The Northwoods Chronicles by Elizabeth Engstrom Page A

have come over to comfort
her, George was the one. “I believe in guided dreaming,” he
eventually said to her after he heard the whole story of Cook.
“I’ll be your guide if you’ll be mine.”
    Missie dried her eyes on the sleeve of her
blouse. “Really?”
    “Sure.”
    She tried calling Cook to tell him the good
news, but his mother answered and said that Cook was unavailable.
Then she hung up.
    That night, Missie went to bed with George
sitting in a wing chair at the end of her bed. She was too excited
to sleep at first, but George was absolutely silent. As soon as she
fell asleep, he was to move into a bedside chair and begin speaking
low to her, to guide her to Cook. She’d click her eyes to the right
to tell him she was in control, and click her eyes to the left if
she lost it.
    She dreamed she was in an elevator, headed down.
She was in an elevator with George. And George was telling her that
she had control over the elevator, and she remembered her mission.
She clicked her eyeballs, pushed on the elevator door and it opened
into the field of flowers.
    The musical flowers were closed with their heads
hanging. They played a discordant tune as she walked through the
rain-wet grass to the tree, where Cook slumped over, eyes closed,
more tree than man. His needles were turning brown, falling off,
carpeting the ground around him.
    “I’m dying, Miss,” he said without even opening
his eyes.
    “What can I do?” she asked.
    “I don’t know. Stay with me.”
    “I can’t do that, Cook, you know I can’t. I’m
here to dream you well.” Even in her dream, Missie was amazed that
she remembered her mission.
    “I don’t know how you’ll do that.”
    “I’m just going to dream you well. This is my
dream, and I have control, so come on out of that tree and be my
husband again.”
    “It’s not that simple.”
    “Of course it is. This is my dream.”
    “But you’re at the Northern Aire Motel, honey.
You can’t control the dreams there, because they’re not really
dreams. There is truth to what happens in your dreams at that
place, and they control you, you don’t control them.”
    “Is that true?”
    Cook nodded, then slumped even lower.
    The flowers wailed.
    “You mean there’s no hope?”
    “Just stay with me, Miss.”
    “I can’t, Cook, I’m asleep.” She felt the tug on
her consciousness. “I’ll go back to the hospital.”
    “Hurry,” he sighed, and she awoke to see George
watching her with intensity.
    “Cook said we can’t change the things we dream
here because in this place the dreams change us, we don’t change
them.”
    “How could that be?” George asked.
    “I don’t know,” she said as she got out of bed.
“But I have to go home. My husband’s dying, and I need to be with
him.”
    “Not until after you guide me,” George said.
    “He’s dying, George.”
    “We had a deal.”
    “It won’t do any good.”
    “Says the demon liar in your dream. A deal is a
deal.”
    As much as Missie thought that her wedding vows
superceded this agreement, she thought that spending a couple more
hours at the motel wouldn’t hurt. She’d already done irreparable
damage to her relationship with her in-laws.
    They went to George’s room, where he changed
into his pajamas and climbed into bed. As per their agreement,
Missie sat in the wingback chair until he began to snore, then she
moved to his bedside and began to talk to him, low and gentle,
guiding him into control of his dream.
    He clicked his eyeballs to the right, and she
knew he was off and running. But she stayed in case he lost
control. She stayed and waited with him with tremendous
impatience.
    Then the impatience began to diminish as she
looked at his face. He was grossly overweight and had a popcorn
nose, his remaining hair was graying and thin on top and looked
kind of greasy, but there was something appealing about him,
something little-boyish about his manner.
    She found herself wanting to touch him, to
smooth the hair