River of Dreams

by Jan Nash

  “‘Survive’ is a big word.”

  He kept waiting, hands up. Silent.

  “What do I have to master to survive?”

  “Fear.”

  He said it very matter-of-factly, as if mastering fear were easy. Finn knew it wasn’t. She was in high school. Fear was homeroom.

  She lifted her hands and mirrored his stance.

  Rafe showed Finn how to punch and then how to shift her weight to deliver the maximum force. He brought out a punching bag and made her hit it over and over and over again, holding his hand on her stomach until he was sure that she was using her core. Afterward, they moved to karate kicks. Snap kicks. Roundhouses. She used leverage to throw Rafe over her body. With every different thing they learned, he’d tell her to concentrate on her breathing: to make punches stronger, to slow down her heart, and to calm her mind; connecting to herself through breathing was the only reality she could absolutely control.

  “If you can force yourself to breathe in critical moments,” Rafe said, “you might survive whatever…” He left the thought hanging there.

  His “might” did not inspire confidence. When she bent over to put her hands on her knees to rest, she realized she couldn’t feel her arms. She didn’t think Rafe would care, but she told him anyway. To her surprise, he laughed and said she could sit down. He headed to the kitchen and got her another mug of something, then sat on the floor next to her.

  “I want you to drink it and then close your eyes. Start breathing. Make your exhales longer than the inhales, count if you need to. Then, when you’re ready, move into the dream space.”

  “All those movies I saw?”

  “Yes, the River of Dreams. Every dream being dreamed right now. Billions of people, asleep, wrestling with their subconscious in some way. I always found it quite beautiful, though I understand it can be overwhelming. You need to get comfortable so you can enter the River confidently. Fear is—”

  “Bad. You’ve made that very clear.”

  “Then I will count today as a success.”

  Finn smiled despite herself and immediately regretted it.

  “You have the power to go into any dream you choose,” he told her. “So close your eyes, go into the River, grab a dream, and … try to fly.”

  “Fly?”

  “Not too high.”

  Finn picked up the mug and got a whiff of something disgusting. “You need to stop drugging me.”

  “They’re not drugs. They’re herbs. Big difference.”

  She and Rafe sat in silence. “I know this is hard,” he finally said. “If you’re not ready, I understand. I’m sure Noah understands, too.”

  Finn knew he brought up Noah to manipulate her, and it worked. Finn drank the brown sludge. It coated her throat all the way down. She tossed the mug in Rafe’s direction and closed her eyes before he caught it.

  She made a silent wish for a few drops of sludge to fly out and stain his shirt.

  Finn took a deep breath. Then another. She pushed Rafe out of her mind, as well as the aches in her arms and legs. She inhaled: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. She exhaled: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

  She took another breath.

  Inhale: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

  Exhale: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

  Her body felt full, as if she were being inflated like a balloon. The parts of her she thought were real began to push away from one another.

  And then she saw it!

  Instead of darkness, color and movement, like a sheet of opaque plastic hung in front of an open window. She walked through the shimmering wall …

  * * *

  And into the River of Dreams.

  She’d seen it through that tiny hole the night she saw her father. But this was different. Through the hole, it was like watching a chaotic movie. This … this was like watching a million movies while standing in a wind tunnel. The images flowed by her, over her, below her. Her ears were full of a humming, all the sounds in the dreams merging together.

  There was nothing else to see. Nothing else to hear.

  Nothing, except the feelings.

  Joy, anger, love, fear, confusion. All bombarding Finn from the dreams that sped by. She could hardly keep up, and suddenly understood what Rafe meant by the River swallowing you. There was so much of it.

  Too much.

  She wanted to do what he’d told her to do and get out.

  Get home.

  Finn grabbed at an image as it flowed by. It pushed away everything around it, leaving only a single vision: two whales, one small, one large. The small whale was swallowing the larger one. Its body stretched and pulled as the larger whale struggled to escape. Finn saw fear in the eyes of the larger whale. She wanted to comfort it, but before she could do anything, the image disappeared.

  Finn found herself back in the River.

  Only now, it smelled like something had died. She heard something roar and turned toward the sound.

  Something was running straight at her. A nightmare. A man with the head of a buffalo, covered in flaming sores and holding a glowing stick. He grabbed at her neck before she could get out of its way. One of the flaming sores burned her cheek.

  Without thinking, she punched the creature in the face, hitting it just as Rafe showed her. It stumbled back a step, then lunged for her again. She jumped and was suddenly twenty feet in the air. Flying. The creature lumbered beneath her and roared in anger before being caught in the River and swept away.

  Her heart pounded.

  The creature was gone. She was safe, but what now? She looked around. Something shimmered above her, the same opaque curtain.

  She swam toward it, pushed through, and then—

  * * *

  Opened her eyes.

  Finn felt queasy.

  She saw Rafe’s lips moving, knew he was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear what he said. His face was out of focus. She blinked, hoping that would help. But he melted away and then …

  Everything went black.

  * * *

  Rafe was sitting beside her when she woke up. He’d put a pillow under her head and covered her with a blanket. Finn tried to tell him. About being attacked. How she’d punched the way he’d taught her.

  “What was it?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know.” He rubbed his hands through his hair.

  Talking had given her a headache. She watched Rafe chew on a nail. He was scared. All those days in the hospital with her mother and Nana, she recognized that look in people’s eyes.

  “Why did it attack me?” she asked.

  It took him a long time to finally answer. “I’ve never heard of a Dreamwalker doing what you just did,” he said. “Accessing the dream world when they’re awake. When you told me what happened at school the other day, I just wondered if it was possible. And now I’m wondering if … what you saw, what attacked you … if it’s somehow related. If you can access something that other Dreamwalkers can’t, who knows what sorts of things might find their way to you.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t need horrible, burning creatures, too.”

  He just shook his head. Not agreeing with her, but mystified by all of it. After a moment, he told her he had a kickboxing lesson downstairs.

  She was certain he was lying, that he’d screwed up somehow and needed to figure out what to do. She didn’t care. She wanted to get away from him, too.

  Finn asked if she could go home, but Rafe said no. They had things to talk about. He suggested she meditate while he was gone.

  Finn had no idea how to meditate, so she just lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. She wanted to go outside and clear her head. Do something crazy like drink a Red Bull and eat a Pop-Tart. She was also tempted to poke around the room and see what she could learn about Rafe, but one of the things that she’d already learned is that he moved without making a sound. She was certain he would be right next to her before
she realized he was back. He wouldn’t be excited to find her spying on him.

  When she stood up, she saw Sydney Norwich’s book on the table.

  She crossed over and picked it up. There was a shiny spot on the cover where, for hundreds of years, people had grabbed the book to open it. When she flipped to the yellowed and water-stained title page, it read:

  THE NARRATIVE OF MY LIFE

  A Story of Time Spent in Between This World and Others, with Hopes That It Will Guide Some and Give Peace to Others

  By Sydney Norwich, Somersetshire

  Finn had to squint to read the subtitle: “A Story of Time Spent in Between This World and Others, with Hopes That It Will Guide Some and Give Peace to Others.”

  She turned to the first page and started reading.

  I was born in Somersetshire in the year of our Lord Seventeen Hundred and Twelve. My father was a sailor. He left home when I was three, never to be seen again. Whether he stayed away of his own accord or was swallowed by the ocean deep, my mother and I never knew, and there was no time to find out. Our lives were hard.

  In my sixteenth year I began to have visions. At first, I thought they were reflective of an illness of the mind, but it became clear these visions were something else, something real. I could go to places other people could only imagine. And whilst in those places I could help other poor souls with the problems that afflicted them. As it became known I had this skill, people rewarded me for using it on their behalf, and I was able to secure a comfortable life for my beloved mother.

  I am happy to say that I was able to provide for her until her death and that she never knew the pain these visions caused me.

  For those who continue to read of my adventures, know that they are true as much as I know the truth and that I always sought to do right as well as I could.

  Finn tore through the first twenty pages, which told how one night, after months of fitful sleep, Sydney dreamed a vivid dream about Charlotte, a beautiful girl from a nearby village. In the dream, a wall of fire was chasing her. Sydney sprouted wings, picked her up, and flew her to a giant nest on a mountaintop. She kept asking him for help, but despite his repeated questions about what kind of help she needed, she couldn’t or wouldn’t say.

  The next day, unable to get the dream out of his head, Sydney walked several miles to Charlotte’s house and discovered her entire family sick with fever. Charlotte was near death. Sydney fetched a local healer, and Charlotte was saved.

  From that moment on, his nights were filled with other people’s dreams and nightmares. Sydney, mild-mannered in life, became like one of King Arthur’s knights in his dreams: saving women, slaying dragons, taking animal form to rescue children, or simply standing and protecting those who did not have the will to run away from whatever danger threatened them.

  Even though a part of him feared the experiences weren’t real, Sydney felt a responsibility to help all these people in his dreams and was deeply sad when he couldn’t. It was a difficult burden to carry alone, and he finally revealed to his mother what was happening. Afraid her son might be possessed, she pleaded with him to stop helping people and to keep the visions to himself.

  Sydney obeyed her until he dreamed about the local vicar.

  In the dream, the man was an earthworm forced to burrow to the center of the earth. The earthworm wanted to see sunlight but knew he never would. He begged Sydney to fill the hole above him with dirt and end his torment. Instead, Sydney leaped into the hole and gave the earthworm comfort. Up close, he saw it was covered in chalky dust. When Sydney awoke, he knew the vicar was in danger somewhere along the local chalky cliffs. And, the next morning, he set out to find him.

  After a full day’s search, he found the vicar at the bottom of a twenty-foot embankment. He’d tripped while out for a walk and fallen down the cliffside. He’d broken his ankle, so he couldn’t save himself. Without Sydney’s help, the vicar would have died from exposure.

  The vicar asked Sydney how he found him. According to the memoir, Sydney considered lying but decided lying to a man of God was a poor choice, so he told the vicar the truth: The vicar had come to him in a dream and asked for help. Sydney had used the clues from the dream to find him. “The merciful Lord,” the vicar exclaimed in church the following Sunday, “has touched Sydney with his hand and given me a miracle.” With this blessing, Sydney came out of hiding and put his gift to work.

  Sydney’s story was riveting, but Finn was tired. She flipped ahead to see how long the book was. And there, near the end, she saw a drawing.

  A triangle inside a circle inside a square.

  All of it inside a maze.

  And next to the maze, a black bird. The illustration was titled “The Labyrinth and the Black Grouse.”

  It was too similar to what she’d seen in Noah’s journal to be a coincidence.

  Sydney Norwich had been to the last place Noah had written about. This is why Rafe had given it to her: Long-dead Sydney Norwich might be the key to finding and saving her brother.

  She had to get home. Finn closed Sydney’s memoir, grabbed her coat, and headed for the door.

  EIGHT

  Finn snuck out of the gym while Rafe had his back to the door. She read more of Sydney’s book on the bus.

  The chapter with the maze involved Sydney’s attempt to help a pregnant woman named Molly. Her dreams were more tortured than any Sydney had experienced. Many of them involved her husband, Peter. Molly told Sydney that since she’d gotten pregnant, Peter had changed. He left home for long periods. He’d started carrying a knife. He’d come home more than once with bruised knuckles, like he’d been hitting his hand against something hard. The blood on his cuffs made her think it was another person.

  Sydney had been a Dreamwalker for almost forty years. He had helped thousands of people with problems big and small. But this situation “bedeviled” him.

  Molly believed Peter was in the grip of Satan himself. Before I knew the truth, I foolishly assured her Satan had no time for the dreams of men. There was too much for him to do in the waking world. But later, I came to believe I was wrong. For a great evil was afoot, and whatever good had once been in Peter’s soul had long since been trampled by it.

  Sydney worked for weeks to figure out what was afflicting Peter. Each night, he followed Peter in his dreams and eventually had an experience he had never had before.

  Peter didn’t have the same kind of glowing necklace Sydney did, at least not one that he could see, but Sydney realized that Peter still moved through the River of Dreams just how a Dreamwalker would. Sydney wondered if he was a more powerful being, or if some other magic allowed him to move through the dream space. Whatever it was, Peter was active and focused, returning to the same people’s dreams over and over to torment them, creating nightmares. How could he do this? Sydney wondered. And why? What drove him to this evil?

  As Sydney followed Peter, he went into levels of the dream world that Sydney had never seen before, dark places full of fear, dripping with evil. In one of these places, Sydney saw Peter bow to something in the shadows. Sydney couldn’t get a good look at who or what it was. But Peter’s deference made it clear that this being was important. So when Peter headed off, Sydney stayed, waiting for it to emerge. It never did.

  Eventually, though, a black grouse—Sydney’s favorite bird—flew out of the shadows and landed at Sydney’s feet. Its musical trill was the only beauty in this dark place. The bird hopped back to the shadows, asking Sydney to follow it. Sydney’s curiosity pulled him forward.

  The bird led him through a cold and horrifying tunnel. When Sydney emerged from it, he found a large pool of water. Black, still as death. The grouse stood at the water’s edge. When Sydney approached, the bird stepped into the pool. Sydney followed the bird until they were both in over their heads. He had no trouble breathing underwater, and, deep in the pool, Sydney saw a gold door. Opening it, he found himself inside a maze. He started to explore, being careful to mark a path so he could find
his way out.

  He followed the bird over several evenings, trying to work his way through the maze. Each night, he failed and was forced to turn around and leave the way he’d entered. Finally, one night he was so engrossed in the search he forgot to exercise the caution that had allowed him to make his way out of the maze. He got lost.

  As he frantically looked for a way home, he encountered something so terrifying he felt it burn his soul like the fires of hell and fill his mind with madness.

  Sydney tried to fight his way out but was exhausted from his time in this underworld. He could not save himself, and, his soul scorching with a kind of pain he didn’t think possible, he felt compelled to reach for the twisted cord around his neck. He ripped at it, and the Lochran tore. He was expelled from the dream world.

  Forever.

  Sydney never dreamed another dream. His sleep was undisturbed. Empty of visions, both good and evil. My sleep is a blank slate. I am left waiting for the day when God’s own hand might deign to write something upon it.

  Much to Finn’s frustration, Sydney Norwich stubbornly refused to reveal what sort of evil he had faced, what the “it” was that had “filled his mind with madness.” All he would say was that when he woke from that final dream, he was bedridden for a month.

  What would have happened if Sydney hadn’t broken the Lochran? Finn wondered. If he hadn’t found his way out of the maze, would he have lapsed into a coma, too? And, if the maze was related to why Noah was in a coma, what had drawn him to it? Was he following someone like Molly’s husband, someone intent on doing evil in the dream world? And, if Noah was dealing with something terrifying, why hadn’t he talked to Rafe or Nana?

  When she finally got home, Finn’s hands and face were tingling from the cold. She burst through the front door, glad for the blast of heat that hit her as she did.

  It was only when she was walking past the couch in the living room that she saw Moby Dawson. He was sitting with her grandmother, holding a mug of hot chocolate. If he was here, school must be over. Finn had no idea so much time had gone by. “Hi, Moby,” Finn said, startled.