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“How do you know it wasn’t me who found you?”
“Don’t annoy me so soon,” she said. “How do I get across this thing?”
Henry had brought his own unconscious here. The river, separating them.
“Where are you?” they each blurted at the same time.
“I’m with Alma and Jericho on the Chitlin Circuit.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“No, I’m not. I’m nowhere near your leg.”
“Figure of speech.”
“You and your strange figures of speech,” Ling tutted. “We’re somewhere in Tennessee, on our way to Arkansas.”
“Are Isaiah and Theta with you?”
“No,” Ling called back.
“Any sign of them in your dream walks?”
Ling shook her head. Henry’s heart sank. He’d so hoped to give Memphis some good news. Something solid to ease his mind.
“Where are you?” Ling asked. “Did you make it to Bountiful?”
“Not yet. We’re stuck on a levee in the middle of the Mississippi flood, darlin’.”
“That’s not a song of yours, is it? Or another figure of speech?”
“Sadly, darlin’, it is all too true. The Pinkertons boarded our train and we had to jump off—and I do mean jump. So that makes the Shadow Men, the police, and now the Pinkertons. I’ve never felt so wanted by so many men but so unhappy about it. If only Gary Cooper were looking for me.”
“You really could make a joke of anything, couldn’t you?”
“Not that unfortunate nightgown. That’s a tragedy.”
Ling and Henry yelped as the landscape shifted under their feet, unbalancing them both. The ground cracked and broke apart like an earthquake. The river geysered up between them, turning Ling into a watery reflection.
“Henry!” Ling shot out a hand, but it was no good. The ground shifted again, and then Ling vanished from the dream.
“No, wait! Ling! Ling!” Henry cried.
The wall of water rose higher and transformed into a giant rattlesnake that loomed above him, its tongue flicking menacingly. Where it struck the ground, lightning crackled. Henry scrambled backward only to see that he was at the edge of a cliff. Before him, the snake liquefied, taking on yet another, more frightening shape.
“Do you like to walk in dreams?” the King of Crows said, walking toward Henry. “How about nightmares?”
The King of Crows stretched out his hand, and a paralyzing
cold seeped into Henry’s legs. “Maybe you’ll need your friend the healer to help you? Let’s give him a real challenge, shall we? Something to slow him down a bit, hmm? A taste of what’s to come.”
The King of Crows waved his arm as if conducting. The field of wheat reappeared. Memphis and Theta were there, still dancing. “What do you think? Will he help you? Or perhaps he’s so happy in this world, dancing his cares away, that he won’t even want to wake up.”
The icy cold immobilizing Henry’s legs crawled up into his lungs, making it hard to breathe. “Memphis,” Henry choked out. “Wake. Up.”
“Yes. Wake up, Dream Walker,” the King of Crows said and laughed.
Henry’s eyes snapped open. He was on his back in the refugee camp struggling for breath. He couldn’t move. All he could do was lie there, knowing that he was slowly dying. Beside him, Memphis slept on, lost to his happy dream. To break the spell, Henry needed to wake him up. But after every dream walk, there were a few minutes when Henry was completely paralyzed.
