Keeper of Dreams (42 page)

Water of Wisdom

Because Mo and Enoch were young, the elixir of love did not tempt them. They drank instead from the fountain of wisdom. Immediately they were carried away in dreams. Here is the dream that Enoch saw:

His mother lay on a hospital bed, wasted and thin and cold-looking. A doctor touched her head, then felt gently for her pulse, then drew a sheet over her face. Enoch screamed and wept and vowed that he would not live another day with his mother gone.

But he lived another day. He saw himself with his father, going dully through the daily routines. Cooking, doing dishes, cleaning house, washing and folding clothes. Gradually they began to talk to each other. Soon they began to joke and smile. They watched TV together. They laughed. They had fun. And at the end of his dream, Enoch saw himself and his father talking about Mother and laughing about some of the crazy things that she used to do, and crying gently at the memory of her goodness. But not grieving.

Not grieving, for the grief had its end. That was the wisdom that the water taught him. That even after the end of the world, the world goes on. Even after the winter. Even after death.

He awoke from his dream and fingered the strange-shaped key in his pocket that had got him into the Castle of Care. He would use the key. He would no longer be afraid of anything.

As for Mo’s dream, she awoke from it as quiet as Enoch did, and because she never asked him what he saw after drinking the water of wisdom, he never asked her either, and so he never knew.

Healing

On the way home they came to the edge of a vast desert. In the distance there were four or five tornadoes, but Enoch was not afraid of anything now. He went right to the desert’s edge, and reached down into the deep dust, and filled his pockets. Only then did he hold some up to his mouth and breathe it in. He choked on it, but all the pain from all his wounds went away, and there was not so much as a scar. Mo did the same, and then she led him back to the cave that led to Oglethorpe’s.

At the short door that said “Employees Only,” Mo turned to him and shook his hand. “You turned out all right,” she said. “Even if you’ll never be a knight, you certainly graduated from page to squire in one trip.”

“Thanks,” said Enoch. And he felt vaguely sad as she strode boldly away, for he admired her so much, and she only liked him, and wouldn’t miss him at all on her next adventure.

Enoch walked around and found his father, who hadn’t even noticed that Enoch was missing. Enoch didn’t come back to Oglethorpe’s the next day, or the next, and after that he couldn’t come for a whole year, because they moved to Tucson then.

In Tucson, Enoch was afraid to use the dust. He was afraid it wouldn’t work so far away from the land that it came from. There were some days that he even doubted that his adventure with Mo was real. After all, it was such a crazy place. Killer squirrels, a talking roast pig, a fire-breathing horse, Santa Claus as the King of Care.

Then one day he saw how worried his father was, and he realized that living in Arizona was not helping. His mother was dying anyway.

So he went to his room, to the shoebox hidden away at the back of the closet, and opened it and touched the dust and held some of it in his hands, and he wondered if the dream of wisdom had been meant to prepare him for his mother’s death. He decided it had not. It had only been meant to teach him that he mustn’t try to put off death forever. This once he could use the dust and keep her from dying out of time. But when his parents were very old, he would not try to heal them again and again, and keep them alive forever. That was wisdom.

He baked half the dust into chocolate chip cookies, which his mother could not resist. The other half he served to her in applesauce at supper. She ate it to the bottom of the bowl.

And she got better. There was no mistaking it. She felt better at once, and gradually regained her strength, and before a year had gone by, she said at the dinner table one day, “Enoch. How would you like to have a white Christmas?”

He jumped up from the table and shouted for joy. “We’re going to Dowagiac!” The dust had worked. His mother was completely cured.

The doctors all said it was because she had followed their advice and gone to Arizona. But that’s how doctors stay in business, Enoch realized, by taking credit every time their patients happen not to die.

The Last Time Through the Door

All the time he was in Tucson, Enoch had thought that the moment he got back to Dowagiac he’d go through the short door again. But when he actually got to Oglethorpe’s, he had second thoughts. And when he discovered that they hadn’t yet opened the back basement rooms for the Christmas selling season, he was downright relieved.

He tried to tell himself that it was kid stuff anyway. That it was unrealistic. But the true reason he was glad not to go through the door was that he was scared. Last time he had Mo with him. And this time there was no crazy girl with her hair up in ugly pigtails hanging around in the basement. How would he handle the killer squirrels without her? What would he do if he ran into a giant? He had a vision of being trapped in a room with a fire-breathing horse, only this time without a silver thread. And so he went on home.

At school his friends were really glad to see him for the first two minutes of the first three class periods. Then they treated him perfectly normally, as if he had never been away. That was OK with Enoch. There were even a few new people, but Enoch talked to them as if he had known them as long as the others.

Not that everything was the same. A year at that age made a lot of difference. A lot of the other guys had grown four or five inches taller and had wispy mustaches.
All
of the girls were taller than Enoch, and looked about five years older. Enoch didn’t mind. He had an appreciative eye.

He appreciated one girl in particular. She wore too much makeup, but that was a disease of the eighth grade; he could put up with that. She just fascinated him, even though she didn’t talk much, even though she avoided his gaze. She even looked familiar. It wasn’t until he heard someone call her Mo that he realized why.

“Mo?” he asked.

“Yeah, Eeny,” she said. She looked miserable.

“It’s really
you
?”

“Have you met?” asked a girl. “She didn’t even come to school for the first time until after Christmas last year.”

“We killed some squirrels together,” said Enoch. It was OK to say that. Everyone took it as a joke, and so nobody asked any embarrassing questions. And in a few minutes they were alone by their lockers. Everybody else was in class, and they’d get in trouble, but Enoch figured what the heck. You don’t have that many friends in the world who saved your life a couple of times.

“I thought your father didn’t let you go to school.”

“He thought I was getting too weird by myself all the time.” She smiled, but it was unconvincing.

“Sorry I didn’t recognize you. You’re taller.”

She looked even more miserable. “I know,” she said.

“Hey, that’s OK. You’re not taller than the
other
girls or anything.” No matter now hard he tried, he was just making it worse.

“I know,” she said. “Eeny, have you tried to go through the short door yet?”

He shook his head.

“You’re still shorter than I am. Maybe you still can.”

Now he understood. She was too tall. “But can’t you bend over?”

“Doesn’t work,” she said. “I tried. I tried scrunching down into my spine until my back ached. I kept trying until the clerks called my father and he saw me with my hair in those pigtails and he put me on restrictions for a month. Restrictions means watching channel forty-six all evening. I cried the whole time. Father thought I was repenting, and I wanted to die. Eeny, if you can get through that door again, I’ll love you forever.”

“What do you want me to do?” Of course she wanted him to do something for her.

She grinned. “That’s true friendship, Eeny. You know I’m going to take advantage of you, and you don’t mind.”

“Actually, I do mind, but I owe you my life.” Actually, he didn’t mind—especially if she loved him forever, like she said. Somehow the idea of having her love him forever sounded pretty good. He looked at her face and finally realized the main reason he hadn’t recognized her. “Where’s the wart?”

Tears came to her eyes. “I didn’t need it anymore, Eeny. So I let Mom get it removed.”

She leaned on his shoulder for a moment and sobbed silently. Then she got hold of herself. “We better get to class or we’ll be in detention your first day back to Dowagiac.”

“I’ve been in worse places with you than detention.”

She touched his hand. “Eeny, you’re the only person who ever went with me through the short door. I’ve really missed you. I’ve done some incredible things since you left.”

“So let’s go to Oglethorpe’s after school.”

After school they talked all the way to Oglethorpe’s. It wasn’t hard to sneak through the labyrinth into the back rooms. And by the time they had the boxes out of the way of the short door, Enoch had a rough idea of all of her adventures.

“I buried the treasure chest at the base of an oak tree about ten yards west of the exact spot where you almost stepped into the quicksand. Do you think you can find it?”

“Yeah. What’s in it?”

“Nothing special. Just enough gold and jewels to pay my way through
college. With enough left over to let our whole class live in luxury for the rest of our lives.”

“Is it heavy?”

“It doesn’t take much gold these days to buy that many dollars. Eeny, am I being too greedy?”

“Not if I get a cut. Which side of the oak?”

“North. There’s no shovel, but the soil isn’t very hard to dig in. If you need my sword, it’s hidden here.” She pointed to a place on her rough map of the path through the cave. Last time he had been guided through somehow in the darkness. This time she gave him the pocket flashlight from her purse.

He fit through the door without bending, without scrunching down into his shoes. But he felt his hair brush the top of the doorframe, and he knew he’d not be making many trips after this.

When he got to the oak tree by the quicksand he knew that he was too late. The hole wasn’t concealed, it was open. The treasure chest had been dug up. Probably by the little people. They were just rotten enough to steal from their benefactor.

He couldn’t bear to go back empty-handed and disappoint her. Besides, with her sword in hand, back here in the place where he had helped to save the king, where he had got the healing dust that saved his mother, he couldn’t just turn around and go back. It wasn’t as if he’d keep Mo waiting—no matter how long he stayed, he would only seem to be gone a split second.

So he retraced the path they had taken before, through the apple orchard, over the back of the dragon Drast, and finally to the door of the Castle of Care. He needed no key now. The door stood open, and he had to stand in line for half an hour as the procession of sheep and cattle and wagons and jugglers and dancers and vendors and fine lords and ladies slowly passed through the door. The doorkeeper recognized his name and embraced him in the name of the king. “He doesn’t have time to see you,” said the doorkeeper.

“I know,” said Enoch.

“But he wanted me to give you these.” The doorkeeper handed him two ornate, jewel-encrusted flagons. “For you and the woman. So you can carry back the water of your choice.”

“Hasn’t Mo come back here herself?”

“Never. And it’s been a good long time.”

Enoch took the flagons and went to the fountain and filled them up. He slept the night in an inn outside the castle, free of charge because he was a friend of the king. And in the morning he got up and stood out on the road leading back to Oglethorpe’s.

This was almost definitely his last trip. Surely there was some adventure for him before he went back. Hadn’t Mo saved lives, slain monsters, befuddled witches, found hidden treasures? Surely he should do something like that, to be worthy of her.

No. He knew better. She was the brave one, the adventurer. He could do brave things now and then, if he had to. But he didn’t know things that she knew without having to learn them. He hadn’t the faintest idea how to handle the sword, to begin with. His only victory had come by snapping a silver cord like a towel. The best place for him was home, with memories.

So he walked home. Slowly, except when crossing the dragon’s back; slowly, so that everything would stay imprinted in his mind. It was night before he got to the cave, but the little flashlight and Mo’s map helped him through. He crossed the abyss and dropped down into the closet, pulled open the door and came out. Mo was standing where she had been when he left.

She was startled. “Why didn’t you go?” she asked.

“I already went. I spent a couple of days in there.”

“Oh. I’ve never stood outside and waited for somebody else.”

“It wasn’t there,” he said. “Somebody already dug it up and took it.”

She nodded, her eyes again filling with tears. “Well, it was silly of me to want it. How would I ever explain to people where it came from, anyway? My father would think I stole it.” She grinned. “In fact, I did. But I stole it from a witch, and she stole it from a dragon, and I guess it’s justice that somebody stole it from me.” Her face darkened. “Probably those rotten little people. I hope the squirrels have a population explosion.”