Tapping the Dream Tree (23 page)

I nod.

“Well, make sure you follow her instructions exactly,” she says. “You don't want to annoy a goodwife.”

I remember Granny Weather's bloodthirsty comment on what she'd do to the bogles and Jeck's brothers, and find myself wishing I'd let well enough alone when the bogle first showed up in my bedroom. I should have listened to Jeck. Because if I screw this up…

“But I'm sure you'll do fine,” Kerry says as she deposits two small paper bags on the counter. “After all, you—”

“Have faerie blood,” I say, finishing it for her.

She smiles. “Exactly.”

I wish I was as confident.

I pay for my purchases. “One last question,” I say before I leave. “Do you have any tips on traveling between the dreamlands?”

“Be very clear about where it is you want to go,” she says, “or you could end up anywhere.”

That wasn't quite what I was hoping for.

“I was thinking more
how
to do it,” I tell her.

She turns away and rummages in one of the drawers that line the wall beside her worktable. When she returns to the front counter, she places a piece of twine with a knot in it on the glass.

“Find a place in between,” she says. “Do you know what I mean by that?”

I nod.

“Once you're there, keep your destination clearly in mind and untie the knot. I'm afraid it's only a one-way traveling knot. Return ones are very hard to find and much more expensive.”

“That's okay,” I tell her as I pay for it. “I've got somebody there to bring me back.”

If we survive. If I don't screw up Granny Weather's preparations. If, if, if. I hate fairy-tale dreams.

Once I have the first loaf ready to go in the oven, I find myself stalling. What memory do I want to lose? None, of course. The better question would be, which one am I willing to lose?

I know now that it's got to be a good one. Something of significance—to me at least—or it wouldn't be a sacrifice. That's the trouble with this sort of magic, you always have to pay for it and what you pay is never something normal like putting down a few dollars and change in a store.

I stare out the kitchen window. It looks out over the backyard and from my second-floor vantage I can see almost all the way down the block, a narrow quilt of backyards. A big orange cat is crying outside of Mrs. Rowling's back door, trying to scrounge a meal. Mr. Potter is weeding his garden again—like a weed would dare make an appearance among his flowers and vegetables.

Sighing, I look back at the little piece of paper on the table in front of me. I write down on it:

The first time I sold a painting.

Then I get up and put the loaf in the oven. I think about that day, how amazing it was. I got a hundred dollars and I felt like a millionaire. Not so much because of the money, I suppose, as that it validated this crazy idea of making my living as an artist.

I start to feel a little nauseous and I sniff at the air, figuring it's the ball of mouse hair, hidden away inside the dough, but all I can smell is baking bread. The queasiness won't go away until finally the timer on the stove goes off. I pull the baking pan out and all I've got is a black lump of a burnt loaf to show for my efforts.

I check the time in case I somehow lost track, but only an hour has passed—not nearly enough time to reduce the loaf to this. And how come I didn't even smell it burning?

Not a powerful enough memory, I decide.

After another trip to Kerry's Cauldron for more mouse hair, I try it again.

Think of something good, I tell myself. Jeck's life is at stake here.

Jeck.

I hesitate for a long moment, then write down on the paper:

The first time Jeck and I made love.

I hate this.

But then it gets worse. Where the first time I felt a little queasy, this time a stomach cramp knocks me off my chair. One moment I'm reveling in the memory of that day in the barn, the smell of the hay, that first touch, our breath mingling, the amazing intimacy I'm finding in this handsome stranger that Jeck is at the time, and the next I'm lying curled up on the floor in a fetal position ready to die, alternately burning and freezing from hot and cold flashes. In moments I'm drenched in sweat, my pulse drumming so fast I feel like my heart's going to pop out of my chest.

I feel like I'm going to faint, but that would be too easy, I guess. Instead I spend an eternity wracked with pain. When the cramps finally fade enough so that I can sit up, it's to find that it's only been ten minutes or so. I get to my feet on wobbly legs, wait for the spinning to subside, then stagger into the living room where I collapse on the couch. Drifting in and out of a daze, I almost don't hear the timer when it goes off.

The loaf is perfect and smells like heaven, never mind that there's a ball of wadded up mouse hair in the middle of it. I set it down on the counter to cool, then look at the paper I'd written my memory prompter on. I guess I was expecting to come up blank when I read the line, but the memory's still there. It just has no life left in it. All I have in my head is the plain fact of the first time Jeck and I made love, no more detailed than what I'd written down.

Well, this sucked. And I still have two more loaves to go. But then I think of Jeck and Granny Weather and put the next loaf in the oven, the one with a ball of wax from the votive candle in it.

The memory I lose this time is of that mad night that Jilly and I bonded after I met her in the hallway of one of Butler U's lecture halls, becoming more sisters than friends. And the cramps take me down again. If anything, they're worse than the first attack.

It takes me a long time before I can summon up the courage to put the final loaf in, the one with dried corn kernels in the center. I lose the last time I saw my dad alive. I didn't even mean to, it just popped into my head and then the cramps came and it was too late to get it back.

I end up lying on the floor of the kitchen for the full hour it takes the loaf to bake. I'm so weak when the timer goes off that I can barely get up to take the bread out of the oven. The only thing that gets me on my feet is the thought of having to go through this another time.

I have to sit for a couple of hours before I can do anything else. I drink some tea and nibble on soda crackers to settle my stomach, then finally pack away the loaves, what's left of the candle and some matches in a knapsack. I sling the knapsack over my shoulder and stand in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, which is about as between as I have the energy to do. There I undo the traveling knot, careful to keep my destination clear in my mind.

I expect some new bout of cramps or sickness, but all that happens is that I end up in the middle of the herb garden that lies on the other side of the path separating the fens from Granny Weather's cottage. It's dusk, the sun just setting.

“There's spiders in that garden,” she told me before I left the bogles' tower, “and their webs will keep you safe from the likes of little nightmares. Make your way there to work the spell.”

Luckily, I'm not afraid of spiders.

I stay in the middle of the cobwebby garden and put the knapsack on the dirt at my feet.

Work the spell.

I'm less than happy with this whole witchy business of Granny Weather's, but there's no turning back now. If I don't go on, Jeck will die and everything I've already been through today will have been for nothing. It's not like he can wake up and be safe back home. Though sometimes I wonder about the people I meet here in the dreamlands. Do they really originate here, or are they asleep and dreaming someplace else themselves? If Jeck is, he has no memory of it, but I know I can't take that as gospel or anything. Lots of people don't know they're dreaming when they are.

I take out the candle and light it. It takes me a moment to remember which loaf goes first. The mouse hair one. I take it out of the knapsack and hold it up in both hands, facing west.

“Come,” I say, repeating the words that Granny Weather told me to use. “You of the wind. I have a gift for you.”

I say it three times, always facing west, but the last time, I kneel in the dirt. I don't know what to expect, who or what will come. Maybe nothing. Maybe I already screwed up. Didn't bake the loaf right. Used too many mouse hairs. Or not enough. Didn't say the words right.

Then I hear it, the slow flap of wings. It comes from the west, borne on the last rays of the setting sun, an enormous owl. When it lands on the ground in front of me, I place the loaf by its talons.

“Is this gift freely given?” a voice says.

I'm not sure if I actually hear the owl speak, or if its words are simply forming in my mind. I look at the loaf and I think of what I had to go through to bake it. It wasn't without cost to make, I think, but I suppose it is being freely given, so I nod.

The owl eats the bread far more quickly than I would have thought possible.

“I would return your kind gift with a favor,” it says, those big round eyes settling their gaze on me.

I clear my throat. “Urn. Granny Weather would like to get her cronebone back.”

I have no idea what this is, and Granny Weather wasn't particularly forthcoming when I asked, but the owl seems to know exactly what I'm talking about.

“It shall be done.”

And then he's gone, those enormous wings lifting it up into the air and away, deep into the fens. I listen to the fading whisper of them for a long moment before bringing out the second loaf, the one with the wax ball in it.

This one calls up a cloud of moths, thick as mist. Moths don't eat bread so far as I know, but this is the fairy-tale world, so I suppose anything's possible. The loaf certainly disappears quickly enough. I don't ask them for a favor. Granny Weather told me to simply tell them where their murderers are.

“Moths are spirits of the uneasy dead,” she told me when I asked about that. “The ones that will come to you will be the ghosts of all of those that the bogles have led astray and drowned in the fens.”

When they fly off in the same direction as the owl, I bring out the last loaf. I wonder what the corn kernels will call up. Mouse for the owl. Candle for the moths. That makes sense. Maybe this'll bring me chickens, I think. I realize I'm getting a little hysterical when that idea sets off a spate of giggling.

I catch my breath and go through the summoning for the third time.

By this point, I'm pretty much used to the unusual, but what shows up is right out of Looney Tunes. There's a little outbuilding that stands in behind Granny Weather's cottage. I don't know what she uses it for. To keep her wood dry, maybe for storage. I didn't realize it was a pet.

For that's what comes in response to the third summoning, an animated hut, its wooden walls creaking and cracking as the hut shifts back and forth, walking on hen's legs like in the story of Baba Yaga.

“Is this gift freely given?” it asks, like the others did, its high, cartoon voice ringing inside my head.

All I can do is nod.

It stands there, its windows looking like eyes, gaze locked on me. Finally I get up from where I'm kneeling and toss the loaf in through its open door. There's a weird chewing sound, then a small burp. I don't know whether to laugh or run.

“I would return your kind gift with a favor,” it tells me.

The voice kills me. The chicken legs are bad enough, but the voice makes me feel like any minute the herbs and vegetables around me are going to pull out of the ground and start up some song and dance routine.

“Granny Weather would like her skycloak,” I manage to reply.

“It hangs inside the door of her cottage.”

Again there's this long pause. Then I realize that I'm supposed to go fetch the cloak. It's the only piece of clothing hanging there and seems to weigh next to nothing when I take it off the hook. I feel like I'm walking on air as I return to the herb garden, holding the cloak against my chest.

The hut's back on the ground now, like it's just a normal outbuilding. I guess the chicken legs are folded under it, out of sight. I approach its door cautiously and start to toss the cloak inside, but the cartoon voice stops me.

“The cloak should not touch the ground,” the hut tells me. “Better that you carry it.”

No way, I think. I'm not getting inside that thing. I can still remember the chewing sound after I tossed the loaf of bread in.

“Why do you hesitate?” it asks.

“I have this thing about stepping inside a stranger's mouth,” I say.

Cartoon laughter rings in my head. The hut gives a kind of shrug. There's a creak in the wood. A cedar shingle falls off the roof.

“Then Granny Weather will have to do without her skycloak,” it says. “She won't be pleased.”

I think about what Kerry said about getting on the wrong side of a goodwife's temper, and sigh. Gingerly I step over the threshold. There's nothing inside. Plain wooden boards on the floor, no furnishings except for a ratty old club chair that looks like it was rescued from a dump, lopsided, the stuffing coming out of the sides.

“Sit,” the hut tells me.

I don't think so.

But then the hut lurches onto its chicken legs and I go sliding across the room. I only just keep my balance and make it to the chair where I sit with the cloak bundled up on my lap. The chair doesn't move as the hut heads into the fens with a staggering walk, but it feels like my stomach does.

Oddly, I don't get sick.

Well, I tell myself. At least I don't have to find my own way back to the bogles' tower.

There seems to be a heavy mist around the tower as we approach. It's not until we're really close that I see it's not mist but a huge cloud of the white moths. Bogles are running everywhere in a panic, batting at the things with their weird extra-jointed fingers. There's already a carpet of downed moths on the wet ground, but there are so many in the air that it doesn't seem to make much difference. The moths swarm over the bogles, covering every inch of their black, oily skin, suffocating the nasty little buggers. The bogles' only defense is to submerge into the fen water, but as soon as they come up for air, the moths are waiting for them, flying into their pug noses and mouths.