by Kurt Kirchmeier

It was only later on, long after Medina should have gone to sleep herself that she heard him clearly through the wall. She was sitting on her bed, flattening Silkfire out with gentle strokes, when suddenly there came a sound as of alternating mumbles and whimpers, punctuated by all-out cries.

Medina slid her now-matted pet between her mattress and her boxspring and tiptoed to the wall, once again pressing her ear flat against it. The strange sound continued, now rising in volume, now falling. What the heck was going on in there? After a while she decided to find out.

Knowing full well that it might be a trick, she moved as quietly and cautiously as she was able, first out her door, and then into the hall, creeping, hardly breathing. She sidled up to Lucio’s door, touched the knob in the way of one fearing a fire in the next room. But of course the knob was cold. Medina turned it slowly, carefully, then opened the door just a crack, half expecting it be thrown fully wide as she did so. But it wasn’t.

There he was on the bed, curled up with his eyes closed, red-and-white striped pyjamas awash in the milky moonlight spilling in from the window. He was shaking, Medina realized as she moved in closer, and he was still mumbling, though she couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying. He was scared, though; that much was obvious. Nightmares.

Medina had been having terrors herself since the divorce, mostly ones about her parents abandoning her, but luckily she had magic to use against things like dreams. It wasn’t perfect magic--sometimes the nightmares came no matter what she did--but it worked a little. It worked enough.

Poor Lucio, however, didn’t have any magic. He’d be stuck with the bad dreams all the time. No escape.

“It’s okay,” Medina whispered to her brother. “It’ll be okay.” She scanned the room in search of special fabrics, locating some on the floor (socks and shoelaces) and the dresser (a sun visor) and holding the curtains open (straps). Tiptoeing back and forth, Medina collected her samples, after which she settled on the floor and concentrated, summoning her gift.

She held her hands out above the various fabrics and whispered the softest of spells, and soon the shoelaces were weaving their way back and forth across the inside of the visor, creating a web-effect. The straps attached themselves to what was to be the bottom of the work, while the socks laid two across the web, and one each at the ends of the straps, taking up the positions of the feathers they were meant to be.

Medina smiled as she took up her masterpiece, and then quickly found herself a tack so that she might hang the thing from the ceiling. She stepped up onto a chair and from there onto a desk, and only then was she tall enough. But no sooner had she finished forcing the tack into the stucco than her foot knocked over an empty pop can that had been left out.

Lucio’s eyes shot open. “What’re you doing?” he demanded of her, but Medina didn’t stick around to answer. One leap and several frantic steps brought her back to her own room, where she leaned against the locked door, catching her breath.

A dozen or so seconds ticked by before Lucio arrived. He knocked on the door, but not so loud as to wake their mother, who would surely die at finding her children starting trouble at two a.m.

“What were you doing in my room?” he said, half angry, half curious. “And what the heck is that thing you hung from the ceiling?”

“It’s a dream-catcher,” she said.

“A what?”

“A dream-catcher. You were having a nightmare. I could hear you through the wall.”

“Oh.” And then he paused, which made Medina think that maybe the nightmares were private, and that he felt ashamed that his sister had found out about them. “So what if I was having a nightmare?” he went on. “What’s that have to do with anything?”

“The dream-catcher will help,” said Medina. “It guards against the nightmares so that only good dreams can get in. I’ve got one in my room, too. It’s hanging by the window.”

Another pause. “You do?” And here Medina heard him slide down the wall and sit on the floor. “So...so it was like a gift, then?” he asked. Medina heard something strange in his voice--guilt maybe.

Not wanting to talk down at him, Medina lowered herself to the floor as well, legs crossed.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “But it’s supposed to have beads and feathers and stuff. It’s not supposed to look so ugly.”

“It’s not ugly,” said Lucio. “Not ugly at all.” He took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have given it to me, Med. I don’t deserve a gift, not after I... well, you know.”

“So how come?” Medina said softly. “How come you burned my turtle?”

“I don’t know,” said Lucio. “I was just mad. Mom said she’d take me away from dad.”

“What? When did mom say that?” This was the first Medina had heard of it.

“Just before the turtle incident,” he said. “I knew dad would freak out if she actually did take me, so I figured I’d give her a reason not to. If you and me couldn’t get along, then maybe it would be better if we weren’t living in the same house. You know?” Medina nodded to herself, which Lucio obviously couldn’t see through the door. He continued. “But then I realized it was just a bluff, and that she didn’t have any intention of taking me back at all, which just made me even more mad than I already was.”

“Because you thought she didn’t want you?”

“Yeah.” His voice almost broke on the single word.

“Yeah,” Medina echoed. She often thought similar thoughts about her dad, that maybe he didn’t want her either. For a moment the two of them fell silent, the width of the door a scaled-down version of the hundred miles their parents had thrust between them.

“Mom cries sometimes,” Medina went on. “She cries ‘cause she misses you.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Dad does, too,” said Lucio, “but he pretends he doesn’t. He tries to hide it. You know how dad is.”

Medina felt a swelling within, a tightness inside her throat, and knew if she didn’t change the subject that she’d bawl right there, that she would cry like a little baby.

“Still,” she said, and swallowed down the ball of emotion. “He was just a little turtle.” She heard Lucio sigh softly.

“Med, you know about Softshell and Silkfire, right? What I mean is... well...”

“What?” Medina asked.

“...nothing,” said Lucio. “Never mind. Can I come in now? Can we be friends again?”

“I guess so,” said Medina. She got to her feet and opened the door, and knew as she did so that it would remain open through all of the weekends to follow.

***** END *****