The Book of Dreams

by O. R. Melling

  Regardless of the mistake Fingal had made, Dana was thrilled.

  “You’ve an Irish accent,” Tim said to Dana. He turned to the other Irishman in his crew. “Well, Boots, it’s either my dream or yours.”

  Boots was well over six feet with a shock of yellow hair and a genial air of disorder. The youngest member of the crew, he was also the untidiest, managing to look even more disheveled than the rest.

  “Can I not even get away from you lot when I’m havin’ a kip?” he responded.

  “You’re both barmy,” said George mildly. “It’s not my form to fall asleep on watch. I must be dreaming wide awake.”

  The other men didn’t argue the point. Tall and thin, George was a former English army man, and meticulous about his work and duties.

  “Mass hallucination?” Boots suggested.

  “Saltwater in the rations?” Tim worried.

  Trondur continued to stare at the visitors without speaking. Big and burly, he had the hands of an artisan. He looked like a Norse god with his curls of chestnut hair and bushy beard. From an ancient Faroese family, he was a quiet man, shy to speak English.

  “Strange things happen at sea,” he said at last, “but I think they are not so much problem.”

  “Right then,” Tim decided, nodding to the newcomers. “We’ll play this out and treat you as guests. Do please join us for supper. You can tell us your story and we’ll tell you ours. The past week has been pretty dull. Dream or hallucination, we could do with the diversion.”

  The crew was pleased with the captain’s decision. After braving gales, storms, and rogue waves in their perilous voyage from Iceland to Greenland, the men had found the journey to Labrador cruelly monotonous. Winds from the south along with calms and pea-soup fogs had slowed them to a crawl. With nothing to do and nothing to see, they were badly in need of some entertainment.

  While the meal was being prepared, Jean and Dana conferred.

  “Do you think the giant come back?” Jean said.

  “He’s got to,” Dana pointed out. “Right boat or not, wouldn’t he have to bring us home?”

  “We don’t ask him this. Only to help us find the book.” Jean touched his head. “He’s not too smart, eh?”

  Despite their dilemma, neither could stay worried, for they were soon immersed in the Brendan voyage. The crew gave them sweaters, scarves, and mitts of oiled wool. These helped to ease the wet chill of the Atlantic. Sitting on damp sheepskins, they shared a night picnic, illumined by the ship’s lantern high on the mast. All around them heaved the dark swell of the ocean. Overhead spread a vast panoply of stars. Though much of the larder had long been consumed, the offerings of food included smoked sausage and smoked beef with the green mold scraped off, hazelnuts, oat cereal, and the last of a truckle of cheese. There was also dried whale meat and blubber brought on board by Trondur. He hunted at sea, providing them with fish and fulmar.

  Dana ate only the nuts and cheese, but Jean was ready to try everything, including a slice of strong-smelling blubber.

  “Is good,” Trondur assured him. “Very good.”

  Jean almost gagged. Rubber soaked in machine oil!

  Hot drinks finished off the meal, a choice of beef extract, black tea or coffee, along with dessert. The “Skipper’s Special” was a tasty sweet mush of stewed apricots, biscuits, and jam.

  • • •

  Jean and Dana leaned against the gunwales, sipping their drinks. They were getting used to the odd feel of the boat. Despite the creaks and the groaning of wood, the overall quiet was profound. The leather muffled the slap of wave against hull. Like a living creature, the boat flexed with the water, and its sides pumped in and out, as if it were breathing. Cupped inside, they felt curiously disembodied, like Jonah swallowed by a whale.

  “Moi, I have a strange canot also,” Jean said to the men, looking around with admiration. “How do you make her?”

  “Heart of oak, bark of ash,” Tim said proudly.

  “And forty-nine oxhides to cover the frame,” George added, “soaked in oak-bark liquor and coated with wool grease, then hand-stitched together. Our fingers ached for weeks.”

  “We’re depending on two things to stay alive,” Tim explained, “our sailing skills and the Brendan’s ability to survive at sea. In many ways it was easier for the original Brendan. For one thing, the weather was milder at that time. But more importantly, the saint and his monks were backed by generations of knowledge and experience in the building and sailing of skin boats.”

  Even as they talked, they heard the low roar of an airplane overhead. It was disorienting to be on an ancient boat out in the ocean with jet planes flying by.

  “We are proving that Brendan and his sailor-monks could have done this,” Tim insisted. “It’s no longer a fairy tale recorded in an old book. Once we cast off in our Brendan, we became like Saint Brendan himself. At the mercy of wind and weather, we have delivered ourselves into the hands of Fate, like the perigrinni of old.”

  “Perigrinni?” said Jean. “What is this word?”

  “Pilgrims. People who set out on a journey for sacred reasons. Usually they’re looking for something special or holy, like the Grail or the Isles of the Blessed.”

  “Ah oui, je comprends. This is you, also, non?” he said to Dana. “You are La Pèlerine.”

  Dana liked the title.

  The crew wanted to hear their story. Dana and Jean took turns relating it. As the tale of the quest for the Book of Dreams unfolded, the men were enthralled to hear of fairy queens and portals, the loup-garou and la chassegalerie, the Cree Old Man and the Medicine Lodge, the Cailleach and Fingal, the Giant.

  “If this is a dream, someone here’s got one hell of an imagination,” said Boots. “Who’s been boning up on Canadian folklore?”

  Both George and Trondur shrugged. It wasn’t them.

  Tim regarded his visitors thoughtfully. He wasn’t a superstitious man but he was a visionary, someone who was willing to go further than most in thought and action.

  “If this is a dream,” he said quietly, “it’s what Carl Jung calls a Big Dream. We appear to have crossed paths in time and space, in a netherworld between realities. I can see why we’ve met. Both of us are questing between Ireland and Canada. I believe that each of us is born to do something special in our lives and it’s our mission to find out what that thing might be. I was meant to go on this voyage. I’ve thought about it and planned it since the first time I read the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. I guess in a way that old manuscript was the book of my dream.”

  Dana’s mind was racing. What he said made sense to her. She was about to ask his advice about her own mission when George suddenly sat up, alert.

  “We’re moving faster!”

  “Look lively,” said the skipper.

  The men were up in an instant and moving quickly. The sailing master was right. They were no longer traveling a steady course through quiet waters. The boat was speeding along at a clip. The wind had risen and the sea was choppy.

  Crack-crack-crack.

  “Damn! What’s that?” cried Boots.

  George scurried up the mast with a flashlight to train it on the water.

  “Hey, I do believe it’s ice!” he shouted. “We’re running into ice!”

  The boat was hitting lumps of ice at speed. They rattled and crackled against the hull like ice cubes in a glass.

  “Drop the sails!” Tim ordered. “We could be knocked to pieces! Our only chance is to stop!”

  The crew worked frantically to lower the sails, but the boat was still speeding. George climbed higher up the mast and shone the flashlight over the water.

  They were surrounded! Caught in a floe of icebergs! The grotesque sculptures were of every size and shape. They muttered and grumbled as they rubbed against each other on the waves. It was like a herd of sea monsters growling at the boat, out there in the cold night.

  “This ice shouldn’t be here,” Tim swore. “I know the ice chart by heart.�
� Then a slow horror dawned. “If a freak gale swept over the main sheet along Labrador, it could crack the whole thing open!”

  Jean and Dana, who were doing their best to keep out of the crew’s way, exchanged glances.

  “Crowley?” Jean muttered.

  “Could be,” Dana said anxiously. “Didn’t Grandfather say he could call up storm demons?”

  “Big one dead ahead!” George cried.

  Tim pulled the tiller as far as it would go to steer around the huge chunk, but no luck. Crash. It was like hitting concrete. Everyone staggered with the shock. Now a series in succession. Thump! Thump! Thump! A quick battering and the boat spun away. Worse loomed directly in front of them. A berg twice the size of the boat rolled in the water like a hippopotamus.

  “Hang on tight!” Tim roared.

  As they struck head-on, the boat tremored with the impact. George was flung off the mast. Hanging on to the halyard and dangling in midair, he was in danger of being crushed between the ice and the boat.

  Trondur rushed to help him down.

  Crash!

  Another collision. The loud protest of wood.

  Could the Brendan survive this punishment?

  There was no escape. They were hemmed in by pack ice, mile after mile, floe after floe, driven toward them by gale and current. There was nothing they could do but fend off the attack as best they could, using wooden poles and their own hands and feet.

  On the roof of the shelter, arm around the mainmast for support, George acted as lookout.

  “Two on the port bow! Another to the starboard side! Mind the gap!”

  Above all else, the Brendan had to avoid being caught when the ice bumped together. The boat would burst like a ripe plum.

  For an interminable time, they wove in and out of the floes, clattering over tabletops of ice or scraping along the sides. As Tim said himself, it was “a cross between bumper cars and a country square dance.”

  Sick with worry, gazing out at the ice, Dana suddenly saw Crowley’s features leering at her.

  Then the squall struck.

  Down came freezing rain and hailstones, cracking like bullets off the tarpaulins. The water rose ominously. Waves began to thrash and pound the boat. Deep troughs would threaten to swallow them only to toss them over the crests in a welter of foam. The full strength of the Atlantic was being hurled against them.

  Veterans of sea storms, the crew reacted calmly and efficiently. They pulled on foul-weather gear and threw spare oilskins to Dana and Jean. With hoods drawn over their faces like cowls, all of them looked like monks.

  “Trondur, handle the headsail sheets!” the skipper shouted. “Boots, take the mainsail and look after the leeboards. George, you’re the best helmsman, take over steering. I’ll handle the pilotage. This is going to be tricky.”

  The wind was rising rapidly. So, too, were the waves. With a thunderous roar, a solid sheet of water crashed into the boat. Water water everywhere. The bilge was filled to the brim. The cabins were awash. They were too low in the sea. Water lapped over the gunwales, sloshing back and forth in the boat. As the bilge pump squirted it back into the ocean, Jean and Dana bailed with pots and saucepans. No one had to tell them that survival time in freezing water was five minutes or less. They could feel the threat of death lurking in the night.

  Tim stood near Dana, eyes red with exhaustion and the sting of salt spray. His voice echoed a moment of despair.

  “What on earth are we doing out here in this lonely half-frozen part of the Atlantic?”

  “Following a dream,” she said.

  He managed a smile and nodded. “Times like this you really have but one choice. Whatever will happen will happen, so you either face it as a coward, or you face it as a hero. It’s up to you.”

  The sinister dance with the ice went on for hours. Yet despite the battering and the drenching rain, the deadly cold and numbing fatigue, the little boat held. Three things kept them alive. Along with the Brendan’s ability to survive at sea and the skill of its sailors, there was a third factor. Courage.

  Then their luck ran out.

  And the worst that could happen did happen.

  The Brendan was trapped between two icebergs as if caught in a vise. The boat shuddered like a wounded animal. Everyone rushed to push the boat free. Too late. The damage was already done. Seawater swirled in the bottom of the boat.

  “We’ve sprung a leak!” George cried.

  Trondur agreed. His voice echoed doom. “I think stitching is broken by ice. Water in stern of Brendan is not so much problem. Water in bow is big problem.”

  Tim looked around frantically. “It could be anywhere! We won’t find it in the dark.”

  Climbing under the protective plastic that sheltered the radio, he put in a call to the Canadian Coast Guard. In calm terse tones he warned them to stand by for a Mayday call. But they all knew the truth. If they went down, no one could reach them in time.

  “We’ll have to work the pump and wait for first light,” he announced. “Then we find the tear and fix it.”

  No one groaned at the thought of more work. No one questioned how they could make repairs while the boat was still in the water. Whatever would happen, would happen.

  Through the last hours of the night, while the storm raged around them, they worked the bilge pumps. Two thousand strokes per hour were needed to keep the boat afloat. Though they were all worn out from fighting the storm and the ice, they took turns.

  Dana did her share. Holding her breath, she squirmed through the dark wet tunnel of tarpaulin to reach the handle of the pump. They had told her to keep turning till her arm got sore, then switch hands. Already aching with tiredness before she began, she managed to follow instructions. The mechanical motion rocked her back and forth. Though wet and frozen with cold, she soon worked up a sweat. Her oilskins were discarded. The monotony of the action was almost as painful as the wear on her muscles. She counted her portion of strokes to help her keep going. No matter how bad it got, she wouldn’t give up. She knew what the crew couldn’t know: that she was to blame. The ice and the storm had been created because of her.

  At last her turn was done. When she crawled out of the space, the men gave her a cheer. Eyes bleary, exhausted, she staggered to her feet.

  “What’s that?” Boots called from the bow. “Do you hear it?”

  Something large was moving through the water toward them.

  Dana’s heart sank. What would Crowley send now? They couldn’t take much more.

  Then it emerged, through the hail and the waves, the big familiar shape of Fingal the Giant.

  “Ahoy, Brendan!” he called.

  “Ahoy!” Tim called back.

  “Got the wrong boat!” Fingal shouted. His round face hung over them like a friendly moon. “The girlfriend set me right. Got to go further back in time. So if ye don’t mind, I’ll just take my little friends, thank ye kindly.”

  Dana turned to Tim and the rest of the crew. They were long past questioning what was happening around them. Red-eyed and spent, they were barely managing to keep on their feet.

  “It’s almost dawn,” she told them. “When the light comes and the weather lets up, you’ll find the leak.”

  “We don’t go!” Jean protested. “Like rats from a ship who sink!”

  “We must,” Dana argued. “Crowley sent the ice and the storm. He’s after me, not them. They won’t be safe till we leave.”

  Jean did not look happy. It was his turn on the pump. The Brendan needed the extra hands to work it.

  “They’ll be okay,” Dana insisted. “I remember this part of the story. They find where it’s torn and they mend it in the water. They survive and the boat survives. But maybe they won’t if we stay!”

  Though he still wasn’t happy, Jean accepted her logic. Shaking hands with the men, he wished them all the best and safe home.

  Dana attempted to reassure them as she said good-bye.

  “The storm will stop as soon as we go. I’m
sorry we brought you bad luck. Things’ll get better. I can tell you this, honestly, I know all of you as heroes.”

  Their haggard faces lit up. Hope would keep them going.

  • • •

  Fingal scooped up Jean and Dana and popped them into his pocket. With a final wave, he strode away, leaving the Brendan behind in the mists.

  Dana could see the guilt on Jean’s face.

  “They’ll make it,” she assured him. “At the end of the book, the Newfoundlanders threw them a céilí, a big party that went on all night.”

  The two snuggled inside Fingal’s pocket. After the cold and wet of the boat, it was gloriously dry and warm. Outside, the gale howled.

  “Will Crowley fight the giant?” Jean wondered.

  It wasn’t long before his question was answered.

  “Hould on to yer britches,” Fingal called to them suddenly, “here comes trouble!”

  A violent lurch followed his words. The giant was under attack. The two scrambled to look out. As Dana had predicted, the storm had left the Brendan to pursue her instead. Now it raged against Fingal. The waves rose in a towering frenzy to match his size, then collapsed against him with vicious intent. Spume erupted like geysers. There was no doubt about who or what was driving the storm. Crowley’s visage screeched in the squall.

  “No!” screamed Dana.

  Fingal floundered. His eyes were blinded by water and he was thrown off balance. Arms flailing in the foam, he tried to tread water, but the waves pushed him under with malicious glee. It was a fight to the death. Though he struggled manfully, even the giant knew that the storm was killing him.