Dreambender

by Kidd, Ronald;

“Are you okay?”

  Turning around, I saw Gracie. Her dark eyes were troubled.

  I tried to smile. “I’m fine.”

  Hannah and Phillip came up behind her. Phillip nodded toward the island. “What happened over there?”

  I started to make something up, then stopped. What was the use? One way or another, they would find out. So I told them, starting with the boat ride and ending with the Council’s ruling. Usually Hannah would laugh and say something funny. Today she wasn’t smiling.

  “There was music? You didn’t follow the Plan?”

  “You should have seen this dream,” I said. “You should have heard it.”

  Phillip shook his head. “I hope it was good.”

  Over his shoulder, I saw Leif watching us from a distance. I tried to read his expression but couldn’t. I wanted to rush over and tell him what had happened. Somehow, though, without knowing how or why, I had a feeling he already knew.

  11

  Jeremy

  I started spending time at the Memory Museum, a small building near the children’s house. When we were little, our caregivers had taken us there to see items that had survived from before the Warming: objects made of metal and plastic, things that floated. I especially loved some old tapestries and paintings that, before the Warming, had been sealed in a church for safekeeping. They showed a world long gone, even from our imaginations.

  The caregivers had explained that dreambenders respected the past but didn’t dwell in it. The important thing for us was the future—envisioning it, planning it, shaping it to be safe for everyone. It was our tapestry, our canvas. And I was shut out of it.

  Fascinated by the old objects in the museum, I took up collecting. I searched the Meadow, looking for things the museum keepers might have missed. Collecting was easier in the daytime, so I shifted my schedule. At first, being awake during the day felt uncomfortable, but I got used to it. Most dreambenders were asleep at that time, so I didn’t have to deal with their questions and stares. I liked that. But there was something else. I began enjoying the sunshine—not just its warmth, but the way it made things jump out at you, clear and distinct.

  One sunny morning, I found three beads hidden in the grass—bright, colorful balls with holes in the middle for stringing. I carried them in my pocket and liked to cradle them in the palm of my hand.

  An oddly shaped object made of plastic was wedged beneath a bush. When I pulled it out, I saw that it was a toy vehicle of some kind. There were front and back wheels, a kind of comb jutting out in front, and a connector at the back, as if the vehicle were designed to pull something. Obviously the toy depicted a machine of some kind. I tried to imagine a kid playing with it, but I couldn’t. I was careful not to show it to anyone.

  I literally stumbled across my best find. I had taken a long walk away from the dreaming field and out to the woods that lined one edge of the Meadow. As I walked, I tripped on something. Part of a rounded metal object was poking up from the ground. I got a stick, dug around it, and finally managed to lift it out of the dirt.

  It was the strangest thing, just big enough to hold in my hands. Two metal tubes were fastened together, with glass at each end. The glass in one cylinder was cracked, but the other was fine. I cleaned the glass, and without knowing why, I raised the tubes to my eyes and gazed through them at a nearby tree.

  “Hey,” I exclaimed. “Hey!”

  I had started talking to myself. I guess that’s what happens when you spend so much time alone. Most of the time I mumbled, but this was different. I was seeing something truly amazing.

  The tree looked tiny and distant. Taking the tubes from my eyes, I checked the tree. It was still just a few yards from me. I looked through the tubes again, checking things—the grass, my feet, a bird. All of them seemed far away.

  I turned the tubes around and looked through the other end. The tree was right on top of me, wonderful in its detail. I could see every ridge in the bark, every leaf on the branches. A worm inched its way across one of the leaves. The worm was green with red spots. It stopped and munched on the edge of the leaf.

  “Hello, little guy,” I said.

  As I studied the worm, I wondered what I’d be able to see when things were far away.

  Holding the tubes carefully, I climbed to the top of Looking Hill. Bringing the tubes up to my eyes, I gazed back toward the dreaming field. A mower was working there, keeping the field neat and preparing it for the evening session. He was so close that I seemed to be floating in the air just over his shoulder.

  I called and waved. “Hello!” He didn’t hear me.

  Swinging the tubes sideways, I shifted my view to the river and the island. The cottage was nearby, almost close enough to touch. Smoke drifted from the chimney, all that was left of yesterday’s Plan.

  When Leif and I used to climb Looking Hill, we had gazed at the forests of Between. I remembered something he had told me one day.

  “Between what?” he had said.

  “Huh?”

  “What do you think it means? If it’s Between, there’s something on each side, right?”

  For some reason that had made me uncomfortable. I said, “I’m the one who’s supposed to ask questions.”

  “Let’s say we’re on one side. What’s on the other?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Think,” he said.

  “All I know is the Meadow,” I told him. “Plus what I see in dreams.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “What do you see in dreams?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “The City.”

  He grinned. I asked him why, but he never told me. Now I thought of it again and wondered what he had meant. Leif always seemed to know things the rest of us didn’t. I wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did. Maybe he learned things from the fixers he liked to spend time with. It set him apart from the rest of us and gave him a kind of power.

  Thinking of Leif’s questions, I turned away from the Meadow and, using the tubes, looked out over the woods toward the empty horizon.

  “Something’s there,” I murmured.

  A faint shape appeared, shimmering like a ghost. It was tall and thin, a tower of some kind. As my eyes adjusted, more towers materialized behind it. There was a whole row of them, wispy as webs, the color of the sky. I lowered the tubes. The towers disappeared, leaving the horizon empty once again.

  I had seen those towers before, but not from this angle. In fact, they were as familiar as the streets and faces of the dreamscape, because they were part of it. They were always there, a constant backdrop.

  I said, “They’re in the City! The City’s on the other side of Between.”

  A thought came right behind it.

  “I can go there.”

  As quickly as it came, a question followed.

  “Why?”

  It was just one word—simple, honest, the question beneath all my questions. I lowered the tubes, and the singer’s face floated in front of me. Her eyes sparkled and her hair shone.

  What would it be like to see her in person? We didn’t need to have any contact. I wouldn’t meet her or speak with her. I just wanted to watch her and know she was real.

  But it was more than the singer. I wanted to meet the people whose dreams we bent. I wanted to see the place where they lived—not in the dreamscape but in real life. I wanted to think about why we changed their dreams and what kind of world we were shaping. Going there was against every rule I’d ever learned. If I got caught, my life as a dreambender would be over.

  A feeling rose up inside me like a thick, hot liquid. It bubbled up and overflowed, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was dangerous. It was stupid. But I had no choice.

  “I’m going to the City,” I said.

  12

  Jeremy

 
To reach the City, I would have to go through the land of Between. It was a strange thought. No one went to Between.

  Between was wild. Between was at the edge of the Meadow. My friends and I didn’t know much more than that. We had all seen it—trees and vegetation, forming a wall beside the open spaces. In the Meadow we didn’t like walls, so we stayed away.

  Anyway, if you were a dreambender, why would you want to go there? The waking world, no matter how wild, seemed boring next to the dreamscape. All the excitement was inside your head. You loved the Meadow because it was calm and quiet, the perfect backdrop for dreams. Why venture beyond it? Why explore? Why take chances? Why ask questions unless you were me?

  How big was Between? I thought about that a lot. Finally I decided it must be just wide enough for dreambenders to cross when they had to—two days’ walk? Three days? Dorothy must have crossed it once when she made her mysterious trip to the City, and if she had done it, I certainly could.

  Being on a different schedule from my friends made it easy for me to slip away. The next morning, after they had returned from the dreaming field and gone to bed, I took the metal tubes, put some food and clothes in a backpack, and set out. I poked around the bushes for a few minutes as if I were collecting. Then, checking to make sure no one was watching, I entered the woods and the land of Between.

  It seemed to be a relatively flat area, crowded with trees and a few small streams. There were so many trees, in fact, that it was hard to get a sense of the place. Entering Between was like going inside a room. I was used to open spaces and the sky; suddenly there were walls and a ceiling—tree trunks and branches—and I couldn’t see the sun. I had met people who hated small spaces and I had never understood it, but just for a second I knew how they felt.

  The trees closed in on me. Thinking of the singer, I shook my head, took a deep breath, and plowed ahead.

  I had expected a path, but of course there wasn’t one because so few people went there. Progress was slow as I made my way among the trees. I looked up through the branches, checked the position of the sun, and used it to move in the right direction.

  Every once in a while, I’d hear a branch rustle or a twig break. I would halt, my heart racing, only to see a squirrel or a bird. Mostly I saw trees. I had never known there were so many of them.

  I stopped for lunch and then dinner, if you could call them that. It was cheese and pretzels, the only food I’d been able to grab on my way out of the Meadow. After dinner, when the sun went down, I curled up beneath a tree and slept.

  I woke up during the night. For a moment I didn’t realize where I was and got scared. Then I saw the stars twinkling between the branches. Dreambenders love stars. They’re the canvas we paint on. Somewhere beyond the trees, people were sitting in the dreaming field, looking at those same stars. Somehow that thought made me feel better.

  I woke up the next morning and plunged back into Between. I grew to hate the shade. I would gaze up, searching for the sun. It was a moving target. I began to wonder if I had changed direction. Once or twice, I saw things I was sure I’d seen before. But who could tell? It was trees, all trees.

  I’d been hoping to use the tubes to find the way, but branches blocked my view. I was in a small, restricted world, where everything in sight was close enough to touch.

  I ran out of food the morning of the third day. “Nice going, Jeremy,” I said, munching on the last pretzel. “Way to plan ahead.”

  What if the walk across Between took ten days, or twenty? What if I was going in circles? By that afternoon I was scared. By the evening, fear had given way to hunger. I tried to think about the singer, but I found myself imagining griddle cakes and pumpkin pie.

  That night, my dreams of food were interrupted by a noise, and I woke up.

  “Who’s there?” I called out.

  I heard another noise. Panicked, I jumped to my feet and ran. I must have gotten turned around, because when I stopped, I didn’t know where I was. My sense of direction was gone, and so was my backpack. The next morning I used the sunlight to look for the pack. By noon I had given up.

  That’s when I saw it.

  It was a footprint—just one. I thought it might be from a dreambender, then noticed that the foot was bare. I found another print, and another, of different sizes. Checking the surrounding area, I stumbled across a cave. There were no people inside, but there was something even better.

  “Food!”

  I realized I had yelled the word, but I didn’t care. The food was separated into several piles: berries, roots, flowers. They weren’t the kinds of things I usually ate, but that didn’t stop me. I grabbed berries by the handful and stuffed them into my mouth. When those were gone, I tried the roots. I even ate some flowers. The tastes were strange, but they were delicious.

  “Hey!” someone yelled.

  Before I could turn around, he had jumped on my back. I tried to throw him off, but he held on tight. I had never been very strong, and without food I was even weaker. After a while I stopped struggling. He slid off my back and pushed me against the cave wall.

  He was a boy my age with a dark face made darker by smudges of dirt. He wore ragged clothing and no shoes. His hair stuck out in all directions like the rays of the sun. Beneath it, his eyes gleamed.

  “You stole our food!” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, feeling terrible. “I was hungry.”

  “Get your own food.”

  “How?” I asked.

  He stared at me. “Gather it. Pick it. Kill it and cook it.”

  “Kill it?”

  “You know—squirrels, rabbits.”

  “You eat rabbits?” I tried to imagine it.

  He studied my face and clothes. “Who are you?”

  “Jeremy.”

  “You don’t live here.”

  “I live…at the edge of the woods.” I pointed in the direction I’d come from. “That way.”

  Then I pointed in the opposite direction. “No, that way.” I shrugged. “I might be lost.”

  “Are you from the City?” he asked.

  I perked up. “Do you know where it is? I need to find it.”

  The boy gazed at me for a moment, then said, “Let’s go to the rock.”

  He started toward the mouth of the cave, and I followed. Then he glanced back at the food. He leaned down, picked a couple of good roots from the pile, and handed them to me.

  I hesitated. “But that’s your food.”

  He nodded. “Mine to give.”

  The rock, big and flat, was on top of a hill near the cave. We sat on the edge of it with our feet dangling over the side. The sun shone on my face. After days of shade, it felt good.

  I munched on the roots. “What’s your name?”

  “Sal.”

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s where we live,” he said. “Me and my friends.”

  I thought of the other footprints and wondered how many friends he had.

  Sal looked off toward the horizon. “You asked about the City? It’s over there.”

  I followed his gaze. “I don’t see it.”

  “Behind those big trees. We don’t go there.”

  I said, “Have you ever wondered about the people in the City?”

  “I’ve heard about them,” he said. “They do lots of things. They’re always busy. They think they’re in charge, but they’re not.”

  He watched me closely to see how I’d react.

  I said, “If they aren’t in charge, who is?”

  “Promise you won’t tell?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Binders,” he said.

  The word sounded strange but familiar. I tried to think of where I’d heard it. For a moment I couldn’t figure it out, and then I smiled. I hadn’t just heard it; I had lived it. A Binder wa
s a dreambender.

  I tried not to show my surprise. “Who are they?”

  “Wizards. Their faces are like flames. Their fingers are blades. They live in the clouds. When people do something wrong, the Binders reach down and fix it.”

  “Where did you hear this?” I asked.

  He looked away. “It’s a story. Someone told me. I don’t remember who.”

  “Aren’t you scared of them? These…Binders?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you ever worry about them?” I said. “Do you ever dream about them?”

  “What’s a dream?” he asked.

  13

  Jeremy

  Sal’s friends appeared that evening with more roots, berries, and flowers. They stared when they saw me, but Sal told them I was okay. After days of thrashing around in the woods, I felt good hearing him say it.

  His friends put their food in the cave, then each took enough to eat and we sat around a fire that Sal had built. One of his friends had killed a rabbit. Sal put it on a stick and cooked it over the fire, then cut it into pieces with a knife and handed a piece to everybody, including me. I ate it, and it tasted good.

  Sal liked visitors. That’s what he told me. He used to live alone, then the others came, and pretty soon they changed from visitors into friends. They were a strange, mixed-up bunch.

  There was a brother and sister named Zack and Deb, who except for Sal were the only ones who ever seemed to talk. There was a boy with one leg who walked using a crutch. One girl had a skinny dog, and the last girl must have been seven feet tall, with black, black hair and a white, white face.

  As I watched them sit around the fire and eat, I thought about what Sal had told me. I turned to Deb, who was next to me. “Do you dream?”

  She cocked her head. “Do I what?”

  “Dream. You know—see stories and pictures when you’re sleeping. They seem like real life until you wake up.”

  I looked around the circle. Their faces were blank. They had no idea what I was talking about.

  “Pictures when you sleep?” said Deb. “That would be nice.”