Dreamside

—What is it? What happened?—Lee’s scream had caught Ella mid-song, and now she sat up in the boat taking Lee’s head in her hands.

—I don’t know I don’t know—Lee looked in horror over the side of the boat at the thin eel-like trails of blood already diffusing into the blue-black water.—I want to get out—

There the dream broke.

They all experienced it in different ways. For Brad it began with a perspiration that grew into a sweat which threatened a melting as if he was made of plastic; for Ella the earth, seeming to want to become part of her, reconstituted her feet as the warm soil.

These lucid nightmares were more terrifying than anything in ordinary dreaming: for what might happen if the absorbing process continued to its conclusion? The implications for waking time were not to be contemplated. So, they guarded themselves. Their dreaming became circumspect, as they proceeded in fear of another attack.

It was Brad who showed them how to deal with these elementals. He called them together on dreamside.

—Watch—he said, bringing them over to the trunk of the oak, and pressing the palm of his hand against its rough bark. He closed his eyes as they watched. At first nothing happened. Then his fingernails slowly took on a glaucous colour, changing slowly to moss-green, which moved imperceptibly down his fingers until the lines and folds and knuckles of his hand deepened and cracked, and his fingernails split. Then his hand absorbed the texture of solid bark spreading across the back of his hand to his wrist, his fingertips transforming into a stunted branch of the tree itself: gnarled, knotted, living tree:

— Stop it—Honora whispered.

—Not yet—The creeping bark inched up his arm, cracking and resetting his bones as it went, twisting at a point below his elbow.

—Stop it!—

—Now!—said Brad, and the metamorphosis stopped dead. His hand was organically joined with the trunk; the rough bark texture of his limb indistinguishable from the bark of the tree. But the process had been halted.

—You’ve become sloppy! Forgotten the art of lucid dreaming!—said Brad with contempt.—There’s no time here, you just have to think it back, reverse the process, think it back, just like rewinding a film. Watch—

The growth which had taken possession of Brad’s limb retreated exactly as it had advanced, moving back down the arm and across the hand like a long glove being peeled off, the rough texture dissolving, the moss-green tincture vanishing until his hand reformed itself entirely.

Brad held up his unscathed hand for all of them to see.—Learn it—he said.

FIFTEEN

There is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may be criticized.

—Charles Lamb

Harmony and security were restored to dreamside, at least for a while. Brad had demonstrated, and the others were able to reproduce, the powers that would keep the frightening encroachment of those elemental forces at bay. Lee and Ella were free to persist with their “orgasm project”: the sexual adventure of making it happen on dreamside. But they had difficulty with sustaining the dream long enough to contain such a high pitch of excitement. The dream always seemed to crack at a crucial moment.

This left Brad to look on, and Honora to resist. It wasn’t long before Brad decided that just being on dreamside wasn’t enough.

—Know what they’re doing, Honora?—

—Of course. Enjoying it, I hope—

—Doesn’t it make you curious?—

—About them? No—

—No, not about them. I mean about it. It. It must be different here. Incredible. Different. The end of the world—

—I wouldn’t know—

—No, you wouldn’t would you? Maybe you should watch them, find out how it’s done—

—I don’t think they’d like to be watched; any more than I would—

—C’mon. There’s just you and me here—

—Perceptive—

—Know what? I want you badly—

—Don’t start—

—Don’t start? It never stops! What am I supposed to do? What about me?—

—Poor Brad; he isn’t getting any—

They had rehearsed this discussion before, both on dreamside and in waking time.

—Am I so obnoxious?—

—I prefer you as a friend—

—I hate people who say that—

—So if you hate me you can’t want me—

Uninterested as she was, Honora knew anyway that Brad’s real feelings were for Ella. She could see what Ella would have dismissed out of hand; what Lee preferred not to see; and what Brad could never admit. Yet there was no question. Brad was secretly in love with Ella, and because he had no chance of getting close he made a mask of perpetual antagonism towards her. He was the only one suffering from this conspiracy to deny the obvious.

Honora felt some sympathy for him, if only because she alone could see what was burning him up. Brad could only vent his feelings destructively. When Ella was around, he would mock or goad or challenge her in ways which at least won some form of contact, even if it was negative. He drew strength from the friction. And when Ella disappeared with Lee, he paced around Honora in a froth of agitation. He was a danger to himself.

—Honora, think of what you could be missing!—

—I thought of it—

—And?—

—I’ll pass—

—It’s an experience denied to other people! It’s like being specially chosen for something! It’s one of life’s great miracles and it’s only available to us! Don’t throw it away!—

—Still, I’ll pass—

—You’re a stupid naive silly little country virgin who doesn’t know anything—

—Oh I’m not so naive; all the other things maybe—

She got up and moved away from Brad’s hot attention, leaning her back against the oak tree. She thought of Lee and Ella, briefly, naked in the long grass.

—I’m not that naive—she said again.

For Lee and Ella were only a thought away, stretched amid the daisies and the long grass, shivering at each other’s hot breath and warm touch. It was as if they had cast off not just their clothes but also their living skin, leaving them a bundle of exposed nerve endings, detonating at every breath of air, kiss, or light caress. Achingly sensitive to subtle changes in the air currents around them, Ella leaned across Lee and pressed her tongue on his stiffened penis, flicking at the dome with her tongue, here is the church, her lips settling and lifting and resettling on him like a butterfly’s beating wings, here is the steeple, Lee in an agony of tumescence, the unstoppable swelling, the ecstatic unknowable voice in his ears until he thought the whole thing would explode, not just his cock but his brain, his head, his body, the dream, life outside the dream, life beyond that, until Ella brought him sharply back under control, coaxing and reminding him to hold it together.

—Slow it—she said.—Slow. Breathe deep. Imagine I’ve got a knife at your throat and I’m making you do this, now do it, put it inside me—

—Prove it—said Brad.

—What?—said Honora.

—Prove that you’re not. Not naive—

Brad stood up. His gaze locked on her and she felt unable to look away, mesmerized, as if he were holding her head so that she couldn’t turn away. The air around was absolutely still, not a whisper of wind in the air, but she felt a strange shift in the currents, something akin to a breeze lift gently at the nut-brown curls nestling on her neck. Although he stood fully ten feet away, she knew it was some force that Brad was exerting.