Lady of Dreams

by W. R. Gingell

  To my weary distaste, the Dream was of Ae-jung again. She didn’t look any happier than I felt, dawdling her way to the boardinghouse and up the stairs with a reluctant tread. This time, instead of knocking, Ae-jung immediately crouched beside Hyun-jun’s door with her back against the wall, staring blankly at the wall opposite her. She was becoming inured to it, then.

  I sneaked a quick look at Hyun-jun and was immediately glad that I had: he was craning to see Ae-jung through his peephole, his teeth bared in annoyance. I must have mumbled a laugh into Carlin’s neck, because I felt him twitch. I knew exactly what Hyun-jun was thinking: he had meant to let her in today—if only to prevent her from being fed by anyone other than himself, apparently—but Ae-jung hadn’t knocked to be let in. After his earlier behaviour, there was no way to let her in without losing face.

  I watched them both through the morning, amused enough to linger despite the lack of action. Hyun-jun paced in front of the door and periodically glared through the peephole, becoming more and more annoyed as lunch approached. Ae-jung, by comparison, perked up a little—looking forward to her lunch, no doubt.

  I’d begun to feel mildly anticipatory myself by the time Yong-hwa’s provision arrived for Ae-jung—this time a lunch tray instead of the usual segmented box. Gleefully intent upon the food, Ae-jung didn’t notice the door opening beside her, nor the offended look Hyun-jun directed at the tray. She didn’t even notice his foot tapping, happily stirring black-bean sauce through her noodles while he fairly quivered with outrage. When it was obvious that she wasn’t going to acknowledge him, Hyun-jun threw the door outward so that it cracked against the wall. Ae-jung, startled into dropping her noodles, sat down rather suddenly.

  “You,” Hyun-jun snapped. She looked up at him with wide eyes, and was dragged to her feet by one wrist. “What are you doing? Inside!”

  Ae-jung squeaked in surprise, jerked into the room without so much as a moment to reply, and gazed up at Hyun-jun in astonishment. He looked back down at her with a peculiar combination of helplessness and frustration that made me hiss softly with laughter. They stayed so for longer than I would have found endurable, but at last Hyun-jun’s eyes flicked away to stare at a point somewhere over Ae-jung’s left shoulder. As if that had broken the spell, he turned on his heel and strode away to the window, leaving Ae-jung blinking and confused behind him.

  “Sit down and don’t touch anything,” he said over his shoulder. “Lunch will arrive soon. You can eat that.”

  He didn’t speak a word to her for the rest of the day, and she sat where she was told, doing nothing but what she was told to do until it was time to leave. I began to find them wearisome and visited Yong-hwa instead, only to find him smiling to himself on his balcony, his eyes very far away and amused.

  “You’re boring, too,” I said, and bestirred myself to the effort of finding Jessamy instead.

  The next day, a week before I was to leave for Eppa, I woke directly into Dreams that didn’t let me go for two days. I don’t often make mistakes nowadays, but I had severely underestimated the strength of these new Dreams. I’ve gotten more adept at managing them as I’ve gotten older, and it was now very rare for me to be taken by surprise at either the strength or stickiness of my Dreams. This series, though—this series was stronger and stickier and more invasive than any Dream I could readily remember. It left me wondering exactly why it was so strong, and what it meant. I did Dream of unimportant things, but the strongest Dreams I got were ones where Jessamy was in danger, or frightened, or sad—they were Dreams that mattered. Once, I was rather certain, I had even Dreamed of my mother. It was one of the things that made me so certain, unlike Father, that I would never see her again. The woman in that Dream had been drowning. I didn’t recognise her face—my mother left when I was far too young to remember her—and I didn’t know whether she had had an accident, or whether she had done it to herself, but I watched, frozen and unable to get away, while she was subsumed in the dark blue embrace of some unknown body of water.

  So why, I wondered, drifting along behind Ae-jung that morning in the Dream, why now was I Dreaming such mundane Dreams with such strength? Jessamy wasn’t in danger, and neither was my father, even if I were inclined to Dream of him when he was in danger. There must be a connection between Ae-jung’s adventures and my half brother that I hadn’t yet grasped. It was mildly irritating, but the Dream had me fairly and there was nothing to do but follow Ae-jung, so of course that’s what I did. It was either that or fight the Dream, and I had neither the strength nor the inclination to do so.

  When Ae-jung and I arrived at Hyun-jun’s apartments that morning, there was a sheaf of scribbled-over and inky pages beside the typewriter on the desk. Hyun-jun opened the door without looking at Ae-jung and sauntered back to his position at the window. One long finger, extending to indicate the desk with the typewriter, tapped the air behind him. “Start with that,” he said.

  Ae-jung’s eyes flicked from his finger to the desk. “R-really? I mean, ye, Seonbae! But your dictation?”

  “Ignore the spoken word; it’s nothing to do with you. Concentrate on transcribing the written pages. If you don’t make any mistakes you may transcribe my spoken work. If you make a single mistake I will have you thrown out. And I will throw you out every day after.”

  Ae-jung’s head ducked devoutly. “Ye, Seonbae.”

  “Finish that by the end of the day,” he added. Did he actually know how to ask for something, or was he capable only of orders? “Oh, and you—if you find something that’s wrong, you tell me.”

  I’m not sure Ae-jung’s eyes could have gotten any bigger. She breathed another “Ye, Seonbae,” as she approached the desk, but Hyun-jun was already murmuring to himself and didn’t show any sign of having heard her voice. I would have thought that he was entirely uninterested in her if I hadn’t seen how he watched her in the reflection of the window-glass. And once, when Ae-jung reverently touched the handwritten papers she was typing, I saw Hyun-jun smile. It was an almost unnoticeable thing that he quickly banished with one of his astonished, offended looks, but it was a smile.

  Well. I supposed that was progress. It wasn’t progress I would have cared for, but then, Hyun-jun wasn’t the kind of man I would have liked to make progress with. At least he wasn’t trying to throw Ae-jung out any longer. Perhaps his pride had recovered, or perhaps no one had ever told him he was wrong before, and he was clever enough to appreciate the use of someone who wasn’t inclined to blindly accept errors. At any rate, he certainly wasn’t willing that anyone else should provide her lunch.

  I watched them for a while longer with dwindling interest. She continued to steal glances at him while typing pages, her gaze more and more awed the more she typed. He continued to watch her in the reflections, reminding me of a slightly crazed owl. Eventually I made a desultory sort of mental eye-roll at them both and pushed myself away from their Dream, searching for another in which to interest myself.

  I met with another almost immediately, drawn into the weary presence of Yong-hwa. He was sitting on his balcony in the boardinghouse, sipping tea with his fingers wrapped around a blue, bowl-like teacup and gazing out on the courtyard below with eyes that didn’t seem to see anything in particular.

  Was he composing, or was he simply caught in the chill-tipped fingers of utter boredom? Perhaps Yong-hwa felt that tea should be savoured without interruption or employment. Still, he must have been considering some form of distraction, because there was empty stave paper on the table beside him, and a pen that interested me by virtue of being neither a Contraption or a traditional model. It wasn’t until Yong-hwa finally set down his teacup and rather absently began to scribble notes on the lined paper that I realised the pen was, in fact, a magical Energy model.

  So Yong-hwa was also a practitioner, was he? Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Composer, violinist, gayageum master, and practitioner of magic?

  “This man is ludicrously talented,” I muttered. Someone—possibly Car
lin—answered me in my body’s Reality, but I was too deep in the Dream to decipher the meaning of the words. Inferring disagreement, I added, “He is. And absurdly good looking.”

  I was beginning to feel slightly irritated with Yong-hwa. An Energy pen isn’t something that occurs to anyone as big magic, but it requires a constant thread of power and attention to keep it working. The number of people I was aware of who could utilize the kind of concentration needed to keep an Energy pen going and pay attention to what they were writing with it could easily be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even if I was inclined to think that Yong-hwa had learned how to do so in order to keep his always-impeccable clothes free from the kind of ink stains that invariably plagued Hyun-jun’s cuffs and shirtfronts, it was an impressive proof of his command of magic.

  Still, as interesting—or annoying—as that was, it wasn’t enough to make him the focus of one of my Dreams. Why was I here? I had escaped from just the same kind of quiet, uninteresting scene with Ae-jung and Hyun-jun, and Jessamy was not yet to be seen.

  I sighed and said to the Dream Yong-hwa, “Being beautiful doesn’t make you interesting. This is very boring.”

  Carlin was probably wondering what I was talking about, but I was now too deep in the Dream to feel the disturbance of his words even if he was talking. Yong-hwa had put his pen down again and was back to staring out into empty space, which was even less interesting. Left to my own devices, I made an effort and prodded at the Energy pen by way of making things more interesting. It rocked a little, and under a second assault began to roll slowly but surely toward the edge of the table.

  Focused on the pen with a weary interest, I was startled into jumping when Yong-hwa’s hand slapped down on it just before it fell from the table. He looked at the pen for an entirely expressionless moment before his lips began to move in a series of words. He was doing magic, I was sure.

  I gave a small sniff of laughter, because he wouldn’t be able to see me, magic or no, but I was made a little uneasy despite that. Who begins to perform a spell simply because their pen rolls off the table? What did he suspect? Was I Dreaming of Yong-hwa because he was a spy? Someone dangerous to Jessamy? No, I was sure the affection I saw when he looked at Jessamy was real, and Yong-hwa didn’t strike me as someone careless or stupid enough to endanger a person he loved, even if he was a spy.

  I left him to his spell, and since the Dream around him was still sticky enough to make it hard for me to leave completely without more effort than I felt like expending, I let my sight drift over the edge of the balcony to take in the courtyard below. There was nothing very interesting there, just Ae-jung returning from the street, a beribboned lunch box clasped close to her side. Hyun-jun must have sent her out for lunch while I lingered with Yong-hwa. How long had Yong-hwa been drinking tea on his balcony while I watched? It was obviously a particularly low point in my years of Dreaming.

  I was just wishing I had access to a lunch box of my own when I saw a skinny little boy pass the courtyard with despondent steps, dressed like a princeling in a cerulean frock coat and bright-yellow trousers. His hair was as extravagantly outlandish as his clothing, cut short at the sides and puffed into an exuberant peak at the top, and he had too many earrings for me to bother counting them. Each one glittered its value in the sunshine.

  Much to my interest, the princeling caught sight of Ae-jung just as her fingers touched the door handle, did a joyful double take, and accosted her with a yell. “Nuna!”

  Was I imagining the look of utter horror on Ae-jung’s face as she swung around? I didn’t think so. On the balcony, Yong-hwa’s lips ceased to move, and his brows rose a fraction of an inch. He left the pen where it was and sat back, his gaze flicking up to rest thoughtfully on the awning above him.

  Ae-jung, the horror not at all faded from her face, said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Me? What are you doing here? Eomma said you were out for a picnic with two of those next-door nunas.” The princeling stared at her accusingly, then slowly took in Ae-jung’s tidy but rather drab clothing. “Ae-jung nuna,” he said, at a whisper, “did you get an actual job?”

  “You can’t be here,” Ae-jung said, more to herself than him. “Go home.”

  “Can’t,” said the princeling. “There’s a party tonight and I need new clothes.”

  Ae-jung looked both exasperated and slightly resigned. “If you need new clothes, what are you doing here? There are no dressmakers in this part of town!”

  “That’s a really interesting story, Nuna; you’ll never believe it.”

  “Did you follow me this morning?”

  The princeling’s mouth dropped open, displaying the glitter of a diamond on his top right incisor. He looked genuinely hurt. “Nuna!”

  “Did you?”

  The princeling paused for the barest moment before he said, “I didn’t follow you here.”

  I snorted quietly. On Ae-jung, the remark had a different, though no less enlightening, effect. “You mean you lost me somewhere and you’ve been running around the streets trying to find me.”

  On the balcony, Yong-hwa’s teeth gleamed through a smile. He poured himself another cup of tea, his long fingers wrapping around it as he sat back. He wasn’t trying to see Ae-jung, nor was he looking directly at the balcony, but his head was tilted at just the right angle to hear best. There was something about his relaxed pose, one leg crossed over the other and his expression distant, that was familiar. Why was that?

  The princeling said, “I was attacked, Nuna. Attacked.”

  “Were you flicking horse droppings at open carriages again?”

  “Also, there was a goat, three little girls with really sharp parasols, and a series of unfortunate events,” added the princeling, glossing over whether or not horse droppings had been involved in the series of unfortunate events. “Anyway, I was completely not at fault and the ahjumma shouldn’t have tried to beat me.”

  “I should beat you!”

  “Although,” said the princeling, again glossing, “it was funny to see her hobbling down the street after me with only one shoe on.”

  Ae-jung sighed. “Did you give her back the shoe?”

  “Well, she threw it at me!” protested the princeling. His face again shone with an almost blinding honesty. “I thought she was giving it to me! I couldn’t refuse a gift from—”

  “Oh, shut up!” said Ae-jung. “You can’t stay here. Go home!”

  “But Nuna, I can’t! I don’t have any money for the trolley cart or a cab.”

  I saw a very real flash of anger come and go on Ae-jung’s face. The princeling must have seen it, too, because he edged behind the trolley cart stop marker. Ae-jung controlled herself very admirably, and said quite calmly after a moment, “I gave you your allowance yesterday. What happened to that?”

  “That,” said the princeling, making a face. “Well, that’s an interesting story, too, Nuna. What happened was—”

  “No,” said Ae-jung. “You can’t have any more money. You’ll only gamble that away as well. Walk home.”

  “But Nuna, Eomma says I’m delicate! How can I walk home on these delicate feet?”

  “Then you shouldn’t be going out tonight,” said Ae-jung, with finality. It was obvious that she didn’t believe his protestation for a moment. “How can you dance with those delicate feet?”

  The princeling’s face changed in an instant from woeful to grinning. “All right, I’ll walk home,” he said. “But I need money for new clothes, Nuna; it’s important.”

  “No money,” reiterated Ae-jung, somewhat harassed. “There’s barely enough to pay the bills as it is, and you never win.”

  “But Nuna! I promise I won’t gamble with it! I have nothing to wear! How can I go to a party in last month’s styles?”

  Ae-jung gave him a look that made him edge behind the trolley marker again. “You walk on your delicate feet. Or you get a job, like me, and gamble and buy clothes with your own money.”

  The princ
eling looked offended. “The heir working for his bread? Nuna, I couldn’t! You know how much I hate work! And Eomma couldn’t stand it: her little prince, working his fingers to the bone—Actually, come to think of it, does she know you’re working?”

  “No,” said Ae-jung grimly. “And she’d better not find out, either!”

  “When I’m worried about things,” said the princeling, his face the picture of innocence, “I quite often forget to watch my mouth. And I’m awfully worried about my clothes for tonight. What if this little dongsang forgets—”

  “If this little dongsang forgets to mind his tongue,” said Ae-jung, her tone matching the princeling’s in sweetness but her eyes glittering as coldly as the diamond on his teeth, “he might find himself waking up to a shaved head. Dongsang might even find his lucky tie shredded to ribbons, or a snapping spell in the toes of some of his shoes.”

  The little princeling, almost completely hidden by the trolley marker now, squeaked, “Which shoes?”

  “You won’t ever know,” said Ae-jung. Her smile was a fearsome thing to behold. “You’ll go for days without finding one and forget about it, and as soon as you do—snap!”

  The princeling flinched. “Nuuuuuna!”

  “Go home,” she ordered. “I have to get back to work. He’s probably already wondering where I am.”

  “He?” The princeling’s head popped out from behind the trolley marker like a jack-in-the-box. “He? What he? Why are you meeting a he in a—What is this place? Is this a boardinghouse? You can’t meet a man here!”

  “Yes, it’s a boardinghouse. I’m typing for a gentleman in his office, thank you very much! I come and go in the daylight hours.”

  “Still—”

  “Still nothing! Go home!”

  “You wouldn’t hit a delicate little—”

  Ae-jung took in a deep breath through her nose and took a step toward him. “I will beat you with this lunch box.”