The Dream-Maker's Magic (17 page)

“Now
that
I could offer him,” Leona said. “A small bed, it's true, but a bed.”

I laughed. “At my mother's, for most of the last few years, I have slept on a mat in the kitchen,” I said. “I don't ask for much more.”

Leona smiled. “I can do slightly better than that. There's only one bedroom upstairs, and that's mine, but I have always kept the room off the kitchen for Phillip. However, he's not sleeping there anymore. He has taken up with friends who are somewhat older and who have quarters down by the docks. Not very reputable friends, I might add. In any case, the room is empty.”

“Who's Phillip?” I asked. In my experience, dispossessed people often did not like to be dispossessed, and I wanted to know a little about him before he came back to reclaim his place.

Leona made a sour face. “My brother.”

“Her scapegrace brother,” Ayler amended. “You'll meet him, no doubt, for he has a tendency to show up when it's least convenient.”

“Demanding things I cannot give him, and complaining bitterly about how badly he is treated,” Leona added. “Such a joy in my life is Phillip.”

We seemed to have strayed from the main point. I took a deep breath. “Then,” I said, “if his room is empty and you need the help and you will trust me to work for you, will you hire me?”

“Oh! I thought we had already settled that! Yes, of course I will,” she responded. She glanced at the Safe-Keeper. “If Ayler recommends you, you know, I cannot help but trust you. In fact, I like you already.”

Ayler's face was touched with his usual abstracted smile. “Yes,” he said in a dreamy voice, “I think this will work out very well.”

I
loved working at Cottleson's. From the very beginning, the place felt familiar to me. Perhaps it was because I knew the work, although running a tavern was somewhat different from either a posting house or a bed-and-breakfast. But there were still meals to prepare, customers to please, cash boxes to balance, and various chores of maintenance and upkeep to complete.

Perhaps it was because Leona reminded me a little of Sarah Parmer. Well, in fact, she was nothing like Sarah. Where Sarah was serene and a little stately, Leona could be passionate and quick to show temper. But they were both warm-hearted women a few years older than I was. They were both kind to me when I needed kindness. They were both grateful for the gifts I brought and always thinking of ways to turn those to good use. So for Leona, as for Sarah, I accomplished a wide range of tasks. While Leona and Sallie mostly waited on customers, I became the primary cook and keeper of the kitchen. I also shopped for food in the market, tended the minuscule garden out back, haggled with peddlers when they came to the door, and fought a perpetual war with vermin.

One day I became the unofficial protector of the other women under the roof.

It was nighttime, actually, not far from midnight, and the tavern was almost empty. I was in the kitchen, scrubbing the last of the pans, when I heard a commotion from the front room. There was a squeal, then a round of laughter, then the sound of Leona's raised voice, both furious and fearful. I dropped the pan, grabbed a poker from the fireplace, and ran through the swinging door to investigate.

Sallie was struggling in the embrace of a drunken fellow whose two companions were exhorting him to
kiss 'er, kiss 'er good, that's a pretty girl, Bart.
Sallie was shrieking and Leona was circling the intertwined couple, still shouting, her raised hands pounding at the back and shoulders of Sallie's captor. As I entered, one of the other men still seated in the booth grabbed Leona's arm and yanked her onto his lap. She tumbled toward him so hard her feet flew up to reveal a froth of petticoats.

I charged in. One hard swing of the poker caught Sallie's attacker in the back of the head, causing him to yelp, release her, and go staggering across the room. Surprise made the other man release Leona, and she leapt to her feet, red-faced and raging.

“Out of here! All of you, out of here! And never come back!” she cried.

“Here, now, you can't be hitting people on the head,” the man in the booth said, giving me a darkling look.

“You're next if you don't get up and get out, like she says,” I threatened, brandishing my weapon. I knew I didn't look particularly menacing—I appeared so young, so soft—but I figured they were drunk and I was a lot stronger than they knew. I could take them, at least one by one.

“Kellen!” Sallie shrieked, and I whirled around just in time to see the first man launch an assault on me. I didn't hesitate. I kicked him in the groin, hard, a move Ayler had taught me many years ago. He grunted and went down. I returned my attention to the men in the booth, no longer laughing.

“Out,” I said grimly. “And take your friend with you.”

They blustered some more, but soon found that Leona had armed herself, too, snatching up another poker since mine had worked so well. Spitting invective and insults, they gathered up their friend and hauled him through the front door. I glanced around, ascertained that they were the last customers for the day, and locked the door behind them.

Leona had collapsed at one of the tables in the middle of the room and looked wan and exhausted. Sallie, a strapping blonde girl of about nineteen, seemed none the worse for wear. I imagined this hadn't been the first time she'd been the unwilling recipient of an overeager kiss. She bustled back behind the bar and drew glasses of ale for each of us. We settled around the table with Leona.

“Does this sort of thing happen often?” I asked.

Leona shook her head, then nodded. “Never when my father was here. Sometimes since he's been gone. Men think they can take advantage of women.”

“Usually I just give them the knee,” Sallie said. “But he caught me when I wasn't paying attention, and I couldn't get free.” She toasted me with her glass and gave me a warm smile. “Glad you were here, Kellen. Very heroic to have a boy like you come to my rescue.”

I spared a moment to hope she didn't start to think I was a romantic prospect, and then I decided that I was too young and slender to appeal to Sallie. I had seen the men she liked to flirt with, and they were all hardy and full of muscles.

“Is it better when Phillip's around?” I asked. I had been here two weeks and had yet to meet the reprobate brother.

Leona shrugged. “Phillip brings his own trouble. His friends are just as likely to cause a ruckus as to save you from one once it's started.” She nodded at me. “But I too am glad you were here, Kellen. You're tougher than you look.”

I grinned. “I guess we're all full of surprises.”

“Maybe you should walk Sallie home,” Leona suggested. “If those men were angry, and they've decided to lie in wait—”

“Happy to,” I said.

Sallie shook her head and rose to her feet. “I'll slip out the back way. It's only two streets, and my father waits up till I'm home. Anyone comes after me tonight, he'll get more than a poker to the head if my father catches him.”

“Good night, then,” Leona said and yawned. “I'm so tired. I'll see you both in the morning.”

Sallie survived the walk home, and we had only minor incidents like that in the days that followed. But I could tell that my very presence made Leona and Sallie feel safer, and I rather relished the idea of being a champion. I had always liked being strong enough to defend myself, to fight for and keep my own place in the world. It was novel but agreeable to think I might be called upon to fight for someone else as well.

I had been in Wodenderry three weeks before I saw Gryffin.

I thought about him every day—heard about him at least as often. It was Sallie who took it upon herself to tell me what she clearly considered his romantic tale. We were working all day to clean up after a late but fairly well-behaved Summermoon celebration the night before.

“There he was, this crippled boy, living in one of those small towns that nobody ever goes to, everyone being mean to him! His whole life! And then one day a Truth-Teller comes to town and says, ‘Melinda's power has faded but I see it has come to rest in
you
.' And so Ayler brings him to Wodenderry, and he goes to live with the queen. And every day he has an audience, in this enormous room just filled with people, and he comes rolling in—he's in a wheeled chair, you know—and he talks to everybody for a few minutes. They say sometimes there are two hundred people there, and he talks to every single one.”

“And how many of their wishes come true?” I asked.

“Oh, I don't know about that. Sometimes the magic takes its own time. But they do say he's the most powerful Dream-Maker anyone can remember. People can feel a tingle if he touches them with his hands.”

Gryffin had touched me more than once, and I hadn't felt any tingle. “I doubt that many people remember a Dream-Maker before Melinda,” I replied rather tartly. “She held the office a long time.”

“Do you have any wishes?” Sallie asked. “You ought to go see him.”

“Have you been?”

She nodded. “Once or twice. I can't say my wishes came true, but I felt better just being in the room with him. Hopeful. Like something good might happen.”

Yes, that was a feeling I could confirm. I had always felt hopeful in Gryffin's presence, capable of almost anything. “Maybe I'll go see him,” I said. “Someday soon.”

I knew he would be hurt to learn I had been in Wodenderry so long without seeking him out. He had written me several times since I had left Thrush Hollow, and Sarah had forwarded his letters. I had written back brief notes that didn't say much. The truth was, I was deeply afraid. A year was a long time to go without seeing someone, especially someone whose life had undergone such a radical change. He could not have become more strange and powerful if he had been named king; he could not have seemed more inaccessible to a country girl come to the city in disguise. He still closed all his letters with the phrase “I have not forgotten you.” But I thought that might be a way to comfort himself by clinging to a familiar past that made the demanding present seem a little less strange. He might not have forgotten me, but he might not have remembered me as I really was.

Still, I had come to Wodenderry to see him. So I would see him. Sallie drew me a map to the palace and I walked there one morning, staring around me like a yokel newly arrived from a coastal town. Since my arrival in Wodenderry, I had not strayed far from Cottleson's and the streets that took me to the markets and back. I was impressed by the fine houses and expensive shops that crowded so close to the palace grounds. The palace itself left me speechless, with its wide sweep of lawn, its parade of soldiers, its grand architecture. I couldn't imagine my Gryffin living here. I couldn't imagine
anyone
living here.

A few mumbled phrases to the guards at the gate and the front door got me escorted to a huge, high-ceilinged room that seemed to be toward the rear of the palace. I found a place in the very back of the room, behind a row of travelers who had spread blankets on the floor and were feeding their children a sloppy lunch. I counted maybe fifty people there before me, and more arrived in ones and twos over the next thirty minutes. Someone had attempted to make the room seem a little less imposing by fitting it with benches and chairs, decorating it with flowers, and installing three small fountains where people could splash up water to drink or cool their faces. Still, it was high summer, and the room was hot. Both flowers and visitors wilted as they waited.

I had been there almost an hour when Gryffin arrived. Excitement swept over the crowd like a breeze across a cornfield. The room rippled as everyone stood up, first those in front, then those in the middle, then those of us in back. Past all the heads and bodies, I could catch only a glimpse of Gryffin, but I strained and contorted to try to get a better look. He was sitting in a customized chair that looked finer than the one Bo had built him, with bigger spoked wheels that he could obviously manipulate himself. He didn't need to, however. He entered the room accompanied by two soldiers and an attendant, who propelled the chair from behind. I was too far away to get a really good look at Gryffin's face, but what I saw made my chest hurt and my cheeks flush. He was so familiar, so dear. He wore an expression of kind seriousness, like a man charged with a delicate task that he had promised himself to perform extremely well. He was dressed in clothes that even from a distance looked expensive and well made, and his hair had been fashionably cut, but none of that really mattered. He still looked like Gryffin.

“Form a line!” one of the guards bawled out. “The Dream-Maker will speak to each of you in turn!”

I hung back, as did some of the unwieldy families with multiple children, but most everyone else rushed forward. Soon a ragged line was snaking around the room as people waited their chance to entrust Griffin with their wishes. It didn't seem that Gryffin talked to any one person very long, for the line moved forward at a fairly brisk pace. What was there to say to him, really?
Heal my husband. Find my daughter. Introduce me to my own true love.
How complex were most people's desires? Couldn't the majority of them be summed up in a sentence or two?

I hovered at the back of the room, trying to get up my courage to approach, trying to frame the words to my own wish.
Be my friend still.
Not the sort of thing to say out loud, I thought. At least, I couldn't do it. But perhaps the words would not need to be spoken. Perhaps Gryffin would glance up, see my face, and show a deep and sudden gladness. He would wave me over and send the guards away and exclaim, “Kellen! I have missed you so much!”

But he did not look up. He did not feel the pull of my insistent gaze. He kept his attention courteously on whichever supplicant stood before him, detailing specific and surely insignificant desires.

I should not have come here. Maybe not to Wodenderry, definitely not to the palace. I could not bring myself to ask for the Dream-Maker's attention.

I drifted over to stand near a large family that was just now packing up their baskets and blankets, and I followed them as they exited the audience room. The children dashed up and down the palace hallways till frowned into decorum by posted guards. The parents talked with great animation about the magical experience of meeting the Dream-Maker, and, oh, wouldn't it be lovely if the wishes really did come true? I trudged along behind them in silence, feeling sad and sick. Ready to give up on dreams altogether.