Past the Size of Dreaming

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Tasha’s edges glowed, and she turned transparent for a split second. She drew in a breath, held it, let it out. “Oh, my,” she whispered, solid again.

  —What is she?—the house whispered to Matt through the fence.—Whom have you brought me?—

  —It’s Tasha.—Matt felt surprised. How could the house not know a witch it had made itself?

  But Tasha had changed. And the house hadn’t known Edmund at first after his long time away.

  —This is Tasha?—

  —Yes.—

  Tasha opened her eyes and lowered her arms. “It’s so different,” she said.

  Nathan shimmered into sight just the other side of the front gate. “Tasha?” he asked.

  “Nathan! Hey!” She ran to him, holding out her hands.

  “The gate,” Matt said.

  It creaked open before Tasha got there, but she wasn’t even paying attention. She stopped in front of Nathan and reached toward him as though she were warming her hands at a stove. “Nathan,” she murmured.

  “Tash. What have you done with yourself?”

  She didn’t answer. She moved her hands around, stroking the air near his image. Her graceful gestures reminded Matt of dance.

  “How strange,” she murmured finally, and held her hand out to him. A frown pinched his forehead. He moved his hand toward hers. His hand passed through hers—or did hers pass through his?—and for an instant light flashed through his translucent form, haloed her solid one. They both jumped and gasped.

  “What have you done?” Nathan said, his voice strained.

  “What are you?” she asked, her voice hoarse as well.

  “Just what I’ve always been,” he said.

  “You seem so different. I don’t understand you anymore. I’ve dedicated my life to air, and air has changed me,” Tasha told him.

  “So I see. Are you happy?”

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled. “I have a great life.”

  “Good! Would you like to come inside?”

  She looked past him at the house. “I don’t want to hurt anything. Did I hurt you?”

  “Only a little. I didn’t know to expect what you’ve become. I think it should be all right now.”

  “I’ll take it one step at a time.” she said.

  He turned and led the way to the house, and Tasha followed.

  —Why wouldn’t she be welcome here?—Matt wondered, gripping the weathered fence.

  —She is welcome. She just brings a kind of energy I don’t know how to meet yet,—said the house.

  Edmund opened the back of the car and pulled out a couple of bags of their things. Matt lifted her hand from the fence and went to help him carry.

  Suki came out of the house as Nathan and Tasha climbed the front steps onto the porch. Nathan said something. Suki and Tasha spoke to each other and shook hands.

  Matt consulted Julio’s memories. Back during the crisis, the twins had come into the house just as Susan was leaving. Had they ever been introduced? Maybe Tasha and Suki were meeting for the first time.

  “Hey!” Edmund called as he and Matt walked toward the house. “‘Did you get the job?”

  Suki came to meet them. “Yep. I’m gainfully employed. I start Monday. I get weekends off, and a twenty percent discount on all my dental work. Nathan let me run some normal electricity in here. Now I can recharge my cell phone and run my laptop. Hey, welcome back, you guys. Did you find Dee?”

  “Yes. She’s thinking about coming, but she wouldn’t say for sure.”

  “How is she?”

  “She seems pretty good. She’s a vet.”

  “A ‘be all that you can be’ vet? I could see Deirdre in the army.”

  “Nope. An animal doctor.”

  “Guess I can picture that too,” Suki said, and smiled. She went ahead of them into the house, with Edmund right behind her. Matt followed them inside and grabbed the doorknob to pull the door shut, though she knew the house could close the door itself.

  She shut the door. Her hand wouldn’t come loose. When she looked, she saw that her hand had disappeared into the doorknob. Her wrist ended and the cut-crystal doorknob began; she couldn’t see her hand inside the glass. She tugged, but it wouldn’t come out again.

  —House,—she thought. She remembered Julio falling into the porch, his brief cat’s-eye view before he was absorbed.

  —Come inside.—

  —Let go of me.—

  —Please, Matt. Please come inside.—

  —Right now?—

  —Please?—

  “Matt?” Edmund turned back to her.

  —What do you want?—Matt asked the house.

  —A map of what you found.—

  —Can’t you wait till later?—

  —But Tasha’s inside me now. In the kitchen. I need to know.—

  Matt growled, frustrated. Edmund took two steps toward her. She leaned back against the door and fell into the blue, her body instantly gone, melted into the house’s bones, blood, muscles, awareness. She shifted around, stretched, got comfortable, woke up to the fact/feeling of people inside her: Tasha a strange bright blot that did not act like a proper person, Terry comfortable and known, Suki, a delight, Nathan, a part of her, and Edmund, glowing red now, his hands hot against her side.

  “House! What did you do?” he cried.

  —Hang on, it’s all right, I said yes,—Matt thought. Edmund could hear house-speak when he was hot like this, she knew.—Stop burning.—

  “Yes to what?” Edmund asked. Some of the heat left his hands.

  Matt considered the question for a minute, then said,—Yes to being in the house’s dream. I don’t think this should take long.—

  “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  —Pretty sure. I’ll let you know if something goes wrong. Thanks, Edmund.—

  He pressed his cheek against her—against the door. She sent warmth there.

  After a moment he pushed away and headed for the kitchen, where Tasha, Terry, Nathan, and Suki were.

  —House.—Matt thought.

  —Matt.—

  —You put something inside me.—

  —We talked about it in dreams.—

  —I don’t remember.—

  —Remember,—whispered the house, and Matt was sitting on the beach, leaning against a large silver-haired, brown-skinned woman, the woman the house became in dreams, whose warm arms held her. Matt and the woman looked out over the ocean. Matt felt perfect safety and comfort, and a warmth in her chest and belly.

  “Will you help me?” the woman asked.

  “How can I help you, Mama?” Matt asked, her voice young, curious, warm.

  “Will you help me find my children and call them home?”

  “Sure,” young Matt said.

  The woman stroked her back, kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Mattie. Thank you. Here’s bread for your journey.” She gave Matt a muffin. It was big and soft and yellow, and it looked sweet.

  “Do I save this for later?” Matt asked.

  “No. You can eat it now.”

  Matt took a bite. It was a delicious taste, cakey and moist, flavored with vanilla and lemon. She swallowed her first bite. In her stomach, she felt something strange happen. Not pain or sickness, more a startle. “What is it?” she said, her hand on her stomach.

  “It’s help for later.”

  Matt ate the rest of the muffin. Each bite gave her a small, pleasant shock. She licked her fingers.

  The woman stroked Matt’s hair. Matt realized she had her old hair, wavy and long enough to reach her waist. She looked down at herself and saw her twelve-year-old body, thin and muscular from dance. She wore a black leotard and footless black tights. “Mama?”

  Then she clicked into strange, dizzying double vision. She was Matt, the grown-up wanderer, veteran of many strange experiences, and Mattie, the twelve-year-old, young, kind, strong, innocent. Mattie was talking to somebody she loved and trusted, someone who reminded her of her dead mother. Matt knew it was t
he house in human form, and suspected manipulation. “Mama, how does it help me?” Mattie asked.

  “It strengthens your willpower,” said the woman. “If somebody tries to will bad things on you, you can will them away again.”

  “Oh, good,” said Mattie, not understanding but feeling comforted.

  “And it reminds you of me,” the woman whispered.

  Matt fell out of the memory and back into the house’s turquoise pool of energy.

  —Do you remember?—the house asked.

  —Guess I do,—Matt said. She thought about the lace vines that had eaten Terry’s spell out of her. Bread for her journey, huh? What about the voice that spoke to Edmund in the night? Was that, too, a manifestation of willpower?

  —How come I was a kid in that dream?—

  —That is the form you take in most of our dreams,—the house thought.

  —How come you were a mother in that dream?—

  —That is the form I take in most of our dreams.—

  —Why?—asked Matt.

  —I don’t know. It is a form you gave me.—

  For a while, they were quiet. In the kitchen, Matt felt Suki run water into a teakettle at the kitchen sink; her hand on the faucet was distinctive. Then Suki touched the old stove. The part of her palm that connected to the house asked the house to heat the stove, please: Matt felt Suki’s request seep into the house’s skin, and the house’s answering warmth and response. It remembered a time when the stove had been bright and hot with cooking; Mall got a dim impression of strangers in the kitchen, and pots and pans on top of the hot stove, coal in its firebox. The house dispensed with everything in the memory except the heat, and then the stove turned hot in the present. Suki lifted her hand away just in time, murmured thanks, set the kettle on one of the stove lids.

  Matt knew there was conversation. Nathan asked Tasha questions. If she concentrated, thought Matt, she would know what he was saying, maybe hear Tasha’s answers. Part of the house’s self connected to Nathan, though the house didn’t direct his movements; it could move into him and perceive through his senses, invoke sight, which was a sense it didn’t have inside itself, and tune its hearing to better understand speech sounds, though it could hear and speak without Nathan’s presence. Often Nathan paid more attention to what people were saying than the house did. If the house missed something of significance, though, it could read the ghost’s memories.

  Matt wondered how Nathan felt about that. Maybe he didn’t even think about it. Maybe the ghost and the house had always been connected that way, and it didn’t bother him.

  Matt reached into the house’s mind a little. The house loved Nathan. It knew that sometimes Nathan wanted to get away from it, and it understood. Their bond was enforced by something beyond their power to defy; under the circumstances, it was a blessing that they got along with and appreciated each other so well.

  Edmund leaned against a kitchen wall, his palms flattened on the paneling. Using the house’s form as though it were her own, Matt stroked fingers across both Edmund’s palms. He shuddered, then settled.

  “What happened to Matt?” Suki asked.

  “She had to run an errand,” said Edmund.

  Matt pressed on his fingertips, sent a ripple through the wall his back leaned against.

  The house said,—The woman is a form you gave me, tempered by memories from other people I’ve known. I like it very much.—

  —Ah.—

  —May I look at what you discovered on your journey?—

  Matt sighed without sound, and said,—All right.—

  She fell into her memories, lived the last two and a half days over with the house beside her, observing, saying nothing. When she finished, she felt as though two and a half days had gone by, but as she woke to the house’s senses, people were still in the kitchen. Edmund still leaned against her wall.

  Suki poured hot water into a teapot, touched a wall, and asked that the living-room furniture be present by the time they went to the living room. The house summoned up the clutter of furniture that had been in the living room when Nathan last lived there, wing chairs, ottomans, scattered small tables with flowerpots and knickknacks on them, a harp, a piano, pictures on the wall, candlesticks on the mantel above the fireplace. Matt felt the people’s footsteps as they trooped from the kitchen into the living room.

  —Thank you, Matt,—the house thought.—Thank you. Do you wish to go out again now?—

  There was something very comfortable and strange about being inside the house. She had the feeling that nothing could hurt her here in this turquoise pool. There were a lot of things to think about, lots of things to feel and do, and someone else to make decisions whenever necessary. A caretaker.

  She didn’t really want a caretaker, did she?

  Mostly not.

  —I’m ready,—she said.

  The house let her out into the kitchen, a little at a time; she oozed slowly out of the wall, dropped her connections gently so that neither she nor the house bruised. At last she stepped away from the wall. She glanced down at herself.

  “Hey, wrong hair,” she said. Blond-brown hair cascaded down around her shoulders, down her chest and her back to her waist. The blue jeans and olive green long-underwear top she had dressed in that morning had turned turquoise, and her army boots had changed into knee-high leather English riding boots. “Wrong clothes. How could you forget?”

  —I’m sorry,—the house said.

  “Can you give me a haircut?” Matt asked, putting her palms against the wall. For a moment she felt solid wood under her hands. She pushed harder, and the surface tension vanished. She melted into the wall again.

  —Think what you look like,—the house told her.

  —I don’t know what I look like.—

  —Think what you want, then. The hair, the clothes.—

  —I liked those boots. Never had any like that—

  —They belonged to someone who lived here a long time ago. I forgot to keep track of what you wore when you fell into me.—

  —I kind of like the clothes, but I don’t wear bright colors. I kind of like the hair, but it makes me feel really strange. I’m not ready to mess around with that kind of feeling right now. I want my regular cut.—She hadn’t actually had her hair cut in a couple of months, and it was growing out, short curls all over her head. They weren’t in her eyes yet, so she left them alone.

  —Think what you want,—the house said again.

  Matt thought about her hair and her clothes and the boots. After a moment, the house released her gently and she stood in the kitchen again. She still had the brown-leather riding boots, and her clothes were still strange colors of blue, though not such a blindingly bright turquoise. She couldn’t see her hair anymore. She raised her hands to her head. Her hair felt reassuringly short. “Thanks,” she said. “That was so weird. What if I wanted to be taller? Or fatter? Or red-haired? What if I thought up a whole new me?”

  —It could happen,—the house said.

  “Wow. That’s really weird.”

  “Matt?” Edmund came back into the kitchen. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.” She looked at her hands, then touched her breasts, her stomach, her hips. “Do I look all right?” She felt her face. She didn’t spend much time thinking about her face, or looking at it. What if she hadn’t remembered it right? The house wouldn’t know. It didn’t know that much about how things were supposed to look.

  Well, except for what it knew from Nathan. And from Julio, and now from Matt—and whatever it knew from dreams.

  “You look fine,” Edmund said.

  “Is my face all right?”

  “It’s beautiful.” He came and cupped her face in his hands.

  “That can’t be right.”

  “It’s great. You look like you.”

  “I do? Are you sure? A minute ago I had long hair. I had to go back in and come out again. If you’re going to fall into the house, take a good look at yourself firs
t so you know how to fall out again. See these boots?”

  He bent over and studied her boots.

  “The house forgot my real boots and gave me these instead.”

  “You know your own boots,” he said. “I bet you remember everything about them.”

  “I like these ones better.” Then Matt had an attack of conscience. Her army boots had been with her a long time, and served her well. How could she just trade them in on something else?

  How could she get them back? Would they even be the same? What were the new ones made of, and where had the original ones gone?

  Where had the original Matt gone?

  What was she made of now?

  Frightened, she grabbed Edmund’s shoulder. He straightened, checked her expression, then gathered her in a hug. She kissed him.—Am I me? Am I still me?—

  He tasted the same: sage, wilderness, smoke, an added tang of tea.

  —Do I taste like me?—she thought.

  —You do.—His mental voice was beautiful, as his aloud voice sometimes was, bright, deep, singing, silvery.

  —Are you sure?—

  —I’m sure.—

  She held on to him for another minute, then loosened her hold. “Were you ever inside the house?”

  He shook his head.

  “Julio was. That’s how the house could make me think I was him. It’s so strange, Edmund. I don’t know where my edges are.”

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “No!”

  “Who’s talking? You, or House?”

  “What?”

  “The house is haunting you now, isn’t it?”

  Matt laughed. Then she realized he was serious. “I guess,” she said.

  “So—are you in your right mind when you say you don’t want to leave? Or is this just the house talking? Is it safe for you to stay here, Matt? Should we have this discussion outside?”

  She took his hand and led him to the kitchen door. The door opened wide to let them out. They crossed the yard and the street out back, walked until they were past the edge of the house’s property.

  They sat on someone else’s lawn, holding hands. “I still don’t know if it’s just me,” Mall said, “because I take the house with me now.”

  Edmund let her hand go and got out his devotions kit. He opened a zipper and took out a pinch of something blue-green. He rubbed his fingers against his thumb above it. It turned to a thin blue flame hovering above his palm. He raised his hand toward her face, the flame accompanying his movement. “Speak across this.”