Lair of Dreams

Wai-Mae handed her a stick. “Draw.”


Ling did as she was told, dragging the stick through the dirt to make a simple representation of a face—a circle, two slashes for eyes, a line for a nose, and another for a mouth. Ling looked to Wai-Mae.

“You know what to do,” Wai-Mae said, guiding Ling’s hands to the image in the dirt.

Ling shook her head. “I don’t think I can do it.”

“Yes, you can,” Wai-Mae assured her.

Ling pictured George’s face in her mind, but all she could see was the ghostly George from her dream. She took a deep breath, and then she saw him as she had known him in life—skinny, hare-quick, mouth in a half smile, brows raised as if he were constantly surprised. That stupid snort. His hopeful eyes darting toward the Tea House door each time it opened, as if someone might walk through with his beautiful future cradled in her hands.

The buzzing sparked across the tips of her fingers. It coursed along her skin everywhere and shot straight up her neck, making her head balloon-light. And then the vibrations resonated deep inside, as if some part of her had joined this dream world, all her molecules shifting toward something yet to be written. Cracks formed in the earth.

Ling opened her eyes, feeling a bit woozy. Where the crude dirt drawing had been, a sapling, yellow-green with new life, now reached toward the sun. Tiny red buds struggled out of white casings. As she watched the light sparking along its fresh tendrils, it struck Ling as both funny and yet so perfect. This was the essence of George: something always on the verge of being born. Something not ready to die. She turned her head away so that the others couldn’t see her tears.

“I did it,” she whispered. And Ling didn’t know if the tears sliding down her cheeks were for her dead friend or the guilty joy she felt at discovering this new power.

Brief lightning fluttered through the dreamscape. The tops of the trees lost all shape and color, as if they’d been erased by an angry child. The whining insect chorus pierced the quiet for just a moment. Wai-Mae said a prayer over George’s symbolic grave. Ling scooped up a handful of dogwood blossoms and placed them near the sapling.

“For George. May all his dreams be happy now.”

Henry nodded at Louis, and the two of them took up with a good-times song, as if they were joining a funeral procession on Bourbon Street, sadness giving way to celebration of the life lived. Far above, the dream sky settled into its rich golden hue.

“When I die, I hope someone will remember me so kindly,” Wai-Mae said.

Nearby, a small flock of egrets took flight, crying into the shining pink clouds.

Wai-Mae took Ling’s hand. “Look, his soul is free.”

Ling kept her eyes on the sky, and she did not turn around to look at the pulsing light in the tunnel, nor did she listen to the screeching, growling chorus rising in the deep dark.





The dreams were everywhere.

From the moment the people took their first breaths, they exhaled want until the air was thick with yearning.

Jericho dreamed of Evie. Firecrackers exploded in the sky above her. The ragged light gave her face an angel’s glow and framed the outline of her body beneath her flimsy chemise. Her lips were an invitation, and Jericho moaned her name in his sleep.

Sam dreamed that he was a child walking with his mother, his hand in hers, safe and loved. But they were separated by sudden crowds of soldiers filling the street. Sam was lost. And then his mother’s voice drifted out from a radio in a store window: “Find me, Little Fox.”

In Mabel’s dream, she climbed a tall platform and towered above a crowd of people who chanted her name. They were there to see her and no one else.

Isaiah dreamed of the boy in the boater hat and the girl with the green eyes, happy as can be, and Isaiah was afraid for them, as if he could see the storm bearing down on their idyll. He screamed and screamed that they were in danger, but no sound came out.

Drunk on gin, Evie would not remember her dreams come morning.

Theta dreamed of Memphis, and Memphis of Theta, and in both dreams, they were happy, and the world was kind.

But dreams can’t be contained for long. Their natural trajectory is forward. Out. Up. Away. Past all barriers and borders. Into the world.

This is true of nightmares, too.

In the gloomy tunnel, the pale, hungry creatures crawled down the walls and into the old station. They tested the rusted gate. When it opened, they sniffed at the damp air, breathing in the intoxicating fumes from so much want, tasting it on their tongues, pushing out farther, crawling into the city’s sewers and into the miles of subway tunnels, hiding in the archways when the trains rumbled past. They loitered in the shadows on the edges of the stations, where they could watch the bright lights of the people so full of yearning.