River of Dreams

by Jan Nash

  “I hate keeping secrets from you, Finn. I know you’d understand how I feel. If nothing else, you’d make sure I didn’t do anything stupid. Or you’d tell me I was doing something stupid and bribe me to stop by making cookies or something.” He smiled. “It wouldn’t work, but I love your cookies.” Finn could see the sadness in him, a slight droop in his shoulders.

  Come on, Noah, she thought, tell me what’s on your mind.

  He was quiet a long time and then whispered, “Do you ever think about Dad?”

  What?

  Of course she did. A lot more recently, since the dream where she was trapped in the room. But even before that. She realized that she and Noah didn’t really talk about their father. They hadn’t in a long time.

  “I wonder,” Noah continued, “if maybe—”

  Finn smelled sulfur right before the room EXPLODED. She turned and saw the man with the buffalo mask charge toward Noah. In the shadows behind him, something fled into the darkness of the hallway.

  The man swung his weapon: a stick about four feet long with dragonlike skulls on each end and covered with glowing spikes.

  As the stick arced through the air, it seemed to groan, and the sound caused the floating Dream Finn to stir.

  Noah raised his sword to defend himself. The creature’s stick crashed down on Noah’s sword and—

  Everything froze.

  The room became completely silent.

  What the hell?

  Finn stepped forward, but nothing else moved. Noah and the man were midbattle. Dream Finn was frozen, too, her eyes now open, her face contorted in fear. What had happened? Rafe had never mentioned anything like this, neither had Sydney Norwich. The only thing that made sense to her was that in real life she woke up. This was the end of the dream. Noah and the man had probably been expelled from the dream, back into the River.

  Finn approached Noah. He didn’t look small anymore. He looked fierce. The muscles in his arms were taut as he protected himself. Whatever was happening at this moment had not surprised him.

  Finn circled the man in the buffalo mask. A sense of dread and decay clung to him. His skin was the palest white she’d ever seen. The burning sores all over it oozed a dark pus-like substance. The animal hides that clung to the lower half of his body were covered in crimson patches. Finn couldn’t help but think they were dried blood. His weapon, gripped tightly in his hands, was smooth, as if he’d been holding it, wielding it, for a long time. Up close, it was easy to see that the glowing spikes were Lochrans. She reached out and touched one. Even in this already-dreamed dream, she could feel its power.

  Finn stepped forward, angry. This man was attacking her brother. Somehow, she wasn’t sure how yet, he was responsible for Noah’s coma.

  She grabbed the mask to rip it off his head, so she could see his face, and only when she touched it did she realize that it wasn’t a mask at all. It was the cleaned-out head of a buffalo. She yanked on it, but, like the book she’d tried to pick up before, it wouldn’t budge. This already-dreamed dream could not be changed.

  Finn leaned in, looked at his eyes. The pupils were indistinct from the irises around them, and the blackness was disconcerting. Even frozen, the man’s fury was unmistakable.

  Finn turned to look at her brother. He was frozen. What was the harm in touching him? She put a hand on his cheek.

  “What have you gotten yourself into, Noah?”

  She waited. As she always did. To see if he would answer. But like every moment for the last nine months, there was silence.

  “Okay, I get it. Still with the secrets. I’ll figure it out,” she whispered into the silence.

  She took one last look at the man in the buffalo head. Was this Jed’s bad guy, builder of armies? If so, Jed might be right that she needed help. It might be too big for her to handle alone. And so she reached out her hand and found herself—

  * * *

  Back in the River. She looked upstream toward the crush of images that flowed her way.

  “Jed,” she said quietly, praying she wouldn’t interrupt anything embarrassing, and she was instantly relieved to be standing in a desert, sand as far as the eye could see. Squatting nearby was Jed, alone, hunched over something on the ground. Finn approached him. As she got closer, she saw he’d used his finger to draw something in the sand. The maze. Sydney’s maze. Noah’s maze. An army of ants moved inside it. Jed was watching them intently. Because there was no way out, the ants just moved back and forth in the trenches he’d created, creating blobs of ants when they reached the end of a blocked passageway.

  After a moment, Jed reached over and created a new opening in a side wall so that they could escape. The ants flowed out and began to march away, one after another. It took only a few moments for the maze to clear.

  “Hi, Jed.”

  He looked up. “Hi, Finn.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “It’s peaceful.”

  “It is. Do you remember what we talked about?”

  “Raisins?”

  “No.”

  “Then, no. I don’t.”

  “You wanted to help me find Noah.”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  “Should we give it a go?”

  She reached out a hand, and Jed took it. “Absolutely.” As he stood, his legs unfolded. He seemed taller in the dream.

  “Hold on, okay. Don’t let go,” Finn told him. “We’re going to try something.”

  “Okay.”

  Finn looked at Jed. He was smiling. At her. She squeezed his hand, then closed her eyes. She heard the River of Dreams. Jed was still holding her hand. When she opened her eyes, he was looking around. “Holy—”

  And then he was gone, her hand empty.

  Finn started to panic. She told herself to wake up and then remembered she hadn’t gone to sleep. She looked around, saw a gauzy spot in the images, and floated toward it. She pushed through and—

  * * *

  Was back in her room, on her bed. Her cell phone was buzzing. She picked it up. Jed had texted her.

  Wuz that U?

  U tell me, she typed back.

  Desert and … what the hell … He followed it with a series of emojis: a wave followed by a bolt of lightning, a music note, and clashing cymbals. She was thinking about how to respond when he sent her a poo emoji.

  What’s that mean? she wrote back.

  That shit was real, Finn. That shit was real. He followed this with a smiley face.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Finn lay awake a long time before she realized she wasn’t going to be able to rest. She went to the kitchen to get some water and heard Eddie scratching at the carpet in Noah’s room to make a comfortable nest for himself. She walked in, and Eddie stopped. He looked up at her a beat before flopping to the floor.

  Finn went and sat next to Noah.

  A thin shaft of moonlight peeked through the curtain and fell across his face, almost like it had been painted on. Finn traced it along her brother’s cheek. She wished he’d told her about being a Dreamwalker. She wished he had asked for help with whatever, or whoever, was troubling him. Finn was afraid that maybe he did, maybe he gave her a thousand little clues that something was going on and she was too caught up in her own high school nothingness to see them. She hoped that wasn’t true.

  In the months he’d been in a coma, she’d relived so many of the important moments of their lives. In an article on neuroscience she’d read soon after he’d gone into his coma, she’d learned the very act of remembering something changed it. The emotions you brought to the memory reshaped it in ways that you couldn’t even know. After she’d read the article, Finn had tried hard not to think about the past when she was depressed or upset, because she didn’t want all her memories of him to be painted with a melancholy brush. Of all the people she’d ever met, he laughed the easiest. Big laughs, small laughs, some that never seemed to escape thi
s own head.

  She hoped wherever he was, his own memories weren’t being altered. She hoped fear didn’t cause all the good things he’d known to slip away. She hoped he at least had his memories to hold on to.

  She was wide awake. There was no point in trying to sleep. So Finn sat there for hours and reminded Noah of the places they’d been, the people they’d met, the things they’d done. She told him his favorite joke and, using only that strip of moonlight, read him a chapter from his favorite book.

  Finn remembered.

  For both of them.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Noah felt a breeze stir. He didn’t know where it came from. He looked around, wondering if the monster was near. He held his breath, hoping it wasn’t.

  In the silence, he heard something. A voice, soothing. Almost like a melody from a favorite song.

  He was so tired, and his chest … it hurt. He fought to keep his eyes open. He had been fighting against sleep for so long, afraid if he gave in, the spiders would crawl down and build their webs on top of him, or that the creature himself would return and finally kill him.

  He wanted to go home. For so long, he prayed that someone would come save him.

  Something about the voice was so familiar. And, finally, he remembered.

  “Finn.”

  He whispered quietly so the monster would not awaken.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Mom and Nana took good long looks at her at breakfast but said nothing other than good morning, as if acting normal would make everything normal. Finn didn’t volunteer any details about her evening. She just ate a good breakfast. They couldn’t worry too much as long as she was eating, right?

  Jed didn’t wait for her to get to him. He was waiting at the end of her corner and screamed “Unbelievable!” as soon as he saw her. She didn’t reply, just walked toward him as he sprinted toward her, talking all the way. “That was amazing. I mean, it only lasted for about a second, so I couldn’t get a good look around, but still, Finn … unbelievable.”

  When he reached her, he grabbed her backpack and her hand. Words spilled out of him in a nonstop stream. One incomplete thought after another.

  “Loud. I can’t believe how loud it was … And so many … How do you track them?… Or is that not the point … I think I saw a dinosaur … Maybe an alligator … It’s a dream, no reason it can’t be a dinosaur … I didn’t expect them to move so fast and flow like that … I know you said ‘river.’ In retrospect, not sure what I thought you meant by that. ‘River’ is a pretty clear image. It was just bigger than any river I’ve ever seen…”

  He went on like that almost the whole way to school, which was fine. Finn was only half listening. She was thinking, as she had most of the night, about the man in the buffalo head. He was like a Dreamwalker, though clearly an evil one. And all those Lochrans. Why did he have so many?

  Finn realized it was quiet. Jed had stopped talking. They were walking, but he was just looking at her. “Normally you’re my favorite conversation partner. Today, not so much.”

  “I was thinking about some things.”

  “No problem. I wasn’t really talking about anything important. Just the most mind-blowing experience this side of LSD.”

  “You’ve done LSD?”

  “No, but I’ve read books. Anything you want to tell me?”

  “Isn’t your mind blown enough for one day?”

  “Depends.” He dropped her hand and threw his arm around her shoulders. “You looked totally hot in your Dreamwalker gear.”

  “I was wearing sweatpants.”

  “And a sword.”

  “Ah. The sword.” She’d forgotten about it.

  “Can I get a sword?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, if I get a vote, I’d like a sword. I’ll be quiet now.”

  He pulled her close, and they walked in silence the rest of the way to school.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The best thing, maybe the only good thing, about Mr. Newsome was he didn’t really care about actual classroom attendance. If you wanted to go to the library and do research on Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, a fascinating bit of treason they’d never actually studied in class because it was way too interesting, then you could ask to go to the library. When you came back to class, either that hour or the next day, Mr. Newsome simply wanted you to share something you’d learned. Wikipedia was usually the source, but the tidbits were almost always interesting, perfect for dinnertime, and allowed parents to feel their tax dollars weren’t being wasted. Finn rarely took advantage of the privilege to leave, but today, the library was where she needed to be.

  She told Mr. Newsome that, while she was researching her term paper, she’d read that James I’s heart had been taken on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She wanted to know if it was true. Mr. Newsome sent her off with a hall pass and an admonition to keep it PG-13. He didn’t want to hear about “bloody entrails.” She didn’t bother to point out that entrails were digestively related and had nothing to do with the heart. She simply said “Of course” and went on her way.

  * * *

  Getting to the library meant Finn had to walk by the main administrative hallway. She glanced down the corridor and was surprised to see Marcus sitting on the bench outside the main office with Deborah, who was crying.

  Finn was about to stop and head toward them, to see if she could help, when Mrs. Olsen, a guidance counselor and by far the best adult in the school, came out of the office. Finn kept moving, stopping to look back only when she’d cleared the hallway. Mrs. Olsen sat next to Deborah and spoke to her. Deborah kept crying, but after a moment, she nodded. Mrs. Olsen stood up, keeping a hand on Deborah’s arm as she stood up, too. They headed toward the office with Marcus trailing behind them. Only then did Finn notice another woman standing inside the room. Finn didn’t recognize her, but when she turned sideways so everyone could walk by her into the office, Finn saw the flash of a badge.

  And a gun.

  The woman was a detective, a police detective.

  Deborah or Marcus, maybe Mrs. Olsen. Someone had called the police.

  Finn watched the office door close.

  She leaned back against the wall, out of sight. Deborah was going to get help. She was going to get away from the parents who were abusing her. It didn’t mean her problems were over, but hopefully it meant they couldn’t hurt her anymore.

  There was no way to know if Finn had helped make it happen, but … maybe. A little. Maybe her walk into Marcus’s subconscious had gotten him to help Deborah. Finn could barely breathe.

  She felt … what? Grateful? Relieved? No, those weren’t quite right.

  Surprised. She felt surprised. Even though she had wanted this outcome, had tried to help facilitate this outcome, she was surprised it had actually happened.

  Correlation isn’t causality, Jed liked to say.

  Screw that.

  The surprise faded away, and gratitude and relief flowed in to take its place. Deborah was going to get some help.

  She heard footsteps in the hallway. If a teacher caught her loitering, she’d be sent back to Mr. Newsome’s class. So she pushed herself off the wall and continued on to the library.

  * * *

  She managed to find an open computer in the back of the library, where nobody liked to sit because the sun shone directly through the window and made it hot even on cold days. She peeled off her sweater and was still uncomfortably warm. She was certain that nobody else would put up with the heat and that she’d be able to work in peace.

  She quickly looked up the facts about King James’s heart. A doctoral thesis by a woman at Edinburgh offered a smidgen of proof that it made a round trip to the Holy Land before being returned to his body by a knight from the Order of Saint John. The part she thought Mr. Newsome would like is that the Order of Saint John eventually turned into the Military Order of Malta, which still has sovereignty under international law and can issue its own passports.

  Th
at bit of housekeeping finished, Finn turned to why she’d really come. She needed to know more about the man in the buffalo head, though she had no idea where to start. She typed “buffalo” into a search engine, which got her a lot of articles about animals and football teams. She moved on to “buffalo” and “ritual,” which led to a list of Native American ceremonies and a couple of stories about the near-extinction of the animal in the late nineteenth century. In one of the articles, she saw a drawing from 1851 of a man wearing a buffalo head as part of a dance. She typed “buffalo head” and “ritual” and found hundreds of images of people wearing real buffalo heads. None of them were right, either. Perhaps the animal she was looking for might be buffalo adjacent. She was about to move on when …

  There he was.

  A drawing by a man named Henri Breuil of a creature standing on its two legs, but with the head of a horned animal.

  The drawing didn’t look like a buffalo, and it also didn’t look like the photo of the fifteen-thousand-year-old French cave painting it was based on. What it did look like—the shape of the horns, the stare—was the man she’d seen last night.

  Scholars had given a name to the cave painting. They called him “The Sorcerer.”

  Somewhere deep inside, a feeling bubbled up. She knew this was important. She knew that she was closer to figuring out what had happened to Noah than ever before. She wasn’t at the finish line. But she was finally in the race.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Finn showed Jed the image of the sorcerer from the cave. “The Shadow,” he said. She knew there was more, so she waited. “From the Hero’s Journey. Gollum. Voldemort … the Sorcerer.”

  “The bad guy.”

  “Yes, except a bad guy never thinks they’re the bad guy. They think the good guy is the bad guy, because the hero is trying to stop them from controlling the world and creating order, their kind of order, out of chaos.”