Joey woke up with the wonderful feeling that his dream had just changed everything.

The funny part was that he couldn’t even remember most of it. All he could hang on to was the sensation that his heart was so full it would pop and the image of a pair of big brown eyes. Those eyes were dancing in his head as he got dressed for school. They seemed to look at him as if they knew his every thought and considered each one wonderful. Even without knowing whose eyes they were, Joey walked taller knowing that they were watching him.

Down in the kitchen, Joey’s mother handed him his lunch, her green eyes smiling but filled with sadness. Joey gave her his bravest smile in return. It was easier today.

Out the front door and down the walk, Joey turned left toward the school. All the other days of this long week, he had walked with his heart thudding in his chest, paying close attention to turns so he wouldn’t get lost, dreading arriving at the strange building at the end. Today, though, he walked eagerly, glancing side to side, wondering at each turn if he would look over and see those brown eyes looking back at him.

Halfway there, Joey heard a cry from up ahead. Sprinting up the sidewalk, he saw a little boy, no more than two years old, who had fallen off his tricycle in a driveway. Joey helped the boy up and checked his hands. No blood. Looking at the boy’s tousled brown hair, Joey remembered when he had fallen off his bike last year. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the rock he found yesterday, the one with the flecks of gold in it. Handing it to the boy, Joey explained its magical properties. With this rock, anyone could ride a tricycle and never fall off. The little boy’s tears stopped and he looked up at Joey with wonder in his swimming blue eyes. Joey felt just a bit disappointed. For some reason he had been sure those eyes would be brown. Then a hand touched his shoulder and the boy’s mother smiled down on him. She handed him a little bag with her thanks. Joey could smell fresh baked peanut butter cookies from inside. His disappointment melted away.

Joey had to run the rest of the way to school, but he made it on time. A few kids laughed at his flushed, sweaty face, but Joey didn’t notice. He was too busy scanning the room for those eyes. He saw a few pairs that were brown, but they weren’t THE brown eyes. Heart sinking, Joey flopped onto his seat. A whole school day ahead and no brown eyes to help him. Joey felt his confidence seeping away. The morning was bad. He tripped on the way to the pencil sharpener and everyone laughed. He made extra mistakes in his math worksheet. The boy next to him spilled water on his homework folder, and the teacher had to hang the papers all over the room to dry them out. By lunchtime, Joey was ready to be done.

At lunch, Joey sat next to a group of kids he had never talked to before. Most weren’t even in his class. Joey ate silently as always, looking down at his own food until a groan caught his attention. He looked up. The girl next to him was shaking her red curls. Thinking of big brown eyes, Joey gathered his confidence and asked what was wrong. The girl said in a quavering voice that her mother had given her a tuna fish sandwich. Nothing was worse than a tuna fish sandwich. She was so hungry, but she would never be able to eat a tuna fish sandwich. Joey knew how she felt. Fortunately, he had that little bag with the delicious smell coming from it. When Joey offered to trade two homemade peanut butter cookies for the tuna fish sandwich, the little girl looked at him with such gratitude in her sparkling hazel eyes that Joey forgot all about brown eyes for just a few minutes. The tuna fish sandwich went quietly in Joey’s lunch box while the two kids ate peanut butter cookies and talked all about the first week of school.

The afternoon was much better. Though he hadn’t yet found the big brown eyes, just looking for them had made Joey’s day something special. When the last bell rang, Joey headed out the door with a sense of anticipation. The brown eyes were still out there somewhere, and the peanut butter cookies had taught him that brown eyes were not the only discoveries to be made.

At home, Joey told his mother the story of the peanut butter cookies, both earning them and eating them, and saw her looking happier than she had looked in a long time. He did not mention the brown eyes. Some things were not meant to be told to mothers, not until the right time, at least. Leaving his mother humming as she cooked dinner, Joey went out to work on his tree fort.

In the woods, Joey searched for sticks of just the right length. He had to go a bit further than usual to find them. Just as he was about to take his armload back to his own yard, he heard a whimpering noise from the bramble thicket under the trees. Carefully pulling about the thorny branches, Joey saw a little tuft of tan fur. His mother had always told him not to bother animals in the woods, but whatever this was had gotten caught in the prickly tangles. Joey couldn’t just leave it there.

His arm got quite scratched reaching so far into the brambles, but at last, Joey had a good firm grip on the furry bundle. It was hard work to pull it out without hurting it any more. He felt the tiny body trembling in his hand, but slowly and surely, he kept up his work. At last he had it free. It was a tiny puppy, all tan fluff. Joey could not believe his luck. A puppy, right here in the woods. As soon as it was free of the brambles, though, it nipped his hand, and dashed away, trembling, to hide under another, less thorny bush. Joey sat thinking for a moment. Then he smiled and ran back to his house.

In a matter of minutes, Joey was back, crouched in front of the book, tuna fish sandwich in had. Holding it out, he spoke gently to the puppy. Its whimpers subsided as it began to sniff with its little nose. In a matter of moments, it darted out and began to gobble the tuna hungrily. Joey stroked its soft fur, wondering where the puppy came from and who it belonged to, feeling it relax as its tummmy was filled and its fear subsided. When finally the sandwich was gone, the little puppy looked up at Joey. Big brown eyes met his, full of adoration, just as Joey had seen in his dream. All questions of who the puppy belonged to fled. The puppy belonged to Joey.

Later that night, Joey watched the big brown eyes close contentedly as the puppy curled up on the end of his bed. One look from those eyes had been enough to convince Joey’s mother. She might not know all about his dream, but she knew all about Joey, and that was enough. Joey snuggled down into his blankets, feeling the warm lump next to his feet.

He couldn’t wait to see what he would dream next.

Gerald had been walking for a long time.  The pain that had begun in his feet had now spread all the way up his legs, and the tiredness that had started in his eyes had spread through his brain and into his soul.  He wasn’t even sure why he was still walking.  There was no where to go.  Nothing in this valley was worth getting to, and there was no way out of this valley.

The dark trees pressed close on every side, shadows hung beneath their branches, tangled vines breathed out decay.  Gerald shuddered at one brushed his shoulder.  This was why he kept walking.  He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he stopped, those vines would wrap him up tight, and he would disappear forever.

Eventually, of course, he would have to stop, would have to sleep, as he had for nights past counting in this dreadful valley.  When he could walk no more, he would find a spot, something not too close to any one tree, make a small pile of leaves and sleep where he dropped.  He would wake with the first dim light from his dark dreams, and he would walk again.  There was nothing else to do.

Just as Gerald was about to face the beginning of another such horrible night, he heard a noise.  Not the eternal droning of the stinging insects, not the rustle of the creeping things among the leaves.  A sharp noise.  THWAP!  And again.  THWAP!  It was the sound of something different.  Something that didn’t belong among these trees.  Gerald loved that sound.

He walked faster on legs that didn’t know how, so the last few steps were a stumble out through clutching vines.  The first thing he notices on the other side was the sky.  He was standing under a sky he hadn’t seen for days past remembering.  He had grown used to the constant overhang of branches, so the vastness up above stopped him cold, as he breathed and breathed and breathed air that hadn’t been trapped under leaves until it was dead.  This air was coming from up there, up by those stars, Gerald imagined, because it had the tang of far away places, cleaner places.

With his head thrown back to drink in the sky, it was a few moments before Gerald even saw the giant balloon in front of him.  When he did, he thought it the most wonderful and terrifying thing he had ever seen.  A whole rainbow of the brightest colors stretched across it’s rounded surface, so brilliant after a lifetime of faded greens and browns that Gerald almost felt that he needed to shield his eyes.  Had anything ever been more alien than this globe of beauty in this hideous place?

“Oh yes,” said a voice, the first words Gerald had heard in so long, and a hand was placed on Gerald’s shoulder, the first touch Gerald had felt in so long.  “She really is amazing.”

Gerald turned to see who this mind-reader could be and saw a man in the second half of his life, strongly built and browned from a sun Gerald had forgotten.  The man was smiling as he studied his miraculous balloon, and Gerald thought him even more alien than the contraption.

“Come, friend, you have walked far.  You need rest and real food.  And I need to get back to work.”

Gerald saw then that the man was holding an ax in one hand, and he saw the branches strewn along was appeared to be the bank of a dried out river.  The man led him down across this choked stream bed and over to where his balloon rested.  A large basket was hung beneath that impossible ball, a basket big enough for a man to stand in, and from here the man produced bread and fruit and a jar of clear, cold water.  Gerald forgot everything else in the taste of something clean, something filling.  His legs gave way beneath him as he ate, and he slumped back against the basket, feeling something he couldn’t name, something warm and covered, like a rabbit deep in its hole.

While Gerald ate, he watched the man at his strange work.  All along the river bank he went, swinging his ax at the branches overhanging the dry river, attacking the trees with an energy that Gerald could not comprehend.  When he had gone several paces up the bank, he crossed over and resumed his attack on the other side.  When nothing but sky showed above the stretch of rocks and weeds, the man came and sat by Gerald, wiping his ax carefully and taking long drinks from the water jar.

Gerald’s questions pushed insistently out, “Who…?  What…?”  His voice, so long unused, resisted.

The man did not seem to notice any lack.  He answered the questions as if they had been whole, but his answers were as foreign as he was.  The balloon was one of a kind, made by his father.  It could float up off the ground and fly through the sky.  That was how the man came here, to this horrible forest, which he had seen from up above.  He had seen right away what needed to be done, and now he was doing it.

With that confusing information ringing in Gerald’s head, the man stood up and set back to work, this time with a shovel, digging out the brush along the bottom of the river, clearing a path for water that didn’t exist.  Gerald stared at this useless effort until his own exhaustion sent him off to sleep.

For two days Gerald watched the strange man work and thought about a balloon that could fly up over the tree tops.  The man had said that when he was finished with his work, he would get into that basket and let the balloon take him up and over the distant mountains to his home on the other side.  Gerald wasn’t sure if he believed the stories the man told about the other side of the mountains.  Open fields?  Wild flowers?  Clear, clean water?  Trees that gave fruit to eat?  That last part Gerald was sure was an invention.  Trees didn’t give.  Trees took.  They gobbled up sunlight and choked off space and consumed hope.

He did love to hear the man’s stories about flying, though.  The feel of wind on your face, the open air all around, the trees shrunken into insignificance below.  He even believed the stories.  After all, this man had come from somewhere, and it was certainly not this forest.

The man had said he would take Gerald with him when he left, when he finished his work.  All the third night, Gerald stayed awake and thought about this.  He thought about leaving, imagined himself in that small basket.  The man had shown him how the simple controls lifted the balloon up and brought it down.  Gerald pictured himself flying.  Then he thought about the man’s work.  He sweated from dawn until dark every day, and what was he accomplishing?  Clearing a river that had no water, gouging out part of a forest that would only grow back to cover it.  When would he ever be finished?

Just before daybreak, Gerald made up his mind.  Stepping over the sleeping man, he carefully untied the ropes that bound the balloon.  As he climbed into the basket, he could feel it beginning to rise just a little.  Gerald’s heart thumped wildly.  He reached for pull that would take him higher, trying not to look at the still-sleeping man below him.  Up he went, up, up, up.  The feeling was even better than the man had described.

Gerald rose above the trees.  The freedom was exhilarating.  He rose higher, felt a breeze, cold and sharp, that he had never felt before.  Higher and higher the balloon went, into air that smelled clean and fresh.  Gerald felt his head clearing.  He was more awake than he had ever been.

The sun peaked over the horizon, and the world opened up to Gerald’s eyes.  He saw the mountains, seeming so much closer from this height, thrust majestically toward the skies, their blue and purple sides emanating power, their frosted tops pointing up in challenge.  He saw the pale haze of the land on the other side, saw a twist of river and a sparkle of lake, a patchwork quilt of fields and orchards, where plants grew under the order of men and provided food for their masters.  It was a paradise.

Then Gerald looked down.  Below him stretched the dark forest, looking from here like a shadow upon the land.  The tangle of green was uninterrupted as far as the eye could see, bounded only by the impossible height of the mountains in the distance.  Gerald knew there were men under that dense carpet.  He had heard them, had seen traces of their passing, but they were all hidden, hidden from his eyes as from the sun’s rays which now played over the treetops, seeking a way through the branches and finding no entrance.

No entrance but one.  At last Gerald saw directly below, and he clutched the side of the basket with fingers that didn’t even feel the fibers.  For there was the river, cleared now for a quarter mile in either direction, a single line of pale brown cutting through that impossible green.  And Gerald saw it for what it was: a sign, a path, an arrow pointing straight at the mountains and freedom.

For a long time Gerald hung suspend in the air, dividing his longing looks between the beautiful haze in the distance and that one pitiful slash below.  He thought of life in a the clear air under the shining sun.  He thought of his life of wandering in the gloom, of the screams he had heard in the distance.

Gerald slowly brought the balloon back down through the treetops.  He was just tying off the last rope when the man woke up with his usual morning smile.  Gerald couldn’t quite smile back.  But after he handed the man his ax, he swung the shovel onto his own shoulder, and the two men set off along the riverbed together.

Once upon a time there was a teeny, tiny worm who lived in the house of a nice young family in this very town.  No one in the family knew he was there, because he lived quietly among the books on the tall shelves in the family room.  He was, of course, a book worm, and he took his job very seriously.

During the day, he wove his way in and out of the books, checking for problems and trying to help.  Some problems were simple, like bent pages and cracked spines which could be taken care of with some smoothing and a little binding glue.  Other problems were a bit more…challenging.  Like the time when someone scribbled all over Alice’s face in Through the Looking Glass.  Try as he might, the book worm could not get those stubborn marks washed off, and he didn’t dare break all the mirrors, for that would ruin the story.  He was able comfort her, however, with a special visit from the shy little kitten and a hot cup of tea, provided by the lovely sisters over in Pride and Prejudice.   Worse was the time when a corner got ripped off of Jack and the Bean Stalk and Jack climbed all the way out and into the science fiction books on the shelf above.  He was nearly swallowed by a giant sand worm before the book worm showed up with a thumper and dragged him home.  There was no way to repair the torn illustration, but you can be sure that Jack was much more careful after that.

These sorts of adventures and misadventures kept the book worm very busy, and he was happy to feel that he was successful in his work.  He had a knack for calming the wild things (as he really never needed to blink) and he knew exactly where the Jaberwocky liked his back scratched.  The family had no idea of the many catastrophes he prevented each week, and that was just the way he liked it.  After a long day of work, he would choose a nice book to curl up in (He used to favor fantasy  for the fascinating dreams, but he got so tired of being woken up by dragons and giant wolves that he switched over to basic travel books with their lovely beaches peaceful forests.) and hum softly to himself as he fell asleep.

The young family grew.  The children learned not to rip pages and scribble on illustrations.  The book worm was relieved.  The parents took the chapter books off the higher shelves and the white witch learned all over again that Aslan always wins, which made her much easier to live with.  Then, the children began to read for themselves.  At first, that was a happy time.  The poky little puppy got lots of exercise and Junie B. Jones got to let off some of that excess energy.

Then the disaster happened.

When he thought about it later, the worm thought that he should have known.  Children who would mark their spot by turning down page corners were bound to be careless from time to time.  Was it really such a surprise, then, when they went to bed one night leaving a pile of books scattered across the floor?  And really, that might not have been so bad if so many of them had not been…shudder…OPEN.

The first one he noticed was Little House on the Prairie, which would have been a disaster if the Indians had gotten out, but fortunately, only Jack the brindle bull dog burst from the pages, chasing a rabbit.  He was a very obedient dog, so a few stern words and he went straight home.  The book worm was just trying to locate the rabbit when he saw the other books.  Chapter books and picture books, fiction and non-fiction, at least a dozen books in all, lying open on the floor.  In moments it was pandemonium.  Goblins poured out of The Hobbit, the atlas emptied kangaroos and koalas onto the carpet, George Washington barked orders at everyone, and hippos went berserk.  There was no hope of sorting it all out.  It was all the book worm could do not to get trampled.

He scrambled up onto the shelves and looked around at the chaos.  The Sisters Grimm were fighting off Count Olaf, while the very hungry caterpillar ate his way through the Sesame Street cookbook.  What to do?  What to do?!?  The book worm knew he needed help, so he eyed the shelves, thinking through his options.  This would be tricky.  If he got the wrong pages, it would end in disaster.

He started with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, making sure to catch Harry alone with Ron and Hermione.  They agreed to help at once, so he tipped their book, ever so carefully, and they leaped out, slamming the pages shut on Voldemort and drawing their wands.  Mother Goose was next, and even harder.  There was only one page, right in the middle of Snow White’s tale, that showed a bubbling cauldron standing all alone.  If the page turned even a little, the witch would be there, too.  The book worm braced himself in the exact spot and gave a final wiggle.  The book toppled over with a mighty thud.  The book worm waited, barely breathing.  Deep inside, the three billy goats gruff were making a lot of racket, but no witch’s cackle could be heard, only the soft bubbling of the potion above his head.  The book worm smiled.

It took the young wizards and the little worm most of an hour to douse everyone with the sleeping potion.  The very hungry caterpillar ate a dipped apple right away, of course, but the goblins were darting about everywhere, using their shields to keep the potion from hitting them, and the hippos each needed several doses to finally settle down.  Finally the book worm used himself as bait to lure the great goblin right into the cauldron itself.  After he went, the others were rounded up quickly.  At last, all the escapees were caught, and the floor was littered with slumbering children and snoring kangaroos.  The book worm began the long task of dragging everyone back into their books.  He just lugged the last hippo into place when the sun came up and he heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Oh, those kids,” someone said, as large hands began gathering up books, shutting them tight and placing them on the shelves.  The book worm breathed a sigh of relief, inching slowly off toward the Lonely Planet books, while the voice loudly explained to someone that books are never, EVER to be left on the floor.  He knew of a nice little hammock in Jamaica that would make the perfect place to take a nap.