The Book of Dreams (46 page)

One struck her arm. She winced in anticipation of the pain and was surprised to feel nothing.

“I’m not really here,” she told herself. “I am with the Old Ones, dreaming.”

Alas, it was not the same for Laurel. As fireballs hit her legs and back, she cried out in pain.

Dana had to do something. With all the effort she could muster she made more light, enough to cover the young woman with a golden shield.

As the
feux follets
came near, they were incinerated, like moths in a flame.

“Thank you!” Laurel panted.

They had cleared the bog and reached the ridge of jagged rock. Dana looked behind. Though she had destroyed the first barrage, more crazy fires were rising from the ground. They had increased in size. The buzzing sound was deafening. Yet they didn’t move to attack. Dana’s heart sank as she realized why. Their ranks were swelling by the minute. They were amassing a huge force. Their intention was to overwhelm her with sheer bulk.

“Go!” she urged Laurel. “I don’t have enough light. I can’t hold them all off.”

Despite her injuries, Laurel attempted to scale the cliff. Her first efforts proved fruitless. As she scrambled upward, the rock crumbled beneath her feet and she slid back down again.

She leaned against the ridge. Her face was white with pain.

“I … I need to catch my breath,” she said. “Look, if it gets bad, you’ve got to leave. Wake up or whatever.”

“No,” said Dana simply.

“Please,” Laurel begged her. “The quest is more important than I am.”

“No,” Dana said again. “That’s what you said when Ms. Woods disappeared and you were wrong.
Everyone
is important. Once I get you out, I’ll look for her. If she’s here—”

A voice suddenly shouted from above.

“Are you guys talking about me down there?”

High on the ridge overhead, Gwen peered down at them. She was about to laugh at their expressions when she spotted Laurel’s injuries.

“Gwen! You’re all right!” Laurel’s voice shook, and to everyone’s surprise, she burst into tears.

“Yes, I’m fine!” Gwen called out. “But you’re not, by the looks of things. We’re throwing down ropes. Can you climb?”

She called to someone behind her. The next minute two corded vines, heavy and strong, came tumbling down the cliff.

Now the
feux follets
charged toward them.

Laurel tried to tie the rope around Dana.

“No, you go!” said Dana. “I’ll fight them off till you’re safe.”

“Stop being a hero!” Laurel cried. “You don’t have enough light! Who knows what will happen if they engulf you. I’ll follow after.”

“You’re injured!” Dana yelled. “I can fight. You can’t.”

“Would you two stop arguing down there!” Gwen roared. “They’re coming.
Move!
”

A shrill screech pierced the air as the phalanx of
feux follets
bore down.

Dana had already thought up a new line of defense.
Fight fire with fire.
Even as she argued with Laurel, she compacted an orb of light in her hand. Now she hurled it at their attackers.

The globe of light hit the front line of crazy fire like a bowling ball striking a row of pins. There was an explosion of light. The front line broke and scattered.

Dana let out a whoop. Gwen cheered from above.

“Go!”
Dana yelled at Laurel as she made another orb. “You’re in my way!”

Laurel had no choice but to do as she was told. Grabbing on to the ropes, she clambered upward.

The second line of
feux follets
advanced. Again Dana knocked them back. A few managed to escape the explosion and charged at Laurel. One bounced off the cliffside. Another struck her back. Laurel cried out in agony but continued upward.

Gwen was now hanging over the cliff, apparently supported by someone behind her.

A third line of
feux follets
bore down.

Gwen reached out for Laurel.

Dana knocked out the third line, but the fourth was already near. There wasn’t enough time to make another orb.

Gwen pulled Laurel up, onto the top of the ridge even as the fourth line smashed against the rock.

Weeping with relief, the two friends hugged each other.

“We came as soon as we could!” Gwen said.

“
We?
Who—?”

But Gwen had turned quickly to shout down at Dana.

“Wait a minute! I need to tell you something!” Too late. Dana was gone.

• • •

With Laurel safe, she expected to wake in the forest where she had begun her journey, but it seemed there was another wind to walk, another dream to speak. As she flew through the sun-spangled sky, she heard a whisper.

This land is far more important than we are. To know it is to be young and ancient all at once.

She journeyed with the wind that blew through the tawny grasses, the sweet-smelling forbs, fescues, and sedges. The land rose to meet her. She found herself walking a deserted highway across moonlit plains. She walked beside time as if it were a river where the seasons flowed past. Sometimes the fields were awash with the gold of summery sunsets. Then they changed color to charcoal-gray and the white frost of winter.

She spied a range of green hills ahead. As she crossed the stony field that lay before the hills, she discovered she wasn’t alone. A woman walked there also, a rancher’s wife dressed in jeans and jacket, with a scarf on her head. The woman was lost in her own musings, gazing up at the sky.

“This star-ridden, green, and scented universe,” she murmured.

There was something about her that deserved attention. The way she walked, the way she touched the land as if it were precious, every blade of grass, every plant, every stone.

The woman turned at the sound of a soft footfall.

Dana stood in the feathered light of sunset, bathed in rose-gold.

“Am I dreaming you?”

“I think I’m dreaming
you.”

They both laughed.

“They told me you’re a wise woman,” Dana said.

The woman smiled shyly. “Who said that?”

“The wind.”

“What’s your accent? It has a musical sound.”

“I’m Irish,” Dana answered. Then she reconsidered. It didn’t sound right. “Irish Canadian.”

“Why are you here?”

“I’m looking for a book. It’s somewhere in the land.”

The woman smiled. “Well, that’s a coincidence. I’m a writer. I write books about the land. I walk in this field and it whispers secrets to me.”

“Because you belong here,” Dana said, nodding, remembering Grandfather’s words.

The land will not yield its secrets to a stranger.

“Actually, I’m pretty well a newcomer,” the other responded, to Dana’s surprise. “But there’s something a Crow Elder once said. ‘If people stay somewhere long enough—even white people—the spirits will begin to speak to them.’”

“I want to stay here,” Dana said. “I want to belong to this land.”

As soon as she spoke she was back with the wind, walking across the sky.

At first she thought she was looking at a vision, a mirage of infinity and timeless space. Then she realized she was looking at a country. She had grasped it in parts when she dreamed with the animals. Now she caught sight of something even grander. Miles and miles and miles of great plain sweeping to the horizon at the edge of the world. A summer land that shimmered in waves of baked heat. A winter land blurred behind the white veil of blizzards.

Place names echoed in the air like spirits.
Red Deer. Lonetree. Ravenscrag. Medicine Hat. Qu’Appelle. The White Horse Plains. Portage la Prairie.
The geography of the wild heart of the West.

From the four directions came the names of the Plains Nations winging on the wind.
Gros Ventre. Shoshone. Siksika Blackfoot. Plains Ojibwa. Assiniboine. Lakota. Crowfoot. Crow Absaroke. Plains Cree.
She saw them in the wind, riding wild horses. Scorned by history, beloved of the land, they moved like bright shadows in the prairie sky.

Wrapped in the vision of unbroken solitude, she mused to herself. What is the meaning of these images? This land? This journey?

At the heart of everything is spirit.

• • •

It was time to return. Pulled away from the starlit prairies, she raced over the great mountain, and deep into the green interior of British Columbia. There was a brief moment when she passed the Sasquatch camp. Some of the Bigfoot looked up to see her. Then she was gone, flying over the painted totems in Stanley Park, and along the sandy shore of English Bay.

Gently as a leaf, she dropped onto the sidewalk in front of her hotel. Moments later, a taxi pulled up.

Dana’s aunts jumped out of the cab, faces white and frantic. As soon as they saw her, they rushed over.

“We thought you were dead!” Yvonne cried.

The aunts smothered her in hugs, weeping with relief.

Dee stood back to regard her.

“Where did you get the cool gear?”

Only then did Dana see how bad the two looked.

“
Y
ou’re hurt!” Dana cried.

“We’re alive,” Dee responded.

“Let’s get inside,” said Yvonne urgently.

Ignoring the stares of hotel staff and residents, the three hurried through the lobby and up to their room. Yvonne immediately ran a hot bath, while Dee ordered room service.

“What happened?” Dana demanded. “Tell me!”

She was the calmest of the three. Her aunts were moving around in fits and starts, taking off their clothes, donning bathrobes, checking their injuries. Both were badly cut and bruised. Their clothes were torn, spattered with blood and dirt. Some of their limbs looked twisted out of shape. There was a wild look in their eyes.

“We will,” Yvonne assured her. “After we treat the shock.”

“We’ve been here before,” Dee said shakily. “A little rumble at our favorite club when it got raided by nasties. We had to hold our own till Toronto’s finest arrived.”

“This is a lot worse, though,” Yvonne muttered. Her voice trembled as she stared at a deep gash on her leg. “I think I might need a doctor.”

“Me too,” Dee admitted.

They slumped together on the edge of the bed. The reality of the attack was only sinking in. They began to shiver violently. The dark thing had left its mark; for though they called on all the liveliness of their personalities to rally against it, they were defeated. It was too hard. Too horrible.

Dana clasped each of them by the hand.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said softly.

She gripped them firmly as she let the light flow. Like liquid gold, it seeped into their skin, slowly spreading like warmth throughout their bodies. As the light moved, it healed, not only the surface wounds but the ones deep inside; the nightmare of the evil they had faced.

When Dana let go, her aunts looked fully restored and refreshed, bursting with energy.

“Wow!” said Dee. “That was some rush!”

Yvonne had tears in her eyes. “Thanks, sweetie. It was lovely.”

“I was taught things about my power,” she said, a little shyly.

Before she could explain further, a knock on the door brought room service with the feast Dee had ordered. The three were more than ready to devour it. The tray was loaded with food: grilled cheese sandwiches, “western” omelets with fried peppers and ham, bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches, double-decker clubs, and a mountain of fries. There were also vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry milkshakes, and a pot of hot chocolate afloat with marshmallows.

They talked as they ate. Dana insisted on hearing their story first. She was dismayed at their descriptions of the Fair Folk.

“He’s a lush,” Dee concluded, “and she has codependency issues.”

“Documentary on alcoholism,” Yvonne explained to Dana.

“I know what I know,” Dee asserted.

“So they can’t help us,” Dana said, shaking her head.

This wasn’t good news. But worse was to come. The attack by Crowley. She could hardly bear to think of what might have been the outcome.

Her aunts shuddered as they recalled their ordeal.

“His tentacles were awful,” Yvonne said.

“What?”
Dee exclaimed.

“I said
tent
-acles.”

“Oh.”

“He couldn’t find me,” Dana said, thinking about it. “I was beyond his reach with the Old Ones. That’s why he went after you two.”

Her voice rang with guilt.

“We signed on for the whole kit and caboodle,” Dee assured her.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Yvonne agreed.

“Not anymore,” Dana said. “It’s too dangerous. I shouldn’t have got you involved.”

“We’d take a hit for you any day,” Dee declared.

Her sister agreed. But it was the wrong thing to say. Dana’s features hardened, as did her resolve.

“I can’t let you. It’s wrong. Laurel told me about this already. Other people can’t get involved. If you don’t agree to stay out, I’ll use a spell on you and make you forget.”