Littlest shook her head. "Not just the dog," she admitted. "I combined so many things that I almost ran out of breath! It was fragments from the seashell. And the chrysalis. And it was that other thing, too. See what he's holding?"
Thin Elderly leaned forward to examine the faded animal in the boy's arms. "I can't tell exactly what that is," he murmured.
"It's a very silly thing," Littlest explained. "A kind of donkey thing, and very old—that's why its color is gone. One ear is mended, and it's patched on its behind. It belonged to the woman once. She called it—" Littlest giggled. "She called it Hee-Haw.
"She was just a little girl," she added, "but she saved it all these years. And she brought it down from the attic for the boy the other night, because he was having such trouble sleeping."
"How do you know all this?" Thin Elderly asked. "She would have done that during the day. You couldn't have been here then. We dream-givers come only when they're asleep.
"Come out to the hallway," he added. "We can converse more freely there."
They both looked again, fondly, at the sleeping boy, and then Littlest followed Thin Elderly to the corner of the hallway, the place where they had frequently huddled together during the invasions of the Sinisteed. Tonight the atmosphere was quiet, with nothing to fear. They would still be on guard, of course, but the visits of the hot-breathed intruder had become less frequent.
So the pair did not huddle apprehensively but rather settled comfortably in the shadowy hall corner beside the attic stairs.
"Now," Thin Elderly said, "tell me how you know so much. I'm in charge of you, Littlest One, and if you are doing anything dangerous, like stealing away from the Heap in daytime—"
"Oh, no! I wouldn't do that!" she reassured him.
"Daytime is a very, very hazardous time for us, you know. We are night creatures." His voice was solemn.
"What exactly are we, Thin Elderly?" Littlest One asked him. "I asked Fastidious again and again, but she never explained. At first I thought I might be a kind of dog, because I felt a kind of ... well, I don't know how to describe it, but a kind of brotherhood with the dog—"
She giggled. "Or a sisterhood. But then I didn't have the right ears, and of course no tail!"
She wiggled her tiny bottom mischievously, and Thin Elderly smiled.
Then he became serious. "Littlest, stop changing the subject. I believe you that you have not ventured out in daylight. You're a very obedient little dream-giver, as a rule. But you must tell me how you are getting information. How did you know, for example, that the woman went to the attic in order to bring back that—"
Wrinkling his nose, he gestured toward the bedroom they had just left. "That donkey thing," he said.
"Hee-Haw," she reminded him with a grin.
"Yes. Hee-Haw." He said the name with a sound of amused disdain.
"Well," she said, "when I touch things—"
"Like the dog?"
"Like the dog, yes. But other things, too. The photographs, the seashell, the dishes, all of it, everything, even Hee-Haw—"
"Yes, even Hee-Haw." Thin Elderly smiled at the solemn look on the face of the tiny creature sitting by his side.
"It all seems to go together somehow," she explained. "The parts. The fragments. All the things that I collect—" She moved her fingers ever so lightly across his arm, to demonstrate.
"With your gossamer touch," he said.
"Yes. With my very gossamer touch I find them all together, waiting for a dream, and sometimes things are added in, things I didn't even know about, or touch. Like—well, like Hee-Haw."
She looked up at him. "He was part of the woman's childhood," she said. "Part of her story. 'Once there was a little girl, and she had a toy donkey—' would be the way her story begins. I already knew her story, from the things I'd collected. It's a long story, and it has sad parts. I get a lot of sad fragments from the photograph of the soldier—feelings of never-coming-back, feelings of now-I'm-all- alone. But the kiss is there, too, in that photograph, so I always collect there, just to keep that kiss fragment for her.
"And you know what, Thin Elderly? Sad parts are important. If I ever get to train a new young dream-giver, that's one of the things I'll teach: that you must include the sad parts, because they are part of the story, and they have to be part of the dreams."
"You'll be a good teacher one day," he told her.
"Thank you," she said demurely.
"But you must stop sucking your thumb."
She sighed. "I know. Soon I will."
***
"Anyway," she said, changing the subject, "I felt as if I knew Hee-Haw a little, somehow, before she brought him from the attic. Then there he was! In the boy's room! And you know what, Thin Elderly?"
"What?" He smiled at her earnestness.
"I think maybe we gave her some fragments in a dream, some bits of her childhood, happy things, and there was Hee-Haw! She'd forgotten him until the dream! But then she remembered, and she went up to an old trunk, and found him again, and brought him to the boy.
"And somehow, when I saw him there, I understood about the trunk, and how the donkey had waited all those years to be given to a boy."
"And now the boy sleeps."
"We all helped him. You and I, and the woman, and the dog, and the donkey," Littlest pointed out, with a happy sigh. "We strengthened him." She giggled. "Strengthen is a hard word to say," she confided sleepily.
"Still," Thin Elderly reminded her, "we must be very watchful."
"Will—" She hesitated, not wanting to say the terrible name. "Will the S-things try to come back?"
"Oh, yes. I'm afraid so. They're always out there. I just hope—" He paused, not wanting to worry her.
"Hope what?"
"Oh, it's nothing."
"Please tell me. I'm brave. And I hardly ever do that with my thumb anymore, really."
"Well," he admitted, "Most Ancient still feels the Horde gathering. I'm fearful that they're frustrated by the boy's resistance.
"I'm afraid there is a Horde attack coming."
She looked at him, wide-eyed. He helped her to her feet and took her hand. "But not tonight, Littlest One," he said. "Tonight the boy is safe."
22
The young woman's dream-giver, Strapping, had had several different assignments in the past; he had bestowed many dreams. But his work had always, until now, been somewhat ordinary. It had even been boring, he occasionally thought (though he knew it was necessary work, important work; he knew that people could not exist without dreams). He had worked in the home of a famous actor once, and another time he had followed a circus as it traveled, assigned to give dreams (imagine this!) to a clown.
He had bestowed colorful dreams upon drab, dull people, and he had given grim, colorless dreams to people whose lives were vibrant and exciting. There seemed no real logic or order to the kinds of people and the kinds of dreams they received. It was all in the gathering; it was all dependent on the memories and the fragments and how they fit together in the jigsaw-puzzle world of dreaming. Strapping paid little attention to any of it. He did his job. He did it energetically and according to the rules, but he did it without enthusiasm or interest.
Then he had been assigned to the young woman. The assignment had been a mild punishment for his disinterest. His Heap's leader had simply grown tired of Strapping's casual attitude. She had decided to place him where meticulous attention was badly needed.
Strapping was an orderly sort of fellow, the kind who kept track of things, liked labels and lists and appreciated cleanliness. In his own Heap he was sometimes referred to as a nitpicker because he insisted on designated sleeping places, whereas some other dream-givers preferred to doze simply wherever they flopped down at the end of a busy night.
At first, because of his basic nature, he had been extraordinarily exasperated by the slovenly apartment to which he'd been assigned, and by the sleeping woman who, when he encountered her for the first time, was curled on the couch wearing pajamas with top and bottom unmatched—how irritating that was, to Strapping! He had sighed with despair that first night, looking around, realizing that he was faced with gathering his dream fragments from chipped china, coffee-ringed tables, dirty carpets studded with crumbs, and clothing that had lain unwashed on the floor for days.
But he was a caring fellow. It hadn't taken long before he had realized, through the collected fragments, how sad and needy this young woman's life was, and—because he was keenly intelligent, as well—how great the possibility was that he could help her.
(This was what Dowager had hoped when she assigned the punishment, because she knew her Heap well, and perceived what talents Strapping had to offer, if she could give him the opportunity. It was part of the Old Ones' tasks, to find the right dream-giver for each job. It was why Most Ancient had assigned Fastidious to instruct Littlest One at first, and why, after the transfer of instructors, he was keeping a sharp eye on Fastidious to see if it was time to retire her altogether.)
Now Strapping was doing what Dowager had hoped he would do, becoming what she had wanted him to become. He looked around the shabby dwelling place attentively each night, assessing the changes in the young woman's life. He saw her attempts to create a little order. He saw how she had arranged the toys in the second, unoccupied bedroom, lining up the Matchbox cars on a shelf, placing the baseball cap on the bedpost after she had picked it up from the floor, where it had lain untouched for days.
He noticed that she had bought, though not opened, a package of nicotine patches, and that she had begun to smoke on the back porch and had opened the windows to air the place, and he could smell the difference.
The mail was no longer stacked unopened on the kitchen table beside the dirty coffee cups. The cups were washed and put away, and now the envelopes were in the wastebasket, and the opened bills lay on the table beside her small calculator and her checkbook.
He found himself beginning to hope for her future and to care for her in a way he had not before cared. As she slept restlessly on the couch with the TV a late-night blur across the room, he chose carefully what to touch and gather: the broken seashell once again, the little baseball cap, the bronzed baby shoes that she used for bookends. He wanted to give her dreams of a future with her son.
23
"It's almost Labor Day, John. Do you know what that means?" The woman was washing the few breakfast dishes while the little boy measured dog food from a bag into Toby's bowl.
"World Series?" he asked. "Eat it," he added, speaking firmly to the dog, who was sniffing the blue ceramic bowl, "because you're not getting any more of my bacon ever again."
The woman, standing at the sink, laughed. "You should never leave your plate where he can reach it," she reminded him. "He's shameful."
John scowled. "I was going to sit on the floor and read the funnies while I finished eating. How was I supposed to know he was going to be so grabby?"
