Dream Eater

by K. Bird Lincoln

  “Don’t be block-headed, then. You’re the daughter of a full-blooded Baku, I’m a Kitsune. We’re both of the Kind. I don’t know the extent of your heritage’s expression, but if you’re Herai Ahikito’s daughter, then you have at least tasted people’s dreams. Probably tasted my dreams.” From the grimace accompanying his last sentence, the thought of me dreaming his fragment unsettled us both.

  But Ken wasn’t done with me. His rant continued even as Dad’s head slumped forward, eyes half-closed. “And Hayk may be human, but he’s got something of the Kind about him. You’re definitely not safe. Don’t hide behind ignorance, it only makes you more vulnerable.” The fervor in his voice reached inside my belly, stirring up sensations until I couldn’t distinguish anger from fear in the murky depths.

  “You can’t just ignore this like Herai-san did with anything that threatened to infringe on his precious human life,” he said, settling back against the seat.

  How dare he? He met me yesterday. He has no right to—

  The taxicab drove past my complex’s driveway. I switched to English and got the driver to make a U-turn and paid the fare.

  As the taxi drove off, Ken stood there, one arm around my Dad, and the carefully neutral expression I was learning to hate on his face.

  Willfully obtuse? Block-headed? Who was Mr. Mysterious Kitsune to call me out for being less than open? Like he was so forthcoming. He knew much more about Dad then he was letting on.

  But he wasn’t avoiding it. He wasn’t hiding in an apartment somewhere, trying to pretend everything was normal.

  He was right. Dad and I had skated around this my whole life. If I let any dreams or not-normalness percolate up into my conscious brain, if I acknowledged that I had more than an inkling what Ken meant when he threw out words like Kind and Baku, then I would have to acknowledge the whole package.

  I dreamed other people’s fragments. A talent I got from Dad who was most likely a mythical dream-eating creature. And Hayk had used something other than just words to command my presence in his office. So he was not-normal, too. Not to mention evil.

  I wasn’t prepared to deal with real Evil. Or to imagine Dad’s ramblings were anything other than tangled, plaque-clogged neuron misfires.

  Or to consider what it meant I should do with other people’s fragments. I choked back a sob midway up my throat. I wanted my real Dad back, one without crying spells and a brain filled with cotton, who could tell me what the hell I should do.

  “So,” said Ken, impatient with my silence.

  Dad took my hand, pressing it to his chest. I felt the warmth, the easy familiarity of him; the one person in the world I’d been able to touch. The one person I didn’t have to flinch away from in daylight because of what I dreamed in the dark. Because I never dreamed his fragments.

  Not once.

  Dream eater.

  “Dad,” I said, so tense I could only manage English. Ken blinked in surprise. “Do you dream my dreams, do you…eat them?”

  Dad let out a long breath. “I used to dream the world wyrm’s dreams,” he rasped in Japanese. “I used to dream the lady of light.”

  My shoulders loosened. Not quite the answer I was looking for. This raspy voice only came out during a confused spell. This was the Alzheimer’s speaking, not Dad-the-Baku. The awful fear ratcheted down a notch. A medical problem, not a mystical one.

  “Of course,” I said. Things were never simple. I guided Dad up the stairs.

  “Don’t bury your head in the sand again,” said Ken.

  “Give me some credit,” I snapped back. Dad’s arm was thin and vulnerable under my palm, but he was quiet, as if anticipating the next question. Calm and serious. Not like the irritated fidgets he got during a confused spell. Oh god. It wasn’t dementia. He was serious.

  The only thing more awful than Dad confused by Alzheimer’s would be if all these years he had been trying to tell us the truth.

  The hand gripping Dad’s wrist felt wrong, awkward. A little girl tugging her wiser parent down to a child’s level.

  “Why did you run away? What were you doing in Professor Hayk’s office?”

  “Hayk?” said Dad. His face went slack, the deep shadows under his half-closed lids making him look like a waxen statue of himself. His tongue worked convulsively over his front teeth. I thought of smoked paprika and yellowed linen and the tang of blood.

  “You dreamed the fragments I had last night, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Dad. “I tasted the dragon. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t reach the dreamer.” He was getting more agitated. Ken came up behind us, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady him, but Dad flinched away.

  “You’re in danger. It knows—the dragon’s pawn—knows about you.”

  “Knows about what?”

  Dad’s eyes closed all the way, scrunching up in his face like he was in pain. Tendons stood out on the side of his neck. Every muscle in my father’s body strained to the limit doing…something. I’d seen this before. It was the beginning of one of his particularly bad spells, when the Alzheimer’s fog made him into a different, crazy-talking person.

  Or, was this the real Dad coming out, one he’d hidden from his family for so many years until it became too late?

  “What’s wrong? Dad?” I put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him, his body rigid as stone, with me through the front door. “He needs to sit down.”

  Dad vulnerable like this was too awful. The sight of his hands shaking at his sides made me bite my lip. Those elegant fingers that used to wield a fillet knife like an artist were now splayed out and useless.

  Dad collapsed on the couch.

  Long limbs tightly held together, curling into himself, Dad looked like a dried up husk. His eyes rolled wildly under closed lids.

  “Where have you been?” said a voice. I whirled around to find Marlin stepping out of the bathroom, adjusting her gypsy skirt.

  “Great,” I said. ’Cause Marlin’s deep-seated need to know everything was just what was missing from this family revelation. “What happened to I’m-dying-and-I-can’t-get-up?”

  “I recovered,” she said. “And I forgot to bring Dad’s prescriptions last night.” She nodded to Ken. Her delighted expression made me curl my fingernails into my palms, but her smile abruptly morphed to a frown as her eyes fell on Dad. He had his head buried in his arms and was rocking back and forth, muttering.

  “What did you do to Dad?”

  “Nothing,” I said, feeling the defensive gates come crashing down. “He had one of his spells and went a little walkabout, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” repeated Marlin, scornful. I bit back the impulse to apologize and explain. The less Marlin knew about Hayk, the better. I didn’t want that man anywhere near my family.

  Marlin gave an exasperated sigh. She pushed past me to enfold Dad in her loving embrace.

  “You can’t just leave him alone.”

  “He wasn’t left alone,” said Ken. “I saw him leave. I didn’t know there was any problem. Herai-san acted in a normal manner.”

  Marlin raised an eyebrow at Ken. “So who is this, then?” She turned the full force of Mom’s Pierce glare on me.

  “His name is Ken,” I said.

  Just how was I going to explain this without Marlin jumping to wild conclusions? It wasn’t like I picked up men all the time. Ken was probably the first non-blood relative Marlin had seen in my actual, physical company in years.

  Ken and Marlin stared urgent messages to me, both demanding things I wasn’t capable of giving.

  “He’s going to help me out with Dad’s care.”

  Marlin returned Ken’s formal nod, looking him up and down like he was a bolt of fabric she was choosing for a client’s easy chair.

  Ken did that nostril flaring thing. “You are Koi’s sister?” His eyes went dark with intent. “What do you know of Baku or the Kind, then?”

  Marlin’s mouth froze open in surprise. “I
’m sorry?” she said.

  Right. Time for me to sweep in with damage control. No way could I let her in on the full blown nutsoid happenings of the morning.

  Semblance of normal was what we needed. I was good at that. I’d been faking my entire life. “Ken’s a student in Japanese studies at PCC,” I said. “He’s a little passionate about his work.” I glared meaningfully at Ken, willing him to back me up.

  “Put some of that passion into watching my father and we won’t have a problem,” Marlin said.

  “That is my intention,” said Ken, his tone formal.

  Marlin harrumphed. She ran her hand down Dad’s neck and back, murmuring something in Japanese. After a moment, Dad stopped rocking and settled again on his side, supported by the cushioned sofa arm.

  “Koi,” he said. I came to the couch to kneel next to him. But when I reached for his hand, he pulled it away. “No,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t touch me. The dragon fragments…”

  Stung, I fell back on my knees. Dad’s eyes clouded over, going blurry at the corners. Tension wrinkles appeared at the corners of his mouth.

  “I know your true purpose come here,” he said to Ken. He was speaking English in the slightly broken, uncomfortable way he did when he used to argue with Mom. “I taste the water dragon there, in Koi’s dream fragment. You know what I say?”

  I turned to Marlin, schooling my features to match her expression of indignant surprise. Now we’re in for it. So much for semblance of normal.

  Ken nodded, his expression carefully guarded.

  Dad clenched his hands into fists on top of his thighs. “I’m not…I may not have able to help,” he said. He let his chin fall to his chest, gulping air like something constricted his chest.

  “Dad?” Marlin smoothed a hand over his fist, working it loose with small rubs. Anger made high spots of color in her cheeks, a Pierce on the warpath. “Don’t feed into his delusions. It’s not good for him—”

  “Let me finish, Maru-chan,” said Dad stiffly in Japanese.

  Ken went down on his knees next to me, legs folded underneath in formal seiza posture. “I’m listening, sir,” he said.

  Marlin’s glare could have melted glass.

  “When I left Aomori,” said Dad, focused on Ken, “the Kind rubbed their hands of me, and others who did not only believe full blood ways.”

  Close-lipped, stoic Dad, saying these intimate things in English. For Ken, a stranger. Resentment burned.

  “I did nothing to, to mend that,” continued Dad. “And then I married a human. And then she birthed children.”

  “Human?” Marlin repeated in a choked voice.

  “They know nothing, then,” said Ken, not hiding his disapproval.

  Dad bristled. “Better they living with no knowledge with the humans than living the welcome they’d find with full blood Kind.”

  “Koi experiences other people’s dreams. You left her vulnerable to that with no guidance? No explanation?”

  Dad’s shoulders slumped. “I thought it was…manageable.”

  Manageable?

  I choked back another sob. Or was it a laugh? It tasted like sour persimmon. All those classes I skipped because I couldn’t face the risk of accidentally touching someone. People’s fragments blurring everyone around me. Never being sure if my reactions were my own or caused by another person’s fragment. I thought of how I’d retched over and over again into the toilet when I’d felt Mom’s fragments of dying, and how Lisa’s dreams of her dad made me ache to tear at my skin, as if I could peel shame off in onion layers.

  Manageable.

  “Dad,” I said. Everyone’s eyes swung to me. Marlin furious and Dad’s clouded not with confusion but grief. I swallowed past the obstruction.

  “You’re a Baku.” I said baldly. After everything he’d confessed to Ken, I had no gentleness.

  “Koi, don’t be an idiot,” snapped Marlin.

  “Hear me out. Just hold off trying to smooth things over for just one second.”

  Marlin blanched. My tone too harsh? Whatever. Marlin can suck it up for once. I turned back to Dad.

  “I’m a Baku, too?”

  “Maybe yes,” he said. “What you are, I don’t know for sure. How much of you is from me. How much is Andrea.”

  “All these years…you never thought that might be important information?”

  Dad shook his head. Anger pricked, turning everything in the room sharp and defined, outlined in light. It felt good, far better than the dragging confusion from before.

  “I thought I was a freak! All you had to do was say, ‘Koi, you’re not a psychotic weirdo, you’ve just got a mythological dream-eating elephant for a father.’ Would that have been so hard?”

  “What would your life be if I showing you to the Kind? You have no idea,” said Dad, his English even worse than before.

  “You think so?” I gestured at Ken. “He doesn’t seem so terrible.” I pressed knuckles into the sides of my head. I wanted to growl or yell or punch something.

  “Stop it,” said Marlin.

  “Why not her?”

  Dad shook his head. “It is rare thing for Kind to mate with humans. We keep ourselves to ourselves.” He blinked several times.

  My Dad, tearless even at Mom’s funeral, had moisture gathering in the crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes.

  Anger turned to astonishment. The whole world turned upside down and inside out. I let my hands fall to my sides. “Ha, right,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. Dad had never seemed so vulnerable, so human as right now. My knees gave out. I came down into a sprawling heap next to Ken. His arm snaked under my ponytail, around my shoulders.

  I couldn’t summon the strength to shrug him off.

  Dad’s hands tore at the frayed edge of his plaid shirt. “Andrea? Don’t cry honey,” he said.

  Marlin tightened her grip on his arm. “Dad?”

  He pounded his fists into his thighs again like he could chase the confusion away with pain. “Koi, yes, ah no.” A deep, shuddering breath racked his frame. “I’ve left it too long. It’s too late,” he whispered in Japanese.

  “What’s too late?” cried Marlin.

  Ken made a shushing motion at her. Dad went on in that thin, wavering tone.

  “I call on you, Kitsune, as one Kind to another. I guess your purpose in Portland. But I am without recourse. You must help my daughter. The water dragon can’t have her.”

  “I so swear,” said Ken, slowly, using archaic Japanese that I’d only heard spoken by actors in historical TVJapan dramas.

  Dad answered in the same style. “I will know, Kitsune, whether you honor that promise. I will taste it in the dreaming.”

  Those last words must have cost him, because his eyelids fell closed, rapid movements underneath a sure sign of his agitation despite the bloodless clench of his lips.

  The sudden drumming of a rain shower pelted the roof. Dad folded his limbs more tightly against his body, closing up like a clam at the sound. Marlin tucked the sofa’s hibiscus-patterned quilt, another one of Mom’s, around him.

  I felt Ken settle his weight back on his heels.

  “What have you done?” Marlin tore open the silence. “He’s so exhausted he’s passed out.”

  “You mean what has Dad done,” I said under my breath.

  “You’ve had him for one night and already he’s fallen apart. Why is it so hard for you to take care of this? Why do you act like everything has to stop just for you? Other people have problems.”

  I thought of her harsh words about me abandoning Mom. Was this how she saw me?

  Marlin made an exasperated cluck. “Don’t you shut me out like that, Koi. Say something.”

  I looked at her, so many words crowding along my tongue there was no room for any of them to escape. An awful layer of heat pressed down on me. I wished everyone in the room gone. I needed to be alone, needed to understand what Dad had been saying. What it meant.

  “Fine, then. You can have
your precious solitude. I’ll take Dad. He can stay with me—”

  “No!”

  Marlin flinched. “I’m doing you a favor.”

  “I keep Dad,” I said. I fiercely craved to be alone, but I wasn’t going to give up. That’s what the whole PCC thing meant. Even with all this Kind and Baku craziness. There was no going back now.

  If Marlin took Dad away, it would prove she was right about how pitiful I was, about how I abandoned Mom. Being filleted by Dad’s sushi knives was a preferable fate.

  “He’s not wounded or insane. Just one of his spells,” I said. “You know how he gets.”

  “It wasn’t just him with the crazy talk.”

  Ken shifted off his knees. “Your father has kept from your family an entire history.”

  No way was I going to let Ken mix it up with Marlin. “Okay,” I said. “There’s stuff going on here. Weird stuff.” See how she’d like a dose of her own blunt medicine. “Stuff about how Dad and I dream other people’s dreams.”

  “Koi,” said Marlin, years of avoidance crammed into the word.

  My self-righteous wave of indignation crashed right over the Pierce tradition of keeping unmentionables unmentioned. “And apparently we’re Baku. You know, those creatures that eat bad dreams?”

  “Why are you being like this? I’m trying to help.” Marlin indicated Ken, still sitting quietly beside the couch. “You’ve obviously got a lot on your plate right now, and I just thought I’d…”

  “What?” I said, “Make it all better? Take away poor, overwhelmed Koi’s problems? Smooth everything over so on the surface it’s okay?”

  Marlin blinked, like she was clearing something from her eyes. Like she was trying to clear me from her eyes.

  “Don’t be a bitch,” said Marlin. “As if I could leave Dad here with you when you’re obviously wound up tighter than a hibiscus bud.”

  The rain intensified into a drumming sound. Hail? In a Pacific Northwest spring? The kitchen window’s glass blurred, the whole world drowning outside.

  How could I get Marlin to understand? I didn’t want her to take things over, to be the fixer-upper sister. This was my problem. Dad was my responsibility, now.

  I thought of Hayk’s hungry gaze following me down the hallway as we escaped.