Beyond the Dream

  *

  He woke with a pounding headache but also to the comforting sound of a crackling fire. Anthony opened his eyes to see that he was lying in a clearing with a generous fire burning in the middle of it. There was a bowl fashioned from bark which contained water, as well as several bits of strange looking fruit beside him.

  “I would eat and drink if I were you”, Anthony heard the Snowman's voice. He sat up and looked beyond the edge of the clearing in the shadows where he could just about make out the silhouette of the snowman.

  “Why are you sitting out there?” asked Anthony.

  “I am not good with fire Mr Hallow, it was all I could do to get it started and then run away.”

  “How did you start it?” asked Anthony sitting up fully and shaking the grogginess from his head.

  “It would have been helpful if this Kannis had told you that fire stones grow on bushes, rare bushes, which can be hard to spot in a forest but are there if you look hard enough.”

  “I think it would have been handy for the jackal to have told me anything of use”, said Anthony, before adding, “thank you for whatever you did to the wolf.”

  The Snowman leaned forward so that Anthony could see him more clearly and said, “I was about to say the same thing to you.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Anthony, confused.

  “I did nothing to the wolf. I started to run back, you cried and were thrashing at the beast; the next thing I know there is a blue flash and the creature is flying back through the air, all mangled and bloody.”

  Anthony looked down at his hand which seemed to have miraculously healed, not just from the blisters but also the cut which he had sustained from Kannis. “How long was I out?” he asked.

  “Some hours”, replied the Snowman, “I carried you a reasonable distance to ensure the rest of the pack would not follow, though I think it unlikely given what happened to their alpha.”

  “Thank you for carrying me, and for the fire and food.”

  “You are most welcome Anthony. Please, tuck in.”

  Anthony did not need to be told twice; he drained the water from the bark cup and devoured the pieces of fruit which, though strange-looking, were succulent and delicious. As he ate he considered the Snowman's words. He could not recall exactly what had happened, his only memories were primal, of heat and colour, not cognitive recollection. This new mystery only added to the overwhelming sense of his being lost and out of his depth.

  After he'd finished eating he turned and looked at the Snowman. “I don't know why I'm here, or what I'm going to do.”

  The Snowman had a look of deep sympathy on his face. “I cannot give you answers I am afraid, I do not know this Kannis or why he brought you here. Judging from what happened to the wolf there is more to you than meets the eye; perhaps that is what the jackals are after. I cannot take you back to the Mercurial Chambers either, there are too many of them, they are too far away and even if we got the right tree there is no way for us to access the platforms without fighting our way through halls containing thousands of tallow bears, or using a sky-ship. Neither of these is viable.” Anthony could do nothing but look more dejected at the frank dissemination of the situation.

  “However”, he continued, “this I can offer you. I can take you to Snowdell, my people are there and I am not ashamed to say that there are wiser and more imaginative minds than mine there. It is possible that they might shed some light on your predicament, and may even know of a way for you to return home, to Lon-don.”

  Anthony mulled it over for a moment or two. Not for the first time since waking in Avalen he thought about Juliet. Back in the glory days they had a system for making decisions that was not unique to their marriage. She would decide what to do and he would nod and do exactly that. But she was far away now, Cornwall had felt like a world apart; now they were actually worlds apart his loneliness swamped him.

  She'd been a phone call, an email away. He'd never called, nor did he email and neither did she. But the option was there, the possibility of reconciliation. She was just another memory now.

  “This place, Snowdell, how far is it?” he asked the Snowman.

  “A two week journey, across less than forgiving terrain”, replied the Snowman, patiently waiting for Anthony to make a decision.

  “I suppose you all live in igloos?” asked Anthony searching for understanding.

  “Igloo?” repeated the Snowman, as if it was an alien term.

  “A small round house made from ice”, said Anthony.

  “Ah, I see. No, Snowdell is a modern and thriving place, you will find that we live in dwellings considerably more sophisticated than your igloos”, he responded.

  “Sophisticated Snowmen, eh?” said Anthony wryly.

  “Quite”, responded the Snowman. Anthony was becoming familiar with the way he used that response as blank canvas for any conversational conclusion that he was not certain of.

  “I am going to have to call you something you know, I can't just refer to you as Snowman”, said Anthony.

  The Snowman raised his hands in a neutral gesture and asked, “Do you have any preference?”

  “Well, in happier days my youngest daughter built a Snowman. He lasted for two months across a particularly hard winter. She named him George.”

  “George”, repeated the Snowman, “that sounds fine to me.”

  “Great”, said Anthony, “George?”

  “Yes, Anthony”, replied George.

  “I would like to take you up on your offer of journeying to Snowdell. Though in part I feel I would be going in the wrong direction, at least I will be going somewhere.”

  “Excellent, Anthony, we shall leave come the morning”, said George, who leaned back into the shadows on the tree beneath which he sat.

  “Thank you”, said Anthony.

  “Most welcome”, said George, and with that they both tried to get some rest. Sleep would not come easily to Anthony, however, but it was not the hard ground which denied him slumber. In his mind he turned over the events of the past couple of weeks again and again. The possibility that he might be dreaming was becoming less and less easy to consider. The possibility that he'd gone mad and that this was all a figment of his imagination was still there.

  But he did not feel like a mad man, not that he would know if he did. He had only one point of reference to determine that he was the same Anthony Hallow he had been for these last ten years: the sorrow. Had his mind been driven from the edge of sanity then surely it would have been driven far away from his sadness, but there it was, deep down and embedded in his soul. He closed his eyes to the fire and the kaleidoscope of melancholy rolled across his mind once more, his memories accompanying him into a restless woe-born sleep once more.