Dreamshade
He found himself in a room where the sunlight, streaming in through the spaces between the slats and the ruptured shutter, provided enough illumination to render its furnishings in dim but clear detail. As it happened, the furnishings were few and decrepit, and if that fact alone wasn’t enough to convince the boy that the place was deserted, then the atmosphere of disuse certainly did: the floorboards were bare, the walls stripped and stained; an empty iron bucket sat upon a neglected hearth, where the grate, devoid of one leg, stooped down to a pile of ash as though half-sunken into it. By way of a seating arrangement, there was only one solitary stool; by way of home comforts, nothing.
But the room was not without its fascinations, foremost of which was the picture hanging above the mantle. It was large, possibly poster-sized, and if it had once been mounted behind glass, then that glass had long since fallen from its doughty frame. The image itself was faded, the design confused by mildewy marks and creases. But what it depicted was clear enough: a crescent, in essence; the shape was ragged, both by intent and neglect, but it was a definite crescent, with its cusps pointing downwards and its arc sketchy but fat at the crown. Drawing closer, Benjamin could see that there were symbols on the picture: carets, wavy lines, crosses, arrows and asterisks, all dotted about with no discernible pattern, save that most of the wavy lines were outside the crescent and everything else was within it. There was writing there, too, usually near one or a cluster of the symbols; closer examination proved that it was a Roman script, highly ornamental, but nevertheless legible: at the tip of the rightward cusp Benjamin found an asterisk, supplemented with the word ‘Niamago’. Opposite, on the leftward cusp, another asterisk, and two words this time: ‘Id Carnifor’. Between them, upon a small diamond with arrows radiating out from it, was ‘Ruadahann’. And above, at the centre of the whole arrangement, there was written, in an extravagant, decorative example of calligraphy: Amar Imaga.
“It’s a map,” said Benjamin.
“Uh-huh,” said Lilac. “But don't get carried away with it. It’s far from exact.” She pointed out a series of arrows, bolder than the rest, that were also tagged with numbers. “Our friend has been trying to get some nous on the fluctuations. Nothing in the Amar Imaga is fixed, remember.”
He remembered that it was nothing like the map Lilac had used to bring him here.
“It’s interesting, though,” the lady said, before sidling off to some other part of the room. “Beautiful craftsmanship.”
But it wasn’t the craftsmanship that Benjamin found most intriguing, nor even the map itself; rather, it was the idea that the land - no, continent - it depicted should exist as such a perfect shape. He knew a little about geology, and was aware that such processes as erosion and continental drift could not possibly produce this sort of symmetry and structure. Perhaps, as Lilac had claimed, it wasn’t a true representation of the landscape at all; maybe it was something more along the lines of the famous map of the London underground, whose topography, though wrong, nevertheless served its purpose well in guiding the harried traveller. But correct or not, it remained a treasure of scintillating curiosities, particularly in the area where the crescent was at its thickest: here, around which the cartographer’s work had become scribbly and uncertain - whether it was a portrayal of mist or ignorance, the boy couldn’t tell - he discovered more symbols, like tiny upside-down egg shapes with black ovals inside, and the word ‘Prestadomus’. To the left of this hazy patch were two more asterisks, one complemented with ‘Dis’, and the other, lower down, appended with what looked like ‘Leng’. To the right, there was only one other place visible (and places they were, he was sure of it) which was called ‘Nemmasin’. There were other asterisks about, some with names that he couldn’t discern, some with no names at all. Niamago and Id Carnifor were, he noticed, the only coastal locations.
When he was finished with perusing the map, he went over to the next most fascinating thing in the room: a small desk, heaped with books, papers and dust, which only really came to his attention when Lilac was using the door beside it to venture out to what was presumably the hallway. The desk itself was nothing special; ramshackle and age-worn, a creak given shape. The books were more beguiling, but they were so thick with dust that they seemed somehow infested, and Benjamin didn’t want to pick them up (he also had the notion that if he were to offer even the tiniest touch to one, it would crumble to powder). The papers, however, were immediately captivating: like the map, they bore a script that was legible to him when not muddied with dirt, creases and shadow. The only difference here was that the handwriting was exactly that, with no calligraphic flourishes at all.
Benjamin offered a little puff of air to the topmost sheet, loosening away some of the dust. Then he began to read:
...speaks of blooms and eidola. I will have nothing to do with it, come whatever appeal. Alexander rejoices at it, all the time, even when he is talking of ‘abomination’. He sees no contradiction in it, rather he sees no contradiction in HIMSELF. I think he is mad, or wicked, but what if he is right? He jokes that we cannot sin in dreams, yet deems Parment a heathen for referring to his blooms as fetches...
Fairly nonsensical stuff, then, assuming he’d read it correctly. After this there were a few more paragraphs made illegible by stains and scribbles - though he could still make out the odd reference to these ‘blooms and eidola’things - and then there was one final segment, located in what looked to be the second to last paragraph, which was as clear the first:
...I cannot be content with apports forever. I know this, and so does Alexander. He is convinced I will give in and form for myself the bloom of my dreams, but I’ve seen the horrors there. If the art were perfected, would I think different? Yes...
This was followed by two more lines, utterly unreadable, which ended with:
...a promise of secrets, which he calls revelations. But I will not give in to Alexander Gogmagog. Not ever.
Gogmagog. He’d heard that name before, back at the pier; a name that had, even then, seemed oddly familiar, though where he had heard it prior to that he didn’t know. And now he had a first name to go with it as well. But who was he?
“Looks like we won’t be able to go upstairs,” called Lilac from the hallway, and Benjamin remembered the hints she’d dropped concerning this Gogmagog: that he was a dreamshader, and perhaps the greatest example of such (“...he’s probably talked you up as being the better of Gogmagog, and the rabble want their hero...”); that he was closely involved with a certain phragodol (“...that Gogmagog atrocity Leopold...”); that he was someone to be feared (“...never mind - it’s not your worry...”). Eager to find out if any of the other papers on the desk had much else to say about this strange and elusive character, Benjamin carefully brushed the topmost sheet aside with his fingertips, uncovering the one beneath. It turned out to be no more legible than the one he had just read, despite there being a dust-free imprint as left by its predecessor. The colour of the ink was slightly different also - fresher, and a little bolder - which led him to believe that it must have been written at a date later than the first.
...what happened to them is that they went. All of them, or all that I knew, anyhow. Isa Raphael went. So did Li Enlai, Antonio Pella, and Robert Kraczkicz. We mustn’t forget Alexander Thorn, either. Some might dispute his inclusion, but I won’t...
There was more, but an interruption from Lilac - “Boy, I think you’ll want see this,” she cried from somewhere else in the house - saw to it that he didn’t have a chance to study further. The papers were interesting, but the summons took precedence in that it promised fresh curiosities, and he departed the room without lingering. In the hallway, he found a collapsed staircase (only three stairs remained intact, descending from the landing into empty space) and, comically enough, a broken toilet bowl, resting upon a stack of broken stairs like some peculiar pyre-piece. Though the light was murkier out here, with the only source being the small pane in the front door, the entrance
to the room opposite was nevertheless visible, and the route towards it free of any shadow-obscured hazard. The door to this other room was ajar, and he espied Lilac even before he stepped over the threshold. “He wasn’t just a scholar,” whispered the lady as the boy entered. “It looks as if our absent friend was a collector as well.”
Again, there was not as much light in this room as there had been in the first, largely because the shutters here were still intact. But his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and he was able to make out the surrounding features without difficulty. Essentially, the room should have been a dining area - there was a large table in the centre, a few musty chairs, a doorless, decrepit wall-cabinet - but it was evident from the amount of paraphernalia heaped about the place that it had probably lost its purpose even before the house had become deserted. The room, in fact, was a trove; the tabletop was covered with objects - bottles, orbs, rods, stones - as was the wall-cabinet. Even the seats of the chairs were hoarded with clutter. But why? After all, if the pieces were valuable, then the owner would have taken them when he departed, wouldn’t he? Unless his departure had been of the permanent sort, in which case one had to wonder why some grieving relative or lamenting friend hadn’t seen to it that the collection had gone to a safer place.
He walked over to the nearest corner of the table, where his eye had been caught by a cylindrical item which appeared to be carved out of marble. There was some kind of label underneath it, or tag, but if there was anything written on it then it was hidden by the item itself. If the boy had not been hindered by the idea that he was still a trespasser (for he was all too aware that an unoccupied house wasn’t necessarily an ownerless one) then he would have picked the object up without hesitation; but it required glance at Lilac, and a nod of her head in return - an unspoken contract of shared responsibility, in other words - before he allowed his fingertips to make contact with it.
As soon as he did so, images swam into his mind; of shining faces all smiling, and a wand that could mark the moon. He grinned. “It’s a dream,” he said. “A great dream.” He took his hand away and let his fingers settle on another item: a ball this time, made apparently of glass, with a large, rough gouge on the surface. Once more there came a dream, startlingly clear, and in this one he found himself in a field, painting mirages upon the horizon. “Yes,” he said, in a hushed tone. It was as vivid as the dream he’d seen when he had touched the soap at Lilac’s place, but with much more in the way of meaning: “A dream of dreams,” he continued, the smile wavering a little. “It’s a dream about ... wishes.”
Afterwards, he tried another object. “Loneliness,” he murmured, the smile lost. Then another; the smile returned, but he did not say anything.
“So what do you think?” asked Lilac, assuming that Benjamin’s turn to taciturnity meant that he was finished with his testing.
“They’re all great dreams,” the boy said, stepping back from the table to appraise its contents as a whole. “Very clear as well.”
“That’s nothing unusual.”
“Maybe -” he held his palms out and shrugged. “Maybe whoever lived here just liked to collect these really pure dreams. Well, the things that were made from them, anyway.”
“But to see them, he’d have to have been a dreamshader.”
“Yeah,” said Benjamin. Then, just as he was about to say something more, he stopped. “Hang on,” he exclaimed, pulling the emberquick out of his pocket. “I think ... I’ve got an idea.”
The emberquick’s song was now so strong that he felt almost as if he could understand it. And he found, as suspected, that it was at its strongest when aimed at one precise place in the room. “It’s a lullaby,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “The first one my mum sang to me. I can feel her breaths on my face.” He walked towards the wall-cabinet, the shining stone held out ahead of him. “Yes, it’s here. It’s definitely here.”
Lilac made no comment. The purpose of their quest was about to be unveiled, it seemed, and she did not want to disturb the boy with some glib remark. Noticing that the silf was beginning to fidget, she patted her satchel, as quietly and as softly as she could.
In the meantime, Benjamin studied the cabinet in front of him, the fingers of his free hand running lightly over certain of the articles stacked there. Finally, he turned to his companion: “Here,” he said, flicking the emberquick over to her. “You’ll have to hold this. I need to be sure.”
“About what?” asked Lilac, pocketing the crystal.
The boy grinned. He reached out and took something from one of the shelves in the cabinet. It was - at least, it looked to be - a dark, glassy orb, small and hollow, with a jagged hole in the top, suggesting a gourd that had lost its neck. “I was right,” he said, holding the object between his cupped palms like a divine relic. His gaze, appropriately enough, would have appeared reverential had it not been for the indulgent smile underlining it.
“What is it?”
“My first great dream,” he replied. “And this is what was made from it.”
16
It was all there: the fireworks, his sorcery, the limitless sky and the stars so far and unreachable. As vivid now as it had ever been, it struck his mind with all the brilliance of an epiphany. It didn't matter that it was old. To see it anew was every bit as glorious as seeing it for the first time.
Yes, there had been other great dreams in his life. Offhand, he could remember two: one about a book whose words had scampered away from the pages and hidden themselves all around his house (from which he’d awoken with the strange idea that nothing was real unless it could be described) and another involving a number of fat women emerging from a lake, who fell to squabbling over whom should wear the lake itself as a garment (which had left him with the even stranger idea that there should be absolutely nothing wrong with the notion that people could dress themselves with water). But neither were possessed of such evocative power as this, the first, where his caperings in that resplendent gulf had led him to understand so much about his place in the world at large. Having rediscovered it to the tune that his mother had hummed to him in his cradle - the very same tune which the emberquick had finally resolved itself into before he flipped it back to Lilac - only compounded the emotion of the moment. He guessed that this was what he would feel like if, as an old man, he was able to return to the sunniest day of his childhood.
“You okay?” asked Lilac, from what seemed a thousand miles away.
“Oh yeah,” said Benjamin, as though emerging from a daze. Letting go of the dream a little, he took a moment to study the surface of his prize, observing the smoky glass and how it glittered from within, as if a million tiny stars had been caught by its casting. He pondered as to how his dream could have forged such a thing, and what possible relationship, be it symbolic or physical, might exist between a broken gourd and a vision of fire-laced eternity; but there was nothing, apart from a vague idea that the glittering was perhaps more akin to a twinkling, and that the dimness of the glass might be somewhat alike to a dark and crystalline sky.
Lilac sidled closer. “So this is what we came for, eh?” she said, gazing intently at the gourd. “A neckless bottle. You know, if I had more of a mindermirf on me, I’d be inclined to say you could pour jewellery out of it.”
“Guess so,” the boy mumbled.
“It’s amazing, though; I never thought you people could do that.”
“Do what?”
She pointed to the gourd. “Divine things by emberquick. Because that’s what it amounts to, right?”
Benjamin nodded, then turned to Lilac with an uncertain frown on his face. “You think it’d be okay to keep it?”
“Can’t see why not.”
The boy didn’t respond, preferring to look down at the gourd, which he cradled carefully in his hands.
“It’s not like we’d be stealing,” said Lilac. “I mean, look around you. Whoever left this place left everything in it at the mercy of whoever comes on by. It all remains
here for a reason, child - the reason being that none of it was important enough to keep.”
“Yeah,” said Benjamin, clearly not convinced, but unwilling to part with this strange and wondrous object. In truth, it didn’t feel like he was stealing anyway - but at the same time, it didn’t seem proper that he should simply just take it. Still, Lilac had said enough to make up his mind for him. He pocketed the gourd, and let settle the wistful smile of someone who knew what he was doing was right, even though it didn’t quite feel like it..
“Excellent,” chirped Lilac. “And now -” she brought her hands briskly to her hips and quickly swept the place with her gaze “- I think it’s time we went, yes?”
Benjamin agreed, and was just about to make for the door when the lady, rather than take the exit, instead headed sharply towards the shuttered windows. “Did you hear that?” she asked, her face becoming a kendo mask of banded light as she squinted between the slats.
“No,” said Benjamin. He’d heard nothing, though it didn’t prevent him from being alarmed at the idea that he and Lilac had been discovered.
“It sounded like scurrying.” She retreated from the window a little, a finger raised as if calling for hush. “Just listen...” she said.
And then Benjamin did hear a noise. A distinctly animal sound (which came as something of a relief, as it probably meant that he and Lilac had not been discovered) like the furtive rustlings of a cat in undergrowth. Lilac stepped back to the window, peered again, then suddenly made a rush for the hallway. “One moment,” she said as she bypassed the boy. “Wait here, okay?”
“Okay,” he replied, baffled as to why the meanderings some animal - the Niamagonian equivalent of a badger, perhaps - should be such a cause for disquiet. A note of his earlier alarm crept back; maybe Lilac had good reason to be suspicious of the noise. The people of this world, after all, came in all shapes and sizes, and it could very well be the owner - the diminutive owner - of the house who was creeping around out there.