River of Dreams

by Jan Nash

  “Uh, hi, Finn. I heard you were sick.”

  Nana jumped in. “I told him you were feeling much better and had taken a walk to stretch your legs.”

  Finn rubbed her freezing hands together. “It was colder than I expected.”

  Moby reached for a stack of papers on the table. “There was a reading assignment for New World History. It’s long. I thought you might want to get a head start.” He handed it to her.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  This was now the longest conversation they’d had since he’d moved to town. He’d been in her dream last night. Now he was in her living room.

  Her grandmother stood up. “Fionnuala, Seth and I were enjoying some hot chocolate. How about I get you some?”

  Finn watched Nana walk to the kitchen.

  “Seth?”

  “My real name. Fionnuala … I assume you don’t want me using that at school?”

  She smiled. “If you don’t mind … Seth.”

  “I’ve gotten used to Moby.”

  They stared at each other. Why was he in my dream? Before she’d thought of a good reason, she blurted out, “That couch is older than Nana. Why don’t we hang in my room?”

  The boy formerly known as Moby picked up his mug and followed Finn down the hall.

  * * *

  Seth scanned the books on her shelf.

  “You read.”

  “So do you.”

  “I mean you like to read. And do it when no one’s grading you.”

  “People usually leave you alone if you’re reading.” Which was true; Finn just had no idea why she’d said it. Making conversation. “How was school today?” she asked, making some more.

  “Fine.”

  He picked up a book from the shelf. It was a book of poetry her father had given her in sixth grade. Poems about nature.

  “I haven’t read any of those in a long time,” she told him.

  Moby flipped to a page in the book marked by a folded-down corner. He started reading and then stopped almost as quickly. “I should go,” he said, putting the book back on the shelf. He barely made eye contact as he rushed from the room.

  How weird.

  Why did he bother to bring her the homework?

  She thought back to last night’s dream, remembered the look of panic on his face as he stood in the cab of the train engine.

  She suddenly realized he wasn’t in her dream; she’d dropped into his, one where he was out of control, traveling too fast. He’d needed help, and Finn, as a Dreamwalker, had responded, even if she hadn’t meant to. I got pulled there to help, she thought. But I made it so much worse. He dreamed he crushed me with a train. He came to make sure she was okay, even though he probably had no idea why he felt he needed to. They were connected, if only by the subconscious experience of fear. Messing with other people’s dreams was not something to be taken lightly.

  Finn crossed to the bookshelf and pulled out the book. She opened it to the page he’d been looking at, a poem titled “Vapors.” One of the passages was underlined. It read,

  And if you see it,

  Run.

  Not fast, not slow,

  But at a speed that keeps.

  Run.

  For the mists are chasing you.

  Finn had no memory of the poem or the passage. Her father must have highlighted it, though she couldn’t imagine why. It was super depressing.

  When Finn heard the phone ring, she knew it was Rafe, wondering where the hell she was. She headed toward the kitchen. Nana was hanging up the phone. Before she could say anything, Finn volunteered, “He’d beat up on me enough for one day.”

  “Fair enough.” Nana slid a dish into the oven, fish and some sort of vegetable. “He said to do the same as last night. I’ll make the tea for you.”

  Finn sat down.

  “And your mom called while you were over there. She wanted to check on you.”

  “She doesn’t need to worry about me.”

  “I hope you take this in the spirit I intend … You’re dumber than I thought if you think she can stop worrying about you.”

  “I will take that in the spirit you intend.”

  Nana smiled. “The storm’s supposed to clear tomorrow. Hopefully, she’ll be here the day after.” Nana closed the oven door. She stood quietly for a moment, looking at Finn, then said, “I’m going to ask how it went, but just know that your brother always said ‘good.’”

  Finn gave her grandmother the highlights, leaving out how much her body hurt, how—because she’d fainted and he didn’t have any idea why—she still didn’t have any faith in Rafe. She also left out the part about the drawing in Sydney Norwich’s book matching Noah’s journal and how she was afraid that Noah was getting sicker because he was trying to reach out to Finn.

  From the way her grandmother squeezed her hand as they talked, Finn could tell that Nana was scared. There didn’t seem to be any reason to add to it.

  * * *

  Finn pulled Noah’s journal from underneath his bed and tucked it into her sweatshirt. She didn’t want Nana to see it and decide to put it back wherever it had been hidden until yesterday.

  She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

  “If you moved through people’s dreams the way you moved through video games, you must have been amazing.”

  Finn watched her brother, waited, hoped for some sign he was in there and trying to get home. But all he did was breathe, a little more labored than earlier that day. In, out. In, out.

  In, out.

  In.

  Out.

  In.

  Out.

  NINE

  Finn checked her phone when she got back to her room. There was a message from Jed.

  Puke yet?

  No. Feeling better, she wrote back.

  Okay, good.

  A few minutes later, she got a string of emojis: a piece of pie, a crescent moon, and a smiley face with both eyes closed. This was a game they played: random emojis intended to communicate a simple thought. A pie and a crescent moon were both parts of something, she thought. Maybe he was simply saying we are all connected? She quickly dismissed it as too philosophical for Jed. Pie is food. Dessert. Her favorite. Whenever they had pie at the cafeteria, Jed would make fun of her because she always said, “Pie is good.”

  Pie, crescent moon, smiley face with both eyes closed. Good. Night. Sleep.

  He was wishing her a good night’s sleep.

  Jed didn’t know that wasn’t possible. She wished she’d told him about the dreams. Maybe she would. Tomorrow. Maybe he could help her make sense of everything. For now, she just typed U get good nights sleep 2 and hit Send.

  * * *

  Finn didn’t want her grandmother to see her working with Noah’s dream journal, so she did homework until Nana delivered the mug of tea.

  That had been a half hour ago, and the tea was still sitting on Finn’s night table. She picked it up and stared at it. She wanted to be clearheaded so she could stay up and read Noah’s journal. She needed to figure out how to follow him, how to find him.

  Finn picked up the mug and tiptoed out of her room. She listened for her grandmother. The house was quiet. Finn continued to the bathroom and poured the tea into the toilet and flushed it away. Only then did her heart start pounding.

  Had she just made a terrible mistake?

  * * *

  Finn climbed into bed. She pushed aside the feeling she was intruding into her brother’s private thoughts and opened the notebook. His hurt feelings were something they could talk about when he woke up.

  Noah started the journal after having strange and vivid dreams about a boy named Jason, who he knew only from summer camp. For over a week, Noah lived through horrifying dreams that Jason was being attacked from within.

  Jason’s insides would fall out of him: heart, intestines, lungs. As Finn deciphered his notes, she sensed Noah’s struggle to figure out what the images meant and what he coul
d do to help Jason. He’d gone to dream-analysis websites and looked up symbols. He held Jason’s organs in the dreams, hoping he could put them back inside his body. Eventually, when Noah realized he couldn’t stop what was happening, he just sat with Jason in the dreams while the young man writhed in pain. Noah eventually called Jason in real life, hoping a conversation would end the dreams altogether.

  Finn wondered how that conversation had gone. “Hey, I’ve been having these strange dreams about you” seemed like an awkward starting place, but he’d obviously stumbled on some magic formula because the words Mom. Sick. were scribbled next to Jason’s phone number. Jason was “spilling his guts.” The dreams showed that he needed someone to talk to.

  At the very bottom of that page he’d written the word Center and a phone number. Finn picked up her phone and dialed it.

  “This is the Center. How can I help you?” a woman asked.

  “Uh, sorry,” Finn mumbled. “I’m not sure this is the right number. What do you do there?”

  “Counseling and support groups, sweetheart. For people dealing with illness and loss.”

  “Oh.”

  “You sure I can’t help you in some way?”

  The woman’s voice was like honey. If she got you talking, there was no telling what you would say.

  “No.”

  “You can always call back. We’re here twenty—”

  Finn cut her off. “Okay, thanks. Bye.” She hung up, a lump in her throat. Noah found a way for Jason to talk. Finn flipped through the notebook. There were no more mentions of Jason. Maybe the nightmares had stopped. For both of them.

  Finn kept reading.

  Not long after that, Noah must have told Mom or Nana about the dreams, because Rafe’s name started appearing. Noah continued to make detailed notes of what he experienced in the River, but they began to be interspersed with research in different-colored inks and theories about what various dreams meant and who the people he’d encountered in the dream space were and the kind of help they needed.

  He wrote Ask Rafe about things big and small.

  If a guy died in the dream, what happened to him in real life?

  Did animals dream? How would you know? Were you supposed to help?

  Could you refuse to help someone?

  And what happened if you tried to help someone and failed?

  As she got toward the end of the notebook, a new thread emerged, an ongoing experience that didn’t seem attached to anyone. Noah was on a quest, tracking something through many levels. The fierce red-green-and-yellow hummingbird eventually appeared and led Noah to darker and more dangerous places. Finn saw a word reappear several times, the final time Noah had underlined it three times for emphasis. The word was Malum.

  She crossed to her computer and typed it into an online dictionary.

  Malum was Latin for “evil.”

  * * *

  Even without the tea, Finn felt sleep stalking her. She feared what it might bring, but she knew she couldn’t keep it at bay.

  The last few nights had been hard on her, and now her body ached from the day with Rafe. Her eyes kept closing involuntarily. She looked at the empty mug on her nightstand, a part of her wondered if she should have taken it. I’ll just have to face what comes.

  With that brave thought, she fell asleep.

  * * *

  She stood in the River of Dreams.

  Without Nana’s or Rafe’s herbs, the experience was totally different, a thousand times more powerful.

  Rather than just a rush of images and sounds and feelings, Finn could pinpoint all of them. She could isolate anything she wanted: the image of a woman plunging into a flaming star, the sound of a baby laughing, the fear of a man fighting a three-headed dragon.

  It was … overwhelming and amazing.

  Rafe had been insistent that she do nothing until she was fully trained, that she should just lie down and sleep. But Noah was fading. He might be dying. If he came into the River looking for something, she needed to figure out what it was and where he went to find it. She couldn’t wait until she was ready. She might never be ready.

  Where to begin? What exactly should she look for in this vast flow of experiences?

  Finn concentrated on Noah himself, on the maze, the symbols he’d drawn. She scanned for the hummingbird, the curls of smoke their father had blown Noah into. None of it worked. The man with the buffalo head was the only other idea she had, but it didn’t seem like a good idea. He’d attacked her.

  Finn was overwhelmed.

  The River was too big. Maybe Rafe was right. She didn’t know enough to find Noah. What if she was actually making things worse for him? She felt her stomach tense, a faint buzzing played at the edges of her awareness. And then she remembered what Rafe had said: Fear was the enemy.

  So she couldn’t give in to it. She had to … breathe.

  Inhale. One, two, three, four.

  Exhale. One, two three, four, five—

  And then, she sensed her mother. Finn reacted and was pulled—

  * * *

  Someplace she’d never been. A beamed ceiling towered over a room full of dark furniture, heavy, solid pieces that looked as if they had been made by hand a long time ago. The walls were bright white, as if to offset the bleak landscape through the window. Across the room, her mother was frantically searching through a chest of drawers.

  Finn was in her mother’s dream.

  She didn’t want to be here. Let her mother figure out her own problems.

  Finn knew that was kind of bitchy, but things were complicated. Her mother … she left. Finn understood the economics. They needed good health insurance. But Noah was in a coma. Who leaves a crisis and heads to the other side of the earth? Finn didn’t. Nana didn’t.

  Parents aren’t supposed to leave.

  Finn watched her mother open one drawer, then another, pulling things out and throwing them to the floor. Finn couldn’t stand it anymore. “Mom,” she finally said, “What are you looking for?”

  Her mother turned around. She looked so sad.

  Finn had never seen her like that before, even after her father died in the crash. Through it all—the Coast Guard search, the horrible news, the funeral—her mom had acted as if everything was the same: made dinner, washed their clothes, kept their routines, made cakes and cookies. When Finn woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to go to her dad’s grave, her mom took her, standing nearby as Finn cried …

  Like she didn’t care.

  And now, here she was, bereft. Over what? Some missing necklace or scarf?

  “Mom,” Finn repeated quietly. “What are you looking for?”

  Julia turned at the sound of Finn’s voice, almost startled by it. “You,” her mother gasped as tears ran down her face. Her mother opened her arms. Finn didn’t move. Her mother just stood there, arms open. The choice had to be Finn’s. But what was the right choice? This was a dream, not their living room. Would it even matter?

  She stood there, trying to decide what to do, until her mother finally said, “Finn,” in a voice that was too heartbroken to ignore.

  Finn walked into the embrace. “I’m right here,” she repeated. Finn could hear the beating of her mother’s heart. Was it only a dream, or was this the beating of her real heart, so many miles away?

  Finn led her mother to the couch and sat her down.

  “Why don’t you go back to sleep,” Finn suggested.

  “I can’t. I have to watch you.”

  “You’ll see me soon.”

  Finn thought back to the Dreamwalker, Wan, who had helped her go to sleep. She helped her mother lie down and put a hand over her eyes. She watched her mother’s body relax and the anxiety leave her face. After a minute, she was asleep.

  Finn realized she was tired. So tired. Maybe she should do what Rafe said and just lie down, go to sleep in the dream, before she got hurt. She would look for Noah tomorrow.

  Yes, that’s what she’d do. Start again tomorrow. But th
en she heard a voice, a faint, “Help.” She closed her eyes and heard it again, louder. “Help!”

  A child. A girl. Finn knew she should go home, but somewhere, there was a child who needed help.

  She concentrated on the voice and—

  * * *

  Was back in the River.

  The young girl’s voice broke through the roar. “Get away!” she screamed. “Leave me alone.”

  Finn reached out and was pulled into—

  * * *

  A forest.

  The only light came from a sliver of moon in a starless sky and the glow of Finn’s Lochran. The only sound was the crunch of dry leaves.

  Someone was running off to Finn’s left. She ran after them.

  She swerved to avoid the limbs dangling near the ground. Then, out of nowhere, one caught her on the shoulder and knocked her down. She scrambled to her feet, trying to get her bearing as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. This was unlike any forest she’d ever seen. There was a reason she kept bumping into tree limbs. It wasn’t just that the lower limbs of the trees were heavy and hanging near the ground.

  The trees were alive.

  A branch swung toward her head. Finn ducked, and it missed her.

  She heard the girl shout, “Put me down!” It was coming from above her.

  Another limb swung at Finn. When it got close, she jumped, higher than she’d ever jumped, higher than she had ever seen anyone jump. Finn landed on the limb and ran toward the trunk of the tree. The tree swayed back and forth, trying to shake her off. She struggled for balance but finally reached the trunk. She started climbing.

  The tree growled in frustration, trying to throw Finn off, but she held on and kept moving. As the trunk narrowed, the motion became more violent. She needed to find the girl and get the hell out of here.