They Will Dream Again

Sweet grapes burst under teeth, filling children's mouths with a taste better than candy. Watermelon juice dripped down their chins while their fingers were still sticky from picking apart fresh figs. They sat on the soft grass, feeling a light wind graze against their hair and clothes, waiting for the adults to light the pyre.

Nine crows perched around the area, watching from the tops of canopies, nearby trees, and a few grey columns brought from the local garden center. They observed as the adults gathered bowls of food around the unlit pyre. Dogs roamed, panting with delight as they played and lounged near their owners.

It started with dreams, as most things do. Then came the stories of those dreams, traveling from one person to the next, and the frightening realization that they all dreamt the same thing. The dreams spread like fast-approaching fog through the small town surrounded by woods. All the stories, all the dreams, exactly the same. And they all started with fire.

A child leaned her head back, trying to get the last gulps of water from her cup. Her eyes drifted upward, watching as dark smoke filled the sky from the east. It crept, ever slowly spreading closer to their clearing in the woods. The child heard her mother call her name, pulling her attention away from the looming monster and ushering her over to help with a large copper bowl of fruit. The girl sprinted to her mother, and when the copper bowl's weight hit her arms, she smiled, straightened her spine, and walked to the pyre.

The dream showed them a great monster, a fire that burned everything in its path. But then, the whistle of an arrow pierced the air; its head, burning in the same fire, cut through the roaring of the monster. It flew and landed on its mark, a river of water. The arrow drowned with a hiss, and the river's water turned golden.

While refilling the water bowls for the dogs, a woman heard a crow caw behind her. She turned and saw the crow watching the darkening sky. She took a deep breath and wondered why she still couldn't smell the burning. As she listened, she also realized she couldn't hear the dying woods surrounding them, nor the roar of impending doom. She shook her head, deciding this was a good sign—that all of this was worth taking the strange risk. One of the dogs walked over and gulped the water. The woman wiped her brow of sweat that didn’t all come from the summer heat, then took out her phone to text her husband to see if he was still at home.

The dream showed them another fire when the river turned gold, one that hovered over human hands, the dreamers' hands. It was smaller and controlled, and there was a knowing that the fire needed to be fed. The sun, higher in the sky than they had ever seen it, told them when. They put their minds together.

Impressions of directions, impressions of salvation.

Fighting the beast by creating one was strange to the dreamers. The townspeople spoke of the contradiction, but there was another impression, a glimmer of wrongness right before they woke. It was pain. Pain of what was to come if the river did not turn golden, if the man-made fire was not fed.

Devil!

Demons!

Witches!

Aliens!

Government conspiracy!

Both said in whispers and in screams. Many left to hide in their homes, praying, escaping. Some left the town entirely.

But fear ruled them all, and so a great many also stayed in town, wondering how to begin and stop the dreams and impending doom.

The mayor of the town walked out of a large red tent, carefully holding a lit torch. Everyone stopped and watched, even the crows jumped forward for closer inspection. Behind him, the mayor's wife held another lit torch. Behind her, a man carried a large plastic container of water. The mayor walked over to the unlit pyre, looking around at all the townspeople, and then up to the sky, wanting to say something, anything to whoever brought the dreams, but he could not. The name was not known.

The mayor and his wife looked at each other and nodded with weak smiles. His wife turned to the man holding the container of water and dipped her torch into it. The water did not turn to gold. But before panic set in, the crows began to chant in their crackled voices, and the dogs howled into the darkening sky.

The townspeople looked at each other and the Mayor saw the confusion. He looked towards the woods and saw the glow of the orange and red monster, the smoke so much thicker and so much darker. The torch shivered in his hands, but the flame was oddly still.

Weeks of replaying dreams bled into the waking world. Each day felt more real: the heat, the burning smell, the pain. Soon the dreams became moments in a possible reality, a journey to another world, as real as can be.

Feed the fire.

Almost too quickly, the pyre went ablaze. The mayor wiped his wet face and watched the townspeople's eye's, staring at the fire. The crows still cawed, and the dogs howled and barked, but the townspeople were far too silent.

He looked towards his wife again. She was staring at the water, waiting. Scanning the area, he hoped to find something different, but everything was the same: the dark sky, the burning monster approaching, the water not golden. Then a howl pierced through the moment—not a dog's, but a human's. A teenager, a boy with blond hair, shaggy and unkempt, and wearing a football jersey, pushed through the crowd of townspeople, who were confused and even frightened by the sudden motion. The young man ran to the pyre, picked up one of the large bowls of offerings, closed his eyes, and dumped the contents into the fire.

Silence overcame everything.

The dogs perked up, their ears twitching to a sound only they could hear. The crows watched, cocking their heads ever so slightly. The teenager grabbed another bowl, hurling more offerings into the fire.

An older woman approached the pyre, holding a small bowl of honey, and fed the flames. A child, a friend of the mayor's daughter, stepped forward and tossed her half-eaten apple into the blaze. A crow cawed, almost sounding like a laugh.

One by one, the townspeople contributed, and the fire consumed eagerly. As the food slowly dwindled, a shadow appeared, circling above them in the sky. When they glanced up, they saw a crow, white as snow.

The girl who had assisted her mother earlier wandered away from the group, pockets of her overalls filled with apricots. She gazed up at the sky as the dissipating smoke returned to its natural blue hue. Watching the monster—the first wildfire she had ever witnessed and would likely ever see—dim and lose its course towards them. She grabbed an apricot and took a bite.

A crow observing her descended to the ground beside her, cawed, and took a few short hops backward toward the townspeople. She looked at it and said, "Hello." The crow responded with another caw and took another hop back. The girl took another bite of her apricot, and followed the crow back to her mother.