Dreamwalker

by J. A. Culican

  I didn’t have long to think as another monster walked toward her.

  My father approached from behind the monster with a shovel. He swung, and the monster grabbed the shovel and forced my father back.

  I had to help them. I grabbed my gear and ran from the barn toward them. I stopped within a range where I knew my shot had a chance. I readied myself and shot an arrow that narrowly missed. How could I have missed? Panic rattled me.

  “Run.” My mother yelled toward me as my father waved me away. There was no way I’d have left them.

  I pulled another arrow out and pushed all the negative thoughts away. I needed this one to make contact. I held myself as still as I could. Exhaling, I let another arrow fly. I managed to hit the monster in the thigh. I shot again, this time hitting him in the chest. He fell to the ground.

  I ran toward the house and yelled. “Get in.”

  Damour swung the door open for us, and we all collapsed on the floor as we fell in. Damour barricaded the door shut behind us.

  “You shouldn’t have come here.” My mother winced as she tried to sit up.

  Her voice faded into the background as the scrapes and bruises those brutes put on her became my focus.

  “We need her here,” Denny, who had taken up at the window as a guard, said. “There’s too many.”

  I walked over to him and peeked out. He was right. More monsters had arrived and gathered on the lawn in front of the house.

  “They aren’t coming any closer,” I observed as I looked back at my family.

  “Are we all here?” Vinsha’s hand shook as she placed some cups on the table.

  I did a quick head count. Mother, Father, Damour, Vinsha, Denny.... Gavin?

  “Gavin. Where is Gavin?” My head swung from side to side. It didn’t take long to search the small home and realize—he was out there.

  “I’ll go.” Denny stood and grabbed the spear my father kept for protecting the farm. “Aria, back me up from the window.”

  “No, I’ll go.” I bolted toward the door, but Damour stopped me.

  “Denny will go.”

  I couldn’t respond. Shock had set in. All I could do was watch as Denny walked to the door.

  Damour gave me a slight push toward the window.

  I stood back as Mother kissed her son before he left to find Gavin.

  “We should distract them somehow so that you can get out.” The words suddenly came to me as a rush of adrenaline filled my veins.

  A thunderous growl from outside rumbled our insides. Damour was the first to the window and I was second.

  I skimmed the lawn, and it wasn’t long until my eyes fell upon the ur’gel that had cornered me in town. With each thunderous pound of his feet, the other monsters stepped back as their leader rallied them. They huddled around him.

  “What’s happening?” Mother sat in her chair, weak from her injuries.

  “I’m not sure.” I hid a tear as I turned back to gather as much information as I could.

  All we could do was watch them and try to figure out what the leader was telling them. After a few moments, they cheered and raised their weapons. Almost in a victory walk. That was when we saw why.

  The lead monster walked away from his pack, toward the house, holding up Gavin by his neck. Gavin’s face turned purple as his body swung back and forth in the monster’s grip.

  The door swung open, and Denny ran out before any of us could stop him. He yelled at the monster with the spear in his hand. The other monsters surrounded him before he could even reach their leader. They gathered around Denny and struck him over and over with their spears.

  My body froze. My heart told me to run out there and fight, but my head knew it would be a death mission. There was no way I would survive. It felt wrong standing here while Denny was out there alone. My heart ached, and I realized I wasn’t a good warrior.

  Gavin cried out to him, but he was gone.

  My mother let out a loud, agonizing scream in a voice I’d never heard before. I realized this would be one of those moments where you remembered everything. The way the sun shone through the curtains, the pattern of dust on the mantel, what your family looked like in tragedy.

  Damour held onto Vinsha as she sobbed into his chest.

  My father fell to his knees and stared off into the distance, quiet as a mouse. Tears teased his lashes, then fell unforgivably.

  The house was silent except for the sobbing of its inhabitants. My eyes drifted from one family member to another. My heart couldn’t take any more.

  I gathered my strength, and my weakened body rose to the window. I needed to see Gavin, to see that he was still alive.

  The monster leader stood closest to the door. He waited for us to make another mistake, to come out and fight them. He laid a frightened Gavin on the ground and surrounded him with the strongest ur’gel, somehow protecting him from us.

  The leader stomped his foot on the ground, and the others stepped closer to him but kept a good foot behind him.

  My stomach fluttered as my hands seemed numb.

  He stopped as our eyes met through the window. Time seemed to stand still, our eyes locked, neither of us wanting to break eye contact first as if this was a game. I blinked stupidly, and he won. In that blink, he had time to throw his spear, which landed close to my head by the window frame. He could have easily made me the target.

  I pushed myself to the ground and looked around the room. The others were preoccupied and missed my near-death encounter.

  “Aria, stay down.” Damour waved his hands toward me. “No one else dies here.”

  I nodded in agreement, but neither of us knew what the future held. And we were outnumbered.

  “They’re standing their ground.” I turned toward Mother, who sat beside Vinsha. She sobbed into her hands as Vinsha rubbed her back.

  I had never felt so hopeless in my life.

  My father was on his knees and paid no attention to anyone. He seemed in his own world as he stared at the floor. For the first time, I saw him as older, physically and mentally not able to help us fight. It would be up to Damour and me to keep everyone safe. No, Damour had a baby on the way. I would need to be the sacrifice. If I could keep the monsters at bay, they may be able to sneak out the back.

  “No.” Damour’s hand rubbed my arm, and it was as if he could read my mind.

  I nodded for him to follow me away from everyone, and he obeyed. Out of earshot, we could discuss a plan.

  “We need to get them out. And you need to live to meet your child.” The muscles in my hands clenched from my nerves. I leaned over the table to flatten them out and ease the pain.

  “We all get out.” He nudged me away from the window to peek out. As soon, as his head popped up, an arrow slammed through the glass, and the window shattered into pieces.

  “You’re bleeding.” I grabbed his face in my hands to examine the glass that had cut his skin.

  “I’ll live.” He fell back against the wall. His hands shook as he placed them on his face to feel the damage.

  “You have some glass embedded, but it doesn’t look serious. Can you see?” I checked him over for major wounds.

  “I’m fine.” He turned his head in the direction of Vinsha and sent a wink her way.She missed his sweet gesture as she held the bottom of her belly and knelt on the floor.

  “Oh.” Vinsha moaned as she sat back on the floor. “I’ve been having pains.” She rubbed her belly. “I didn’t want to say anything, but they are getting worse.”

  “Are you in labor?” How could this get any worse?

  Another arrow shot through the door and just missed the top of Momma’s head.

  “Get them to the bedroom.” I motioned my arms toward the room as if that would get them there quicker.

  My father returned to us from whatever trance he’d been in and crawled on the floor with Mama and Vinsha to the back bedroom.

  “It’s her first. She needs to relax, and the cramping will go away.” I grabb
ed my arrows and prepared for the plan we didn’t have.

  “You know this as a healer?”

  I didn’t bother to answer him. I didn’t know that, but I needed him to remain calm. I kept my focus on my arrows and, out of the corner of my eye, watched as he nodded his head beside me.

  “So, what do we do? They must want something.” He grabbed some arrows from the floor and helped me organize them in my basket so they would be within easy reach when needed.

  “I can’t think of anything of value we would have.” My thoughts clouded with images of Gavin out there alone.

  I tapped Damour on the shoulder as I pointed toward the window. I lifted my head up to the side of the window to get eyes on Gavin. Instead, I almost lost my balance as the lead monster stood a few feet away from the window and locked eyes with me. I dropped to the floor. My eyes widened as I made eye contact with Damour. My finger went to my lips as I signaled for him to stay quiet. He nodded in acknowledgment.

  “The boy is safe,” the monster shouted at me through the window.

  My head felt light, and my shoulders tensed as the beast communicated.

  “What do you want?” I cringed as I waited for more arrows to fly through the walls, but there was just silence.

  “The little dreamwalker,” the monster replied.

  “Dreamwalker?” Damour mouthed to me.

  I let out a big sigh. There was no time to explain to Damour. This monster and Mother Ofburg had it all wrong. I wasn’t a dreamwalker. I’d have known it long before now if I was.

  “There is no dreamwalker here,” I shouted back. Damour and I curled into little balls as we expected to be bombarded by arrows.

  I caught something from the corner of my eye. I glanced back to the bedroom as our mother walked out in a stupor, her eyes glazed over, and she stood in plain sight through the window for the monster. Damour and I waved our hands frantically, telling her to get back into the bedroom. My father pulled back the curtain and crouched on the ground as he called her back.

  “You are the dreamwalker they seek.” The words came from my mother, but it wasn’t her voice. Her arm rose as her finger pointed toward me.

  “The boy will be safe,” the monster spoke.

  Damour lifted himself and looked out of the window.

  “They are taking Gavin,” Damour said.

  The pit of my stomach rumbled. I stood to face the monster, to yell and scream at him for hurting my family. However, meeting him face to face silenced me.

  “Bring Beru to me, and I will set this boy free.” The monster turned to leave with his horde.

  Smoke hung heavy around us as we burned Denny’s body. We owed him a warrior’s burial, but it wasn’t according to ritual, considering our fear the ur’gel would return at any moment. Damour and I said our goodbyes to our brother and sent him on his next journey. We let Mother rest and Father and Vinsha stayed with her at the house. Her contractions had stopped once the monsters had left.

  “He died fearlessly.” Damour stood close to the fire as he made his offering. “I couldn’t have done what he did.”

  “Me either,” I admitted my fault. “But you have a child and wife. A family of your own.”

  We stood and gazed into the flames together, arms linked. A member of our tribe gone, lost in battle.

  “It’s not over. We have to get Gavin back.”

  “We’ll find a way.” Noble would know what to do. He would come into battle if I asked him. “From now on, we only plan day-to-day.”

  “I’ll move back into the house with Vinsha.”

  “Vinsha and farm life?” I laughed out loud. I loved my sister-in-law, but she would not do well on a farm.

  Damour smiled. It was a minute of peace in our hour of sorrow.

  “She would surprise you.” Damour still had a smile on his lips. It disappeared when he turned back to the fire.

  “He ran this farm for Mother and Father. Are you sure you want to do that?” He had never wanted just to be a farmer. He wanted more and had found success in starting his own business.

  “It’s sometimes not about what you want, but what you need to do.”

  “I get that.” No matter how many arrows had missed their target, I was a fighter.

  Damour pulled up two log stumps, and we sat by the fire. I flicked a tear from my cheek. Today would be the last day I had hugged Denny.

  We both stayed in silence. We wouldn’t move till it burned dry. Then we would know Denny had moved on to his next life.

  “I still think of him.” Damour placed a gift of a flower to the fire.

  “Harov?”

  “They were alike, fearless.” Sorrow swelled in his voice, in that he wanted to be like them. Damour had never been a fighter. He wouldn’t know what to do with a spear or how to shoot an arrow.

  “They’re very courageous.” I thought of them as little children. How stupidly fearless they were. The time they jumped from one tree to another, narrowly escaping a terrible fall.

  “Sometimes dumb.”

  “Harov is still here.”

  “Is he?”

  I nodded and returned my focus to the fire. Harov had chosen not to be around us. To Damour he was dead, but I understood his need to be someone else.

  I didn’t cry much. The last time was when Gavin had his accident. He cheated death that day, but he would never be the same. But different didn’t have to mean bad. He was more cautious now and, in some ways, a better man.

  A figure appeared from the direction of the house as it walked toward us.

  “Is there room for one more?” Vinsha asked as she neared.

  “There’s always room for you.” I smiled as I reached for her hand. She had never been through something as traumatic as the last twenty-four hours. Only new to our family for two years, she didn’t have a deep connection to our past, but we could feel her love.

  “Your parents are sleeping. Mother stopped crying about an hour ago.”

  My heart twinged at the thought of Mother and her pain. First her parents, who had left on a journey, never to be seen again. Then her youngest brother to illness. Now one of her sons. And Gavin? I wouldn’t let that happen.

  The sight of him as he swung by the neck hadn’t left me. His eyes as they’d met mine and the fear they’d held. I’d do anything in my power to get him back.

  “I think they want me.” I didn’t bother to look up for their reactions, but my head reeled as it hit me. “They followed me here.” It made sense.

  “This is not your fault.” Damour reached for my arm, but I leaned away from him.

  “He followed me here, and I don’t even know how I got here. One moment I’m in town, ready to die, then the next I’m on the farm.” My eyes grew wide, and my body became enraged at the possibility I had brought this all on.

  “Even if they followed you here, you didn’t bring them here,” Vinsha said, trying to make me feel better.

  “They want me.”

  “Okay, so what if they do. Why?” Damour tried to play devil’s advocate.

  “I don’t know.” As the flames began to die down, so did the rage I had.

  “Who is the dreamwalker that the ur’gel had spoken of?” Vinsha asked.

  Damour and I glanced at each other. Neither of us wanted to explain.

  Vinsha had been sheltered by her well-to-do parents. She knew nothing of the evil creatures in her own world, and my brother wanted to keep it that way.

  “Dreamwalkers are able to connect with people through dreams. They can make themselves known or not.” I stopped there as most of what I knew about dreamwalking wasn’t very good.

  “I know of one,” Damour added, and his mouth frowned.

  “Where?” I asked before he shut down.

  “I don’t know if they are still there. It’s such a long time ago,” Damour rebutted.

  “Where?”

  “He’s far away. In the Western March.” Damour took a deep breath.

  The Western March had bee
n a vast territory populated by the D'ahvol. They'd been outcasted by the humans and elves who had created them. With nowhere else to go, they had taken the lands that were least desirable. Low hills, rocky terrain, and wide plains. It was where plain cats, lions, forest cats, and tigers had run wild for years.

  “They took him to get to me.” I was desperate for them to believe me. Damour had to tell me the name of the dreamwalker he knew of. “I have to know more about dreamwalking.”

  “It’s too dangerous.” Damour turned to me and placed his hand on my knee.

  “It’s the only way I can get him back. I have to do this.” My eyes stung with tears that had built up and begun to roll down my cheeks. It was my time to be a warrior and save Gavin.

  “I can’t.” Damour turned back to the fire as his hand stroked the side of his face, conflicted and likely thinking he would be handing me a death sentence by saying anything more.

  “You have to.” Vinsha leaned over to him and took his hands in hers. She was more solid than I gave her credit for.

  “I’m not even sure he will talk to you about it.” Damour stood. “It’s a tricky business. He has lost family to dreamwalking.”

  There would be dangers. I remembered the stories I had heard my father tell us as children. But they were fables mixed with reality, and I wasn’t sure where that line stopped.

  “I can only try.” I gestured and stood beside Damour. “Please tell me what you know.”

  Damour walked past me as he paced back and forth. I had decided to let him breathe before I pressured him again. After a few moments, he stopped in front of the fire, opposite us, his eyebrows low and his mouth squished up in thought.

  “I’ll give you a map. I can’t take you. I need to stay here,” Damour compromised.

  “I will seek a companion to join me on the journey.” I hoped to convince Noble to come with me. I trusted him most and had seen him in battle. I’d be lucky to have a mentorship under him.

  Damour nodded as he paced back and forth.

  Vinsha offered me a weak smile. With her face pale, her body trembled even next to the fire. It appeared her contractions had started again. She smiled to herself when Damour said he would not be leaving.