He stopped before her. In the brief instant before she spoke, he saw within her lined features the young woman he’d left so many years ago.
“Husband,” she said.
“Wife.”
Their embrace was long. The traveler smelled the remembered perfume, the sweet underscent of her skin. Her tears dampened his face, and for a moment, all the years dropped away. They were young again and courting, when she had teased him from horseback, outracing his own horse on the windy forest trails she knew so well; when she beckoned him to sit at streamside, and they talked long and earnestly about their lives to come; and when she danced in the Great House hall, far surpassing the other women who once vied for his attentions. For the moment of the embrace, the world became her, and he realized the dampness on his face was his own tears too.
So he did not object when the servants took his sword to hang above the Great House fireplace, or gave him new, fine clothes to replace the road-worn ones. Nor did he object to the welcome home feast where his grown son toasted to his good health and then returned the ruler’s scepter, or when his wife led him up the stairs they had walked so many years before to the wedding chamber. It seemed he floated, now, so much weight had disappeared.
But much later, when the only sounds in the Great House were the skittering of mice and the familiar pulsing throb in his ears, the traveler roused himself from the bed and padded barefoot to the open window overlooking the courtyard. A full moon showed brightly on the well-swept walk from the archway entrance. Quartz or mica flecks in the stone caught the light so that the path looked more like a river than a road. It flowed from the entrance, through the courtyard, and then emptied into the darkness of the stronghold’s backdoor, a little used exit barely wide enough for a man and the belongings on his back. He stared at the shadowed door for a long time, the evening breeze washing over his nakedness until goosebumps roughened his skin. The light seemed to gravitate to that spot as if the courtyard were tilted. What was it that drew his gaze there? Behind him, the bed, so much softer than most he had slept in in his journeys, beckoned. His wife, still the young woman in her heart, still in love with the young man in his, slumbered deeply there, waiting for him even now.
But there was the mysterious door.
He leaned against the window’s sill so he could see it better. Moonlight touched his hands and face. Then, he remembered. He pictured it: his hand reaching out, unlatching the heavy bolt, all those years ago. His quest began there where the road led him from enigma to revelation, and from danger to triumph, over and over again. That’s where he had started, his wife’s last caress fresh on his lips, his sword untested and keen in its sheath.
Who was that young man then? The traveler felt that he knew of him, but he didn’t know him, just as he knew of the son who had spoke so loudly for him at the dinner that evening, but he did not know him, not like a father should know a son. Nor did he know the woman in the bed. Not really. She was like a story told to him about another woman, another man’s wife. A romance he learned about. Not his.
He shivered. Was the stronghold even a part of him?
A hazy cloud passed in front of the moon, dimming the courtyard, so it almost disappeared, but the road seemed to glisten just as brightly.
The woman coughed in the shadows behind him as she rolled in her sleep. The traveler flinched. He didn’t recognize her breathing. The stone sill beneath his hand felt rough-edged and unfamiliar. He rose on the balls of his feet. His hands drifted away from the window and floated at his sides, relaxed, ready to defend him. Without thinking, he moved away from the silhouetting window and into the room’s darkest corner. There, he watched. Did the ornate arras that covered the far wall move, just a little? Could there be someone behind it? Quiet as the moonlight, he moved from one corner to the next, until he stood at the tapestry. It lay nearly flat against the wall, barely room for a sword to fit behind it, much less an assassin, but his heart still pumped as if he’d run a long race, and his mouth felt dry.
The woman in the bed stirred again. Her white hair wisped across the bed’s covers, all light shadows and dark shadows. He crept around the room’s door and into the hallway beyond where his foot encountered a pile of soft cloth, his old travel clothes. The shirt pulled on easily, as did the pants and much-patched boots.
No less quiet than before, the traveler stalked down the stairs. The lay of the stronghold seemed less familiar every step he took. The shape of a chandelier surprised him. An unfamiliar draft caught him unawares. With some difficulty, he found his way to the Great House fireplace and retrieved his sword. When he held it, its weight pushed him down just enough that he felt he was touching the earth again. He remembered the quick flick of his wrist earlier and the bird cleft in two, and he smiled sadly at the thought. For good or ill, the sword was a part of him. Not like this strange fortress that reeked of memories and people who did not know him.
He moved now with purpose, across the Great Hall to the throne room where he found the scepter on the high seat where he’d left it. Like a ghost, passing through one dancing-dust moonbeam at a window and into the next, he wandered until he found his son’s living quarters, marked by a sign above the door. The traveler leaned the scepter against the polished wood. It looked better there than in his hand.
Minutes later, he stood at the small door he had seen from the wedding chamber window. The latch lifted just as heavy as he remembered, and when the door swung open, the trail glowed like the brilliant face of the moon overhead. He shifted the sword into a more comfortable position and began walking.
Trees passed, and so did rock and hillock and a thrushy dell. Finally, the road returned to the climb he had started earlier that day. Before him, the not so distant peaks caught the moonlight in their teeth and did not tremble, nor did he. The path led to them and through them and passed beyond. He leaned into the ascent, his thighs burning familiarly.
So close now to the road’s beginning, so comfortable in the long strides that would eat the miles, so aware of his legs moving him forward, always forward on his comfortable journey into the unknown, he realized the road had no end, and he was content.
ONE IN A THOUSAND
This is a dream!
This is a dream!
I entered the last dream shouting at my sleeping self, aware that I was dreaming. Wake up, fool! I pleaded. I’ll admit it. But I slept on anyway. Some things you just can’t help. Tonight I won’t do it, though. Plead, I mean. Tonight I’ll welcome the dream.
I knew it was a dream, all of them were, because I woke to leave them and slept to enter. But that was the only way I knew. The dreams are reality in all other ways and when I die here I die in my waking life. I saw it happen to a guy once, so I know what I’m talking about.
He stood three men down from me. No name, just another soldier. I’m a soldier, too, in the dreams. Scared looking, but holding himself stiff and straight; he was just one guy in a line of a thousand men and women. I stared straight ahead, but from the corners of my eyes I saw them wearing khaki uniforms, hiking boots, belt buckles shining.
Even in the first dream I started thinking, “How many of these people got what it takes to survive?” This is a kind of fantasy I play by myself. I remember in junior high doing the same thing, looking at a classroom full of kids and wondering who would live if suddenly they were transported to a desert island. I’d pick them out one at a time. “No, not him,” I’d think. “Too weak. Not her either. Not hard- headed enough.”