The Dream-Maker's Magic

Gryffin looked at me. “What would
you
have asked the Dream-Maker for? That's what I want to know.”

I sighed and snuggled deeper into the sofa. My head tilted sideways till it was leaning on Gryffin's shoulder. “So many things,” I whispered. “I want my father to do something to prove he cared for me. I want my mother to be happy. I want someone in my family to love me for who I am,” I said. “I want you to be well, or at least out of pain. I want Sarah to marry Bo and have a splendid life. I want Mr. Shelby to find every book he's ever wanted to read. I want…I want…I want everyone I ever met to have at least one wish come true, even if they don't deserve it. That's what I want.”

Gryffin was laughing now, silently. I could feel his shoulders shaking. He picked up my hand and held it in front of him, turning it this way and that, as if it was a rare and beautiful stone he had just rescued from a riverbed. “Those are some very generous wishes,” he said.

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Two

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Part Three

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

T
HIS IS THE STORY MY MOTHER TOLD ME:
She was traveling late in her pregnancy when she was overcome by labor pains. Fortunately, she was near a small town and had enough time to send a message to my father before she was gripped with spasms so great she could barely speak. A midwife arrived in time to help deliver the baby, a squalling, dark-haired boy. My mother, who had lost a great deal of blood, saw him for only a moment before she slipped into a sleep from which they thought she would not recover. When she woke, my father was there with a wet nurse; they would not let her near the baby till she had regained her own strength. By that time, they were back home, having chanced the two-day journey in the hopes that she would recover better in her own surroundings.

The baby was nearly two weeks old before my mother was strong enough to care for him herself. But the first time she unwrapped his soiled diapers, she began to scream. The baby was not a boy after all, but a girl. My mother could not be calmed from her hysteria. She could not be convinced that, in the birthing bed, she was in no condition to know whether she had delivered herself of a son or a daughter. Nothing my father or the wet nurse said could convince her that she had not borne a boy who had mysteriously metamorphosed into a girl.

I was that baby. I was that strangely altered child.

From that day on, my mother watched me with a famished attention, greedy for clues. I had changed once; might I change again? Into what else might I transform, what other character might I assume? As for myself, I cultivated a demeanor of sturdy stoicism. I was hard to ruffle, hard to incite to anger—at least that anyone could tell from watching me. It was as if I hoped my unvarying mildness would reassure my mother, convince her to trust me. It was as if she was some animal lured from wild lands and I was the seasoned trainer who habitually made no sudden moves.

She never did learn to trust me, though, or to accept me for who I was. It was my first lesson in failure, and it stayed with me the rest of my life.

Every important event of my life seemed to be set in motion during the summer. The year I turned nine, our small town of Thrush Hollow was visited by a Truth-Teller, a thin and haggard woman. Neither her soul nor her body accommodated the padding that sometimes makes life more comfortable. I can't remember who called her to Thrush Hollow or why, though it is always a dangerous gamble to ask Truth-Tellers for their services. They cannot speak lies and they do not indulge in pleasant deceptions. You may find that what they have to say to you is just as unpalatable as what you would have them say to your neighbor.

At any rate, this Truth-Teller had arrived and was staying at the local inn, and a few people had gone to lay their grievances at her feet. One night I overheard an argument between my mother and father, when they thought I was already sleeping, and the next day the three of us headed to the inn. My father, a dark and perpetually harassed man, looked dour and unwilling. My mother, who was short and fair and very determined, seemed nearly as grim. She had wrapped her fingers around my wrist with a grip so tight I kept twisting to get free, but she would not release me. I did not protest aloud, of course. I never said anything that might mark me as temperamental.

When we arrived at the inn, we were directed to a small parlor in the back. It was a warm day, so the windows were open, but the room was still stuffy and hot. The Truth-Teller sat in a straight-backed chair, her eyes closed, her head resting against the worn cushion. She opened her eyes when the three of us walked in, and she did not look happy to see us.

“What is it?” she snapped. “I'm tired. There are enough liars in Thrush Hollow to make even the strongest Truth-Teller weak, and I'm old and frail.”

“I won't take much of your time,” my mother said breathlessly.

“Introduce yourselves,” the old lady demanded.

“I'm Amelia Carmichael. That's my husband, Stephen. That's Kellen.” My mother had christened me after an uncle of hers, but it was a name some women bore as well. It was not a name that gave away secrets.

“And what do you want me to tell you, Amelia, except that your agitation is making me nervous?”

“I would just like to ask you a few questions about my son,” my mother said, pushing me forward. I was dressed that day, as I was dressed every day, in shapeless clothing that would suit a boy and yet not be wholly out of place on a girl—loose black trousers, loose white shirt, leather shoes. My unstyled black hair hung to my shoulders, its only positive attribute that it was clean. I could have been any anonymous child called in from afternoon play.

The Truth-Teller sat up and stared at me, her dark eyes bright with irritation. I stared back at her, my expression impassive. “Son!” the old woman exclaimed. “This child isn't a boy. It's a girl. Why do you call her ‘son'?”

“See, yes, she's a girl
now
, but she wasn't always,” my mother said eagerly. “That's what I want you to tell me—that's what I want you to tell my husband. When she was
born
, she was a boy. I saw him. You tell them the truth.”

The Truth-Teller gave a crack of laughter. She was still staring at me, and I could read neither compassion nor interest in her eyes. “No, this one was a girl from the moment she was born,” the old woman said flatly. “She was a girl inside the womb. She has never been anything else.”

My mother fell back with a little cry, her hands going to her cheeks. I saw my father move to stand behind her, as if to lend her support. “But she—but I
saw
him—she has been changed—”

The Truth-Teller closed her eyes again and leaned back against the chair. “Don't waste my time,” she said.

My mother babbled a few more incoherent protests, but the Truth-Teller did not look at any of us again. My father turned my mother toward the door and practically hauled her out the inn and down the street to our house. I followed behind them, saying nothing.

I was neither surprised nor unsurprised by the Truth-Teller's words. My life had been so strange up to this point that I would not have found it particularly unnerving to have had my mother's madness proved true. You understand, I had not been treated as a girl at any point in my life—I had not been dressed in frilly gowns or showered with gifts of lace and ribbon. And yet, I had not really been treated as a boy, either, expected to go fishing or frog-hunting with my neighbors. In fact, no one really knew what to make of me. My father tended to avoid me. He was a peddler of metal goods and so he traveled a great deal. When he returned, he was awkward around me, not sure what to say. The people of Thrush Hollow all knew I was a girl, but—since I dressed in such indeterminate clothes, and since my mother
spoke
of me as if I was a boy—sometimes they forgot. So one day I might be greeted as “lad” and another day as “missy,” and I found it just as easy to respond to either. I did not really think of myself as a boy or a girl. I considered myself just Kellen. Just me.

Just nobody.

But the Truth-Teller was convinced I was a girl. Had always been a girl. She had not said I always
would
be a girl, and I considered life uncertain enough to reserve as a possibility the idea that someday, even yet, I might assume a shape that better pleased my mother. But for now, one question had been resoundingly answered.

It did not make my life any easier.

That night, as the night before, as many nights in the past, my parents stayed up late, arguing. There was a more urgent quality to the quarrel this night than there usually was; the raised voices were louder, more accusatory. I snuck from my bedroom to crouch in the hallway, listening to them as they paced the parlor and shouted.

“I cannot
do
this any longer, Amelia,” my father said, his voice despairing. “I cannot live such a strange and sad life. It is killing me—it is killing all of us.”

“Maybe in Wodenderry—there are plenty of Truth-Tellers in the royal city. I will go there with Kellen, and I will ask every one of them—”

“Amelia, you have been told the truth already! Kellen is a girl! She was always a girl! Give up this madness and try to resume some normalcy in your life! When I think what we have put her through—our own daughter—and when I think there is no end to it, I swear to you, I cannot breathe. Make your peace with your destiny and take up the shape of your true life.”

“I can't,” my mother whispered. “I know I'm right.”

There was a long silence. I crept close enough to peek around the corner of the door. I saw my father standing with his head against the wall and his hands flat against the paneling. It looked as if he was holding up the walls of the house, but I knew it was really the other way around.

“Go to sleep,” he said finally. “I have to leave again in the morning. We'll talk about this more when I get back.”

“And that will be when?”

He shook his head, rubbing his forehead against the paneling. “I don't know. I'll send word.”

“I'm not crazy,” my mother said.

Still resting against the wall, he turned his head a little to look at her. “You're obsessed,” he said. “And you're ruining Kellen's life. And you're ruining your own. And you're ruining mine. Even if you're not crazy, what you're doing is.”

“I want Kellen to be what he is supposed to be.”

“She will be,” my father said. “Whatever that is.”

In the morning, he was gone, his cart and his metal goods with him. He usually traveled for seven or ten days at a time and returned exhausted but cheerful, coins jingling in his pocket. He often brought us treats from nearby towns, Tambleham or Merendon or wherever he had gone on his route this time. Once he went all the way to Wodenderry and brought me back a doll shaped like Queen Lirabel. I was always pleased to know he thought of me on the road, since he seemed to think of me so little when we were in the same house.

This time, when he left, he did not return.

Two weeks after his departure, my mother received a note that sent her crying bitterly to her room. It was not unprecedented for my mother to have an emotional breakdown, and I knew what to do. I fixed dinner for myself, finished up the chores, kept quiet, and allowed her to weep in silence. When I was sure she had sobbed herself to sleep, I crept into her room to wash her face and loosen her dress so that she could pass the night comfortably. It was summer, but the air was cool, so I shut the window and covered her with a sheet.

Then I picked up the note that she had flung to the floor and took it to the parlor to read it by candlelight. It was from my father.

For a moment, I wanted to cry, too, except that I knew it would do no good. Tears would not bring my father back, and tears would not change my mother. Tears would not turn me into someone she could love. I folded the note and went back into her room, carefully dropping the letter on the floor where she had left it. Then I tiptoed to my room, stretched out on my bed, and lay awake till morning.