Beyond the Dream

  *

  Dawn was slow to come, the light struggled to make itself known through the leaden sky above. Anthony's mood had improved with sunrise but only by a degree or two. George made a mental note to steer well clear of any topic that might involve speaking about Anthony's family. They moved on with only a few words between them, mainly about the weather and the dreary prospects for the day.

  The grey garments which Kannis had given Anthony many days ago were looking decidedly worse for wear by now. They walked and walked. The land was deserted but incredible to look upon. Ever further north they went, through valleys and the endless forest. Anthony thought sometimes of back home and simple old Blighty. It was often said that before man came all of Britain was forest, just trees from coast to coast. Anthony wondered if this was what it had looked like before it became the patchwork of farms, towns and the sprawling cities that it was today.

  There were distinct differences, however, there were things here which one would only see in a land the make-believe. There were areas where fields of roots stuck up from the ground, tangled masses which went on for leagues, millions of roots all joined together in the frosty landscape. George told him that these were called confused forests, places where the trees grew down into the ground whilst the roots sprouted into the air.

  Anthony was familiar with the phenomenon of seeing faces and objects in the clouds, here, however, such things were taken to the next degree. The clouds were filled with hundreds of detailed aspects, faces, dragons, buildings and also mirrors, areas of cloud that were filled with forests in a mimic of the land below them.

  When he remarked on such things, George told him that they were not normal, that the clouds seen under the will of the Magister Elementis were white, fluffy and manufactured from the perfect image of what a cloud should look like. “What you are seeing is genuine dream cloud, a reflection of Avalen, a reflection of dream, a natural interpretation of the universe”, George told him. Anthony would stumble and fall many times and even started to develop an ache in his neck from looking up at the faces in the clouds.

  Such strange cloud formations did little to detract from the sometimes bizarre and magnificent scenes which greeted his feet and his eyes as he walked. There were places where lakes sat not in hollow bowls but floated some feet above the ground. They were frozen in parts, but otherwise they lapped gently at the air with no care for the absence of a shore. Fish swam freely as did other things that looked less like fish and more like men in the guise of fish.

  It seemed to Anthony that the further they went the more oddities they encountered. In one area of the forest they found the snow was moving like water, it flowed and splashed around the trees but when he walked upon it Anthony found it solid, if a little unsettled.

  “It's getting more severe”, remarked George at one point.

  “What do you mean?” asked Anthony, “you said you made this journey only a week or so ago, was the land not like this then?”

  “No”, said George, “there was snow, certainly, but this level of disruption to the natural order of things - floating lakes, snow like water, irregular cloud patterns - this is beginning to look less like Avalen and more like...” He did not finish the sentence.

  “More like where?” pressed Anthony. They stopped.

  “It's beginning to look more like something from the Dream Sea, chaotic and free. Whether they admit it or not, Avalen is comprised of the same base material as the Dream Sea, it's just here the Great Fenn brought order to the chaos and constructed the Dreamstone Wall to keep the order in and the chaos out. These developments would seem to indicate the guards Fenn put in place are unravelling.”

  They trudged on in silence, ever northwards, through the snowy forest to Snowdell, home of the Snowmen.