Dream Hopping

The room is bright with candlelight, and the flames reflect off the polished candelabras. The books in their cases and on the floors shine, embossed covers flickering in rich blues and reds. In the midst of the bibliological chaos, Gwynn is standing with care not to touch any of the stacks of books, anxious that they will topple to the floor and break the enchanting silence.

But it is a voice that breaks the silence, accompanied by Isabel’s footsteps as she enters the room. “What are you doing, Gwynn?”

Gwynn shifts and carefully navigated closer to her, through the books. His elbow brushes a pile of volumes that sway to and fro, but otherwise stay up.

“I’m not sure,” he says, then adds, uncertainly, “I’m supposed to be resting. But I don’t think I can.”

Isabel crosses closer to him, weaving around the books without looking, as though she has memorized their locations. “Then we can talk.”

“Do you not need to help your father?” Gwynn asks, reluctantly. He would rather not be alone in this strange library by himself, and so close to her he suddenly craves her company.

“When papa is with his most treasured books, I am more a hindrance than a help. We will not be needed,” she assures him.

Gwynn and Isabel make room for themselves between the books, carefully lifting piles in to the corners, and leaning them against the walls.

“I wish we could get rid of some of these wishes,” Isabel says, lifting a pile that makes her swing back and forth as she walks. “Papa won’t be selling all of them.”

“Why don’t you?” Gwynn asks, setting down his pile with a heavy thump. “Get rid of them, I mean?”

“Dreams need to be looked after. If they aren’t given away and taken care of someone else, we must maintain their proper care. The responsibility falls to us. Dreams can easily get out of hand. They are a piece of a person, and that can never be let free. They are wild.”

“But you said dreams are just things. That they are easily stored. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Because dreams have such reason and rhyme,” Isabel counters, drily. She smiles as she replies, moving the last of a small pile of books to a stack on the shelf next to her. “They are things. In the way pets are things. They are easily stored, but they must be stored. Does that make sense?”

Gwynn shakes his head.

Isabel sighs. “It is confusing, isn’t it?”

Gwynn surveys the books around them, put aside to provide space enough to walk, an possibly to sit, though not without touching.

“Isn’t it overwhelming, to live here?” Gwynn asks.

Isabel laughs. “Not at all. I have lived next to dreams all my live. The thrill has worn off, and all I have to fear are nightmares.”

“Wouldn’t you have gotten used to them too?”

Isabel shakes her head. “It isn’t something you get used to. I used to be so frightened of nightmares that I could not sleep,” she says, keeping her eye on the volumes, running her hands along their familiar spines. “Most children at that age fear death, when they know enough of life to understand the finality of its end. They cannot sleep for fear of seeing themselves die in some way and waking in the dark without holding someone’s hand. And perhaps some of them will have worse deaths that other, but on the whole, it isn’t something to worry too much about. But how can you protect a child from nightmares?”

Gwynn does not answer. Instead he stands still and waits for her to speak. Isabel faces away from him, but does not move away. She lifts a hand to the shelved books.

“To know that they are real, at least in some way, is terrifying. And to know that they are right beyond your bedroom door… My father would sit with me, night after night, when my eyelids were heavy with sleep, so that I felt I would not live to see morning, and it was only my terror that kept me alert. He read to me, from ordinary books, fairy tales, and nightmares. He taught me that where there is light, there is shadow. And where there is darkness, there is a promise of light. He read me stories of princes, and did not object when I insisted that it was not right for the princesses to simply sit around and wait for rescuing. When I defended the wolf for simply acting on hunger, and insisted that a red-clad little girl be more frightened of a violent woodsman, he laughed. I am lucky that I live beside nightmares and dreams, for I fear neither.”

When she turns, Gwynn cannot speak, and takes several moments to consider his response.

“Your father does not sound the type to promise his daughter away in exchange for magic,” he says at last.

“He was not my father at the time,” she replies. “He was young, and foolish, and he wanted desperately to prove himself. He wanted adventure. He was a reamer himself. And after that, he was in love. I can begrudge his thoughtlessness, and his recklessness, but I can also forgive his unrest.”

“It wasn’t a fair bargain,” Gwynn says. “You are worth more than the ability to steal dreams.”

Isabel smiles. “Thank you, Gwynn.”

“How does he find them?” Gwynn asks, suddenly, indicating the books. “How does he find specific dreams? The best ones, like you said?”

“Some dreams, vivid dreams, carry a palpable energy,” Isabel says, glancing at another book and setting it aside. “I can feel who they belong to, if I have met the dreamer before, though that does not often happen. It is like knowing a storm is coming. I feel it in the air. I’m not sure one would be able to feel it if they were unfamiliar with the sensation.”

“Is the Rajah’s book here?” Gwynn asks. “Or Rina’s?”

Isabel’s brow furrows as she gazes at the rows upon rows of book and pearly spines. “I expect father has them all elsewhere, since they’re so valuable. There may be one of them here. Maybe a dream that isn’t as grand.”

‘Is every book a different dream?”

“Yes. Though some dreams fade into one another, and they can be in the same book.”

“There are a lot of dreams,” Gwynn murmurs, looking at the books with reverence.

Isabel laughs in response, and his attention returns to her sparkling eyes. “Father has many more than this. And he does not keep every dream he collects.”

“What doe she do with them?

“He sells them. At the Night Market.”

“The Night Market?” Gwynn repeats, his curiousity about another impossibly possible place overcoming his question about what the dream thief sells them for.

“It is the nocturnal market that many people visit. People who know what the world is really like. Who know about all this.” Isabel gestures around them at the exotic glass lanterns and tomes of dreams.

“What can you find there?” Gwyn asks.

“Penny illusions, mostly,” she answers. “Small magics, tricks and taboos.” Her eyes focus on the space past Gwynn, though she appears to be looking somewhere much farther away. “I have seen a vendor with a small menagerie in cages; birds packed wing beside wing, tiger cubs rubbing away their fur against the bars, monkeys with hollows for eyes. Cruelty and confinement. You can find many things in the Night Market.”

“There must be some upside to his business,” Gwynn says, hoping to distract Isabel from her apparently uncomfortable thoughts of the market.

Isabel looks thoughtful, before refocusing on Gwynn. “Father trades with other merchants. Magicians in far flung cities. Users of legerdemain who cannot make their own magic. I believe he does business with a nomadic circus, whose proprietor is in London.”

Gwynn is impressed by Isabel’s knowledge, though he thinks it is similar to his own. Years and years of standing by his father with questions and watchful eyes, and his father’s trade has become his own.

“Will you be taking over your father’s… occupation, one day?” Gwynn asks.

“There must be so many things you could be, because you can do so much.”

Isabel shakes her head, smiling. “Father has always given me the choice to do something else with my life. He does not care whether I make a substantial sum or enough to get by, or which currency it is in. And seeing as he began collecting dreams all on his own, it is hardly a family business. And if it were, he would not blindly expect me to continue it anyway. He has given me many choices in my life. If I wished to leave Venice, he would not stop me.”

“Leave Venice?” Gwynns asks, with some alarm. “Why would you leave Venice?”

Isabel smiles, though she tries to conceal it. “I would not, Gwynn. I am happy here. Travel would be nice, but Papa cannot move, and, at the moment, I have no urgent desire to leave him.”

“Why can you not move?” Gwynn asks. If he had a barge he would leave the canal and ride it across the ocean. Or perhaps along the coast, as he has little experience with traveling on water.

“It would not be good for father’s business. He is like a fisherman, he gets to know his area well, where the most vivid dreams are, where there are nightmares, and he cultivates what he can, and collects from the most fertile places. Were he to move to another place, even for a short time, he would have to start all over again.”

Suddenly, Isabel moves from her position, coming closer to Gwynn. He holds very still as she reaches around him. Her perfume makes his skin prickle. When she withdraws her hand from behind him, she holds something in her hand.

Isabel holds the book out to Gwynn, presenting the cerulean cover embossed with a simple bronze border.

“This is one of Rajah’s.”

Gwynn takes the book with unsteady hands, flipping open the cover and turning the pages. They are all blank.

“There’s nothing in it,” Gwynn says, looking up at Isabel.

Isabel takes the book gently from his hands and, in a single swift movement, tosses it in the air, where it turns and flutters with a sound like bird wings. While it is suspended above them, she leans forward and whispers, “Close your eyes.”

Gwynn slowly lets his eyelids fall closed. In the darkness behind them he hears the sound of pages fluttering, but they suddenly become something else. The sound of wind, distant and cool in the sudden heat on his skin.

Gwynn opens his eyes and gasps. The cavern is gone, replaced by an endless stretch of sand. Dunes of golden brown sand beneath a blue sky, and a wavering form in the distance, like a cool shadow.

Isabel stands beside him, but takes a step away as he steps forward, eager to feel the sand beneath his feet.

Gwynn takes a few steps forward. When he glances behind him, his boots have left imprints in the sand.

There is the deep scent of golden sand and amber, and something richer and spicier.

Cinnamon and sandalwood, ginger and incense. It smells both ancient and fresh, like the heat over a dune of powder soft sand.

The sky is blue as a robin’s egg, though the sun is as hot as an ember. Gwynn already feels over-heated as he stretches out his arms.

A hand touches his wrist, as Isabel appears at his side. “Gwynn. This is not it.”

Gwynn turns to her in surprise. But she is wearing a smile that suggests hidden knowledge, and he cannot guess what it might be.

Her hand slides from his wrist into his palm, and in a quick tug, they are flying over the sand, swiftly as birds. Their toes skim the ground, but Gwynn cannot even look back to see if they have left marks in the sand.

Gwynn feels the elation of a cool breeze sweeping over golden sun-warmed sand. It is as fragile a feeling as a being a whisper, carrying Arabian spice to tiled courtyards shaded by green fans, filled with dusky skinned sari-wrapped people. They mingle with peacocks that shimmer like jewels. In the flora-lined pools are tall pink birds, lunging for golden-scaled fish at their feet.

When Gwynn’s feet touch the floor again, he stumbles and would have fallen if Isabel were not there to catch him. She leads him to the side of the room, out of the way of dark skinned, gold-clothed men and women who carry trays and scrolls and small birds through the courtyard.

Many stop to exchange greetings with the woman seated in a pile of jewel coloured cushions. Her hands and feet are decorated with henna, like an elegant piece of jewelry sunken into her skin. She is tall and willowy, with long dark hair falling in waves around her and dark eyes that make her seem older than the rest of her face implies. She nods and smiles at many who walk by, but is preoccupied with the ladies sitting by her feet, rubbing her hands or re applying henna where it has begun to fade on her toes.

“This is the Rajah’s dream, yes?” Gwynn says, quietly, for he is sure that the people in the dream will hear him and regard him as an intruder of some sort. He certainly feels like an interloper, in this beautiful and exotic place.

Isabel nods. “He often dreams of places like this. And that woman,” she tilts her head toward the dark haired beauty in the cushions. “She is often in his dreams, and she leaves an imprint in them. I cannot tell what they’re saying, but she is someone of high status.”

They stand for a few more moments in stillness, and in the shade of a large fanned leaf. Silently, Isabel moves from the shelter of the plant, beckoning for Gwynn to follow her.

They look out of place as they traverse the courtyard, walking from shadow to shadow, nodding at those who pass and look at them curiously.

One man speaks to them in the same throaty language spoken by the Rajah, and Isabel responds in kind.

When Gwynn looks at her quizzically, she only says, “I have been here before. I should know at least one or two words of their language.”

Isabel leads him around the woman in the cushions, circling behind her to the opposite end of the courtyard, where they slip into the shadows of an alcove echoing with the sounds of the bubbling fountain that occupies it.

“There isn’t too much else to this dream,” Isabel says quietly, though they are attracting little attention in their alcove. They are standing quite close, though they have space between them and the wall. When Gwynn drifts closer, Isabel does not move back.

“Do you want to go back?” Isabel asks. She is close enough that her words are warm against his skin.

“Can we go into another dream?” Gwynn asks. When Isabel nods he tips his head, “Yes. Sure.”

Isabel takes his hand, and the sensation that accompanies her touch makes Gwynn think they will race over the dunes again, but instead she whispers, “Close your eyes again.”

When Gwynn is looking at the backs of his eyelids, Isabelle pulls him a few steps forward. He loses his balance for a moment, and when he catches himself with a heavy footfall, it makes the compact sound of a boot on dirt, rather than on a tiled courtyard floor.

“You can open your eyes now,” Isabel says.

The desert and the courtyard are gone when Gwynn opens his eyes. There is only the cavern and the mountains of books around them, looking almost exactly as they left it, though a few close to him have fallen over, presumably toppled when Gwynn stumbled back into the room.

“That was…” Gwynn feels breathless, and his voice catches. “This is impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” Isabel says, with a smile.

While Gwynn struggled to readjust to the sudden change of venue, Isabel peruses the selection of tomes around them.

“I do not believe we have Rina’s, but Emma’s is right here,” Isabel says, righting a toppled pile of books and picking up the topmost.

She presents it to Gwynn with a small flourish that makes its evergreen cover flash like a beetle husk.

“Do I have to close my eyes?” Gwynn asks, as Isabel flips the cover open.

“No. Not necessarily. It’s just, getting into the dreams can get… complicated. Especially if you don’t know where you’re going. Just because this dream has an open door,” she hefts the volume in her hand, open to a random page. “Does not mean you won’t wander into another.”

Gwynn decides to close his eyes. He tells himself it is purely precautionary, though he also feels as though the transition between dreams would leave him feeling even more disoriented than he already does.

Isabel does not offer her hand out loud, but when she holds it out, Gwynn grasps it and shuts his eyes tightly.

There is the sensation of a tug, and the world tips as though he were dizzy. When Isabel tells him to open his eyes, he does so with a certain amount of trepidation.

They stand in a garden. It is a large garden that stretches on in both directions, fading into the violet of twilight sky on the horizon. Immediately around them, though, the garden looks as though it has been encroached upon by the woods, choked with vines and filled with trees.

And everywhere there are animals wandering. Beneath the ferns, in the branches of the trees, through leafy aisles. They walk around one another as though they have a preordained path, and it is not until one of them comes quite close to where Isabel and Gwynn stand that Gwynn realizes they are not ordinary animals. No, they are much more than that.

It is an alternate version of Emma’s waking environs. The creatures that pad across the moss are creatures of myth, or strange variations of animals Gwynn only glimpsed in the menagerie.

There are wyverns and dragons, nine-tailed foxes, griffins, eight-legged horses. A mare sits beneath a tree; its white torso shimmering as it lazily waves the scaled green tale that rests where its legs would.

A bird screeches overhead, drawing Gwynn’s gaze heavenward. A flock of scarlet-red birds with glittering golden plumage scatter sparks across the greenery, disappearing above the canopy.

Isabel leans forward to pet a foal, maneuvering her hand around the horn protruding form its head. It wobbles past and disappears beneath a bower of entangled vines.

Gwynn follows Isabel slowly, taking a more leisurely pace through the garden, though that is partially due to his own misgivings about traveling solo within a dream.

She moves from dream to dream easily, though Gwynn feels slightly discombobulated and would have gotten lost by now if he had not been following her so closely.

They stop at a clearing that is filled predominantly with flowers. Forget-me-nots and bluebells carpet the ground like a blue blanket. In the spaces between flowers Gwynn can see small salamanders in shifting rainbow colours crawling slowly this way and that.

“Why did you never tell me?” Gwynn asks. It is what he has been wondering most since she first revealed her origins. She is quiet for a moment, seeming to consider her words.

“At first because I did not trust you,” she says carefully. She does not meet his eyes. “And then because I suspected you would not believe me. And even if you did, it hardly ends well, revealing this side of the world to anyone. Younger minds can accept it easily enough, but with age one is more likely to reject it. People are comfortable with their perception of the world, not matter how blind it may be. I was unsure, and I kept putting off telling you. And eventually it did not seem like lying.” She glances at Gwynn. “I am sorry.”

Gwynn glances around the woods, at the fantastical creatures that gaze back with matching expressions of curiousity. “I’m not. I’m glad to know about it now, anyway.”

“What made you decide to tell me now?” Gwynn asks, after a pause.

“I was weary of lying to you. And I did not want you to think, should this fail and I go with papa’s associate, that I had just left you. I wanted you to know who I was.”

They stand in silence for some time, gazing at the animals and watching them, though Gwynn’s eyes are drawn to Isabel repeatedly, watching the sunlight on her skin. She regards him occasionally in a similar manner. When their eyes meet, they do not look away.

Isabel only suggests that they return when a basilisk slithers over her boot.

Gwynn is less jarred when they return to the cavern, and he does not relinquish Isabel’s hand until she reaches for a book elsewhere.

The silence of the cavern is interrupted by the pitter-patter of rain on soil above them, echoing in the adjacent rooms.

Isabel selects a book from a high shelf, pulling volume after volume down from the well-stocked shelf, wavering on her tiptoes, before retrieving it.

She stares at the silver and black cover with a small frown for some time.

“It something wrong?” Gwynn asks.

Isabel shakes her head and turns the book over, to perceive it from different angles. Gwynn cannot tell what she might be looking for.

“I cannot tell what is in it. It seems a dark sort of place, but that can mean anything. It is foggy, in my head, like hearing footsteps far away in the mist and not seeing whose they are,” Isabel says. She looks up and returns the stare Gwynn has aimed at her. “We just don’t know what is inside. There is only one way to find out.” Isabelle smiles.

The dream they step into is ice cold. Air as sharp as knives hits Gwynn’s skin before his eyes open.

These woods are different from the ones in which he stood only minutes before. They are the cold and black, with skeletal trees that reach above them like the elaborate bars of a cage.

Isabel’s hand tightens in his.

Close by there is the sound of a snapping twig, though Gwynn sees nothing in the direction from which it comes, only blackness and moonlight, repeating in fractal patterns over and over.

Something like dread crawls up Gwynn’s spine.

“This is a nightmare. We shouldn’t be here,” Isabel says.

Gwynn opens his mouth to answer but the air around them shifts. The ground shudders as though his with a wave. It reverberates through them like the vibrations of a noise, shaking their bones.

The small amount of light illuminating the trees disappears. Isabel is only a voice and a hand in the darkness.

“Gwynn, close your eyes now.”

In the added darkness, Gwynn feels a sharp pain in his chest. The sensation of falling, with no ground beneath him. Cold fingers on his throat.

Then the sensation is gone, and only Isabel’s voice remains.

“Gwynn, open your eyes.”

Isabel is kneeling beside him, holding his hand. Her expression of concern fades as he sits up.

“What happened?” Gwynn asks. He is no longer cold, and the light is slowly reassuring him.

“I pulled us from the nightmare. I’m sorry; I should have recognized it sooner. It got out of control.”

The rain is growing to a steady din that sounds like distant thunder in the cavern.

Gwynn slowly stands, and when he is steady, Isabel turns to the nearest pile of books.

“Dreams are comparatively easy to handle,” she explains, flipping through a thin blue volume. A ribbon flutters by her fingers as she turns page after page. “Nightmares are harder, they are volatile. Father usually doesn’t let me handle them. He prefers to do it himself. Dreams are also kindred spirits, they tend to huddle. A person dreams many dreams in one go, then nothing. They don’t spread them out. Nightmares are more solitary. Imagine a rogue animal, it was once yours or someone else’s, and now it is feral and vicious. That is a nightmare.”

“Are your dreams here, or somewhere else?” Gwynn asks, wanting to divert the conversation and suddenly very curious of what he would encounter, were he to step inside one of her dreams, and desiring the opportunity to find out.

But she shakes her head and replies, “My father has never taken my dreams from me. He has never even touched them. They come and fade with morning light.” She smiles as she replaces the book on its shelf. “He has given me the freedom to keep my dreams, or relinquish them as I choose. They are, possibly, the only dreams he does not have in his entire thiefdom.”

Isabel replaces the book in its pile and sweeps a hand toward the shelves.

“Pick one, Gwynn,” Isabel says.

Gwynn looks between the books on the shelves and on the floor, but there is not indication  of what is inside them. The ones on the floor look identical to those in the cases; he wonders if there is some indiscernible filing system. Thinking of the dream thief, he thinks there probably isn’t. He chooses one at random from a collapsed tower at him feet. It is pumpkin orange, though it shines with the warmth of smoldering embers.

Gwynn opens it and hands it to Isabel, closing his eyes as she takes his hand.

The heat between their palms spreads, and becomes the heat of summer.

Around him, Gwynn can hear the roar of surf, and the whistling wind. He opens his eyes slowly.

What had been the rough stonewalls and packed dirt floor of the cavern are now the night sky, midnight blue over the endless expanse of ocean, rippling like black silk.

Isabel leads him as close to the surf as they can be without wetting their boots. In the stillness, her breathing matches the rhythm of the tide.

The ocean is almost indistinguishable from the sky on the horizon.

“There,” Isabel says, pointing to a flare of light in the distance, ember red and small as a firefly. “That is the temple on the far shore. Its torches remain lit every hour of every day, so that its disciples may see it from afar.”

“How do you know?” Gwynn asks, though his eyes remain on the flickering light.

“I simply do. It is another unforeseen effect of growing up next to dreams, I suppose. And I have been in this dream before.”

They walk in silence down the beach, keeping an eye on the temple in the distance, watching it blaze and burn.

When they finally return, Gwynn does not stumble. He steps from the dream to the cavern as calmly as he can, and watches Isabel place the book back on the shelf.

“Are any of my dreams here?” Gwynn asks. 

Isabel does not answer immediately, and though she gives no indication of having heard; Gwynn doesn’t repeat the question.

When Isabel responds, she looks at the brightness of a lantern, glowing like a small sun. “I don’t know. Once before, I thought perhaps a dream was yours. It felt familiar enough. But I cannot be certain, and I never thought to ask father to leave your dreams be.”

The pause between them goes on long enough to make Gwynn uncomfortable.

“Would you be mad it they were?” Isabel asks, quietly.

Gwynn considers the prospect of remembering each dream he has forgotten. He can hardly recall each dream he has had that is still vividly clear to him when he wakes. He decides it likely would not matter if he still had those dreams; he may have forgotten them all on his own.

“No,” Gwynn answers. Isabel turns to look at him. “I think there is hardly anything I could be mad at you for.”

“Even when I broke your violin, right after I met you?” Isabel asks.

“Even then… The first time I saw you, I thought I was dreaming,” Gwynn says, he feels his ears getting rather hot.

Isabel smiles. She takes a step closer to him. “You were standing up,” she points out. “Not asleep.”

“I was in a state of disbelief. Also, I was exhausted. I could have fallen asleep while my legs still carried me.”

Isabel takes a step closer. There is little enough space between them that her toes brush his.

When Gwynn reaches for her and draws her lips to his, it is as though they have met like this before.

Hot breaths follow, growing hotter with roving hands.

Gwynn learns the xylophone ridges of Isabel’s spine.

They fall to the floor gracelessly, pushing aside books and toppling stacks.

Their voices tangle together. Entangled limbs, lips against skin.

When their breaths no longer outpace the rain, they fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When Gwynn wakes, Isabel is lying with her head on his chest, and he thinks perhaps he is dreaming, as he softly strokes her back.

He does not move until she wakes, and they dress slowly, speaking softly.

The rain has stopped. Outside the cavern the streets are filled with silver sunlight, and three strangers are preparing to visit the dream thief.

Art by Ludovic Jacqz

Text by Lucie MacAulay