Past the Size of Dreaming

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

She lifted shining eyes to his. “I wanted to kill that rat bastard myself. Susan didn’t talk much about the kinds of stuff he did to her, but every once in a while something would slip out. Not like she was looking for sympathy or anything. Just kind of like, oh, this thing happened to me this morning, that’s why I was late. Like she thought it was normal. Once I told her if I was her, I’d sneak in after he was asleep and cut his throat. She was horrified and wouldn’t talk to me for a week. I never did understand that girl.”

  “Well,” said Edmund. He drank some water. “I didn’t feel like that. I put a curse on him and drove Susan’s father insane. Then I went home and thought about how I was just as bad as he was. Evil and wrong. And then, I ran away. From everything. Went way out in the wilderness, past the end of the road, and sat there and waited to die.”

  “But you didn’t die,” Deirdre murmured.

  “No. I sat in the forest, afraid to move. I thought anything I did might hurt something, and I didn’t want to hurt anything else. So I waited, and it got really, really quiet. Then I heard this voice.” He smiled. “It was spirit.”

  “Spirit?”

  “That’s what I call it, anyway. It said eat, drink, be alive. That’s what to do first. It said the past couldn’t change, it was what I did next that counted, and it told me how I could help instead of hurt. So that’s what I did. I lost my past and just followed the voice. I traveled all around and found people and things to help.”

  “That’s where you went, huh?”

  “That’s where I went.”

  Deirdre shifted silverware off her napkin, back on. “It was tough in Guthrie after you left. Your mom kept calling me and Julio, asking us if we’d seen you. We looked all over town, but we couldn’t find you. We asked Nathan, and he hadn’t seen you. I even got Julio to—finally I got Julio to—to—” Her voice trailed off.

  “What?” asked Edmund.

  She sat for a moment, frowning. “You remember that demon thing? About a year before the whole Susan’s-father’s-collapse thing?”

  “Of course.”

  “And afterward Julio pretended nothing had happened.”

  “Right.”

  “But I knew something happened.”

  “So did I.”

  “Were you scared? He pretended he was just the same, but he could still do weird stuff with flames. He didn’t do it much, and never if he thought somebody was watching. But he never went back to normal. I was mad about that, too. I mean, I loved him. He was one of my best friends. I was so glad we could rescue him, and I know those guys really hurt him. He suffered a lot. But then he ends up with magic, and I’m still—” She thunked her fists on the table. “Well, it was frustrating. But I’m supposed to be a grown-up now.”

  Rita came by and gave them food. “Okay. Here’s the sauces,” she said, setting three squeeze bottles on the table. “Yellow tops sweet, red top’s spicy, brown top’s regular. Enjoy.”

  Matt stared at her platter of barbecue, coleslaw, and fries, and her mouth watered. She squirted spicy sauce on the pink slabs of beef. Steam rose up. It smelled great. She glanced at Edmund and Deirdre, then took a big bite. Smoke and spices, garlic, tender meal, vinegar’s acridness, cut by brown sugar. “Oh, man. It’s great.” She glanced at Edmund and Deirdre again. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Deirdre smiled. “Matt! I can’t believe it. I totally forgot you were here. You’re a comfortable person. Does this stuff sound crazy to you? Docs it make any sense at all?”

  “It makes sense.”

  “Wow! How could that be? Did Edmund tell you about this?” Deirdre turned to Edmund. “You sure have changed. You didn’t use to be very talky.”

  He smiled.

  “Julio scared you?” Matt asked Deirdre.

  “Huh? Yeah, he did at first. I saw him without his body. That was so strange and spooky. He was this swarm of colored lights, and he—I don’t think I can explain this.” Deirdre frowned down at her barbecue platter. Matt took a surreptitious bite of hers, then two more.

  “I mean, if that was what was inside Julio, what was inside me? I’ll probably never find out. Would mine would look so—so beautiful?” She shrugged. “Beside the point. What he did after he got back together with his body scared me. He squirted flames. He made a knife grow out of his finger. He cut Tasha. Edmund could do some cool tricks, but never anything as scary as that.”

  “So Julio did fire tricks. So what? He never hurt you, did he?” Matt asked.

  “No.” Deirdre shook her head. “I knew he wouldn’t. At least, I believed he wouldn’t.” She poked a fork into her barbecue beans, stirred them around. “Nathan told us Julio was okay, and Nathan always knew what he was talking about. And then Julio didn’t do anything weird after that. It worked kind of like he wanted it to, I guess. I forgot he had changed.

  “Then Edmund disappeared and Susan left town. We knew why Susan left, but we didn’t understand about you, Ed. We looked for you all over. No luck. One night I went over to Julio’s apartment and just pestered him until he said uncle. I told him to use magic to find out if you were still alive.”

  “What happened?” asked Edmund.

  Deirdre bit her lip. She took a sip of her Diet Coke. She rolled a still-wrapped straw on the tabletop, glanced around the restaurant. “It was really weird. He turned into that light thing again, only—where did his body go? He was this total fire thing. He looked different. More flamey, mostly red and orange. I’m sitting on his bed and there’s this totally burning-up weird fire thing dancing in the air in front of me. I could feel the heat against my face, and thought maybe my eyebrows were burning off. I say, ‘Jeeeeezus, Julio, what the hell happened to you?’ And he says, ‘Well, Dee, this is who I really am now.’ It wasn’t even his voice saying it. It was like musical notes from some instrument I never even heard of.”

  She rubbed her eyes. She glanced down, and then away. “I kept telling myself,” she said in a low, choked voice, “‘Nathan says Julio’s okay. Julio’s my best friend. I’ve known him more than half my life. He’s not going to hurt me.’ But I was scared all over again.”

  They sat in silence. This time Matt didn’t feel like eating. “Then what happened?” she said presently.

  “He did what I asked him to. He flickered some weird way, and half of him disappeared, and colors shifted all over him. Then he grew back into this cloud of colored flames, and then he solidified out of the middle of it, and he looked like Julio again. He says, ‘Edmund’s alive. He’s all right. He needs to be away from here now.”

  “So I say, ‘Okay, that’s great. Thank you for doing that. At least now we know.’ And I went home.”

  Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “See, the worst part is, I made him do that, and then I was scared to talk to him anymore. I felt terrible, but I couldn’t talk myself out of being scared. You know what I was like. I never wanted to admit I was scared of anything. It seemed like it would be easier just not to run into something I knew I was scared of.

  “That night I went home and decided I was going to get out of Guthrie. I mean, we were all eighteen. It was time for us to go away to college. I’d already applied and been accepted in a preveterinary program. It seemed like everything in Guthrie was falling apart, anyway. Susan left town before I had a chance to say good-bye, and so did you, and then Julio was so … Nathan was still Nathan, but it wasn’t the same at the house without you guys. Because we’d been such good friends, I never made other friends in Guthrie. I was so ready to go somewhere else and start over.”

  “Dee,” said Edmund, in his most burnished voice. He touched her hand.

  She looked away from him. “Besides, I was still ordinary. I wanted to find some ordinary friends so I could stop being the only one left behind.” She turned her hand under his, and gripped his fingers. “I can’t believe I’m saying this stuff out loud. But, I guess, what have I got to lose?”

  “I’m glad you’re telling me,” he said. “Now that I have my memor
y back, I wanted to find you and see if there was anything I could do for you. I’m sorry I left so suddenly back then. I didn’t think about how you guys would feel. I couldn’t think. I was in shock. So was Susan.”

  “She wrote Julio some postcards from San Francisco. So we knew she was sort of okay. She sounded really weird. It was like, ‘The weather here is nice. My aunt and uncle are nice. I have a nice room.’ After everything we did together, that’s all she could manage? It made me mad.” Deirdre smiled. “I wanted to punch her. I always want to punch people.”

  Edmund grinned.

  “So you left, huh?” Matt said. ‘You went away to vet school. How long was that?”

  “Six years, plus a year and a half internship at a big clinic in Portland.” Deirdre smiled again. “I loved college. The studying was exhausting, but I did meet a bunch of normal people, and I made new friends. I even married a guy for a while.” Her brows pinched together. “I still like the guy, but it didn’t work out. After running away from the magic, I wanted it to come back, and marriage turned out not to be the way to find it.”

  Edmund leaned toward her. “But you knew where to find it. Guthrie. Why didn’t you go back and talk to Nathan? Dee, what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Oh, that. Well, there’s really good barbecue here, and it’s getting cold.” She stared at her plate as though seeing it for the first time. “Let’s eat.”

  Matt sighed happily and finished her dinner. Deirdre only picked at hers, but Edmund did all right. He looked up often as he ate, watching Deirdre. Every time she realized he was watching her, she’d actually put a bite of food in her mouth, chew it, and swallow it. Toward the end of the meal, he watched her more and more, until she realized he was doing it on purpose and put down her fork. She stuck her tongue out at him.

  Rita returned, still chomping gum. “Anything else I can get you?”

  “A box,” Deirdre said. She had only eaten about half her dinner, despite visual nudges from Edmund. “I’ll take the rest home to my coyote.”

  “My mama says you shouldn’t start feeding those things,” Rita said. “They’ll get used to living near and come after your cats.”

  “I’ll take the rest home for me and Mr. P., then,” said Deirdre. Rita brought her a box and the check. In a short time, Edmund, Deirdre, and Matt were out on the street again, walking back in the chilly darkness toward the clinic. Stars pricked the night sky above them, and cold wind brushed past them in gusts and rattled the branches of trees in yards they walked past.

  “Thanks,” Matt said. “That was a great dinner.”

  “You’re welcome. I don’t think I’ve talked this much in the past seven years combined. Where do you guys go from here? Hey, how did you find me, anyway?”

  “Witchcraft,” said Edmund.

  “Cool!”

  They walked in silence for half a block. Then Deirdre said, “Why did you find me? Why now?”

  Edmund said, “I’m trying to find everybody.”

  “Wow. How are you doing so far?”

  “I’m missing Julio.”

  “And the twins,” Matt said.

  “You found Susan? You found Nathan?”

  “Nathan wasn’t hard. He was where he always is. We found him first. Suki was harder, but we found her.”

  “Suki?”

  “She changed her name.”

  “How the hell is she?”

  “I think she’s getting better,” Edmund said, his voice edged with laughter.

  Deirdre punched his arm.

  “Hey!” he said. “What d’ya do that for?”

  “General principles. You’re not telling me everything, are you?”

  “Not yet. We haven’t had time.” Edmund rubbed his arm. “You’re just like Matt.”

  “Really?” Deirdre looked past Edmund at Matt.

  “I don’t punch him that hard. Hey, Deirdre, can we spend the night at your place?” Matt asked.

  “I don’t know. How are you about sleeping on the floor?”

  “We can sleep in Edmund’s car, but it doesn’t have a bathroom.”

  “My kind of guests,” said Deirdre. “Please do stay over.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I haven’t picked the place up, or dusted.”

  “We didn’t let you know we were coming,” said Edmund.

  “I’m not much of a housekeeper. Take it or leave it.”

  “No problem,” said Matt. “I don’t do any housekeeping at all. I don’t even have a house.”

  “What?” Deirdre peeked past Edmund at Matt again.

  “Where do you live?” Edmund asked Deirdre.

  “In a house behind the clinic. Handy for checking on the animals we’re boarding. Sometimes they have to have medication at particular intervals. But I live so close that I never get away from my work.”

  “Do you want to?” Matt asked.

  “Well. I love the animals. They’re wonderful. But I see them when they’re in trouble or in pain, most of the time. I do … get tired sometimes.”

  A bright white guard light shone over the clinic parking lot, which was empty except for Edmund’s station wagon.

  “That’s your car?” Deirdre said.

  “Yep,” Edmund said. “She’s a great car. Comfortable, stylish, friendly, sturdy, goes miles on a tank of gas.”

  “Tiger-striped seat covers?” she asked as they came nearer. The white light illuminated the interior.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Deirdre shook her head. “Well,” she said, “you better drive it over near my house or Russ will investigate you. Shit, he might investigate you anyway. I better call and let him know I’ve got company.”

  “Want a ride?”

  “It’s just over—oh, hell, why not?”

  The front passenger door opened before Deirdre touched the handle.

  She looked across the roof of the car at Edmund. “What?”

  The back door opened and Matt climbed in. “Come on, get in,” she said to Deirdre. “Hey, Car, this is Deirdre. Deirdre this is the car.”

  “Uh-oh. Does the car talk?” Deirdre climbed into the front seat and settled her purse and her boxed leftovers on her lap. “Hello, Car. Nice to meet you. Thanks for opening the door for me.”

  The door closed itself, gently. Edmund got into the driver’s seat. “The car doesn’t talk except to Matt, but it listens to everyone. Do we go back out to the street to find your driveway?’ he asked.

  “It’s just around the other side of the building. I don’t use it much. You can walk to everything there is in Artemisia, though it gets pretty snowy in the winter.”

  The car started almost silently, and drove out onto the street. They passed the front of the clinic and turned in on a gravel drive.

  Deirdre’s little A-frame looked cozy in the darkness, with a yellow porch light on the front end of the building. A black Volkswagen Beetle was parked to the left of the house, and a stack of wood half-covered by a tarp stood to the right. Edmund pulled up next to the porch. The car’s engine turned off.

  They sat in ticking silence for a while.

  “Want to stay in the car all night?” Matt asked.

  “I just—” Deirdre stroked the glove compartment, touched the doorframe, wrapped her hand around the emergency-brake lever. “This car is magic, isn’t it? It’s like a mobile haunted house. I’m trying to soak up some atmosphere. Hey, how’d you guys meet, anyway?”

  “In a graveyard,” said Matt.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. On Christmas Eve.”

  Deirdre laughed. “Sounds about right. Matt, are you some kind of witch too?”

  “‘Nope. I have things I can do, but they’re not like what Edmund does. I just talk to things and look at things.”

  “Don’t let her fool you,” Edmund said to Deirdre. “Her craft is strong.”

  Deirdre glanced back at Matt and waggled her eyebrows up and down. She opened the door and got out.

&nb
sp; Matt and Edmund followed.

  The two steps up to the porch were rough half logs, flat side up. The A-frame had a weathered, rustic look to it. It reminded Matt of summer camp—not a place she had actually been to, but the idea of summer camp she’d picked up from books and movies. It didn’t look much like a dwelling place for a grown-up.

  Matt and Edmund followed Deirdre across the porch. While Deirdre unlocked the door, Matt touched the front wall. She didn’t ask any questions. She just waited to see if the house would talk.

  —Who’s there?—it asked in a sleepy voice.

  —Matt.—

  —Oh.—

  Then silence.

  Matt had cut way back on talking to things the way she used to. and had mostly stopped using dream-eyes to see what people were thinking and dreaming. She felt safe now. Did being safe mean she was falling asleep, the way this house had? She had definitely lost her edge. She had realized that when she went back into survival mode in Sisters.

  “There are things about my life I feel I should explain,” Deirdre said, “but I’m not going to. You’ll just have to like it or lump it.” She opened the front door and switched on a light inside, then led the way. “Don’t let the cat out.”

  Following Edmund into the house, Matt noticed the cat before she noticed anything else: it was huge and very fluffy, with blue eyes and sort of Siamese cat coloring. Mostly it was dark brown, seal-colored, with lighter patches above its eyes and on the top of its head. It had a white chest and white whiskers, and half a white mustache, and some of its toes were white too. And it was trying to escape. She blocked it with a boot. It pawed at the boot, then backed off a step and sat, staring up at her with reproachful eyes as she closed the door behind her.

  “That’s Pepe le Pew,” Deirdre said. “He doesn’t like to be petted.”

  Named after a cartoon skunk, Matt thought, and noticed a hint of cat-box scent.

  Deirdre went to a wall phone, picked it up, dialed. “Hey, Russ. It’s me. I’ve got visitors tonight, so don’t have a fit when you see a station wagon out front, all right? … Okay. You have a quiet night too.” She hung up.

  Matt locked gazes with the cat. She had met cats during her wandering years, even saved kittens by handing them over to shelters. That always made her feel strange. She rarely stayed in shelters herself; weren’t cats natural wanderers too? But some got left behind before they were old enough to fend for themselves, so she took them where they could get the care they needed. She had done that a couple times with kids, too.