Dreamhunter

by Elizabeth Knox

  While the back was still only roughly shaped, Laura put her sandman’s heart in place.

  Nown had had her father’s letter hidden in his chest. It had served him as a heart. Laura fished the rust-stained rock from out of her coat pocket and pushed it through the sandy back. She shoved it deep into the body she imagined lay before her, with its knees, feet, hipbones, chest and face — its own true face — all hidden in the sand. She withdrew her empty hand and closed the hole, smoothed the place over. She then shaped the symmetrical trapezoid muscles and shoulder blades. She fashioned wide shoulders and strong arms. She made sure the elbows were level with the waist, and wrists with the top of the thigh. She got his proportions right. She laid the clay hands at the end of the arms, backs down and curled fingers up. She blended the join between sand and clay and sprinkled a coating of dry silver sand on to the still damp blue clay so that — when he was dry — his hands would be the same colour as the rest of him. She made a powerful neck and as shapely a skull as she could fashion.

  Laura sat back and began to laugh. She’d forgotten to make ears. She looked at the clay on the bank, and at the place both she and her father had dug, and felt too tired to move. So she wrapped her coat around her and lay beside the face-down, earless figure, and went to sleep.

  THERE WAS NO DREAM at that place in the riverbed. Nothing marked on the map, and nothing even for Laura.

  WHEN LAURA WOKE up she opened a tin of condensed milk and poured it on top of several dry rounds of dreamhunter’s bread. She looked at the face-down figure. It was beginning to dry in the air, its surface turning a soft, granular silver. Laura was careful as she moved around it. She didn’t want the vibrations of her footsteps to shake any sand from the figure, making cracks in his skin.

  Laura went to the bank and scooped out two balls of clay. She fashioned each into an ear, a left and a right, like the hands. She had to dampen and remould the sand of the figure’s head in order to attach the ears, though each had a cupped back, like a shell, that held them firm.

  Laura lay down once more to gather her strength. She had been in that place for sixteen hours by her watch, through a sleep and two meals.

  She began to sing, lying there, looking into the sand-man’s ear. She didn’t feel any need to get up and lift her hands to the mist-covered skies. She sang in a quiet, clear, intimate voice. An unfaltering voice. And, as before, on other occasions when she’d managed to get through ‘The Measures’ without making a mistake, Laura began to feel the spell build around her, a force like a wind funnelling up around her body. Nothing moved, though, her clothes and hair stayed still, and no dust devil got up to dance for her as it had when she sang in Aunt Marta’s yard. The force sucked at her, like air pressure so low it was almost a vacuum. Laura grew cold. She finished her song shivering. She shut her mouth. The air began to shimmer around her.

  Laura lifted her own cheek and ear from the riverbed. She leant up on one elbow and bent over the back of the figure’s neck. There, on the bumps she’d made to suggest vertebrae, Laura scratched the letters with the tip of her finger. She wrote his whole name:

  NOWN.

  The cold, shimmering, sucking force around her leapt into her body and out again through her finger. She heard the spell again, a whole song that seemed to shout only this: Soul of the spell! Come out of the earth! Wake! Speak! Obey my will, and know your name!

  Laura flopped back, exhausted.

  Nown’s arms moved up from his sides, turned palm down, and pressed. Laura was only feet from him. His hand brushed by her as it moved. She saw the back of the head she had shaped stir, a crack appear in the sand where what she had shaped came to an end, and the earth itself began. Laura watched Nown lift his face from the riverbed. He came up shaking off clots of sand. Only not all the sand fell. Instead it sorted itself out, some grains rising like steam against Nown’s face, settling there and shaping it.

  He turned towards Laura, his skin of sand still rearranging itself. She saw his skin move to make sharp ridges of eyelid. She saw his nostrils become dark and deep, then flare, as though he drew breath. She saw his lips split in two, and teeth rise up before the hollow of his mouth, and sand run from the hollow, leaving only enough for a tongue. She saw thin gaps appear in the fence of his teeth, but nothing in his eyes, no lines to represent an iris, no hole for a pupil. His eyes stayed smooth — widely spaced eyes in a face as handsome as that of a classical statue. Except that, having no human model, the face was too symmetrical.

  Nown got up, separated his sandy self from the sand of the river bed. He stood above Laura, looking down at her. He opened his mouth again — and this time didn’t dribble sand. He said, ‘Laura Hame. I am your servant.’

  Three

  Laura had done what she wanted to do. She had made her own Nown. That done, she was left with only her duty. She had to follow her father’s instructions. She felt that, if she followed them faithfully, she might somehow find him again. Sometimes this was what she felt, and sometimes she thought it was silly and crazy to have feelings like that, and that her father was lost to her for ever.

  Laura knew where she had to go next because the film her father had left had shown a view of a burnt building. Laura believed that she would find her father’s ‘dreadful dream’ near the building. The film had shown its black beams flickering like the shadows of twigs stirred by a breeze, against a bay of naked sand. The film had stopped, then started again with the building, shot from her father’s shoulder. He had held the camera and turned himself about, one hundred and eighty degrees, to show the view back the way he had come, and hills like a page in a book of profiles.

  Laura was looking at those hills now from the other side. She could see them rising in the distance, above the scrubby country across the dry streambed. She knew that, beyond the hills, she would find the ruin, and the dream she had to catch and carry.

  For over three months, Laura had gone about her business as if turned side-on to her own intentions. From the moment she had read her father’s letter she had meant to do what he told her. She had felt that if she followed his instructions she could conjure him too, and make him reappear. But she had not thought clearly about what following her father’s instructions would actually entail. She hadn’t thought about catching the ‘dreadful dream’ and overdreaming her Aunt Grace.

  Laura tried to make plans as she lay on the ground looking up at her sandman. But any thoughts about what she should do next were driven out of her head by the sight of him — the fact of him.

  She — Laura Hame — had raised a thinking, speaking being from nothingness, or time, or family tradition. It was very confusing. She had made a person out of river sand in the Place, and the rock she’d kept. She had made her sandman out of longing and disappointment and indecision. She had made him as though she were making her own father, rather than a replacement for her father’s servant.

  Laura had made someone to look after her. And here he was, big and strong, and wise — she was sure of it — and looking at her to see what she would ask him to do. Waiting for her to make decisions.

  Laura was too exhausted to move, and couldn’t decide what to say to him.

  Hello again. I missed you. I needed you.

  Looking up at Nown, Laura felt she had finished everything she wanted to do. She felt safe, not just because he’d arrived again to protect her, but because she’d put something of herself into him — where it was safe for now — something she felt she was too young to use wisely.

  Laura realised that she needed to sleep. So great was her need that, when she closed her eyes, she immediately fell asleep.

  LAURA WOKE WHEN she turned over and snuffled up a little sand. She sneezed and sat up. She was thirsty, and needed to pee. Time had passed. Nown stood as he had before. He was looking out over the low bank of the riverbed and through the curtain of grasses at the hills Inland.

  Laura asked him what he was doing.

  ‘Listening,’ he said.

  Laura c
rawled over to her pack and found her water bottle. She took a long drink, not bothering to ration it. Nown could carry her out again.

  This thought came to her calmly. He had suggested it once, and she had shied away from him. Now she couldn’t see anything wrong with the idea. Perhaps this Nown was less uncanny — more hers. She looked at him again and began to laugh.

  Nown had no nipples, or navel, or whatever lay under the fig leaves on the copies of classical statues at the Museum. Laura had studied her favourite statue before making this Nown. She had studied the most beautiful statue she could find, but it had had a fig leaf. Laura had made her Nown face down, hoping to discover his true face — but she also wanted to find out what was underneath the fig leaves on statues. Of course she had a vague idea — she’d seen plenty of small children of both sorts, girls and boys, running about naked on the beach. But she was quite sure men were different from little boys.

  Laura finished laughing and wiped her eyes. She imagined sharing the joke with Rose — then sobered up when she remembered just how much she’d have to explain first.

  Nown had watched her laugh. But when she was quiet he lifted his head again and listened.

  ‘Is someone coming?’ Laura said. She clapped her hand over her mouth, regretting having laughed so loudly.

  ‘No,’ Nown said.

  ‘Then what are you listening to?’

  ‘I am listening to it. It is listening to you.’

  Laura shivered. ‘The Place?’ She said. ‘Is the Place listening to me?’

  ‘Yes. I can hear now. I am nearer to myself than before.’

  Laura stared at Nown for so long that her neck began to hurt. She climbed to her feet, and stood rubbing it. Did Nown mean that each new Nown was better than the one before? That he was made to make progress towards some perfect sandman? Is that what he meant by being nearer to himself? He couldn’t mean that, could he?

  ‘What do you mean?’ Laura said.

  ‘I can hear now. I am here with myself,’ Nown said.

  ‘How?’ Laura asked, then realised it wasn’t the right question.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Nown answered her anyway.

  ‘Are you more yourself? More your true self?’ Laura asked, then blushed — feeling she had asked for a compliment, or a show of gratitude.

  Nown was looking at her intently. She knew it by the way the gleaming black grains of iron sand sorted themselves out from the mix in his face and flooded his wide open eyes, till his eyes, brows and the bridge of his nose were banded with glittering black. He answered her. ‘Yes, I am.’

  Laura was pleased to have helped Nown. Pleased with her own speculation. She didn’t for a minute consider that her servant might have spoken obscurely.

  Nown stood, his face striped black with the force of his attention, and waited for his mistress to help him understand what he sensed. Then she was talking again, and his desire to understand disappeared into the flow of time, for her will was the flow of time for him.

  She said, ‘My father wrote in his letter that I must listen to the Place. He meant the dreams. He meant me to do something about the convicts in the dreams.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nown said. ‘I think that is what he wanted.’ He touched his chest, wherein he had once carried Laura’s father’s letter — or where, at least, the eighth him had.

  Laura saw that he remembered the letter and was curious to know if he knew what she’d put into him. When she asked he said, ‘It’s a rock you wanted to throw at your father. To throw at the train that took him away. It is anger and unhappy love in a rock.’

  Laura began to cry then. She covered her face with her hands — sore, raw under their nails from scraping sand — and sobbed. Her sandman made no move to comfort her, and after a time she simply finished crying.

  Nown was listening again, it seemed. Perhaps he was even embarrassed. Laura imagined that it might be embarrassment that made him look away through the grass to the hills Inland.

  Laura told him to pick up her pack. He did. Then she told him to pick her up.

  His arms were faintly warm, like sand under a winter sun. They softened to accommodate her. She rested her head on his chest, heard a faint creak of sand moving on sand — but no heartbeat. ‘Back to Summerfort first,’ Laura said, ‘for provisions.’

  Nown began to walk back the way Laura had come.

  Part VI

  The Rainbow Opera

  One

  Chorley’s appointment with the Grand Patriarch was on a Sunday afternoon between the masses at noon and three. On Sundays the Isle of the Temple was quiet. All dream parlours and palaces were closed till sundown. By one the cafés were open and serving whatever it was possible to prepare in an hour.

  Chorley crossed from the west bank on the enclosed iron footbridge slung under the railway bridge. He was early. He stopped at a café for coffee, and crépes with honey and nuts — a Sunday favourite. The café was in a colonnade across the square from the Temple. Chorley ate, and watched pigeons fossick for crumbs among the iron table and chair legs. Then he paid, stored a coffee-soaked sugar lump in one cheek and crossed the square. He went around the Temple to the gates of the Grand Patriarch’s palace. He presented his appointment card. The guards, men in long embroidered capes — beneath which they cradled repeater rifles — let Chorley in. An usher led him upstairs and along galleries under high vaulted ceilings covered in frescoes. Their footsteps echoed.

  Chorley had expected to be taken to an office, or an audience chamber, but instead the usher took him to the Grand Patriarch’s private rooms.

  The Grand Patriarch was just finishing his lunch. He was sitting at one end of a long, polished table, and tilting his plate to spoon up the last of his soup. There were a few slices of black bread and a pot of tea in front of him. When Chorley appeared the Grand Patriarch called over the solitary servant in the room and had him pull out a chair for Chorley where a second cup and saucer sat waiting for him.

  Chorley sat down. He turned this way and that to check how many people there were in the large, gloomy room, and whether they were near enough to hear him if he spoke. There were two guards, one by each door, the servant and a young priest who stood closer.

  The Grand Patriarch set the plate back on its base, laid his spoon down and removed the napkin he’d tied around his long beard to keep it clean. He wiped his mouth. His beard, dented where it had been tied, began to spring back into shape. For the next few minutes, while they talked, Chorley watched the beard expand, bristling, and restore itself to its square, golden magnificence.

  The Grand Patriarch held his hand to Chorley, palm down. He offered his ring for Chorley to kiss — but Chorley only took the hand and shook it. The Grand Patriarch smiled faintly.

  ‘Cousin,’ Chorley began. ‘I will call you cousin because I am not a parishioner, and I intend to presume upon our relationship.’

  Erasmus Tiebold took up the teapot and poured Chorley a cup.

  ‘Er — thank you,’ said Chorley.

  ‘How was my friend when you saw her?’

  ‘That was more than a week ago,’ Chorley said — he couldn’t resist telling his kinsman off for not responding more quickly to his request to see him. ‘Marta was well — a week ago,’ Chorley added, then took the sealed letter from his jacket and gave it to his kinsman.

  The Grand Patriarch broke the seal and read the letter. It wasn’t a long letter. Erasmus Tiebold finished and looked at Chorley over the top of the page. Then he gestured to the young priest, who came over. The Grand Patriarch handed the young man the page, then said, ‘No, don’t read it.’ Then he gestured at the branch of candles in the middle of the table. The young priest held the corner of the page to a candle flame. The paper flared up. The Grand Patriarch pointed to his empty soup plate, and the young priest laid the paper there to burn and backed away from the table.

  Chorley watched this and realised that, if his family really had found itself on the wrong side of something — a secretive, sinister
something that had to do with the Regulatory Body — then this secret, sinister something had opponents. This man, the head of the Orthodox Church, and his father’s cousin, was an opponent. This man — and other men and women. Marta, for instance. Chorley realised that he wasn’t just here to look for Tziga, he had come to show that he was willing to sign on to some sort of resistance. If they would have him.

  Chorley actually had no idea what Cas Doran and the Body were up to — but they had taken Tziga from him, he was sure of it. He blamed them. They were his enemies. And his enemies’ opponents were his friends.

  Chorley leant towards his kinsman, his eyes fierce. ‘Tell me what to do,’ he said.

  The Grand Patriarch laid his hand on Chorley’s. ‘Only this, for now,’ he said. ‘You must take passage to Sisters Beach by sea. Catch the packet boat from Westport. The schooner Morningstar, which sails every week. You must leave the Morningstar at the first place she stops.’

  The Grand Patriarch lifted his hand and leant back. He took up his teacup and sipped, raising his brows to urge Chorley to taste his tea. ‘Don’t bring anything back with you,’ he added. ‘And I hope to see you on your return.’

  GRACE SAT ON the bed and watched her husband pack.

  ‘I won’t be back till the day after St Lazarus’s Day,’ he said. ‘I have a table booked for us at Bacchus. The booking is for six-thirty. And Rose wanted to go skating in the afternoon.’

  ‘Goody,’ said Grace, who didn’t like skating.

  ‘She won’t expect you to take her,’ Chorley said.

  ‘Still, I had better take her. She won’t mind if I’m groggy.’ Rose would know that her mother would be tired. Grace performed a dream called Homecoming on the evening of Saint Lazarus’s Day, every year. The site of Homecoming was three days In from Doorhandle, and Grace was setting out herself the following day.