Past the Size of Dreaming

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  “I might be able to find Tasha for you. She travels a lot. She’s almost never home.”

  “We haven’t even looked for her yet, but we could use help.”

  “You looked for me first?” Terry smiled.

  “Matt thought you might still be in Spores,” said Edmund. “She remembered knowing you here. Search led us here.”

  “You already found the other two friends? Princess and Braidgirl?”

  “Don’t be such a snot,” Matt said.

  “Yes, we found Suki and Deirdre,” Edmund said. “Deirdre doesn’t know if she’ll come back yet, but we told her about it. Suki’s already at the house.”

  “And you’re inviting me to this party?” Terry glanced at Rebecca, waggled her eyebrows. Rebecca smiled and twitched her eyebrows too.

  “Are you busy? Can you come?” Matt asked.

  “Let me check my calendar and my e-mail. I’ve got a meeting tonight, but I don’t have any tutoring scheduled until next week.”

  “If you’re going to find Tasha,” Rebecca said, “could you find her from here? I haven’t seen her in six months.”

  Terry checked her watch, then twitched aside a curtain at a kitchen window to view the night: dark had fallen while they ate. “Before we do that, I have to go out. I’ll be back in a couple hours, and we can do some seek spells then. Mom, you could call Danny. He should be up by now.” She turned to Matt and Edmund. “Danny’s Tasha’s boyfriend. He knows where she is more often than we do. ’Scuse me, guys. Be back soon.” She darted out of the kitchen.

  Rebecca rose and went to the phone, which was on the wall beside the back door. She lifted the handset, consulted a list of numbers on the wall, and dialed. “Seems like a prosaic way to handle this, with a house full of witches,” she said, “but—Hi, Danny. It’s me, Becka, Tasha’s mom. I’m fine. How are you? … Oh, good. We’re wondering if you’ve seen Tasha lately, and if so, where … oh. Really?” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and turned to face Matt and Edmund. “He’s gone to check. He thinks she might be coming home tonight.”

  A brief wait. “Oh! Hi, honey! You were going to let me know you were in town, weren’t you? … Okay. Kidding. Sorry to bother you when you just got back, but we have some guests who’d like to talk to you. Edmund—”

  The air beside the kitchen table shimmered, swirled. Small winds rushed around the room. A girl appeared. “Edmund?” she said, her voice warm and light. Her hair was a wild riot of black curls, her cheeks were bright, her eyes glowed blue, and she was dressed in something with lots of layers of sheer blue gauze shot with silver-and-gold threads. Her feet were bare and rosy. “Edmund?”

  Chapter Eleven

  edmund stumbled to his feet. The chair fell over behind him. Interesting, thought Matt, who had never seen him do anything clumsy before.

  “Tasha?” he said.

  Rebecca hung up the phone and sighed.

  “Hey! Where have you been?” Tasha launched herself at him, flew over the table and landed in his arms. She stroked his face, ran her hands through his curls, touched his mouth. “Hey! Why haven’t I run into you before? You’ve been to lots of places I’ve been. Wow. You’ve been doing air work, too.”

  “Tasha,” said Rebecca. “Ahem.”

  Tasha glanced over at her mom, followed her mom’s gaze, noticed Matt. Her eyes widened. “Oh, my. Excuse me.” She drifted down out of Edmund’s arms and landed beside Matt’s chair, reached a hand toward Matt’s face. Matt leaned away from it. Tasha snatched her hand back. “Why didn’t I know you were here? Oh, my. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I forgot where I am. Excuse me. Hi. I’m Tasha. I’m sorry I have such terrible manners tonight.”

  “Hi,” said Matt.

  “Hi,” Tasha said again. She took some long slow breaths. She smiled. “My head is somewhere else. Uh—may I touch you?”

  Matt held out her hand. “Matt Black.”

  Tasha took her hand and shook it, nodded. “It’s very nice to meet you, Matt. Sorry I was crawling all over your boyfriend. It’s been a long time since I saw him, and I just came from the forest, where the manners are all different. It takes me two days to realize I’m back in human land, usually.”

  “Oh. Okay. Why were you touching him like that?”

  “Well. I was smelling him.”

  “Tasha!” said Rebecca.

  Tasha held her hand out toward Matt’s face again, and this time Matt didn’t flinch away. Gently, Tasha’s fingers touched Matt’s forehead. “Chlorine, sweat, sagebrush. Cotton, polyester, pepperoni. Gasoline fumes. The ocean. A cat. The—the haunted house? A lot of the haunted house.” She closed her eyes and frowned. “Deirdre? Wow! Deirdre? Deirdre in the desert. And—” She lifted her fingers away and opened her eyes. “A spell. Only tiny remnants. But a really unsettling one.”

  “Terry did it,” Matt said.

  Tasha stared at her. “Matt,” she said. “Oh. Matt! Are you the Matt she was awful to before?”

  “Yeah. We’re friends now. I made her cast the spell on herself too. It was interesting.”

  Tasha grinned. “Wish I’d seen it.” In the smile, Matt finally saw how Tasha’s face resembled Terry’s, though everything else about her was different.

  “Tasha?” Matt said. “Will you come back to the haunted house with us?”

  Tasha touched Matt’s face again, Matt’s cheek, her brow, her mouth. “Sure,” she said.

  “You smell people by touching them? All this time you’ve been smelling me when I thought you were touching me?” Rebecca asked, as Tasha hugged her and stroked her face.

  “Come on, Mom. You like it.”

  “But I didn’t know that’s what you were doing. That’s way too weird. Stop it!”

  “Okay,” Tasha said, and sighed. She pressed her cheek to her mother’s, then stopped hugging and stepped back. “You know, when cats rub up against you, they’re not expressing affection. They re just marking you with their scent.”

  “I didn’t want to know that.”

  “Oh, my. Sorry. I am decidedly bad-mannered tonight. Maybe I should go out and come back again, see if I do a better job.”

  “Stay,” said Rebecca. “You want some stew? We made some wonderful stew, and there’s still some left.”

  Tasha sniffed. “Yeah. Thanks. It smells great. Where’s Terry?

  “She’s at a meeting.” Rebecca got a bowl down and dished some stew, set it on the table. Tasha sat down beside Matt, and Rebecca sat down beside Tasha. “When Terry comes home.” Rebecca said, “can you touch her and tell me where she’s been? She goes out at night a lot, and she never says where.”

  “No, I won’t. Don’t be silly, Mom.”

  “How can you smell with your fingertips, anyway?” Rebecca asked.

  “People breathe with their whole bodies, not just their lungs. There’s air exchange going on all over your skin.”

  “Okay, maybe that’s true, but that olfictor-factor stuff is all in your nose, isn’t it?”

  “Uh, well,” Tasha said. “For most people it is.” She wrinkled her nose. Then she tasted the stew. “Wow! Traveling stew!” She ate more.

  “How can you tell?” Rebecca asked.

  “Things catch a little of everywhere they’ve been. This has a lot of that spice, the spice of everywhere,” Tasha said. “It’s great. Thanks, everyone.”

  Matt studied Tasha, studied the strange intense way Tasha tugged at Matt’s friendship strings. What was it with this bouncy girl? Matt felt connected to her on some unknown level already. Why?

  Matt lifted a hand and touched one of the layers of Tasha’s dress, expecting fabric. She felt coolness, and then the material melted under her fingertips; she stubbed them abruptly on Tasha’s warm, naked side. “What?” she yelped, snatching her hand back.

  Tasha glanced down. “Oh, my. Oops.” She ruffled her fingers across the gap left by Matt’s touch, and the fabric reformed. “It’s kind of fussy. If I’m not concentrating, it does tend to dissipate. I’m not used to bei
ng back yet.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s air. I was in a hurry when I left the house. Gotta get some real clothes.”

  Matt glanced at Edmund, who had been silent since Tasha arrived. He still looked kind of stunned.

  Well. The girl had jumped on him, and she wasn’t even wearing real clothes. Matt wondered if Tasha had concentrated enough to make the clothes be there when she jumped into Edmund’s arms, or whether they were just for looks, and not for touch.

  Edmund took Matt’s hand under the table. She squeezed his hand. “Can I touch your clothes while you’re concentrating on them?” Matt asked Tasha.

  “Sure. But after that I’ll go upstairs and change. There’s so much I forget when I’ve been away for a while. I’m going to need normal while I’m visiting, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t know yet. We don’t know what we’re doing.” Matt reached out and grasped the edge of one of Tasha’s layers. It felt cool and slippery, almost watery, and she couldn’t hold on to it.—Cloth?—she thought, trying to hold it between her fingers.

  It slipped away without responding.

  Tasha grasped a handful of it and held it still while Matt tried to touch it.—Dress?—Matt asked with her fingers pressed to the gather Tasha held. It was like touching ice.

  “You’re sending signals,” Tasha said.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think it talks that way. It’s the medium, not the message … well, except it talks to me all the time if I just slow down and listen, but your signals aren’t on the same wavelength.”

  Matt touched the table.—Hello?—

  —Hello again, Matt.—

  Of course. This table had been here ten years earlier, when Matt had spent miserable meals in this kitchen eating what Terry ate. How many things had she talked to in this house? Lots. In the frustration of captivity, she had made friends wherever she could. All the things Terry came into regular contact with had picked up traces of her magic. Matt had liked this table. As tables went, it was wider awake than most.

  —Hi. Just checking to see if I could still talk to things.—

  —What’s on Tasha isn’t a thing.—

  —How can that be?—

  —It’s not a made thing. It made itself. You can talk to us. Someone made us. What’s around her is something that made itself. It could talk to you if it wanted to, but it would use a voice.—

  —That’s so strange. Thanks.—Matt blinked several times, and looked up at Tasha.

  “What did you find out?”

  “Your dress made itself?”

  “Uh-huh. I said, ‘Air, I need an atmosphere of clothes,’ and this is what I got. I think it looks neat.” Tasha brushed her hands down over the layers of sky-blue gauze, and they fluttered in the wind of passage; gold-and-silver glints sparkled. Matt smelled pine-sap and incense.

  “It looks great,” Matt said. “Smells good, too. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “But you’re really sitting there naked?” asked Rebecca.

  “No. I’ve got my own atmosphere. What did I just say?” She rose. “Excuse me while I find something else to wear. I’m starting to remember more about human land.” Her hand drifted across Matt’s head, and then she vanished.

  It was the talking, Matt thought. Tasha was talking to everything, finding out things in ways that most people couldn’t. Matt could do that too, except lately she had shut down her extra senses most of the time. Tasha was living with hers, wildly alive with them.

  Fun to watch. Matt smiled.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Rebecca asked Edmund.

  “Yep,” he said. He shook his head. “She sure has changed.”

  “That’s my girl. Social goofball, but with a heart of gold. She’s a great kid.”

  Footsteps on the staircase, and Tasha pushed into the kitchen through the swinging door. Now she wore a pale pink short-sleeved blouse with little bunches of flowers printed all over it, and jeans with the cuffs rolled up. “I hate clothes,” she said.

  “For heaven’s sake,” said Rebecca. “Does that mean you usually don’t wear them?”

  Tasha collapsed into a chair and pouted. “That depends on where I am. I’ll get used to this again, I suppose.”

  “Don’t you get cold?” Matt asked.

  “No. Feel.” Tasha moved her hand close to Matt’s cheek, and Matt felt radiant warmth. “Air takes care of me. It’s all around, everywhere. Anyway, Mom, now you know why I don’t call you the instant I come to town. It takes me a while to settle down.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” said Rebecca.

  “So when are we leaving?” Tasha checked her soup bowl, found some left, and ate it. She had tied her hair back with a pink ribbon, and she looked strangely normal.

  Matt exchanged glances with Edmund. “Tomorrow?” she said. “Or tonight? Tasha, Rebecca said we could use your room to sleep in. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. I have my own apartment. I’ll go back there for the night and come here first thing tomorrow.

  Matt reached deep into a pocket in her jacket and found the little carved stone monk. “Hey. When I lived here before I took this from your room.” She opened her hand. The small brown carving perched on her palm. “I’m sorry I stole from you. I hope I didn’t hurt you. I needed friends. Do you want it back?”

  Tasha held out her hand above the monk, but didn’t touch it. She frowned for a moment, her eyes blank, then glanced up. “No. He’s yours now. It’s all right.”

  “Thanks. I’m really sorry.” Matt slipped the monk back into her pocket.

  Tasha sighed. “Don’t worry about it. Can I ride over to the coast with you guys? Or do you even use a car? Terry will want her own wheels, but I’m not sure I’m up to two and a half hours of Terry right now. I could get there on my own, but I’d like to talk to you.”

  “You’re welcome to come with us,” Edmund said.

  “Oh, good.”

  A door slammed somewhere in the house. A moment later, Terry came through the swinging door into the kitchen. “Hey, Sis!”

  “Hey!” Tasha jumped up and went to Terry, hugged her. Matt noticed Tasha didn’t even try to touch Terry’s face.

  “So they had no trouble tracking you down, hey?” Terry said.

  “I just got back to town.”

  “Had a feeling you might. They invite you to the haunted house?”

  “Yes.”

  “You going?”

  “Sure. Aren’t you?”

  “Probably. I’ll go check.” Terry left the room again.

  Rebecca propped her cheek on her hand and sighed. “Another lonely weekend,” she said.

  Matt’s hands gripped each other in her lap. She glanced at Edmund. He watched Rebecca.

  Should they invite Rebecca? She was a really good sport, but she didn’t have any magical skills that Matt knew about. It would be troubling to try to take care of her if things got dangerous. Though Matt couldn’t figure out how things could get dangerous. Then again, she didn’t know what was going on.

  “Quit it, Mom,” Tasha said.

  “Go. Go. I’ll be fine. I’ll just sit here in the dark.”

  “Stop it. It’s not your thing. You’d go over there and just get in trouble,” Tasha said.

  Rebecca sighed. “I’d love to see a big magic battle. I bet it’s quite the spectacle.”

  “Stop that!”

  Terry slipped back into the room. “All clear,” she said.

  “You kids leave me out of everything,” Rebecca said, and heaved a deep sigh.

  “Mom, are you teasing Tasha again?” Terry asked.

  “Yep.” Rebecca straightened.

  “Ignore her, Tash. She and Dad have a big bridge tournament scheduled for tomorrow.”

  “That’s so mean!” said Tasha.

  “You’re so easy, honey.”

  Tasha sniffed. “I’ll know better next time.”

  “You always say that,” said Terry.

  Matt
said, “You and Mr. Dane play cards?” to Rebecca. When Matt had stayed here before, Rebecca’s divorce was still fresh and distressing.

  Rebecca shrugged. “I’ve been seeing him again lately. He’s still the best guy I’ve ever met. We’re testing it.”

  “Which reminds me, I should track him down while I’m around,” Tasha said. “At least say hi.”

  Terry asked, “Are we heading out tonight?”

  “We could,” Matt said. The kitchen clock said it was only 8:06 p.m. In Edmund’s car it would take them at least three hours to drive to Guthrie, but the night was young.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” said Edmund.

  “Okay,” said Terry. “Rendezvous here?”

  “I’ll be back for breakfast,” Tasha said, “if that’s okay. I ran out of food, and I don’t feel like shopping if I’m not even staying here. I’ll bring clothes.”

  “See you tomorrow,” Edmund told her.

  Tasha waved. Little winds blew around again, and then she was gone. Her clothes settled to the floor in an untidy heap. Rebecca picked them up and folded them, shook her head, smiled.

  Guthrie was cool but sparkling in spring sunlight when they drove into it the next day. Tasha rolled the window down, letting in the sea air. Matt sat up and sniffed. It’s really true. I’m home now.

  “Oh, my. I haven’t been back here since I joined air,” Tasha said. “It’s lovely.” She stuck her arm out the window and spread her fingers to let air slide between them.

  Edmund turned off the highway and drove to the haunted house.

  —I like this street,—the car thought as they stopped by the fence.

  —I bet it likes you,—Matt responded.

  —Yes.—

  They parked beside the rickety fence. Terry’s Miata was already there. She had sped ahead of them early on, impatient with the Volvo’s slow-but-steady pace.

  “Oh, my,” said Tasha, climbing out of the car. She stood facing the fence, the blackberries, the haunted house with her feet apart and her arms wide, fingers spread. She took slow deep breaths. Her eyes were closed.

  Edmund rounded the car and stopped, waited while Tasha stood still.

  Matt stood next to her, one hand on the fence.