the signs. Much younger than the others,” Nana said, talking so quietly that Finn had to lean forward to hear her clearly. “I did everything I could to keep him from realizing what was happening and acting on it. But it didn’t work. We couldn’t stop him. Noah wouldn’t let us.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Your mother and me.”

  Everyone in the family knew but her? No way. “Nana, if this was going on, Noah would’ve told me.”

  “We asked him not to.”

  “Why?”

  “We thought it was best. Until his training was complete.”

  It clicked. “Rafe trained him.”

  Her grandmother must have heard the judgment in her voice because she immediately said, “Someone had to. Rafe is a Dreamwalker. Family members in Ireland, other Dreamwalkers, helped me find him. He didn’t want to train Noah, but he eventually agreed. We all just wanted Noah to be … safe.”

  A wave of anger and confusion crashed over Finn.

  “Is this why Noah’s sick?”