The Dream Catcher's Daughter (24 page)

She chuckled, easing herself onto the bed.
“I know what you mean. What I don’t know is what this means. This spell
should’ve easily lifted the seal from your mind. But that was our sixth try.”

It confused Jason, too. Every time she
tried the spell, he could feel the seal inside him. It latched onto his mind,
digging into Jason’s being. And it wouldn’t budge. Every attempt, like the one
before it, burned not only Jason’s mind but his body. And he wasn’t keen to try
again.

“Why is it important? This whole time, you’ve
had me re-collect my dreams. At first I thought it was just to stop them from
wreaking havoc…but now…”

He looked up and saw the Catcher
scrutinizing him. He was just as much a mystery to her as he was to himself.
But there was something in her eyes that he clearly understood—desperation.

She stood, her knees wobbly. “We’ll try
again. I apologize for the pain, but...”

Her head jerked up, her eyes flicking to
behind Jason. He could hear it, too: the creaking of steps. Someone descending
the stairs. Jason rose slowly, his muscles tensing. The Catcher stood by him as
the creaking became louder. The final step groaned.

She glanced about the musty basement, an
amused grin on her lips. Her white cloak swept the floor. She stopped just
outside the circle of chalk between two pillars. Her green eyes fell upon
Jason, then flickered to the Catcher. Shemillah tossed her mane of green hair.

“Good to see you, Jason. And you must be
the current Dream Catcher. My adopted sister. Maybe niece is more accurate?”

The Catcher raised her flute only a split
second before Shemillah raised her wand. But the Catcher’s fingers were
nimbler, and quickly ran the flutes keys while she blew the notes. From the
rock pillars beside Shemillah giant arms shot out and coiled around her, making
her drop her wand. She looked down at her binds, then back up at the Catcher.
Her skin started to turn green.

“Jason,” said the Catcher. “Run! Summon
the train and flee!”

“I’m not leaving without you. Len needs a
teacher.”

The Catcher laughed. It sounded harsh and
exhausted. “Jason, don’t you see that Len hates being my apprentice? She wishes
to never have been chosen. And that kind of resistance is what will make her
age. At this rate, she’ll look like me when she’s twenty. She’ll die long
before me.” The rock arms around Shemillah cracked. Jason clenched his fists.
“If you don’t leave now, then it won’t matter whether or not Len has a teacher.
We’ll all be dead!”

The middle of the rock broke away, and
Shemillah’s second mouth smiled out. It spoke to Jason: “Stay and feed me.”

Jason turned, and shouted at the top of
his lungs:

“Train man,

train
man,

ring
your bells!

Let your whistle blow!

Train man,

train
man,

I hear the wheels,

so
let’s go, go,
go!”

The light cut through the musty darkness, and
the whistle drowned out the cracking of rock under Shemillah’s transformation.
And there, somehow fitting within the basement’s confines, stood the single
train engine he’d escaped on.

“Come on,” said Jason to the Catcher. “You
can still escape with me!”

The Catcher raised her flute and played
another quick succession of notes, which lifted Jason into the air and slung
him into the engine’s control room. His head smacked against the far wall. With
another blast of notes, the lever clunked down, and the train sped off.

As Jason fell unconscious, he could hear a
few more notes drifting into his ears. They belonged not to the Catcher’s
flute, but her voice.

She said, “Tell Len I love her.”

***

“Wake.”

Jason didn’t recognize where he was. The
train engine was nowhere in sight. He sat up, pressing a palm to his throbbing
forehead. Stars danced about him as they blinked out one by one. The sky was
blood-red; the sun would set soon. Jason still had no idea what to do about
Len. As he stood, something scraped against the pavement beneath him—Darlene’s
cell phone, which had fallen out of his pocket. He accessed Darlene’s spell
book and re-read the third spell’s description. The only way to follow the spell’s
directions was to sneak into the paladins’ stronghold. If he did that too soon,
he could be captured again. No, he needed a plan. But what? Darlene was,
hopefully, with the Guardian. Len was in jail. The Dream Catcher was—

He smashed his fist into a nearby
lamppost.

“Forth,” he said, before the liquid stone
could snake into his body.

He was on a corner in downtown
Sheriffsburg. Not a lot of people walked by this spot, and the road hardly
counted as a side-road. Jason glanced over his shoulder, and a car drove past
him. There was a large tree only feet from Jason. People driving toward the
corner wouldn’t be able to see him, especially since the sun was setting. Jason
let his hand fall to his side and lowered his head, staring at the cracks in
the sidewalk. The cell phone was still in his hand, glaring up at him. Accusing
him.

Another car drove past him, obeying the
stop sign and halting at the corner. Jason glanced at the car and saw that it
was an ambulance. Its bulbs weren’t lit, so it wasn’t on an emergency run. But
it reminded Jason of that day, not even a week ago, when Trevor was
hospitalized. Now Jason recognized his location: He was only a few blocks east
of the hospital.

The ambulance slowly pulled away, rolling
down the road. Jason followed.

***

Visitation ended at 9:00 P.M. Jason
checked Darlene’s phone for the time: 6:56 P.M. He walked up to the front desk
and asked for Trevor Ortiz’s room. The receptionist asked Jason’s relation to
the Mr. Ortiz, and Jason pulled out his wallet and showed her the badge
Sheriffsburg High gave to all its mentors. The woman with big, beehive-like
hair could’ve said no—Jason wasn’t Trevor’s family. He was exactly as the badge
said, a mentor.

“A mentor?” said the woman. “Kind of like
a big brother-big sister, right? I had one in high school. Really helped me. I
mean, I’m working through medical school now. Wouldn’t have happened without
her. Room 274.”

And just like that, Jason found his body
moving toward Trevor’s room. The hospital’s silence pressed upon Jason, making
even his own heartbeat sound like rolling thunder. He didn’t know exactly why
he came here. If Shemillah were to show up, not only would Jason have put
Trevor at risk, but all the people in the hospital as well. Still, he loaded
onto the elevator and went up to the second floor. The doors dinged as they
opened. He checked a nearby sign for directions. 274 was just around the corner
to his right. He found the door open.

For a few moments, he haunted the doorway.
He’d already seen Trevor the first time, right after he’d fallen under his
coma’s dreamless veil. He couldn’t look any better by now. Jason hardly noticed
the
clik-clak
of heels behind him. He jumped
when the doctor spoke.

“Hello, sir. Can I help you?”

He pointed at Trevor’s doorway. “Is he
still in a coma?”

“Afraid so. It’s strange. He doesn’t show
any negative signs. We’re not even sure why he’s still comatose. All of his
brain activity is normal.” She shrugged. “But I’ll tell you...for being alive,
the kid looks...you know...
not
.”

“Thank you.”

Jason moved inside the door, hoping just
to get away from the doctor. Only a few feet inside the room, he spotted the
bed. And it took all Jason had not to start crying.

The boy’s arms were straight at his side. A
number of tubes and other hospital gadgetry were plugged into him, as if he
were a human power strip. Trevor looked more like Frankenstein’s monster than
an eleven year-old boy. Jason shook his head.
If anyone here is the monster,
thought Jason,
it’s me.

Just off to the right of stood a
nightstand crowded with flowers and get-well cards. Somehow, Jason’s
Megatron
figure found its way there, despite the fact that
Trevor’s parents had returned it to Jason—thanks for coming to show his
condolences. Jason sat down in a chair next to Trevor’s bed. The boy’s chest
barely lifted, but the heart-rate monitor blipped steadily. Jason leaned back
in his chair.

“I know you probably can’t hear me,” he
said. “But I’m sorry. I should’ve done something earlier. And I’m sorry for not
being there...That year was rough, I bet. You had to start a new class without
me. I wish I could’ve been there. Are you doing well in English? See? I said
‘well’ instead of ‘good.’ That’s good English, Trevor.”

But the boy’s lips remained still. Not
even a flutter of the eyelids to acknowledge Jason’s presence. The look on
Trevor’s sleeping face—it seemed like one of anticipation. Waiting. Jason
slumped back in his chair, his eyes drifting over to the nightstand. He
straightened up slowly, rubbing his eyes.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “We…I gave it to
Trevor.”

Jason moved aside the
Megatron
figure to get at the picture book beneath it. He laid it across his lap,
staring down into the water-painted cover. The title spider-webbed across the
top of the cover in a flowing script, reading,
The Tale of the White Knight
.

Jason glanced at Trevor. A small smile
came to his lips. “You
wanna
hear a story, Trevor?
You used to love it. That’s why Tara and I...Forth...Sorry. We made this
hardcover for you. The look on your face was worth the hard work. But don’t
worry, we had fun. That’s what’s important, right? Fun.” Jason cleared his
throat, opening the cover of the book. “The Tale of the White Knight,” he read.

“Once upon a time a knight didn’t want to
be a knight. On the outside he looked like a knight, talked like a knight. He
could duel swords with King Arthur, and he could scare even the bogeyman with
his ruthlessness. But the knight hated this. He only wanted to be kind, to care
for all...On the inside he wasn’t truly a knight.

“No one would believe him, though. They
knew him for his deep voice and muscular body. They never noticed his poetry or
the flower garden he kept in his backyard. They only saw his armor and his
sword.

“So, one day, the White Knight took off
his armor. When he did, no one recognized him. The knight found this foolish.
How could they not recognize him? Did his voice not rumble as before? Did his
walk not hold the knightly pride they’d all come to know?

“But they didn’t. And a sad realization dawned
on the knight: People knew him for what they wanted him to be, not what he
truly was.

“The knight gave up; he would return to
his house and put back on his armor and sword. He would destroy his garden and
burn all his poetry. Knights didn’t do those things, he decided. They had no
place in his home.

“But inside, the knight hated his decision
and wished he could make it stop.

“On the way home, as the knight was
sulking, he bumped into a maiden. The maiden dropped her things, and they both
apologized to each other. The knight bent down to help pick up, and noticed
what she had been carrying.

“A sword and shield! The maiden had been
carrying a sword and shield. He found this strange, and asked the fair maiden,
‘By what reason do you carry these manly items?’

“The maiden replied, ‘I carry them because
I so please! I find them much more interesting than the flower gardens of my
house and the poetry I’m forced to learn.’

“The knight found this ridiculous. But
before he said anything, realization struck him: This maiden was in the same
boat as him. The exact same boat, just sitting on opposite ends. So the knight
said, ‘Milady, I shall teach you my sword-craft if you shall teach me how to
raise the most beautiful flowers and write the finest poetry.’

“At first, the woman couldn’t believe it.
But when the knight took her home and showed her his garden and large
collection of poetry, she considered his offer. In the end, she accepted. They
spent the rest of their lives supporting each other and became the best of
friends. Eventually, they lived together. Then they had kids, and when the kids
asked why their father wrote poetry and their mother wielded the sword, the
knight and maiden would smile and say:

“‘To love yourself, ‘tis the most
important thing.’”

Jason closed the book and heaved a sigh.
He felt surprisingly good. He couldn’t exactly place the feeling, but something
about it belonged. He moved to set the book back on the nightstand. Trevor’s
eyes were open and watching Jason. The book slid out of Jason’s hand. He rubbed
his eyes. Nothing changed: Trevor’s mouth twitched up into a smile.

“Jason? Are you tired? You keep rubbing
your eyes.” Tears sprung from Jason’s eyes, rolling down to his chin. Trevor’s
smile shrank, and his nose scrunched. “Why you crying? Did I say something
wrong? I’m sorry if I did.”

But Jason shook his head, wiping away the
tears. “No, it’s all right. I’m just very emotional today. How’re you feeling,
Trevor?”