“Louis?” Henry called, the lump in his throat swelling.
Up ahead, the vague trees shifted slightly, revealing a dimly lit path through the middle. The fiddle was stronger now.
“Ling!” Henry tried one last time. He didn’t want to abandon her, but he was afraid of losing this vital link to Louis. Perhaps wherever she was, Ling heard the music, too, and would know to come this way. Hoping that was the case, Henry followed the music deeper into the wood.
The sun grew brighter. The fog thinned. The flat trees rounded and grew bark, becoming immense live oaks trailing wispy beards of Spanish moss. Dragonflies pirouetted past Henry’s face and darted toward the surface of a sun-brushed river where a blue rowboat, just like the one Henry and Louis had used for their fishing trips, swayed against the bank. Propped up by wooden stilts at the river’s edge was a rustic cabin. Smoke curled up from its crooked chimney. The music came from inside. Henry’s legs jellied as he approached. What if this was just another cruel trick played on him in a dream? His fist was a weight at his side. He took a deep breath and knocked. The music stopped. Henry put a hand on his stomach to steady himself as the door creaked open.
Louis appeared, as handsome as ever. He blinked—first at the hazy sunlight, then at Henry. “Henri?”
Henry could only nod. He didn’t know if it was possible to faint inside a dream, but he thought he was perilously close to finding out. The moment seemed to stretch forever. And then suddenly Louis was smiling wide. “Mon cher! Where you been?”
As Ling moved through the gray wood calling Henry’s name and getting no response, her panic turned to anger. Their agreement had been clear: Ling was to help Henry try to find Louis in the dream world. That agreement did not include entering strange buildings, wandering through an old train station, and getting lost in a creepy, half-finished forest. She should never have consented to help someone from outside Chinatown—ten dollars or not.
“Henry!” Ling called sharply.
“Are you lost?” a sweet, girlish voice answered.
Ling whirled around. “Wh-who’s there?”
“You walk in dreams but you’re not asleep.”
Ling turned in the other direction, looking for the source of the voice.
“You’ll make yourself dizzy if you keep turning like that,” the voice said, giggling.
“Show yourself!” Ling commanded.
A girl in a wide-sleeved tunic and a long skirt stepped out from behind a tree. She was about Ling’s age, small but sturdy with a wide, open face and very straight brows. Her plaited hair was coiled at her neck, secured with two crisscrossed hairpins. “I can walk in dreams, too. Just like you.”
First Henry, now this girl, too? Soon they’d need to put up traffic signals in the dream world for all the comings and goings. It annoyed Ling. Annoyance was good. Ling preferred it to fear.
“Who are you?” Ling demanded.
“I am Wai-Mae,” the girl said, bowing a little. “What is your name?”
“Ling,” Ling answered. It always fascinated her that inside a dream walk, there was no language or dialect barrier at all, as if in dreams, they all spoke the same language.
Wai-Mae’s brow furrowed. “Just Ling? That’s a funny name.”
“Where are we? What is this place?” Ling demanded.
“Isn’t it beautiful? It’s nothing like ordinary dreams!”
“But what is it?” Ling said, more to herself than to Wai-Mae. “How did you get here? Did you come here on the train?”
“The train?” Wai-Mae’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. “Oh, yes! The train! Did it also bring you?”
“Yes. But I came with a boy, another dream walker, Henry—”
“There’s another?” Wai-Mae gasped, delighted. “But where is he?”
“I don’t know. That’s the trouble,” Ling said evenly. She was beginning to think that Wai-Mae wasn’t terribly bright. “When we stepped off the train, he ran, and I lost him.”
“You lost the dream walker?” Wai-Mae shook her head. “That’s very careless, Ling.”
Ling glared, but Wai-Mae didn’t seem to feel her silent scold. “Can you at least help me look for him?”
Wai-Mae’s eyes widened. “Is this other dream walker your husband?”
“My…? No! No. He is not my husband,” Ling sputtered. “He’s… never mind.”
“I don’t know if it’s proper for you to be walking in dreams with a boy who is not your husband, Ling,” Wai-Mae tutted. “Very well. I will help you. But you really should be more careful with your friends in the future, Little Warrior. Come. This way.”
Ling wasn’t sure whom she wanted to kill more for ruining her night’s dream walk: Henry or this thoroughly irritating girl. She opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it, and with a heavy sigh resigned herself to following Wai-Mae through the wood.
But once she found Henry again, she’d have plenty to say to him.
Louis’s voice, no longer a memory, unlatched Henry’s emotions. He wanted to throw his arms around Louis but was afraid that if he did, Louis would disappear, leaving him in an embrace of smoke.
“Louis, is that really you?”
“You know another Louis looks like me?” Louis said, just as if they were on the Elysian, headed up the river on a hot day, as if no time had passed at all. “Where are we? What is this place? Looks like the bayou but it isn’t. Not quite.”
“It’s a dream. We’re inside a dream,” Henry explained, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He was laughing and crying all at once.
Louis let out a long whistle. “Well, then. Got to be the nicest dream I ever had.”
Henry couldn’t take it another second. He wanted to kiss Louis, to hold him in his arms. He’d never been able to do that in a dream before, but he’d never been in a dream like this one, either. Carefully, he reached out to touch Louis’s sleeve, and his heart sank when he couldn’t quite make contact. It was as if the thinnest pane of glass separated them. How could it be that he could smell gardenia and feel the grain of the wood but not touch his lover? The logic of dreams was unknowable and cruel.
Sharp barking sounded from the river, and a moment later, a freckled hound came sniffing up to Henry through the grass, its tail wagging.
“Gaspard?” Henry said, amazed. The dog circled him twice before tearing after a mourning dove.
“It’s all so real,” Henry said, but his wonder soon gave way to anxiety. “Louis, where have you been?”
“What d’you mean, where I been? ’Cept for some trips up the river, I been where I’ve always been. You’re the one who left, not me,” he said, and Henry heard the note of recrimination in it.
“Only because I had to. Because of my father,” Henry said. He told Louis what had happened the day his father found the letter. “I tried to get word to you, believe me. I’ve been looking everywhere for you—even in dreams.”
“And here I thought you’d gone and forgotten me.” Louis played it light, but Henry knew him too well. He was hurt. Maybe even angry.
“Never. I could never forget you, Louis,” Henry said, and he wished once more that this weren’t a dream and that he could hold Louis.
“I went on over to your house lookin’ for you. Thought Flossie might know somethin’.”
Henry’s heartbeat quickened. “What happened?”
“Found your maman sitting in the cemetery talking to the angels. She didn’t know nothin’. About ’at time, your daddy come out and found me talkin’ to her. He knew who I was, all right. Told me I’d better never come ’round there again or he’d shoot me as a trespasser. Not that that woulda kept me away.” Louis’s smile was short-lived. “He told me you’d left town and that you didn’t want nothin’ to do with me no more—you didn’t even want to say good-bye.” Louis’s voice went feathery. “He told me you hated me.”
“That bastard,” Henry spat. “But what about all those letters I sent you? And two telegrams—one when I reache
d St. Louis, one from New York. When you didn’t write me back, I thought…”
Louis shook his head. “Didn’t get no letters. No telegrams, either.”
“My father,” Henry said. He didn’t like to think that anybody at Celeste’s would sell them out, but money was money, and his father had a lot of it. It would be just like him to pay someone to intercept Henry’s letters and make sure they were thrown out before they could even be delivered. If so, that meant his father had Henry’s return address in New York and had done nothing to try to find him. It was a relief to know that his father wouldn’t drag him off to military school, but it stung, too, knowing that it was easier for his father to erase his only son’s existence than it was for him to tolerate the disappointment of who his son really was.
“But you’re here now, cher,” Louis said. “We’re here now.”
Louis raised his palm toward Henry’s and Henry followed suit, their fingers nearly touching.
Wai-Mae’s mouth hadn’t stopped moving the entire walk through the wood. “Do you know the story of Mu Guiying? She is my favorite of the Dao Ma Dan. When she battles with Yang Zongbao and falls in love with him, saving his life? It’s the most beautiful love story,” she said, huffing alongside Ling like an excited puppy. There’d still been no sign of Henry. “I think it’s my favorite. Except for the Courtesan Yu Tang Chun. Or the Drunken Beauty. Or possibly the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”
“Henry!” Ling called again, more desperately. “Henryyyy!”
“I’m sorry, Ling. Uncle says that I talk too much, and I’m a silly girl and my head is too full of romantic stories to be much good,” Wai-Mae said in cheerful apology. “Would you like to know a secret?”
“Not particularl—”
“I am to be married soon!” Wai-Mae exclaimed. “We’ve never met, but I have heard my husband-to-be is very handsome, with kind eyes and a high forehead. He is a wealthy merchant in America, in New York City, and once I’m there, I’ll live very well with servants to wait on me and plenty of money to send back to my family. I’m traveling to San Francisco now on the Lady Liberty. I hate the ship. It makes me so sick,” Wai-Mae said, putting a hand on her stomach.
“It’s very difficult for Chinese women to immigrate to America. How did you manage it?” Ling asked.
“Uncle arranged everything through matchmakers, O’Bannion and Lee. Mr. O’Bannion will greet me in immigration in San Francisco. Then he will take me to my husband in New York City. My future husband is very respected and successful there. I hear you must be careful on the streets, though,” Wai-Mae continued, barely stopping to take a breath. “There is all manner of vice and corruption and murder—opium dens and houses of ill repute!—and a lady has to keep her wits sharp, or terrible misfortune could befall her in the Den of Thieves or Murderer’s Alley and along Bandit’s Roost on Mulberry Bend and—”
“Mulberry Street,” Ling corrected.
“Mulberry Bend,” Wai-Mae said again, knowingly. “I have heard the stories, Ling.”
And I’ve only lived there my entire life, Ling thought.
“Of course, I will have a husband to protect me, but…”
Wai-Mae’s mouth never stopped. Through her prattling monologue, Ling kept moving, thinking only one thought: Kill Henry.
“… it’s the love stories I like best, the ones with the happy endings? I would live inside the opera if I could.…”
No. Ling would need Henry alive for the tongue-lashing she intended to dole out. Then the murder.
“… I know that women can’t perform, but if they could, I would play all the best, most romantic roles, royal consorts, and my gestures would be precise and elegant. And you would be the brave Dan. I can already tell you’ve got a warrior’s spirit—”
“Could you be quiet, please? I’m trying to think,” Ling snapped.
“I’m sorry.” Wai-Mae bowed, embarrassed, and Ling felt like she’d kicked a kitten. “It’s only that I’ve been on the ship for such a long time, and the other women are older and not from my village. They want nothing to do with me. It’s nice to talk to someone else. Someone young. With all her teeth.”
“How old are you?” Ling asked.
“Seventeen. You?”
“The same.”
“You see? We are like sisters already!” Wai-Mae bit her lip hopefully. “And do you like opera?”
“Opera is for old men,” Ling said definitively.
Wai-Mae’s mouth opened in shocked surprise. “Oh, Ling. How can you say that? The opera is wonderful! They are our stories we carry with us, just like dreams.”
“I don’t like fairy tales. I like facts. Science.”
Wai-Mae made a face. “Sounds very dull.”
“Well, if you’re so keen on the opera, you’re in luck. My uncle runs the opera house,” Ling confessed. “In New York. That’s where I live.”
Wai-Mae made a high-pitched sound, and it took Ling a second to recognize it as excitement, not distress. “You are the luckiest girl in the world to have such an uncle! Do you go all the time? Do you sit in the balcony and eat pumpkin seeds and imagine yourself living out those scenes? When I come to New York, you and I will go to the opera, and you’ll see how wonderful it is! Clearly, fate has brought us together. We shall become the best of friends. And in the meantime, while I am on the ship, we can meet up each night, here in this beautiful dream world.”
They’d come to the end of the trees. Ahead, it was only blocks of gray and brown, like a vague sketch waiting for detail. “This seems to be as far as we can go,” Ling said.
“Would you like to go farther?”
“But we can’t go farther,” Ling said, irritated. She really was starting to wonder if Wai-Mae might be a bit simple.
“Then we will change it, make it into whatever we like. Go where we wish.”
“You can’t change a dream.”
“Yes you can.”
Ling spoke as if she were a peeved schoolmarm explaining a subject to a confused child. “I’ve dream walked plenty. It doesn’t work that way. You can walk inside an office building. You can take the stairs, which already exist. But you, yourself, cannot turn that building into, say, a schoolhouse or an automobile.”
Wai-Mae’s expression was quizzical. “What’s an automobile?”
Ling shut her eyes, took a deep breath. “Never mind.” She started back toward the forest. “Henry! Henry!”
“Here we can change things,” Wai-Mae said, catching up. “It isn’t like other dreams. Here, I’ll show you.”
Ling stopped and folded her arms across her chest, defiant.
“Think of something you want,” Wai-Mae said. “Something small.”
I want my legs back, Ling thought. I want to walk without braces, without people staring at me in pity or fear. I want to wake up without pain.
Ling swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. “Fine. Shoes. I want a pair of beautiful shoes.”
“Very well,” Wai-Mae said, pleased. She reached down and scooped up a rock, and her hand dropped as if the rock had real weight.
“How did—”
“Shhh. Watch.” Wai-Mae shut her eyes. Her mouth went tight with concentration. She moved her hands over the rock, skilled as a magician with a well-worn trick, and as Ling watched, astonished, the rock shifted beneath Wai-Mae’s hands, no longer solid but something between states, a moment of becoming, observed. Wai-Mae’s edges blurred as well, as if she and the rock were joined in this alchemy. The rock wavered for a moment more, and then it was gone. In its place lay a pair of elegant embroidered Chinese slippers.
Ling ran her thumb across the raised thread at the tips of the shoes and felt just the tiniest static, some lingering charge. “How… how did you do that?”
Wai-Mae wiped sweat from her brow. “It’s this world. Our dream-walker energy is like magic here.”
“Not magic,” Ling murmured. Her mind whirred: She knew the dream world was not the real world, and yet, as fantastic
al as it all was, she’d never been able to change or create anything within it. This seemed unbelievable—as if Wai-Mae had altered the atomic structure of the dream landscape somehow.
“This place makes whatever you dream come true. It makes me very tired, though.” Wai-Mae trembled, breathing heavily. For the first time, her mouth wasn’t running amok. “Come back tomorrow night, and I will show you how to do it, too.”
“But how do I come back?”
“Take the train from the old station, of course. Just as you did tonight,” Wai-Mae assured her, grinning. “We will be friends, you and I. I will show you how to change dreams. And you…” Wai-Mae twisted her mouth to the side and looked up to the trees, thinking. “You will tell me stories of your New York City so that I will know it when I get there. So that I will not feel like such a stranger.”
Ling couldn’t stop staring at the slippers. “Tomorrow night,” she said.
The first sharp ring of Ling’s alarm clock roared across the dreamscape. Her body grew heavier, a signal that she had begun her ascent into the waking world.
“Till tomorrow, Little Warrior!” Wai-Mae called.
Tomorrow, Ling thought, and like the flapping wings of a dove, the night whitened and twitched, then blurred into a great cottony nothingness.
At the first peal of the alarm, Gaspard barked furiously.
“No! Not yet!” Henry yelled. He thrust a hand out toward Louis as if he could grab hold of him and keep his lover from disappearing. But it was no use. Henry gulped in huge lungfuls of air as he woke in his chair at his tiny table in the Bennington. The alarm clock screamed and shook on the floor where it had fallen. Henry lay in the chair, paralyzed, unable to wipe away his tears. From the other room, he could hear Theta yelling. In a minute, she’d come out and growl at him. But Henry didn’t care about any of that. He’d seen Louis. He’d talked to Louis.
But would Louis even remember their conversation? People didn’t always remember their dreams, and even if they did, even if one crawled under the skin for a little while, it didn’t linger for long. Details were forgotten. People brushed them aside, busy with their lives. But Louis didn’t have a telephone, and if Henry’s father was somehow keeping his letters and telegrams from reaching Louis, then calling for him at Celeste’s was useless.