Celia slept at the edge of two worlds,
in a hammock of insect silk, with Boo slumbering on her stomach. She slept deeply
but yet she still dreamed.
A very tall black elf stood over her bed; he
was the colour of midnight and bitumen. The stranger, whose face she had
trouble focusing on, grinned down at her.
‘Well met, mighty
witch queen! ’
She struggled up. She
was home in Eth City and there was no sign of either Owen or Boo. She was
dressed in the same long nightshirt that she’d been wearing at The Anchor. She felt very grateful that
she’d slipped it on a few minutes earlier when she’d gone to the bathroom. That
that thought made no sense didn’t occur to her for a while.
‘Who are you?’ she
demanded.
Her intruder bowed.
He was naked and elf-shaped but, as with his face, there seemed to be nothing
to focus on – no definition, no colour, no clear shape: he was an approximate
elf seen through murky water. His fuzzy smile
broadened.
‘You can call me Kojo[1] – I like
that name – I was given it by you humans a very long time ago, when I first
padded up to warm myself by a camp fire’
‘I don’t care what
you’re called – what are you doing in my bedroom?’
He laughed and lifted
up the hem of her nightdress very slightly so that her ankles were briefly
revealed. He didn’t seem to need hands for that at all.
‘Well, bedrooms are a
place that I do love, but the people in them are usually wearing less
unflattering clothes. Or no clothes at all, if my work is going really well’
She stopped herself
from blushing (some witches can do that). She was damned if she’d let an
intruder embarrass her.
‘Why are you here?’
she growled, preparing to zap him where he stood if necessary.
‘Well, I’m not really
here’ he said, ‘and neither are you. You’re asleep and I’m in your dream. You
see it’s just a lot easier to infiltrate a dream when everything else in the
dream is totally normal, otherwise one has to deal with all the boring extra
flotsam in the dream – or do I mean jetsam?’ He pretended to wonder about this
for a second.
Celia shook herself,
so that her nightgown shivered. I’m
dreaming. Of course I’m dreaming. Only
the gods knew where she was in reality. It certainly wasn’t at home in her
bedroom.
‘Why are you inside
my dream, then?’ she asked, relaxing slightly. Zapping probably wouldn’t work
anyway.
‘Well – you’re in the
deepest part of the deepest sleep that you’re ever likely to experience, so
this seemed like a jolly good time to sneak in and find some things out, then
sneak out. You’ll never remember this conversation; at best you’ll have a shadowy
memory of me, who is, as you can see, often a bit on the shadowy side anyway. I
have no desire to leave any trail’
‘What are you trying
to find out?’
‘Whether it’s worth
staying on for a bit longer. I’m beginning to wonder if I should leave before
everything starts to get a bit too wearisome. Eventually even the best heavy stuff is a bit boring, don’t you
think? Particularly when things are starting to fall apart ’
‘Are things falling
apart, then? What do you mean?’
‘Oh yes – no-one took
into account mad witches when they set up this lovely little clockwork toy. And
they certainly didn’t expect coruscatingly insane witches with petulant death
wishes. I was all for humans you know – they are so wonderfully raw and brief,
but we can’t have them breaking out of their cages’
She was beginning to
realise what he meant.
‘You mean Kratos –
and Bea, the necromancers? You mean that they are the vandals, do you?’
He laughed as if
considering the punch line of a mildly amusing joke.
‘We made you, as stupid,
brutish children, scooped from the pure energy of the void, fashioned into roughhewn
minds and then left to get on with it. So what did we expect? Anyway, we got
what they deserved; centuries of unfettered couplings have sired these splendid
monsters. And now, in horribleness at least, they threaten to outgrow their
parents.’
‘I don’t understand…’
He looked at her intently
and smiled in some way so that made his face suddenly clear. She was astonished
by the intensity of his gaze. He had the kindest mouth and cruellest eyes that
she had ever seen. She had no desire to spend any more than the shortest
possible time looking at them, but she sensed that not everyone would share her
repulsion. She looked away.
‘You’re immune’ he
said, his voice lower, ‘well, isn’t that extraordinary. Maybe they are right
about you after all. Maybe you are our… ’ He stopped himself with a sharp
frown, ‘…I mean ‘their’ saviour, after all’
Even in the dream,
her heart sank. This was becoming a distressing refrain.
‘I’m just a jobbing
witch’ she said, ‘helping wherever I can. I’m no-one’s saviour – I work as one
small part of a team’
He yawned
ostentatiously.
‘Well, that really is
rather tedious stuff I’m afraid – I have absolutely no interest in your many
limiting weaknesses. I just need you to tell me how likely it is that you’ll be
able to wipe out those two rabid mongrels, (beautiful though they were once,
admittedly) and let us get on with enjoying this wonderful thing… ’
Celia shook her head.
His voice was soft, and sweet and sour. She could feel her skin prickling, as
if a host of centipedes were crawling over it.
‘Why are you asking
me? I know nothing’
He took in a deep
ham-actor’s breath and the whole of his body swirled like smoke.
‘Humility, modesty,
tolerance, kindness… The list of human ‘virtues’ is the most boring thing in the universe, it really is. It’s exactly the
things that those two rogues have eschewed, and just look how much they’ve
achieved. Most of it hugely unhelpful, admittedly, but nonetheless…’
‘I’m sorry’ she said
stubbornly, ‘my group are trying to find and destroy Kratos and Bea, that is
true, but we have had very little success’
‘But you defeated him,
on that hilltop in Huatalacan. The earth shook with thunder and the birds of
the air rose as a host; well, for twenty minutes or so. It was quite a
sensation’
‘It was luck’ she said
firmly, ‘blind luck – I would not be able to repeat it’
He shook his head. He
seemed caught between disappointment and exultation.
‘I am not surprised –
they are consummate experts of their craft, particularly the witch lord. I have
seen his laboratories, his libraries, his workshops. His island crackles with
the energy of wild creation, he has the best
minds there you know: it was all so marvellous when all he wanted was
power. But, even I draw the line at destroying absolutely everything. It’s hard to be a jester to the void.’
Celia was astonished.
‘Island?’ she said, ‘he
occupies an island? We had no idea. Where is it?’
He lifted his head
back and pursed his lips.
‘As if I’d tell you that…’
‘But why wouldn’t you?’
she asked insistently, ‘you just said that you don’t want the world to end…’
‘True – but I can’t
get involved. It’s my job to stir up, confuse and titillate, but never be let
it said that I helped a person’. He
shivered. It was like vapours dancing.
‘Why did you go to
all this trouble then? Why did you invade my sleep?’
‘Because I’m nosy and
because there was an opportunity, and normally these things aren’t risk free.
The last thing I want to do is bump into more frequent dream intruders. I know
my lump of a brother has been known to…’ He stopped himself. ‘Anyway, as you
have said, you know nothing and have no plan, so I really do seem to have
wasted my time’
He studied her
closely for a few more seconds and then he smiled, almost a little sadly. His
tragicomic pity was like a raw wind.
‘That’s that then’ he
said, quietly ‘looks like it’s time to start packing. I’m not of a mood to sit
around waiting for the end of the world, I must say. It is a bit of a shame,
though. It was quite a ride – intrigue, pride, hatred, lust and fear, and all of
it all at once… there’ll never be another place like this, I’m telling you…’
His voice trailed off – he was no longer talking to her; it sounded like
distant dinner party conversation.
He made to turn away
and disappear back into the waking realm. His body began to melt, like rain
streaming upwards from black snow. She looked
at his leaving not with terror or awe but with a pique of extraordinary
irritation. Her voice rose to meet her mood.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she barked
He turned back, the
slushy downpour reforming back into snow again.
‘Away…’ he said, half-smiling, ‘and be assured
that you will never see me again’
She shook her head.
‘No you’re not going
– not yet. This isn’t the real world you know. I’m sure that there you would be
able to escape in as second. I know exactly what sort of thing you are – I can
feel your power’
‘And that’s true in
any world, my dear lady’ he said, bowing facetiously, ‘some truths never alter’
As he unbent she took
a step closer to him and fixed her eyes on his.
‘So why haven’t you
gone yet then?’
His gaze remained
unflinching but she was certain that she saw a tiny tremor in his face.
‘Because I choose not
to’ he insisted, ‘you entertain me. Such a strange meld of strength and
weakness’
‘Is that so? Well, I’m
not sure that dreams work like that, you know; I’m not sure they are actually under
conscious control. I’m no expert but I think that if you’re in my dream then in
some sense I must in yours too, and I think that then it’s a matter of pure
will, not of power. And sometimes I surprise myself’
His body began to
lose its shape again, twisting and turning like wind-blown clouds, but his gaze
seemed trapped by hers. His voice was edged, quite suddenly, with irritation.
‘What do you want,
witch?’ he snapped, ‘I think that you’ve proven your point. I’ll appoint you
Empress of Dreamspace and you can rule your little realm for ever. I promise
never to cross your borders again’
‘I want you tell me
where Kratos’s island hideout is’
He sniggered. He had
stopped struggling to break free.
‘What good will that do
you? You won’t be able to recall anything roughly two seconds after I’ve told
it to you. This deep inside a dream it will all trickle away; you won’t
remember a dickybird’
‘Nonetheless – I want
you to tell me. You can at least give me some temporary satisfaction’
She held his eyes
doggedly. It couldn’t last long, but she might as well make him squirm a
little. God or no god, he was clearly a bit of a git.
‘Well, I guess that
if you’re clever enough to remember anything then you deserve to use it, and if
you’re that clever then you might be resourceful enough to defeat our… your…
enemies. Not that I care much, of course…’
‘Tell me, then…’
His eyes began to
fade. Soon he’d escape. It was time to give in.
‘Please…’ she
implored him, softly.
His eyes were free
now, but he stayed a little longer. He gave a wry smile – for once it looked to
be just what it was – no trickery.
‘It’s a volcanic
island at the very western end of the Pedamon archipelago, hidden from
navigation by enchantments. It’s on the Architect’s maps, if you can find them,
although I have no idea what they called it then. You barbarians renamed it Pelican Island, rather
unimaginatively, but now he calls it Ynys Bara, the last island. He has a great
sense of the dramatic, does Kratos. He’s rather ridiculous, to be honest, but
then aren’t you all?’
‘But how do we find
it?’
‘It’s in folded
space, but it can be reached by boat if you throw away your charts and suspend
your disbelief. Make for the Green Isle
of Hoy. Sail to it from the east, round it twice anticlockwise on the north
side, and then bear due south for a day. Just don’t be distracted by anything
you might see on the way. I travelled that route recently – it’s rather an extraordinary thaumato-geographical
experience’
‘How have you been
there?’
‘Well, that’s none of
your business, but if you must know – I went in disguise, they never knew who I
was at all, and I went because I was…’ he hesitated. She sensed that the word
he gave her was not the one that had sprung first to his mind, ‘…fascinated, and I wanted to find out
what was going on’
‘But…’
‘No more questions,
witch lady. I have broken free!’
He laughed and dissolved
into a triumphant squall. The bedroom began to flex and bulge. It had had
enough of being a room.
Celia sank down to
the ground. How could she remember all
of this? Perhaps if she wrote it down she could hide it somewhere? She knew
this was nonsense, but what else did she have?
The dream space began
to slip away. It was like a holed and rusty ship being pushed into a deep
harbour. Pointless, she knew, but she still had to try something. She struggled
up to her dream desk and pulled open the desk drawer. Inside was a pile of
paper. She scrabbled out a sheet, along with a pencil, and forced herself to
scrawl his words on it as best she could. Fortunately this seemed much easier
in a dream. She folded up the paper and put it into the ball of her hand.
The bedroom had now
slid under the waves and she was treading water in a grey glassy sea. She
struggled to keep the paper above the water, kicking out for dry land; the wind
seemed to blow her on towards a vague shoreline. She reached it and pulled herself up.
The sea rolled into a
massive oak-beamed library – there were two steps up and then the bookcases
began. They library had no roof. Celia
ran up along the aisle from Z to A, looking for a book that she recognised; one
that she might be able to find again.
There was a crack of
thunder overhead. Torrential black rain began to fall, and a river formed at
her feet. She scrambled through the burgeoning mud and reached for the first
book that she could grab on the shelves. It was a volume of Kalappos’s Secret Elven Histories. Why had her mind
chosen that book? It was in Old Elven
and she had certainly never read it or even heard of it before. She opened a
page at random, intending to stuff her sheet of paper inside it, and her eyes
instinctively scanned a few lines:
So, when the east fell, Adrial was overcome by his
fears and despite the endless love of his lady he could not resist despair and
he fell into it and was consumed by it. And Ophia knew at the end that she had
been mistaken…
What was that? It
seemed to be nothing to do with her at all. She laid the note in the page, shut
the book up and pushed it securely back into the shelf. She had the sense that
a tiny spider has on a balloon of silk.
She dropped back into
the mud and inky water. Her nightdress was sodden but she didn’t mind. She just
wanted to get away from here, to sleep on in the hope of waking. The flood took her back down into the grey
ocean and then covered her like a stone falling onto a coffin. She allowed the
dream to finally unravel and its parts were scattered everywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment