[This one comes with audio, should you so desire to listen to me read. A little experiment in voice over.]
I read once that dreams are not to be relayed, that doing so casts a pall of sorrow upon all who listen. The speaker, that individual so graced by the wonders of night, inflicts the air with nothing but stories banal and strange and seemingly without meaning.
I am certain that whoever wrote that is wrong.
Dreams are chaotic and wild, full of wonder, weirdness, and—if I may be so bold—a hint of the prophetic. For all my life I have been lucky to sleep under the penumbra of dream. I have gotten to visit the harrowing, the uncanny, the places that physics denies and to bear witness to stories that disintegrate upon the light of dawn. So varied are these tales that at one point I kept a journal (for some time I even kept a slakian log right here). But, alas oh ye reader of the leaves, those days have also faded.
Recently, though, I have had the same dream, one that comes with such intensity that it leaves me drowning and longing for the place I see within its shade.
Unwilling to let it go, I must jot down its content.
Upon arriving at some distant and foreign shore, emerging from a cramped wooden vessel and tasting the salted air, I am handed a piece of parchment devoid of all but a solitary cartouche.
“This map is blank,” says the man who stands now by my side. He bows. “Fulfil the map.”
I nod, folding the parchment in half and then half again, slipping it through the belt that is woven and cinched at my waist. Then I move, setting out along the dock. My boots strike the ancient boards, the sound distorted by the lapping of the waves. I pass crates that are stacked in threes and overflowing with market goods; I see merchants who toil in beads and spice, strangers wrapped in robes of colours I could never describe in words. I move past creatures kept in cages or that perch on poles; some I recognise—the eagles and snakes and viridian birds—whilst others—glimmered wraiths, an orgulomph, two solitary brok—are creatures I did not know I knew. They chitter as I move, the wraiths uncaring for all of material form; the brok, grey-maned and with their elegant barbed flukes, dip endlessly into the sea to emerge precipitated in the crystal salt of the shore.
The city is ahead, beyond the docks and where the road inclines to a cobbled square. Two sides are marked by archways whose keystones bear the patterned insignia of the king. Here is The Great City, a title that could never be more true: its houses and edifices are carved and stitched to the towering rockface, the edge of a mountain that reaches far into the sky.
Without a map, this city is not real. The words drift to my mind, as though whispered by someone far away. I am, I realise, unskilled in all but the cartography of land and sea, the inking of place onto page—no other profession has ever beset my life. In my pocket is a quill, a gift from my father before I was exiled to this coast. This fact, like so many others, is made real with each step that I take. The feather is from a tamabril, its deep and luscious red unseen in these parts, the calamus as light as the bird from which it once belonged. I finger its edge, feel the prickle of the barbs along my skin. The desire to begin my work is almost uncontrollable; my hand wants to hold the parchment and let the quill connect with its surface, my eyes wish to see the ink drip and flow as though life still lingered within the hollow chamber of the bone that now bleeds.
I resist, move into the square, passing under the southerly arch. Strangers hurry in each direction, some flowing back and towards the ships whose sails ruffle in the wind-licked docks. Others take the path that I follow, the one to the north and through the City Arch. The path narrows and then forks, splitting off to the left and right and always up, up and up like branches that reach without haste to the unending sky. I move through alleys, under narrow passes, skirt channels that carry water to feed the city entire. I witness a hundred doors of darkest oak, vines that cling to walls and windows with leaves green and heavy with the season’s fruit. They scent the air with the sweetest perfume.
I move as though I have walked these streets a thousand times, as though my knowledge of this world is etched far inside my mind. Splintered domes catch the light of the sun and moon; monks scurry on silent feet to preach the religion of this realm; terraced crops grow sheltered from any storm. I see it all. I traverse paths and streets and alleys, my fingers lingering on the barbs of the quill. At some distant, high place I unfold the parchment and begin my work, sketching and annotating until all the light has faded and I sit under the glistening stars.
And then, somehow, I am returned to the dock. It is sunrise and the man is there by my side.
“The map is not fulfilled,” he says, taking the parchment from my hand and pushing me off the dock. I land with a sudden splash. It is cold. My robe is heavy with water and I begin to sink. From deep below I can see the map bobbing there at the surface, thrown and discarded. Sunlight refracts around its edges as I drift deeper and deeper, the salt and wash in my nostrils and lungs. I cannot breathe, and—
—and then I am awake. The dream ends there. It always ends at that moment, the map unfulfilled and incomplete.
I am yet to understand the meaning of this dream, if it has such. Perhaps to do so is unnecessary. Perhaps with each visit to the city that is not real I find some new street or landmark, some means of measuring distance with chain or rope, a triangulation of facts that, obscured by having no recollection of any prior visit, I cannot possibly perceive.
As the reality of day blurs into my world, I am left with a singular feeling: Nothing before now is real.
This sense of incompleteness and unfulfillment is something I've experienced all my life. Sometimes, I think it might be another one of those messages from the Universe -- perhaps the most important one -- that keeps recurring: life is inherently incomplete and unfulfilled, and all we can do is accept it and navigate through it without succumbing to the anxiety such an idea might provoke. We are obsessed with the notion of beginnings and endings, but perhaps these are just human constructs, tied to our primordial need to assign meaning to everything, especially life itself. I think your marvellous piece captures this intricate web of emotions, questions, and feelings so beautifully. The final passage of the dream is so vivid that I could easily imagine the scene, as if I were the one in the depths of the water, looking up at the parchment with sunlight refracting around it. Another magnificent story, Nathan. I loved it. :)
“…to bear witness to stories that disintegrate upon the light of dawn. “
How many times in the early morning hours, that moment, when my eyes are just seeking the light of day, and my mind for a split second , wakes with the excitement of a great dream to recount, and
poof, it is gone. Not even a spark of a guess.
When I finished reading, I thought of the quote Charles Dickens wrote for his character, Oliver Twist; “ Please sir, I want some more…”
More Dream sequences,
A book to finish this magic of the midnight mind, or a movie script so I can join in your dreamscape.
“As the reality of day blurs into my world, I am left with a singular feeling: Nothing before now is real.”
Excellent, Nathan!
A grand piece of writing.