Dangerous Dreams: A Novel

by Mike Rhynard

  “What do you seek?”

  “My locket! He had my mother’s locket. Must have put it in the bundle before the fight. It has to be here. Oh, Isna, where is it?” She lowered her face to her hands, moaned softly.

  Isna rolled onto his knees beside her, caressed her hair, then gently lifted her chin. “Perhaps the Panther did not bring Emily’s locket with him.” He touched her cheeks, gently lifted her head until she sat back on her heels, rubbed her teary eyes. When she looked at him, he moved his left hand from behind his back. It held a pink flower—the first flower of spring. He extended it slowly toward her face, gently dabbed her tears, kissed it, then held it to her lips.

  Emily stared at him teary-eyed, took the flower, kissed it, then touched it to her cheek. She slowly nodded, smiled a contented smile, leaned forward as he again held her cheeks, pulled her into a soft, lingering kiss.

  True-Dog jogged to his position as advance guard. He was several yards into the forest when Emily, her flower tucked in her hair, walked to the stream, knelt, and scooped a handful of water.

  As she stood and turned toward Isna, something in the grass caught her attention. “ Isna!” She dropped to her knees.

  All three warriors gripped their weapons, faced her.

  “Isna, Isna, I found it!” She stood, dangled her precious black locket from her hand. When she opened the trap door, she found the lock of her mother’s hair inside, stared at it as tears filled her eyes and a procession of images of her father and mother drifted slowly through her mind like leaves floating on a lazy stream. She shut the locket door, held it to her cheek, closed her eyes. Mother, I love you . . . I shall see you again. Tears of joy streamed down Emily’s cheeks as she smiled at Isna, stared into his eyes; she slowly removed her first flower of spring from her hair, held it and her locket to her heart.

  He softly touched her cheeks, gazed into her glistening eyes, leaned forward, gently kissed her lips.

  And while Allie’s heart and soul willed them to stay, the enveloping mists of time slowly encircled them until they were gone.

  Chapter 27

  Allie brushed her hair, smiled contentedly at herself in the bathroom mirror. Look pretty decent today, O’Shay . . . good color, twinkle in your eye, nice-looking hair . . . like your old self . . . ’bout time. Feel good, too. Though she continued to robotically brush her hair, her thoughts detached from her eyes, refocused inside her mind. What a tale . . . what an ending. But is it the end? She smiled. No . . . it’s a beginning . . . and what a beginning. Wonder if I’ll ever see her again. A twinge of sadness, sudden longing swept her heart as a soft voice in her mind told her, no. She put her brush down, fluffed her hair with her hands. Shirt’s a little skimpy; maybe I should . . . nah, forget it.

  Allie walked into the kitchen, sat at the table with Dressler and her mother, smiled serenely at both as they stole quick, involuntary glances at her deep cleavage and nearly see-through shirt.

  Nancy said, “Well, don’t you look smiley this morning.” She grinned. “Must be feeling good. Maybe my Allie Girl’s back.”

  Allie blushed. “Mom!”

  “Okay. Maybe my dear, long-lost daughter, Allie O’Shay, has returned. Good to see you again, kiddo.”

  “Come on, Mom. You’re embarrassing me.”

  Dressler chuckled. “You do look rather contented, and enchanting, today, Ms. O’Shay. Must have been a good night.”

  Allie smiled. “ ’Twas indeed.”

  Dressler said, “Well, finally! Way overdue.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to get to a meeting pretty quick, so can you give us a quick rundown on what happened?”

  Her persistent smile pasted on her face like a mask, Allie relayed the events of her dream, grew reflective when she described the attack on the villages and Emily and Isna’s consummation of their marriage, then bubbled with excitement when she described the fight and Emily finding her locket.

  Dressler said, “Wow. What a story.” He smiled. “You know, I think what they say about real life being more exciting than fiction is true. So, do you think you’ll—”

  “Oh! Excuse me, Doc, forgot something.” She shook her head. “Can’t believe I forgot to tell you this; it’s the most important part of the entire experience. The last night, Emily and I dreamed Isna’s spirit vision, and—” She pondered something for a moment. “I don’t think I ever told you about the spirit vision, Mom, but I’ve told Steve.” She quickly described the vision. “Anyway, it always ended with the last little white fawn, with the vision pipe and two black stones around her neck, but Emily and Isna never understood what that meant.” She looked at them with a haunting smile and sparkling eyes that gave her a striking, almost-hypnotic aura. “But last night, the little white fawn turned into—”

  Dressler’s phone rang. He held up his index finger, answered the call. “Okay, I’ll be right over.” He glanced at Nancy and Allie. “Meeting got moved up. Gotta go.” He stood, stared at Allie. “Allie, I’ve never seen you so contented and happy . . . and vivacious, if I may say so. I think you’ve turned the corner, found closure; and I want to tell you, I’m more convinced than ever we’re onto something earth-shaking. So if you’re willing, I’ll complete the preparations for the next phase, as we’ve discussed—PET, CT, MRI, SPECT, and functional MRI—so we can get going immediately . . . whatever and whoever you dream of. Are you game?”

  Allie and Nancy looked at one another—Nancy with a worried look, Allie with an excited one. Nancy eyed Dressler. “Steve, I’m not going to lie. I’m really concerned about this. I mean, we all know the history of what’s ultimately happened to our family’s dreamers, and . . . and we’ve just experienced something that could have put Allie right there with the others.” She shook her head. “I know this is the dream-science opportunity of a lifetime, but damn it! I’m afraid as all hell for Allie . . . period. And as her mother, going into a program that encourages more dangerous dreams scares the hell out of me.” She glanced at Allie then back at Dressler, sighed. “But Allie’s an adult . . . so I guess I have no say. So. . .” She looked at Allie.

  Allie stared empathetically at her for a moment then spoke. “Thanks, Mom . . . I understand your feelings . . . and I appreciate your concern. And I’m still kinda scared, too. They are dangerous dreams; I can see that . . . and the worst, scariest ones are probably yet to come. But I’m gonna dream anyway, so we might as well advance science in the process . . . no matter what ultimately happens to me. But I still believe the more we learn and the more we understand the dreams, the more controllable my reactions to them will become. I mean, hell’s bells! Is there really any other choice?”

  After a long silence, Nancy shook her head. “Actually, I guess not . . . so consider me onboard. Let’s go for it!” She smiled.

  Allie nodded slowly. “Thanks, Mom. I know I’m gonna need your support . . . Dad’s, too.” She looked at Dressler, smiled. “Guess we’re a go, Doc.”

  Dressler studied her for a moment, nodded. “Sounds good. So—”

  “Oh, Doc.” She sighed. “Is there any way I could get a week off before we start—like to go home to the ranch and R-and-R a bit? Been a long, stressful time. And if I dream—about Emily or anyone else—I’ll do good, comprehensive debriefs.”

  “Absolutely. Great idea. You need it . . . and I need more time to get organized.” He nodded repeatedly. “Good plan.” He then walked to Allie, held her hands in his, stared into her suddenly teary eyes. “Allie, you’re incredible. Can’t wait to get going . . . thanks.”

  Allie felt a surge of warmth through her body and mind, leaned forward, kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Doc. I’ll be ready.”

  Dressler eased away, lingered his gaze on Allie for a moment, nodded, then looked at Nancy, who watched with a slightly suspicious look. “And thank you, Nancy. We couldn’t have gotten through this without you. And I know we’re going to need your help in the future.”

  Nancy said, “Thanks, Doc . . . and good luck. This is the right thing to
do.”

  Allie sat alone on the front porch of the ranch house, sipped coffee, watched the flaming red of the sun’s first glow creep relentlessly like a lazy incoming tide, from the timbered mountaintops in front of her across the dark, blue-black tent of sky above her. She’d stared at the same view her entire life—all times of day and night, all seasons of the year—had never failed to feel her pulse quicken at the raw, naked beauty of it, thank God for the privilege of being there to witness it. She’d always reveled in the solitude of the mountains, imagined herself an Indian or a mountain man, subsumed the residual feelings of awe and exhilaration they’d left behind in the forests and meadows, their harmony with everything around them, their often arcane sense that God himself surrounded them. Wakan Tanka . . . always here . . . in every thing . . . in every creature. She’d always felt his presence, had never had a shadow of doubt he was there, marveled that any honest being could experience the grandeur, the immensity, the feeling of utter insignificance extant in the Rocky Mountains, without believing some higher force, some higher power had set it all in motion, indeed, resided there unseen . . . or perhaps quite visibly if one simply looked in the right places.

  The previous night, the entire family had sat on the porch, under the light of six candle lanterns, sipped a little whiskey, told jokes, listened to Allie tell about her dreams, all the while casting frequent, irresistible glances at the speckled, starry grandeur of the expansive Montana sky. Her father and brothers had turned in early, so they could get an early start for the two-day livestock convention in Billings, but the ladies had lingered until the wee hour of 10:30 p.m. before retiring.

  Allie hadn’t dreamed that night—at least nothing she remembered. So she’d awakened with a stubborn disappointment, a nagging sadness like the aftermath of a deeply emotional book or movie, hanging in her mind and heart like a heavy sandbag. She repeatedly forced herself back to Emily, relived all that had happened to her from the beginning through the end of the dreams—the innocence, joy, excitement; fear, anxiety, trauma; despair, desperation, depression; courage, love, sacrifice; resilience, perseverance. Funny, but now that it’s all over, I feel satisfied, happy, at peace with where Emily is and where I’m headed; though I wonder if the next dream will be the bad one, the debilitating, crushing one that can destroy my life. No, Allie, gotta trust Steve, play it straight; he’ll get you through, and maybe we’ll even figure out how it all works.

  She smiled, felt a sudden surge of excitement about dreaming again, then suddenly visualized Emily’s final dream—of the last little white fawn—the dream that answered all the questions, put everything before it in perspective. Damn it! Can’t believe I keep forgetting to tell Mom about it . . . most important part. Do it now. She stood to go inside but immediately sat again when Nancy walked onto the porch with a small cardboard box in her arms, sat beside Allie, and plopped the box on the small table between them.

  “Mom, I was just coming in to tell you—”

  “Wait! Gotta show you this stuff.”

  “No, listen, that last dream of Emily’s I told you and Steve about—”

  “Seriously, wait a sec, Allie. This is Ian’s stuff my mom gave me when I was a little girl . . . and which, by the way, I’ve only looked at once before . . . very briefly.”

  Allie sat back in her chair. “Oh yeah! Forgot about that . . . we were gonna look at it when I was coming home that time.” She nodded. “Okay, let’s do it . . . but don’t let me forget to tell you about Emily’s last dream.”

  “Got it.” Nancy opened the lid of the box, extracted the letter that sat on top. “Ian wrote this, and it explains her name and where she came from.” She handed the letter to Allie. “Not the neatest penmanship in the world.”

  “Wow. Really old . . . hard to read.”

  Nancy nodded. “Yeah, it is. I don’t know when she wrote it, but it had to be a helluva long time ago . . . like probably when my mom was a little girl. Pretty fragile . . . in fact, now that we know we have it, we oughta make digital copies of it and preserve the original somehow.”

  “Good idea.” She held the letter in front of her, traced her index finger from word to word. “Oh my God. Ian was Lakota. Wow! Ee-hahn-blay Ween-yahn . . . Dream Woman . . . Ee-hahn . . . Ian. Wow.” She looked at her mother. “So that’s where it came from. Wow! Just wow! Dream Woman!”

  Nancy nodded. “Pretty incredible, huh . . . sure fits, doesn’t it?”

  A minute later, Allie looked up at her mother. “Mom, do you know what this tells us about the dreams . . . the Lakota heritage, the tie to Isna and Emily?”

  “I do, Hon; and it gives me chills thinking about it, and . . . oh! My mom stuck a note in here that Ian said we have European blood in our veins from a thousand years ago . . . and again from four hundred years ago.”

  Allie’s eyes were tight beads of concentration staring at empty space; her mind swirled. She mumbled to herself as if oblivious to her mother, “A thousand years ago . . . Tryggvi, his dreaming English girl, Bjarni, Hefnir . . . Vikings . . . like Emily and I dreamed . . . here in North America, L’Anse au Meadows, the St. Lawrence, Niagara, Great Lakes, Ohio River Valley, the Lakota. Holy shit. And four hundred years ago, so . . . so she must have—” She looked at her mother. “Mom, she must have dreamed about Emily”—she shook her head—“and known she was our ancestor . . . and Tryggvi, too . . . and Isna. This is astounding . . . and . . . and Ian being Lakota ties it all together.” Her eyes bloomed with excitement; she again detached her mind, stared vacantly through her mother, recalled the internet passage on the Lakota. “1770 to 1780 . . . Lakota crossed the Missouri onto the plains . . . Dakota, Nebraska, Montana. My God . . . a direct line from Emily and Isna . . . and even the Vikings. Sonofabitch!”

  The two stared silently at one another until Nancy suddenly blinked, twitched as if jabbed by a pin. “Oh! There’s more! Look at this.” She reached into the box, removed a reddish stone Indian pipe that had a four-inch-long stem slightly over an inch in diameter, with a hole in one end for a wooden smoke tube through which the smoke would have been drawn. A three-inch-tall bowl rose from the other end of the stem and widened toward the top, where the tobacco was once stuffed in and lit. Decorative designs had been engraved into both sides of the stem; but the long, hollow, wooden smoke tube had long since been destroyed. “Obviously, it was Ian’s, but the what-and-where of it I’ve no clue of . . . but pretty cool, huh?”

  Allie didn’t reply. Her eyes looked ready to explode. Her mind flew to another dimension, to Isna telling Emily of his vision quest: how his pipe had been offered to each of the four directions, Mother Earth, and the sky, then filled with a pinch of kinnikinnick for each, sealed with animal fat, and after the vision quest, taken to the shaman to be smoked. She reverently took the pipe as if it were a fragile, sacred relic, held it six inches from her eyes, stared at it, lips agape, chest heaving. After thirty seconds, she spoke slowly, softly, her eyes still fixed on the pipe. “I know the what-and-where of it, Mom . . . this”—her eyes filled with tears; she shook her head slowly—“ this is Isna’s pipe . . . his vision pipe. I saw it in Emily’s dreams.” Her tears glistened as she smiled, looked into Nancy’s eyes. “Isna’s pipe, Mom . . . from four hundred years ago . . . the symbol of everything in his vision—his connection with Wakan Tanka; Grizzly, his spirit creature; his destiny; his wife-to-be, his descendants; everything . . . on down to now.” She stared silently, thoughtfully at it, rubbed her fingers along the engraving in the sides, closed her eyes, held it to her cheek. Finally, she sighed, opened her eyes, rubbed them, looked at her mother. “Mom, do we have any pictures of Ian?”

  Nancy smiled, reached into the box, pulled out a wrinkled, faded, black-and-white photograph, handed it to Allie. “How’s this?”

  Allie slowly took the picture, leaned close to it to distinguish the details. Her eyes suddenly blossomed with recognition, then tearful awe. “Mom, Mom! This . . . this is the old woman from Isna’s vision . . . and Emily’s dream. I
saw her. Wait ’til Steve hears this. It’s her, Mom . . . Ian. Right out of the vision . . . the old woman with the pipe . . . this pipe here in my hand, in her hand”—she shook the pipe, pointed at the picture—“and these two black stones around her neck . . . hard to see them, but they were in the vision and dreams, just as in this picture.” She shook her head. “Mom, there ain’t no doubt about it. The dreams are for real, and Ian knew it for sure . . . and now I know it for sure, and I’ll tell you why.”

  “Okay, but what’s this?” She held a closed hand out to Allie, opened it a few inches from her eyes.

  “Ahh!” Allie jerked backward as if afraid then gawked at the black locket in the palm of Nancy’s hand.

  “Allie, what’s wrong?”

  Allie slowly extended her trembling hand, took the locket. “Mom . . . this . . . this is Emily’s locket.” She shuddered. “My God, I’m a giant goose bump.” She slowly took the locket, stared silently at it for a long moment, then whispered to herself, “I’m holding something she held . . . four hundred years ago . . . like Isna and the pipe.” Her voice cracked. “Oh, Mom! Mom!” She shook her head as her eyes again filled with happy tears. “Remember when she found it at the end of the last dream? It was her most precious keepsake. Her mother gave it to her father when he and Emily left England. Oh, Mom. I can’t believe it! Here . . . in my hand. So, watch this.”

  Her mother leaned closer.

  “It has a secret door, and there’s a lock of Emily’s mother’s hair inside. Watch!” She squeezed the sides to make the stem pop out. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing. She glanced anxiously at her mother then used both thumbs to squeeze three more times with increasing force. On the third squeeze, the stem reluctantly extended. Allie quickly twisted it a full counterclockwise turn, half a clockwise turn, then pushed in to open the trap door, but again nothing happened. “Damn it!” She tried twice more without success. “Come on!”