by Jack Dann
‘Vomiting is not good PR,’ Izabel had announced, and she had given Anna a pill to calm her nerves. After the show, she had presented Anna with the bottle, saying that it looked as if she was going to have to endure many more shows. She had been right, for Anna had been inundated by offers from galleries and agents after that first night. But she had never taken any more of the pills for shows. She hadn’t liked the way they made her feel as if she was wrapped up in cotton wool, all her senses numbed down.
Suddenly there was a loud thud against the window. Anna started violently but there was no broken glass. She drew a long steadying breath and went outside to see if the bird was lying in the grass, stunned. She thought how uncanny it was to have this happen after she had dreamed of something smashing the window. Of course birds frequently flew into the oversized windows David had insisted they install in the cottage. It might even be that she had subconciously registered a bird hitting the glass when she slept, and had simply incorporated it into her dream. Certainly more birds hit the windows when the fog was in. But there was no bird lying under the window so it must have managed to flap away after all. Or else Electra had been even faster than usual.
As if her thoughts had summoned the Siamese cat, Electra was by the door waiting to be let in, blue eyes guileless.
‘Don’t you think this is a very weird day, Electra?’ she muttered as they came back into the kitchen.
‘Not really,’ Electra answered in exactly the sort of raspy smokers’ voice Anna always imagined the cat would have if she talked. Then her mouth fell open at the realisation that the cat had talked! Electra yawned elaborately, showing a pink tongue and sharp white teeth. ‘I hope you are not going to be boring and do the whole oh my god the cat is talking routine.’
‘This has to be a dream,’ Anna said faintly.
‘What else?’ asked Electra drily.
‘I’m dreaming!’ Anna repeated. Relief washed over her at the realisation that this was the answer to all the strangeness of the morning. The mist, the foreign man, her inability to remember the previous night, even the birds hitting the windows; they were all part of a dream. But that meant she had dreamed of waking two times in the course of a dream, without ever actually doing so. The thought made her feel dizzy. Then it struck her that she was not just dreaming. She was lucid dreaming; she was aware of dreaming while she was dreaming. According to Leaf, that meant she could direct her movements in the dream, and wake when she wanted just by voicing the wish aloud. But the experience was so amazing and novel that she had no desire to wake.
‘I don’t want to wake,’ she said.
‘Fortunate, under the circumstances,’ Electra muttered obscurely, as she began to groom her tail.
‘This really feels real,’ Anna said.
‘What is reality?’ Asked Electra.
Anna looked down at her. ‘I always imagined you would sound like this.’
‘Which is why I sound like this,’ Electra said. ‘So are you going out?’
‘I can’t. David took my keys by accident,’ Anna said. Then she remembered she was dreaming. The real David was probably lying right beside her sound asleep. In fact, Leaf claimed that when you dreamed about a person, it was only the bit of you that the person represented, so it was actually she who had taken her keys.
All at once Leaf herself was sitting at the kitchen bench cupping a mug of green tea in both hands. Only instead of one of her voluminous tent dresses, she was wearing a close fitting emerald green silk dress with a long train that hugged her multitude of curves and trailed across the terracotta tiles, and rather than being cropped into a white blond dandelion, her hair hung well past her waist and was bound into a loose plait from which fetching wisps escaped. She looked wonderful.
‘I’m dreaming you,’ Anna said.
‘Of course,’ Leaf responded, beaming. She bent down and picked up Electra, who began at once to purr. Anna was startled to notice that the cat’s eyes had turned the same shade of green as Leaf’s own.
‘What does it mean that I keep dreaming of waking?’ Anna asked.
‘You mustn’t look for the obvious in dreams,’ Leaf said in her gentle pedantic way. ‘To understand the meaning of a dream, you have to regard it as a message from the parts of you that are intuitive and voiceless, rather than reasoning and rational. In a sense, a dream is a code and you have to find the key if you want to unravel its meaning. Sometimes it will be a recurring image or event, or it might be one of the people you dream about that is the key. I mean, whatever it is that they represent for you.’
Anna frowned. ‘Let’s see; I dreamed of David being missing, and of mist and of birds hitting the window. Of the clocks being stopped and the phone not working. And I dreamed of Electra talking and then you appeared.’
‘Not me exactly,’ Leaf corrected her. ‘I probably represent an aspect of your personality, too. You must think of me as a symbol.’
‘Of what?’
‘I’m not sure. Dream symbolism is very subjective. But if you want an educated guess, I would say that I symbolise the spiritual, imaginative aspect of your persona, and you have conjured me because whatever it is that your subconscious is trying to tell you is to do with intuition rather than facts.’
‘What about Electra? What does she symbolise?’
‘Well of course not everything in a dream is a symbol. For instance, you are not a symbol and it might be that Electra is simply Electra, but the fact that she spoke is surprising. It suggests to me that she represents a part of you that does not usually voice itself. Given that she is an animal and a cat in particular, I would say she represents atavistic aspects of your nature. Jealousy or rage perhaps.’
‘But I don’t feel either of those things,’ Anna protested.
‘Electra could also simply represent animal awareness; Your primal sense which existed in humans before reason. But don’t get hung up on a single aspect of the dream. Tell me about this dark man? Is he attractive.’
Anna shrugged. ‘He was a foreigner wearing black old-fashioned looking clothes. He had the palest face, too. I was trying to warn him about the neighbour’s bull and then he said something odd. I can’t remember it exactly, but something about not being able to visit my place unless I invite him.’
‘Sounds like a vampire,’ Leaf said. ‘I hope this is not going to be a nightmare.’
Anna laughed. ‘He was just a hiker that got lost in the mist.’
‘Your mist,’ Leaf reminded her. ‘Your hiker.’
‘What about David taking the keys?’
‘It suggests to me that part of you has been set aside or misplaced in your relationship with David.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Anna protested. ‘I knew you didn’t like him. It’s because he’s younger isn’t it?’
‘If that’s what I think, it’s what you think,’ Leaf said mildly. ‘In fact I did have reservations about him to begin with. It was something of a shock to come back from a trip and find you married, and he was always so controlled that I felt he was playing a part. But you know all of this because I told you. Yet in the end, I came to see that under the coolness and sophistication, he is a man in pain.’ She laughed, adding, ‘No, I don’t wonder any longer why you are with him. These days it’s Izabel who says he’s not right for you.’
‘But she introduced us!’ Anna protested, but she thought of the whispered voice on the phone; Izabel apologising. But that was a dream. This is a dream, Anna reminded herself.
‘Tell me what aspect of the dream stands out most for you,’ Leaf asked. ‘Sometimes that is the best way to understand a dream.’
‘I guess it’s that I dreamed of waking but I was still dreaming, and then I woke again, but I’m still dreaming,’ Anna answered.
‘Sounds as if you are trying to wake,’ Leaf said. ‘Tell me about the clocks.’
‘They stopped. That antique of Gran’s and David’s little electric travelling clock. One runs on battery and the other has a mechanism that works
on a pendulum but they both stopped at the same moment. Three o’clock.’
Something smashed into the kitchen window and Anna jumped and swung round in time to see something dark fly up and out of sight. It looked a lot bigger than a bird but when she turned to ask what Leaf had seen, she found that her friend and her cat were gone.
There was a knock at the front door. Anna stood for a long minute, then she went through to the front door and opened it. The foreign man was standing on her doorstep. ‘Anna,’ he said.
‘This is a dream,’ Anna said.
‘I know,’ agreed the man, ‘I was only able to penetrate this far because you gave me your name. The giving of a name is always an invitation. Have you been beyond the boundaries of your dream yet?’
‘Beyond?’
He nodded his glossy head. ‘If you wish, I can escort you. It can be daunting in the beginning to go beyond your dreams. But I have been exploring around your area lately and there is nothing too bad. No nightmares. I came because I saw the hill but I could not find the house because of the mist. Then you called me.’
‘I don’t understand a thing you are saying,’ Anna said. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you are not part of my dream?’
‘I am a part of your dream in this moment, but I can leave it and retain solidity and form and identity as I travel though the larger dreamscape. As you can. It is one of the advantages of being a long dreamer.’
‘What is a long dreamer?’ Anna asked, beginning to feel uneasy.
‘A person who has been asleep long enough for their dream to have become solid. This means you can leave your dream and return to it without it vanishing. And once you become a lucid dreamer, you can direct your course as I have done. Of course, there are short dreamers who lucid dream, but they cannot travel outside their own dreams because the dream will immediately dissolve, causing them to wake.’
‘But am I … I mean, why am I sleeping for a long time? What happened to me?’
He shrugged. ‘Car accident, failed suicide, embolism, bomb explosion. Could be anything really.’
‘You mean I’m in a coma,’ Anna gasped. All at once she felt weak.
‘Let me help you,’ said the man, but he did not move. Then he said, ‘You have to invite me. I can’t breach the boundaries of your dream.’
‘I’ll come out,’ Anna said.
‘I’m not a vampire,’ the man said. ‘But you should try not to think about such beings else you will summon one and they are very difficult to deal with. We may not be able to be killed but we can feel fear and pain very vividly.’
‘You read my mind!’ she accused.
‘Not really. You projected an image into my mind of me as a vampire. But listen, let me show you what I mean. We should have a very good view of the dreamscape from the top of your hill.’ He held out his hand.
‘What is your name?’ Anna asked.
He smiled. ‘I am Nicholas and knowing my name will allow you to summon or repel me from your place. But it is rude to summon a person physically. You must say my name and allow me to come to you. Remember, though, that if you speak the name of a short dreamer, it can sometimes make them lucid but more often it will cause them to wake.’
‘You mean I can go into other people’s dreams?’
‘Have I not been saying so?’ Nicholas asked. ‘But remember, the dreams of short dreamers are instable and like to vanish when you are in them. Then you will be drawn back to your own place. But you will pass through the void and that is a place of pure nightmare. Best to learn the signs that tell you a dreamer is about to wake, so that you can abandon a dream before it abandons you. Come.’ He held out his hand again and, after a hesitation, Anna stepped outside telling herself this was a dream and ordinary rules could not possibly apply. She expected his flesh to be cold to match his pallour, but his hand was warm and strong as it closed about hers.
They went down the side of the house to the back yard, past her car. She was startled to see that it was not her new car in the driveway but the little green Volkswagen she had brought out of her first earnings at teachers’ college. She touched it affectionately as she passed and was shocked when it purred.
‘Things are often as you imagined them in dreams,’ Nicholas said, reaching out to pat the car. At the back of the yard, he leapt over the fence and then he helped her over it, adding, ‘Best not to think about the bull you mentioned the other day.’
Anna stared at him. ‘The other day? I saw you less than an hour ago.’
His winged brows lifted. ‘Time is subjective here.’
They climbed the hill, which was as steep as she remembered from years before. Anna grinned to think how it would irritate her neighbours to know that she had appropriated their hill as part of her dreamplace. But thinking of the neighbours made her think of David and her smile faded. ‘Am I in a coma then?’ She asked flatly.
He was a little ahead and he looked back at her. ‘It would seem so.’
Anna suppressed a surge of claustrophobia. ‘But I can wake, right? I mean, I can wake up eventually.’
‘It is possible. But the longer you sleep, the less likely it is that you will wake.’
Anna wanted to ask how long he had slept, but there was a remoteness in his face that prevented her voicing the question. They toiled up the last steep sloping part of the hill, and then turned to look around them. The hill had bought them above the mist and they had a panoramic view in all directions. But what Anna now beheld was not what she had seen the last time she had been to the top of the hill, save for the part of the hill that ran down to her house, or what would be her house, if it was not hidden in mist. There was no sign of the beach or the sea. Beyond the mist, a vast city rose up, which was bordered by a desert on one side and on the other by factories and housing estate homes in a rigid grid of streets. Further away was a wood, and a lake and then what looked like a castle, but in between each, there was mist.
‘Those are all dreams?’ Anna asked.
‘This is the dreamscape. The solid seeming parts are dreams and the mist is void. But those solid places will vanish as soon as their dreamers wake. That is what makes your hill so unique. It is a true fixed point and so it can be used to navigate by. The nearest solid place beyond it is a wood with flaming trees.’
‘Is that the dream of another long dreamer?’ Anna asked.
‘It must be so, but I have never found them. It may be that the dreamer has taken the form of a tree rather than becoming lucid. True long dream travellers are rare.’
Anna felt dizzy at the alienness of what he was telling her. Nicholas said sharply, ‘Don’t! If you let go, you will go back into the void and drag me there with you.’
‘Won’t I just wake?’ Anna asked.
‘An ordinary dreamer would do so, but waking is no simple matter for long dreamers. The best way to describe it is to say that there is a gap between waking and dreaming, and that is the void. To get from one state to the other, the dreamer must pass over the void. But while ordinary dreamers have a bridge to cross, long dreamers do not.’
Anna nodded slowly. Then she drew in a breath of surprise, because over his shoulder she saw that the city was beginning to shimmer and lose definition. Nicholas followed her gaze, then he said, ‘Someone you know is waking.’
‘Someone I know?’
He nodded. ‘The dreamscape is formed of dreams resting alongside one another. Of course it is in constant flux as dreamers wake and sleep, but usually, each dream is surrounded by the dreams of those who think of their dreamer most often.’
‘So the desert and that housing estate and the city are the dreams of my friends?’ Anna asked. ‘What will happen if I go there? Could I speak to them?’
‘You can enter their dreams easily enough because they are not solid enough to have barriers. But then you must find the dreamer. If you can do that and if they have taken a form that permits you to question them and allows them to answer, and if they do not wake, of course you can speak
with them. But what would you ask?’
Before she could frame an answer, an enormous oversized raven swooped into life in the sky above them and dived on them. Anna screamed and threw herself to the ground, but Nicholas stood over her batting at the bird until it flew away. When its shrieks had faded, Anna rose on legs that shook. ‘What is it with these birds?’
‘There have been others?’ Nicholas asked, looking worried. Anna nodded. ‘Two, I think. They crashed into the windows of the house. What are they?’
‘Warnings from your undermind,’ Nicholas said. ‘It seems that some part of you does not want answers.’ He held out his hand and Anna was horrified to see there was a gash on his arm from which blood dripped freely. He glanced around. ‘Let’s get down from here.’
‘I want to visit one of the other dream places,’ Anna said.
They went to the housing estate. They reached it by walking along the road that passed the front of Anna’s cottage. Nicholas explained that roads and paths were archetypes, and because all dreams contained them, a lucid dreamer could move from one dream to another using them, so long as they could visualise their destination. ‘That is what makes the wood of flame trees and your hill so important. Because this is a land of constant change, and yet they do not change. Fortunately, we also saw the dreams surrounding yours from the top of the hill.
‘I don’t know whose dream this could be,’ Anna said doubtfully, and they made their way along streets lined with houses that were all exactly the same.
‘Try one of the doors,’ Nicholas suggested.
Anna went up the nearest path and knocked at the door. She heard the sound of movement and then the door opened to reveal a small, grubby child with dirty straw yellow hair. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.
Anna stared at him, not knowing what to say. ‘We wish to see your mother or father,’ Nicholas said, smoothly.
‘No one but me’s home and I ent to talk to anyone,’ said the child. He shut the door.
