Lair of Dreams

From high atop a shelf, the crow squawked something fierce.

“Go away, bird,” Memphis said. “This is my night.”

When he looked toward the table again, he saw that it sat inside a long, dark tunnel.

“You don’t want to keep them waiting, do you, Mr. Campbell?” A’Lelia Walker asked. Her hand threatened to snap the curtain closed, shutting him out.

“No, ma’am,” Memphis said.

The growling was back. It was thicker now, almost a hornet’s nest buzz. The smiling audience crowded around Memphis. “Dream with us…” they whispered, and urged him forward toward the table of books and the hungry dark waiting behind it.

With a great flapping of feathers, the bird caromed about the room. In the mirror, Memphis saw the warm sands and his ancestors. One of those ancestors, a man with a tall staff, spoke to him in a language Memphis did not know but which resonated deep inside him, urging caution. Look closely now, it seemed to say.

The muscles of Memphis’s neck tensed against some unseen threat and his heartbeat doubled. He turned his head. Mrs. Carrington stood in the corner, her face pale and her mouth struggling to speak.

“Don’t. Promise,” she wheezed. “It’s. A. Trap.”

Memphis opened one of the books that carried his name, riffling through the pages.

Blank. Every single page, blank.

Look closely now.

“Where are my words?” he asked.

“Words don’t matter. Dream with us.”

But Memphis knew that words did matter. Look closely now.

“Where are my words? Why have you taken my stories?” he asked.

As soon as he said it, the curtain to his dream slammed shut. A’Lelia Walker vanished, and the edges of her shining parlor peeled away. He was back in the long dark tunnel now, with those strange greenish lights winking on, raining down. The crow left its perch. It pecked at Memphis’s cheek. He gasped and put a hand to his wound. Blood pooled on his fingertips. Quickly, Memphis grabbed hold of Mrs. Carrington’s wrist. In his head, he heard the distant drums of his ancestors, and, acting on some primal instinct, he smeared her with his blood. Memphis cried out as a great roaring rushed through him, like a dammed ocean unleashing its power at last.

In the next second, Memphis fell on the floor beside Mrs. Carrington’s bed. His arms shook and he gagged as if he might vomit. He felt as if he’d run full-out for miles. Muffled voices became clearer.

“Memphis! Memphis, sit up now, son. Come on.” Papa Charles’s hands were on him, helping him off the floor.

In her bed, Mrs. Carrington sat straight up. Her dark eyes were wide and blinking. Her fingers clawed at the air. Her mouth opened and closed as if she had been drowning and was now trying to choke the last of the water from her lungs.

“Emmaline!” Mr. Carrington cried as he rushed to his wife’s side. “Emmaline!”

With a shuddering gasp, she inhaled.

And then she was screaming.

MIRACLE ON 125TH STREET! DEPARTMENT STORE KING’S WIFE WAKES FROM SLEEPING SICKNESS! screamed the front page of the late-edition extra.

Eager New Yorkers swarmed around the newsies, whose fingers could barely keep up as they peeled off the freshly printed newspapers, which told of Mrs. Carrington’s miraculous awakening. From her sickbed, Mrs. Carrington reported that she could remember nothing from her time asleep except for a happy dream about riding a blue bicycle and a music-box song. Mr. Carrington claimed that his wife’s sudden recovery was due to “the great healing power of the Almighty himself.” Sarah Snow came round to take a picture, a fresh orchid pinned to her very fashionable dress as she sat at Mrs. Carrington’s bedside. The Carringtons made no mention of Diviners or of Memphis.

But as Blind Bill Johnson sat in the Lenox Drugstore sipping his coffee and listening to Reggie read the story aloud to an eager group of patrons, he knew who had done the healing.

The time for patience was over.

On the evening of what should have been Mabel’s first date with Jericho, she had come down with a terrible cold. Now that the rescheduled evening had rolled around at last, Jericho was second-guessing every choice he’d made. He’d gotten a reservation at the Kiev, a tearoom in the West Fifties where patrons could drink tea, eat blintzes, and dance to the orchestra between courses if they liked. He didn’t know why he’d chosen that place. He wasn’t a dancer, and taking a girl to a restaurant with dancing announced your intention to do just that. The whole evening had begun to seem like a bad idea, but it was too late to back out now.