Nevermor (7 page)

They stared at
each other for a few moments in silence, but Wren was not ready to back down
from this.  She heard a short laugh come out from beneath the hood.

“A girl – and
with bite.  Not what I was expecting to call here,” he considered.  “I suppose
it’s good that I can still be surprised after all this time.”

Call?  She
didn’t understand.  As she was preparing to attack that, he pulled back his
hood to scratch his head, thus revealing himself to her.  She could see his
face clearly now, and this did not help her choice to be frustrated with him,
for she hadn’t failed to notice that he was handsome – in an unkempt sort of
way.

His hair was
lightened by the sun, untamed and windblown, cut at several different lengths
and sticking up all over.  There were two streaks of red paint – at least she
perceived it to be paint – trailing from his cheekbone and disappearing
somewhere between his smooth chin and the square of his jaw.  She could
see now that his eyes were blue, set in a tan face, and in his amusement, he
was smiling attractively at her.  It was the coy smile of a boy who recognized
his own seductive power.

There was
something about that grin that made her almost forget who she was.  She
had to try very hard not to smile back.  She was only able to break out of it
when he moved, taking a few leisurely steps across the sand.

“If I’m not
here, then what am I?” she demanded to know, once she had come out of her
trance.  “You said ‘
dreamer
’…”

“This is your
dream self,” he explained, stepping nearer to her so that they were shoulder to
shoulder.  His closeness made her heart speed.  “You made it past the sea
of dreams to find this place, but your body isn’t really here.  You can
see
Nevermor, but you don’t belong in it.”

Nevermor?
  Was that
what this place was called?  She wanted to ask, but the way he was looking at
her face made her hesitate.  He seemed to be caught in his own daze as he
looked at her.  What was he thinking?  Wren stared back into his eyes, and
neither of them spoke until he snapped free of it visibly.

“My home,” he
said, holding out his arms as if to present it to her.  “It’s the place
where dreams go.”

“Dreams,” she
said thoughtfully.  “And what do you use the sword for?”

“To keep away
the nightmares,” he said easily.

Wren thought all
this was very unusual.  She knew she was certainly dreaming now.  Yes, she
was asleep.  There was no other explanation.

“I didn’t expect
to find someone like you,” he mused thoughtfully, pacing across the sand as he
examined her.  “It’s very strange.”

“Who
are
you?” she asked him.  Shouldn’t he have introduced himself by now?

He turned back
to her, frozen for a moment as if that was a forbidden question that she
shouldn’t have asked.

“I don’t have a
name,” he told her.  Wren wasn’t sure why, but she thought he looked a bit
confused by her question.  Was it that difficult?

“Well, they must
call you something,” she insisted.

He hesitated. 
Didn’t he want to tell her his name? 

Perhaps it
doesn’t matter.  This is a dream, after all.  My dream.

“They call me
the Rifter,” he answered finally.  “That’s all.”

The Rifter? 
That’s an odd name… 

“Rifter, then,”
she said, testing it out.  “Why are you out here?”

“I told you I
live here.  Did you forget?”

She sighed in
dismay.  “I mean, why are you out here on the beach?  I heard your music.  I
think I was following it.”

“Oh that,”
Rifter said dismissively, waving it off.  “I’m waiting for someone.  Have been
for a few nights now.”

“It seems rude
of them to keep you waiting.  Who are you waiting for?”  Straight after, she
wondered if she should have been so nosy.

“I don’t know
yet.  Maybe
you
.” He paused, looking her over a moment.  He didn’t seem
convinced.  “But that doesn’t seem likely.”

He had only
insulted her further.  She wasn’t good enough to be the one he was looking
for? 

“In fact,” he
started again, “I’m not really sure
why
you’re here.”

“Am I
unwelcome?”  Rifter looked back into her eyes, and what she saw there was
unreadable.  There was confusion, uncertainty – maybe even a hint of sadness.

“I’ve just never
called a girl before,” he said, as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

I don’t
understand this boy. 

“How can you not
know who you’re waiting for?  And if it was me, wouldn’t you know?”

He gave her a
hard look which made his blue eyes narrow to accusing slits.  “You ask a lot of
questions.”

“I–!  Do not,”
she sputtered, taken aback.

“Yes you do,” he
pointed out, nodding as he realized it himself.  “Everything you’ve said to me
has been a question.”  He looked at her suspiciously.  “I don’t like too many
questions, especially from dreamers.”

He turned away
from her without formally ending their conversation.  Was he just going to
leave her there?

“Wait a minute!”
she called, starting after him, but found that she couldn’t match his pace over
the sand.  He moved over it with impossible ease, and she struggled as it
swallowed her feet.

“Are you going
to ask me more questions?” he asked without turning.

Wren stopped. 
She
had
been about to ask him more about this place, but felt guilty for
it now.  She quickly tried to think of something that wasn’t a question.

“My name is
Wren,” she told him.

He stopped,
turning back to her slowly to peer over his shoulder.  His face twisted and he
looked extremely disapproving of that. 

“That’s an odd
name to have…”

If nothing else
insulted her, this certainly did.

“It’s better
than
Rifter
!” she declared quickly, but then she felt her face grow
hot.  She wasn’t usually one for making personal remarks like that. 

“Is it?”  He
didn’t sound angry, but thoughtful, as if he was just considering that it
wasn’t a very good name.

“I’m sorry,” she
said finally.  “That wasn’t very nice of me.  I shouldn’t have said that.”

His confusion
didn’t let up.  He stared at her as if she was an unknown life-form that had
been discovered under a rock.  She had been taught that it wasn’t polite to
stare.

“You’re
apologizing?”  His eyes were wide, as if she’d just insulted his family name or
something worse – as if he couldn’t believe her gall. 

“That’s what one
does when one says the wrong thing.”  Wren wondered why she was explaining
herself.

He smirked a
little, nodding as he considered their meeting to himself. 

“You’re
different,” he said.  “I’ll have to think about this.”

“Think about
what
?”

“That’s another
question,” he scolded, but he was smiling again, and she was puzzled.

Wren sighed,
feeling so frustrated that she turned her back on him and looked out at the
ocean again.  The sea of dreams?  She had crossed it and now she was here in
this place called Nevermor, except that she wasn’t really here at all.  Her
dream-self was here, and she was only able to look at the world.  She was a
visitor – a
dreamer
.  But if that was so, how could she feel the sand
beneath her feet or the wind on her face?

And what of this
confusing boy?  The Rifter?

“Will you at
least tell me how I can—” She turned to look at him as she spoke, but found
herself coming to a halt.  He was gone. 

She couldn’t
help but look down at his footprints in the sand, trailing away from her.  They
left off abruptly as if he had simply disappeared – as if he had never been
there at all.

“Get home,” she
finished, but she was only talking to the air.

2

As Wren awoke in
her bed at the orphanage, a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder jolted
her, but she was not the only one.  The other children began to stir in their
beds, roused by the tempest outside.  Thunder was grumbling angrily in the
heavens and the wind was urging tree limbs to scratch at the window like a
stray – or a monster from nightmares.  Wren knew that soon, all of them would
be awake, and would probably need consoling.

What a strange
dream…

Wren felt
groggy, unable to sit up for several moments in the wake of the dream, which
had once again been so vivid that it had taken all the energy out of her.  She
still remembered the island and the frustrating, feral boy called Rifter – the
endless water and the sand between her toes.

It seemed so
real.  Could it have been?

No, of course
that wasn’t possible.  She had dreamed it all up of course – the beach, the
shadows, the Rifter…  There was no way that it could have existed except in a
child’s desperate reverie.  She was more mature than that.

Sea of Dreams? 
Wake up, Wren.

She was still in
a bit of a stupor when Max crawled into her bed, frightened by the storm.  She
hushed him instinctively, but she was in a distant world, wondering how she had
found her way to that island beyond the sea, but she could not map out clear
directions. 

In the next bed,
Henry had rolled over, peering at her through the dark.  The flashes of
lightning illuminated his grim features, but he didn’t speak.  Some of the
others were coming out of their beds now, gathering around her to be protected
as if she was their mother hen.

“I’m scared.” 

“I can’t sleep.”

“Can we go to
the closet?” they began to ask.

There was a deep
closet that housed all their coats and shoes, and sometimes they would gather
there when the weather was bad so that they could not hear the wind and
thunder.  They could all huddle together cozily for comfort, and often in the
past, they would get a story or a song if they were good.  Wren looked around
to see that some of the others had not even stirred, but she would not wake
them.

“Get your
pillows and come on,” she said, taking Max by the hand.

Wren consented
that they should go into the closet and instructed some of them to bring candles. 
Once there was light in their hands, they dared to go inside where they sat in
rows on the floor beneath the clothes that brushed the tops of their heads. 
They settled themselves, excited for the adventure of the closet which could
have been called their secret clubhouse.  Wren was in the midst of them with a
lamp, and they had no sooner closed the door than Max turned to her.

“Tell us a
story, Wren,” he requested.  “Please?”

This did not go
ignored by the others, who jumped in immediately to express themselves as well.

“Yes, it’s been
so long since we’ve had a story!”

Wren sighed,
knowing that it was infectious now, but she had made a vow to herself that
there would be no more stories to influence them in negative ways.  No more
talk of the factory and no more nonsense about running away.

“I don’t know
any more stories,” she claimed.  “I’ve told them all to you.  How about I sing
instead?”

“No, no!  You
must make one up!”

“Please!  A
story!”

Wren looked at
their anxious faces, and while she had been able to make excuses for a while,
they had all come together as one against her.  She didn’t think that they
could be appeased otherwise – all wide-awake because of the storm.  They would
continue to be until the storm had passed.

I shouldn’t be
filling their heads with these things anymore, but…

Max was looking
up at her with eagerness in his wide blue eyes, and she found Henry’s face
nearby as well, watching her intently.  Perhaps they needed this, whether or
not it was good for them.  Wren surrendered, and started off on the thing that
was nearest to her mind.

“Somewhere out
there, beyond the sea of dreams, there is an island.  It is the place where
dreams go.  It’s called Nevermor, and if you’re very lucky, you may see it some
night when you are asleep, but it can only be found by flying low over the
ocean and following the music of a reed flute in the distance. 

“On that island,
everything you could possibly imagine, from all your wonderful dreams, can be
seen and realized.  Every day is an adventure, and every day you will discover
something new.”

Wren wasn’t sure
how she knew these things.  She had not seen enough of Nevermor to be able to
make those judgments, but now that she was seeking it, the answers rose to the
top of her mind.

“A boy lives
there, and he is called the Rifter.  He is dressed in leaves and is protected
by a strange glowing light – a fairy, perhaps – but you can’t quite see her
because she moves about so quickly.  There is a sword at his hip which he uses
for battle.  Though Nevermor is a place of dreams, sometimes, there are
nightmares that threaten the world, and he has to fight against them to keep
the island safe.  Nevermor is his world, and he protects it.”