Stealing Butterflies

Chapter Seventeen

Sometimes I dream about Pocahontas.

Well, really, I don't go anywhere in my hazy sleep most of the time because I'm too zonked from patrol or too full from Emily's cooking to do anything but hit the bed like a sunken submarine and melt into nothing.

Every once in a while, though, when I'm confused or upset or just plain lost in my own life, it takes me a few minutes longer to fall asleep. And then, when I finally do drift off, I time-travel back to the time of our tribe when the original werewolves existed as spirit-walkers.

And, usually, Pocahontas is there.

Everything is in cartoon, too.

These dreams started when I first phased. I'd just lie on my bed backwards most nights, waiting to wake up to some kind of normalcy. The legends-gone-truths of our people were like a million broken CDs stuck on repeat in my head, screaming the same stories over and over.

So, when I finally fell down into dreamland, I would end up running through two dimensional corn fields, wearing beaded moccasins, and singing Screamo songs with Claire's favorite Disney princess.

And then, in the typical inconstant form of dreams, we'd poof instantly into a great big unfamiliar cafeteria, where the wise chief of that time in our history, Taha Aki, would be waiting for us.

Then I'd have these really indepth conversations with him. Well, at least, that's what it felt like at the time. In all actuality, he really just listened to my problems then would quote a bunch of different fortune cookies' secret messages.

It made me feel better though.

Pocahontas petted her 2-D beaver, I got to vent and eat whatever came to mind, and Taha Aki helped me out, all the while constantly shifting between human and wolf form. And, for some reason, whenever I woke back up, everything seemed to make a lot more sense.

So, as I was wailing on Billy Black's hardwood dining room table and Dr. Vamp-Fang was rearranging my skeleton, I wished Taha Aki could join me in the real world this time. He could have explained the whole wolf-situation to Katie a lot better than how I was managing.

That sudden declaration of mine had done three things.

1. "Is he high?" Katie asked Leah. "Are you all high?"

2. Every wolf in the room looked at me like I had lost my final shred of sanity.

3. And Edwin laughed.

Forget suing, I was going to kill that guy.

SNAP.

I hollered.

Katie looked like she wanted to slap everyone in the room.

I didn't like her looking angry.

"Somebody better start explaining this instant," she growled. Literally.

It even stopped Dr. Evil's hands on their way to my next bone.

"Em just did," Quil said, adding another note of brilliance to our vague conversation.

"Quil," Jake sighed. "You're not helping anything."

"Neither are you!" he shouted back.

SNAP.

"AH! WE KILL BLOODSUCKERS!"

"What?" she begged, her colorful, cat-like eyes alight with desperate determination, while she ran her fingers through my hair in a comforting, calming manner.