The Dream Catcher's Daughter (8 page)

“But why me? Why did the Caller summon my
dreams?”

To this, the Guardian said, “The Dream
Catcher can teach you. Will you learn?”

“I won’t learn. Not until you tell me
what’s going on.”

The Guardian crossed his arms. “Answers
are not always handed out. You must work for them. I leave it to you, then.
Will you learn?” Finally, Jason nodded. “Then tomorrow go to the Dream Catcher.
She will take you from there.”

The Guardian turned to leave, but Jason
said, “Hey, wait. I don’t even know where the Dream Catcher lives.”

“I believe you do. After all, the Dream
Catcher’s apprentice gave you her mistress’s house key.”

Jason blinked, and the Guardian vanished.
He stood there a moment, dumbfounded, then walked home. His dad was still
working, but Jason had a spare key. He went upstairs and found his cell phone
on his bed. A note sat next to it, from his dad:

Left this in my office earlier! Don’t want
to lose it. Never know what might happen to you.

Jason crumpled the note and chucked it
into his wastebasket. He sat on his bed, clutching his cell phone. For a few
moments, he only stared at the phone. Then his eyes trailed to his desk. The
second stool wasn’t there. But it would be, sometime. Unless he did something,
the second stool would always threaten to appear. Just as the liquid stone
would threaten his body. Just as the law threatened to wipe his memory. Just
as, now, this mysterious Dream Caller hunted for Jason with his own dreams.

He opened his phone and fished out from
his pocket Len’s house key and phone number.

Darlene sent him a text around seven the
next morning, asking him if he’d be at the U TOP, usual time. No, he’d replied.
When he called her the previous night, Len had told him to come over around
3:30, that way no truancy officers would pick Jason off the street. He didn’t
have a record as a truant; his record was so clean teachers would ask where he
was, not because they suspected him of playing hooky, but because his absence
was like a void. Jason was sure his year away had remedied that.

He sat on his back porch, staring out into
the backyard. The family apple tree stood in the far corner facing north. A few
rotting apples lay about the tree’s roots. Tara had liked apples, fresh apples,
and applesauce. They’d made her giddy, made her giggle with the charm of a
fairy.

The tree’s trunk seemed to curve slightly
inward toward the middle. Jason rubbed his eyes, and the curve disappeared.
Suddenly, he wanted to carve curves into the tree. Carve them deep and smooth.
Then he’d hollow out the sides so that two wooden arms looped out like teapot
handles. He’d chop down the rest of the tree, harvesting the apples first, of
course, then round out the top of the handles, making shoulders and a head atop
the wooden statue.

But why stop there?

He’d strip the remaining five foot-seven
wood statue of its bark. With sandpaper, he’d smooth it out. He’d use a chisel
to create breasts and a face. The hands would come next, firmly planted against
the hips, which would be fitted inside jeans of sanded wood. The hair, lips,
and nose would be tricky. But he had a good memory.

The hardest part would be the eyes, those
shimmering hazels. How would he catch so much emotion with only wood? He
couldn’t. The real thing had to be here. How else could it be done? Without
Tara Engel, this sculpture, this monument to beauty would stand as ugly proof
of failure. By the time Jason came to this conclusion, he could hardly breathe.
His body was trembling, filling with the liquid stone. His lips were dry
and caked with dead skin. His bottom lip split when he opened his mouth. The
iron tang of blood stuck to his tongue as he licked his lips. The stone had
already filled his arms and belly and the lungs would come soon after. Then his
heart. By that time he’d already be dead.

“Forth,” he croaked.

Painful relief followed, searing every
joint, tendon, and cell as if he’d just finished an excruciating workout. Jason
fell back, banging his head on the screen door; it didn’t hurt much, not
compared to the rest of his body. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and a
breeze swept across his face, turning it icy.

His phone’s alarm buzzed. It was already
three o’clock. He sat up, careful not to look directly toward the tree. He
turned to head out through the back gate. When he hit the street, he looked
back at his house. It felt like he’d forgotten something.

He glanced down at his phone, then
pocketed it.

***

His father never forced Jason to work on
Fridays, which freed up plenty of time for Len’s. When he arrived on South
Hollow Ave, music floated past cracked and faded concrete; past houses with
shattered windows and rusted cars; past overgrown lawns and sagging
foundations, peeling paint, and the hodge-podge of trash scattered throughout.
At the foot of Len’s drive, the music grew louder. She was on the roof, legs
folded beneath her Indian-style. Jason felt stupid for using such a tasteless
analogy, considering Len had the complexion of a Lakota princess. Her hair fell
in tangles down her back, looping down and around her hips. It almost looked
like a pet lying beside her, that spool of gray hair, snoozing as Len sewed
smooth melodies into the air. The song seemed familiar, and Jason couldn’t help
it when his eyes watered. He wiped away the tears.

“Len,” he called out, throwing up his hand
in a wave.

She jumped, the music stopping on a sour
note. Light exploded from one end of her flute and Leech lunged out of the
light, his claws aimed directly for Jason’s throat. Jason only stood there,
mouth agape.

Len slurred a few notes together and as
though she’d hit the ‘rewind’ button, Leech flew backward, talons still
extended, mouth still slobbering and snapping as it disappeared into the flute,
a puff of smoke burping from the end. Len glared at Jason. He blinked, and Len
reappeared on the porch. She drilled her fist into his shoulder. He stumbled
back and rubbed his arm.

“What was that for?” he said.

“You forgot to call me.
Never
surprise a Dream Catcher or her apprentice.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to. Didn’t you know
when I was coming?”

“My job is never done. I don’t have
downtime, okay? Just don’t fuck up again.”

Jason barely winced at the f-bomb. He’d
heard worse. What burned into his mind was the hateful glare Len gave him, as
if he was a burden passed onto her. This caused him to smile a bit on the
inside.
Someone who understands how I feel about myself.

***

Len played her flute for a few minutes and
explained that it helped calm her down. “Actually, it helps everyone calm down,”
she said. “You’d be surprised how far and wide the magic of this flute
reaches.”

After that, Len led him into the small
hallway, then through the door on the right into the kitchen. “So,” said Jason.
“You comfort people? Everyone? While they sleep?”

“Kind of. We make sure to catch malignant
dreams. Nightmares are bad, too, but they just scare you. They’re a byproduct,
really. Dreams...they can look good, but be bad. It’s our job as Dream Catchers
to make sure these dreams never influence a person’s conscious decision-making.
So we soothe whatever pain they may be suffering by taking away the indulgent
dreams and replacing them with better ones.”

“So you control what people dream?”

“Oh, not even close.”

Jason paused, his nose assaulted by a
pungent stench. The kitchen was small and filled to the brim with plastic
grocery sacks, the very sacks Jason used for delivery, though he couldn’t tell
what each bag was filled with now—some looked to be swollen with cans, others
with paper wrappers—but they were full and round, like plastic, garbage-stuffed
mushrooms huddled on the yellow linoleum floor. They crowded the counter, the
table, the top of the fridge. They even sat in the chairs, a plastic family
feasting upon their own plastic brethren. Len snapped her fingers in front of
Jason’s eyes.

“I know it’s a pigsty, but you can go
dumpster diving later.”

She led him down another hallway, walking
over and around the sacks clogging the floor, the pathway etched into her
muscle memory. Jason kept brushing against them; one felt like it was filled
with a waterbed, cold and jelly-like against his leg.

“If you don’t control people’s dreams,”
said Jason, “what do you do?”

“Well, dreams can’t be controlled. Not
unless you’re a focused individual. Get what I mean?”

“Not really.”

She whirled around, her hair whipping
Jason across the face. Her lips puckered. “Okay. So,
lemme
use an example. Hm...Okay, you know that girl? Your girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend?” That word nearly broke the
dam holding back the liquid stone. “I...don’t have a...girlfriend.”

“That black girl. The sexy one.”

If he could’ve, Jason would’ve burst out
laughing. He felt a great relief inside. Had Len just said Darlene was sexy?
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s lesbian.”

Len’s face smoothened out, her eyes narrowing
slightly. She cleared her throat, turning around. Jason had already seen the
blush.

“Well,” she continued, “let’s just
say...for example...Darlene is dreaming of...of doing something stupid. She’s
sad, so dreams of losing herself in whatever. These dreams might be harmless on
the surface, but they’ll eventually corrupt her if no one puts them in check.”

“Why can’t she do it herself?”

“Depends. Maybe she can. But most people,
even magi, aren’t talented enough to have a lucid dream, where they can influence
every little thing.” She looked back to Jason, her red cheeks seeming still a
little too crimson. “They let their dreams and nightmares torture them to the
point they start hurting others. So I play my music, and those who are troubled
by their dreams are less susceptible to their desires. Maybe they’ll even get
better. Happier.” Len turned from Jason’s stare. “You look like you’re plotting
my death. Quit staring at me.”

“When you play your song, do you learn the
names of those who are suffering?”

“No, and I couldn’t remember that many
names. Why would you...”

“I never told you Darlene’s name.”

Silence so thick, Jason swore the liquid
stone inside of him had seeped into the air. Then, without another word, Len
bid him to follow her down the hall.

***

The basement staircase was marked by dusty
purple curtains as thin as mist. Jason thanked God he didn’t have allergies,
because the stairway looked like the Mecca of all allergens, with motes of dust
the size of pencil erasers floating down, illuminated by light cutting in
through a window at the end of the hall.

Len pointed down the stars. “My mistress
is expecting us.”

The stairs creaked beneath them as the
stairway curved down and down. The dust thickened and Jason coughed. After
another five minutes, Jason wondered if they’d reach the end of the stairs
before he suffocated on dust bunnies. He’d survived his fifth coughing fit by
the time they reached the basement. ‘Cave’ was probably a more appropriate
word.

The walls ballooned out wide and deep.
Instead of wooden beams, pillars of rock rose from the ground and supported the
ceiling. Jason had to crane his neck in order to see the top and even then the
shadows hid the true peak. He wondered how far underground they were.

They stopped between two of the pillars,
and Len fell to one knee. “Mistress, are you well?” Something shifted in the
darkness. “May we approach?”

There was no audible response, but Len
stood, nodding. There were white markings beneath their feet as they moved
farther into darkness, but it was too dim to see what they made. Out of the
shadows appeared a bed. Upon white sheets lay an old woman: her skin wrinkled
leather; her hair snow-white. With hands clasped over her stomach, the only
thing to betray her corpse-like appearance was the rise and fall of her chest.

She looked at them, her eyes half-open.
Jason was struck by this woman’s strange air, much like the air of youth Len
carried.
But she can’t be,
thought Jason.
She has white hair and
wrinkled skin.
But Len’s hair was gray and her face was smooth, youthful.
The Dream Catcher’s eyes caught his gaze. She lifted a trembling hand and
pointed at him. Her mouth opened to say something, but let out a racking cough
instead. Len moved to her mistress’s bedside. Jason stared at this feeble old
woman. How was she supposed to teach him if she couldn’t even talk? Did the
Guardian have any idea the condition this woman was in? If he did, this was a
cruel prank. Or a death sentence, if the Dream Caller was alive.

When the coughing subsided, the Dream
Catcher cast one last glance upon Jason, then flickered her gaze to Len. She
nodded, but Jason thought it could’ve been exhaustion tugging at her head. The
old woman leaned back and closed her eyes. Len stepped into place beside Jason.

“She’s the Dream Catcher?” he said.

“Yes. She falls in and out of sickness.”

“I see.”

“She’s exhausted because dreams are
wreaking havoc everywhere.”

“Dreams?”

She nodded. “Apparently, full-fledged
Dream Catchers can feel these things. That’s what I’ve gathered, anyway, from
the magic my mistress has taught me.”

Jason eyed the flute in Len’s hand—a sleek
instrument carved from a red wood. Intricate designs were carved along the
underbelly and along the holes on top.

“So that’s your wand?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

“How do you get your power?”

Instead of speaking, Len raised the flute
to her mouth. She blew a quick flurry of notes, like the chirping of birds in
the morning. It reminded Jason of a dream he’d had when he was young: He’d
flown high above the earth, his arms spread wide. Golden powder fell from his
arms, dusting the heads of people everywhere. He loved it; everyone loved him.

This very dream, one he had forgotten for
years, was now being projected upon one of the rock pillars by Len’s flute. She
played another succession of notes, and the holographic image of his dream
faded away.

“Whoa,” said Jason. “I...I thought I had
no dreams anymore. I thought they were all...gone.”

“No. Just sealed. All of them. Well,
except for a few troublemakers.”

“Yeah,
cuz
a giantess,
a nightmare hound, and sex-crazed, knife-wielding twins are clearly just
troublemakers.” Suddenly, Jason remembered something. “Do you think it was the
Dream Caller? Who released Talshe and them?”

Len scrunched her brow. “How do you know
about the Dream Caller?”