Dreamer

Prologue

I was having the dream again. I could feel myself in a perpetual state of movement; walking, running, dragging my feet along the damp highways. Horns honked at me—whether in praise or frustration, I was never sure—as I continued my endless trek. I had been dreaming of the journey for five nights now. I had no idea where I was headed to; I just knew that I needed to get there soon.

Something dangerous was coming, and I shuddered to think of the consequences if I didn't get there in time to heed my warning. Onward and onward on I went along the highway until my legs, heavy with exhaustion from my journey, took me down a battered road with small houses scattered on either side. Finally, I stumbled to the right, and made my way up the porch of one of the miniature homes. I knocked on the door, mentally wondering where I was.

"May I help you," echoed the voice of man who sounded to be middle-aged.

"Please," I murmured to the stranger, "danger comes."

I had the feeling my dream was coming to an end, as all went black, and I felt myself being pulled into the realm of the conscious.

One

Julie

The first thing I felt was an incessant twinge in the lower-left side of my back. Odd, I thought, I've never had back pains before. My mattress is supposed to have great back support. The second occurrence to my senses, clumsy and still dulled from sleep, was play of light on the outside of my eyelids. It was light out; I always got up before the sun.

Something was wrong.

I was almost afraid to open my eyes at that point. I tried to remember what I had been doing for the past week and struggled to come up with a solid answer. I only remembered the dreams I'd been having of late. As fear began to settle over me, I made the decision to keep my eyes clenched shut, and thrust my body out in my customary morning stretch.

"Billy," a woman's voice called, "She's moving again. I think she's starting to wake up."

There was a shuffling sound; I could hear water dripping back into a basin, and a cool, damp cloth soon adorned my forehead. A few seconds later, I heard wheels being rolled over hardwood, and soon the man whom I presumed to be Billy spoke.

"She has terrible timing. Jake just called and told me he's tired of staying with Sam's. He's on his way home, dead-set to see why he's been banned from his own home, as he put it."

Something was wrong; this time I was sure of it.

I wasn't in my home, I realized. My bed never gave me back pains, and as I took in a deep breath, I didn't smell the mix of lavender and vanilla candles that surround the perimeter of my room; the blanket covering me was a thick woolly one, not the soft down comforter from my bed. My silent in-take of foreign happenings was coating panic over the fear I'd felt earlier The madness continued as I noticed the familiarity of the voice of the man named Billy; I remember hearing that exact same voice in my dream just before waking up.

"Hello," Billy's voice called to me softly, "I can tell from your movements that you are awake. You can open your eyes now, and I will do my best to explain your situation."

It was time to look at the odd place I'd been thrust into. I took a deep breath and, with an apprehension uncharacteristic of my personality, opened my eyes.

Four eyes stared back into mine, both sets a deep brown, suitable to their russet-colored faces. They gave me my time as I slowly sat up in the lumpy bed, feeling the washcloth fall to the sheets. No wonder my back had a crick in it, this bed was a small single, suitable for a child, not a growing teen like myself. Additions to the tiny, empty room were sparse. There was the uncomfortable bed, a desk, and some posters of scantily-clad women posing suggestively over cars and motorcycles. I was clearly in a teenaged boy's room. Did it belong to the Jake-guy they had mentioned earlier? I avoided their expectant stares as I continued to ponder the place I was in. I knew that this was not my home—that I was in some strange place with strange people; yet the paranoia I had experienced when this thought first donned on me was beginning to subside. My family always told me I had a knack for reading people, and I knew that the man and woman beside me meant to do me no harm.

Finally, I turned my attention back to the two sets of eyes I'd first woken up to. "Okay," I breathed, "I'll start off with the obvious: Who are you and where am I?"

The man extended his hand and said calmly, "My name is Billy Black, and you're in my house. This is my old friend Sue. She's been taking care of you for the past few days."

I took his hand and shook it firmly. My father had always told me a firm handshake reflected a strong persona. "A few days," I said, stunned, "How long have I been asleep for?"

"You've woken up a few times while Sue tended to you," Billy responded, "but it was clear you were not conscious of doing so at all. I saw you three days ago as you walked up to my doorstep and fell onto my lap in a deep sleep. You haven't fully woken up since then."

The dream, the endless walking…there's no way that I really did all of that, or did I? I had always had elaborate dreams that spanned more than one night for as long as I could remember, and my parents have told me of my humorous stints of sleepwalking. Though it had been years since I'd walked in my sleep, and even longer since I'd left my house whilst doing so. Is it possible that I walked in a trance from my house to Billy's? And if I did, just how far away from my home could I be?

"Um," I started out cautiously," Where is your house at? Like, what city do you live in?"

From the look that Billy and Sue exchanged, I had a feeling that they were starting to understand why I'd asked. "Well," Sue told me, "We live on the La Push reservation near Forks, Washington."

"No way," the words slipped out of my mouth as I'd thought about the excursion I'd just undertaken, "She was right, but she can't be right, and there's just no way," the words tumbled out but I was far from aware of what I was saying, as I thought about what I had just done.

"Why don't I give you some time to think about things," Billy suggested, "sort out what it is that happened, and such? I have some errands to run, and I'm sure Sue's family is eager to see her home. I'll be back in a couple of hours, okay?"

I nodded, still wrapped up in the impossible events that led me here. I sat up and vaguely heard Sue and Billy leave.

The silence enveloped me life a comforting arm as I continued to think about it all.

The La Push reservation was home to the Quileute Indians. My gran, a sweet old lady, Quileute, had grown up on the reservation. When she was eighteen, the council had told her she held the gift of a spirit lady, one whose dreams were prophecies brought to her by spirits of her ancestors. It was an honorable position; it was a position that would give her seat on the council, no less. It would mean she would stay on the reservation for years to come; it was something she didn't want. When she was eighteen, my gran left the reservation and never came back. She made a comfortable life for herself as an elementary school teacher in northern California. It was there that she met Grandpa, and had her only son, my father.

I was gran's only grandchild, and my family was very close to her. She watched me as I grew up while my parents worked tirelessly as family lawyers, and I was told frequently that I resembled her in many ways. She always told me my dreams would take me places, just like her dream to leave La Push led her to Grandpa .Although my father is half-Quileute, and I am one quarter, we were never close to our heritage. Because Gran was so keen on leaving it all behind her, my father was taught that old Quileute practices, such as the use of a spirit lady, was all just a load of fairy tales, and I was taught to believe the same thing. But that didn't stop Gran from spouting off with the occasional premonition. She frequently told me she dreamt of me, "going places," but I didn't think that meant going from Del Norte, California to Forks, Washington.

As I look back on mine and Gran's similarities, I wondered if I have her gift, the gift that she tried so hard to run away from. I still sense an impending danger around this area, not unlike the one I had felt in my dream.

If I had been walking for as long as I'd been dreaming of my travels, then, including the time that I was sleeping in Billy's house, I'd been gone for eight days. I was supposed to leave with my mom on a week-long mother-daughter bonding trip six days ago—I'd had my bag packed and everything. Wondering if I would have thought to bring anything before leaving, I started to look around the room. There it was, resting against one of legs of the desk. Not the bag I'd packed for my trip with Mom, but a different one. It was a sports bag I usually used when I spent the night at a friend's house or to cart around my yoga gear.

Because the room was so small, I merely needed to lean a little and fully extend my arm to grab my bag. Inside was the wad of cash I usually kept in the bottom of my dresser, totaling about eight hundred dollars; there was also a bottle of water, a set of pajamas and a spare change of clothes, spare underwear and socks, and an envelope with my name on it.

I was about to reach in and grab the envelope when I heard a clamor coming from outside the room I was currently laying in.

"I don't know why you wanted me to stay at Sam's, but you know three days is my limit over there," A voice called. I could tell it belonged to a young man, and I figured it was that Jacob I heard Billy mention; I could only presume the boy is Billy's son, the one whose room I lay in. I could hear as his footsteps brought him closer to where I lay. I didn't know what do. I thought it was odd that Billy kept him away in the first place, but I knew there was nothing I could do. If the boy wanted to go in his room, there was nothing I could do to stop him. Noticing a mirror resting on the desk, I quickly got up and took a look at myself.

It looks as if the Sue woman had been able to get me up for a shower, seeing as my face was clean and my hair was hanging in the curls I get when my hair dries naturally. I looked down and noticed I was wearing my yoga pants, my pink sports bra, and a tank top. I knew I wasn't wearing this the last time I remember going to bed, which means Sue found my bag and must have changed my clothes.

The approaching footsteps, which I knew had previously been wandering through the house, approached the door to the room, and stopped suddenly, just short of the door frame. Slowly, I turned around, and looked directly into a beautiful russet face. As the familiarity of the boy's face dawned on me, I let out a small gasp.

"Who the hell are you?"