Sarah sat up in her bed. Shamrock stood by her bedroom door.
“Are you all right?” he asked. He handed the green jewel to Sarah.
“I don’t remember my last few dreams.” She turned the jewel around in her fingers. “I remember the bees, and snow…”
“I should have said something about it. If you die in a dream, you transform for a little while. I only was able to use my jewel again tonight. I couldn’t come here and bring your jewel sooner. You can’t remember all your dreams without it.”
Sarah concentrated. The jewel flashed around her, and she became Clover. Shamrock held the mirror beside her.
In the reflection of the mirror, a preteen boy walked through an old town. Clover looked carefully at the reflection. “It’s all black and white. There’s no color.” She pressed a hand through the glass. “Even my hand is all grey.” She pulled her hand back out. “Now it’s normal again.”
“Sometimes dreams are like that,” Shamrock said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ve been in dreams like this.” He set the mirror and the ground. “Other dreams have funny colors, like purple grass and green skies.” Shamrock pulled the mirror taller. “Are you ready?”
Clover slid her feet over the bed, and to the floor. She waved he wand, and her outfit transformed into a t-shirt and shorts, with socks and tennis shoes. “I’m ready.”
In the grey world, Clover appeared through the mirror. She looked around, not seeing the boy. “Where’d he go?” Clover proceeded to search around the small buildings.
“Um, hello?” the boy asked, stepping out from a broken building door.
Clover looked back. “There you are! I was looking for you.”
“Who are you?” the boy asked.
“My name is Clover, and I’m a magical girl.”
The boy tilted his head. “A magical girl?”
“You know, like the cartoons. If I wave my wand, I can use magic.”
“My father’s a magician. I’ve seen all the tricks.” the boy asked.
“This is real magic.”
“For real magic?”
“Watch!” Clover waved her wand. “Make a peanut butter sandwich.” The wand flickered, and a peanut butter sandwich appeared in front of Clover. She took hold of it. “See?” Clover set the wand against her leg, and used both hands to tear the sandwich into two pieces. She handed the boy a piece.
The boy looked at the bread. He lifted up a slice, and looked at the peanut butter inside.
“It looks funny without color,” Clover admitted. She took a bite to check the taste. “But it tastes great!” She watched the older boy continue to play with the bread, tearing at the crust. “Don’t you like the crust? Don’t you like peanut butter?”
“I don’t remember,” the boy replied. “I haven’t eaten in a long time. I don’t remember what food tastes like.” He lifted the sandwich to his mouth, and he took a small bite. He chewed it slowly before swallowing. “I think I remember this, maybe just a little.” He took a bigger bite.
“Did you really forgot about peanut butter sandwiches? They’re the best food in the world. Oh! I forgot, my name is Clover. What’s your name?”
“I don’t know if I have a name. I don’t remember any name.”
“That’s weird,” Cover told him. “How don’t you know your own name? Doesn’t everybody call you by your name?”
“I haven’t seen anyone else for a long, long time. You’re the first person I’ve seen. Did you come here to help me find it?”
“Are you looking for something?”
“So, you didn’t come for that.”
“I’m a magical girl. It’s my job to help people. If you lost something, I’ll help you find it. I can even use magic to help find it. What are you looking for?”
“I’m trying to find my way home,” the boy said, looking at the sandwich in his hands. “I don’t know how to get there. Everywhere I go, my house isn’t there. I tried looking in the buildings, but they’re all locked. Some have broken doors, but my house isn’t in there, either.”
“You should look in houses, not buildings,” Clover said before putting the final piece of sandwich in her mouth.
“I checked houses a long time ago. They’re all locked.”
“Then we’ll unlock them with magic,” Clover told him. “Let’s go find them.”
The boy nibbled at his sandwich as he led Clover down one street, across another, around a turn, and past more buildings. Clover couldn’t tell one street from another, but the boy assured her this was the way to the houses.
The two passed by a store with televisions in the window. The boy stopped to watch.
“Don’t you want to find your home?” Clover asked.
“Look,” the boy said. “There’s a different show on each television.”
Clover looked in the window. All the televisions were built into wooden boxes, with screens different from the flat screen television Clover was used to seeing.
On one television screen, a black-haired man beat his hands on a drum. On another, a woman twitched her nose, and her clothes changed. On a differnent television, a woman appeared from smoking coming from a bottle.
“I think we don’t have a television at my house, so I come here sometimes to watch all the shows. Look at that one back there. That’s the new television.”
Clover looked at the television on the back. Nothing looked unique about it. A man on the screen looked to be advertising a product. After the advertisement finished, the television show continued. A brown-haired sheriff watched as a drunk man entered one of the police station jails and locked himself in. “It’s…”
“It’s in color,” the boy said. “I think my Dad said he can boy a black and white one after people starting buying them in color.”
“Let’s look for your house some more,” Clover said. The boy didn’t want to leave yet, but decided he could come back and watch more later.
The two continued walking through town. The sun reached for the ground in the west, casting long shadows off of the one-story buildings.
“My house is closer to the sunset,” the boy said. “There’s a big beach, but I don’t live close to it. Something is familiar. Um… My name… I think my name… It’s Daniel. That’s right, I remember it now. My name is Daniel.”
“Do you remember where your house is for sure now?” Clover asked.
“Maybe. I know we’re really going the right way. My grampa used to take me walking down this street almost every day. We’d stop at kinds of shops, and look in other store windows. On the way home, we would stop outside of the television store, and all the different shows playing. If we keep walking on this street, we’ll find my house.”
“Daniel?”
“It feels good to hear someone say my name again.”
“Why is everything black and white?”
“I don’t know. Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s nothing. Dreams can be really weird.”
The sun slowly moved down the grey sky. Clover and Daniel reached the edge of the shopping buildings. In the distance, houses lined the fields.
“My house is over here,” Daniel said, hurrying down a side street. Clover followed. “It’s that one, right there.” He pointed at an old house, but his excitement lessened when he noticed the boards over the broken door and shattered windows.
“What happened to your house?” Clover asked.
“I–I don’t know. It wasn’t this way before.”
A faint voice said, “He’s been showing erradic signs of brain activity.”
Clover looked around. “Shamrock? Is that you? It doesn’t sound like him… Who’s there?”
“Something’s going on in there,” the voice said.
“Daniel?” a faint lady’s spoke. “Can you hear me, Daniel?”
“Who are you?” Clover asked, looking around. “Show us yourself!”
“Don’t be afraid,” Daniel said. “I know who that lady is. That’s my mom! Mom! I’m over here!”
“Can he hear me?” the lady asked. “Where are you right now, my Daniel?”
“I hear you, Mom! I’m waiting for you at our house! Please, open the door for me!” Daniel put his hands on Clover’s shoulders. “Magical girl Clover, you said you can use magic to open the door to my house, right? Then show me. Show me more of your real magic.”
“All right. Here I go.” Clover walked along the sidewalk leading to the door. She looked at the rotting wood boards nailed on. She took a few steps back, then waved her wand. “We need a saw to cut through all the boards.” A hand saw appeared in a green flash. The saw went right to work, sawing into the highest board.
“What’s that?” the lady’s voice asked. “What’s going on? What’s making that noise?”
“Something is happening in his mind,” the other voice said. “Something major is happening.”
“What do you mean ‘something major’? Is my boy going to be all right? Is he going to wake up?”
“I’ve never seen this kind of activity before. The readings make no sense. The activiity isn’t in any of the parts of the brain it should be. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he found a way to use parts of the brain normally not actively used by humans.”
The saw snapped through the first piece of wood. It started on the next.
“Mom?” Daniel called into the broken door. “Are you in there? Mom? It’s me, Daniel. Where are you? Why are these boards on the door? Don’t you want to see me again?”
“Of course she does!” Clover said, accidentally shouting into the boy’s ear. “Your Mommy loves you. She wouldn’t lock you outside. We’re going to go into your house, and your mother will be so happy to see you, she’ll hug you and won’t let you go.” Clover waved her wand, and another hand saw appeared. As it went to work, Clover produced a third and a fourth and a fifth hand saw, each with a wave of the wand. “We’ll be in in no time.”
“Doctor,” Daniel’s mother’s voice cried out.
“I’ve already put in a call for assistence,” the other voice said. “The machine must be malfunctioning. We’re going to disconnect Daniel from it.”
“What are they talking about?” Clover asked Daniel.
“I don’t know.”
“Will my son be all right?”
“We can’t trust any of the equipment in here anymore. We’re going to transfer him to another room. His mind will slip back into recession while he’s moved, but considering the state he’s been in for so long, he’s probably never left. This has all been a malfunction. I’m so sorry to have gotten your hopes up.”
“What if it’s not a malfunction? What if something’s really happening in there? What’ll happen to my Daniel if he’s disconnected even for a moment?”
“Please, ma’am, consider what might happen if we leave him connected. If anythingn goes wrong, the last five years will have been for nothing. I’ll minimize his down time as much as possible, but these machines are too big and heavy to put two side-by-side for the transfer.”
The saws worked through more boards. One by one, the clean cuts dropped pieces of wood to the ground.
“I understand,” Daniel’s mother said. “I just don’t want anything to happen to him. It’s been so long. I keep hoping he’ll wake up one day. I can’t risk losing him now. Make the transfer.”
Clover pushed the broken door open. On the other side, an elderly lady sat next to a hospital bed. She stroked the light brown hair of the grown man lying in the bed. A doctor walked to an open door on the other side of the room. He helped wheel a bed on wheels into the room.
“We’re going to move him now,” the doctor said, as a nurse wheeled the moving bed next to the bed with the man sleeping on it. “I’m going to remove the sensors now.” He took removed a piece of tape and a wire from the sleeping man’s forehead.
The house shook, causing one a few roof shingles to fall to the ground near the kids. As the doctor removed a second wire, the house across the street crumbled, sinking into the ground as it collaped. Another wire removed caused the sun to fall completely out of the sky, and several more houses collapsed.
Clover and Daniel watched as everything around them fell, one house after another crumbling away.
“You have to hurry,” Clover told Daniel. “You have to go into your house.”
“But that isn’t my house,” Daniel said back.
“It is right now. It has to be. Trust me.” The ground shook under Daniel’s house, and the roof to the side of the house fell in. “The house will fall before you can go in!”
Daniel looked in the doorway. The elderly lady looked back at him. “That’s… She’s really old, but that’s her. That’s my mom. Mom!” Daniel ran through the doorway as the house started to collapse. The roof caved in at the door just after he passed through into the hospital room.
The ground pulled down under Clover, and the wand fell from her hand, falling under the crumbling house. A hand reached down toward her. “Grab my hand,” Shamrock said as he leaned into the hole. Clover took hold of his hand. “Everything’s falling apart in this town. We need to wake up.”
“How do we wake up?” Clover asked as Shamrock pulled her onto the sidewalk. “Do we use a lot of magic?”
“No, we’ll still be somewhere in the dream.”
“Do we have to die?”
“No, we can’t do that, either. We just got better. It’ll be worse if we die again right now.”
A spot of green in the distance caught Clover’s eye. She looked to the horizon where sunlight started shining again. A wave of color passed over the grass, climbing the trees, and reaching into the sky. Green, brown, blue, yellow, orange, red, and purple raced in all directions, pulling the houses back up from the ground, and restoring their shapes. Clover’s wand rolled to her feet.
That morning, Sarah woke as the sun first peaked over the hills in the east. She continued to wonder why color was missing from the dream, and where it came from at the end.
