Coyote Dreams

A big hand reached down and snagged my arm, hauling me out of the water and onto a branch dangling over the river. I yelped and clung to it, dripping and astonished. Below me, darkness bubbled and boiled in place, apparently unable to go farther than I was, regardless of things like physics. I could see it roiling against clean water as if they were two wholly different substances, never meant to mix. From above, it was easier to see into the depths of the black, and to imagine eyes of indigo and violet, fluttering like urgent wings against the air. The rapid, soundless beats carried pressure with them, as if someone had made a corset of the earth’s core and squeezed the breath from my lungs with its weight.

“That what I think it is?”

I twisted my head up to look at Gary, who’d righted himself on a branch above me and was drying his hands on his khaki pants. There was a pink flush to his arms, telling evidence of the burst of strength that had hauled me from the river. His army-issue shirt was a little different this time, Muldoon still printed in yellow block letters on a black nametag over his left breast. Below it, though, there was now a medal, so discreet it faded when I tried looking at it directly, and only reappeared when I caught it from the corner of my eye. His eyebrows had gotten a little farther away from him than they’d been the first time I’d been in the privacy of his own garden, as if he’d learned to see himself as slightly older than he had then, only a few weeks ago. I guessed a heart attack would do that to a guy. His hairline was flushed, too, from hanging upside down to catch me in the river, but his hair was dark and the wrinkles I knew so well had only just started settling into his face.

“Annie was so lucky,” I blurted, and my old/young friend gave me a sly grin that made me laugh and blush at the same time.

“You’re avoidin’ the question, Jo.” He nodded beyond me at the river and the flittering, dangerous surface that tried to rise from it. I shuddered as I glanced at its alien blend, then lay on my stomach and reached down.

Weight swam up my arm, black and heavy, as if it was trying to drag me into the water. Flutters of magic danced through that weight, a feeling like eyelash kisses on my skin. I yawned, and the lethargic murkiness came to life, no longer content to be slow and drowsy. It rose up, not like water at all, but like a wave of enclosing wings that worked to buffet me into them. Oil-slicked patterns formed in the darkness, delicate purple eyes and blue threads between them, familiar without quite being recognizable. Softness swept in around me, diminutive feathers tickling and bearing a promise of sleep making everything all right.

“C’mon, doll.”

I looked up, eyes glittering from holding back another yawn, to find Gary offering his hand and a smile. The lush trees were gone, and he looked younger than I’d ever seen him, in his twenties. His eyebrows were groomed and his smile was as strong and white as it was when he was in his seventies. His uniform was crisp and new, not yet worn comfortably like it was in his self-image a decade hence. A dance floor lay behind him, uniformed men dancing with women in full-skirted dresses. They looked absurdly young and beautiful to my eye, semiformal atmosphere tinged with hope and desire and the rush of falling in love as quickly as possible. Gary tilted his head, an eyebrow rising in a rather endearing look of puppy-dog anticipation. “Don’t break a soldier’s heart, lady.”

I laughed, unduly charmed, and put my hand in his, discovering I wore wrist-length white gloves. A startled glance down at myself told me I was wearing one of those period dresses, too, in a forest-green that I suspected complemented my skin very well. The dress had a prim collared throat opened just far enough to be not that prim after all, and a nipped waist that fitted over my hips and flattened out into pleats. I had no idea I had so much hourglass to my shape, and wondered briefly just how sturdy my underwear had to be to keep me curved that way. My hair brushed forward against my chin, fat black undercurls, and I touched my forehead to discover bangs, just as well coiffed as the rest of my hair. A mirror on the far wall gave me the startling impression the outfit made me look taller, not something I normally needed, and then I was dancing with Gary and no longer worried about my clothes or hair, or even the fact that I couldn’t dance.

Because I could. Whether it was Gary’s lead or magic shoes or the music lending me its gift, I followed him on the dance floor without thinking or worrying about it, and instead laughed and nestled close when the music slowed, unable to remember being so happy. At breaks between songs, other boys cut in and asked to dance, and Gary let me go graciously, unconcerned, and that was as much a reason to come back to him as anything else. There were young men who scowled when their girls danced with someone else, sulking around the edges of the dance floor, but Gary put a hand in his pocket and got a glass of punch and watched, eyes full of confidence and pleasure.

“I thought boys didn’t like to see their girls dancing with other men,” I said when I came back to him after one dance, and he let go a belly laugh that all but knocked me off my feet.

“Darlin’, if they’ve got that much to worry about, I guess I wouldn’t like it, either, in their shoes.” He winked, then cast an exaggerated look toward the dance hall clock and lowered his head to say, “Your mama staying up waitin’ for you to come home at the stroke of midnight?”

I lifted my chin in a mixture of pride and offense. “I’m nineteen years old, Gary Muldoon, and in college. I can go home when I want.”

He gave me a grin that melted all the offense out of my expression, then caught my hand. A moment later we were in sweet-scented woods, Gary offering me his coat as I shivered. I slipped into it, feeling silly for leaving my own coat behind, though a tiny part of me knew I’d done it on purpose so I could huddle in the warmth left from his body. “I’m lost in here,” I protested in amusement, which was more true than I expected. Gary had height and breadth on me even as an septuagenarian. His younger self was wonderfully broad-shouldered.

“That’s whatcha get for leavin’ your coat inside,” Gary teased. “C’mon, this way.” He nodded ahead of us, taking my hand to lead me over a root-ridden forest pathway, an incline leading us to a bluff that looked over a night-black ocean. “They’re sendin’ me to Korea,” he said abruptly.

My heart caught, little white pulse of pain. “When?” Gary watched me out of the corner of his eye, as if afraid of my reaction. I’d let go of his hand, and mine were knotted together in the sleeves of his army jacket, worry tasting like copper at the back of my throat.

“I leave Saturday. You gonna wait for me, sweetheart?”

“Wait for you,” I said quietly. “What do you think I’ve been doing the past four months, Gary?”

Relief swept the big man’s expression and he turned all the way to me, hope bright in his eyes. “It ain’t much, but I wanted to…” He slid a hand into his front pocket and came out with a small black box. My heart caught again, a lurch so profound I wasn’t sure it would start again, and Gary gave me a funny crooked grin as I lifted my gaze to his. “It ain’t much,” he repeated, “but maybe it’s enough. I’ll getcha somethin’ better before we—well, will you? Will you marry me, Annie?” He opened the box and a soft golden glow sprang up from the ring within. I laughed, and touched the stone with a fingertip—

—and flinched awake in a surge of alarm that pushed sleep away. I could feel it consciously now, a pressing blackness trying to enter me more forcefully than it had Billy or Melinda. There, it had the sense of having all the time it needed. With me, it felt disturbed, as if my power drew it out of its usual languor and encouraged it to action. I jerked back from the river, shaking darkness from my skin, and put my hands against my mouth. I didn’t want to look at Gary. I was afraid I’d start crying, which would be impossible to explain.

“Jo?” Concern colored Gary’s voice and I bit my knuckles, eyes wide as I stared into the unblended water. “It’s what you think it is,” I whispered. “It wants to put you to sleep. Or me. I don’t know. It followed me in here. I’m sorry, Gary. I didn’t mean to do this. I just wanted to put a tingle on your heart to help it heal some more.”

“Jo,” he said again, the word more solid. “Darlin’, something’s stoppin’ it. What?”

“The…” I closed my eyes, the yellow chip of stone set into silver metal against a black box playing behind my eyelids. “The topaz,” I whispered. “I think it’s the topaz. It woke me up.”

“Woke you up?”

“I think it’s trying to give me things I want. Dreams. Dreams I want. Like they’re real.” My voice was tight, and I wasn’t sure I was really talking to Gary. The last dream swam around in my mind, its focus on Mark and the mechanic’s job I’d been so happy with. I wondered, sharply, if the only reason it’d lost its hold on me was Morrison’s intrusion into the scene. I wondered, too, if Gary had been able to afford a diamond fifty years ago when he proposed to his wife, if I’d be content to stay in that dream of happiness they’d shared for five decades.

I shook my head, trying to push the questions away, and climbed down the tree so I could crouch at the river’s edge without touching the water. “Come here.” My voice kept playing in that same scratchy whisper, too