The Nightmare Catcher

It was quite a bit before dawn. The small girl climbed up into her grandmother's bony lap with a tired sigh and rested her head against the old woman's shoulder.

"Still not sleeping well, child?" asked the grandmother, smoothing the girl's mussed hair. It was part of life for old people to wake up early, but when young ones did it, it seemed unnatural.

"No, Gran."

The old woman lifted the girl's chin with two fingers so she could look into her eyes. "Still the bad dreams, then?"

The girl hesitated. She did not want to tell her grandmother that the horrible dreams continued to wake her, after all the old woman had done to try to help.

Nights of lullabies at the girl's bedside, long tales, warm milk, warm whiskey (just a sip), and even the beautiful hand-made dreamcatcher circle that hung above her bed. Gran had walked through the forest with her for hours to find the perfect feathers for the thing. It was supposed to filter her dreams, Gran had said. The webbing made of sinew from the dead stew-squirrels was supposed to catch all of the dreams coming in, and only the good dreams were supposed to drip down the hawk and pheasant feathers into her head. Gran had worked so hard on it - it had not been easy for old fingers to twist and form the willow hoop.

But Gran would ferret out the truth eventually anyway. With regret, the girl admitted that the bad dreams still plagued her. "But don't worry, it's not your fault, Gran. Your magics can't get every dream."

"Tah!" the old woman spat. "That weren't any magics of mine, that dreamcatcher hoop," she said. "I got that notion from silly old Hilde down the road apiece. I didn't have much hope for it. Honestly! A squirrel-gut net to catch bad dreams? What's to hold 'em in? Everyone knows bad dreams is stronger than the good ones, and they're much... more... wriggly." She playfully poked her fingers into the girl's sides, tickling her. Some months ago, the girl would have squealed with laughter; lately, all she had energy to do was smile half-heartedly. The smile didn't even reach the girl's puffy eyes anymore.

The grandmother sat, quietly, pursing her wrinkled lips and moving them left and right, left and right, over the teeth she had remaining. The girl knew that this was Gran's Thinking Face. So she sat quietly too, uninterrupting.

"Stands to reason," Gran said suddenly, after several minutes of silence, "that Hilde's idea would be a good one, if we just had the right fixins. Something stronger than rodent guts and feathers and wood." She stood up, the girl sliding from her lap in one motion.

The girl followed her grandmother around the small house as the old woman muttered to herself. "The problem with that dreamcatcher hoop is that it ain't smart. It can't see what it's doing." Gran got slowly down on creaky knees and pulled out an old box from under the bed. The girl knew this was a very special box, with all of the old woman's most secret potion and spell ingredients. Old dry fingers lifted the lid of the box, moving over leather pouches and yellowed paper envelopes until they settled on a tiny bottle with what appeared to be liquid in the very bottom. Gran popped the tiny cork from the bottle and poured the contents into her palm - hardly enough to be considered a dollop. With one last shake, a small orange object popped out of the bottle and into her palm.

The girl squinted hard at the bottle, upside-down in Gran's hand, to read the hand-scrawled label. "Gran!" she exclaimed. "That's your last fire-newt eye! You save those for your very best potions!"

"Tosh, it's just an old eye. We can always get more newts," Gran said, and set the eye on her kitchen table, wiping the rest of the fluid off on her patched skirts. The girl fidgeted uncomfortably, for she knew that while Gran knew where to find more newts, they were dreadfully hard to catch, and delivered terrible bites.

"Now, then. A frame," thought Gran aloud. "Willow is a pretty frame, but it bends and can snap. We need something..." She trailed off as she shuffled to her dresser and opened her tiny jewelry box. She pulled out an old pin, almond-shaped, all silver around the outside, like the outline of a leaf in winter frost. The girl knew the pin was a gift her grandmother had received from a lady she'd helped through months of illness. Gran didn't have much that shined; this was one of her few treasures. "Just the thing!"

With a twist, Gran snapped off the pin part, leaving only the silver almond frame. It was a surprisingly nimble and strong motion for such an old woman.

"Gran!" the girl gasped. "Your pin, you... broke it!" Her mouth was a round o of horror.

"Tut, it ain't broken, I'm making it better." She flapped her hands at the girl. "Now, what we need is something to catch the bad dreams and hold them fast. What have we got what's stronger than sinews, hm?" And she made the Thinking Face again for a moment. "Ah! I know." Gran turned to her small shelf of books, and took down one of her favorites, entitled "A Gudwyf's Gyde To Sekrit Erbs And Ware To Fynd Them." The pages were dogeared and worn, and the book was bound through holes on one side with a length of copper wire.

Which Gran began meticulously unwinding, so the pages became loose.

"Gran! Your book!" the girl cried. "You'll lose your pages!"

"Hush, child, I have all these pages mem'rized by heart and soul, I've had this book so long. I don't hardly need it anymore." And she set the bendy wire next to the silver leaf frame and the newt eye on the table. The girl's own eyes were wide. "Now, it seems to me, wire is a good net for bad things, indeed, but even the dullest bad dream'll get bored and try to 'scape if it got nothing to keep it occupied. We need something colorful..." and she headed for her tiny bedside table.

There, she picked up a hair tie that was strung through lovingly with tiny beads that shone purple and blue. The tie was old; the thread it was crafted from had once surely been black as night, but now it was grey and faded. The girl knew that it was something from Gran's childhood, something that Gran's mother, or even Gran's mother's mother, had given her.

"Gran... don't, please. Please." The young girl pulled at her grandmother's forearm gently.

But it was too late. The old woman parted some of the threads so the tiny glass beads could roll free. She brushed them off of the short table and onto her hand, and carried them to the kitchen table to set next to the other supplies. "See, dear. It's been so many moons since I had hair nice enough to need tying back. It all sticks up no matter what I do with it." Brushing off her hands, she looked down at the collected scraps, one finger pressing her lips as they moved back and forth, back and forth over her teeth.

"I think we're almost done. One thing, yet. It has the eye to find the bad dreams, and the wire to snare, the beads to lull, and the frame for strength. But what if we can fool these bad dreams into thinking they found themselves someplace safe, someplace like your pretty head? Then they'd be too comfortable to get up and pester you ever anymore. But what would make a good mind? What do we got around here what thinks?" She walked quietly about the house, pacing, sizing up everything in sight, her granddaughter following quietly, worriedly, behind her.

A sudden snap of the old woman's fingers brought the girl up short. "I got it. The watch."

The girl stood dumbfounded. "Gran... no. You can't. You can't. It's... it's..."

"Darling girl," Gran said, resting her hand on the girl's. "I know it's your father's watch. But it won't never run, on account of it having got all filled with sea water and a little rusted. Still, I think one little salty cog would make a great replacement for a salty little girl's mind, don't you? Why, them bad dreams won't ever want to leave the trap. It'll feel like home."

It was too much for the little girl to bear. She wouldn't miss one gear from the watch, not her, but she knew the watch was the dearest treasure Gran owned. It was the only piece of anything she had to remember her son, the girl's father, by. The only thing the men had sent back from Father's ship, after the storm.

The girl burst out crying.

"Shhh, shhh, little one. It'll be more useful this way than sitting next to an old tea tin over the fireplace." Gran fetched the watch out of its spot, opened it up, and after a small amount of fiddling and perhaps a cuss or two, removed one of the more decorative gears inside. She set it next to the frame, and the eye, and the beads, and the wire, and clucked her tongue. "Now, I start."

The old woman worked for an hour, twisting and bending, folding, twisting some more in the firelight. She said some spells over her handiwork as she crafted, little sing-song sounds that maybe were in another language, or maybe not. The girl watched, wide-eyed, sniffling occasionally.

"And there," the old woman said, holding out her hand, "is your nightmare catcher." In the wrinkled palm, the oval frame glinted, all wrapped in copper wire, the newt's eye in the center, resting on the tiny watch cog. "Only it's much smaller than that dream hoop, so, you ought wear it close to your heart so it'll work best." She took an old lace from an even older boot and threaded it through the top loop of the charm, and tied the lace around the girl's neck. The nightmare catcher shone on the girl's chest.

"Oh, Gran," she said, because there wasn't anything else to say, and she hugged the old woman as tightly as she could, and she cried just a little more.

The girl slept that night, all the way through, her fingers curled around the charm.
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There are those who hear this story and scoff and say the magic was not in the items themselves, or the charm completed, or the spoken spells, but rather in the knowledge that the girl's grandmother loved her so much that she would give up all of her most precious treasures to bring the girl peace of mind.

Those are the people who take all of the magic out of everything and who need a grandmother very badly.

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The nightmare catcher's replica is made out of a silver-colored metal frame, glass beads, copper wire, and, never fear, it's a glass eye.


I do have this item for sale, here if you would like to see. Contact me in e-mail please, as I lose track of comments and Notes.