“But like I said, I didn’t seem to have anything to do with it,” said Lee, “and I wasn’t trying to be clever. I went to say something like ‘hello Ella’ and the other stuff is what came out.”
“But what was remarkable,” Burns observed, “is that not only did you meet, as previously agreed, but you also passed on a gift, a token, a message which you then brought into the objective reality of waking life. Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve punctured a tiny hole in the membrane that separates the dream world from the waking one. Now we have to keep that hole open, and get Honora and Brad involved.
“Now; why that choice of place? Did it have resonance for Lee and Ella, but not for Brad and Honora? What we have to do now is find a tree where all four of you can, as it were, scratch your initials. I’ll give the matter some thought. Meanwhile, see if the experience can be repeated. It should be possible to do something to overcome the paralysis you describe. The potential to think and move and act on dreamside, just as you would here, must ultimately be available to you. Brad and Honora—you must familiarize yourself with this particular spot in the park. At the moment that’s all I can suggest. We may be moving towards a point where I can no longer give you advice. After all, you four are the practitioners, and my few theories are quickly being left behind. All I can do now is offer you an objective critique of the experiences you describe, evaluation at a distance. “Now I’m feeling tired. Shall we call it a very big day?”
With the four of them gone, Burns sits hunched over his study desk, his window open to the thickening dark and the smells of moon-washed grass and earth. His Anglepoise lamp throws the disc of light around the paper on his desk and illuminates his skeletal hand scuttling back and forth. The pencil whispers to the page as it delivers its looping longhand scrawl, whispering, whispering as it goes, stopping only occasionally, like a creature listening for prey or predator; until the scuttling hand moves back in action to effect the compulsive writing of the old academic who fears he might have found more to say than he has time in which to say it.
ELEVEN
Ella was waiting under the tree, a silhouette. From the distance Lee recognized the slope of her shoulder and the fall of her hair. In the next instant he was beside her, and she was smiling. He thought her eyes were like jewels, and then they were jewels—twin sapphires—and then they were eyes again. Ella touched him and he shivered. Touching almost broke the dream.
Then Ella was sitting in the tree. She was the tree spirit again. She blinked at him and he was sitting on the branch beside her.
—Did you make me do that? Or did I?—
—Do what?—
On dreamside, communication existed in a zone between thought and speech. You had spoken before you realized it. You thought after you had spoken. All communication seemed wide open to ambiguity and interpretation. Meanings generated new meanings.
—Make me be here. In the tree—
—In the tree?—
The muddle of the dreamspeak made them laugh. “In the tree” became for them an expression to explain the euphoric but confused, dithering condition of their dreaming state.
—Why all this mist?—It was a cobweb sheen, deadening all sound, filtering light through a grey sky, soaking the grass with heavy dew.
—Why all this mystery?—
—In the mist tree?—
They were drunk on dreaming.
—It’s us! Us! See, Ella? We’ve fogged it. The mist. Tree. It’s our own… dreamscape!—
—Can we change it?—
—Let’s get rid of this mist and bring a sun up. Think it. Over there—He pointed to the eastern horizon. Ella focused.
And together they made the sun rise. Dreamside dawn was shell-pink and grey.
—Bigger—said Ella. The sun swelled visibly.
—More—The sun inflated again. It filled the sky, unnatural in its dimensions and pulsating with light. All mist had evaporated. The dew on the grass had dried.
—Change colour—said Lee. The huge, throbbing disc changed from pink, to blood red, to tangerine, to liquid gold.
Ella gasped.—It’s incredible. I feel like a painter! I feel like… —
—Like… God—
And so they walked together under the huge sun they had wrought. It was a world still moist from creation. They were afraid to touch each other.
—Lee. I love you Lee—
—I love you Ella—
The dream had a skin, a thin film which threatened to puncture at any moment. It also had a pulse, more sensed than heard, that kept time with their beating hearts and the throbbing energy of the sun. But this other pulse was frightening. They knew that when it stopped the dream would split at the seams.
—Do you feel it?—
—Yes. Like something trying to get in—
—It’s frightening. Kiss me, Lee—
Lee turned to Ella. The idea of kissing her was more than he could bear. Even as he touched her, he felt the tiny hairline cracks appearing in the very fabric of the dream, and multiplying at astonishing speed.
Then suddenly, the dream broke.
The couple woke, shivering and exhausted.
Further dreamside encounters took place, characterized by that same intensity but always inhibited by an erratic sense of control. Lee and Ella reported that the paralysis which had gripped them on the first occasion had loosened and had opened up possibilities for further interaction, but that they still sometimes felt like live figures trapped in a painting. Any strenuous effort to act in a prescribed manner ran the risk of breaking up the dream. But progress was made and every small step was minutely observed and feted by the group. They became insular and secretive, conspiratorial even, as their interest in the experience grew and their excitement increased.
Burns was becoming more than a little concerned that Brad and Honora were still unable to make the dream rendezvous, and that they were beginning to feel left behind, despite their encouragement and support for the successes of the other two. Even Brad had become less flippant, even a touch introspective as he struggled to catch up with the action. Both his and Honora’s lucid dream control had progressed astoundingly, spurred on by the inspiration of their co-dreamers. But they repeatedly failed to find a path to the meeting place.
“It’s like it’s a closed place on dreamside,” Brad complained, “anywhere else I can get to without a ticket. Sometimes I feel like I could shift to the Bank of England or to the Kremlin, but this place, somehow it never feels on.”
Honora agreed. “I get a know about it. It’s not an option, it’s not on, I have the know.”
Burns had come to trust the strength of the dreamknow to which Honora referred, and which only he of the five could not claim to have experienced. This know was more comprehensive, more fundamental than one’s understanding in ordinary waking time, and he respected it deeply.
“Is it a fear, an anxiety or something that keeps you from the place where Ella and Lee meet?”