Nephilim

Flatere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo

When the angels fell from heaven, heaven felt it like a knife. The sky opened like a wound, and festered with storm clouds.

It bled drops of gold that once would have opened their wings and caught the air. But on their shoulder blades were stubs, softened with downy feathers, sticky and burning with the blood of angels. The memory of wings. 

They hit the earth with an impact that rattled their bitterness from the crevices of their hearts into their fingertips.

They burned less with heaven’s dying fire, more with the smoldering anger of the forsaken.

They lusted for sin, for oh, it was delicious.

And when they lay with the daughters of man, and their children were born from their light, their children craved win with a hunger like the starving winter wolf’s. And they feared falling with a memory passed on to them from their fathers.

Art by Matt Barley

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Overheard Conversation at the Phantom Tea Parlour

Just wait a little longer, if you can smoke it out-

It’s been so long. I thought he would have written by no-

How much should cupcakes cost? I only brought-

This last part is illegible- is that an ‘h’?

Please remember, now don’t give me that look, please remember to move the rug before the lighting, we don’t need a repeat of last year-

Marshmallow cupcakes, maybe…

Since when did I make all the decisions? Call her if you want.

Just don’t tell poppa. Please, I couldn’t bear it if he knew.

So I told him to pull out his lighter and put that to use, and do you know what he said?

Nothing. It was empty, just some junk and nonsense.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Hymn to Melizazni, Goddess of Death

Hail to you, serpent-fair and deadly Melizazni, guardian of the tomb, eater of light.

You who bring us the eternal night, and give us the oars with which to row toward the world-awaiting.

You with the voice soft as grave dust, hard as stone

Grey as smoke, blackened as bone.

The goddess who pursues the soul of the tyrant, the peasant, the fool, as the white wolf pursues the maiden through the red wood. Melizazni takes peacefully, the sick child in the night, the crone in the shadow of the door, the wounded in the battlefield.

Malizazni rides on horses graceful as the swan, blacker than night, and carries her spear tipped with silver. She appears at the dead man’s side and, with bold heart, turns his face away from family, his unseeing eyes toward light. For all light comes from darkness.

For she is immortal among the mortals in both thought and deed.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Consequences

While the address printed on the card that Isabel handed to the dreamers is not erroneous, it is not the location of the dream thief’s home. If the cavern or crumbling once-house above it has any address at all.

It is a room in the temporary residence in the house over from their crumbling home that Isabel tells Gwynn is sometimes procured by her father should he need to meet someone not entirely informed of his profession. 

Gwynn and Isabel walk to the temporary location

When they arrive, Isabel disappears to a kitchen, leaving Gwynn in the front hall, watching the dream thief disappear to and from a room to the left, behind a sliding stained glass panel that shimmers in the candlelight. When Isabel reappears, she follows her father and tilts her shoulder at Gwynn, who follows her in turn. She leads him through the sliding door and into a large parlour paneled with dark wood, filled with colourful silk screens and warmed by a fireplace that casts dancing light over the glasses of brandy and wine and the cups of coffee Isabel places on a shelf by the window.

The dream thief takes no notice of them, slipping from the parlour into the adjacent room, and returning with a book in hand, muttering under his breath. Isabel moves aside easily, like water moving around a rock.

“Is your father alright?” Gwynn asks, indicating the person in question, who paces the width of the room like an agitated cat.

“He is nervous. I think the scope of what he is about to do is bigger than anything he has ever accomplished.”

The dream thief finally goes into the adjacent room and closes the door, and there is no noise from beyond it.

Isabel and Gwynn wait for the guests to arrive, and though Isabel offers him food, Gwynn does not think he could keep anything in his twisting stomach.

The rajah is the first to arrive, bedecked in an ivory robe shot through with gold. Beneath its swaying hem are visible the curled toes of his elaborate embroidered slippers and hi turban and belt are the deep crimson and ash of a dying fire. The overall effect gives Gwynn the impression that he is a djinn reincarnated into a man.

Gwynn opens the door and is greeted with a warm handshake and a slight smile. “Hello (Arabic),” he says as Gwynn opens the door wider, to allow him entrance.

“Hello,” he replies, as Isabel appears and shakes his hand.

Isabel leads him into the parlour and he seats himself as close to the fire as he can, relaxing in a velvet armchair. He makes polite remarks about the weather, but seems content with the silence as Isabel makes him a cup of black coffee.

Katerina and Emma arrive at the same time, though they insist it is merely a coincidence. Within seconds of their arrival, Isabel has handed them each a glass of wine and is directing them around the room, pausing before unusual artifacts her father usually uses to keep the corners of books down, and proceeds to inform then that the curios are part of her father’s collection.

Katerina insists she has furthered her discoveries in the time between their visit to her laboratory and her arrival to thief’s home. She declares she is almost there, and her next discovery could be her last in a world in which gold is found instead of made. But she will not discuss her formula, nor disclose her findings unless heavily intoxicated, she tells them, and adds that is would take much more wine than they would think to accomplish this.

Emma is somewhat more subdued and when asked why, attributes it to the taxing care of a newly acquired pet in the menagerie. She exudes further enthusiasm when the rajah briefly introduced his homeland, and asks him more questions than he is able to answer in a timely fashion.

Gwynn introduces the rajah to Emma and Katerina, who insist on a formal introduction, though they have already spoken.

The ladies are more talkative than the rajah, but he offers the perfect comments and remarks to ward off gaps in the conversation, so it flows as easily as the wine.

The door to the adjacent room opens and the dream thief steps out, dressed in a black suit with tails.

His arrival causes the conversation to halt abruptly. Emma breaks it.

“Sir, would I be correct in assuming you are the Mr.Marque we have heard so much about?” she asks.

“I am indeed,” he says, with a smile that has a certain charm to it, a pulling seduction that Gwynn has not witnessed before. “I would love to make your acquaintance more properly, but I am busy at the moment, so I will have to return to your company in a few minutes. But thank you for coming, and you are welcome to drinks,” the dream thief sweeps a hand at the tray in Isabel’s hands.

“Wonderful,” Emma says, reaching for a glass of wine. The dream thief turns back to the adjacent room.

“Please feel free to get acquainted while we make preparations,” the thief adds, before he closes the door behind him.

Emma returns to Katerina and the rajah, and politely inquires about Katerina’s line of work.

Isabel collects Gwynn from his place by the side table and whispers, “Would you like to see the other room? You’ll have to go in there anyway.”

“Alright.”

Isabel pulls a small ring of keys from her pocket and opens up three different locks, two of which Gwynn did not notice, but are set in dark metal on the dark door, and follows him into the room.

The perimeter of the room is lined with vessels resembling Moroccan lanterns, ornamented with mosaic glass, empty and dark.

And everywhere, there are books.

Lying open on the floor are several volumes covered with lines of handwritten symbols. There are one or two Gwynn recognizes from books of myth, some he recalls from the alchemist’s chemical-splattered notes, but most of them are foreign.

Some of the volumes are so close together that their edges overlap, but none of the symbols are obscured from view.

“What are those symbols for?” Gwynn asks Isabel, while she lights the candles by the window.

“Father is a student of two teachings. He can enchant with or without the use of symbols, but for some things it is simply safer to use on or the other. This is a very old magic, wild. The symbols are a safeguard.” Isabel touches the page of one of the books, careful not to nudge it from its position beside the other books.

The dream thief is nowhere to be seen, but his voice comes from behind them,

“Is everything in place?” the thief asks his daughter, glancing to the clock on the wall, eyeing the distance between the hour hand and the twelve.

“Yes,” Isabel replies, looking uncertain and pale as she stands next to the thuribles, awaiting instruction.

“Then we can start,” he says abruptly, and turns to the door.

When they re-enter the room, the company does not stop their conversation, but instead they seem to grow more engaged, and the rajah looks almost animated.

The thief taps a silver coffee spoon on the edge of his wine glass to get the guests’ attention.

The conversation fizzles to silence, and the three guests lean back in their seats to regard the thief with mixed expressions of concealed suspicion and curiousity.

The thief addresses the entire company, and only stops to scowl at Isabel when she quietly offers another glass of wine to their guests.

“You have no doubt surmised that I have brought you all here for a reason. That purpose has been disclosed individually to you and with a request for discretion, for which I thank you. It is not entirely necessary, but given the circumstances, I believe better safe than sorry.”

He takes a pause, in which he glances at the door behind him.

“Please get to the point. None of this beating around the bush nonsense,” Emma insists, from her seat by the window.

“As you wish,” the thief says, with a small nod. “If I may request that you enter the room to my right, one at a time, for a private consultation. I will disclose to you your individual responsibilities.”

The guests do not protest, but they seem suddenly more cautious, and as the dream thief invites the rajah first, stepping back and sweeping a hand toward the door, the rajah rises slowly and follows, flanked by Isabel and the thief, and Gwynn casts one last glance at Katerina and Emma before pulling the door closed.

Isabel tilts her head and Gwynn locks the door.

The rajah stands in the centre of the circle of books, looking guarded but not frightened.

“Mr.Marque, though I can appreciate an unconventional personality, it is much to ask for the faith of a person who stands in a stranger’s home without protection,” the rajah says, in a voice like a thunderstorm.

“You are absolutely right, but this procedure is a necessary evil. I am sure you understand the lengths to which you would go to protect someone you love,” the dream thief replies.

Isabel’s expression gives nothing away; she watches the rajah, occasionally glancing at her father, remaining attentive yet reticent.

“I do not know what you understand, sir,” the rajah says. “But I demand an explanation.”

“I am sorry,” the dream thief says, moving back against the wall, outside the triangles of the thuribles. “I have other demands to meet.”

The rajah takes a step forward, but the movement has no impact in the light that follows. The thuribles flash, as though blazing with white fire. A wind whips throughout the room, howling in the space. It blows the rajah’s robe into a flurry of golden silk, though he does not notice.

He falls to his knees, eyes wide as though in pain. Gwynn takes a step forward, but Isabel’s hand upon his arm stops him.

The dream thief’s lips move, though in the rush of wind, Gwynn cannot hear his words.

The thuribles blaze brighter and brighter, until their light is blinding. Gwynn closes his eyes against it, and the light burns red through his eyelids.

When Gwynn looks again, the rajah lies on the floor surrounded the books, which appear untouched by the wind, in their same positions.

Two of the thuribles are dark glass, but the third glows as though it holds a small sun within its scarlet glass and iron frame.

“It is done,” the thief says, lifting the lantern and gazing into it with narrowed eyes.

Gwynn looks to Isabel. Her eyes are fixed on the rajah, and she sways as though she may faint. Under Gwynn’s gaze she shakes her head. “I am alright. There is more to do.”

The remaining task was to lift the rajah and bring him into a room through another sliding door, and out of the view of the other guests.

When the rajah rests on a velvet couch surrounded by silk cushions, which confuses Gwynn, for the rajah’s soul certainly cannot be comforted by cushions, the dream thief opens the door and cheerfully motions Katerina into the book-filled room.

“I am very busy,” Katerina says, as the thief closes the door behind her. “I am very close to a scientific discovery of great value.”

The thief says nothing, and the alchemist interprets his silence as an invitation to say more.

The clock ticks  closer to midnight in the silence.

Gwynn is not sure he can watch this again.

The dream thief mutters a few words, and the thuribles begin to glow again. Katerina collapses to the floor more rapidly than the rajah had, and this time Gwynn pulls Isabel’s face into his chest while he closes his own eyes against the light.

When Katerina lies on the floor, and the second thuribles glows like an emerald caught in sunlight, Gwynn and the thief bring her into the other room.

Isabel stands with a pale face by the empty thurible.

The thief approaches her, and after a moment of hesitation, pulls her into an embrace. He pulls away, with his back to the window.

Gwynn takes Isabel’s hand and leads her away from the thurible.

The rain on the window freezes into frosted streaks of ice.

The thief hears the devil before he sees him.

“How sweet,” the devil says, behind the thief.

The dream thief does not turn to acknowledge his masked companion, only watches his daughter and the boy with the same piercing scrutiny.

“He’s just as lovesick as you were, if not more,” the masked gentleman continues, walking up to the glass, standing next to the thief.

“A would-be prince, an animal lover, and a girl with imaginary machinations,” the devil says, considering the glowing thuribles before him. He taps one with his finger and the sound echoes in the quiet room.

Gwynn and Isabel turn to him. To Gwynn, he appears like a shadow, elongated and black,

“You get less and less mundane each time I see you. I am almost impressed.”

“Who are you?” Isabel demands.

Gwynn does not need to hear the masked gentleman identify himself as the devil.

“I have no name, but you are welcome to name me if you wish. For your benefit. You get more beautiful each time I see you,” the devil answers.

The devil’s insouciance makes Gwynn nervous, though the dream thief seems unruffled. His expression looks forced though, and Gwynn hopes the devil does not realize it.

“We’re almost done,” the dream thief says. “I’m sure we can spare you a glass of wine, if you would like to wait.”

“I would love a glass of wine,” the devil says.

The dream thief gestues to his daughter, and Isabel exits the room, leaving Gwynn in the silence between the two companions. The masked gentleman stands calmly with his hands behind his back.

Isabel returns and hands the masked gentleman his glass, careful not to touch his fingers. When he has a secure holdon it she releases the glass and retreats to stand beside Gwynn, watching the devil wearily.

The masked gentleman takes a sip, tapping a nail upon the glass. The sound mixes with the steady tick of the clock.

Gwynn does not glance at it. He does not take his eyes off the masked gentleman, even when the gentleman speaks.

“These are very impressive souls. I would be very honoured to possess them.”

It is the latter sentence that catches the thief’s attention and makes the smile fall from his face.

“Would be?” the thief repeats. “You are not keeping them?”

The devil smiles. “Seeing as our agreement ended a minute ago, I am not accepting them.”

Gwynn turns immediately to the clock on the mantel, but it read a minute past midnight.

One of the thuribles remains empty; the process left unfinished, awaiting completion.

Isabel speaks first. “That isn’t fair,” her voice breaks on the word as her hands begin to shake. “That isn’t fair, you interrupted.”

“I was only speaking, my dear. I did not hinder the process physically. You could have finished, had you not been distracted.” He claps his hands behind his back, looking untroubled despite Isabel’s growing distress.

“You will not take her,” the dream thief says, moving to stand before Isabel, who has begun to tremble in Gwynn’s arms.

The devil approaches them slowly, tilting his glass, which glows with an incandescent red colour in the candlelight.

“I gave you a chance. It is not my fault you could not comply with the conditions of our agreement.” The masked gentleman holds the thief’s gaze steadily for a moment before turning his attention to Isabel.

Isabel pulls away from devil, and around them the books begin to flutter. Ripples form on the surface of the coffee in its cups, and a sudden tempest swirls around them. Gwynn must hold his sleeve before his eyes, watching the whipping on Isabel’s hair.

The devil stands in the centre of the vortex, pages swirling around him.

And suddenly, it is gone. There is no flash, or puff of smoke, only an emptiness where there had been, previously, the devil and Isabel.

As quickly as the wind started, it stops.

The books are messed of covers and paper and crumpled symbols. The rain patters on the window as the clock ticks onward. The devil’s half-finished glass of wine sits on the windowsill.

It is ice cold in the room, though the devil is long gone.

“We have to get her back,” Gwynn says, before he realizes he has opened his mouth.

“We cannot,” the thief says. He looks ill, and what may be sadness in his expression is distorted into agony.

“We can,” Gwynn protests. “We only need to find her.”

“you cannot defeat the devil. Not in his own domain,” the thief says. He reaches blindly for the wall, and leans against it heavily.

“She’s your daughter!” Gwynn shouts. “And you will not even try to get her back?”

“I has nothing to do with effort,” the thief snaps. “The devil is cunning. He has an eternity of wisdom. He has no morals, nothing to stop him from destroying others with his greed. Your own conscience would hinder you against him. And he has abilities you cannot even fathom.”

“Then prepare me against them. I will do whatever it takes to get her back.”

The thief looks at Gwynn with narrowed eyes. The silence is heavy as Gwynn returns his gaze. Then the thief suddenly strides through the paper, and begins to grab book after book from the floor. He turns abruptly and pushes the door, into the parlour, where Emma sits, looking concerned and sipping tea.

“We are dealing with something,” the thief says to her. “I apologize, but you must come back another time.”

He does not wait for a response and slides the glass door open, striding across the hall and into the room opposite. Gwynn spares Emma an apologetic glance before hurrying after the thief.

The room he enters is filled with dream books, in multiple colours, as though the thief has transported some of his collection into this temporary place.

“I have his address, though not in this language. I will have to translate it,” the thief says as he sorts through the disarray of paper. He topples piles of dreams and a jar of ink that spills across the desk on which it sits, dripping off the surface and onto the floor. It spread like a black pool.

Gwynn absently rights the inkbottle and hastily moves a lit candelabra before the space it previously occupied is disturbed by a sudden upheaval of papers.

As he speaks, the thief goes back and forth between his book, discarding some for others, then returning to them a moment later.

“It is a dangerous place. Do not let the pleasant appearance fool you. Beauty isn’t made of sugar. It can be as dangerous as the forest in the night, and the devil has eyes in many places. I’m not sure where Isabel will be, nor what state she will be in when you find her.” The thief pauses. “If you find her. But you must not linger there. No matter what. You must be swift.”

“I must be swift? Are you not coming?” Gwynn asks.

“I cannot,” the thief says, simply. “I am barred against any of his dominions, I am sure about that. He will have so many wards there meant to keep people like myself explicitly out.”

Gwyn is not sure he trusts the thief’s castigations, but there is something beneath them, a warning and a hint of caution, than keeps him silent.

“I will try,” he says. “I will bring Isabel back.”

The thief opens another book and scans the pages. Barely discernible in the symbols is a jumble of archaic language that may be some form of Italian but is too looping for Gwynn to distinguish.

“Simply know, that you may not come back yourself,” the thief says, and, finding a spare pen amidst the flurry of paper, begins to translate the address for Gwynn.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

All the Colours

Cynthia hasn’t seen Justin for days, and maybe that wouldn’t scare her, but their last encounter was taut with his angry silence and her uncertain attempts at conversation.

Cynthia stands behind the curtain, to the side of the floodlights, where Dr.Kane balances two clipboards in her hands.

“Ready, Cynthia?” Dr.Kane asks, absently. She isn’t expecting an answer. Her mind is already on the runway, and Cynthia’s future walk along it.

Cynthia moves her hands restlessly at her sides, and resists the impulse to brush her fake eyelashes with her fingertips.

“Where is Justin?” she asks.

Dr.Kane does not glance up as she exchanges one clipboard for another. The click of her pen makes Cynthia’s heart skip.

“Justin’s gone.”

“No.” The word falls from Cynthia’s mouth like a gunshot.

“He’s at Boston University. He moved into residence on Tuesday.”

The rest of Cynthia’s words die in her throat. The floodlights blur like sunspots on a camera.

“Cynthia, are you alright?” This time, Dr.Kane is expecting answer.

Cynthia nods. “Justin-“

But the speakers are turned on, and in the din of the audience and the music, Dr.Kane does not hear her reply.

She gives Cynthia a gentle shove onto the stage, with what could be construed as affection, were her hands not ice cold.

Cynthia’s feet pull her body like an anchor. She is already sinking when she reaches the edge of the stage.

The crowds are a mass of colour; swirls of dots of faces with eyes that never bother to see.

But then Cynthia’s eyes feel warm, and the faces blur together.

Because the colours all form Justin.

Art by Cynthia L.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Grounding

Cynthia was surprised that no one seemed to notice her. Nobody glanced into her face and saw a thousand others. Or perhaps they did, and that was why she was so well hidden in broad daylight.

People see what they want to see. It should have concerned Cynthia that the voice in her head sounded like Dr.Kane.

Justin led her onto the subway, and away from the facility and his usual haunts. When they disembarked, in a neighbourhood she did not recognize, he stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled boyishly. “We can go to Starbucks first, if you want.”

Cynthia shrugged, but Justin was already crossing the street, weaving around cars.

When they left Starbucks, coffees in hand, he took her down a system of side streets into a wealthy neighbourhood. They passed a billboard, and though Cynthia’s head turned, Justin’s didn’t. She wondered how many times he had seen her face suspended on a high rise.

Cynthia brushed her finger over her brow, down her nose, over the bow of her lips. It was something she did in times of stress, to trace the face she really has beneath layers of make up and spray paint, and never in front of anyone. (Somewhere alone the line, Justin stopped counting as someone.)

“Number twenty three,” Justin said, and stopped.

It was more than the series of boarded up windows that presented the house as out of place. The brick was unwashed, the bushes uncut.

Justin pulled the address from his pocket.

“It’s dated a while back,” he said, passing it to Cynthia.

Though she stared at the address, the letters refused to resolve into words.

Above, the sky split into a thousand sunset colours that arced and swooped like the paths of birds.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Intersects

What Cynthia liked about Justin, was that he genuinely didn’t seem to see the difference between her and the rest of the world.

He sat beside her in her bedroom or on the grass outside with the same ease with which he sat beside the doctors and analysts. He carried with him a subtle energy that seemed to extend to everyone around him.

He brings it with him to her bedroom when he visits, along with two brown files leaking pictures that Cynthia identifies before she reads the accompanying documents.

“This one’s your Mom,” Justin says, laying it before her, like a tarot card.

“She’s pretty,” Cynthia remarks.

“And this one is your Dad.” The pictures are similar fluorescently lit photographs, like passport pictures.

Cynthia skims the documents, lists of positives and negatives. Negative for hereditary diseases, for nickel allergies, no police records. There are contact details for familial relations, but Cynthia flips those pages quickly.

There are brief details about their personal lives, hobbies. Justin is silent as she reads through them.

None of them resemble her own.

Not that she has any.

“Their phone numbers and stuff are there too,” Justin says, suddenly, drawing her attention to him. “I could call them, or you could visit them.”

“Dr.Kane wouldn’t let me,” Cynthia says. Her insides feel disjointed, in pieces like a jigsaw puzzle.

“Then we wouldn’t tell her. I could get you out, just for the day; your Mom is in the city. She’s across the bridge.”

Cynthia glances at her open door. The hallway beyond it stretches out like a vacuum.

People didn’t live in a vacuum, she realized. She wouldn’t either. 

Art by Joanne Young

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Escaping the Masquerade

Gwynn is both relieved and terrified when he arrives at the devil’s manor. It is not the vision of hell he has been envisioning since he left the dream thief’s dominion. It is illuminated by tall windows emitting amber coloured light that shine like beacons in the darkness.

It is surrounded by a large black gate with decidedly unfriendly spikes atop it, though the curling pattern of the metal winding between the bars makes excellent footholds for climbing. They also prevent Gwynn from passing through the gate and into the garden beyond easily.

Gwynn does not need to worry, however. With a gentle push of his hand, the gate swings open, without creaking despite its appearance of advanced age.

Gwynn enters cautiously, and does not notice when the gate swings closed, equally soundlessly, behind him, until he reaches the door and glances over his shoulder.

The doors are twice his height, and made of sturdy oak carved with many swirls and depictions of dancing creatures. Some of them have human faces, turned upward toward a sun at the crest of the door, though Gwynn cannot tell if they gaze upward in admiration or restlessness.

These doors swing open in the same way as the gates, and when he steps through, they swing closed. Though their closing is followed by the muffled thump of a very old lock being turned.

Within, it is vastly different from without.

It is a riot of colour, and ablaze with light from both the sconces on the wall with bright flames dancing in them, and the chandeliers above that catch and release the reflected colours of the many dancers below.

Masked staff bedecked in a similar shade of dusky violet circumnavigate the crown, balancing silver trays with a variety of coloured drinks in oddly shaped glasses. They serve the parched company until their trays are full of empty glasses, then they fetch full replacements, though Gwynn cannot identify a point at which they might exit the room to some adjoining kitchen or parlour.  Nevertheless, refreshments arrive and the guests drink them with vigor, despite their dubious origins.

There are table laden with deserts and colourful creams, and some more exotic drinks that seem to glow in the undulating light of the surrounding candles.

The dancers at the edge of the room exhibit no shyness; they take breaks to sip wine or graze the selection of chocolate and sweets. They are easily coerced back into dancing.

The band that plays the brassy, danceable tunes is clothed in deep, smoky purple. They hardly glance up from their instruments, and the dancers hardly notice them, veering this way and that to circle around the raised platform on which they play.

Gwynn moves around the periphery, gaining boldness and venturing from his self-relegated positions in the shadows.

There is not one inch of the ballroom floor uncovered by the constant moving crowd of dancers. Gwynn can hardly get through them, and it requires much elbowing and many apologies to get anywhere. The crowds enclose around him, and then enclose again, like a Chinese puzzle box.

A few ladies standing nearby become suddenly hushed as he passes, speaking in murmurs and trailing their gazes over him.

Gwynn pushes through the crowd, looking back and forth among tafetta and satin and velvet, seeing no sign of her.

It is not until the crowd parts and he glances into a crowd to his right that he freezes and stares at the figure dressed in spangled blue silk.

Despite her star speckled mask he cannot mistake her eyes or the gentle bow of her lips.

A gentleman whirs past with a lady on his arm, and Gwynn loses sight of Isabel. He pushes through the crowds again, muttering apologies, until they apart again and he finds himself feet away from the hem of her blue gown.

“Isabel,” he says, trying to get his breath back.

She stares at Gwynn with parted lips, her gaze sweeping over him like a tide.

“Gwynn.” She sighs, lowly and softly. His name on her lips renders him lost in a state of bliss, and elements of the ballroom fall away until they are the only two people in the world. “Gwynn, you’ve come.”

There is a dreamy quality to her voice that Gwynn does not recognize, and her expression is one of unbridled delight.

“Isabel, I’ve come to get you. Are you alright? We can leave, now. I’m not sure how- the door closed, but maybe we can get one of the windows open-“

“Dance with me,” Isabel murmurs, then leans in to brush her lips against his.

Gwynn pulls back, though he keeps an arm around her waist. “Isabel, we have to leave,” he says, but his lips are tingling, and the sparkle in Isabel’s eye, possibly an effect of the wine, possibly something else, are too tantalizing to ignore.

“Dance, Gwynn. We have the time. Listen to the music; it’s just like your violin, Gwynn.” Though there is nothing sweet about the melody reverberating through the crowd, like a summer breeze through the leaves of a tree.

The music calls to him. It stirs something in his soul, and only Isabel in his arms and his own moving feet can satisfy it.

It is that, coupled with another of Isabel’s pleas that causes him to relent.

Isabel pulls him by the wrists onto the dance floor, and before another gentleman can reach for her, Gwynn catches her around the waist.

Gwynn feels ungraceful and shameful in comparison to the other dancers, who waltz across the floor with the grace of swans across a lake. But Isabel leads him in looping patterns around the other dancers, and the walls and rambunctious crowds begin to blur together into colours.

Isabel’s face loses form, and it is only her eyes that hold him steady.

The music echoes behind his eyelids, and Gwynn realizes he has closed his eyes. It pounds with his heartbeat in his ears.

Gwynn stumbles, his grip on Isabel lost, and the movement jars his eyes open. Isabel is still turning in circles, though she falters, gazing at Gwynn with dazed concern.

“Isabel,” he gasps, holding tightly to her arm as she stops spinning. He begins mentally berating himself for losing focus before he tells her quickly that they must find a place to talk, away from the music.

Gwynn pulls Isabel through the crowds, stumbling on the hems of dresses, bumping elbows aside, and attracting glares from multiple dancers.

Gwynn does not recall climbing any stairs, but they arrive at a air of double doors that open onto a balcony.

The cold air creeps down his spine like frost over a windowsill. Isabel does not seem to notice the cold, though her dress rustles as it is blown around her ankles.

Below the balcony the city glows like morning dew on a spider’s web, darkness interrupted by lanterns and street lamps and reflections on rippling water. It stretches on like another sky. The crisp air smells of a cloud of perfume from the ballroom and marine water and orchids.

“Isabel, do you remember how you got here? How he brought you here? If there is another way out?” Gwynn asks.

Isabel shakes her head. “No. I remember only dancing. As though I have been dancing forever.”

“Your father’s house is not far from here. We have to find a way to escape,” Gwynn tells her.

Isabel’s expression is clearer, though there is a lingering dazedness in her eyes.

“We can escape in a dream,” she says, and holds out her hand.

“Without a book?” Gwynn asks.

“Dreams are not books. They can be bound in books, but they are all around us,” she says, and places a hand over his eyes, plunging him into darkness.

The feeling of delving into a dream that is not already bound in paper is like falling upwards, and unplanned and shocking ascension.

When Gwynn opens his eyes, they stand atop a mountain, on a peak that is too small to walk more than a couple of paces. Though a mist hangs below them, Gwynn can see acres of bamboo, and, where the mountain slides into a valley, a collection of houses hidden by even taller shoots of bamboo.

“We have to keep going,” Isabel says, in his ear. She pulls him forward, and Gwynn does not have time to worry about her foot, falling into open space beside the mountain’s peak, before they are stepping between pumpkins in the black soil of a cemetery in the evening. They run, hand in hand, around the gravestones while Gwynn’s feet tangled in the pumpkin vines, before Isabel stops, and Gwynn nearly runs into her.

“We can rest for a moment,” Isabel says, leaning against the side of a tall statue of an angel that eclipses the moon with its wings.

“Can you? I was under the impression you would want to be quick about it,” says a voice, from behind them.

Gwynn and Isabel turn to the masked gentleman, and the dread that has been creeping down Gwynn’s spine, turns to icy fear.

“I am willing to overlook your misadventure,” the masked gentleman says, clasping his hands behind his back, and speaking to Isabel. “If you come back easily. No fuss.”

“No,” Isabel and Gwynn say in unison. “I will not be coming with you,” Isabel continues solo.

“Then you will not be coming easily,” the gentleman says with a sigh, and takes a step forward.

Gwynn’s hand finds Isabel’s instinctively, and they vanish from the cemetery.

They stand now on street in the early morning, beneath a bower of cherry blossoms. Around them, oriental merchants carry bolts of silk, carved jade animals, and other trinkets around corners, and into unopened shops.

“No rest then,” Gwynn says, as Isabel takes his hand, and they resume running.

They leap from dream to dream so quickly – as though they were climbing the steps of a staircase two steps at a time – that the dreams begin to blend together in a haze of colour and vertigo.

When they reach a stop, it takes Gwynn a moment to look at their surroundings steadily. Sand that stretches out behind him and the sea in front of him like a rippling cloth of night. Calming and serene. He inhales the scent of sea air and wind-carried temple smoke.

Beside him, Isabel breathes quickly. “We’re home,” she says. After a moment, she adds, “he’ll find us.”

“We can hide in another dream,” Gwynn suggests.

“We can’t run forever,” Isabel says, shaking her head.

“Maybe your father will think of something.”

“I doubt it,” Isabel says, but she says it softly, and she is shivering in her dress.

Gwynn draws her into his arms, stroking the back of her neck. “Can you take us back?” he whispers in her ear.

Isabel is still nodding when they reappear in the cavern full of books.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Deal With The Devil

The canal is glass-still, swaths of mist lingering on the surface. Reflections of street lamps and dark windows are perfect as a second world built beneath the surface of the water.

Then it ripples. The reflections waver, shudder as the ripples grow. The barge approaches from around the corner, almost silently, with the slow confidence of an island.

It is hung with heavy curtains, deep purple and lined with silver in the moonlight. It’s own ghostly lanterns have cascades of crystals catching the light and sparkling like teardrops, and its railing, the statue at the bow, are all gilded with deep, rich gold.

The barge floats dreamily down the canal, huge and looming, a gilded shadow.

The barge is a nightly occurrence, a shadow that few see, for they are asleep and even those awake and wandering the streets, careful not to fall in the canal, do not notice it.

The barge makes its journey not at midnight, but at three hours past, the dream heavy hour.

Its only passenger stands at the bow, like a gondolier, yet he does not steer. This vessel needs now wheel or oars.

The dew-cold wind in the winter whips his cloak to the north in a canopy of black silk. There is an oncoming storm, and he does not mind, he has collected more than his usual share of dreams, and they sit in a pile bound in pearly covers, behind the curtains.

With one final backward glance at the empty windows, the Dream Thief disappears into the curtained room aboard the barge.

Within the purple enclosure, the space is more modest than the rest of the opulent barge. Lit with candles in lanterns with rainbow coloured glass, it is a kaleidoscope of diamond shaped light over piles of books and curiosities.  There are discarded wine glasses, and tea cups for the more frequent colder nights, and some dream catchers lying in heaps of beads and feathers and string, collecting dust.

There is a carpet from Tabriz, one collected in a market, for the Dream Thief can never move very far from his territory, and on it is a small pillar, with curling metal at the top giving way to an instrument that most people would mistake for a clock upon first glance.

Yet the clock does not count hours of the day and night, but hours according to sleep, when dreams are heavy. It measures the dreams in the atmosphere, like a compass. The Thief hardly uses it; dream laden nooks of the city are familiar to him, and only when he has finished perusing the busiest streets does he turn to the compass, to point him in the direction of further dreams, should he need them.

Tonight he hopes to escape the worst of the storm, and the barge speeds through the water in his haste to avoid the increasing wind and the rain beginning to patter on the barge’s deck.

The barge rocks gently on the waves; the Thief once had a hard time keeping his balance, now he merely sways.

The storm-tossed weeds and resonated foliage have gathered in green and brown knots on the edges of cobblestone streets, smelling earthen and marine.

The barge rounds another corner, turning into a canal inky with shadows, save for the bridge lit by street lamps some ways away.

The bridge, coupled with the darkness, provides ample cover as the barge turns, swinging the stern forward as it comes parallel with the bridge. Beneath the stone there is a world of shadow, bleeding into the niches of the stone arch, reaching for the barge like long fingers.

The darkness welcomes the barge like a mother welcoming a soldier home. It is soft and dark, and the thief processes fearlessly through, though the sky and the water disappears, and he can no longer tell where he is. He is suspended in the abyss.

There is a rustle, like the pages of a book. The glint of a lantern in the distance, and slowly the cavern comes into view, growing from a photograph to diorama.

The barge advances slowly, swaying as it perches beside the dock, warm and opulent in the returned lantern light.

He glances at the sky, pitch black and star bane, through the window, thoughtfully. A forked tongue of lightning cracks the sky in half and an electric tang fills the air.

The thief is undisturbed, though he guesses, correctly, that his presence has been detected, but in his habitual meditation, he sits undisturbed, watching the storm as it increases in intensity.

Other persons, unaware of his heavy thoughts, of the deepness of his pensiveness, have no care for disturbing him.

The brush of fabric against paper rouses him. The thief rouses from his thoughts like a fish to the surface of the ocean. The sound of a toppling tower of books draws him to his feet, his eyes to his visitor.

A gentleman, clad in a black suit and a matching black mask, stands near the desk, in a space unoccupied by artifacts or disorganized dreams. He smiles wolfishly, and with slight apology in his countenance, though he stands tall and straight.

“I’m sorry for interrupting. Please, finish the thought, if you feel so inclined.”

The thief does not return to his place. He has gone startlingly white and holds his hand behind his back to disguise its shaking.

“No?” The masked gentleman looks genuinely surprised. “Well, then come here. I have things to discuss with you and I prefer not to do it at such a distance. Let’s get to it, directly. No dancing around the subject.”

The thief approaches cautiously, with the weariness of one dreading punishment. He gives the masked gentleman a wide berth as he reaches his table, stepping over books and pausing to retrieve some fallen dreams already withering in the damp.

“You aren’t going to invite me to sit down?” the gentleman says, once the thief stands across from him, regarding him silently.

“Why are you here?” the thief demands.

“Well, certainly not to reminisce about our school days.” The gentleman gestures to the chairs at the desk, raising his brows.

The thief regards the man wearily before retrieving a velvet-lined seat and placing it across the table. He is careful to keep the chair, then the table, between them as he retreats again.

“I here to collect my debt,” the gentleman says as he brushes off the armchair and takes a seat.

The thief raises his eyebrows. “What debt is that?” he asks.

“Don’t be tiresome, Orpheus. If you truly have forgotten then you are more senile than I had thought,” the masked gentleman says. He sits erectly, as though he cannot bear touching the chair.

The gentleman smiles, though the expression is too wolfish to be friendly. “I would wager that you thought you could hide yourself from me down here, didn’t you? When the thief does not reply he continues on as thought he did not pause. “It is impressive; who would expect a thief to live in a subterranean library? Who would even consider the possibility of the existence of such a library? But then again, you are no ordinary thief.”

The thief does not move, but narrows his eyes as the gentleman gazes at the book-lined wall of the cavern.

“Well, you have been busy. You are very skilled. I saw much of your performance tonight. I am impressed, if dismayed.”

“By what?”

“That the gift of your education is for the purpose of this barbaric trade. Petty thievery and piracy.” He pauses to look slyly at the thief before inquiring, “How many dreams have you collected?”

His companion shrugs, though the gesture is one of forced nonchalance.

“I have never stopped to count,” he answers.

“How many of these are your daughter’s dreams, I wonder,” the gentleman says.

“None,” the thief says, firmly. “I have given my daughter the choice to keep her dreams to herself.”

The gentleman folds his hands on his lap and regards his companion with disconcertingly light grey eyes. “It is a shame the other dreamers do not have the same luxury.” He pauses for a moment, his eyes going back and forth between the man before him and the volumes strewn across the cavern. “How can you be sure? I would have thought that after so much time and with such an immense collection, you would not be able to distinguish their original owners.”

“I have not forgotten our bargain,” Orpheus replies, returning to the greater of two evils.. “I have simply chosen not to address the issue. You cannot have meant it seriously, at the time.”

“I was, and I believe you were too. You seemed incredibly willing to promise me anything in exchange for my teachings, for your late paramour. My condolences about her. I would have written you at the time, but I was preoccupied.”

What small glimmer of hope the thief had been holding that the gentleman before him had forgotten their contract is crushed by his first statement.

“You love it, don’t you?” the masked gentleman asks. He does not wait for his companion’s reply. “Don’t deny it. You look at those books like a dragon does his gold.”

“What is it you want of me?” he asks.

The gentleman smiles. “Your daughter, of course. Your first-born child. Your only born child, now.”

The conviction of the statement hits Orpheus with devastating force. “She is not part of this. Name another price. She is too much.”

“Too much for what?” the gentleman asks. His eyes sharpen, light grey and piercing as knives. “You occluded my process for years, spouting this and that about your intentions to do good with my teachings. While I taught those who have made more of themselves, you begged me for my help. And when I gave you the tools to create this – this,” he sweeps an arm around the cavern. “This empire, you procured the heart of a woman. Well, we made a bargain and I have come to collect.”

“She is the most precious thing to me,” the thief says.

“That is precisely why I want her,” the masked gentleman replies. “Should you wish to keep your treasures, you should not be so careless with them.”

“Name another price, anything else. Why should my daughter be so important to you?”

The masked gentlemen runs a finger along the embossed book spines, shaking it free when it catches in ribbon bookmarks or on fraying covers and tears.

“I’m not sure what I’ll do with her, yet,” the gentleman continues, adding another spoonful or sugar and stirring while he elaborates. “Perhaps I will teach her my trade, and she could assist me. Perhaps I will teach her some simple tricks and she can amuse me. Perhaps she has her own talents,” he adds, eyeing the thief and grinning with satisfaction.

“I want what we originally put forth. You should not have offered me something you could not bear to part with. But you paid with your daughter and the contract is binding. As you well know,” he adds, glancing at the books on the shelves, one book in particular, inconspicuously wedged between dreams and gryphons and masquerades, one of the few academic volumes he has hidden in plain sight among his volumes of dreams.

“Your daughter is somewhat of a raving beauty, but even that does not compare to the ephemeral light of a soul. You may keep her. If you pay me in three other souls.”

“Three is too high a price,” the thief says. “My daughter is one soul, why now should I give you five?”

“I want our original price, threefold, for my generosity in amending our contract.”

“And where am I to get three souls?”

The gentleman waves his arms around them. “Perhaps you should consult your books. Three vibrant dreamers. Three vibrant dreams. And you have three days in which to collect them. Otherwise, it is your daughter I will be keeping.”

As the gentleman stands, a sudden cold overtakes the thief. Though he cannot be certain if it is the effect of his companion, or something else and much more leaden settling on his shoulders.

“It was, as always, a pleasure to see you, Orpheus,” the gentleman says, holding out his hand.

“I cannot imagine a time when I shall sincerely return the sentiment,” the thief says, and does not move to take the gentleman’s hand.

After a moment the gentleman lowers his hand, giving a small shrug before turning down a rocky, shaded passage.

“I’ll show myself out, shall I?” he calls out behind him as he leaves.

When he is sure the masked gentleman is gone and it is only his own breathing and his voice that echoes softly in the cavern, the thief mutters a simple, declarative, “Fuck.”

Isabel’s father sits in quiet despondency, eyes fixed on a dying oil lamp perched on the corner of his table, no doubt where he has elbowed it absentmindedly while reading the book in front of him. But he seems to have no interest in the book; he does not even glance at the contents of its pages, but keeps his dark eyes on the lamp. He shifts slightly in his seat, his gaze unwavering, and the lamp begins to tilt. She leaps forward to catch it and rights it several inches from the table’s corner.

“Father?” she says.

Her father does not respond, he watches the space previously occupied by the lamp. The light is dying and the shadows in his face make him appear older than he is, though he has never disclosed his true age to her and she often cannot guess beyond a five year age range.

“Father?” she says again.

Her father seems to waken. His eyes move first, sliding from the lamp and coming to rest on her face. Slowly he sits up. He looks at her as though he has never seen her before.

“An old colleague of mine came to visit today,” her father says.

She barely conceals her surprise. It is rare her father has visitors. “And?”

“And he reminded me of where I come from. Of our school days, and what he taught me, and what he gave me in exchange.”

“What are you talking about?” Isabel asks, peering down at him with concern.

“I loved your mother desperately, when we met. I was more than tempted to give anything to that man in exchange for that talent of tracking and containing dreams. To bind something so free and unreliable in paper. To know what she dreamed, what she desired, and be able to give it to her. I did not think that later it would be a problem. I did not dream that it would involve you.”

“You… made a promise to someone, in exchange for your abilities?” Isabel attempts to clarify her father’s words. He is always articulate and confident in his words and she finds his sudden hesitancy disquieting. “To whom did you make this promise?”

“He is not the devil exactly; he is more accurately called the devil’s shadow.”

Isabel pulls away from her father, bending down to look him in the eye. “The devil? You made a deal with the devil?”

“We had neither the means to go to the market, or to trade once we arrived. So we brought the market to our dorm, to our rooms and to our cards table. We gambled tricks and manipulations for abilities, which most people would now mistakenly call magic. It was not some great ceremony. The devil’s shadow is not one for ceremony. But we have a contract, and my signature is on it. Regrettably. I do deeply regret it, Isabel.”

Isabel looks at him with concern. “Whatever it is, I will help you,” she promises.

Her father raises his head to meet her eyes, and takes a deep breath to steady his next words.

Text by Lucie MacAulay