Dreamshade

  Quite simply, it allowed her to get a handle on why he had disappeared. To her, it was no longer inexplicable; her boy did not go sleepwalking, be it outside or not, unless something was seriously wrong ... and it so happened that the only thing wrong with him was flu. True, she hadn’t completely trusted the doctors when they told her to expect as much; this was probably due to him being in such good health the day after his return. But when the disease hit - and as far as she was concerned, it was a disease - the doctors were validated. Her son had gone sleepwalking because he was unwell. It was strange, it was unusual, but it was all his mother had to go on, and it was enough. It was just a symptom, and no more than that. Even the doctors had said so.

  He smiled. It was nice solving things, working it all out. He wondered why he didn’t save all his niggling problems for this time, when his mind was so apt for the task. Then he understood that he did, but usually forgot about it the next day. A sigh, therefore, followed the smile; but he was not too unhappy, because soon - so very soon - that sigh became the sigh of an iridescent sea ebbing from an unearthly shore.

  26

  He felt better next morning; much, much better. He rose without too much trouble, and managed to eat a well-stacked bowl of cereal for breakfast. He still wasn’t great: his limbs continued to ache, and his head seemed stuffed full of cotton-wool. There was, however, an undeniable liveliness in him that wasn’t there before. His mother, delighted, said that she could see that he had changed. “There some colour in your face,” she disclosed. And then, ominously, she revealed that there was something she needed to ask him.

  “What?” said Benjamin.

  She placed a freshly made bowl of instant porridge on the table, and considered it a moment, her hands on her hips. “This,” she said, tilting her head. “Maddie’s breakfast.”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you think your sister would appreciate it if I coloured it green and put some marzipan trees on it?”

  “Mum,” replied Benjamin. “Is your life really that empty?”

  His mother gave a burst of healthy, good-natured laughter. “Cheeky sod,” she said. “Yeah, you’re definitely on the mend. But don't get too cocky just yet, my boy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it looks to me like it won’t be long before you’re back at school.”

  Benjamin coughed ... but not very convincingly.

  ***

  Now that it was easier to think about things, Benjamin discovered that he needed something to fill his mind. And he found it on one of the bookshelves, after idly scouting around for something to do that didn’t involve too much strenuous effort: a chain-store volume called ‘Mysteries of the Millennium: UFOs, Ghosts & the Paranormal’. There was a picture of something blurry yet distinctly saucer-shaped on the front cover. The author was one Louis Chapel.

  He picked it up because it reminded him of what he and Pete had been talking about a few nights ago. And he decided to read it because he remembered that Lilac had said something about certain stray atulphi being mistaken for ghosts (and fairies too, if memory served). Suddenly excited, he realised that he could be holding the answers to much of what the book might reveal: that UFOs were not alien spaceships at all, but Niamagonic vehicles; that ghosts were not really spirits of the departed, but lost dream-companions. His imagination, starved by his illness and now hungry, was already at work even before he turned the first page; perhaps he held the answer to every mystery as presented by this tome. Sadly, this turned out to be not the case; after a good half-hours’ worth of avid reading, the puzzles remained as perplexing as ever. Yes, the UFOs could be Niamagonian; but the array of flying saucers, flying triangles and cigar shapes could just as easily be not. Those photographed were either too blurry, too inconclusive, or too fake-looking to be of any use. The reports of ghosts were genuinely ghostlike, as opposed to being atulphi-like, while most of the accompanying pictures were not as convincing as the text tried to make them out to be (a notable exception being one of a sinister figure, hooded and blank-faced, standing transparent before an altar). He skipped the article about spontaneous human combustion, because it was too scary (according to his wide-eyed pal Miles Kingdom, it involved people ‘bursting into flames - for no reason!’) and didn’t seem to relate to his Niamagonian adventure at all. The section on alien abductions was scary too, but he had to read at least some of it because there was a remote possibility that the aliens themselves might be phragodols. As it transpired, they probably weren’t, though he was sure it wouldn’t stop him wondering. All in all, it was beginning to feel like a pretty inconclusive exercise until he found a small section concerning a woman named Alexandra David-Neel. Back in the 1920s, she had travelled to Tibet in order to train with a reclusive group of monks who were supposedly able to generate ‘thought-forms’. And they referred to these thought-forms - which were creatures apparently sprung from their own imaginations - as ‘tulpas’.

  He noted the similarity of the words: tulpa; atulphi. Was there a connection? He read on:

  ...the Tibetan Lamas did not so much consider their tulpas to be real, any more than they believed the world to be real. Everything was resolved from the ‘mind-stuff’, a rarefied substance that, they believed, permeated the universe. In general, the adepts used this mind-stuff to shape religious figures; Mme. David-Neel, having become skilled in the practice, decided to create a fat, jolly friar. By her own account she succeeded, though the monk eventually became disruptive, and had to be dispelled...

  It was certainly close to what he knew about the atulphi; beguilingly so. But the book had far too little else to say on the subject for him to be entirely persuaded that a tulpa was indeed the same thing as an atulphi. As with the names, it was close - but not quite close enough. And it was the same when, reading further, he found another interesting possibility, this time in a subsection about mythical lands:

  ...we have seen and heard many who are overwhelmed by such madness, carried away by such folly, that they believe and assert that there is a certain region called Magonia (The Magic Land), whence ships come in clouds...

  According to the book, these were the words of a ninth century saint, Agobard, who had been responding to local claims concerning the arrival of four strangers who, witnesses observed, had descended from one of these ‘cloud-ships’. St. Agobard, as it turned out, was decidedly unimpressed, but Benjamin was not; ‘Magonia’ was clearly an anagram of Niamago, and the idea of ‘cloud-ships’ could just as well apply to any number of Niamagonian vehicles. But why ‘Magonia’, and not ‘Niamago’? Had the atulphi, for whatever reason, rearranged the name of their city in the intervening centuries? Benjamin couldn’t dismiss it as a coincidence - that Magonia was nothing more than a fiction, and mere chance had made the word an anagram of a real magic land - because it just didn’t seem like one. The Magonians came in ‘cloud-ships’. Their realm was supposed to be magical. And, he discovered, those peasants dismissed by the good saint Agobard were not the only ones to have claimed sight of one of these elusive ‘cloud-ships’:

  ...writing circa 1211, the chronicler Gervaise of Tilbury tells of how, one morning, a number of parishioners left their church to find a cloud-ship anchored to a gravestone (presumably by accident). A ‘cloud-sailor’ was then said to have shimmied down the rope to free the anchor, but he was captured before he could climb back up to his ship. With his fellows sailing away, the cloud-sailor expired in the arms of his captors like a man ‘stifled ... as a shipwrecked mariner is stifled in the sea’...

  By now, Benjamin was beginning to feel as though he was genuinely on to something here, though nagging doubts remained. Why, for example, did the accounts only ever appear to regard the ‘cloud-sailors’ as otherwise normal people? The atulphi came in a multitude of shapes, colours and sizes; so why no mention of such? And how was it that so many adults seemed capable of seeing these atulphi - if that was what those cloud-sailors really were - when he knew, both from personal experience and
a trusted source, that most couldn’t? Was it because people were more superstitious in those days, more willing to believe in the supernatural? Possibly. And yet, if he had to put his faith into these accounts, he would also have to put his faith into the fact that they did not altogether tally with what he already understood about the atulphi and their world. For instance, why should a cloud-sailor suffocate in our atmosphere? Lilac hadn’t, and neither had Strifer - and besides, why should this supernal visitor find the air so disagreeable simply because it was closer to the ground? Hadn’t he already been happily sailing in the sky, breathing that very same air beforehand? To Benjamin, it seemed like a mistake, a misinterpretation of an even more mysterious event - which meant, unfortunately, that the whole thing was suspect.

  The tales, after all, were old. As such, they were likely to have been subject to a great deal of error and embellishment over the ages. Bearing that in mind, he found that he still couldn’t dismiss them out of hand. There was definitely something there; some grain of truth, of being in concert with a world he knew to exist. They might be muddied by virtue of being beheld by primitive eyes ... but essentially they had to be true. Otherwise, what else could he do but accept the near impossible fact that Niamago - or Magonia, call it what you will - had left not even the slightest mark on human history?

  In need of something more substantial, he flicked to the index and abruptly found the word ‘aquastat’ almost as soon as he had begun his search. He recognised it, of course, because Lilac had used that very same word just before she and her passenger had crossed-over to her realm. “Volatile aquastat,” she had said, or something much like it. More than intrigued, Benjamin immediately turned to the corresponding page.

  Aquastats, he learned, were part of a mysterious network of pathways called ‘leys’. These ‘leys’ - and he was certain he’d heard of them already, though usually as ‘ley lines’ - had been discovered in the 1920s (when, Benjamin recalled, Alexandra David-Neel had taken her journey to Tibet. Was there a connection here, too?) by a man called Alfred Watkins. He had been standing on a hill one day, surveying the countryside, when he noticed that certain landmarks - church spires, standing stones, ancient earthworks and the like - appeared to span the landscape in a straight line, as if they had been set down along a singular but invisible route. Excited by this, Watkins began to research old maps, and came to realise that there were many such routes, all over the world. He published his findings in a book called The Old Straight Track, where he dubbed the routes ‘leys’, and asserted that they were prehistoric trade routes, or sacred paths. Initially, he maintained that these leys were no more mystical than any forgotten trail or ancient site; but later, in the following decade, another researcher, Guy Underwood, decided they were something different, and a whole lot stranger:

  ...by using a dowsing rod, Underwood came to some very provocative conclusions. He held that the leys were actually ‘energy paths’, and were often not as straight and as singular as previously thought. Sometimes they ran in parallel lines - he dubbed these ‘aquastats’ - and sometimes they spiralled, usually at the ancient sites themselves. Controversial as they were, his theories nevertheless proved popular, providing the germ for many other unusual ideas. John Michell, writing in the 1960s, even goes so far as to suggest that leys might be UFO flight paths...

  Despite the slightly mocking attitude of the author (who had hitherto been quite happy to act the true believer no matter how outlandish the topic) Benjamin found Michell’s hypothesis engaging. It meant - providing he had heard Lilac right, and that she really had said ‘aquastat’ - that these ‘leys’ could very well be the essential link between his realm and that of the Amar Imaga. It also meant that, given enough time to study the subject, one might learn how to cross these two realms without an attendant atulphi. He thought back to what Lilac had said to him, during their goodbyes: that it would take a lifetime of study before he could achieve such a thing. Then again, she had obviously managed it, and she was still young. So why shouldn’t he?

  He checked the book, to see if there was a map of these ‘leys’, though in his heart of hearts he knew he wasn’t about to learn the secrets of atulphi navigation in a single afternoon, and wasn’t all that surprised when the pages failed to disclose what he was looking for. By nature of being so inclusive, the book was necessarily brief when it came to the respective phenomena, and he found no more upon the subject of ley-lines than what he had already read. Finally, then, he put the volume aside, and blinked a sting away from his eyes. He had been reading for about an hour and a half, and hadn’t noticed that his mother had come into the room in the meantime. When she saw that she had caught his attention, she asked him why he had been reading that particular book.

  “Oh, I dunno,” said Benjamin. “Seemed more interesting than the others.”

  She nodded. She was sitting on the sofa and sipping some coffee. “Must have been very interesting,” she said. “You were well away.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t think you were into that sort of thing.”

  “Well, I’m not,” he said, suddenly tired. His thoughts were becoming muddy again, dulled by the head-sapping symptoms of what remained of his illness. “Not really, anyway. I was just bored; needed something to read.”

  “I’ll say,” said his mother, returning her gaze to the magazine on her lap. “It was like you were in another world there, for awhile.”

  27

  Another day passed, and so did the illness. Left with only a lingering cough, he was, in all other respects, in fair health. He was not yet ready to return to school (his mother had decreed that a good few day’s rest was essential after such a debilitating attack) but it was certainly on the cards. His uniform was washed, pressed and tidy. His books, pencils and homework waited in a neat pile next to his schoolbag. Life resumed its normal course, and everything settled back to being the same as it had always been. For the first time in so many nights, his mother left him to sleep alone, the recliner returning to its place downstairs. And alone he happily slept - for the most part.

  He awoke at around midnight, perhaps by a sound, and found that he couldn’t get back to sleep. So he rose, walked over to the window, drew the curtains and gazed out into the dark. He didn’t quite know what he hoped to see - Lilac, maybe; another silf - but the urge to look outside was strong, and he saw no reason why he shouldn’t do so. He took the gourd with him, in order to be sure that what had happened to him had really happened, and that his journey to Niamago had not been merely a dream.

  He didn’t know if it was the result of being in darkness, or of having already become so used to the numbing lack of residuals in this realm, but his first great dream came back to him with extraordinary force. He even stared up, above the benighted terraces opposite, as if expecting to see a sky profligate with thunderous, coruscating fireworks. And while he watched, with the dream cavorting at the back of his mind, he pondered, replaying his adventure and attempting to make sense of what it meant and where it might lead him.

  And what did it mean, exactly? He wasn’t sure. Dreams were more than they seemed, imaginary friends were real, and the world had gateways to places that most may have only glimpsed; so what? But then again, was there not a profound and intimate link between his realm and that other? Did not the atulphi bring dreams to this place, dreams which they then took back and took life and sustenance from? Lilac had hinted as much, but even she had not been sure. Still, it was enough for him, in being young enough to not yet understand the difference between charm and meaning.

  Mostly, then, he thought of what his journey to Niamago might portend. Would he see Lilac again? He reckoned so. But would it be soon? He didn’t know. He hoped that Strifer had lived long enough to tell her that her young charge had gotten home safely, because then it would be likely that she might come searching, to see if her friend had indeed arrived without incident. And if she didn’t ... well, he simply refused to contemplate it. She would arriv
e, eventually. Even if Strifer had failed to reach her, she would still come looking, needing to be sure that he was alright. There was no question about it.

  He wondered if Lilac had found her birds yet; strange, how it was that a place so apparently far felt so close. He hoped that Strifer had died without pain. He thought about what Vespinner had said. He wondered if his father was a dreamshader, too.

  ‘He just went,’ came the response, whenever he asked his mother about him. She would never tell her son where he went. She said she didn’t know.

  ‘Crosskeys,’ had said the monster - or something very close. And if Vespinner had indeed said his surname, what was he supposed to make of it? That his father had joined with the phragodols, with Gogmagog? But for what purpose?

  To learn his greatest secret, came the voice, mocking, of the creature. To make and unmake. To live, to rule; to be at his side when he conquers the blasphemous island; to share in his supreme triumph when he takes all the world.

  He remembered it all. Every word of it.

  So why couldn’t he recall if the creature really had said ‘Crosskeys’ , or something that was merely similar?

  What if he didn’t want to remember?

  Thankfully, his ruminations were interrupted at that point by the sound of a door opening out on the landing. Quickly, and as silently as possible, he closed the curtains and returned to bed, placing the gourd back on the beside table. The footsteps outside were light and stealthy, definitely those of his mother; but she went into Maddie’s room, not his, and moments later he could hear her voice, murmuring softly to his sister. He was too good a judge of his mother’s character to take a chance at the window again. His good judgement was borne out when his mother left Maddie to check on her son; she pushed his door ajar and whispered “Benjamin?” twice. He did not reply, preferring to breathe deeply, as if he were asleep. If it was urgent, she would soon attempt to rouse him with something more strident. She did not, however, and in a little while the door was closed again.