River of Dreams

by Jan Nash

  Finn took the page. It was a photocopy of the maze from Noah’s journal. Jed had used different colored pens to follow the complicated paths through it. Every color led to a dead end. No path led to the bottom exit. Only one path led to the center.

  “The ‘vile enigma,’” he said with a smile.

  “I have no idea what that means,” Finn answered.

  “I found it online. From a poem about a guy who develops an elaborate maze and promises great riches to whoever can solve it. In the end, the person trying to solve it loses everything and no longer wants the riches.”

  They stood in silence. A wind blew, creating a chilling swirl around them.

  Finn looked at him, trying to gauge if there was any weirdness. He waited, expecting her to say something, and when she didn’t, Jed took the page back and looked at it. “I think the little man thought this maze was going to take him somewhere. Somewhere worth going.”

  Jed didn’t do “layers.” If he had a problem with you, you knew it. He didn’t remember his dream from last night. Finn was certain. And relieved.

  She pointed at the bottom of the maze. “How did he know what the maze looked like? There’s no way through it, yet he drew an exit at the bottom. But, based on what you’ve done, there’s no way to get to the exit.”

  “Huh. I hadn’t thought about that. I suppose he could’ve drawn it wrong, which invalidates my current theory. A depressing development, since I didn’t pay attention during any of my morning classes while I was working on—”

  “Hold on.”

  Finn unzipped her backpack and pulled out Sydney Norwich’s book. She flipped to the maze page and laid Jed’s photocopy over it.

  Jed looked over her shoulder. “They’re identical.”

  “The drawing wasn’t a mistake. It’s a trap. Someone gives you the map, and you go in, thinking it leads you through. Instead, they catch you.”

  “Who? The boogeyman?” He laughed. He meant it as a joke.

  “Malum,” she whispered. She could still feel the eel’s teeth pinching her elbow: the searing pain, the cold. She thought it was just the little girl’s nightmare. But now she knew it was something else, something deep and old and—

  “Finn?”

  Finn looked at Jed. He wasn’t bouncing anymore. What she saw in his eyes was concern. She smiled, hoping to lighten the mood. “Yeah?”

  “Who’s ‘Malum’? You mentioned him before.”

  Finn stamped her feet and blew into her gloves, pretending she was cold, just to buy a moment or two. How much truth was too much? “I’m not sure,” she finally said.

  “Remember when we did that Internet research on reading people’s body language?” She did. She and Jed spent an entire afternoon trying to fool each other about what was true and what wasn’t. She’d laughed so hard she’d fallen off the couch.

  “When people lie,” he reminded her, “they fidget and touch their mouths, both of which you just did.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “You’re not telling the truth.”

  Jed was the best person Finn knew. Good and kind and smart. Why couldn’t she just tell him the truth?

  He moved closer. “I get it. This is scary. Dangerous, even. There’s some weird supervillain, which makes perfect sense because every superhero needs a nemesis.”

  “I’m not a superhero,” Finn said quietly.

  “That’s what a superhero would say. Until they get comfortable with their cape or big hammer or put on their indestructible super smart suit.”

  “Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Superman. Thor. Iron Man.” Jed took Finn’s face in his hands. “Whatever it is, I’m going to help you. Call me a sidekick if you have to. I prefer ‘boy genius,’ but that’s not important. What’s important is…”

  He kissed her. His lips were warm, the skin of his face cold. She remembered the dream from the night before.

  Jed liked her.

  She felt Jed’s lips pull away from hers, but he was so close all she could see were his eyes. They were smiling.

  Finn burst into tears.

  * * *

  It took a while before she calmed down enough to explain that she wasn’t crying because he kissed her. She was crying because … well, she wasn’t exactly sure why she was crying. Sometimes Finn thought she was on the verge of tears all the time. Maybe when Jed kissed her, she was just too overwhelmed to keep it together. Or maybe she was crying … because it felt good not to be alone right now.

  Or maybe she was crying because it would be nice to have a boyfriend and walk around school holding hands. That would feel normal. That would make high school … fun. But now, there wasn’t time for fun because she had to huddle over old manuscripts to figure out what sort of evil was lurking in the axis mundi.

  Or it was all of those. Or none of them.

  Jed looked at her, expectantly.

  He had little flecks of brown in his eyes.

  Telling him why she was crying wasn’t important.

  What was important was getting out of the cold before her face froze. And figuring out what she was going to do tonight when she stepped into the River. Finally, she just said, “You’re going to have to trust me. I’m not upset you kissed me. But I also can’t think about you kissing me right now or I’ll cry again.”

  “I’m going to take that as a good sign, even though I think a more logical person probably wouldn’t.”

  Jed put an arm around her. She wasn’t sure how to tell him she wasn’t ready to go public as a couple, but it turned out he was just reaching for her backpack. She let him take it.

  As they slowly walked home, Jed asked her what they should do now.

  “You’ve helped. A lot. What you figured out about the maze, it makes me think that someone was after Noah. And that other guy, Sydney, maybe even Rafe.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea. I also don’t know what ties them together. Other than they’re all Dreamwalkers.”

  “Which seems like a big thing.”

  “Yeah. I guess. Whoever, whatever, is doing this … they’re smart and dangerous, and they’ve been hurting people for hundreds of years. At least.”

  “How does that help?”

  “I know to be extra careful.”

  “Can I have the old book?”

  It made sense to give all the material to Jed, but …

  “Where are you with school?” Finn asked.

  “Passing all my classes.”

  “Barely or by a comfortable margin?”

  “State-school-acceptance comfortable.”

  This was one of Jed’s few strict rules. He let himself goof off as much as he wanted as long as he was doing well enough to get into a good state college. If he went to a party school, he wanted it to be by choice.

  “Okay, then. Go ahead and take it,” she told him. “There’s another journal in my backpack from Rafe, as well, and some notes my mom made at a monastery.”

  Jed reached into Finn’s backpack. As he rummaged around, he said, “We’re going to need to talk about it.”

  She knew what he meant. It wasn’t the journals or the Dreamwalking.

  “I know. Just not now.”

  “I think I get one question.”

  Finn nodded.

  “Scale of one to ten, with ten being a certainty, what are the chances that I’ll get to kiss you again?”

  They had arrived at Jed’s house. He tucked all the Dreamwalking materials under his arm and zipped up her backpack before handing it back.

  Finn took the backpack and looked at him, his wide smile. All those days they walked to school, walked home. How many of those days had he wanted to kiss her? Finn’s chest felt warm, like her heart had melted. She’d read that in books but didn’t know what it meant. Now she did.

  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

  “Ten,” she said.

  She turned for home. She didn’t hear his footsteps. He was standing wat
ching her.

  “So definitely more after that one? Or was that one the one guaranteed by your ten?” he shouted.

  Finn threw an arm up and waved goodbye.

  “I’ll text you if I find anything.” And with that, she heard Jed’s footsteps fade away as he ran toward home.

  FOURTEEN

  Her mom and Nana were sitting at the kitchen table when Finn walked in. A delicious smell hit her: chicken potpie, Finn’s favorite.

  “How was school?” her mother asked.

  “Distracting.”

  All the Dreamwalker materials were on the table. Except for the ones Finn had already taken.

  “Here are the rest,” her mother said.

  “I needed something to do in study hall.”

  “Are you going to tell us anything?” Nana asked.

  Finn looked between them. She knew how hard this was. “Probably not.”

  * * *

  Nana tried to make small talk during dinner, but Finn and her mother couldn’t get with the flow. Eventually, Nana stopped, and they ate their chicken potpie in silence. When Finn had eaten as much as she could, which was a lot more than she actually wanted, she looked up and blurted out, “Jed kissed me.”

  Her mother’s eyes went wide. Nana smiled. “I wondered when he was going to get around to it.”

  “How did I not know he liked me?” Finn asked.

  “You weren’t looking,” Nana told her.

  Finn’s mother seemed caught between conflicting emotions. Eventually, she said, “That’s great, honey. I guess the timing seems…”

  “Off. I know. The reason I’m telling you is that, well, I haven’t really had a boyfriend since Tommy McGill in third grade and I think having one would be really fantastic. Which means that I need to not get hurt or end up—” She tipped her head toward Noah’s room. “I’m going to be safe, smart. Do what needs to be done and then come home and go to the prom.”

  “The prom’s in three months,” Nana said.

  “You know what I mean. I just … I don’t want you to worry.”

  Her mother reached out and took her hand.

  “I hate to fall back on clichés, but as they say, that’s what mothers do.”

  “It’s not going to help.”

  “No, but everybody needs to feel like they’re doing something, right?”

  Finn scooted her chair back, ready to get up and get on with it. Except her mother wouldn’t let go of her hand. “You’re quite a young woman, Finn.”

  “Yes. I am. If by that you mean completely overmatched for the task at hand in almost every way.”

  Her mother and Nana laughed.

  “My plan is to save Noah and then go back to being ordinary. Okay?”

  They nodded. After a few moments, her mother said, “Your plan’s a little short on details.”

  “It’s a work in progress.”

  * * *

  Finn headed to her room and threw herself on the bed almost at the same moment that her phone buzzed.

  Jed.

  Call me. ASAPASAPASAP.

  She put in an earbud and hit speed dial two. He started talking without any warm-up pleasantries.

  “Did you notice the thing in the middle of Sydney Norwich’s maze?”

  “The triangle in the circle in the square thing?”

  “Do you know what that is?”

  “I looked online. I didn’t find anything just like it, but it resembles the alchemical symbol for—”

  “The philosopher’s stone,” they said in unison.

  Finn could tell that Jed was excited. When he got like that, he was incapable of letting people finish their sentences. “Turning lead into gold,” he said. “Or a source of enlightenment. Or the elixir of life, enabling someone to live forever.”

  Finn interrupted. “It’s just a story, Jed. No one ever found it. Ever. In the history of time, ever.”

  “But what if someone did? What if it’s not in this world? What if living forever in this life isn’t possible—”

  She knew what he was thinking and finished his sentence. “But living forever in the dream world is.”

  “The guy Sydney Norwich was chasing—Peter. His wife was scared he was up to no good. And he was, but he wasn’t a Dreamwalker. He didn’t have one of those glowy necklaces. How did he do it?” Finn did not have an answer to that question, so Jed just kept plowing through his theory. “Maybe someone, someone who has the philosopher’s stone, gave him that power so he could go around being awful in people’s dreams, and then he’d wake up and be awful in the real world, too.”

  Goosebumps prickled Finn’s skin. “The bad guy needs soldiers. To do all his bad things.”

  “Yes. What did you say?” Jed asked. “Before I kissed you.”

  “Malum.”

  “Latin for ‘evil,’ right?”

  He’d looked it up, knew exactly what they were dealing with. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finn heard him exhale, then say, “I think you and Noah have stepped into some deep shit.”

  * * *

  Finn took Jed’s copy of the maze and tucked it into her pocket before she lay down on her bed. She’d need a weapon. Dreamwalker Wan had that big sword. She’d need to get herself a big sword.

  Or a spear, she thought as she closed her eyes. Or a machete. Like it matters. I don’t really know how to use any of them. She could feel her pulse in the vein at the side of her neck. All that blood moving through her body. Round and round, twisting through veins and arteries and capillaries. How strange.

  Ba-boom. Ba-boom. Ba-boom. BA-BOOM.

  * * *

  Finn heard the sound of a heartbeat. But it wasn’t hers.

  It was coming from the River of Dreams flowing around her. The heart was beating at the same rate as hers, like they were connected, but Finn didn’t feel compelled to follow the sound. There was no menace in it. The dreamer felt no danger, and the sound got quieter as the River carried it away.

  Finn took a moment, felt the energy of the dreams. There was the usual swirl of shapes and colors and smells and sounds. Each separate and yet mixed up in a great symphony.

  She pulled the copy of the maze out of her pocket. In the background, she heard the sound of a storm. It passed by her feet, and she felt a charge of electricity. It didn’t call to her, but the shock suddenly brought to mind something Jed had asked. Could she walk back through the River to the past, to dreams long since dreamed and forgotten?

  For the first time, Finn turned around and looked at where the dreams were going. Unlike a real river, there was no horizon. The crush of it continued forever. But as the River moved off, the colors became more muted, eventually fading to black-and-white—except for a few spots that still blazed brightly. Are they fading as they become less visceral, forgotten, less emotionally charged? And, if that were true, what were the bright spots?

  Only one way to find out.

  She started downriver, walking at first, and then when the River put up no resistance, she broke into a run.

  “I’m on my way, Noah,” she said, comforted by the sound of her own voice. “I’m on my way.”

  FIFTEEN

  In a place that was darker than dark, Noah stirred.

  SIXTEEN

  Finn ran, catching glimpses of grayscale dreams as she looked right and left. She wondered what effect, if any, she could have on dreams that had already been dreamed.

  In the distance, the bright patch of color got no closer. She stopped, and the River quickly pushed the colors even farther away. Of course, she realized, there are always new dreams, pushing the old ones into the past.

  She remembered a biology class she’d had last spring. They’d gone on a field trip to the river and studied water patterns. It had been surprisingly interesting, how the river made waves in the obstacles that it ran across, waves that bounced into one another, creating bigger waves or canceling each other out and creating patches of calm. The water kept moving, creating more and more activity, all govern
ed by the same rules. “Fluid dynamics” is what she remembered her teacher calling it.

  Obviously, the River of Dreams was different. The dreams weren’t water, and Finn wasn’t a rock. These were people’s experiences, and she was …

  What was she?

  Finn reached out her hands and felt the dreams flow over her, almost through her. What was she? At home, she was just Finn. Not the girl she wanted to be or the almost-adult she sometimes pretended to be.

  But who was she really?

  Being a Dreamwalker was the path to finding her brother. Maybe it was also the path to waking up and finding herself. Here she could do anything.

  Finn looked at the bright spot in the River now farther away than ever. I don’t have to chase it, she thought. I’m already there.

  She reached for the bright patch of dream, and as she did, she watched her arm stretch out like rubber, pulling her into a thin thread of Finn-ness and then—

  * * *

  Found herself in her own bedroom.

  Sort of.

  It was her room if it were dropped in the middle of a video game about the Middle Ages. And she was on the bed, eyes closed.

  Or at least a dreamed version of herself was near the bed. Dream Finn was actually floating about two inches off the mattress.

  Finn walked over to the bedside table. A paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet was open on it and, next to the play, a piece of paper. Finn watched as words magically appeared on the paper. Her term paper was writing itself.

  She’d read the romance in freshman English. The teacher had forced them to read aloud every day. Some days, boys played girls and girls played boys, some days only the boys read, some days only the girls. After they’d finished the play, the teacher had brought actors into the class to read the important scenes. It changed everything. It was as if they’d been reading a different book all those weeks.