The Dream Catcher's Daughter

The Dream Catcher’s Daughter

a
novel by

Steven Fox

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY

TWENTYONE
TWENTYTWO

TWENTYTHREE
TWENTYFOUR

TWENTYFIVE
TWENTYSIX

TWENTYSEVEN

He pulled the van onto South Hollow
Avenue. On this Tuesday, Jason was making a routine delivery for his father’s
grocery store. He ran through his head a checklist of items: milk, eggs, bread,
and crushed fairy bones. The latter was held within a glowing circle of chalk
in the back of the van. Jason knew nothing of the bone powder, aside from “Keep
it out of sunlight,” as his father had said, and “Don’t sniff it.” Not that
Jason made a habit out of sniffing things, but he was a curious person. The key
word being
was
.

A house pulled into view on Jason’s right:
It had a low-pitched roof with tiles the color of red clay and below this, a
white screen door marking the middle of a large porch littered with glass
shards and dark planting soil.

He parked the van and killed the engine.
Heaving a sigh, he leaned back in his seat, staring through the passenger-side
window at the porch. He counted the flower pots—five of them—and tried to
remember if there had been six or seven before. Jason glanced at the clock: 5:15
P.M. Part of him wondered if he could sit there for forty-five minutes. He
didn’t care about money, but without any more deliveries, the only way to fill
out the last half hour of his shift was to work in-store. To interact with
people. He closed his eyes.

He unbuckled his seatbelt and hopped out
of the van. A cool breeze lapped at the back of his neck as he skirted the
van’s side toward the back doors. He’d covered the inside of the windows with
One-Way Tarps, which, as his father had explained, camouflaged all magical
things. If someone looked at one side of the tarp, they would see through it.
But not really. They wouldn’t see the white circle inscribed on the van’s
floor, or the box of powdered fairy bones the circle secured in its center.
They would merely see the eggs and milk and Jason and everything else
non-magical.

The tarp’s other side was normal, so Jason
couldn’t see out his back window. He’d asked his father if it wouldn’t be wiser
to flip the tarp so he
could
see. But Jason’s father had only shook his
head, muttering, “You
never
put crushed fairy bones in daylight.
Never.
”
Jason, under his father’s order, wrapped the jar of bones in several towels and
then stuffed it into a box.

When Jason opened one of the back doors,
he felt hyperaware of the sun on his neck. He had never taken magic classes and
knew nothing besides what he was told. With his eighteenth birthday around the
corner, it was impossible to learn.

Cradling the box of bone-dust in one arm,
he decided the milk and eggs could wait, especially after glancing at the
customer’s receipt. If something happened to the fairy bones, the money Jason
would owe couldn’t be covered in a year. He turned toward the yard and walked
up the pathway, breathing in the fresh autumn breeze—the weather he’d loved
once. Jason only enjoyed it now, but wondered if
enjoy
might be too
strong of word. Almost like a sin.

Jason shook his head out, hoping the
thought would disappear. In his mild shaking frenzy, one of the folds of the
box flipped open. Quickly, he smashed it down, pushing the flap back into
place. Jason sneezed, and wiped his nose on the crook of his elbow.

He opened the screen door and stepped into
the dark hallway. Trash bags lined the wall, and a layer of grime and dust
coated everything. A three-legged table sat in the corner to his right. A vase
with flowers sat atop the table. Next to that stood a door, and beyond was a
mystery, for Jason never saw the recipients of this weekly order. Until today,
Jason would never have guessed the people here to be magi. Rich, powerful magi.

He glanced at the wall of trash bags and
ran a finger along the door frame. A black streak of gunk coated his finger.
Maybe the people here were well-off instead of rich.

He set the box on the floor next to the
table, just out of the sun’s reach. It would be fine once he closed the door.
As Jason straightened up, he noticed something: the breeze. It felt cool only
moments before. Now it felt stale and lukewarm. Something else bothered him,
but he couldn’t concentrate. There was a noise, almost like a rattling. He
looked at the vase and its flowers. Something white and square-shaped was
lodged between the flower stems, flapping in the breeze. It almost sounded like
snoring. He then realized that the breeze seemed to flow like someone’s breath:
in, out, in, out.

“Jason...”

He turned, and saw nobody. His heart
thudded, reverberating in his temples and at the base of his skull. Rubbing the
back of his head, he stepped out onto the porch. There was a noise:
hngh
,
huuh
,
hngh
,
huuh
. In, out, in, out.
A great shadow covered the ground; a nightly chill grew around Jason. The sun
was sitting halfway between its peak and the western horizon.

A black dot formed in the center of his
vision. Jason blinked, and suddenly the dot’s shadow cloaked him and the house.
The dot grew and stretched toward the ground. It took a human form, growing
flesh that changed from black to gray. It stood taller than the house, taller
than a large water tower. One of its toes was as round as Jason was tall. He
realized this dot was female only because it grew a womanly face. Her body was
smooth and featureless except for the slight curves of a teenaged girl. She had
long black hair that flowed down her back, a great river of tar.

In, out, in, out; the breeze came from her
mouth, and Jason gagged at the smell—rotten chicken salad and morning
breath
. He blinked and blinked, hoping the giantess would
disappear. Instead, he only succeeded in giving himself a headache, which
formed at the back of his head. He gripped this spot, right at the base of his
skull. An electric shock bolted down his neck, fanning out into his back and
sides. The giantess’s flesh turned green for an instant, then back to gray. In
that instant he heard a scream, then a voice: “Jason. I’m...I’m sorry. I
should’ve told you.” Then a cry: “Traitor! You son of a bitch!” There were
footsteps, and then running.

His spine seized up, and he arched his
head back, his mouth agape and his eyes wide and staring at the gray giantess
eclipsing the sun. She kneeled down, lowering her hands toward him. He looked
into her eyes and saw nothing but predatory hunger. As she spoke, Jason was
awash in déjà vu.

“Where is my king?” she said. “Tell me, or
you’ll melt in my stomach.” Her voice was thunder in Jason’s relatively tiny
ears. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know, Talshe,” said Jason.

Talshe’s
smile shrank.
“How do you know my name?” Jason didn’t reply.
Talshe’s
smile turned vicious. “You know where my king is. You know where King Lukoje
is.”

Terror pooled at the bottom of Jason’s
chest. He wanted to flee, but found himself frozen. Paralyzed. He thought he
could hear music floating through the air, trickling into his brain. His breath
remained steady, despite his galloping heart. He tasted
Talshe’s
rotten breath at the back of his throat. He wanted to throw up, but couldn’t
bring himself to do that, either.
Talshe’s
hands slid
under him and her fingers curled around him. Her skin was slick with sweat, yet
cold and corpse-like. Jason’s feet left the ground, and he reclined into her
fingers. Above him, her smile grew. Saliva glistened her lips.

As the music
crescendoed
,
Jason realized it wasn’t in his head.

A light blinded Jason for several moments,
and he smacked against the ground. Stars swam in his vision. When they cleared,
the sky was empty; Talshe had vanished. He hadn’t fallen far enough to hurt
himself, but the shock was enough to make him forget his headache in favor of a
new one. For a few seconds he lay there, hands at his sides, huffing. All
around him the world swirled and blurred like a child’s water painting. The
cool breeze washed over him again, turning his damp armpits chilly. The sweat
droplets on his forehead were tips of icicles skating down his temples, ears
and neck.

The high-pitched shriek of breaking glass
made him sit erect. The shrieking explosion made him jump to his feet and run
to the porch doorway.

The vase had fallen and hit the box just
right, causing it to topple and pop open. Despite the layers of towels wrapped
around it, the jar had rolled out of the box and into sunlight. Jason’s proof
lay in a black smear across the porch, just at the foot of the door. Black
glass shards were spread in all directions. Shards from the vase littered the
hallway, its black potting soil in a pile below the table. He stooped down to
clean up the mess.

The white square was among the wreckage,
though a tad singed. Jason moved to pick it up and place it on the table, but
stopped. The square had a name inscribed upon one side: Jason. He blinked,
rubbed his eyes, but the fuchsia ink didn’t fade or change.
His
name
stared up at him. He turned the paper over in his hand, and found another name:
McKinney—his last name. He threw a glance over his shoulder, then carefully
unfolded the note:

Jason,

You’re coming undone. We can’t have that.
Soon I’ll give you a key. Save all your questions and don’t worry about this
note. When the key is offered to you, take it. And, whatever you do, make sure
to inhale the powdered fairy bone dust. Your life depends on it.

His throat felt hot. The note was crushed
inside his pocket. The sun of this October day kissed the horizon, bathing the
front of Silver Moon Groceries in orange light. He rolled the van to a stop at
the four-way intersection in front of Silver Moon. The light had turned red,
and Jason leaned against the wheel. What he couldn’t get over had nothing to do
with the gray-skinned giantess or the strange note. Yes, he worried about the
fairy bones and what his father might say if he found out they exploded, but
weighed heavily on him. What hurt most was the ache at the back of his head.
The one that had manifested itself when Talshe appeared. He blinked hard,
white-knuckling the steering wheel. His breath quickened. His back felt prickly
and warm.

The bleating of a horn jerked him out of
his daze. The light had turned green, and a line of cars behind him chorused
their horns. Jason stomped on the gas pedal and turned right, into Silver
Moon’s parking lot. He drove to the garage at the back of the store, where
three other vans were stored. No one was around as he killed the engine and
hopped out of the van, locking its doors. He placed his van key on a hook just
at the front of the garage, where three other hooks each held a set of keys.
Below them was the time clock. It read: 5:59 P.M. Jason tapped his foot for a
minute, then punched out.

He shut the door behind him, and turned
back toward it. While the garage held nothing incriminating to Silver Moon’s
true nature, Jason’s father insisted each employee check to make sure the door
was locked and enchanted. Each delivery driver was trained for this. They knew
what enchantments might be on the door. These, besides what he heard from his
best friend, were about the only spells Jason knew. But knowing and being able
to perform them are two different things.

Standing there, staring at the metal door
with its gold, bulbous handle, Jason wondered if he could skip the door check.
Probably not: His father kept records of everything. Jason sighed through his
nose, braced himself, and reached out. In the split second before gripping the
door, Jason wondered what it would be this time—Ivy Snare? Brain Cramps, his
father’s personal favorite? Jason gripped the doorknob tight, and when neither
occurred, his stomach sank. A small box-shaped hole opened upon the door. Jason
tried to shrink back, but the handle held him in place. He couldn’t even uncurl
his fist. He jerked and twisted, but only succeeded in growing the salty,
grainy sweat-stains in his armpits.

“Jason McKinney...”

He froze. The voice hit him like the
lowest note of a bass guitar, reverberating in his bones and the earth below.
His eyes floated upward, toward the black shape in the door. His eyes narrowed.

“YOU’RE AN ASSHAT!!!”

Water jetted out, dousing Jason in an icy
blanket. He stumbled back, his hand having come unstuck, and fell on his ass.
He sucked down breath, his heart throbbing behind his Adam’s apple. He could
barely hear the laughter to his left, where from around the corner, two
teenagers in Silver Moon uniforms appeared.

“Got you good, McKinney!” said the taller,
fatter one. Ronnie Skinner wore his grin wide, revealing his yellow white
teeth.

The other stumbled behind him, one arm
wrapped around his stomach, his eyes wrenched shut. Boone Harold’s smile was
like a cut across his face. Jason hated both of these faces. Hated both of
these people. Only wanted them to disappear. Now. He tried wiping off his dress
shirt, but remembered that water soaks.

“What’s with the glare, bro?” said Boone.
“It was only fun.”

Jason shook his head. “Fun? You call that
fun? It’s against the rules.”

“Yeah, yeah. No messing with store
enchantments. Lighten up, McKinney! Not like we’re
gonna
get fired.”

Jason stood and stalked off. The laughter
and ribbing floating after him like smoke. “Get the corncob out your ass!”
“Take a chill pill!” “Loosen the tie!” “You
ain’t
boss, yet!”

“You’ll never be the boss, either!”

The two burst out laughing. Jason walked
toward the storefront. His face was smooth. He felt nothing inside. He hated
it, but he’d chosen to be like this. It was better than letting the shadows
return.

Just inside the store stood a huge display
of chips and soda—a Halloween special. After the dinner rush, the display was
merely a skeleton of paper and cardboard. Beside it sat a bench. There was a
lone
boy
on the bench with red cheeks and puffy eyes.
The boy cradled a Transformers action figure in his lap.

“Hey, Trevor,” said Jason. The boy looked
up, and upon seeing Jason, rubbed his eyes. “
Wha’cha
doing here?”

Trevor’s eyes gleamed, and Jason hoped
Trevor wouldn’t cry. But Trevor only looked down at his toy and sniffed.
“Waiting for my mama,” he said.

Jason ran a hand through his black hair.
“Something happen?”

“My friends.”

“They picking on you?” Trevor nodded.
“Why?”

“They say Transformers are for babies.”

Jason crossed his arms. He wanted to grin,
but his lips didn’t work like that. “They don’t sound like very good friends.”

“Aren’t all friends good?”

“Nah, not really. Good friends wouldn’t
diss
you like that. If I were your friend, I’d bring my
Transformers and we’d play.”

Trevor looked up, his eyes wide, his
bowl-cut bangs brushing his brow. “You’d...play Transformers with me?”

Jason tried to smile again, but couldn’t.
Instead, he shrugged. “Well, I’m pretty busy, so I can’t promise that. But I
can let you borrow my
Megatron
figure.”

“Will you really?”

“Sure. I’ll drop him off at the elementary
school tomorrow. Promise.”

Trevor smiled and hugged Jason, who hadn’t
been expecting it. He stood there, stiff and motionless. His scalp prickled. A
voice came from Jason’s left: “Giving out free hugs? I want one.”

Darlene Mosby wouldn’t prank Jason. Tease,
maybe. But her wide smile and soft green eyes gave him nothing but a sense of
security.

“Sorry,” said Jason. “All out for today.”

“Ah. Well, I’ll take an I.O.U.” And she
winked.

Trevor said, “
Ew
.”
And Darlene laughed. Jason stared longingly at her smile.

After her laughter died, Darlene put her hands
on her hips, her curly brown hair falling in a tangled veil across her round
face. “Your father’s
lookin
’ for
ya
,”
she said.

“Oh, good.” Jason hoped his father hadn’t
heard about the fairy bones.

“You-know-who is here, too.” Jason only
stared, and Darlene’s smile fell. “Is that bad?”

“It’s not my birthday yet.”

“Well, your dad
is
his old
apprentice.”

Nodding, Jason looked at Trevor and wished
he could smile at his old mentee. “I’ll be around tomorrow,” he said.
“Promise.” The boy smiled, and Jason walked away with Darlene.

They moved past the cash registers, down
the pop aisle. They walked slowly, taking their time. Jason told her what
happened by the garage. Darlene’s mouth came unhinged like a broken gate. “I
think I’ll tell my dad. I’d feel bad for having Ronnie and Boone fired. Okay,
not really. But I feel like it’s a waste of Dad’s time.”

“They broke the rules—the ones
your
dad wrote. I don’t think it’s a waste of time. What if they messed up an
enchantment and got us all exposed?”

“True. I just don’t like being the
tattletale.”

“’
Fraid
they’ll
come after
ya
?”

“Not really. You’d pound them into pulp.”

They high-fived each other, and Darlene
turned back to head up front. Jason turned to the doors leading to the back
room, beyond which lay his father’s office.
The Guardian’s here,
he
thought.
It’s not even my birthday yet.

Jason pushed past the swinging doors. He
weaved his way through a maze of grocery palettes and stacks of milk crates.
His father’s office was at the back of the store in case any
normies—non-magical folk—haplessly wandered in. You needed to know the way,
otherwise you’d magically find yourself at the fire exit, nowhere near Mr.
McKinney’s office. Jason learned this the hard way when he started working more
than two years ago. Since then, he has mastered the backroom route.

There, to his left, wedged between damaged
goods and diapers, stood the entrance. Jason poked his head through the slight
crevice, which was barely wider than him, hoping he’d successfully navigated
the maze. For a moment, he saw nothing but thick blackness. Then he spotted it,
to the right—a red, pulsating beacon. Jason pushed himself farther into the
gap. As he pushed himself in, the space stretched around him, encasing him like
a latex glove.

Up ahead, the darkness lifted: The real
Silver Moon Grocery bustled with its true patrons. Several wooden stands with
shelves were set up in a long stretch of alley. Each stand was stocked with
glass jars of floating eyes and pots heavy with pixie dust. Several customers
glanced at Jason. If he’d been in his street clothes, he may have had a
problem. Even in the midst of modernity, magi preferred traditional robes and
cloaks to t-shirts and jeans. Jason didn’t see what was so special about
musty-looking capes and ratty, moth-eaten hoods. Some were nice, sewn with
star-like patterns that glimmered like diamonds, but most were plain, holey
robes.

Jason greeted the customers, as his father
would have him do, then slipped away. The cobblestone floor stretched on for
what seemed like a mile, and along the way Jason observed the magi as they
pondered Mr. McKinney’s wares. There were mason jars and cauldrons filled with
green and white powders and purple liquids. Jason walked briskly, hoping to
avoid the eyes of customers in need of help. Despite explanation by his father,
Jason had little to no idea about his father’s magical wares.

The alley ended with a sign that hung
above a door decorated with iron-wrought gargoyles. The sign read: “Have a
complaint? Let me fix it for you!”

As he stepped up to the door, a chill fell
upon his body. He recognized the feeling. And he hated it. He hated it because,
as every mage knew, only people who couldn’t use magic would feel a chill in
the Guardian’s presence.

He opened the door, and shadows billowed
out like a black fog. Looking up, he saw his father’s office first—the
immaculate array of magical objects with normie things. Jason would always
remember the day Mr. McKinney attended a major-league baseball game and caught a
foul ball. He had the ball signed—“It’s something you always do when you get a
piece of someone else’s work!”—and mounted it on the wall, right next to a
portrait of a hydra that seemed to grow more heads each time you looked at it.
Signed by the artist, of course.

Mr. McKinney stood from his desk and
smiled. “Jason,
m’boy
! How goes it, son?”

Jason didn’t answer, because the Guardian,
with only his piercing green eyes visible in the shapeless, inky-black mass of
his form, stared at Jason from a chair just right of his father’s desk. The
chill snaked into Jason’s spine and his lips twitched. Somehow, normies
developed a fight-or-flight reaction to magic. Jason could control it, but it
wasn’t easy.

“Greetings, Jason, son of Arthur
McKinney,” said the Guardian, his voice deep yet whispery. “Have you yet to
learn a spell?”

Jason glanced at this father, who smiled
at him with unwanted expectations—things Jason could never hope to meet.

“No, sir, I haven’t.”

“But h-he’s learning!” said Mr. McKinney.
“There’s no reason to get hasty, Master.”

“I’m not your master, Arthur. Call me
Guardian.”

“Yes, Guardian.”

Jason looked into the Guardian’s green
eyes. His body seized up, his sides and thighs twitching, pleading Jason to run
or attack. Don’t just stand there, they said. He’ll kill you if don’t do
anything. Part of Jason wanted to believe this, to give in to his normie
instincts. But another part said not to. This part, as he gazed into the
Guardian’s eyes, felt strange. Guilty, almost, though he wasn’t sure why.

“It puzzles me,” said the Guardian, “that
you would return to work so close to your eighteenth birthday. You will have no
memory of it in less than half a week.” For the longest, most unbearable
stretch of time, no one said anything. In that time, Jason wanted to claw his
own eyes out. But he kept his gaze locked onto the Guardian’s. This twisted
staring contest drew a shift from the shadows around the Guardian’s face—a
smile? “I believe you have something to tell your son, Arthur.”

“Ah, yes, let me see here...” Mr. McKinney
rifled through the papers on his desk, and held up a sheet of paper inscribed
with a thick block of print. He cleared his throat, and said, “This is the
contract we usually read to those about to retire. In your case, Jason, it says
you have to train someone before you leave.”

“Ah, I see. Found anyone?”