Dream a Little Dream (18 page)

“I was so worried about you,” Nola said, dazed by the kiss. “I thought you were dead. What about the shot?”

“Never!” he said and kissed her again.

A female voice shouted to them. “Come on, will you? Here come the dogs!”

That was Lori’s voice! Nola turned and saw the car with a rope attached to the bumper. Attached to the other end of the rope were the electrified window bars. Tina was already in the front seat and
Lori was behind the wheel. Nola saw four boxers running toward them, snarling and barking loudly.

Nola and Mich dashed for the car. The dogs arrived just as they slammed the door shut. Mich’s window was open and a dog stuck in its head and snapped at him with its white fangs as he rolled up the window. The dog couldn’t get its head away quite fast enough and the rising window caught the creature’s tender nose and upper lip. It howled with pain and jerked away.

Lori slammed her foot on the gas and the tires skidded for a moment on the grass; then the car sped across the lawn. Nola and Tina sagged in their seats, overwhelmed by relief. Thank God for good friends, Nola thought weakly.

“But how did you ever find Lori?” she asked Mich. “You don’t know your way around this world, and she’s in another city.”

“Ah,” he said, pleased with himself. “I used the magic she explained to me when we talked before. The magic box number.”

“Magic number?” Nola asked blankly.

“The phone,” Lori explained, laughing. “I told him how to use the phone, and how to call collect, in case of emergency. I didn’t realize he would remember my number.”

“I would remember anything to save Nola,” Mich said.

“But how did you know where to find us?” Nola demanded.

“I felt your presence,” he said. “You are my Creator.”

Just as Nola and Tina had felt each other’s presence, when coming together. It must have been stronger for Mich.

“Well, you took long enough!” Tina said. At that, they all laughed.

Lori drove them back into the city to her apartment. Once there, she made them some food and they sat talking.

“So, that guy killed Johnboy?” Lori asked as if this were routine, but her face was grim.

“Yes, and he would have killed us also if it weren’t for you two,” Nola said, stuffing her face with chili. This was mostly to conceal her own reaction to the killing, but it had another cause: she hadn’t realized how hungry she was. It was good to eat again.

“After making us turn tricks for his clients,” Tina added.

“Tricks?” Mich asked. “You perform tricks? I would like to see some of them.”

Tina opened her mouth to explain, but Nola cut in first. “Never mind!” She also felt much better knowing Mich was safe, his innocence almost intact. “Mich, I thought that guy had killed you.”

“Killed me? Ha!” he said, assuming a macho pose. “He didn’t know who he was messing with! I gave him a few punches and he ran away as fast as a pink bunny.”

Nola saw that his shirt was bloodstained in the midsection. “How did you get the bullet out?”

Lori interrupted with the explanation. “I’ve been working part-time at the hospital. I took it out for him with a razor and a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Fortunately it was superficial. I expected him to scream his head off. He didn’t even say ouch.”

Tina turned somber. “I’m sorry I got you all into this mess. You should have just left me.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mich said. “You’re too pretty to—” He caught Nola’s look, and changed tack. “We need your help. You’re a Creator too. You can’t lose faith, no matter what happens.”

“If you do, you’ll make more trouble and we ‘11 all be dead,” Nola said.

Tina, Mich and Lori turned to look at her.

Nola saw that she should elaborate. “Mich, do you remember what the worm king said about the Fren?”

“Yes. They are the product of a shattered dream.” He suddenly realized the enormity of what she had said to Tina.

“Yes, they are. I realized something. The Fren are borne by a
shattered dream; that means that they don’t actually kill certain creatures. It is the faltering Creators who make the Fren strong, and unless we do something about it, their numbers will increase.”

“Maybe we can do something here,” said Tina.

“I thought about that too, but the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. We can’t just walk up to people on the street and say, ‘Hey, are you a Creator?’ Even if we can tell by the tug of their minds, the chances of getting close enough are remote. The world is just too big. We were lucky that the two of us found each other, even considering the affinity we felt. Maybe we could train ourselves to tune in from afar, as Mich did on me, but that would still take so long that the battle would be lost before it started. The best thing to do is to work through their minds in Kafka—through the cumulative dreams of mankind. That way we can reach all Creators without having to search for the individuals. Even if we could find every Creator on Earth, we could not convince them to have faith and not let people smash their dreams into Fren.”

“What are you saying?” Tina asked, clearly interested.

“I’m saying that we have to attack the Fren directly.”

“Isn’t that what we have been trying to do?”

“Yes. The only problem is, how can I destroy them? To destroy them you have to disbelieve them. I can’t disbelieve someone else’s dream. That’s up to the other Creator. How can we contact the other Creators, once we ‘re in Kafka, and tell them how to destroy Fren if we don’t know ourselves?” No one could answer that question. “Well, it’s a problem we’ll have to deal with in due course.”

“Why don’t you all get some sleep?” Lori said. “I’ll pull out the couch for Tina and myself, and you and Mich can take my bed.”

“Thank you for your help,” Mich said as he led Nola to the bedroom. Lori winked. She evidently liked him, and in other circumstances might have done something about it, as she had with some of Nola’s prior boyfriends.

Mich showered while Nola changed. He found the shower another novel experience. He just turned a knob and not only did the water pour out, but he could pick how warm he wanted it. His hair was tangled and dirty, but a little squeeze of this liquid soap fixed that. Like the wheeled, speedy vehicles, this was novel magic.

When he was done, it was Nola’s turn. She was glad to have a shower. The water seemed almost to wash away her cares. Almost. When she was done, she blow-dried her hair.

She stepped into the closet and found an oversized night shirt with Mickey Mouse on the front, and donned it. When she stepped out, Mich was waiting for her under the blankets. He smiled when he saw her. She wondered what he could see in her. She was about to destroy his world, literally. She wasn’t sure if she ‘d ever discover a way to cure Kafka of its shattered dreams.

She climbed into bed and sat up next to him. He put his arms around her and put his head on her shoulder. She could feel a hank of his black hair fall against her skin. It felt like cool silk. She couldn’t resist running her hand through it. He closed his eyes and seemed to drift off. There was no way she was going to let him go. He was, after all, the man of her dreams. Too bad he hadn’t yet gotten up the nerve to take proper advantage of opportunity. Maybe she should nudge him a bit under the covers and see what happened.

She lay for a moment in silence and tried to fathom the secret of destroying the Fren. In her dream, Spirit had said that she had to disbelieve them. How could she do that? Should she just walk up to them, one by one, and say, “I don’t believe in you,” and they would disappear? That was too easy. It couldn’t be that simple.

She pictured Kafka in her head, in all its splendor. She pictured the River of Thought and all its changing colors. She pictured the Shattered-Glass Glade and the Centicores. Not wild and terrorizing, but going about their business in the glade, grazing and sprinting
about with their babies. She thought of the castle, and being there with Mich and her friends.

She looked down at the shining cross around her neck. The moonlight that poured through the window bathed the star sapphire in its center. The stone seemed to almost catch the light and play with it; then it released the light in a dazzling display of bright, laser-like beams. She was surprised as one shone in her face. This seemed familiar. When had she experienced something similar?

Suddenly, there was a loud
Crack!
and a ball of swirling lightning bolts appeared in front of her, then disappeared.

Mich was started awake. He stared. In a moment, there was a louder
Crack!
and a hole appeared, hanging just over the bed. There was an actual gap in the air. Wind started coming from it, and it brushed their faces with scent.

Nola remembered what it was that was so familiar.

Tina rushed in, holding her billowy robe shut with one hand, clutching her purse with the other. She stopped short, behind the swirling hole. “What’s that?”

“It’s a bed spell,” Nola said, smiling. “I’ve seen one before.”

Mich jumped out of bed, his hair blowing into his face, and noted the splays of light that emanated from Nola’s cross.

“Where did you get a bed spell?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know it was a bed spell. It’s different.”

“Yes, it is. The light, it’s moonlight, not magic light. How’d you do that?”

Nola looked bewildered. “I don’t know, but let’s go through it before something abolishes it!”

Both Tina and Mich hastily agreed to that. One by one, they jumped into the black hole and were immediately whipped by a magic wind that dropped them gently into . . .

Suddenly they were standing on a landscape, Nola in her Mickey Mouse nightshirt, Tina in her billowy robe, and Mich in white undershorts. They would have been embarrassed, but there were more pressing sights to see.

“Where are we?” Tina asked, looking at the blackened ground. “It looks like Kafka, but everything is burned!”

And so it was. Kafka had been decimated. Nola felt as if she was going to collapse; the scene was just as it had been in her dream.

“What happened to—?” Mich asked of no one in particular. He was too abashed by the sight of his ruined home to finish his statement.

It has been too long.

The three of them turned around to see Spirit, accompanied by Heat. They scuffed the ash-covered ground with their hooves.

“Is it too late?” Nola asked sadly.

It is never too late,
Spirit thought, but he seemed doubtful.

“What happened?” Mich asked.

Heat stepped forward and nudged Mich lovingly.
The Fren have destroyed most of Kafka. They have been multiplying in your absence and it seems there are half as many Kafkians and twice as many Fren. The Fren are running rampant and destroying things.

“I was afraid something like this would happen,” Nola said.

Spirit focused a green eye on her. Its horizontal pupil contracted
and expanded.
Congratulations on your fathoming of the secret. Now our world may be saved.

“But I don’t know it!”

Of course you do! What do you think converted that celestial dream-stone into a bed spell?

She looked down at the cross that dangled on her chest. “Celestial dreamstone? It’s just a star sapphire.”

No. It is one of the rarest types of dreamstone in Kafka. I have yet to see another like it.

“How did you know about the stone and the bed spell? That happened on Earth.”

I watched it in your mind. My mind can touch yours anywhere hope exists.

“Oh,” she said, remembering that they shared minds. “But I don’t know what I did.” Nola could feel that Spirit was disappointed. “I’m sorry, I just have no clue,” she said.

Replay the scene in your mind. Perhaps we will be able to find out what you did.

Nola closed her eyes and remembered as Spirit watched, tuning in on her thoughts.

She saw herself getting into bed with Mich and she remembered the feel of his hair, and her wish that die innocent lunk would do something. She held the cross in her hand and closed her eyes, missing Kafka.

What are you doing there?
he interrupted.

Nola was startled. She had forgotten that Spirit was in her mind. “I’m looking at my cross,” she said.

No, your eyes are closed.

“I was just thinking of Kafka, and wishing—” She broke off as she caught on.

You were here,
he finished for her.
You see, you have found the power within yourself.

“I understand!” she cried and jumped up and grabbed Spirit’s neck. “Thank you, Esprit! Thank you! Now I think I can do it!”

I may be wrong, but the cross you wear seems to be a catalyst that amplifies your thoughts. I had not known its nature before, but I assumed there was a magic about it because it appeared before me one day, at my feet.

“So you think the cross had something to do with it?” She paused in thought. “That seems feasible. This cross means a lot to me. But why did you get it? Why not me?”

Your world is too corrupted for magic ever to work there. There is no room for magic in a world of science.

Mich hugged her. “I knew you’d figure it out,” he said. “But you said the Fren don’t kill people, so that means they can be saved. What about the Welties? I figured they were—Forgotten.” He hesitated on the word, dreading the thought of it.

Nola thought about that. The Fren were crushed dreams, but it did not mean that they were Forgotten dreams. “The only reason I can think of for that is that they were also transformed into Fren. Maybe if the Fren remain in that state for too long, they get Forgotten. It could also be that when a Kafkian creature is destroyed, or crushed, it happens in degrees. For example, if you are a child with an imaginary friend and your parents tell you it is not real, that is a light crush, but if you believe wholeheartedly that your dream will be real, only to find it isn’t, that could be a big crush. Maybe the big crushes are Forgotten faster.”

“So, you think that they were Fren when they disappeared? But why, then, would Greyden send us the note?”

“The note?” she asked blankly.

“The note Greyden, the Weltie woman, sent to the mermaid for us,” he reminded her. “Saying that they were all being Forgotten, including her.”

That stumped her. “I don’t know. Maybe she was the last to be converted.”

That sounds plausible,
Heat thought.
But if that is the case, then the Fren would eventually disappear entirely, and that would be no better than having Kafka full of Fren. Earth would surely be destroyed.

The group looked solemn. Mich tried to help. He knew if his friends lost hope, the battle would be lost. He couldn’t let that happen now, not when they were so close to a solution.

“Well, now we can get on with Kafka’s salvation. Let’s find the dragons—if they still exist.”

I don’t believe that would be possible tonight,
Spirit cut in.
The night is growing short and our moon has ceased to glow. Perhaps tomorrow.

“Now wait a minute,” Nola said, looking thoughtful. “From what we’ve discussed, it seems to me that there may be a way to save the Fren instead of just having the dragons chomp them to bits—”

“
Save
the Fren!” Tina cried, shocked. “Are you out of your Creative skull? What good would that do?”

Nola stifled her ire at being interrupted. Tina tended to be annoying at times, but she was a good person. Nola tried not to smart-mouth her, but couldn’t cut it off entirely.

“I will be able to tell you as soon as you stop interrupting me!” she said, biting her lip so as not to yell. “Now, if you will let me continue, I was going to say that we can save what the Fren once were and even, possibly, revert them to their original form with a nonphysical method.”

“Oh, you mean like reinforce them and make them ‘uncrushed,’ so to speak. Like, with your mind, right?”

“Yes!” Nola agreed. She was relieved that someone finally had it straight.

“Oh, that’s easy, then!”

Nola shook her head. “We’ll see.”

“Say, I’m hungry. Snort!” Mich called, looking around. The little basilisk came slithering into view from the nearby brush. “Let’s go see if we can get some food while the girls set up camp. In the morning, we ‘ll go in search of the Fren and put Nola’s theory to the test.”

“Wait!” Tina said. “Why not test it now? Maybe you should give it a try. Nola, you turned that stone into a bed spell; why not see if you can think up some Chinese take-out for us?”

“I can give it a try,” Nola said. She wasn’t very hopeful, but she was anxious to test her newfound power. She had learned the hard way not to take too much on faith, and not to count unhatched chickens. The sooner she tested herself, the sooner she would know, one way or the other.

She stood amid her friends and closed her eyes. She took her cross in hand and tried to think of Chinese food. She thought of a white paper carton with a red dragon printed on it and the little metal handle on top. She imagined herself opening it and a cloud of steam coming from it along with the smell of pork fried rice.

She was jolted from her concentration by Snort’s surprised honk. She opened her eyes and saw a huge Chinese take-out box sitting on Snort’s tail. She walked over to it and found it open and steaming hot. It was filled to capacity with pork fried rice. There was enough for all of them.

“Let me try!” Tina said. Tina closed her eyes. In a moment, three cans of soda appeared next to the food. “Wowee!” Tina said when she opened her eyes.

Nola was filled with excitement. Could this be the answer they had been searching for? She wanted to test it again. “We need some place to sleep tonight too!”

This time she thought of a fine, large house with huge windows
and many rooms. When she opened her eyes, she was disappointed.

Next to the river was a much smaller house than she was thinking of. It wasn’t even a house, really, it was more like a shack with a thatched roof. It had no windows and only two rooms. It looked as if it had been through a hurricane.

Spirit approached it and looked at it with distaste.
Apparently there are limits,
he said.
You must practice. Your power will grow.

“I hope so,” Mich said, inspecting the inside. “This has no magic shower.”

Nola laughed. It certainly hadn’t taken him long to get used to the comforts of Earth culture! “Put in a magic-number call to Lori,” she suggested. “Maybe she can send you a shower.”

He shook his head. “No. There’s no magic box either.”

“I hate being inadequate,” Nola said, cheered. “When my power grows, I’ll be sure to install a phone system.”

“For now I will settle for some clothing,” he said.

“Oh. Of course.” She conjured him a halfway-decent princely outfit. As an afterthought she conjured herself some clothing to substitute for her nightshirt, including a comfortable halter. Tina made herself a shirt and slacks. After some tinkering, they were all reasonably garbed, and far more comfortable.

The group dived into the carton of rice, stuffing the food in their mouths by the fistful. Snort really seemed to like the new treat. He almost fell into the carton, at one point, in order to reach the fast-disappearing rice. Nola practiced, conjuring up some luberry bushes for the two unisi to graze upon. She knew the bushes wouldn’t last through the next day, with no water or soil to sustain them. Everything was delicious and welcome in their growling stomachs.

“At least we don’t have to worry about finding food in this burned-out place,” Mich commented when they were finished. “Let’s go in.”

They settled in for the night. Nola and Tina took one room of the shack while Mich took the other. Snort rested in the doorway as “watchdog” and the two unisi rested in a copse of burned trees.

Mich lay there for a while in his room, staring at the ceiling. He felt rejected. Why had Nola chosen to bed with Tina instead of him? He was a man of honor and respect. She knew that he wouldn’t try to touch her, or even kiss her. Did she still distrust him so much that she could not even be alone in the same room with him? Maybe he should face the fact that she might never trust him. He had believed that since she had Created him, her dream man, that she would fall instantly in love when they met. He loved her, of that much he was certain. Maybe she would forget about him when this was all over. As much as he hated to think of it, the possibility remained. Anyway, what was the purpose of being a dream when she did not love him the way he loved her? Maybe it would be better to be Forgotten. For the first time, he cried.

In the other room, Nola sat quietly against the wall. Tina, beside her, was resting peacefully, her eyes shut. Nola felt uneasy. She was happy about finding the answer that for so long had eluded her, but she wasn’t sure what she would do once Kafka had been restored, if she could restore it.

She stood up and crept to the door. Snort was ever alert and stared at her with bright, yellow eyes. She reached down and gave him a loving pat. “Stay here and look after them. I’ll be back.” Snort snorted affirmation. She stepped over him gingerly and went out under the night sky. She wandered silently around the shack, looking at the stars blinking behind a mist of clouds.

Night was her favorite time. The air was clear and cool and the silence was comforting. Mich kept entering her mind and she kept refusing to think about him. She did not know why. She let the clear breeze brush her face.

She was startled by a nudge from behind. It was Spirit.

what
troubles you?

Nola laid her hand on Spirit’s flank. “It’s stupid,” she mumbled.

I see. You are troubled about Prince Michael.

“Yes.” She sighed. There was no pretending with Spirit around. She could feel the tears starting.

There is no need for sadness, my friend,
he said.

He raised his head and put his nose to the wind, his velvety nostrils flaring. His mane floated gently in the night breeze. His forelock was swept about his ridged horn as it caught the starlight and sparkled. Nola found it difficult to distinguish him from the night. His hide was so black that only its starlit sheen could be seen, outlining him, and his green eyes glowed like a cat’s. His wings were slightly more visible, neatly folded and protruding well beyond his tail.

Nola caught her breath at his beauty. She turned her eyes to the stars once again. “He is all I could want and more,” she said, stroking Spirit’s neck. “Why am I so afraid of him?”

Maybe it is not him you are afraid of. Maybe it is reality.