A
long, long time ago, there lived a little boy about eight years old.
His name was Kimo. He lived with the Navaho Tribe although he wasn't
really Navaho Indian. His parents had found him by the river, and kept
him as their own.
One bright morning Kimo woke up suddenly, very frightened. He slowly
scanned the hut. On the left side there was a row of even wooden
benches carved by his father...and the skins on top were from his
Grandfather. On the floor, there was the same dirt and fire hearth as
he'd seen the day before. The ceiling was covered with hanging baskets
filled with drying meat. He was still lying on the bench to the right
of the flap door, with the skins over him.
Kimo sighed,"Whew..." But at that moment something else caught his eye.
On the other side of the room where the window had always been,
there was now a large hole big enough for a full-grown man to fit
through. It was much larger than it was supposed to be.
And looking down on the skin covered bench right under...the hole,
there were two, huge, muddy, grassy footprints. Below that, on the
floor...there were more footprints...footprints that were leading right
to him!!
"You know...the funny thing is..." Kimo said (more to himself than
anyone else) sitting up, "there are footprints leading to me...but no
footprints leading back out again..."
He just sat there a while. He was breathing really hard. He could almost feel his heart beat right out of his chest!
At that moment his mother walked in through the flap door. She
wasn't looking around the room. She was looking carefully at the wet
piece of pottery that could have been easily dropped. So of course she
didn't see him. She finally sat the pot down and looked up at him.
Her face got a really worried, stressed look. She paced over to him
and felt of his forehead. "Kimo...is something wrong? You're very, very
hot and well...you look worried."
"Yes, Mom? I think something is wrong. See I had another dream. But this time...it was different. Very different.
"A bluish, purplish, monster crawled into this hut...this hut...this
hut, through that window!" Kimo shouted pointing at the enlarged window.
"It had horns and it was warty and bumpy. It crawled over to me and
then, it climbed right inside of me!! It really did! It climbed right
into my head! Oh, and then everything began to swirl.
"It began to swirl really fast. Until everything was black and mixed
in with the emptiness...the emptiness of...of something...I forgot.
Anyway, when it finally stopped swishing around and settled down, I was
in a different place. Well, sort of. I was still on the bed, but then I
wasn't either. I was on the bed, but I was looking at myself lying on
the bed limply.
"And then you and Father walked in. The me on the skins wasn't
breathing though. Father looked at me kind of funny...then his eyes
filled with tears.
"You looked at me longer but then your eyes filled with tears too and Father just hugged you, but you still cried.
"Then everything started to swirl again and this time when things
got clear, I was standing outside the chief's hut. Tomaho and Chief
Bungawhoot were sitting outside of it, and they were talking...talking
about you and Father.
"Tomaho sighed and said, 'It's strange...Big Bear's son dies one
night...and not a half moon later he and his wife died. They died with
grief...'
"Then I woke up! And you came in!" Kimo gasped.
"Son! This is getting worse and worse!! We must tell someone!
Someone like Chief Bungawhoot!! He'll know what to do! I'll be back
Kimo, and whatever you do, DO NOT FALL ASLEEP!!!!!!!! We don't want
those dreadful things filling your head again." And then his mother
left.
"Yes Mom."
Red Fox, his mom, left in a hurry. Kimo watched her leave and then
asked, "Why me? Why do all the curses and bad things happen to me? Why?
I don't understand! Ow!!! Ouchhhhhhh!!!!! OWWOWOW! My head! It hurts!"
Kimo fell onto the bed and held his head very tight! Tears flooded his
eyes and fell onto the skins.
"My head! My head!" He screamed over and over. He felt as if his
head were about to rip apart with pain. Then everything went black.
"Kimo! Kimo! Wake up! You fell asleep again!"
Kimo slowly lifted his eyelids. They felt like there was a heavy weight on the top of both of them.
Then Kimo's eyes focused and he was looking at his mother.
"He told me what to do Kimo...He gave me this..." And she thrust into
his hand a beautiful webbed thing. The outer circle was made of bone
wrapped in tanned deerskin. Little strings were attached to the outside
and all ran to the middle of the circle and connected- creating a sort
of web. Little blue and red/brown feathers dangled from the bottom of
it.
"He said that this was a dream catcher. He said that you hang it in
your window at night and the nightmares can't get to you. They'll get
caught in the dream catcher. Oh, yes, he said that the monster you saw
was a bad dream, or a nightmare. He said that they've been getting in
your head and that's what's causing all these horrible dreams."
"It's beautiful!" Kimo whispered.
"And he gave it to you...to hang up in our window."
Kimo went over to the window and hung it up. The sun's rays showed through it and the pattern copied on the floor.
"Then why was my head just hurting?" Kimo asked, looking back at his mother.
"He said that the nightmare had to leave your head at some time. It
couldn't do anything to you while you were awake so, it left you. It
had to get out of your head and it would be painful."
That night Kimo took one look at the dream catcher before going to
bed. It hung loosely from the window. The moonlight hit it turning the
feathers a crisp silver. Kimo smiled and fell off to sleep.
Ever since that day, Kimo has never had a bad dream. Pretty soon
everyone in the village had a dream catcher for their window. The
nightmares never came back, so...I guess the Dream Catchers worked.
