Dreamquake

by Elizabeth Knox

  “What will happen when you ask me to dig up this grave?”

  Laura laughed, wildly. “You’ll refuse me, because you can’t know what will happen. Isn’t that the rule for you?”

  Nown was silent.

  “Your free will has laws. That’s what you told me.”

  Nown said, “I think this Now is keeping promises I made to you.”

  Laura clenched her body into a tighter ball. She cried out as though he had struck her. Above her head, dulcet, clear, the glass Nown kept on with his pitiless reasoning. “I promised to do everything to save whoever you loved.”

  Laura gasped for air between sobs. The pressure of tears behind her eyes was so great she thought she might literally cry them out. She shouted at Nown, “Who is being saved? Who do I love?”

  She had often imagined Nown sighing, but this time he did and she heard it. “You know that it is difficult for me not to answer your questions, Laura. It is in my nature to answer whatever I can. So I will give relief to my nature and answer you—though I’m tired of it, tired of my routine obedience.”

  Laura looked up and saw through her boiling blur of tears that Nown was counting off the fingers on one of his hands. “Who do you love?” he said. “You love your father and your cousin, your uncle and your aunt. And you love me.”

  “I do love you!” Laura said, in the voice of someone begging for mercy.

  And still he went on, and she heard him say, “And you will love that child you’re carrying.”

  Laura bent over again. She howled like an animal. She thought, “God, let me die now. God,” she thought, “if it was God at the beginning and end of all this, in the tomb at Bethany opening Lazarus’s ears when they were stuffed with the silence of death, and, somewhere, not too long, please God, when this music finally falls silent for my cursed family. God,” Laura begged, “let me not have to choose.”

  Because Laura did feel she was being asked to choose between her friend and her future.

  Nown gathered her up again and held her while she cried, and while the jagged remnants of sobbing shook her, and when she was worn out and looking listlessly through her swollen eyelids at the blue shadows inside his body.

  Close to an hour passed that way. Finally Laura stirred and sat up and looked into her servant’s face. “When I ask you to dig up this grave, I’m afraid the world will end.”

  “But, Laura, we already know that it doesn’t.”

  It was true. They knew that an invalid would ride on the roof of a train, and convicts fleeing through a forest would look down on a bonfire on the beach like the beacon of a better world. They knew a girl would get a beautiful horse, friends would ride together down a wild river, a boy would find a spring pushing through a seam of coal on his father’s property, a drought would end, and a mother would shelter her child while an earthquake shook the scent of honeysuckle down over them. And they knew that some lost, grown child would wish so hard for salvation that he’d have a vision of his mother waiting for him at the gate to Paradise.

  “Laura,” Nown said, “you came here and waited for me so that you could ask me to dig up the grave. You didn’t need me to tell you any of this.”

  Laura nodded. He set her away from him and began to delve in the dry earth of the mound, digging quickly with his hard, transparent hands.

  “Wait,” she said. There was more to say. She had said it already, but it was one of those things that couldn’t ever be said enough. “I love you.”

  “Yes.” Nown waited, reasonable, peaceable, his dust-gloved hands poised above the crumbling rent he’d made in the piled earth. Then he set to digging again.

  The man lying in the shallow hollow in the earth looked dead, his face gray with dust over black grime, coal dust in the pores of his skin. His face was familiar. Curiosity made Laura daring. She licked her palm and ran a lock of his hair through her wet hand. His hair was grimy too but showed a trace of a true, bright red.

  “I’ve seen him before,” she said to Nown. “He was building a wall in a dream. He crept over to me and pulled a paper from his mouth. It was the bottom part of the letter Cas Doran wrote asking the ranger to follow Da. He was also the man who stopped to help that crippled convict up when they were being hunted by dogs through the forest. And I think he’s one of the convicts working on the stone bridge in The Water Diviner. And he’s one of the convicts in Convalescent One, in leg irons, standing on the causeway.”

  Nown seemed unmoved by Laura’s wonder. He only said, “Remember what I told you about the final N? You cannot end this Nown until you have first given it its voice.”

  “Have pity,” Laura said.

  “I will.”

  Everything she asked her servant to do trapped her further in what had already been done. Nown’s pity was a promise fulfilling itself over time—a long, inhuman time.

  “Here, I’ll help you,” Nown said. He took her hands and assisted her down into the shallow trench so that she perched above the body. She kicked toeholds in the wall of the grave, steadied herself, and stooped over.

  The man had his hand on the wall, his index finger curled to make a mark. Laura glimpsed the wings of the letter W beneath the hand. She turned her eyes up to her servant, tried to find his eyes in the glowing, glassy nothingness of his face. She said, “What will happen?”

  “Ask him,” Nown said.

  Laura bent to her task. She scratched an N into the wall beside the man’s hand.

  Nothing happened. No one spoke. The Place was as still as ever, a silent desert.

  Laura thought of her family, separated, trying desperately to fix things.

  She took the man’s thin wrist in her hand. It was like touching a fresh corpse. The temperature of his skin was tepid, too cool for life. She moved his hand away from the wall, so that the W was exposed. Then she used his fingertips to wipe the letter away.

  Far Inland, the compound of the Depot imploded. The buildings rushed together like matter in water pouring toward a drain. The timbers of the huts and barracks split as a slope thrust up under them, and all their bolted doors burst open.

  Greenery—ferns, trees, vines—burst like fireworks amid the splinters and billowing dust. Fireworks that froze into permanence, startled trees above gouged, wet earth. Forest birds fled shrieking from the mess and circled up over a towering tangle of metal—fifty miles of narrow-gauge rail line concertinaed into fifty yards of mangled mountain forest.

  And yet, by some miracle, this violence spared the few people there. A miracle of care and intention. When the barracks dormitories exploded, the yellow-clad bodies were momentarily cradled in huge fists of dust—dust as soft as talcum powder—then released and spilled into the tree ferns on the forest floor.

  Grace lay in the circle of Foreigner’s West, a dusty blanket thrown over her for camouflage. She was asleep, despite the lumpy ground jabbing into her hip bones.

  … the woman waited for him at the gate. He saw that her eyes were red, ruined by weeping. She stretched out a hand to him and clasped his wrist. He remembered that he was dreaming. He knew that the twilight was a landslide, and its silence his deafness.

  The woman, small, young, strong for her size, tightened her grip and hauled him toward her through the arch of flowers, through the gate—to where it was cold and someone was whistling, and someone else was angry, slamming a teacup down into its saucer.

  A fly made a tickling six-point landing on his face …

  Grace touched her face. The blowfly took off, bounced from her arm like an electrified thistledown and zoomed away. When its buzzing had faded, Grace heard a parson bird whistling above her, spitting and clanking in its characteristic mix of music and disharmony. She opened her eyes on green leaves, and the blue sky between them.

  VII

  Lazarus Hame

  1

  OSE AND MAMIE WERE HAVING BREAK-FAST WHEN THE FIRST FIGURE CAME OUT OF THE FOREST. A MAN IN YELLOW PAjamas made his weaving way through the stream below the springhouse wher
e the valley narrowed.

  Mamie got up and opened the door to get a better look.

  Another man came out of the trees. This one seemed eager. He blundered through the stream and raised his arms as if rushing to embrace someone.

  “What do you make of this?” Mamie said.

  Rose had watched the film and listened to Laura’s description of the captive dreamhunters. But these men had come from the forested foothills of the Riflemans, not appeared at the border on the avenue.

  Mamie flicked Rose an anxious look. More figures were walking down the valley. They were mostly men, but a few were women. They all seemed disoriented, then very excited. They saw the house and hurried toward it.

  “They don’t seem to be together, as such,” Mamie said.

  Rose joined her friend at the door. They waited. Several servants joined them, two footmen, one carrying a cricket bat, and a maid with a feather duster, who had seen the men from an upstairs window and now looked as though she wished she’d remained upstairs.

  There were more yellow-clad people arriving all the time.

  “I don’t like this,” Mamie said. She drew Rose inside and shut the French doors. She shot the bolts.

  As they came upon the house, the people began to babble. At first they were speaking only to themselves, rapt with relief. “This is my house,” Rose heard one cry. “I’m home!”

  “My beautiful house!”

  “It was all worth it, for this!”

  Several paused on the terrace, puffed out their chests, and gazed around them with proprietary satisfaction. Others headed straight for the front door. The footmen repelled two—then retreated inside and slammed the door. “Miss Doran! What shall we do?”

  “Don’t let them in!” Mamie looked terrified. She and Rose joined the servants gathered in the entrance hall. They listened to the voices beyond the door. Raised, contending voices. It didn’t sound like an argument; it sounded like a group of children all clamoring for attention.

  “This is my house.”

  “No. It’s mine. I built this house twenty-eight years ago.”

  “Both of my children were married out of this house. My grandchildren visit me here.”

  “What should we do?” Mamie asked the butler.

  He looked desperate.

  Rose grabbed her friend. “Let’s leave. We can get out by the back door.”

  Mamie moved immediately to do this, but Rose detained her. “I mean, we should grab what is necessary, then set off.”

  “What?” Mamie wrung her hands. “What is necessary?” She jumped when the door knocker sounded.

  “Wife?” said a voice, outside. “Is that you?”

  “Where is everyone?” said another.

  And, “Why don’t you come out? It’s such a lovely day.”

  Rose dragged Mamie upstairs. She pushed the hatbox that held the film to the back of the wardrobe in the guest bedroom. She found a sunhat, a coat, her good walking shoes. She went through Mamie’s wardrobe. She tossed a heavy coat onto the bed, and a soft bag. “Change your shoes.”

  Mamie sat down to swap her slippers for her school shoes. “Shall I take my jewelery?”

  “I don’t think they’re here to loot the house. Only to live in it.”

  “Why?” Mamie was in an agony of incomprehension.

  Rose heaved a sigh. “Your father has been dosing kidnapped dreamhunters with a dream that makes people happy and compliant. He’s filled half of Founderston with it. That’s why I’m here. Mamie, you knew something like this was going on.”

  Mamie began to cry. “But why do they think that this is their house?”

  Rose considered. “Well—I’ve had Contentment and, come to think of it, this is the house in the dream.” It was so strange. Rose realized she had seen Mamie as a middle-aged woman, and Ru as a middle-aged man. She had seen their children—either his or hers or a mix of both—turning cartwheels and carrying canoe paddles and hurrying indoors for a breakfast of eels they’d caught the day before.

  “Please pull yourself together,” Rose said to her friend. “This is frightening, I agree, but I’ve been living with alarms for some time now, and do you see me carrying on?”

  Mamie made an effort. She picked up her coat and bag and followed Rose to the kitchen, where Rose rifled the cupboards and drawers for cans of fruit, a can opener, cookies, ginger beer, candy, matches. She stuffed their bags and lifted them to test their weight.

  Mamie jumped and cowered at every noise. But the noise was only voices and the door knocker. The dreamhunters were puzzled at not being let into their own house, but they were in too good a mood to force doors or break windows.

  Rose checked the servants’ entrance. There was no one in sight. She went back to Mamie, gave her a bag to carry, and led her away from the house.

  2

  AURA AND THE BURIED MAN WERE IN A FOREST OF TEA TREES. THE SEA WAS VISIBLE AS BRIGHTNESS DOWNHILL through the tangled black trunks. As the minutes passed, a bird dared to speak up again. “Peep?” it said—perhaps asking some other bird, “Did you notice that? What was that?” “Peep?” it went, each time a little bolder, till it was answered and the whole hillside began to gossip.

  The man sat with dry dust smoking away from his hair and clothes in the slight breeze. He turned his head slowly to face Laura, moving like someone half frozen and very depleted. He whispered, “Why are you just sitting there?” Then, “Why aren’t you running away?”

  Laura searched her pockets, found her remaining apple, and offered it to him. His hand came out, tentative, then snatched. He hunched and bit into the fruit, then gave a little grunt which seemed to say that, although the food pleased him, he’d rather not let himself in for the possibility of being pleased again. He gobbled the apple and wiped his fingers on his shirt.

  “I don’t know any way over the Rifleman,” Laura said. “Except the rail bridge. It’s best crossed in daylight. So we should set out now.”

  He raised his head again and peered at her, suspicious.

  “After that we can follow the coast. We can be at Sisters Beach in a day and a half.” Laura got up and removed Sandy’s coat, which Nown had asked her to put on over her own. He’d been right to do that. The slippers and trousers and scarf and knitted hat had all vanished with the Place. So had Nown. Nothing cataclysmic had happened at the grave. Nown had only gone more transparent, till he wasn’t there. The beige grasslands and ashy barrier of The Pinnacles vanished, and the tea trees came, in a close crowd, and stood like dark spirits around them, not quite still, a sea breeze sieving through their aromatic leaves.

  Laura gave the man Sandy’s coat.

  He got up, with difficulty, and put it on.

  Laura saw that his feet were wrapped with strips of cloth torn from the bottoms of his trousers. His shirt was blue cotton, a work shirt, but the ragged trousers were printed with prison arrows. He covered himself up with the coat.

  Laura pulled out a lemonade bottle and let him have the last of its contents. “We’ll need the bottle for water,” she said. “You can carry it.”

  She set off toward the sea, without waiting to see whether he’d follow her.

  3

  HORTLY AFTER LEAVING THE VILLAGE OF DOORHANDLE, THE SISTERS BEACH COACH PULLED UP FOR SOMEONE WHO STOOD in the road, both arms raised, a fan of ten-dollar bills flourished in one fist. Naturally the driver let the woman on.

  It was not quite the low season, but still the coach had plenty of room to take on another passenger. The other travelers made a few rearrangements to accommodate the woman. She crammed herself into a corner and sat biting her fist and staring out the window as the coach went on up the Rifleman Pass.

  There was mist on the summit. Dark, lumpish shapes loomed at the roadside, the stumps of trees from a forest burned off years before, and limestone outcrops.

  The woman, though at first despondent, eventually seemed to be taking a great interest in the view.

  Finally one of her fellow travelers
asked her, “Is this the first time you’ve been through the Pass?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you—forgive me if I’m wrong, and I must be—the dreamhunter Grace Tiebold? You do look like her.”

  “I am Grace Tiebold.”

  The passengers exchanged looks. “But how?” one said, for they all knew that any dreamhunters attempting to cross the Rifleman Pass on the Sisters Beach stagecoach would find themselves falling from a suddenly immaterial coach onto the border trail of the Place.

  “How can you be here, Mrs. Tiebold? We’re beyond the border.”

  “The Place has gone,” Grace Tiebold said. “It just went.”

  4

  AURA DIDN’T RELAX UNTIL THEY HAD CROSSED THE RAIL BRIDGE OVER THE RIFLEMAN AND CLIMBED THE slope to the tunnel mouth. It wasn’t a long tunnel. When she looked through it, the far opening appeared the size of one of her own fists. Still, she didn’t like to venture into it. She turned to the man, who was limping behind her. He stopped and stood at some distance from her.

  She called out to him. “I don’t think either of us is in a fit state to have to run.” She wanted to complain that this did concern him too, and why should she have to be the leader? She gestured at him to join her.

  He came up, reluctantly, and peered into the tunnel.

  Laura saw that he was as pale as ever, and slick with sweat. His shirt was open, and she could have counted all his ribs.

  “We can go over the headland,” she said. “It takes longer, but we can just creep along.”

  “This is your stamping ground,” he said. “Lead on.”

  “I’ll need a leg up,” she said, and went to the side of the buttressed tunnel mouth to show him where they’d have to climb.

  It was a struggle, but eventually they both managed the steep part and got into the scrub. From the top of the headland, Laura pointed out the beach where there was a fresh stream. “No more than two hours,” she promised. “We’ll rest there.”