The Sandman: Book of Dreams

by Neil Gaiman

Isaac Trismegistus lived in an old dark house near Creechurch-lane. Like himself the house was a little foreign-looking. Like himself, the house appeared to know that the City was not always kind to strangers, for it had crept into a dusty yard full of shadows and dead leaves, where it hoped to be forgotten. But the Jew and the house differed in one respect, for he had not got a great stopp't clock in the middle of his forehead, forever telling the time of a long-dead afternoon.

  On the third day after Trismegistus had spoken to Mr. Newbolt a tall, thin, shabby man (who looked nothing at all) knocked on the door of Trismegistus's house. He said that his name was John Paramore and that he had come to learn magic.

  "Why?" asked Trismegistus suspiciously. "To catch the women, I suppose?"

  Then the thin, shabby man (who had looked nothing at all) smiled a long, thin smile that went up one side of his face and when he did that he looked quite different. He looked what he was--one of the slyest rogues in the City and his sharp, bright eyes had worlds of cleverness in them. "No, sir," he replied with a mix't air of modesty and complacency. "That magic I do already have. I hope, sir, that you have not heard any ill report of me? London is a wicked place--an honest man's reputation has no more wear in it than a whore's shoestrings once the City gossips have got hold of it."

  Inside the house a great staircase spiraled up into darkness and a cold wind spiraled down. Paramore glanced and, shivering a little, remarked that it was very quiet. "Why, sir!" he cried suddenly. "You are ill!"

  "I? No."

  "Indeed you are. You are as pale as wax and your eyes--! You have a fever."

  "I have no fever. It is only that I do not sleep." Trismesgistus paused. "I shall die if I do not sleep soon," he said. "But I am afraid to go to sleep. I am afraid of what I might dream."

  "Well, sir," said Paramore in a kinder tone, "if you will tell me how I may help you, I shall be glad to do so."

  So Trismegistus led Paramore to a room and he taught him two spells. One spell gave Paramore the power to see into another person's dreams, but what the other spell was for Trismegistus did not say. Trismegistus told Paramore to watch his dreams as he slept and if Paramore saw any harm coming to him in his dreams, he was to wake him up.

  Trismegistus got into bed and Paramore sat crosslegged on the floor like his Puck, and Paramore said the spell and look't into a little polished crystal.

  Trismegistus dreamt that he was in the Venetian Ghetto, in a mean and dusty little courtyard where six old Jews-- friends of his--sat silent on battered wooden thrones and one by one each caught fire. Not one of them tried to save himself and all were burnt to ashes. As the old magician watched the smoke and sparks twist into the darkening sky, he saw a recipe for plum cake writ upon one of the stars. It happened that in his dream he had a use for such a thing, and so he went to fetch a ladder to read it better. But all he found was a great fat woman with a moustache made of spiders' legs, that stank of cheese and dirty slops, and who produced, from under her skirts, pairs of rusty scissors, toasting forks, and French tweezers.

  Now this Paramore thought was very horrid and so he woke the old man up. But Trismegistus was very cross at being woken and said he had not meant that sort of dream at all. He said Paramore should watch for a tall, black castle in an airy place, guarded by a dragon and a griffin and a hippogriff and for a tall, pale man, like a king, all dress't in black with starrey eyes. These, he said, were what he feared more than anything, and he went back to sleep. He slept until morning and neither the castle nor the terrible pale king appear'd.

  The next day Paramore paid a visit to Mr. Newbolt.

  "The Jew keeps a very odd house, sir," said Paramore. "He says he has no servants."

  "Pish! Everyone has servants. Even you, John, have that saucy footman."

  "True, but I have been thinking for some time, sir, that I must get rid of Francisco. I must turn him off. I dare not for shame be seen anywhere with him. His clothes are so much better than mine. He was ever a better thief than I."

  "I daresay," said Mr. Newbolt (whose thoughts still ran on his old friend), "that it is the loss of his daughter that makes him so solitary and sad. She ran away and married a Christian--a tall, spicy fellow with rogue's eyes and no money--just such another one as yourself, John. Isaac found out their hiding place and visited her in secret and begged her to come home. But she was very proud and would not come, though by that time she knew what sort of a man she had married. Ah, but he was cruel! He gave away her petticoats and earrings and candlesticks and spoons to other women. Then one night he came in from his rovings about and made her get out of bed. 'Why?' she asked, 'Where are we going?' But he bid her be silent. They got into a coach with all that was left of their possessions and they rode away. But he kept looking back, and far away she heard the sound of riders. He made the coach stop and he pull'd her out and took a horse and made her get up behind and they rode on. But he kept looking back and all the while she could hear the sound of riders. They reach'd a black river too deep and too quick to ford and he was almost frantic to know which way to go. She begged him to tell her what he had done. But he bid her be silent and far away she heard the sound of riders. 'Why,' he said, 'you don't want to come along of me and, sure it is, I'll get on faster alone.' So he tumbled her into the quick, black water and she drowned. She had golden hair--a very rare thing for one of her race. Isaac said she put the very sun to shame. But then I thought nothing could compare with my dear Richard's smile, and I daresay there are people in the world who did not find it so very remarkable. What do brokenhearted old men know? Oh, yes, the fair-haired Jewess of Stopp't-Clock Yard, I remember her very well. She had a little daughter-- but I have forgot what became of her."

  Paramore scratched his long nose and frowned. "But how do you know this, sir?"

  "Eh?"

  "How do you know what the Jewess said to her husband at the moment of her death?"

  "Eh?" Poor Mr. Newbolt grew confus'd and unhappy, as old people do when it is prov'd to them that their wits are duller than they used to be. "Isaac told me," he said. "Why! What is that glinting on your finger, John? Has your widow given you a bright new golden ring?"

  "I found it, sir, in the Jew's garden. Caught on a rosebush."

  "You should tell him, John. Perhaps he has lost such a thing."

  But Mr. Newbolt no longer saw very well. It was not a ring at all, but only two or three golden hairs that Paramore had found, just as he had described, and had wound about his long finger.

  She looked, as they do, neither old nor young. Under different circumstances (very different circumstances) he might have thought her beautiful. In her fine, dark eyes and the curve of her cheek was displayed some Spanish or suchlike Romancy origins, but her skin was rather pale. She wore a severe black robe with a line of tiny buttons that went from throat to hem. A pair of silver spectacles swung on a long silver chain around her neck. She had two pieces of paper. She looked at the piece of paper in her right hand, but it was not what she wanted. She looked at the piece of paper in her left hand and liked it better. She put her spectacles on her nose and read, "The Lord of Dreams and Nightmares, the Prince of Stories, the Monarch of the Sleeping Marches, His Darkness Dream of the Endless." She paused and glanced over the spectacles and no amount of cold, astonished majesty on the part of the person seated on the tall, black throne would ever discompose her.

  "Well," she said, "are you?"

  The person seated on the tall, black throne agreed that he was all those terrible things and inquired, a little stiffly, who in the world she might be.

  "Doktor Estrella Silberhof. Of Heaven. That is to say the Heaven of the Children of Israel. Secretary-in-Ordinary to the Chamber of Dreams, Visions, Visitations, and Extraordinary Hauntings." She produced a quantity of letters and documents beautifully written in several ancient tongues on best-quality vellum and neatly tied with red silk ribbons, all testifying to the fact of her being who she said she was. "I wrote to you," she said
, "on September 30th. And again on October 4th. And again on October 11th. I did not receive a reply. I was forc'd to come myself. I arrived six days ago. I have waited six days for an audience. When I first came to the castle it was not my intention to trouble you. I asked to speak to your recorders, secretaries, bailiffs, magistrates, clerks, or any other of your servants bearing such like office or offices. But I was informed that no such persons are employed by you. In the interim ..."

  "I have a librarian. You may speak to him. Good day."

  "... In the interim your servants have attempted to fob me off with a weak-brained librarian, a raven named Jessamy, and a prattling fool of a white rabbit called"--she consulted the piece of paper in her right hand--"Ruthven Roscoe. I am here," she said, "about the Returns"

  "The Returns?"

  She produced a very large book beautifully bound in the palest tan-colored leather with "Memorials of Returns, September 29th, 1682 (R.C.F.)" stamped in gold letters on the spine. It contained approximately seven million names written in excruciatingly small characters with a number of entirely incomprehensible shorthand symbols by the side of each.

  "A record," she explained, "of those occupants of Heaven, those righteous dead, who on the night of September 29th left Paradise to visit the living in dreams. I have marked the place for you to see and underlined the subject's name in green ink. Simply stated, Deborah Trismegistus came from Paradise into the Dreaming on September 29th and did not return. My intention in coming here was quite simple: I wish't to compare our Memorials with your own and to discover into whose dream this young woman went. But I am told that nowhere in this realm are any such records kept."

  "Doktor Silberhof, Deborah Trismegistus is not in the Dreame-Countries."

  She smiled patiently. "No, I did not think that she was. In that case, you know, the person dreaming of her would now have been asleep for thirty-three days."

  There was a long silence.

  "I'll look into it," he said.

  In Isaac Trismegistus's bedchamber in Stopp't-Clock Yard John Paramore sat, yawning his head off and peering without enthusiasm into his polished glass.

  "I wonder who it is," he murmured, "that goes creeping about this house?"

  A little while later, he glanced into a crop of dusty, moonshiny shadows that clustered thickly in one corner. "And I wonder who it is," he observed, "behind that curtain? With two little mousey feet and ten little mousey toes."

  He studied his glass for a while. "And I wonder who it is," he continued thoughtfully, "that stands directly before me, peeping out between those little mouse fingers?" He looked up. "Hello, puss-face. What big eyes you've got."

  "Grandfather..." she said.

  "Grandfather is asleep, sweetheart. He dreams of walking in Paris-Gardens. But who is this that walks beside him, that he cannot help but catch up in his arms, who strokes his beard and who provokes him to so many loving smiles and kisses?" He gave her the glass to hold that she might see herself in it. She did not object to being taken upon his lap.

  "How cold are these hands. How cold are these feet. And what," he muttered to himself, "have you got on your arms?"

  There were two little black boxes, one tied to each arm, with leather straps wound round and round to keep them on. The first box contained a strip of paper, on which was written, WHAT THINGES ARE GOOD FOR LILY TO DREAME OF. And underneath was a very long list which began, "Breade & Jam, Treacle of Venice, Sugar'd Chesnuttes & Such Like Sweetes & Tit-bits; Ye Goode Dogge, Pepper ..." In the other box was another long list entitled, WHAT THINGES LILY MUST NOT DREAM OF. This list began, "Our enemie, Kinge Morpheus nor anie of his friends nor anie of his servants; skeletons & old bones ..."

  As he had never laid eyes on her before, he reasoned that she must have come from one of the mysterious rooms at the top of the house. He waited until she had fallen asleep and then he picked her up and carried her out onto the cold, black staircase.

  During the day the wind had brought a quantity of dead leaves into the house and now it was entertaining itself by tumbling them up and down the steps and making a queer rattling music with them.

  "And if there are no servants," he mused, "then who cares for thee? Combs thy hair like silk and makes thee smell of apples and lavender?" He climbed a little higher. "Staircases are like the bowels of a house, remarkably like--I wonder I never thought of it before--and this is the windiest, most flatulent house that ever I was in. Were I a physician, I would prescribe it three pills fortis. Kill or cure..."

  He paused at the last twist of the staircase. "Paramore, Paramore," he muttered, "you are speaking without sense or connection. What in the world is there to fear, man?"

  At the very top of the stairs stood the dead Jewess, her golden curls silver in the moonlight. A little draft made the dead leaves spin and eddy about her feet. Another shook the tiny, tear-shaped pearls in her ears, but she moved not at all.

  "Faith! You must forgive me, madam, but all these stairs have snatched my breath away. My name is Paramore--another very famous magician. And you, madam--if a man might ask--are you a Ghost or a Dream?"

  She sighed. "Are men still such fools? Am I a ghost or a dream? Lord! What manner of fool's question is that? What am I? I am her mother." And she took Lily from Paramore's arms and disappeared through a dark doorway.

  Mrs. Beaufort (the widow in whose affairs the City took such a warm interest) lived in Jerusalem-passage in Clerkenwell, a street much patronized by musicians. Whenever Mrs. Beaufort paced the length of her large, well-furnished rooms, weighing the emptiness in her arms where her little boy should have been, or peered into mirrors to discover what a childless lady look'd like, she did so to the accompaniment of the slow, sad music of the German gentleman's viola da gamba at number 24 or the melancholy airs of the Scottish harpsichord at number 21.

  Late in the afternoon of the following day a servant came to Mrs. Beaufort, saying that Mr. Paramore was below and wished to speak to her at once.

  When Paramore entered Mrs. Beaufort looked up from her needlework and frowned. "You have been drinking," she said.

  "I? No!"

  "Wenching then."

  "No, indeed!" he cried, all indignation.

  "Something then. There is a kind of riot in your face."

  "That is because I am happy."

  She turned a corner in the hem she was making before she said in a cold and jealous way, "Well then ... I am glad for you."

  "I am happy because of what I may do for you. Tell me," he said, "what you dream of--at night when you go to bed."

  She looked very coldly at him for some moments and then pulled her hand away (he was holding it).

  "Oh, I am punished!" she cried. "A hundred, hundred warnings I have had in this very room! But these ears"-- and she put up her hands as if to menace the offending ears--"would not heed them! And if, sir, I should hold myself so cheap as to submit to you, should you put it all in a poem afterward?--nail it to a post on Snow-hill for every passing fool to smirk at?"

  Paramore threw up his hands and cast his looks about him in his exasperation. "I do not mean that!" he cried.

  "Indeed? And what should I understand from all this talk of what you may do for me and going to bed?"

  He crossed his arms. "There are tears in your eyes-- which you do deserve for thinking I am so bad--and I have it in my power now to make you so happy. Only believe that I am better than that and you shall be happier yourself."

  She smiled and wept together. "That is no reason ..." she began.

  "Hush ... Tell me what you dream of."

  "Of my baby. Of my little boy."

  "Then all is well and I shall cure you of all your griefs. For Morpheus is an idle king, grown dull and foolish from the long years of security. His walls are old and crumbling. His gates are unguarded. His servants are not watchful."

  The next day Mrs. Beaufort was seen walking in St. Giles Fields, and at her side was a little boy, with hair
that was such a mass of fine curlicues and spirals that it appeared to have been written onto his head in gold and silver ink by a very expensive writing master.

  The Librarian (who was in the act of polishing his spectacles with a bit of wool) began to change. It started at the tips of his curious ears, which dissolved into fine sand. If he were at all distress'd by this sudden transformation, then he gave no sign.

  The throne room, with a musical swish, became sand and tumbled down. A raven swooping across it crumbled to sand in mid-flight. The whole dreaming world turned to sand. And when it was done, all that remained of the whole world was a quantity of sand in the Dream-king's white cupped palm. Then the Dream-king took a pair of scales that he kept for the purpose and weighed the sand and discovered that, as he suspected, he was five grains short.

  "How many?" asked Paramore.

  "Five," said Trismegistus. "They stuck to the hem of my daughter's gown when I brought her out of the Dreame-Countries, and, as you see, John, I keep them very safe, for who knows how powerful these five grains may be.... Now remember, John--'tis very important-- were you and I ever to fall asleep at the same time, then Morpheus might slip into our dreams and reach out and take hold of my Deborah and the little English boy and steal them back. While you sleep I shall say spells and watch over them, and while I sleep you shall do the same."

  "But perhaps the Dream-king might care to make a bargain with us, sir? After all, he knows us English magicians, does he not? Our brother-magicians have had dealings with him. I have heard of recipes to make a man have a particular dream."

  "He is not a king to deal with," said Trismegistus. "He is a king to spy upon, to cheat, to deceive, and to steal from--and then to fear. You and I, that have spied upon him, cheated, deceived, and stolen from him, must--for a part of every day or night--venture into his realm and how he will wish to abuse us then. So while you sleep I shall watch over you, and while I sleep you shall do the same."

  In the weeks that followed Isaac Trismegistus and John Paramore brought many dead people out of dreams, through the broken walls of the Dreame-Countries and into the waking world. They restored children to parents, parents to children, wives to husbands, husbands to wives, sweethearts to each other. Some gentlemen of the City who had insured a ship that had sunk near the Barbadoes (and who had thereby lost a large sum of money) paid Paramore five pounds to bring the captain back to life so that they might relieve their feelings by railing at him.

  For the first time in his life Paramore began to make money, but he said that it was not the money he cared for. What he did care for, he said, was that young people should not die. Surely, he said, there were saints enough in Heaven to sing the hymns, and sinners enough in Hell to keep the fires blazing brightly through all Eternity? He had heard tell, he said, that Death was lady. Strange behavior for a lady! To be so very hasty and a-grabbing after every little thing she fancied. It was high time, said John Paramore, that someone taught her better manners.