Dream Fishing

"Da, I got one!"

Bannibrandt braced his leg on the pier as his fishing pole arced toward the surface of the shimmering dream water. Deep down, a cloudy shadow pulled away from him with increasing strength.

“Two hands, boy, or you’ll lose it.”

Horst popped an almond in his mouth and secured his own fishing rod—making sure to leave the line cast in case of another bite—and hobbled to where his son struggled with his own.

“Be the shadow, Ban. Feel the hook in your mouth, the panic overwhelming you.”

“I’m trying!” Red-faced Bannibrandt cranked the reel. His rod bent lower and lower until it dipped into the drink.

“Don’t reel when it’s pulling away from you. You’ve got to tire him out. Tug-o-war, just like I taught you. Reel when he’s too tired to fight.”

With a zing! the line took off as Bannibrandt lost his grip on the crank.

“Oh no!”

The handle spun so fast it was impossible to catch hold again. Until it the line ran out and it stopped. For a split second, Bannibrandt pulled the rod.

SNAP!

The boy stumbled backwards, and, catching his heel on an uneven board, fell into the waves.

The old fisherman hid a smile as he pulled his son out by the collar. Shimmering liquid dripped from the drenched boy, puddling on the timbers around his bare feet.

“Aw, I broke your fishing pole.” Bannibrandt stared at the pieces of rod that floated where he had fallen.

“It’ll be alright,” Horst said. “The important thing is to build more. You’ll always have a backup, if you do.”

He wrapped a towel around his son’s shoulders and hugged him to his side.

“Whose dream did you fall into?” he asked.

“Some girl’s. She was kissing a frog. It was gross.”

“Ha! Even so, no nightmares?”

“It was almost blinding in there, it was so bright.”

Horst slipped another almond between his lips. “Hmm. No accismus then. Good.”

The boy’s eyebrows went sky-high. “Ax what?”

“Accismus. It’s when the humans aren’t genuine. Out of fear, or greed, or cunning manipulation. It’s one of the reasons the shadows exist.”

The click of Horst’s fishing reel caught their attention. The line moved in circles through the water, making the rod twitch as the circles got bigger.

“Looks like we got another one. Quick, get the cage!” Horst attended the pole while Bannibrandt opened a mesh box and set it beside his father.

The old fisherman set the hook and fought the shadow with ease and patience, his experienced hand a stark contrast to his son’s. Before long, he reeled in the shadow and scooped it up with a net.

Horst dumped the cloudy shadow, writhing and shrieking, into the cage. It lashed out with a cloudy arm as Bannibrandt closed the top.

“Whew, that was close,” Bannibrandt said, backing away.

“Great job, Ban. We’ll make a proper dream fisher out of you yet!”

Bannibrandt knelt to get a closer view of the shadow. It had shrunk, and now looked like a dollop of tar, huddled there in a corner of the cage. Smelled like it, too. But it purred like a kitten.

“Not so scary out here, is it?” Horst asked. He chewed on another almond.

“Won’t they die outside the dreams?”

“No, most of them are docile out here. They gain their power from the people they feed on. When seen for what they really are, well, see?”

Bannibrandt pet the shadow with his finger. It reacted to his touch and snuggled against him. There was a flash inside the shadow, and a small image played.

Bannibrandt watched the scene unfold: a teenage boy stood on the stoop of an old house, a dozen red roses in hand. He offered them to a beautiful girl, who threw them on the floor and stomped on them. The boy trudged away, head hanging low. Then, the girl called out to him, ran after him. But she could never catch up. The scene changed: an old woman in a rocker, holding the portait of a young man. There was no ring on her finger; there never was.

The image faded.

Bannibrandt stood. “When we catch these little guys, the humans go back to regular dreams, right, Da? The girl who dreamt this will sleep better now?”

Horst had stepped away from the cage and gazed into the sunset. A dark cloud gathered and moved toward the pier.

“Bad weather’s coming, isn’t it?”

“There is no bad weather. Only bad clothing.” Horst winked.

“What?”

“Something my granddad used to say. Grab your rain jacket out in the shed. The quicker you catch you your first shadow, the quicker you can have some of grandma’s Kvæfjordkake.”

Bannibrandt grinned. “Those shadows are doomed!”

When I tap the "Roleplay" button on the server, my body lurches through the screen.

There's no gentle "Hey you, you're finally awake," no benign old guy showing me how to forage or build, no heads-up display telling me my life and mana.

Instead, a giant battle ax hurdles toward me, neck high. At the other end of it, an orc with forearms the size of my thighs foams at the mouth.

This is going to be a bad day.

I duck. The ax blade shears off the top half of my helmet and embeds in the tree behind me with a sickening thud. That could have been me. I don't know what happens if I die here.

Locks of golden hair drift to the forest floor beside me. I tap my head to make sure the top is still there. It is, and there's some hair left, too.

I'm dressed to the hilt in armor--except for my now-ventilated helmet--but my frantic hands can find no hilt. No belt pouch of magic potions, no bow strapped across my back.

The orc draws a knife and charges me. Instinct kicks in and I grab his wrist, using his momentum to throw him off balance.

How do I know how to do that? What am I, an armored ninja?

I dodge and weave between strikes, the unwilling partner in this dance of death. He lunges too far once, and I roll inside to deliver an uppercut to his jaw.

He barely flinches.

The pause gives me enough time to escape his grapple and create some distance. He glares at me.

I don’t know my body, so I do what any human of average intelligence would. I run.

The orc bellows as I take off; every hair on my body stands up on end.

I run for some time, until I reach a section of trees whose branches hang lower than most. I crash through them. Then I realize the ground is gone.

An abandoned quarry stretches downward further than I'd like to fall.

I scramble for a branch to hold my weight. It does, and I swing back to solid ground.

A low chuckle grates against my ears. I turn to see the orc set his plumed helm on a stump.

He licks the flat of his knife.

"Time to taste your blood, champion."

"You really don't have to do that," I say. "If you want, I can give myself a paper cut and you can--"

"Silence!" he roars. "Die, insolent fool!"

He sprints toward me with amazing speed, and I have one fleeting thought. A long shot. A last resort.

I wait till he's almost at my throat, and I step backwards. My armor scrapes the side of the quarry as I fall.

The orc tumbles over me as I grip the edge of the cliff, his face twisted in an expression of disbelief and hatred. He screams until he doesn’t, and his armor rattles far below.

I pull myself up, panting.

“Incredible,” says an elf who’s joined by several others from the forest. “You’ve defeated the general, my liege.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I stammer.

"Are you not Floopbert the Magnificent?"

"No. I'm Joel, the guy who lives alone at the end of the cul-de-sac."

“Told you he’d log out before the fight,” says a second elf.

My body lurches backward. My reflection in the computer monitor bears red marks the size and shape of keyboard squares. The “Roleplay” button is still there.

I close the window and go for a long, long walk.

The Mushroom Marriage

Glump the toadstool bowed to the giant hickory tree. "Then it is decided?"

Old Man Hickory's bark groaned as he also bowed, albeit at a much slower and in a much slighter way.

The circle of shrooms danced around their glumpiest Glump. Their shrill acclamation reached not far from the forest floor, for fungi lack large lungs.

Glump sidled up to one of Old Man Hickory's roots, where a porcelain ballerina pirouetted inside a hollow knot. She wore a perpetual smile beneath long lashes. Her blue skirt billowed about her waist, making her look to Glump very much like an upside-down mushroom.

He embraced his new wife in the traditional way that mushrooms hug, and stared up at her glassy, dark eyes. He loved her eyes, and her flowing hair, and most everything about her. But he liked her most because she never said anything cross.

"Chanterelle and I will live here, beneath your boughs, Father." Glump pronounced this last word with reverential awe.

Old Man Hickory had not the heart to tell the tiny toadstool that some unfortunate lass had dropped her childhood toy some years ago, and that he had merely been caretaker since then.

"Son," he managed through taut vocal cords. With a shake of a branch, he showered them with a dozen leaves, laden with enough nutrients for another generation of mushrooms.

Glump would have smiled if he could have, but instead he spread mycelia in the dirt beside his bride, drawing out nutrients from the rich soil and detritus.

"What shall we do on this fine day, love?" he asked.

Figuring her silence for generous deferral, Glump lay his cap against her brow and sighed. "I think so too. It's much too fine a day to cuddle to do anything but."

"Now that everyone's here, our safety topic today is flammables and combustibles."

Welders shuffled around the tiny office like zombies, zipping up tool bags and donning extra layers to beat the November chill.

Supervisor Gravinski sighed and tapped the tablet screen to complete his task. "Be safe out there. Nothing new that you haven't heard before, I guess."

No one responded. No one edged toward the door for another full ten minutes, but eventually the room emptied of workers.

The door banged against the trailer's exterior as a brisk wind sent papers flying off the desk. An apprentice nicknamed Hefty bumbled in moments later.

"What is it now, Martin?" asked the supervisor.

Hefty wiped his drippy nose and squinted through his thick and very scratched eyeglasses. "Uh, aren't we supposed to sign something in the mornings?"

"I already took care of it. Is the shipping container clean like I asked?"

The desk tilted toward the corner where Hefty leaned against it. "No, you told us not to start work until we sign the forms."

"Work started an hour ago," Gravinski muttered under his breath.

"What?"

"Exactly my directions. I wish all my guys were as diligent as you, Martin." He pulled a blank sheet from his notebook and slapped it down in front of the apprentice. "Sign this. I'll finish filling it out soon."

Hefty patted his pockets and then his chest, where he might have had a breast pocket if he'd worn the company shirt. "I don't have anything to write with," he said.

A smile formed beneath dull eyes, and Gravinski offered Hefty his pen. "I know you know the rules, but you also know how the plant is. No smoking near the oxygen tanks. They'll throw us all out if they catch us."

Hefty winked and tapped his safety glasses. "You got it, boss man. They won't catch us smoking."

He signed the blank paper and crammed the pen into his pocket. Then he lumbered outside, leaving the door open to a clear view of the refinery campus down the hill. Its stacks belched steam and chemicals into the sky.

Gravinski shivered and wandered the office, scooping up papers and stacking them under a paperweight shaped like a fire extinguisher. He leaned back in his seat with another sigh and stared into the man-made clouds below.

Suddenly his vision went white. A shockwave shook the trailer like a box of cereal, sending the fire extinguisher and other loose objects toppling to the floor. He blinked several times as his vision and hearing slowly returned. Clouds flickered red and orange in the valley below, where collapsed buildings and charred pipe bridges still burned.

Gravinski straightened his jacket and walked toward the parking lot.

"Mr. G! Mr. G!" sooty-faced Hefty panted as he caught up. "Where are you going? It's bad. Real bad."

"I hear they're hiring a couple states over," he replied as he climbed in his truck. "Maybe it'll be better for me over there."

Wow, nothing like beginning the alphabet with a super-duper hard word. At least it can get only easier from here? =P