“Darius?”

Darius woke and sat up on the sway-backed couch. Badrik’s voice? He was sure he had heard Badrik’s voice. It had awoken him. He blinked, looking around the old cottage, the grandmother’s cottage. The home of his childhood. Badrik wasn’t here. No one was here. He unconsciously traced the pattern of the quilt with his fingers, the same thing he always did when he woke up at home.

The broad cottage window glowed as it always did in the dawn. The soft light flooded golden through the small panes of glass with the dreamcatcher hung there. The catcher had never been moved from its place in the window. He could hear her voice, a memory of the moment that she had placed it there. She had spoken the old words to catch the evil that flew into his sleep. Words from an ancient language that sounded like round boulders dancing deep in the earth.

He stood up from the couch and looked around for Grandmother. He could smell dried lavender and honeysuckle. Always the same. The smell of her things. The room was quiet. Silent. She wasn’t here. His feet, still in his baseball cleats, clicked on the worn linoleum.

The cookstove was not long from being hot. He could feel the heat of it residing in the room.

He wasn’t supposed to be here.

The heat-stained kettle sat at its place on the stovetop.

But these things are all the same; they are as they should be.

He could almost smell the honey and tea, unsure if the scent was real or only a memory of what he should be smelling right now. He touched the stovetop. It was still warm from an early breakfast. She always rose early in the summer months and cooked with the woodstove before its heat made the cottage too warm.

He hadn’t remembered falling asleep. Especially not here. He checked his clothing. Yep, baseball uniform. All the way from Japan.

“Grandmother?” he called. He looked throughout the cottage.

Her knick-knacks. She had changed nothing since he had left. The two brown horses curved necks, trailing white manes like sea foam, one smaller than the other. The old paper dollar bill pinned to a board covered with finely scripted writing too faded to read—the clock: a small plastic gold circle set into a polished wood slab. The horseshoe, painted black and pitted with age, nailed ends upwards to hold luck.

The sand-coloured scroll with its prayer hanging beside the framed “Home Sweet Home” needlepoint.

The sun brightened through the coarse-spun curtains and fell on the red kitchen table, causing its chrome to glint and sparkle. The familiar white vase with the chip in its rim of gold held dried flowers and stood command over the field of red Formica.

This was not a dream. It was real.

But I’m still wearing my ball uniform.

“Grandmother?” he called out again. He knew she wouldn’t answer. She wasn’t here.

He went to her room: the wooden door that was always kept closed and the fancy crystal knob with a latch that stuck.

“Grandmother?” he called again with a gentle knock.

Nothing. He turned the doorknob, continued to turn it past where it stuck in the jamb, and pushed the door open. It would creak on its hinges as it always did when she came out in the morning, and it did creak now.

The room beyond was as it should be. It did not matter that he was wearing his ball uniform and was supposed to be on the other side of the world. The world that fire had engulfed.

The dark green carpet. Soft and worn with the smell of sand dust. It looked like it always had to him, like the soft green moss of a shadowy forest floor. The square of the bedspread beyond. The veneered wooden nightstand. On it, the buckskin medicine bag with beads in a bright geometric pattern with the twist of dried tobacco at its neck. The large hutch and mirror against the far wall.

He had never entered this room. Never stepped over the rough plank of a threshold that was covered with the bulky green carpet. And he wouldn’t now.

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Bucky had been threatening her. When Bucky was still Bucky and not that other thing that had come… The real Buck said he would send his family to hurt her.

Darius felt his heart begin to race. Was that what had happened? Had Bucky been able to do something to her?

A knock on the door startled him. He turned quickly.

The door was being slowly opened, and another knock, politely added, rang out louder.

“Is this door open?” It was Badrik’s voice again.

“Yes,” Darius replied.

“May I come in?”

Darius nodded, then he realized Badrik wouldn’t be able to see him nod, but it didn’t seem to matter. The door continued to swing.

The doorknob made the usual “clack” as it was released.

“Hi, Darius. Can you see me ok?”

“Kinda. I heard you earlier. It is very bright in here. The sun…” Darius replied. It was shining so brightly through the curtains. The chrome of the kitchen table was dazzling. He held his hand up to shield his vision.

“Let me help block some of this light,” the big man replied and seemed to move into the brightness.

Badrik stood there in the doorway, filling it, blocking out the sun.

He smiled.

“There you are. I knew I would find you.” The big man made his way into the room. “May I?” he gestured to the sofa where Darius had been sleeping—his bed. Darius nodded.

He settled onto the sofa, knees sticking up in front of him like a stork. He was wearing the pin-striped suit. Pinstriped in what Darius had seen was the fine scrolling text of continuous words, almost like what was on the grandmother’s dollar bill she had pinned to the wall. But Badrik’s jacket was gone. The jacket that ended in the crisp round collar like a priest wore. His black dress shirt, with the same round “no collar,” was now unbuttoned. The shirt front was fancy. Frilly, like you’d see at a wedding. Billowing sleeves rolled up.

“I don’t know where she is,” Darius said, as if in an apology. “She is not here.” He felt worry begin to course through him. “Bucky said…”

“She? She… is your… grandmother?”

“Well, she’s not, like, my grandmother. It’s what everyone calls her. She is just Grandmother. Or The Grandmother. But Bucky said…”

“I need you to look at this.” His deep voice filled the room. “I found it. Something for you, I imagine.” Curious, Darius walked towards him, around the table. The sunlight had become so intensely bright through the windows. The brightness hurt his eyes. It was making his head ache.

“What is it?”

“Something she would leave for you…” the big man said, his voice deep and strong, filling the room. “I’m sure to tell you that she’s ok.”

“A note?” he asked. Darius turned his head to try and avoid the glare.

“Yes. Of course. A note from her to you. Explaining why she isn’t here. Look here. Read it. I’m sure everything is ok. She took the time to leave you a nice note.” Darius squinted through the brightness for what the big man had to show him. A small sheet of his grandmother’s lavender-colored paper was pinched between the big man’s thumb and finger. It was folded over, just like all her notes to him had been. The note was dark. It was like the paper made its own shadow. Nothing was around it but the intense sunlight.

“Can you see it?”

Darius shied away from the brightness and concentrated on looking only at the cool, shadowy square of green. It was like searching for a chunk of ice in a bonfire. He reached for it, felt the paper, took it, and unfolded it.

“I’m sure there is nothing to worry about. I expect the note will explain that.”

It was just a few lines of her old-fashioned beautiful pencilling where all the letters of each word were joined together.

“Will be back. Had to run an errand. Will most likely stop and stay with Jenny Spiritnose. She has been sick again. I’m glad you’re home. Love and Hugs, Grandmother.” Darius folded the note gently back on itself and put it in his pocket.

My baseball uniform pocket.

“How did you find me?” Darius asked. The sunlight came easy now through the window. The glare off the table had stopped. A cloud, maybe? Something had stopped the brilliant intensity.

The big man smiled. “I’ve been thinking about it, and this was what I came up with. I’ve also been looking for Nova and Brock, so, as you kids would say, one down and two to go. We need to find them. I have never been here before. Will you help me?”

“Yes, ok.”

“Where should we look?” Badrik asked.

“They can’t go far. This is a box canyon we’re in. The only way in is to walk down from the gas station. That’s where you should have left the car. We did drive here, didn’t we?”

“Excellent. Joy will be there with the car. Maybe she has seen Brock and Nova. Let’s go and look for them.”

“Ok,” Darius said. He swung open the door and stepped out into the sunlight. “But you just came from the car, didn’t you? And how did we get here? I don’t remember getting here. Only if I could have slept for a really, really long time…”

“Looking for you, I’ve become a little lost myself. I need you to help me find the others. We’ll start with Brock and Nova. I’m sure they’re looking for us.”

“Ok,” Darius said, and pulling the porch door open, they were flooded with sunlight.

“It’s very bright here. I know I’m an old man and everything, and you’re too old to hold hands, but I would appreciate it if we could hold hands for a little while, so I don’t get lost. It will help me, and if you could tell me what your home here looks like, that would help me see too.”

“I don’t really want to hold hands,” Darius said.

“Just for a few moments. I’m having trouble not getting lost. I just found you, and I don’t want to lose you again.”

“Ok. But just for the first bit.”

“I’m sure that’s all it will take.”

“All right. But don’t tell the others.”

“Pinky swear,” Badrik said and laughed.