Dream of Night - Couverture rigide

Henson, Heather

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1416948996 ISBN 13 : 9781416948995

Editeur : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2010

Synopsis

Book by Henson Heather

A propos du livre

Extrait

One

NIGHT

Brrr—

The sound comes sudden and sharp. Shrill. Like the call of a bird, but not. The sound is not a living sound — somehow he knows that — and it is everything.

rrrr —

The sound is flight, freedom.

nnnng —!

The sound makes his legs move. Before his brain even knows. He is moving. Exploding through the metal gate. Into space.

Not empty space. No. There are bodies in the way, blocking him. But he will move through the bodies just like he moved through the gate. Except he is being held up by the man on his back, and this makes him angry.

And so he fights. And fights. And fights.

To run.

To be faster than the rest.

To be leader of this pack.

To be the winner.

Tight inside the rush of bodies he smells rage and joy. He smells fear. He does not know which makes his legs move faster. All he knows is that he must run.

And so he does. He runs and runs and runs, and around the turn the man lets him go.

A little.

Bodies still in the way but now he can see the empty spaces between them. Because it’s the empty spaces that matter in a race. An inch, a moment, a breath to slip through.

Open.

Close.

Open.

Close.

It’s that quick. The space between the bodies. Too quick to think about. Time only to move.

And that’s what he does.

Move.

One by one the bodies fall away. Until only two remain.

And still the man on his back won’t let him go and still he keeps on fighting. It’s all he knows how to do.

Fight and fight and fight. And run. As fast as he can possibly. Run. Just to be the best, the first, the winner of this race.

Nothing to hold him back now. Not even the man on his back. He is faster than the rest and he knows it and the man knows it and so the man lets him go at last.

Two bodies.

One.

Open space.

And that’s when he hears it. That’s when he always hears it. The sound that makes him run even faster.

A great roaring. Like the wind. Fierce and terrible. And beautiful, too. The most beautiful sound in the world.

Because the roaring means that he is winning, that he is flying.

Dream of Night is flying through air.

Eeeeee!

And then he isn’t.

Eeeeee!

Something ripping him out of that time, long ago, when he was a winner. Something pulling him back to where he is now.

Eeeeee!

The ground rumbles and shakes beneath his hooves. Light tears at the darkness. The roaring inside his head has disappeared.

Eeeeee!

He lifts his nose, inhales deeply. What he smells is fear and confusion. Panic.

What he smells is man.

“Hiya, hey! Hey! Hey!”

“Watch it! Whoa, whoa!”

Ears cupping the voices.

None belong to the man with the chains, but it doesn’t matter. All men are the same. He hates every one.

“This sure’s a wild bunch!”

“You said it.”

“Get ’em to go this way.”

Now he understands. Men have come to this place, strangers. And the mares are screaming, wild and frantic, to protect their young.

He lifts his head higher, calls out, but the mares can’t hear. They are beyond hearing.

And so he stomps his hooves into the hard ground.

Pain like fire burns up his front legs, but he ignores it. He takes a great breath and rears back with every bit of strength he has and lets his hooves smack against the hard wood of the stall door.

Bang!

“Hey, did you hear that?”

“I think there’s one over here.”

Cupping his ears again, waiting. He knows the men are coming close. He can smell them and he can feel their eyes upon him now, watching through the slats of his stall.

“Getta load of the size of him!”

The voice does not belong to the man with the chains, but it makes no difference. He readies himself.

“He’s a big’un all right.”

A low whistle.

“I bet he was a looker in his day.”

Ears flat back against his skull. Waiting, waiting.

“Not very pretty now. Take a look at those bones! He’s starved near to death.”

“Last legs, I’d say. Poor old fella.”

The scrape of the bar being lifted; the creak of hinges.

He snorts, lowers his head, waiting. A new strength is pulsing though him. The fire in his legs doesn’t matter at all.

“Hey there, big fella. How ya doin’?”

It is dark inside the stall but he can see the shape of a man coming forward, hand outstretched.

“Hey there, boy.”

Waiting, waiting until the man is close enough.

“Hey, old boy.”

Rearing back with all his might. Head up, hooves ready to strike.

“Look out!”

“Get back!”

The door slams shut — just in time.

Hooves striking wood, a hammer blow. Splinters flying into the air.

Bang! Bang!

“You okay?”

“That was close!”

Rising up again for another strike as the metal bar scrapes back into place.

Bang! Bang!

Bang! Bang!

“Whew, what a nutcase!”

“Wonder how long he’s been in there?”

“Take a look at that stall. Filthy. I’d be a nutcase too.”

He waits now, head low. The air is hard to breathe. The pain is white-hot. But he won’t give in.

The men are stupid enough to make another attempt. They click their tongues and talk in soft voices.

He feels only contempt. How can the men think they can trick him with their soft ways? Soft ways to hide the meanness, the need to hurt.

Bang! Bang!

“I think we’re gonna need extra hands.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

His whole body is on fire now, flickering, trembling. Still he kicks and kicks and keeps on kicking. Long after the voices fade away. Long after the screaming of the mares stops and the only sound is the rain, gentle now against the tin roof.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Morning light is creeping, dull and gray, outside the barn. It pokes through the wooden slats and falls in faint bars across the dirt floor.

Bang! Bang!

Still he kicks and kicks and keeps on kicking. It’s all he can do. Because he cannot run.

SHILOH

Brrrr —

In the shadowy dark the sound is cut off before it has any chance to bloom. Before it has any chance to wake up the old couple sleeping down the hall.

The girl does not say a word as she picks up the receiver and holds it to her ear. Not like she used to, like a dumb baby.

Hello?

And then repeating it. Like a dumb baby.

Hello?

Hello?

Hello?

The first time, years ago, there’d been a click in the middle of the train of wobbly hellos. The sound of dead air. Her own dumb baby voice.

Hello?

Hello?

Hello?

There’d been the tears she couldn’t stop.

Hello? Is that you? I know it’s you. When are you coming back for me?

There’d been only the dial tone. Nothing else.

And so she learned from then on to be silent. She learned not to cry. She learned to pick up the phone at the first sound and put it to her ear and just listen.

Silence.

That’s all. But it makes no difference.

The call is what matters. The person on the other end is what matters, and the day of the year. The one day of the entire year the call will come.

Of course the girl never knows the time. It could be morning or afternoon or night. (Although more often it is night, when other people might be in bed.) Even so, she has to always be on guard, listening, waiting. She always has to be the first one to the phone.

This isn’t always possible, in all the different places she’s lived over the past few years. One place didn’t even have a phone, it was such a dump.

But this place does. The phone is in the kitchen and the old people are down the hall and anyway they sleep soundly through the night. And so when the call finally comes the girl puts the phone to her ear and listens and hardly breathes.

Sometimes if she listens hard enough she can hear a hint of something. The rustle of clothes or the clink of ice cubes in a glass. The sizzle of fire and ash.

Tonight when she closes her eyes she can smell cigarettes, even though the old couple doesn’t smoke. She can smell perfume, like candy. Sweet.

When she closes her eyes and smells the perfume and the smoke she can wait. And wait. She can wait forever if she has to, although she hopes she doesn’t have to. She hopes one day, if she’s quiet enough, there will be a voice on the other end. But for now this is enough.

The girl waits and listens.

Maybe she can hear another sound now. Wet and soft. Steady. Rain? Is it raining there, too?

How far away does her mom live from the old couple’s house? How far as the crow flies? Because that’s what people say when they mean a place is closer than it seems. As the crow flies.

“W-w-wh-wh-wh...”

All at once the noise explodes out of the silence and the girl nearly drops the phone she is so surprised.

“W-w-wh-wh-wh...”

Like a siren, a police car coming closer and closer.

The girl knows all about police cars and ambulances. But this sound, it isn’t a siren. This sound is human.

“W-w-w-whaaaaa! Whaaaaaaa!”

Somebody is crying.

Not the girl of course. She never cries anymore.

Somebody is crying on the other end of the phone.

“Shhhh-shhhhh-shhhh.”

And somebody is trying to shush the crying, stop it before it grows louder.

“Shhh-shhh-shhh.”

Getting more desperate.

“Sh-sh-sh-shhhhh.”

Somehow the girl knows the “sh-shhing” isn’t going to work. She can tell the baby — because that’s what it is — the baby is going to rev itself up instead of down, even with the “shhhh-shhh-shhhh”s. The girl has heard enough babies crying in the places she’s been. She’s met enough people who must have thought they wanted a baby but didn’t when they found out how much trouble they are. When the babies cry and cry and won’t stop crying.

“Shhhh! Shhhhhh!”

“Whaaaaaa-whaaaaaa!”

When babies cry like that in the places she has been, people usually tell them to shut up.

“Meet your sister.”

The girl clutches the phone closer. Her heart nearly stops dead in her chest.

“A screamer.”

The voice is exactly how she remembers. Low and gravelly. From the cigarettes.

“Just like you.”

The girl opens her mouth. Is she supposed to talk now? Is she supposed to answer back? What does her mom want her to do?

“Happy birthday, Shy.”

Click.

And it’s over. Just like that.

One click, and the sound of her mom’s voice and the siren cry of the baby (a sister, she has a sister!) are gone.

Click.

Like they were never there at all.

JESSALYNN

Brrrrnnnnnnng!

The sound comes from nowhere and everywhere.

Brrrrnnnnnnng!

The woman tries to ignore the sound. She tries to stay in the cozy dark and hold on. To where she is. To the bundle in her arms. But she can’t.

Brrrrnnnnnnng!

The sound is already reaching through the darkness, hooking her like a fish and yanking her upward, arms empty.

“Hello? Hello! Jess! Hey, girl, wake up! Jess! Wake up!”

The woman recognizes the voice. Too loud for this time of night — or morning. Is it morning already?

“Jessalynn DiLima! Haul it outta bed, girl! E-mer-gen-cy. I’ll be there in thirty.”

Click.

Ah, now the woman can return to the dark. Sink back into darkness. Ignore the doorbell when it rings.

E-mer-gen-cy.

Eyes open. Just a squint, but open.

E-mer-gen-cy.

The curtain edge holds the barest hint of light. Rain pattering against the glass, soft and low. A vague memory of something harder, of thunder and lightning deep in the night.

The woman squints at the bright red numbers hovering on the bedside table. Morning, for sure. Way too early.

“I’m going to kill you, Nita.”

The old redbone hound dog draped at the woman’s feet lifts her head, thumps her long tail once.

“It’s okay, Bella. You don’t have to get up.”

The dark wet eyes have a guilty look. Or maybe the woman is just imagining it. Not so long ago the dog would have been up like a shot, ready for anything. But now there’s a dusting of white along her muzzle. The dog’s head drops back onto the faded quilt.

The woman sits up and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. She stretches her arms into the air.

“Ahhh!”

A spasm of pain.

Slowly, carefully this time, she tries again, stretching, rising to her feet. Gently she kneads her thumbs into the small of her back.

Mornings mean stiffness now. Stiffness means she’s getting old.

“Too old for e-mer-gen-cies at four thirty in the morning,” she grumbles, but of course there’s no one to hear. The dog, Bella, has already gone back to chasing rabbits in her dreams.

One

SHILOH

She’s not doing it for the woman. She’s doing it for the black horse.

Mornings now Shiloh takes the bucket of warm bran mash to the field, hooks it on the gate, and then she switches buckets again, full for empty, late in the afternoon.

“Do you want to see how I mix it up?” Mrs. Lima Bean asks, after Shiloh has been feeding Night for a couple of days. “You don’t have to. I just thought you might want to do it on your own.”

Shiloh shrugs. But she doesn’t say no.

“It’s like mixing up oatmeal,” the woman says.

“I don’t like oatmeal. It’s gross.”

“I never liked oatmeal either.” The woman acts like she’s telling a secret. “But the horses love this stuff. And know what? We put medicine in it. So he’ll get better.”

The woman shows her how much medicine to put in, how to mix it. Shiloh can’t believe Mrs. Lima Bean lets her do it on her own. Isn’t she worried that Shiloh will get it wrong? That she’ll put too much or too little?

One foster freak used to act like she wanted all the kids to bake cookies together, but then she’d get mad if they didn’t measure the flour and the sugar exactly right. She’d make them dump it out and start all over again.

“Night is getting used to you,” Mrs. Lima Bean says, handing over the bucket of warm mash. “I think he’s starting to trust you.”

“So?” Shiloh says, but she turns away so Mrs. Lima Bean won’t see.

The flicker of a smile.

At the gate she switches buckets. Full for empty. The black horse won’t come right away. He keeps his head down. He acts like he doesn’t care. But she knows. He wants to gulp it down. He’s hungry. Maybe he’ll always be hungry. After being starved. Maybe he’ll never be able to get enough food.

The black horse snorts hard th...

Revue de presse

Three lives and three story lines merge as readers get to know a former racehorse, a 12-year-old girl, and a middle-aged woman. Dream of Night was a successful Thoroughbred until an undetected injury led, over time, to horrific abuse and neglect. Shiloh and her mom suffered unspeakable domestic violence, landing Shiloh in increasingly ineffective foster homes. Jess has spent years working with rescued horses and foster kids, but thinks that perhaps she is too old now for either one. Night and Shiloh both end up at Jess’s farm and are needy, angry, and incapable of trust. Eventually, cracks begin to appear in the walls that the two have erected, and a crisis cements their bond. Within each chapter, the third-person narration switches from character to character, with each portion labeled. The brief sections use few words to maximum potential, developing each character and focusing on believable behaviors. While accepting Night’s line of thought occasionally requires a leap of faith, this is a touching read with a satisfying ending. Recommend it to kids who have heard about Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called “It” (Health Communications, 1995) and to animal lovers or girls who read reluctantly.–SLJ, April 1, 2010

Once Dream of Night was a champion racehorse, but by the time Jess DiLima gets him he’s nearly dead from starvation and pneumonia, and his thin hide is covered in scars. Twelve-year-old Shiloh is scarred, too, both from physical abuse and from the emotional withering of years in foster care. Jess doesn’t feel up to the challenge of either one of them, but she knows that she may represent their last chance. Henson’s story unfolds in a tight, third-person, present-tense narration that shifts its focus among the three principals: Jess, Shiloh and Night. Her novel, like her characters, shimmers with anger and hope. She doesn’t pull her punches—the scenes and flashbacks of abuse are realistically graphic—but she also never lets the details overwhelm the narrative, always offering the possibility of redemption. The author understands, too, that victory is not necessarily a blue ribbon won or a family reunited—sometimes it’s just the quiet triumph of a girl confidently brushing a horse in a stall. Another impressive book by the author of Here’s How I See It—Here’s How It Is (2009). -- KIRKUS, April 15, 2010

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Date d'édition: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1416948996
• ISBN 13: 9781416948995
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 224