And Other Stories (12 page)

Street glances at O, “You see how
happy I am? You tell everyone of Bossman Sevenday’s kindness! You
tell ‘em to stop fearing him, because he’s the most forgiving
gentleman there could be!”

O nods hesitantly.

Street looks back up at Bossman
Sevenday. “I was terrified you’d kick me out in the world without
my memories, and folks would laugh at me for the rest of my life as
the poor fool who tried to steal from you. I thought I’d suffer and
suffer as the proof that no one should mess with you.”

Bossman Sevenday says, “You
will—”

Street cries louder, “Now Oya’s
seen how you’ll even forgive a trickster who was fool enough to
steal from you. People will come up to you and say you’re the
gentlest gentleman of all!” Street leans forward and kisses
Bossman’s cold shoes. “See, Oya! Tell ‘em how grateful I was when
you left me!” He kisses Bossman’s shoes again. The leather is even
colder against his lips. “Bless you, Bossman Sevenday! Bless
you!”

Bossman Sevenday looks at O, then
at Street. Smoke comes from behind his round sunglasses, and they
begin to glow red, and he says, “Get. Up.”

Street says, “Are we going now,
Bossman?” He scrambles to his feet and grins. “I can’t
wait!”

Bossman Sevenday’s face is a
flaming skull as he screams, “Get out! You get out of here this
instant!”

Street says, “But Bossman, haven’t
you forgiven—”

O grabs his wrist and jerks him
toward the door.

Street says, “No, O! I beg you!
Don’t make me go back!”

They stumble down the long hall.
The tiles rock beneath them as the earth quakes. Doors blow open.
Harsh winds like arctic storms and scorching desert gales buffet
them from each door that they pass, and they hear screams and wails
of despair. And as they run, Street shouts, “Let me go back, O!
Please!”

Ms. Brigitte stands at the front
door. She glares at them, then throws the doors wide and shouts,
“You deserve no less!”

“No! Please, no!”
cries Street. He and O plunge down the steps and leap into the
Zephyr and race away from Bossman Sevenday’s home.

And, as they go, Street is not sure
whether the sound that he hears is Bossman’s rage or his
laughter.

9

Street stretches in the car as they
cruise into the city. O looks at him and says, “I don’t think you
know the meaning of subtlety.”

Street nods. “I’m not the only
one.”

O says, “You don’t have your
memories.”

Street says, “I know life’s good,
and you’re the best there is. What else do I need to
know?”

O laughs. “Not one thing at
all.”

Street says, “So everyone in our
crowd has a purpose?”

O nods. “More or less. And duties
with the purpose.”

Street says, “What about
me?”

O shakes her head.

Street laughs. “So my only
purpose—” He smiles smugly at O. “—is to be.”

O smiles back. “A pain.”

He shrugs. “Well, yes. Everyone’s
good at something.”

Dream
Catcher

Will Shetterly

Dear John Marshall,

My name is Crosses Water Safely. At
school, I was called my white name, Janine Skunk. I didn’t know my
real name then. You always held your nose and waved your hand in
front of your face when you saw me, and everyone laughed.
Grandmother says skunks are beautiful and smart. She says anyone
who can trick Rabbit is smart, and Rabbit knows to leave Skunk
alone.

Grandmother dreamed my real name.
She saw me in a storm in the front of a canoe. Many people were in
the canoe, and they were all scared. But I was not scared. The
people stopped being scared when they saw I was not scared. And
then the storm went away.

Grandmother lives on a reservation
up north. Father said she is a bush Indian. And he laughed like you
always did at school, John Marshall. My mother looked down and did
not say anything. I want to be a bush Indian when I grow
up.

Grandmother came to stay with us
last fall. She came because Father told her I was having bad
dreams. He laughed when she showed up at our door. He said she was
a bad dream herself, and where would she sleep? She said she would
sleep on the floor of my room if she had to. She came because she
had made something for me. A dream catcher.

Grandmother said all dream catchers
look like spider webs. It doesn’t matter what they’re made of. She
made the frame of mine with basswood twine and birch branches. The
colored string came from a Hudson Bay store. You hang the dream
catcher in your window. Bad dreams get caught in it, but good
dreams pass right through.

When we hung the dream catcher in
my room, Grandmother asked if I remembered the bad dreams. She
looked at me very hard and said it was important. I said not
really. She asked if I remembered anything about them. I said
maybe. She asked what I remembered. I said red eyes. She asked what
else. I just shook my head and laughed like the dreams were
silly.

I didn’t have any bad dreams that
night. In the morning, Grandmother looked at the dream catcher and
looked at me and smiled. I smiled at her, too. I wanted her to stay
with us forever.

That was the day I took the dream
catcher to Show and Tell and told how Grandmother made it for me.
Our teacher said it was a good report. But in the hall, you grabbed
the dream catcher and said a skunk should be able to scare away bad
dreams with its stink. When you threw it down the hall, I was glad
it didn’t break.

That night, Father asked
Grandmother if she wasn’t tired of sleeping on my floor. She said
she didn’t mind. I didn’t have any bad dreams that night, either.
In the morning, I looked hard at the dream catcher, but I couldn’t
see any dreams. Grandmother said I didn’t know how to look. But
someday I would see everything better.

That day, you asked if my
grandmother had made me a brain catcher, ’cause I could sure
use one. Also, Father asked me to go to the park and play softball
with him. I said I was tired. Mother said I was always tired and
always in my room and I should go.

When we came back, Father said he
needed a shower. Mother said he sure did. Father said I should
shower too. I said I was okay. He laughed like I was very funny and
said to come on, don’t waste water. Then he saw Grandmother
looking, and he said oh, forget it.

After dinner, he brought home a
brand new living room couch that folded out into a bed. He said
Grandmother should sleep comfortably, since she wanted to stay with
us forever. Grandmother said he did not have to do that. He said it
was done, and he wanted her to be comfortable. He took a big drink
of beer and he didn’t say anything else. Grandmother looked at me
and didn’t say anything, either.

At bedtime, she said if I needed
her, I should just call. I could not answer. I laughed like it was
okay and went into my room and put on the nightlight and got into
bed.

I lay there for a long time, trying
to go to sleep. I told myself it was okay with Grandmother in the
next room. But it wasn’t okay with Mother in the next
room.

Then I heard him standing outside
the door. I smelled him there. I prayed for him to go away, and I
told God I was sorry for whatever I had done. Then he opened the
door and whispered my white name. I tried not to hear. When he got
into the bed, I tried not to look. He turned my face so I had to
look. He said he loved me. His eyes were all bloodshot.

When the door opened, he jumped up
and pointed at me and said, “She wanted—” and “You don’t think I
was going to—” and “I was drunk, I didn’t know—”

Grandmother came straight to me and
hugged me. She wrapped my blanket around me real tight. She said,
“We’re going.”

Father said, “It’s not what you’re
thinking! You can’t believe—”

Grandmother led me to the dream
catcher and took it down from the window.

“She’s my daughter!”
Father yelled. “You’re not taking her—”

Grandmother held up the dream
catcher and said, “Look.”

He looked at it, and then at her,
and then at me. I looked at the dream catcher. Grandmother handed
it to me. I hugged it. Father screamed and ran out.

Mother was in the hallway. She did
not say anything as we went out. Father was in the living room,
curled up in a ball and gasping. Grandmother did not slow
down.

I am living on the reservation now.
I have two best friends, Adam Mishenene and Martha Kwandibens. I
have a dog, Socks. He walks funny because he was hit by a car, but
he will fetch anything. I have to talk to a counselor every week
who thinks if I say everything that happened, it will be better.
Mother and Father have to see a counselor too. Maybe we will be a
family again this summer. I said I would give it a try, anyway, and
everyone cried.

I wrote to my old teacher, asking
how everyone was. She said you had been taken away, John Marshall.
When I saw that, I was happy. Then she said your parents had been
doing something bad to you for a long time. That is why I am
sending you what’s with this letter. You hang it in the window, and
only the good dreams come through.

Your friend,

Crosses Water Safely (Janine
Skunk)

The
Princess and the Lord of Night

Emma Bull

This story is for Carolyn Brust,
with best wishes.

Once upon a time there was a
princess who had everything she wanted. She had a horse as white as
the high clouds of a summer sky who could run from one end of the
kingdom to the other in a day. She had a walnut-brown dog who
understood anything she said. She had an ash-gray cat as swift as a
blink and as clever as six professors. She had a crow as black as
the inside of an inkwell who could recite every poem ever written.
She had a velvet cloak as blue as twilight that could turn its
wearer invisible.

Whenever the princess said she
wanted anything—or even when she looked as if she might want
something—the king and the queen, her father and mother, hurried to
give it to her. For the Lord of Night had put a curse on the
princess when she was born, that if ever she wanted something she
couldn’t have, the kingdom would fall into ruin and the king and
queen would die.

Some people, if they got everything
they wanted, would become spoiled and silly before they could turn
around once. But the princess had seen her mother and father
hurrying to get her whatever she wanted, afraid that the Lord of
Night might appear in a burst of green smoke and destroy the
kingdom if they failed.

The princess felt terrible about
it, so she tried to delight in all she had instead of longing for
more. Still, there were her horse, and her dog, and her cat, and
her crow, and her cloak, which she had wanted and gotten, and she
was glad to have them.

On the morning of her thirteenth
birthday, the princess woke very early and sat straight up in bed.
She had dreamed of something she wanted, and now that she was
awake, she found she wanted it more than ever. But she resolved not
to tell the king and queen about it. She would go out and get it
for herself.

So she mounted her white horse, who
could run from one end of the kingdom to the other in a day. She
called her brown dog, who understood everything she said. She put
her gray cat, swift as a blink and clever as six professors, on the
saddle before her. She set the crow that could recite all the
world’s poems on her shoulder, and tucked the velvet cloak that
could make her invisible into the saddle case. Then she rode out
into the kingdom to look for what she wanted.

She hadn’t been riding for an hour
before she met a young man sitting on a stone by the side of the
road. He’d covered his face with both hands, and she thought he
might be crying.

“What is your
trouble?” the princess called to him, from high atop her white
horse.

“Oh,” he said,
looking up at her, “my mother is wasting away with sickness. I have
a charm to cure her, but I have to use it before the sun goes down,
and she lives far away, on the edge of the sea. I can never reach
her in time.”

“Well,” said the
princess, “I want your mother to be well and you to be happy. Take
my horse, and you’ll be there in time for dinner.”

At that, the young man leaped up,
full of hope. The princess unstrapped the saddle case and set it on
the ground. Then she helped him mount the white horse, and watched
as they disappeared, fast as the wind, bound for the edge of the
sea.

“That’s a start to my
journey,” said the princess, and went on down the road with her
dog, her cat, her crow, and the case that held her
cloak.

A little farther along the way she
entered a forest, and in the forest under a tree she met a ragged,
weeping little girl.

“Whatever is the
matter?” asked the princess.

“I’ve lost our
sheep,” the little girl sobbed, “the ones I was driving to market
to sell. They took fright and scattered into the trees. Now I’ll
have to go home with nothing, and all my brothers and sisters will
go cold and hungry.”