River of Dreams

by Jan Nash

  “True that, but still…”

  She took his hand. “Ready?”

  “Where are we going, Finn?”

  “To find a hummingbird that will lead us into a trap.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “I hope so. Close your eyes.”

  He did. And then Finn closed hers and—

  * * *

  She heard the whirring of the hummingbird. It was very close, and she could tell it was swooping, up and down, the way hummingbirds do when they are trying to attract a mate or intimidate a rival.

  She opened her eyes. Jed was already watching the bird, the light from his headlamp tracking it, occasionally flashing off its iridescent feathers.

  Finn looked around. They were in a flat, rocky area. Not at all the kind of place she would expect a hummingbird. But this one looked just like the hummingbird she’d seen in that first dream of Noah, where the two of them were floating below the ice.

  Now the bird was just flying, up and down, in a giant U-shape, making a show for her.

  She put out her arm, one finger extended. The hummingbird flew over and landed.

  “Well,” Jed observed, “that’s not something you see every day.”

  “I think this is our guide.”

  “Do you trust it?”

  “My brother’s in a coma. So no.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking. So what do we do?”

  “Follow it until following seems dumb.” Finn lifted the hummingbird until they were eye to eye. “Lead on, little guy. And, while I find you very beautiful, I will crush you like a bug if I have to.”

  The hummingbird lifted off from Finn’s finger and headed away.

  “Did that bird smile at you?” Jed asked incredulously.

  “That won’t be the strangest thing we see, if it did.”

  Finn followed the bird. She knew Jed was behind her because the light of his lamp created a shadow of her legs against the ground. The shadow stretched out ten feet in front of her.

  She was a giant.

  THIRTY

  For some reason, Noah was thinking about cowboys.

  Actually, he was thinking about Woody from Toy Story. A long time ago, he’d had a costume. He pretended to be a sheriff while he chased the neighbor’s cat.

  What was the cat’s name?

  Herbert … No. Herman. Big and gray, his tail white, which made him easier to find, even when he hid in the bushes.

  Herman liked to catch birds and mice. He’d parade up and down the street. Showing off. Noah thought Herman was a bully. He cried once when he saw Herman out in front of the house with a baby robin in his mouth.

  Finn thought if they made enough noise, the other creatures would get scared off so Herman couldn’t get them. They ran up and down the street for hours, clanking pans and shouting, until Herman would finally slink through the cat door into his house. Sometimes, Noah felt sorry for the cat, and he’d give him a can of tuna to make up for the animal snacks he was missing.

  Sheriff Noah and Sheriff Finn.

  It was a good memory. Noah let it settle into the dark places in the back of his mind, almost like a light in a dark room.

  THIRTY-ONE

  They’d been walking a long time. Instead of a plateau of dusty emptiness, they were starting to see bushes and trees. Grass peeked out from the edges of rocks. Finn even thought she heard water flowing in the distance. It made her wonder if they’d get thirsty if they were out here for a long time. Or hungry?

  It had never dawned on her to think of this like a camping trip, that they’d need supplies. What if she’d failed at that most basic of things—being prepared? As she ran through the list of ways she’d screwed this up, she realized she was cold. She looked back at Jed. He’d stuffed his hands in his pockets and drawn his arms tighter to his body.

  Shit.

  What if they didn’t have enough clothing? What if they froze to death before they found Noah? Would they lapse into comas, too? Or if they died in their dreams, would they die in the real world?

  She noticed the hummingbird had stopped moving forward. He was just buzzing back and forth in his giant U-shape right in front of her. She stood still and watched a moment, wondering what she was supposed to do.

  Why wasn’t there a manual for this?

  She was really cold.

  Jed stood next to her, watching the hummingbird. He started to whistle.

  He had the craziest whistle. He would pick a note and stay with that note, jumping up and down octaves. Not quite a song, more a musical exercise. He did it when they studied. It had the advantage of not being distracting; it was calming, like a meditation. Jed pulled his hands out of his pockets and stood, whistling, matching the duration of his notes to the arc of the hummingbird as it zoomed back and forth.

  Finn wasn’t quite as cold as she’d been the moment before.

  Why?

  She listened to Jed whistle, thought about how safe it made her feel, and suddenly she knew that her fear was part of the trap. The long walk full of nothingness, lots of time to think. And she was, about all the ways this could go wrong. If she gave in to those thoughts, she and Jed were doomed. Hungry, thirsty, cold, chased by wolves. Her fear would manifest all of it—well, maybe not the wolves. Maybe something worse. She could make it happen. She could create nightmares. For both of them.

  They had everything they needed. They had prepared in every way they needed to. She listened to Jed whistle and looked at the hummingbird. It was smiling at her. Not in a friendly way. It was like that cat in Alice in Wonderland. She held out her hand, and a rock appeared in it. She bounced it up and down like a tennis ball. She meant for it to be threatening. It worked, because the hummingbird stopped smiling.

  “Get moving,” she told the bird.

  * * *

  The trees grew thicker; limbs drooped ominously close to the ground. They reminded her of the trees she’d seen in the little girl’s nightmare. She put an arm to Jed’s elbow and steered him to the middle of the path, just in case. Every now and then, the hummingbird disappeared. Finn wondered where it was going. Was it getting instructions or hoping she’d step off the path and follow it into the forest? She wasn’t going to. There were too many fairy tales involving children wandering into the dark forest for her not to take seriously the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  As she and Jed stood waiting for the hummingbird to come back, Jed put an arm around her. “Does this count as a date?”

  “Yes. If you’re going for the worst date ever.”

  “I will call that a no, because that was not my goal.” When she laughed but didn’t say anything, he said, “What do we do if that bird doesn’t come back?”

  “I don’t know. Even if it does, I wonder if we should leave and come back another time.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “We’ve been walking forever. What are your parents going to say if you don’t wake up in the morning?” Finn asked him.

  “I never thought about that.”

  What if the hummingbird didn’t come back? Finn thought back to Sydney’s black grouse. It led him to a tunnel. As much as she didn’t want to walk into the woods, Finn wondered if perhaps the hummingbird disappeared because it had taken her as far as it could. “Jed,” Finn whispered. “Do me a favor, make a slow circle with your light.”

  Jed twirled. The first time, Finn didn’t see anything. The trees were too thick. “Can you go lower?” He got down on one knee and spun around again. It was so dark the forest was absorbing the light. “One more time. Slower.” He spun around again, so slowly he was barely moving. It was just blackness and then—

  “Wait.”

  Jed stopped.

  “Back up a little bit.”

  He spun back.

  “I know it sounds weird, but it’s darker there than it is on either the left or the right, isn’t it?”

  Jed swung his head left and right. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s like the light is bei
ng eaten, which sounds pretty ominous now that I’ve said it out loud.”

  Indeed. And, since they were walking into a trap, that meant it was probably exactly where they were supposed to be headed.

  * * *

  Finn had kept the rock she’d created, rolling it around in her hand as they walked. Now that she was standing at the edge of what seemed like a tunnel, but one without any visible structure, it felt like the logical thing to do was to hurl it into the darkness. So she did. And, as it pierced the blackness, the rock disappeared. There was no sound of it hitting the ground or anything else.

  “Not going to lie; that seems weird,” Jed said.

  Finn held her hand up to the spot where the blackness began and then, after a moment, tentatively took her pinkie finger and pushed it through. The buzzing was louder than she’d ever heard it. She yanked back her finger. Jed jumped back, too, startled.

  “Something bite you?” he asked.

  “No. I just … I got nervous.” Finn took a moment and then turned to Jed. “I think this is … I don’t know, some kind of vortex of evil.”

  “Don’t sugarcoat it, Finn.”

  “I don’t know what else to call it. I think this is a good moment for you to wake up and go home.”

  “Nope.”

  She looked in his eyes. “Serious” wasn’t one of his looks. But right now, he looked serious.

  She pointed to the darkness. “I think the Sorcerer feeds on fear.” Jed’s eyebrows lifted. “He needs nightmares. If we go in here, it’ll be like a waking nightmare. You’ll feel fear, hear it. But you cannot give in to it. Whatever you have to do, think of wool socks or milkshakes or—”

  All of a sudden her mind was blank. She couldn’t think of any happy things.

  “You?” he said, smiling.

  “Oh my God. That is so cheesy. It’s beneath you.”

  “But you’re smiling.”

  “Your ridiculousness makes me laugh.”

  “I will think of happy things. If I’m not, remind me. And I will do the same for you. Which is why it’s good we are here together.”

  He had a point. She grabbed his hand. He squeezed hers. She turned back to the darkness.

  “What if we don’t find him, Jed?”

  “That’s not happy.”

  “But what … what if we’re too late? What if he’s gone or beyond saving?”

  “We will deal with that when we have to. Right now, I believe he’s waiting for us, counting on us. Well, you. That’s why he came into your dream. He knew you were the one who could help him, even if he didn’t know what kind of help he needed.”

  What if Jed was wrong? She couldn’t will herself to go into the darkness. One step, she said to herself. Just take one step. But she couldn’t.

  Until she felt Jed squeeze her hand. Without saying a word, he stepped forward, pulling her with him.

  * * *

  The cold hit her like a hammer. She couldn’t see anything; the light from Jed’s headlamp was gone. It was dark, so dark. She even felt her Lochran straining to stay lit. The only sound was the buzzing, so loud it crushed every other possible sound.

  It wasn’t clear which way was forward or backward or up or down.

  Her mind filled …

  Images …

  Snow. Father’s funeral. Ambulance ride—hospital, Noah, eyes closed. Pale. Mother … airport. Snap pain—cast. Neighbor dog. Blood, blood, blood—

  “Stop!” she screamed, though she wasn’t sure if she was saying it inside her head or outside.

  But it wouldn’t stop.

  More images pushed through.

  Nana, dead, lying in an open casket. Noah’s hand outstretched but out of reach. Her father’s airplane falling,

  falling,

  falling,

  out of the sky and into the cold lake.

  She felt something against her wrist. Saint Patrick pressing into her skin as Jed squeezed her hand. Jed still holding on.

  Those last images. Nana … Noah … her dad. Those weren’t her memories. Something, someone was pushing them into her mind. Her knees were shaking. She felt like she was going to collapse. If she did, she knew she’d never get up. “No!” she screamed, and this time, she heard herself saying it.

  She had to fight back, clear her mind, and—

  Remember.

  Nana’s last birthday, the lopsided cake Finn had baked for her.

  Noah playing ice hockey on the pond at the park.

  Jed, wearing the too-small Chelsea jersey she’d ordered from the UK.

  She held Jed’s hand as tightly as she could.

  “Jed!” she screamed. “Tell me your favorite element.” He didn’t answer. She forced herself to take a step and pulled him with her. “Mint chip ice cream, green or no?” He felt less like a deadweight, as he’d taken a step on his own. “I’d like to go to the prom with you. Should we go to the prom?”

  And, just like that, they stepped from the dark void and into … a cave. There was the faint odor of rotting garbage. Jed’s headlamp was working again, the light steady on some rocks in front of them, including the one she’d thrown through the tunnel.

  Finn turned to Jed. He was still, eyes glassy, his cheeks streaked with tears.

  “Are you okay?” When he didn’t answer, Finn reached up and put her hands on his face. She tilted it down so he was looking at her. “Jed?” He still wasn’t there. “You are brave, strong, and I am so glad you are here.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. She held it until she felt him kiss her back. Bit by bit, she felt the warmth return to his lips. And, then, after a moment, he wrapped his arms around her. He ended the kiss and buried his head in her hair.

  He mumbled something. She couldn’t make out what it was.

  “What did you say?” Finn whispered.

  He leaned back and looked her in the face. “Worst. Date. Ever.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Julia stared at the ceiling, trying to find benign farm animals in the shadows created by the light at the edge of the curtains. When she squinted, one of them looked like a sheep, but finding it hadn’t made her any more tired than counting sheep, or meditating, or singing children’s nursery rhymes.

  She didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to go into Finn’s room and watch her, help her, make sure that she got through the night okay. But deep down, Julia knew going into Finn’s room wasn’t a good idea. She’d stared at a comatose Noah enough nights to know that just sitting wasn’t going to give anyone comfort.

  And there was always the risk that she might actually screw things up for her daughter. What if she sneezed and woke Finn, would that put her in danger? Could Julia do anything, positively or negatively, to affect what was happening … wherever Finn was? She had no idea. She wished she’d asked Conor more questions when he was alive, forced him to explain the Dreamwalker world to her. She wished she’d thought to ask how they’d know if their children were Dreamwalkers, but she hadn’t. You could put it on the list of the many ways she had failed her children. Or at least felt she’d failed her children. She hoped they didn’t feel that way, but, like the Dreamwalking questions so long ago, it wasn’t one she’d ever had the courage to ask.

  She threw her feet off the side of the bed. She was awake. Better to be awake someplace else.

  * * *

  As she headed to the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea, Julia glanced out the front window to see if it was snowing. It wasn’t. But there was a car sitting in front of the house. It was running; she could see smoke curling up from the tailpipe. She crossed to the window. Someone was inside in the driver’s seat. It was too dark to see them.

  Julia went to the door and flipped on the outside light. When she went back to the window, there was just enough light to see who was inside the car …

  Rafe.

  * * *

  The grass crunched under her boots as she walked across the lawn. It was cold, and the blanket she’d wrapped around herself was barely able to keep it out. />
  Rafe had looked her way when she’d opened the front door and watched her as she walked toward him. When she got close to the car, he leaned over and opened the passenger door. Julia slid inside, comforted by how warm the car was, even though she’d been outside for less than a minute.

  “How long have you been sitting out here?” Julia asked him.

  “Not long. Maybe an hour. Two.”

  “What exactly are you doing?”

  “Same thing as you. Waiting. Wishing I could help.”

  Julia watched a scrap of paper skitter across the road in front of them. It hit the curb and fell to the ground.

  “I’m scared,” she said, as much to fill the silence as to tell him.

  Rafe didn’t respond. He just reached over and took her hand in his.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Finn turned and looked at the cave wall behind them. The void, the tunnel—or door, she wasn’t sure what it was exactly. What she did know was that it was hard to see on this side and that when they got back here from wherever they were going, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to find it.

  “Can I borrow that knife I gave you?”

  Jed reached into his pocket and pulled out the Swiss Army knife. Finn moved her hand about an inch over the cave wall until she found a place that was colder than the rest. She didn’t want to touch it; she didn’t want those thoughts back, if she didn’t have to have them. She picked up a small pebble and threw it at the wall. It disappeared. The entrance was there, just invisible.

  She scraped in the wall an arrow pointing to it. And then, just to be safe, she drew one on the ground, too. And then a third on a large rock farther away. Jed’s headlamp followed her progress, so she knew he was watching. “We don’t know who’s in here and how badly they won’t want us to find our way out,” she explained.

  “Oh, I’m guessing pretty badly.”

  “So better safe than sorry.”