Dreamhunter

by Elizabeth Knox

  He resumed his briefing. ‘You will each take one of these kits, in which, among other, more self-evident items, you will find a signal whistle and a book about its use. I recommend that you study the book and master all the signals before you even consider going In on your own. Which, I might add, you have no hope of doing until you are licensed. And, to be licensed you must satisfy the Body that you will not be a hazard to yourself or anyone else, either in the Place or out of it, with any dream you manage to catch.’ He looked at each of the children sternly and then went on to talk about the futility of attempting to light a fire in the Place, the importance of consulting maps, and of reporting any changes in the landscape. As he talked his eyes roved over the whole assembled group. He wanted to make sure they were listening to him. He looked into each of their faces — and was satisfied by their looks of respectful attention. But, as his gazed moved, he found himself looking more often and longer at that pretty, attentive girl.

  Grace Tiebold arrived at the door of the meeting room. The Chief Ranger waved to acknowledge her and watched every head in his audience — even his own rangers’ — swivel to the door.

  ‘Mrs Tiebold,’ he said, ‘I have just finished with the generalities. I’m afraid that, at the moment, these young people are looking on their trip In as an exercise in orientation — which it is not. Perhaps you would like to explain its purpose? I think a dreamhunter will do a better job of explaining than any ranger.’

  Grace Tiebold said, ‘Thank you, I’d like that.’

  The Chief Ranger yielded his place, but stayed at the front of the room, watching both the famous dreamhunter, and that increasingly — it seemed to him — attractive candidate.

  The girl was smiling at Grace Tiebold — who smiled back, a brief, warm look, then moved her gaze to take in all the expectant, admiring young faces.

  Grace began by pulling down the Chief Ranger’s chart. Several of the candidates gasped.

  Grace Tiebold said, mildly surprised, ‘Have some of you not seen a map of the Place? You’re shocked. Of course, any map of the Place will be shocking to anyone with any understanding of geography. As you can see, this is a map of no earthly geography. It is an interpretation of an unearthly geography by the discipline of earthly mapmaking.’ She looked around at the Chief Ranger and asked if he had a pointer. He found her one and she returned to the map and tapped it with the pointer. ‘As you can see, parts of this chart correspond in many ways to normal maps. There are topographical measurements. These hills and valleys have been surveyed.’ The pointer pattered on the canvas of the map. ‘Here is a forest,’ Grace said. ‘Here is a dry watercourse, here are roads, and ruins. Yes — ruins. And then here are markings only to be found on maps of the Place. These shadings indicate bands of certain sorts of dreams. And these spots — little dots that on a normal map would show the position of a village or town — here mark the sites of certain famous stable dreams, dreams that any dreamhunter can catch, that are always consistent in their content and intensity.’

  The Chief Ranger’s eyes wandered over the large labels of the famous stable dreams. He spotted Convalescent One and Two, Starry Beach, Balloon War, The Great Players, Beautiful Horse and Big Member — a title he wished was rather less prominently visible to these children.

  Grace rested the tip of her pointer on one spot. ‘This is Wild River — the dream on which you will be tested.’

  IT WASN’T THE first time that Laura had seen a map of the Place, and she knew that it wasn’t the bands of colour, or the phantom villages, or even Big Member that caused the candidates to gasp — it was the whole shape of the map. The interior of the Place couldn’t be measured in relation to known lines of longitude and latitude. Because, Laura knew, the land in the Place represented a much bigger space than the fifteen miles between Doorhandle and Tricksie Bend. Also, the Place had only parallel borders. No attempt to follow the border on the inside had ever resulted in tracing a line from the marker just inside the border at Tricksie Bend around to the one near Doorhandle. The Chief Ranger’s map of the Place consisted of two horizontal ribbons of borderland, separated by a feathering of details supplied by those who had travelled deepest In from either side. Between the feathering was a broad blank space. No map of the interior of the Place could be set inside one of the surrounding country — as a maritime map of a coastline can be set against a corresponding map of what lies inland from that coast. And that was because the border to the Place was only continuous from the outside, not from within.

  Laura’s Aunt Grace was saying, ‘This is where we are taking you today. It’s a dream site at map reference A–8. As you can see, the map is labelled in bands A to E from the Doorhandle side, and Z to X at Tricksie Bend, where the Place hasn’t been quite so fully explored. I always wonder if we’ll eventually have to adopt letters from another alphabet when we find there are actually more bands in the hinterland than there are letters to label them.’ Grace Tiebold paused and made a thoughtful humming noise. Then she said, ‘But enough of that. Yes?’

  A boy — one of the bandy-legged runts — had put up a hand.

  He asked, ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘A–8?’ said Grace.

  The boy blushed and subsided in confusion.

  Laura knew that her aunt had purposely misinterpreted the boy’s question. He had probably just asked for the first time that perpetual, teasing question: what was the Place for? Why did it exist?

  Grace continued, ‘A–8 is the dream Wild River. It is highly likely you know it already.’

  Many of the candidates nodded.

  Laura had shared the dream before, a perennial favourite performed at least four times each year in the Rainbow Opera. It was a dream to which older children were permitted to go — a harmlessly exhilarating dream. Anyone who shared Wild River found themselves as either a young man or a young woman — depending on which point of view they fell in with — taking a ride with friends in a sturdy boat down a river. A very beautiful river with a series of increasingly thrilling rapids. The dream always ended with the boat’s safe arrival, and stately progress, into a calm lake.

  ‘Wild River is a highly consistent, benign dream. It’s ideal for you to cut your teeth on. What we’re looking to see is, first, whether you can catch and retain it at all. Second, how strongly and for how long. Third, whether any of you will be fortunate enough to catch the split dream, to carry off both protagonists’ points of view.’

  There was a murmuring among the candidates, who must all have been aware that anyone who caught the split dream would have their fortunes made. There were only eight dreamhunters who could catch split dreams — of that eight, Grace was by far the most powerful.

  ‘Even given that you’re all sleeping in the same place, so boosting one another — this a true test, because you all get the same advantage. The test takes account of that. After the test you’ll walk out and catch a train back to the capital. You’ll be taken to the head offices of the Regulatory Body where you will each individually perform your Wild River for the examiners. Because Wild River is consistent it’s possible to grade the quality of your catch.’ Grace asked if they had any more questions.

  The bandy-legged boy put up his hand again. ‘Miss,’ he said — rather betraying his charity school education — ‘aren’t all dreamhunters different? Is the river dream one any dreamhunter can get?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why we use it. If you can catch a dream at all, you will catch Wild River. We don’t really learn much about what sort of dreamhunter you are unless you catch the split dream. In this test we will only measure your strength and the dream’s longevity, and get some sense of your powers of projection.’

  Another hand went up and a boy whispered, ‘What say you’re afraid of water?’

  ‘The dream supplies another self — you know that. Though it does happen sometimes that a dreamhunter can change the appearance of a character in a dream so that they resemble someone in the dreamhunter’s life.’

 
; Grace Tiebold went on to tell the boy who was afraid of water about other exceptions to the rule that the dream supplied all its characters. ‘There are a few talents who are able to make substitutions. To supply faces and bodies to order. For instance, the dreamhunter Maze Plasir makes half his income from the sale of “bespoke dreams” to solitary clients. He can make the characters in his dreams look like people his patrons desire and can’t have, or like people they’ve lost. Plasir makes wishes come true. And he resurrects the dead. His is a very rare — and, I think, rather dubious — talent. I’m sure you — all of you — will find that you’re one or the other same old characters in the usual old boat.’

  ‘That’s to be hoped,’ the Chief Ranger added, seeing the disappointment on several of the young faces. Some of the candidates, having joined an exclusive club, now wanted to be singular among the exclusive, to find their own strangely configured niche and sit in it like saints.

  ‘Any further questions?’ asked Grace Tiebold.

  There were none.

  THE HEAD RANGER thanked Mrs Tiebold, and she spread her hands to herd the candidates from the room — out to the road and the short walk to the border. The rangers fell in behind her. The Head Ranger was surprised to see Grace Tiebold collect a pack from her car, shoulder it and set off along the road with this latest clutch.

  The Head Ranger had, years before, stopped bothering to check the newspapers to see who had passed at each Try. The successful were always named in the same breathless, gossipy tones in which the social pages reported on who attended the Founderston Cup race day. It wasn’t worth following. He’d only notice them when they either became dreamhunters or came to work for the Body as rangers. However, on this occasion, the man did go back and ask one of his clerks for the day’s log to see the name of those who went In. The unlicensed eleven were easy to find. And there were only three girls.

  ‘Laura Hame,’ he read. That sombre, pretty child was the daughter of the dangerous Tziga Hame.

  GRACE AND THE dreamhunter guides left the eleven guarded by rangers at an encampment at A–8, under a group of trees from which the bark hung in blackened strips. The children spread their bedrolls on ground rubbed bald by successive visitors. Grace and the other hunters walked off out of range. The eleven had something to eat and drink, then lay down.

  Laura slipped a black silk eye mask over her face. For the next few hours she listened to the ludicrous sound of coughs, sniffs, shuffles and giggles as the stage-struck eleven tried to settle. Someone got up to pee, then everyone did, including Laura. Once they’d done that — a mutual acknowledgement of nerves — the eleven settled somewhat. Laura noticed the sounds thin out as, one by one, the young people fell asleep.

  She felt a lurching drop. It was as if she had been walking and had lost her footing on a tilting stone. She knew the feeling. It was what she always felt when she was in a dream palace and the dreamer fell asleep before she had. There was a moment when she teetered, and either fell in after them, or not — and the feeling would pass. Laura very nearly removed her eye shade and sat up to see who the real dreamhunter was, the one who just fell so hard into the Wild River. But she didn’t sit up, she continued to lie still and breathe deeply. She would go too. She could feel the Wild River beneath her, rushing by under her bedroll. ‘Ah,’ Laura thought, with relief, falling asleep, dropping through dream water and white bubbles, ‘here it is —’

  For a moment it seemed to the fleeing convict that he had fallen asleep on his feet, and had dropped through his weakness into a cold, stifling substance, like water. He found himself lying, gasping for breath, on the leaf litter of the forest floor.

  The man knew he was finished. He was sick and tired. He couldn’t keep up with the others, who could coax but not carry him.

  It was black dark in the forest. He and the others from the mass breakout were running, strung out along a ridge.

  The man was glad at least to be out. He got up from the ground to struggle on to the clearing he could see ahead, a thinning of the trees on the ridge’s spine, where he’d be free of the forest and under the sky.

  Another convict took his arm to help hurry him along. It was the young man from the cell next to his. They’d scarcely ever spoken, but had always stood together at the tubs to wash off the mine’s black grime. The young man hauled him along. Then the failing convict stumbled and was dragged a little further, skidding on his knees.

  Several of the men nearest him in the ragged line stopped when the sick man fell in the clearing. They waited for him. But he looked up at the star-filled sky, and remained on his knees, swaying.

  The man who had helped him began to call out to the others — his voice croaking. He was parched. He made no words, only a sound, a rattling scream. Back along the ridge a line of torches moved through the trees. The pursuers. Their dogs would be bounding ahead of them, nosing along through the dusky forest, following the warm trails of the desperate convicts.

  There were other fires burning, a long way down on the coast. Stationary fires, the convict thought. Bonfires maybe, bonfires on a beach. He imagined company, singing, fish baking in glowing embers. He turned full circle, looking one last time at all the open horizons, before running down to the trees again. He saw why the man beside him had cried out in despair. He saw that both coasts were visible from the ridge and that he and the other prisoners were being driven along a narrowing peninsula. He saw that, as the pursuers came on, their line grew tighter, the lights closer together, and that it would be impossible for any of the escaped convicts to double back to break through that line. He saw that the only real choice was to be swept along by that net and eventually be gathered up into it. He saw what was going to happen, and yet he ran.

  He felt the raw surfaces of bone grate in his bad knee. He swung his leg out from the hip at each step as though meaning to fling it away from him.

  The continuous line of light was closing on him. His fellows were scrambling ahead of him, grubby shapes in the acidic undergrowth of the dry forest.

  He was all in, worn out by labour. For years he’d broken stone, and hauled stone. His hands were permanently cramped as though clutching a pick. He couldn’t run any further. He lay down to wait. He pressed his face into the leathery leaves on the forest floor.

  A dog found him and leapt about, barking and snapping at the air over his head. One of the pursuers arrived and pushed it away. The light of the torches held over him made the long, dry gum leaves on which he lay look like dim flames and their shadows like a bed of coals. He heard one pursuer say to another, ‘This is the first. But what should I do with him?’

  An overseer answered, ‘I’m tired of even feeding these people. They’re all ill-conditioned and I’m not going to trouble myself driving the worst of them back.’ He kicked the convict in the ribs. ‘Do you hear me?’ he said. ‘There’s nowhere to take you animals back to. When you set fire to the prison you burnt your own bridges.’

  The convict realised he was about to be killed. The man was working himself up to it. The convict held out his hands, asking for mercy. In the torchlight he saw his clawed fingers, his broken nails. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Was this it, then? Was this all? How could it be? ‘This isn’t me,’ the man thought. ‘This isn’t what I’ve come to.’

  He remembered being a boy at the lighthouse on So Long Spit — his quiet, isolated life with his father, tending the light. He remembered how he had liked it when ships had come along the Spit, stopped and offloaded supplies on to the platform his father and the other keepers had built out on the level sand at the low-tide line. The convict remembered being a boy, running on the sand, alongside a schooner that was sailing up the ocean shore of the Spit. He ran on the unending, smooth sand, and waved at figures lining the ship’s rail. He ran into the wind, the same steady wind that bellied out the schooner’s sails. The boy waved. A group of four low-flying gannets passed between him and the ship, faster than both, scooping the air back with their black-tipped wings.
The gannets flew on towards their colony, far away at the end of the Spit where — to the boy’s eyes — the sand vanished in the sea horizon so that only the colony itself was visible, a thin line of shimmering black and white drawn between the sparkling water and the blank sky.

  The flying gannets overtook him easily, but he made an effort, sprinted, breasting the wind, trying to keep up with the ship. His shadow ran beside him, and sometimes he was paced by his reflection too, on sand made wet by waves. Reflection, shadow, boy — running, and all keeping up.

  Three

  The head office of the Regulatory Body was in a tower built on a spur of reclaimed land, formerly swamp, at the downstream end of the Isle of the Temple. The tower stood by itself in a walled park, whose grounds were planted with water-loving willows and cypresses. From the gallery that circled its upper storey there were views of the city, the wide pavements of the west embankment, and, on the east bank, the walls of narrow houses stained by the outfall from jutting privies. Upstream, back along the island, the white marble dome of the Temple itself — St Lazarus — seemed to hang in the blue air, hazy and weightless, like a daytime moon.

  The examiners were waiting in the ring room, some walking about stifling yawns. One complained to another that he was dead on his feet. This season’s little clutch of unlicensed dreamhunters had arrived back at the very end of the period he was rostered on. The woman walking with him had only just arrived and wasn’t at all sleepy. In fact, she felt quite perky. She glanced at one of the clocks. It was three hours yet to sundown.