Dreamquake

by Elizabeth Knox

  Rose went in and ran upstairs. There was a light in Laura’s room. Rose pushed the door open.

  Laura was standing at her bureau patting one of the furred, silvery lamb’s-lugs in Rose’s flower arrangement. She was wearing a darned jersey; it was too big for her. She also had on heavy cotton trousers and rope-soled sandals. Her hair had grown, so that its uneven lengths made a wide black halo around her face.

  “Hello,” Rose said. Then, “The flowers were Ma’s idea,” for some reason finding herself unwilling to admit to all the trouble she’d taken.

  “Doesn’t your ma usually just cram them in a vase and leave it at that?”

  “Your hair looks nice. You should let it grow,” Rose said, then immediately regretted her bossiness.

  Laura wandered over to the window and eased it up a few inches. She looked out into the blackness. Her look was expectant and yearning. Without turning around, she asked, “How was it at the Doran summerhouse?”

  Rose plonked herself down onto the bed. She began to talk breathlessly about the map she’d spotted in Cas Doran’s library, its circles representing penumbras, and how, in some of the circles, there were names of dreamhunters who had disappeared. “Or dreamhunters who were supposed to have taken ‘early retirement,’ ” she added. “Gone back to their towns south of The Corridor, or gone abroad. There weren’t any big earners among them, no one really distinguished. Da and Ma looked up the names I’d managed to memorize. Ma tried to find them by tracking down their friends and relatives. She’d show up supposedly to return something she’d borrowed. And Da’s planning to reconnoiter one of the properties. He wants to see who is in residence. I’d like to do it. I could throw my schoolbag over the wall of 121 Courtesy Street and then sneak in, and if someone caught me I could say that one of my friends tossed my bag over the wall. Da can’t do that. What’s he going to say? ‘I’m sorry, but my silly friend Mr. Brown threw my umbrella into your garden’?”

  “Do you think Cas Doran wants to get a whole lot of dreamhunters coloring Founderston’s dreams?” Laura asked, frowning. “I thought Colorists were rare, not just because coloring is illegal but because it’s difficult to do.”

  “We have no idea what he means to do. But whatever it is, he’s got coverage of practically the whole central city.”

  Laura came and sat on the bed too. Rose smiled but didn’t pause in her talk. She felt that she was trying to lure some shy animal. She told Laura about the constantly replenished piles of narrow-gauge railway materials beside the border. “Ma immediately decided to take a trip to The Pinnacles, but when she made inquiries at the Tricksie Bend rangers’ station about the pass, she was told it was closed for repairs.”

  “Which would support Cas Doran’s story about the rails being used to reinforce collapsing banks.”

  “Except he said the rails were leftovers. That there was just one lot. In which case, they’ve been sitting there for two years without rusting.”

  Laura nodded.

  “Taken together with the circles on the map, the rails just seem—”

  “Yes—there’s a rail line.” Laura seemed certain. “A rail line Inland. But why? And when the pass is closed, is there just a sign saying ‘Danger. Closed for Repairs’?”

  “There’s a locked gate, apparently. A big, spiked iron gate.”

  The girls looked at each other, wide-eyed. Rose was so curious about this theoretical railway that she was practically urging Laura to go check it out right now.

  “I’ll go after Christmas,” Laura pronounced, as if she was reading her cousin’s mind. “I’ll take Nown with me, to see how he manages the gate.”

  Rose’s hands went numb, then her feet followed. For a moment she thought she might faint. She stared at her cousin, dumb. “Noun” was the word Laura had yelled at the Rainbow Opera. A monster had come running in answer to Laura’s call and had carried her away. The monster had NOWN inscribed on the back of its neck.

  After a moment Laura seemed to realize what she’d said. She glanced at Rose’s face. She looked startled and sly.

  “Your monster,” Rose said. “Whose name is Nown.”

  “He’s not a monster. He’s a—” Laura paused and pondered. “He’s a soul called into different bodies, time and again, throughout history. Bodies made of earth, or fired clay. And once of ash—or so he tells me.”

  Rose sat with her mouth hanging open. She wanted to ask why Laura was telling her this now when she’d denied it before, at the risk of Rose’s great resentment. She said, tentative, “Why did you—?”

  Laura didn’t let her finish. She seemed eager to talk, eager now to tell. “Why did I make him?”

  This wasn’t what Rose had intended to ask, but she was distracted by the question. “You made him?”

  “Yes. That’s how he comes to exist. He’s made. I said that. He’s made of sand, or earth, or fired clay, and once of ash. And I think whoever makes him has to need him very badly. And they have to give something up. When Da got on the special train last summer, and I learned he wouldn’t be at my Try, I just gave up some of my faith in him. I think I understood that, even without knowing it himself, Da meant to leave me. He meant not to be there for me, at my Try, and then not at all.”

  “Wait. What do you mean?”

  “Da jumped off the pier at Westport. Didn’t anyone tell you that?”

  “I thought it was an accident.” Rose was horrified.

  Laura shook her head. “No. And I think I knew. I thought he was letting me down, but I felt he was leaving me. I gave up my faith in him. Or rather, my faith left me. But it didn’t just blow away like smoke. I saw that rock on the railbed, the rock I just had to pick up. I think I put my lost faith into it, without knowing what it was for. And without knowing what wanting to do that was for. What being able to do that was for. Then, much later, I put the rock into Nown’s chest when I made him.”

  “Oh my God!” said Rose. To her eyes it seemed that her cousin was framed by brackets of blue light. Then black patches bloomed on Laura’s face and obliterated it altogether.Rose bent and pressed her face into the coverlet. She felt nothing—for a moment saw and heard nothing. Then her sense of touch came back, and the texture of the embroidery under her cheek. Laura was stroking the back of her neck. “Oh my God!” Rose said again, muffled.

  Laura reminded her cousin that she was an atheist.

  Rose wriggled violently, like an infant trying to avoid being dressed. Then she sat up. “So your monster doesn’t just smash things and run off with girls?”

  Laura smiled. It was one of her rare very happy smiles, which, having reached its physical limits in terms of crinkling eyes and curving lips, then seemed to go on to pump light into the air around her. She said, “No. Mostly he just does what I say, but all the time noticing the world in a way that’s entirely his own.”

  Rose opened her mouth to ask something further but was disturbed by a knock on Laura’s door. Rose’s ma put her head around it. “Rose,” Grace said, “you should come say hello to your uncle Tziga. He has to go to bed right after we’ve had dinner.”

  Rose clapped her hands to her face. She felt the heat come into her cheeks. She got up and ran downstairs. Laura and Grace came after her, talking—Rose caught snatches of their exchange. “You’ve grown an inch or so,” Grace said. “You’ll need new shirts and trousers.”

  Rose’s da and her uncle were sitting in armchairs by the window of the lightless living room. The moon was coming up over the headland at the eastern end of the beach. Rose went to kiss her uncle and first saw the changes in his appearance by moonlight—which made them somehow less terrible. She crouched by his feet, and he took her hands in his.

  Chorley said, “We’ve just been discussing Doran’s map and surplus rails.”

  “Us too,” Rose said. She glanced at Laura. “That’s what we were talking about.”

  “That’s nice,” said Grace, droll. “Now you two pairs of conspirators can get together in a pack. I almost feel
sorry for Secretary Doran.”

  4

  E FAMILY HAD SEVERAL DAYS DURING WHICH, IN THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON, THEY WERE VERY CAREFUL WITH ONE another. Rose was now keeping Laura’s secret and already felt she wouldn’t have much trouble doing so. She was hardly likely to talk about something she had such difficulty even thinking about. When she thought about Laura saying “He’s not a monster, he’s a soul,” Rose would get dizzy with astonishment.

  On Boxing Day the cousins ambled along the seafront to Farry’s. They sat at their favorite table, looking out on Main Street and its traffic of vacationers in summer finery, ladies in new hats or gowns, men either dutifully or proudly wearing Christmas present ties and tie pins. The children had new toys, dolls and dolls’ carriages, bats and balls and sailboats, but they were blotchy and fretful, still recovering from Christmas Eve sleeplessness.

  The cousins ate white chocolate and cardamom ice cream, and Rose told Laura about what she was now referring to as her “run-in with Ru Doran.” She said, “I don’t want to exaggerate how upset I was. Especially not with Mamie coming in a few days.”

  “I would have been upset too, if it was me,” Laura said.

  “I keep feeling I should have known how to handle him better. And I shouldn’t have complained to Mamie. It was Mamie who made a fuss. She’s very loyal to me.” Rose touched the high collar of her shirtwaist dress. “Anyway, the whole thing has me dressing differently.”

  “There are nice boys, Rose. You might want one of the nice ones to notice your figure.”

  “Maybe nice boys don’t notice those things,” Rose said.

  “Huh!” Laura said. “What’s the first thing you notice about a boy?”

  Rose scanned the room. The only young men in Farry’s that day were the waiters. One caught Rose’s eye and came over. “Can I get you ladies anything more?”

  “Manners,” said Rose to Laura, answering her question.

  “Manners are off today, I’m afraid,” the waiter said.

  The cousins giggled. Laura asked the waiter to bring them some lemonade.

  Rose looked sly. She asked Laura, “Do you think Sandy Mason notices your figure?”

  Laura said, “I wrote to Sandy, and he didn’t write back.” She sighed. “I hoped at least he’d get angry at me about the nightmare. I’m sure he must have known it was me. Your ma hasn’t said anything yet either.”

  “Perhaps you should say something.”

  “I can’t say sorry without making excuses.”

  “Yes, I know, you were only doing what your father told you to do.”

  “Yes.” Laura laced and unlaced her fingers. “That’s my excuse. I followed my father’s instructions. But I wanted what came with his instructions. The spell. I wanted to make myself a sandman.”

  Rose touched her brow. She could feel it coming—the dizziness, chills, a clench of disgust. It was as if her whole body wanted to shrink away from the altered reality of the world she found herself living in.

  Laura studied Rose’s face, then turned her eyes down to the tabletop. “I don’t have a figure,” she said, reverting to their earlier subject. “I think Sandy liked me only because I come from a famous family.”

  “No, Laura, he really liked you.” Rose remembered Sandy Mason’s fiery blush, the intensity of his attention when he looked at her cousin. “You should write to him again. You could ask him to visit us at Summerfort. You need all your friends, Laura.”

  Laura studied her cousin, then said, “I need people.” Cool and bland.

  “Yes,” Rose said, innocent of her own meaning, and of the fact that Laura had understood her meaning—that she needed people rather than her monster.

  The lemonade arrived, and they drank it and went back to their traditional summertime occupation of watching the world go by Farry’s big bay windows.

  That evening Grace surprised her family by announcing over tea that it was time they all heard what she had to say. Chorley was possibly the most startled of all of them. He stared at his wife with the white-eyed look of a shying horse but kept his seat.

  “Pass your father the sugar bowl,” Grace said to Rose.

  Rose handed the sugar to Chorley, who helped himself to five lumps and sat back, stirring his cup. The sugar lumps thunked, and the spoon rattled sharply.

  Laura got up, went to sit on the footstool beside her father. She took his hand and faced her aunt.

  “All right,” said Grace. Then she set her cup down and stood up.

  “Are you making a public announcement?” Rose said.

  “Hush,” Grace said to Rose. She looked at her brother-in-law. “Tziga, now that you’re not catching those horrible, distorting nightmares, you must be thinking more clearly.”

  “Yes,” Tziga said. “Though sometimes I forget what it is I’ve thought clearly.”

  “I know that. But my point is, you must be able to see now that your plan, such as it was, wasn’t a very good one.”

  “The papers didn’t publish Lazarus’s letters,” Chorley said, defending Tziga.

  Grace stamped her foot. “I don’t want to hear any of you refer to ‘Lazarus’ ever again. I might have to maintain that silly fiction in public, but I refuse to do so in my own home!”

  Laura said, “I’m sorry I overdreamed you. It’s not Da’s fault.”

  Tziga squeezed Laura’s hand. “It is my fault. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “But it’s also wrong to give a nightmare like Buried Alive to convicts to make them behave, and slave away in the Westport mine,” Laura said.

  “Yes, Laura, but is giving the St. Lazarus’s Eve patrons a nightmare about being buried alive any way to change that?” Grace said.

  “I think you’re being naïve, Ma,” Rose said.

  Grace flushed. She glared at her daughter.

  “Think of Doran’s map,” Rose said. “Think of what he’s planning to do.”

  “What is he planning to do?” Grace set her hands on her hips.

  “Use your imagination.”

  Grace rounded on Chorley. “Are you going to let your daughter talk to me like that?”

  “Rose, please be more polite to your mother.”

  “And you—” Grace went on, speaking to her husband now. “You could ask your good friend the Grand Patriarch what he’s planning to do about Doran and the Regulatory Body. Except, of course, it isn’t the Body the Grand Patriarch dislikes, it’s dreamhunters.”

  “That’s not true,” Tziga said, softly.

  “The Regulatory Body has been around for a little over ten years,” Chorley said. “Have you ever heard of any institution becoming as powerful as the Body has within such a short time? Even Christianity didn’t manage it.”

  “Napoleon?” said Rose, as though she were doing a quiz. She was ignored.

  “That’s beside the point,” Grace said. “You seem to think Doran has a plan. And you also think—rather trustingly—that the Grand Patriarch has a plan.”

  “He has vigorous suspicion,” Chorley said. “He acts on his suspicions. He hides dreamhunters who come to him for help.”

  “And how many of those ‘disappearing’ dreamhunters that you and Rose have been talking about have been disappeared by the Church rather than the Regulatory Body?” Grace said. “After all, the Church didn’t tell us where Tziga was.”

  “They weren’t sure I’d recover,” Tziga said. “And the Body didn’t tell you what had happened to me either.”

  “True,” said Grace. “And the Church did help you. I understand that you feel you owe the Grand Patriarch. And I know you’re a churchgoer—a believer. It is different for you, Tziga. But Chorley thinks he’s doing research for the Grand Patriarch. He’s taking it all very seriously. When really it’s just another one of his bloody hobbies!”

  There was a moment of silence; then Chorley dropped his teacup into its saucer, got up, and walked out.

  “Ma!” Rose said.

  Grace’s eyes glazed over with tears. “Why does
n’t anyone ever listen to me?”

  “Please don’t cry, Ma,” Rose said, distressed.

  “You’re going to start trespassing on properties in Founderston looking for clues,” Grace said to Rose, and began to sob. “Your father has got you thinking that it’s all right to break the law if it’s for a good cause.”

  Rose went to her mother and hugged her. “Well, I won’t, Ma. I’ll let Da do it.”

  “You all act as though you’ve been appointed to save the world,” Grace said, still sobbing.

  “I was only trying to mend my mistakes—mistakenly,” Tziga said, sadly.

  Laura just sat, wearing a dazzled, radiant expression.

  “There, there,” Rose said to her mother.

  “What’s so wrong with our lives anyway?” Grace said, querulous. “Why do you all have to be such damn rebels?”

  “I’m not,” said Rose.

  “It does,” said Laura. “The world does need saving. Or, at least, I think it’s the world.”

  Everyone looked at her. Then Chorley came back into the room, and everyone looked at him instead. He was carrying one of his notebooks and a pen, so vigorously dipped in ink that the fingers of his right hand were tipped brilliant scarlet. He gave the notebook to Grace and said, “If you will, dear, could you please read aloud the passages I have underlined?”

  Grace gave him a look of dread but did as she was told. She spoke softly, stammered once or twice, but read: “Rise up! Rise up! I said to rise! Crush them! Rise up and overturn everything! Find your feet and get up! Shake them all off! I said, Get up! I said, Rise up now!”

  Chorley said, “I found those within only seventy pages of bad messages from the abandoned Founderston-to-Sisters-Beach telegraph line. Sometimes there’s just the odd, plaintive ‘crush’ or ‘rise’ or ‘shake.’ ‘Plaintive’ is the right word. These are complaints, angry complaints.”