Lair of Dreams

  “Sometimes I can change what people dream,” Henry said.

  Ling whirled around. “You can? How? In what way?”

  “Well, don’t get too excited. I can’t change the dream directly. I can only give the dreamer a suggestion.”

  “Oh. Is that all?” Ling said. She stuck her fingers back into the fountain, smiling as the goldfish nibbled at her fingertips.

  “I’m wounded,” Henry drawled. “It can be useful, though. If it looks as if the person’s having a bad dream, I can help them out. I’ll say something like, ‘Why don’t you dream about something more pleasant—puppies or hot air balloons or top hats—’”

  “Top hats? No one wants to dream of top hats.”

  “How do you know? Perhaps they’re very formal dreams,” Henry said, smiling. “Anyhow, I give suggestions, and sometimes that’s enough to steer the person away from a nightmare.” He played around with a new melody. “Were you afraid the first time you walked in a dream?”

  “A little. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I thought maybe I’d died and woken up in the afterlife.”

  “And then you were sorry you hadn’t worn a top hat.”

  Ling ignored Henry’s joke. “What about your first time?”

  “I thought I’d gone mad. Just like my mother.”

  “Your mother is crazy?”

  Henry shrugged. “Oh, you mean to tell me it isn’t perfectly normal for mothers to spend all day in the family cemetery talking to statues of saints? Why, don’t you know, Miss Chan? The DuBois family is very respectable!”

  “Has she always been mad?”

  “No. Sometimes she’s just peeved.”

  “It isn’t funny.”

  “Oh, yes, it is. It’s terribly, terribly funny,” Henry said. He was used to delivering this patter to the jaded theater crowd, who liked to keep things light and entertaining, with no embarrassing sentiment to force them into pretending to care. Over the years, Henry had gotten pretty good at his act: “My parents?” he’d say, perched at the piano. “Tragic, tragic story. They were circus performers eaten by their own tigers just after a rousing performance of ‘Blow the Man Down.’ Poor Maman and Papa, gone with a roar and a belch and a half-finished chorus.”

  But he realized how silly it was to pretend with Ling here inside a dream where everything you kept inside could suddenly show itself without warning. Lying about your emotions, putting on a happy face when you didn’t feel it, was exhausting.

  Henry kept his fingers moving, testing various chord progressions. “My mother tried to kill herself. She sent the servants into town, found my father’s straight razor, crawled into the bath, and cut her wrists. But she’d forgotten that I was home. I found her. There was blood everywhere. I slipped and fell in it.”

  “That’s awful,” Ling said when she found her voice again.

  “It was awful. I loved those pants.”

  “Your father must have been grateful that you found her.”

  Henry scowled. “My father has never used my name and grateful in the same sentence.” He glanced at Ling, ready with another quip. She was looking at him. Really looking. It made him uncomfortable. “I’ve grown a second head inside this dream, haven’t I? Be honest. I can take it.”

  “Your family has its own cemetery? You must be loaded,” Ling said.

  Henry laughed. “Oh, yes, darlin’. We are, indeed, loaded.” He played a jazzy riff. “We’ve got a family crypt! Inscribed with nonsense Latin! Generations of the DuBois bourgeoisie lined up as a feast for the worms!”

  Ling allowed a smile, then went serious again. “Generations. Your family’s been here a long time. My parents struggled to get here. I’ve never even met my grandparents. How did you find the courage to leave home?”

  Henry had thought himself a coward for running away. It was strange to hear Ling call it courage. “My father was angry with me over my friendship with Louis.”

  “Why?”

  “He thought it was…” Henry searched for the right word. “Unhealthy.” He could sense Ling preparing a follow-up question that he wasn’t prepared to answer just yet, so he rushed on. “And he didn’t approve of my music. He forbade me to follow my passion. The old man wanted me to become a lawyer. Can you imagine me as a lawyer?”

  “You’d make an awful lawyer. Absolutely terrible.”

  Henry grinned. “Thank you for your confidence in me.”

  “Terrible,” Ling said again.

  “Yes, we’ve covered that sufficiently, I believe. Anyway, when he decided to send me to military school, I packed my suitcase and left. I suppose you think I’m an ungrateful son.”

  “No,” Ling said, considering Henry’s reasons. “But I could never leave my parents.”

  Henry tried to imagine the sort of filial duty Ling felt. If anything, he saw his parents as a burden to be endured. When people talked about “family” as something special, a place where you belonged, a dull anger nipped at Henry, a feeling that he’d been cheated of this basic comfort. Instead, Henry had made his own family with Theta, with his friends in the speakeasies and backstage at the Follies. He imagined that one day he’d hear that his parents were gone and feel only a vague sense of loss. How could you mourn something you’d never really had?

  “Well,” Henry said wistfully, “it must be nice to be so loved.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” Ling said, letting the subject drop. To her surprise, she found that she liked talking with Henry, especially about dreams. Sure, he told too many jokes for her taste. But he was easy and loose, like a gentle stream that carried her along.

  For a moment, she considered telling Henry about her plan to look for George tonight. But she decided it was best to keep quiet; that was her mission, not his.

  “You asked me if I was afraid the first time I walked in a dream. But what I’m most afraid of is not being able to do it,” Ling said quietly. “Here, I’m completely free. I can be myself. I can do anything.”

  Henry nodded. “I know just what you mean. When I’m here, if someone is having a bad dream, with a word, I can help them have a better dream. I can do something. In the waking world, I can’t even get my songs published!”

  “Are you sure you’re working hard enough?”

  Henry raised both eyebrows. “You are quite possibly the rudest person I have ever met. And I work in show business, so that’s saying something.”

  “Fine. I’ll be the judge. Play me a song,” Ling said.

  “Heaven help me,” Henry said on a sigh. He played one of his numbers for Ling, a fun little ditty that quite a few of the chorines liked dancing to after hours.

  “Well? Did you like it?” he asked.

  Ling shrugged. “It’s all right. Sounds like every other song.”

  “Ouch,” Henry said.

  “You asked.”

  “It just so happens they’re gonna put a song of mine in the Follies.”

  “Then why do you care what I think?” Ling asked.

  “Because…” Henry started. It wasn’t really about Ling. There was something about the song that didn’t feel right to him, but he couldn’t tell what it was anymore. He’d been trying for so long to make other people happy with his music that he’d lost his internal compass.

  “Here’s one for you. Just wrote it,” Henry said. He broke into a big ragtime number. “I’ve got a yeaahn to walk with Miss Chan—”

  “Awful.”

  “Again and agaaain, round the gleaahnn, at half past teaahn—”

  “Corny and awful.”

  “See you theaahn! If you’ve a keaahn! Dear! Miss! Chaaaannnnnn!”

  The lights flickered wildly for a moment. From somewhere came a strange, gurgling, high-pitched whine, like a distant swarm of cicadas. Henry jumped up from the piano.

  “I told you that song was bad,” Ling said, her heart beating wildly.

  But then the train’s lamp glowed in the tunnel. It lit up the station as the train came to a stop. The doors opened, and
Henry and Ling raced inside.

  Wai-Mae was waiting for them in the forest. Seeing Ling, she broke into a grin. “You’ve come back! I knew you would!”

  “Wai-Mae, this is Henry, the other dream walker I told you about,” Ling said, nodding to Henry. “Henry, this is Wai-Mae.”

  Henry bowed courteously. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Wai-Mae.”

  “He is very handsome, Ling. He would make a nice husband,” Wai-Mae said in a whisper that was not a whisper at all. Ling’s face went hot.

  Henry cleared his throat and said, with a formal bow, “Well, if you ladies will kindly excuse me, I’m off to meet a friend. I wish you sweet dreams.” He turned and walked down the path until he disappeared into the fog.

  “I have a surprise for you,” Wai-Mae announced.

  “I hate surprises,” Ling said.

  “You will like this one.”

  “That’s what people always say.”

  “Come, sister,” Wai-Mae said, and Ling stiffened as Wai-Mae linked arms with her, just like the schoolgirls who often passed by the Tea House’s front windows, talking and laughing. But Ling had never been terribly girlish or giggly or affectionate. “You’re not much for a cuddle, are you, my girl?” her mother would say with a wan smile, and Ling couldn’t help feeling that she was letting her mother down by being the sort of daughter who enjoyed atoms and molecules and ideas instead of hugs and hair ribbons. Her mother would probably love Wai-Mae.

  Wai-Mae’s mouth didn’t stop the entire walk. “… and you can be Mu Guiying, who broke the Heavenly Gate Formation. I will be the beautiful, beloved Liang Hongyu, the perfect wife of Han Shizhong, a general. She helped to lead an army against the Jurchens and was buried with the highest honor, a proper funeral befitting the Noble Lady of Yang.…”

  All of Wai-Mae’s stories were romances. Oh, so you’re one of those, Ling thought, the girls who see the world as hearts and flowers and noble sacrifice. Wai-Mae led Ling deeper into the forest, and while Wai-Mae chattered away about opera, Ling noticed that the dreamscape was even more vibrant than it had been the night before. The crude sketches of trees had been filled in with rich detail. Ling ran her palm over scalloped bark. It was rough against her hand, and she couldn’t help but touch it again and again, grinning. A sprig of pine needles hung invitingly from a branch. Ling pulled and a handful of needles came away. She brought them to her nose, inhaling, then examined her fingers. No resin, no smell, she noted.

  “We’re almost there!” Wai-Mae chirped. “Close your eyes, Little Warrior,” Wai-Mae insisted, and Ling did as she was told. “Now. Open.”

  Ling gasped. Golden light bled through the breaks in the line of gray trees. Here and there, mutated pink blooms sprang up. Red-capped mushrooms poked their fat heads above the patchy tufts of grass that tumbled down into a verdant meadow rippling with colorful flowers. In the distance, a rolling line of purple mountains brushstroked with hints of pink rose tall behind an old-fashioned village of Chinese houses whose pitched tile roofs tilted into smiles. So much color! It was the most beautiful thing Ling had ever seen inside a dream—even more beautiful than the train station.

  “Where are we? Whose dream is this?” Ling asked.

  “It doesn’t belong to anyone but us,” Wai-Mae said. “It’s our private dream world. Our kingdom.”

  “But it had to come from somewhere.”

  “Yes.” Wai-Mae smiled as she tapped her forehead. “From here. I made it. Just as I did the slippers.”

  “All of this?” Ling asked. Wai-Mae nodded.

  Ling couldn’t imagine how much time and energy it must’ve taken. This was more than transmutation. This was creation.

  “There’s something magical about this place. We can make new dreams. We can make everything beautiful.” Wai-Mae bit her lip. “Would you like to learn how?”

  “Show me,” Ling said. “Show me everything.”

  Wai-Mae marched to a puny, half-formed tree at the top of a hill. “Here. Like this. Watch.”

  Wai-Mae threaded her fingers through the wispy leaves, holding tight. She closed her eyes, concentrating. The bark moved like melting candle wax, and then, with a great groaning, the trunk shot up several feet. Massive branches reached out in every direction, bursting with pinkish-white flowers.

  Wai-Mae fell back with a gasp. “There you are,” she said, wiping a hand across her brow.

  Dogwood blossoms drifted down toward the girls. One landed in Ling’s hair. She pulled it free, rubbing the velvety petal between her thumb and forefinger, feeling something primal in its core, some great electrical connection to all living things. If she’d been a true scientist, she would have shouted “Aha!” or “Eureka!” or even “Holy smokes!” But there were no words that she could summon to communicate the magic of the moment.

  “Now it is your turn.” Wai-Mae twisted her mouth to one side, thinking. “We will need places to sit for our opera. Try changing this rock into a chair.”

  It was as if Wai-Mae had asked Ling to grab the moon and put it under glass. “But how?”

  “Start by putting your hands on the rock.”

  Ling did as she was told. The rock was cold and dull, like clay awaiting the artist’s hands.

  “Think only of the chair, not the rock. See it in your mind. Like a dream. Do you see it?”

  “Yes,” Ling said.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s a red-and-gold throne fit for a queen.”

  “I cannot wait to sit there,” Wai-Mae said, excited. “Now see the chair and concentrate.”

  Ling kept her thoughts on the chair, but the harder she tried, the more it seemed to elude her. Shift, she thought, and Transform and Chair. But the rock remained a rock. Finally, Ling fell back in the grass, exhausted and angry. “I can’t do it.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “No, I can’t!” She pushed herself up and stalked off toward the forest.

  Behind her, Wai-Mae’s voice took on a steely resolve. “Little Warrior: You can do this. I believe you can.”

  “Just because you believe something can change doesn’t mean it will,” Ling snapped, feeling ashamed of her outburst but helpless to stop it.

  Wai-Mae came to her side, offering a moth-eaten dandelion. “Here. Try something smaller. Turn this into a cricket.”

  Ling glanced from the dandelion to the magnificent flowering dogwood Wai-Mae had managed to create. “This is hopeless,” she grumbled, but she took the dandelion from Wai-Mae anyway.

  “Concentrate. You are too tight! You want too much control.”

  “I do not!”

  “You do too. Let it become something else. Allow the Qi to move through you like a breath. Think of the dandelion changing from the inside.”

  “Atoms…” Ling murmured.

  Ling took a deep breath and let it out. She did this twice more, and on the third time, she felt a small fluttering at the tips of her fingers that strengthened into a stronger, buzzing current that coursed up her arm and along her neck all the way to the top of her head. Frightened, Ling dropped the dandelion. But as she watched, the dandelion fluctuated wildly between two states, weed and insect, before settling back to dandelion.

  “I almost did it,” Ling said, astonished. “It started to change.”

  Wai-Mae grinned. “You see? Here, we are like Pangu, creating the heavens and earth, but even better, for we can make it as we wish it to be. My powers have gotten stronger each night I’ve been coming here. Perhaps if you come back tomorrow night and keep coming back as I have, then your power will grow, too.”

  “Can you bring physical objects into this place?” Ling asked, excited. “Can you take something out of this dream world? Have you noticed anything interesting when the transformation occurs—a smell or a temperature change? Have you experimented?”

  “Isn’t it enough that this world exists? That we can be everything here that we can’t be when we are awake?” Wai-Mae asked.

  “No,” Ling said. “I
want to know how it works.”

  “I just want to be happy,” Wai-Mae said.

  Three quick surges of light shot across the sky. Another, smaller spark rippled through the treetops, robbing the leaves there of color. Ling heard that same skin-crawling whine that had frightened her back in the station. The whine devolved into a death-rattle growl, then stopped.

  “What was that?” Ling asked.

  “Birds, perhaps?” Wai-Mae suggested.

  “Didn’t sound like birds. Come on. I want to find out where it’s coming from.”

  “Wait! Where are you going, Little Warrior?” Wai-Mae called, scrambling after Ling as she ran through the forest, searching for the source of the light and sound.

  At the entrance to the tunnel, Ling stopped. The vast dark crackled with motes of staticky brightness. “It’s coming from there.”

  Ling took a step forward. Wai-Mae grabbed her arm. Her eyes were wide. “You mustn’t go in there.”

  “Why not?”

  “That part of the dream isn’t safe.”

  “What do you mean? Not safe how?” Ling asked.

  “Can’t you feel it?” Wai-Mae backed away, trembling. “Ghosts.”

  “I’ve spoken to plenty of ghosts on my walks. There’s nothing frightening about them.”

  “You’re wrong.” Wai-Mae reached the fingers of one hand toward the tunnel, as if drawn to it. “I can feel this one sometimes in there. She… cries.”

  “Why?”

  “A broken promise. A very bad death,” Wai-Mae whispered, still staring into the dark. With a shudder, she turned away, hugging herself. “I’m frightened of that wicked place. If we do not trouble her, she won’t trouble us.”

  “But what if I could help?”

  Wai-Mae shook her head vehemently. “We must stay away from there. Promise me, Little Warrior. Promise you won’t go near it. You must warn Henry, too.”