The Dreamer (2nd Place Fiction)

Lena did not believe in dreams.

She dreamed every night, fantastical visions of beaver attacks and her teeth falling out while vacationing on a tropical island. She dreamed about missing college exams, though she had dropped out of college once and for all five years ago; she dreamed that she was in her favorite movies, most often a Greta Gerwig film like Little Women or Barbie; and she regularly dreamed about her best friend from high school, Natasha, who’d sold her latest app for thirty million dollars. When Lena woke in the morning with the taste of a dream on her tongue, she’d quickly categorize it and move on. Losing teeth—work is stressing me out. Greta Gerwig movie—I’m feeling hopeful. A dream of Natasha—I feel like a complete and utter failure.

Lena dreamed all the time, but Lena didn’t believe in dreams. Her dreams were generally a mishmash of her hopes and fears, and especially of her present anxieties. They could be useful for a bit of self-psychoanalysis, but not much else.

Still, last night’s dream unsettled her. In it, she and her family had entered the Stockholm temple. The building had started to shake, bending this way and that. Then the chandeliers shattered and the walls collapsed. Everyone got out—everyone except for her. Lena had been trapped in the rubble.

The dream shouldn’t bother her, as she was only here to support her family, not attend. She tried not to think about it as she stood looking up at a circular window with metal lines that looked like spokes of a wheel. This edifice looked rather different than most LDS temples in the United States. Its steeple was a distance in front of the main building, its black spire jutting into the sky.

They were here because this was her mother’s dream, a grand glorious goal. About once a decade, her mother wanted all of them to gather at a temple that had some significance to their family. Since a bunch of their ancestors on both sides of the family had joined the church in Sweden, her mother had chosen the Stockholm temple.

Lena shivered, then rubbed her left eye.

“Jet lag hitting you hard?” asked her dad, Robert.

“I didn’t sleep well. But it’s Tyler’s fault.”

“No way,” said Tyler, tugging on a lock of her hair. She still thought of him as her baby brother, but he was now twenty-three and recently married.

“You didn’t have to tell me that the temple shakes every time a train goes past,” she told her brother.

“It’s an interesting fact!”

“I had a nightmare about it.”

“That must’ve been cool,” said Tyler, and then he was pulled away by his wife, who wanted him to look at something.

“I’ve got soda in the rental car,” said her dad. “Caffeinated soda.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Lena.

“Quiet everyone,” called her mother, silencing them. She’d set the big camera on a tripod. “We need to take the photo before we go in. Everyone—grab your spouse and line up over here.”

Lena’s breath hitched in her throat. Not again.

Her parents stood in the middle. Her two brothers with their wives stood on the left; her two sisters with their husbands stood on the right. Lena hesitated. If she joined them, she’d ruin the perfect balance of the picture.

“Lena, stand right here,” said Tyler.

Lena trudged over to her brother and stood awkwardly next to him. She’d be on the edge of the photo. Again. Single. Alone.

After the photo, her dad distributed the temple cards to everyone but her. Her parents had spent a year searching for Swedish ancestors so they could do their work on Swedish soil.

Lena’s mom came up and hugged her. “Thanks so much for coming, Lena.”

“I wasn’t going to miss the family trip to Sweden.” They’d spent the last two days in downtown Stockholm, seeing palaces, museums, churches, and jewel-covered royal carriages. Starting tomorrow, they’d visit other cities and tour the Swedish countryside. Her siblings had left their kids at home with neighbors, friends, and relatives, so it was an adults-only trip.

“I meant today,” said her mom. “Thanks for being willing to come today.”

“No problem,” said Lena. It wasn’t that hard to spend twenty minutes outside the temple to do something nice for her parents. “I remember how much you loved the last time we did this.”

“That was amazing,” agreed her mom.

Ten years ago, when Lena was twenty-two, they’d visited the Nauvoo temple to celebrate their pioneer ancestors. She’d participated in an endowment session with her parents and watched her siblings perform baptisms for the dead, but Lena’s favorite part of the trip was seeing all the reconstructed buildings of Old Nauvoo. At the blacksmith shop, the craftsman had taken train nails and beaten them into rings. “Prairie rings,” he’d called them. The pioneers didn’t have money for fancy jewels perfectly set in valuable metals like gold or silver, but they could make these rings. Lena’s had a small indent on the side that looked a bit like a feather. She’d dabbed a touch of purple nail polish on the inside of it, so it wouldn’t get mixed up with her siblings’ when they inevitably misplaced theirs. She had worn it every day—every day for three years. Unfortunately, she’d lost it at a beach in Virginia.

“Are you taking the train or ordering an Uber?” asked her mom.

“I think I’m going to walk around a bit, then get an Uber and see some sights.” Lena gestured to the forest beside the temple. “It’s a nice day.”

“Don’t get lost,” said her mom.

Lena almost said I won’t, but they both knew that she was already lost.

“I’ll be fine,” Lena said instead.

Her mom gave her a quick hug, and her dad hugged her as well.

“See you tonight, at the hotel,” said her dad.

“I’ll be there.”

Lena stepped into the forest before she could see her family enter the temple without her.

The woods were deep and beautiful, with trees that stretched up to the sky. The ground was covered with moss, grasses, and ferns. And there, buried in the soil, with only their tops visible, was a circle of stones.

The stones were large—the parts sticking out of the ground were at least twelve inches across, and who knew how big they were underground. They looked like they had been there for more than her lifetime. The soil was undisturbed, the air peaceful.

Lena walked on and saw a mound—an area of earth that looked like it had been intentionally built up. A hundred feet later, she found another stone circle, and not far past it lay stones arranged in a shape that looked almost like a ship.

She walked further, looking for more large stones, but didn’t find any. She stuck to the forest, away from the roads, but did cross a couple of walking paths. When her fitness watch said she’d walked about a mile, she found another stone circle—this one with rocks sticking three feet into the air. She walked through short, summer grasses and a meadow of leafy plants with miniature white flowers, before joining a path that led her to a mound, then a solitary stone, then huge jagged stones in the shape of a triangle, and finally a circle of tightly packed stones—at least a hundred of them, each one or two feet wide.

She found a sign in both Swedish and English. “Jordbrogravfältet,” it said. “Jordbro Burial Grounds.” She read:

See the raised stones and low mounds? Those are graves! Here, you will find solitary stones and stones in various geometric formations: circles, squares, triangles, and many-pointed. Below the soil surface, there are also graves of smaller stones laid out in geometric formations.

The sign went on to describe that the stones and the mounds were an important part of early Iron Age burials, which had taken place in this location from 500 BC to 400 AD.

That makes the most recent burials over sixteen hundred years old. One and a half millennia later, and they are still here. Her brother Tyler would love this—he was really into history and Vikings and had even participated in a reenactment once.

Lena continued to follow the path, seeing dozens more stones in different patterns. Most of the other signs were only in Swedish, and she couldn’t get the translation app on her phone to work.

Her eyes drooped and her steps began to drag. Jet lag was the worst.

Lena sat down on a bench and stared at a large mound of earth, three or four feet tall. She wondered who had been buried here, and what it had been like to live in Sweden two thousand years ago. She yawned, then shut her eyes. Just for a minute, she promised herself.

And then, she fell asleep. And Lena dreamed.

Lena dreamed of men, women, and children planting the soil. They worshipped the sun. They told each other stories. They had joy. They experienced sorrow. In the dream, seasons passed, and she saw trolls—they were really just giant people, with blood dripping from their mouths. A dragon flew through the sky. Elf-like creatures lived in the hills. Men and women sailed on ships. People of all skin colors visited with gold and tales of Rome and Jerusalem. She saw missionaries and Christian crosses and Viking runes. War. Death. Struggle.

Then, the dream changed.

Lena saw a bird. The bird was a deep black, with shiny wings. It turned to her, and Lena’s breath caught. The bird knew her, and she knew the bird. It was almost as if the bird was part of her.

The Lena bird flew over lakes and forests and water inlets and fjords. It flew around the world, sad and alone. The bird grew exhausted and found an empty nest in a tree. When it awoke, it was surrounded by other birds, birds it recognized. The Lena bird flew away again, but every time it grew tired, it came back to the others, and they shared their warmth and their food and their shelter.

The dream changed again.

Now Lena saw the mound in front of her bench. The mound grew, and in the side of the mound appeared an old wooden door, ancient as time itself, carved with runes and symbols. The door opened, and out stepped a woman. She felt timeless, both old and incredibly young, wrinkled and unblemished. She wore a tunic dyed in beautiful browns and yellows. Around her neck was a metal ring—not a necklace with small individual chains but rather a long, curved piece of metal covered in complex patterns that reminded Lena of the waves of the sea.

The woman smiled. “Come, Lena, daughter of Robert.”

After a moment’s pause, Lena followed her into the mound. Inside was a long, low room. The walls consisted of thin strips of wood, woven together with what appeared to be soil and straw. On one side of the room sat a bed with a carved wooden frame, like she’d seen in a museum. Shields hung on the wall, and painted pottery rested on a shelf. Chairs stood next to a large fire.

“Sit with me, Lena, daughter of Robert,” said the woman.

Lena sat. “How do you know my name? And my dad’s name?”

“You share my blood—of course I know your name. Now what can I give you?” The woman stared into her eyes. “Do you have any upcoming battles?”

“Battles?”

The woman—her great-great-endlessly-great-grandmother—stood and removed a sword from the wall.

“This sword has killed many in its time. It has traveled across land and sea.” She set the sword down on a table and reached for another weapon on the wall. “Or how about this axe? It belonged to one of my grandsons, and I’ve sharpened the blade.”

“I don’t think I need a weapon,” said Lena.

“Ah, you seek prosperity. Come, I will show you my treasures.”

The woman led her to an old chest. She lifted the iron latch, revealing gold necklaces and armbands and illuminated manuscripts and amulets with precious jewels, and more modern treasures—Rolex watches, a gaming laptop, and designer clothes.

“Please, look through them,” said the woman.

Lena felt like she must, so she sorted through the treasures. They were beautiful, many of them likely priceless, but she didn’t want any of them. Then, at the bottom of the chest, she found a gray metal ring.

She lifted it. It was a prairie ring, made from a nail, like the one she had received in Nauvoo. And there, on the side, was the indent in the shape of a feather. On the inside of the ring, she found the purple nail polish she had placed there so long ago.

“That’s an interesting treasure,” said the woman, holding out her hand. Lena dropped the ring into it. The woman held it up in front of the fire, considering it. “I’ve never seen this before, and while it doesn’t look particularly valuable, it feels valuable, as valuable as anything else in my chest. Would you like it?”

“Yes,” said Lena, with a fierceness and desperation that surprised her.

The woman—her ancient grandmother—slid the ring onto Lena’s finger. It fit perfectly.

“Now you must go,” said the woman. “They do not give me long.”

“Who is they?” asked Lena, but the woman did not answer her, instead leading Lena out of the barrow.

“Farewell, great-granddaughter. Thank you for relieving me of my solitude, Lena, daughter of Robert.”

The woman stepped back through the door, which closed and disappeared. The mound shifted, returning to its original shape.

Lena woke up and opened her eyes. She blinked. The sun shone brightly on her face. She’d probably get a sunburn. Her neck ached from sleeping while sitting, and her shoulders felt sore. She peered at the mound in front of her. What a peculiar dream.

A woman walked up the path, purposefully, as if she had seen Lena and wanted to talk to her. She was about Lena’s age, with pitch-black hair in a pixie cut and multiple piercings on her ears, eyebrows, nose, and lips.

The woman said something, probably in Swedish.

“Sorry?” said Lena.

The woman switched to English. “Did you get the dream you wanted?”

“What?”

“If you fall asleep here, or at another old gravfält, sometimes you dream. Personally, I feel like it works better if you sleep on the stones themselves, or on a mound, but a bench can work.”

“Do you sleep on graves a lot?”

“Of course,” said the Swedish woman, as if it was a completely normal thing. “So did you dream?”

“I did.”

The woman pumped her fist in the air. “I knew it. Was it a normal dream? Or . . . was it a real dream? One that means something. One that matters.”

Lena thought for a moment about the different parts of the dream. First, the land, with its creatures and people. Next, the birds. Finally, the woman in the mound, who said they shared the same blood. Each had a clarity and brightness unlike that of her normal dreams. These were nothing like the dreams she’d learned about in church—an angel delivering a message three times—but still, they felt like they meant something.

“I think it was a real dream.”

“That’s what I thought,” said the Swede. “Do you mind if I tally it in my notebook? I like to keep track of when and where they happen.”

“That’s . . . fine.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I hope you have a great day, and that your dream didn’t have any calamities in it, because that’s a bad sign.”

“I hope you have a great day too,” said Lena, unsure of what else to say.

“Nice ring, by the way,” said the woman, then walked down the path.

Lena looked down at her hand. There, on her finger, was a familiar gray circle.

She almost never wore jewelry, and she hadn’t brought any with her to Sweden. But her finger held a metal prairie ring, like the ones from Nauvoo, like the one she had just dreamed about.

She removed it. On the side she saw an indent that looked like the mark of a feather, and inside she found the purple nail polish.

This is my ring.

Lena knew it deep within her bones. How is this possible? She slid it back on her finger. She’d lost this token at a beach in Virginia, but now it was here, in Sweden, on her hand.

“Thank you,” she whispered, though whether it was to the mound or to her ancestor or to God she was not sure. Maybe it was to all three. After taking a few pictures, she retraced her steps through the forest, back toward the temple. She would wait for them to finish. Lena wanted to bring Tyler to the grave field, and it wouldn’t surprise her if the rest of the family joined them.