by Alena Deerwater.
The first time the Night Mare comes to me, I see her peer through the slats of my crib, her eyes glowing like a pair of fierce blue moons.
She snorts.
I holler.
By the time Momma comes running, the Night Mare vanishes.
The Night Mare doesn't visit again till I am just old enough to tell Momma about her. This time the Mare brings other Night Creatures with her. A whale, some fish, a herd of reindeer. All the animals are protected by a man with a bow and arrow, a scorpion, and the moon. This time I don't scream. The animals escort me on a ride through the night sky. I ride on the Night Mare's back and do fine till she decides to gallop.
I start to cry.
I can't help it.
I cry so hard I can't see.
Then Momma's there, rocking me, in my room.
“Horsey,” I say between the sharp intakes of breath that quell sobbing. “Cow … owl … deer. Flying.”
Momma is thrilled; she is half hokey-hippie.
For weeks she tells everyone how her baby, her Star Wonder, is dreaming already. “Her first dream,” Momma beams every time she speaks to anyone – even complete strangers. “And the night visitations are full of Star's animal guides!”
Some kids have a baby book and know how much they weighed and shit; I have a first dream journal. Momma writes the words I say when I wake up, and I draw the pictures. Now I know you're thinking I just know this story because of that first journal. But I actually remember the whole thing. And it didn't feel like any dream to me.
I know, because when I am ten years old the Night Mare returns again. I had forgotten about her so she scares the crap out of me.
Clip-clop, clip-clop.
A horse is walking toward me through the air.
Clip-clop, clip-clop.
Pretending to be in a deep sleep, I slowly shift and turn till my head is buried under piles of pillows and covers. I hide, but the sound gets louder.
CLIP-CLOP. CLIP-CLOP.
What does she want?
The farther I stick my head down under, the louder and faster she gets.
Maybe if I lay perfectly still and stop breathing, she'll think I am dead. I suck my lips together and pinch my nose closed.
LOUDER AND LOUDER. FASTER AND FASTER.
Sweating and dizzy, I give up and stick my head out for some air. Not a peep meets my ears. Hmm. Maybe I am dreaming.
You know that scene toward the end of To Kill a Mockingbird? Momma had just read the book to me. You remember the part where the kids are walking home through the woods at night and they think they hear someone following them, but every time they stop to listen the sound of the footsteps stops? Well, that's what happens with me and the Mare. Every time I stick my head outta the covers to be brave enough to get a real good listen, the clip-clop stops. But every time I put my head deep and comfy on my pillow and pull the covers up and close my eyes and begin drifting off to sleep …
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.
If I keep my eyes closed, pretend to ignore her, she speeds up into a ferocious cantor as fast as my ten year-old heart is beating.
I think the reason Dad had a vasectomy was so he wouldn't have to be woken up by a baby in the middle of the night ever again. And here I am, precociously on my way to an early puberty with little breast buds and everything, standing outside their bedroom door full of dread and indecision. Finally I crawl into Momma's arms without waking Dad. Then I crawl out, feeling childish. Then in again, when the clip-clop is in the hall.
“You cannot wake me twice in a row!” Momma bellows, her eyes snapping open at me like some red-eyed beast. “It's torture!”
Dad starts pounding the pillow, muttering his traditional curses, “Damn it, goddamn it.”
“Okay Star,” Momma takes a deep breath and shape-shifts into a loving human being again. She shuffles out of bed, winds her arms around me, and guides me down the long hall back to my bed. We snuggle in together. She rests her forehead against mine. Her breath smells of interrupted sleep.
“What did you see tonight?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
I pause, listening for the Mare.
Silence.
I continue cautiously, “It was a sound. I don't hear it now.”
I close my eyes; there's no need to talk about the Night Mare now that Momma's in bed with me.
“Star.” Momma nudges me awake. She likes having a conscious audience. “With sounds in the night, the trick is to listen till you figure out what's truly making the noise.
“One night when I was little,” Momma continues. “I heard a tap-tap-tapping on the window. There was an old Indian outside, waiting for me to open up and let him in. I was petrified – literally, I couldn't move. As I lay there listening to the pattern of the beat, I began to recognize it. Finally, I got up the gumption to look. The little plastic handles on the cords that opened the drapes were tap-tap-tapping together. Warm air rose to my face and I realized the cords were swaying in the heat from the radiator. All's I had to do was get up and look.”
“You sound like Dad,” I say, then add in his annoyed, deep voice, “'Just get up and look with your eyes, Willow. Look! Damn it, goddamn it.'”
Momma laughs then shushes us, whispering. “Sometimes it's good advice.”
“Momma? I thought you were gonna say the old Indian was your spirit guide come to watch over you and the beating was his drum waking up your heart.”
“God,” Momma says taking me way serious. “Maybe he was. And I was too much of a chickenshit to believe in him so he created drape handles tapping to calm me down.”
Now that I'm all calmed down, my eyelids slide closed for sleep.
“Star,” Momma won't stop talking. “What was your noise?”
“A horse.”
“A horse?”
”Yeah. Clip-clop, clip-clop.”
“What so scary about a horse?”
“What so scary about an Indian?”
Momma gives me a look.
I twirl a string of her hair before answering her question, “The horse is mean.”
“Well, feed her a carrot. You didn't used to be frightened of horses. Remember the Mare and all the animals that came to your crib at night. You loved them once you stopped hollering.”
Momma slowly inhales and exhales, settling deeply into my nightworld.
“Give the horse a carrot. Or an apple. An offering. Maybe the Mare is friendly.”
“Then why was she galloping?”
“I don't know.” Momma sighs, sounding vexed. “It's up to you, Star, how you respond. Monsters will always appear, believe you me, but you have power in how you choose to see and interact with them.” She pauses letting that slip into my brain.
She slows down her breathing again, and I match her breath with mine. When Momma continues, her voice is softer, hushed, like she's the moon speaking through the clouds.
“Give the horse an apple, one from our tree out back. You know how to do it. Hold your hand open, flat. Feel the Mare nuzzle-muzzle your hand with her mouth, warming your palm. The tart windfall smell of apple enters your nose as the Mare's teeth crack the fruit open releasing a magic scent. The Mare bends her front legs, kneels, and bows her head to you revealing her wings. The Night Mare has returned to give you a ride. Climb on, Star. Where do you want to go?”
I know my Momma sounds hokey as all heck here, but when you feel her warm breath and smell her body right next to yours, the hokeys fall away as you drop into her words.
“Where do you want to go? Let any answer come to you. The ocean? The moon?”
My eyelids lower slowly. I try to open them again and again but they keep dropping closed.
“I want to go to the star I came from.” I think I'm talking to Momma, but when I open my eyes, I'm looking at the Night Mare. Her nostril flare and blow steamy breath into the starry night sky.
She nudges me with her soft nose.
I climb on the Night Mare's back. My legs slide into place between the base of her neck and where her wings sprout from her body. As she rises and begins to move, I feel the pull of her muscles against my calves and thighs. Quickly she takes us higher and higher. Too fast. The night wind is cold. She turns left, sharply. I make the mistake of looking down. The stars spiral with earth and moon. Spinning around and down.
“Stop. Please. Stop.”
I open my eyes, landing back on the bed. But this world is spinning too. Momma wraps her arms around me tight. The spinning comes to a halt
“I wanted to ride on the Mare, Momma, but I got so scared. I can't control my brain.”
She scrunches her mouth to one side, seems to think a minute.
“Repeat after me,” she says. “I, Willow Star Templeton, am a brave girl.”
I laugh at the lie in it.
Momma looks straight at me, eye to eye. “Say it.”
“I, Willow Star Templeton, am a brave girl.”
“Try again, like you believe it.”
“I, Willow Star Templeton, am a brave girl.”
“If you say it over and over and over again. Your brain will believe your words. You will be brave. You are brave. It's called an affirmation.”
“An affirmation?”
“It's how I got to be a writer. I kept repeating, I, Crystal Amaryllis Templeton, am a writer again and again and again till I was bored off my butt. And I kept going even after that till it felt … natural … true.”
Then Momma says in a voice hushed with reverence, “Look at me: I am a writer.” And adds the best part of the secret right in my ear, “It works.”
“Wow, Momma.”
“But Star,” Momma's voice gets stone dead, like when she wants me to listen and remember. “Be careful what you ask for.”