Dorothy’s expression softened. “I’d like to see it sometime.”
The woman told her, “You could build something like it, you know. Not in your dreams. In the world.”
Dorothy gazed at the woman, then gazed out the window, beyond the trees and bushes.
“It could be in Between,” she said.
“This is stupid,” said Leif.
Watching him, Callie asked, “Back at the Music Place, you never answered Jeremy’s question. What’s your gift?”
Leif didn’t answer, so I answered for him.
“You could have been a mathematician. You could have worked with numbers.”
“You mean, like a computer?” asked Callie.
I shook my head. “Computers fumble in the dirt; Leif could write in the air. He could make patterns, discover order—how things function and fit together.”
The woman brought the golden stick to her lips and blew. A different melody came out—intricate as an equation, as strong and flexible as a spiderweb. She had created a melody for Leif.
Lowering the golden stick, she asked him, “Have ideas ever popped into your head? Numbers? Patterns?”
“All the time,” he said. “I wish they would stop.”
“Melodies pop into mine,” she said. “When I see people, I hear music. The melodies have personalities—like you or Dorothy, like Jeremy or Callie.
Callie said, “Jeremy has a melody? Can you play it?”
The woman smiled, then lifted her golden stick and blew. Notes stabbed the air, probing, posing questions and looking for answers. All the questions I had ever asked and more were there—enough for years, for a lifetime. The melody filled me. I could feel myself smile and relax.
When the woman stopped, I said, “Play Callie’s.”
The woman nodded to Callie, and Callie sang. Of course, I already knew the melody, because I had heard it before in a dream on a mountain. The melody didn’t just describe Callie; it was Callie, with all her hopes and possibilities.
Callie finished singing. We sat in silence, pondering what might have been and what still could be. I watched the Council consider their own dreams and the dreams of the City.
“The world can be different,” I said. “We can change. All of us can.”
When I was growing up, I had learned a lesson: never forget about Leif. If you did, he would spring up in the most unexpected places—behind a bush, in a crowd, under your bed. He would have that wild, dangerous grin on his face, the way he was grinning now as he came up behind Callie and gripped her neck.
“Don’t move,” he told us.
27
Jeremy
I moved toward Leif, and he tightened his grip. I watched, helpless, as Callie struggled. Her face was white, her eyes open wide.
Leif’s gaze swept the room. “Jeremy’s gift is asking. Mine is saying no. You’re about to make a mistake, all of you. But I won’t let you.”
Dorothy said, “Leif, don’t do this.”
He shook his head. “You’ve lost your will. I’m in charge now.”
Leif’s anger was a weapon. I had a weapon too.
“Why?” I asked him.
He snorted. “Don’t you ever get tired of questions?”
“What are you going to do, Leif? Hurt Callie? Hurt us all?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”
“Then what? You think the fixers will back you up? What about the Council? What about Dorothy?”
He glanced at her. “She’s weak.”
Dorothy watched him, concerned. “Leif, this isn’t the way we solve problems. We don’t use violence. You know that.”
“Jeremy wants change,” said Leif. “Maybe violence isn’t so bad. Maybe it makes you strong.”
“You don’t believe that,” she told him.
I said, “Think about it, Leif. Can you pull this off? Are you really that good? Are you that smart?”
A drop of sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped it away. His hand was shaking.
“You always were the strongest,” I said. “You don’t need violence. Maybe you need change. There’s strength in that, isn’t there?”
I had grown up with Leif. He’d been my best friend. I knew him as well as I knew myself. He wouldn’t hurt Callie—or would he?
Squeezing harder, he took a step toward the door.
“Aaugh!”
A strange, primitive cry rang out.
Leif looked around. “What was that?”
A black shape loomed in the doorway. Light streamed in behind and around it.
Leif staggered back. He had a familiar, haunted look on his face. It had been years since I’d seen that look, but I knew it at once. At night in the children’s house, he used to have nightmares. He would sweat and squirm and cry out. Sometimes I would go into his dream. The dark figure I saw then was the one bearing down on him today.
The shape advanced. “Aaugh-ee!”
It was everything that Leif, in his longing for control and power, had ever feared—mystery, defeat, death, nothingness. He feared those things today, and he had feared them as a child when he would wake up next to me, screaming the word he screamed now.
“Boogey!”
Leif stumbled and lost his balance. Seizing the opportunity, I lunged forward, grabbed Callie, and yanked her from his grasp. As I did, the shape went hurtling past me, rammed into Leif, and lifted him off his feet.
When I looked back, Leif was being held by his greatest fear: Boogey…or was it Booker?
“How did he get here?” asked Callie.
“He must have followed us,” said the woman.
Off to one side, I noticed Dorothy staring at Booker.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“Booker?” she said. “He was the most remarkable dreambender I ever met, the greatest of his generation. I thought I’d never see him again.”
I studied Booker. His hands were clenched. His dark brow was furrowed, and his mouth worked silently.
“What happened?” I asked. “How did he get…like this?”
“You mean mute?” said Dorothy. “Wordless? He was born that way. Booker was a strange, brilliant child of dreambenders. He couldn’t speak but showed great talent for dreambending. He worked mostly on big dreams.
“Then one day, something awful happened. He came across one of those rare, fragile dreams that are too delicate to bend. He kept trying, and the dream shattered. It went dark.”
“I saw one of those,” I said, remembering the dream that gave off green fog. “What was it? How can a dream go dark?”
Dorothy shook her head sadly. “Once in a great while, as in delicate surgery, a dream is destroyed and the dreamer is damaged. It always seems to be a teenager, at that sensitive age when children become adults.”
“Damaged?” I asked. “How?”
“They lose their ability to dream. Worse than that, they lose their memories—sometimes part, sometimes all. They don’t know who they are. They wander through the City. When that happens, dreambenders hurry to get them and take them to Between, where they’re trained to survive and live out their lives.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “We’re supposed to help people, not hurt them.”
Dorothy shook her head sadly. I could see pain in her expression, along with something else that surprised me. It was shame.
“That’s what happened to Sal and his friends, isn’t it?” I said.
Dorothy nodded. “Remember when I told you I went to the City on a special assignment? It was to get Sal.”
I thought about Sal’s description of Binders and suddenly knew where it had come from.
Callie said, “That’s so sad.”
“Yes, it is,” said Dorothy. “When that kind of damage occurs, it’s awful—not
just for the dreamer but for the dreambender too. In Booker’s case, when he realized what he had done he let out a loud bellow, like the one we just heard. He paced the Meadow, overcome with grief. Then one day, he was gone. He just disappeared. We sent out search parties, but they never found him. We tried to track him through his dreams, but there weren’t any. It was as if he had dropped off the earth.
“Finally we gave up. I always thought he had wandered away and died, maybe killed himself. Legends grew up around him. The children called him Boogey.”
Booker grunted and released Leif. Strong, proud, independent Leif stood there quivering, unable to stop staring at his nightmare.
Dorothy approached Booker and placed her hand on his arm. “Are you all right? Do you understand?”
Booker hesitated, then nodded.
The woman took a cloth from her bag and wiped his forehead. “I was picking berries in Between one day, and Booker came to me, distraught, clearly needing help. I took him home to the Music Place, and he lived there with me. He didn’t talk. For a while I thought he didn’t dream. Then one night I learned differently.
“I fell asleep and had a vivid, detailed dream. It was pictures, all pictures. No one spoke. They didn’t have to. It was Booker, telling his story without words. He showed me the Meadow, the dreambenders, his terrible accident, his escape to Between.”
“That can’t be right,” Dorothy told her. “We adjust dreams. We don’t create them.”
“Booker does.”
“Why didn’t we see his dreams or yours?” asked Dorothy. “We would have found out about the Music Place.”
“He didn’t just create dreams,” said the woman. “He learned how to cloak them. He hid his own dreams and mine, so you wouldn’t find the Music Place.”
Dorothy gazed at him in wonder. Booker, the greatest of his generation, had done things no dreambender had ever done—maybe the kinds of things Dorothy and the watchers had hoped I would do.
Callie said, “Does Booker live with you?”
“Yes,” the woman replied. “I think he finds the Music Place comforting. Every once in a while, though, he lets out that cry.”
Leif caught my eye. His voice was low and flat. “You’re a fool, Jeremy. You ruined everything.”
I shot him a sad smile. “We couldn’t stop you. But your dreams did.”
Turning to Dorothy, I asked, “What happens next?”
“I thought I knew,” she said. “Now I’m not sure.”
“Maybe that’s all right,” I said.
28
Callie
We walked outside, and the watchers followed. Booker walked with Leif. The breeze blew, carrying the scent of roses. Waves lapped against the shore. The sun was brilliant, not yellow but a pure, pure white.
The woman looked out over the water, then turned to me. “I’m old. You’re young. You have the gift.”
“The gift?”
“Music,” she said. “You create melodies. The melodies live. You can sing the world. I can show you how.”
Her gaze was so intense that I had to look away.
“She’s a computer,” said Ching-Li.
The woman smiled. “Break out of the box. Build, don’t bend. Leave people to their dreams. Let Callie sing.”
I thought about the gift—the weight of it, the joy. I could sing every day. I could make music with the woman. I could spin melodies while Eleesha and her friends painted.
Jeremy had asked what would happen next. The answer, it turned out, was simple. The woman closed her eyes, then lifted the stick to her lips and played. I joined in, because I couldn’t help it.
The music drifted over the water, toward the land of Between, which didn’t seem as wild as before. Seeing the trees, I thought of Sal and the expression on his face when he played the sound box.
When we finished, Jeremy asked me, “Is anything wrong?”
“No,” I said. “I just need to do something.”
“Will you just tell me?” said Eleesha, laughing. “Does it have to be a surprise?”
I had found her in the City, painting a building. Leaving Jeremy behind, I had brought her to Between, where I knew Sal would find us. When we arrived, he stepped out from behind a tree.
“Hello,” he said.
Eleesha stopped short. She stared at him, her eyes open wide. Then, grinning, she went running and threw her arms around him.
“Sal!”
“Who are you?” he asked.
Eleesha stepped back, startled. She looked at me.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, “but I realized that when he plays music, he has the same expression you do when you paint. I had to bring you here to see if it was him, but I didn’t want to get your hopes up. So it had to be a surprise.”
“Why doesn’t he recognize me?” asked Eleesha.
“I’ll tell you,” I said, “but first, can we get something to eat? I’m starved.”
Sal took us to the cave, where he gave us roots and berries. We settled on the ground, and Eleesha glanced around as we ate. She seemed nervous, the way City people get when they’re in Between.
I asked her, “You like stories, right?”
She nodded.
“This one is about the Warming,” I said.
“What’s that?” asked Sal.
Eleesha gazed at him in wonder.
I told him, “The Warming was a terrible time. Rain flooded everything. A few lucky people escaped and lived on a boat for years. When the waters receded, they came to the City. A few of them who had special abilities settled in a place called the Meadow and came to be known as Dreambenders.”
“Binders?” said Sal.
“That’s right.”
“Could I meet one?”
I smiled. “You already have.”
Turning back to Eleesha, I went on. “Some of the people studied history and worshiped cemeteries. They lived in the past.”
“That’s us, isn’t it?” said Eleesha. “The City people.”
I nodded. “But the dreambenders were different. They controlled the future, by adjusting people’s dreams. Sometimes, though, they made mistakes and the dreamers were changed. They stopped dreaming. They lost their memories. When that happened, the dreambenders brought them to Between. Stripped of the past, blind to the future, they lived in the present—eating, sleeping, hunting, playing music.”
Sal seemed troubled. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”
Eleesha reached out and took his hand. “You’re my brother. I’m your sister, Eleesha. We’re twins.”
“Twins?” he said.
She smiled. “I’ve missed you. I go to a bench in the cemetery to think of you.”
“What’s a cemetery?” he asked.
“I’ll show you,” said Eleesha. “I can take you home.”
He glanced at me, worried. “This is my home.”
I told Eleesha, “He’s right, you know. He’s different now. This is where he lives.”
“I like it here,” he said.
“Did you bring it?” I asked Eleesha.
She reached inside her jacket, took out a small painting, and handed it to Sal. He gazed at it in wonder. “Did you make this?”
Eleesha nodded. “Do you like it?”
Sal didn’t answer. Instead, he went into the cave and brought out the sound box. Sitting next to Eleesha, he gazed at the painting and played its colors—green, red, a deep blue.
When he finished, Eleesha said, “This is your home. Can I come visit? We could be friends.”
That was when the world changed.
Things are different now. The dreambenders, after years of hiding, showed themselves to the people of the City. At first the people were angry, hardly able to believe what the dreambenders had done. Gradually, though, they came
to understand that the dreambenders, misguided though they had been, were trying to help. In the end, it may have been music that saved us.
The woman showed the people her golden stick. Sal played his sound box. I sang. The people listened, frightened at first but growing to like it. Some sang along. A few disappeared into their homes and brought out instruments, keepsakes that had been passed down and hidden away. The people tried to play them, and a new orchestra was born.
The dreambenders, hesitant at first, opened the Meadow and invited people in. Jeremy’s friends led the way. Gracie gave tours. Hannah served food. Phillip explained dreambender philosophy.
The City dwellers were amazed—first, that such a place existed, hidden away in a far corner; and second, that it was so simple and small. Their dreams and lives had been controlled by just a handful of people, sitting in a field under the stars.
And the dreambenders? They were out of a job. But with the help of Dorothy and Arthur and the woman, they adjusted. There was talk of lessening the pain they had caused by partnering with dreamers to help and heal. We’re not sure yet how this will work, but we have faith that it will.
Jeremy and I see a lot of each other these days. I visit him in the Meadow, and he comes to the City. Sometimes we take a walk and talk about the way it will be.
When we go to Between, we often see Dorothy. She’s building things—a house, a gathering place, an oddly shaped structure that seems to be her favorite. She got rid of her bun and is letting her hair flow down over her shoulders.
The dreambenders aren’t the only ones who have needed to change. For City people, the old world was built on assigned roles that were rigid and inflexible. What will the world be like if we can pick a role and then, if it doesn’t fit, slip into another one? The people are excited to know, but they are also nervous.
No one, in the City or the Meadow, has all the answers. We do have questions. If we run out, Jeremy gives us more. We aren’t always happy, but we are free. Each year, we celebrate it on Freedom Day—not freedom from, as Pam and Juanita remind us, but freedom to.
We are free to roam. The City people, no longer bound by fear, explore Between and come to the Meadow. Dreambenders visit the City.
Dreambender Page 13
