The Book of Dreams (45 page)

“I don’t know how to say thank-you in your language,” she said.

She gazed into their features, which no longer seemed alien. She saw their kindness and intelligence. With sudden inspiration, she placed the staff on the ground to free her hands. Bowing with respect and thanks, she placed her palms together till the light welled up. The flow was far stronger than at any time before. It poured out of her hands in a stream of gold.

They were neither surprised nor afraid, but they were obviously delighted. All beamed big smiles at her as they bowed in return.

It was the first time Dana really understood the phrase she had been hearing since her quest began.

“Yes,” she said softly, smiling back through her tears.
“We are all family.”

• • •

Setting off into the woods alone, Dana wished some of the Sasquatch had come with her for company. But she knew it wasn’t possible. This was her initiation and she had to do it alone. The forest was immense, a vast green country. While she had originally assumed her staff was a ceremonial object, she soon discovered it wasn’t. Without it, she wouldn’t have been able to make her way through the undergrowth. Again and again she had to beat back the sea of bracken, sallal, wild rose, and blackberry. Always the woods threatened to engulf her, the dank smells, the untrammeled growth, the clouds of insects, the density of trees. She could feel the weight of the massive greenery bearing down on all sides, creaking, sighing, muttering, groaning.

Hour after hour, she continued to hike through gigantic spreads of pine and cedar, rotting logs and forest debris, roots and stumps, toadstools and slugs, fallen branches and clumps of fern. Sometimes she stumbled into dips and hollows. Other times she waded through shallow streams. The forest soon left its mark on her. Her face and hands were scratched, her clothes caked with mud. Twigs and leaves clung to her hair. She was glad of the clothes the Sasquatch had given her, as they kept her dry and allowed her limbs free movement. Her own jeans and coat would have been destroyed long before this.

Though the monotony of the trek began to wear her down, Dana didn’t halt or rest. She was driven to fulfill her vision quest.

Then the Old Ones came.

She had already begun to sense Their presence: something immense and profound in the forest itself. A great mystery that dwelled within it. An impenetrable strength. Slowly but surely the secret was revealed. They were here. All around her.

The first sound she heard was high in the air, so far above her it could have come from heaven. A great sigh on the wind. Then came the rivers of light exuding from the trees themselves, ribbons and striations of light that penetrated the green dimness like arrows and spears. They surged on the wind, a great movement through the forest, a force that sighed through every leaf and branch and blade of grass, surging through the undergrowth like the surge of the sea; a pacific force, urging the trees to explode into the sky, to swirl in spirals of green and yellow, terrible and rapturous, a great swell of light and movement and color and presence, a vast overflowing, a hugeness of energy, all of it coalescing into a trembling luminosity that only the word
God
could come close to naming.

How long Dana remained in Their ecstatic embrace, she couldn’t know, but there came a time when she felt the struggle to emerge. Rising to the surface, like foam on the waves, an upsurge of consciousness, she felt the infinitesimal mote of awareness that split her from the whole as she remembered who she was.
O nobly born, remember who you are.
And in that rising which was epic and glorious she knew that she, like all the others, like all other things existing in the universe, she knew that she was important: a hero of life.

That was the moment when she plummeted downward

falling like a meteor

falling like a star

striking the ground with such force

she was embedded inside it.

She had landed in a bog and was buried beneath a tree. Sleeping there in the dark earth, inside the roots of the tree, she began to dream.

Where is the path my feet must tread?

Into the dark your heart doth dread.

S
he was in a cavernous house built of cedar, with one enormous open room. It was big enough to hold gigantic carvings of eagles with extended wings. The carvings dwarfed the inhabitants of the house: the chief and his family who lived there with their kin. Cradles hung from the rafters, rocking gently. Anyone passing by would give the cradles a push and the babies would laugh.

A storm was blowing outside the longhouse, but there were plenty of fires to keep the room warm. The air was smoky, sweet with the scent of burning wood.

Leaving the house, she wandered outside, unaffected by the wind and rain. Nearby was a rocky beach strewn with seaweed. Canoes lay upturned on the shore, elegant in design and painted with bright patterns. Their bows curved dramatically, like the crest of a wave.

When she glanced back, it appeared as if the village had grown organically from the dense tangle of forest. The houses were low and flat, with curled roofs, and connected to one another but with separate entrances. Each door was fronted with a tall carved pole. To enter the house you had to pass through the totem. Eagle was the most common, with hooked beak and feathered wings. Another was Beaver, with immense teeth and flat tail. The sacred animals towered over the village, reaching as high as the great trees at their back.

Now as the rain stopped and the sky blazed with sunlight, the village came to life. Hunters stalked into the forest. Women and children tended to the crops, cured skins over fires, and washed clothes on the shore.

She was drawn to steps leading up a high hill. More carved poles pointed to the sky, but these were crowned with wooden boxes. A whisper in her mind told her these were coffins, containing the bones of the tribal ancestors. And beyond the totem poles was a different kind of house. A burst of light on the roof made her look upward. Shielding her eyes, she saw a figure crouched at the edge. A halo of feathers spiked from his head like the rays of the sun.

She was suddenly afraid. This house was not for the living. She didn’t want to enter. Yet something compelled her inside. She was instantly aware that the interior was crowded. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness she was able to see, though she wished she couldn’t. The bodies were piled on top of one another, up to the ceiling. They had all died horribly from diseases that had arrived with the white traders and missionaries. Whole families had been wiped out, almost entire nations. She felt the grief and the anger in that House of the Dead.

Returning to the village, she found it abandoned. An oppressive silence hung over the empty buildings. The totems leaned precariously. The wooden skeleton of a canoe lay alone on the shore. In the distance came the sounds of clear-felling, as great trees crashed to the ground.

She began to move swiftly, along the coast, past glowering hills and beaches of pale driftwood. The ruins of villages lay scattered like bones in the grasses. A gargantuan statue rose before her; the wooden carving of a woman bearing a child in her arms. No passage of time, no splintering or wear, could despoil the tenderness of those big loving hands, that mother’s embrace.

We do not believe in beating children.

Now she found herself in a cold and unfriendly building. With drab furnishings and worn curtains, it had an institutional feel. Was it a school or an orphanage? It was filled with Native children with sad silent faces, filing through gray corridors or sitting at desks. The air was rank with the smell of misery, homesickness, and fear. They had all been taken from their families.

In the yard, a little girl was being comforted by her brother. As he whispered the words in their own language, a smile crossed her face:
Once upon a time Skokki the Spider traveled to the moon and learned from the Sky Dwellers how to weave. That is why the Salish people make baskets.

She was back in the forest, at the heart of the darkness. Shadows blocked the light. Great curtains of foliage hung heavily around her. She was surrounded by totems. She felt as if she were falling upward into the sky, even as the sacred animals fell earthward toward her. She was lost in colors and shapes, faces and eyes, feathers and wings. Voices murmured in the air. And behind the voices came the steady beat of a drum and the hint of an eternal promise.

Not all that is gone is gone forever.

Traveling over the Rockies, she delighted in the breathless freedom of flight. So many mountains, towering skyward, some cloaked in snow, some covered in conifer, some brown, some blue, some barren rock, all shining like stone angels with limbs outstretched to embrace the clouds. Their presence, their very being was huge and overwhelming, vast amassings of matter, brooding souls. Such strength and longevity. Guardians of the earth.

She dropped to the ground for a run on the plains. After the gravity of the mountains, it was a lighthearted experience to race with smaller creatures. Gophers popped up and down from holes in the red earth. Chipmunks somersaulted in the air, leaping from tree to tree. Rattlesnakes basked in the sun.

She passed over plowed fields, furrowed troughs, calm dark sloughs, and tracks of wet gumbo turned to mud. In solitary treeless spaces rose the stark dark shapes of hoodoos, eerie spirits of rock. And as the starlit prairie fell behind her, she fled into the North, into a boundless shroud of black spruce and moose pasture and the broad sweep of muskeg sprayed with tamarack.

At last she sank exhausted into a bog, dreaming deeply and darkly of the world of wild things.

• • •

Dana looked down at her own outline. Was she really buried in black soil at the foot of that tree? A disheveled figure knelt beside her, sobbing wildly.

“This is very weird,” she said.

Laurel spun around. “
Dana!
What? How—!”

Grief and horror changed to shock as Laurel looked at the mound where Dana lay buried. Then back again at Dana who stood before her, alive and well, dressed in Native clothing.

“It’s the quest,” Dana said slowly. “I keep ending up in the strangest places.” She looked around. “I think I’m here because I was worrying about you in the back of my mind. About you and Ms. Woods. Are you all right?”

But she could see that the other wasn’t. Besides being covered in mud, Laurel’s clothes were torn and there were livid burns on her arms and legs.

“I’ll live. Gwen’s not here. I looked for her, but I’ve been alone the whole time, except for these crazy fireball things. Are you really here? Are you … I mean … you look like a ghost.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not dead.” Dana smiled faintly. She did feel a little vague and insubstantial. “I’m not sure where I am. Even while I’m talking to you, I seem to be moving through time.” She shivered visibly and her voice echoed with wonder. “I’m on the prairies. There’s buffalo everywhere. Thousands and thousands of them. I’m running with them.”

Laurel was stunned. “Are you dreaming me? Am I dreaming this?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. Isn’t life a dream?” Dana’s confusion rang in her voice. She closed her eyes a moment, to listen. “Oh, I see.” When she opened them again she looked clearer, more solid. “I’m wind-walking in the West. But I’m also dream-speaking with you. I’ve been sent to help you.”

“Who were you talking to?” Laurel asked, amazed.

“I’m not sure. The wind, I think. It’s too hard to explain. This is what the Native peoples do. I can’t really describe it. Something like fairy magic. The Old Ones are teaching me.”

“You don’t have to explain,” Laurel said, touching the moonstone. “I’m just happy we’re being helped. Things have been going from bad to worse.”

Dana closed her eyes again. “Things are bad, yes, but after the darkest hour comes the dawn.” When she opened her eyes again, her voice was urgent. “We’ve got to go. If Crowley finds out I’m here, he’ll come back. You need to get over the ridge.”

“I tried that already. The fireballs—”

“The
feux follets
,” Dana said, nodding. “I’ve fought them before. Can you run fast?”

“That is definitely something I can do.” Despite her injuries and fatigue, Laurel was more than ready to try again.

Dana cupped her hands together till the light spilled from her palms. “Run behind me. Keep going no matter what happens. I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

It was a dash of hope and courage: Dana in front, streaming her light like a banner; Laurel behind, determined not to falter.

The
feux follets
were taken by surprise, but they recovered quickly. Buzzing through the air like giant wasps, they bombarded the runners. It was trickier this time, Dana saw. The crazy fires had learned their lesson. Avoiding her light, they wove in and around her, darting and diving.