“Yes!” screamed Velag. “Does it still have teeth? And claws?” he asked, his eyes wide.
“I would think so.” Father nodded.
“Is it going to be in chains?”
“I hope so, Velag. Otherwise it might get loose and…” he paused for dramatic effect. I froze in fear. Velag looked eagerly at him. “Eat you both up!” he bellowed, tickling us with his huge hands. It took all my willpower not to scream. I looked at Velag’s delighted expression to keep me calm, reminding myself that these were just Father’s hands jabbing my sides.
“Careful!” Mother said sharply, to my relief. “They’ll get the fruit all over.” The indigo segments were still in our laps, on the napkins Mother had handed to us. Father stopped tickling us, still grinning.
“Do you remember what they look like?” Velag asked, as if trying to see how many questions he could ask in as little time as possible. He had asked this one before, of course. Father had fought Nightmares, and even killed some, when he was a knight-errant.
“We never really saw them, son,” said Father. He touched the window. “Out there, it’s so cold you can barely feel your own fingers, even in armor.”
We could see the impenetrable walls of the forests pass us by—shaggy, snarled mare-pines, their leaves black as coals and branches supposedly twisted into knots by the Nightmares to tangle the path of intruders. The high, hoary tops of the trees shimmered ever so slightly in the scarce light sneaking over the horizon, which they sucked in so hungrily. The moon was brighter here than in the City, but at its jagged crescent, a broken gemstone behind the scudding clouds. We were still in Evening, but had encroached onto the Nightmares’ outer territories, marked by the forests that extended to the foothills. After the foothills, there was no more forest, because there was no more light. Inside our cabin, under bright electric lamps, sitting on velvet-lined bunks, it was hard to believe that we were actually in the land of Nightmares. I wondered if they were in the trees right now, watching our windows as we looked out.
“It’s hard to see them, or anything, when you’re that cold, and,” Father breathed deeply, gazing at the windows. “They’re very hard to see.” It made me uneasy, hearing him say the same thing over and over. We were passing the very forests he travelled through as a knight-errant, escorting pioneers.
“Father’s told you about this many times, dear,” Mother interjected, peering at Father with worried eyes. I watched. Father smiled at her and shook his head.
“That’s alright, I like telling my little tykes about my adventures. I guess you’ll see what a Nightmare looks like tomorrow, eh? Out in the open. Are you excited?” he asked, perhaps forgetting that he’d already asked. Velag shouted in the affirmative again.
Father looked down at me, raising his bushy eyebrows. “What about you, Valyzia?”
I nodded and smiled.
I wasn’t excited. Truth be told, I didn’t want to see it at all. The idea of capturing and keeping a Nightmare seemed somehow disrespectful in my heart, though I didn’t know the word then. It made me feel weak and confused, because I was and always had been so afraid of them, and had been taught to be.
I wondered if Velag had noticed that Father had once again refused to actually describe a Nightmare. Even in his most excitable retellings of his brushes with them, he never described them as more than walking shadows. There was a grainy sepia-toned photograph of him during his younger vigils as a knight-errant above the mantle of our living-room fireplace. It showed him mounted on a horse, dressed in his plate-armor and fur-lined surcoat, raising his longsword to the skies (the blade was cropped from the picture by its white border). Clutched in his other plated hand was something that looked like a blot of black, as if the chemicals of the photograph had congealed into a spot, attracted by some mystery or heat. The shape appeared to bleed back into the black background.
It was, I had been told, the head of a Nightmare Father had slain. It was too dark a thing to be properly caught by whatever early photographic engine had captured his victory. The blot had no distinguishing features apart from two vague points emerging from the rest of it, like horns or ears. That head earned him a large part of the fortune he later used to start up his contracting business. We never saw it, because Nightmares’ heads and bodies were burned or gibbeted by knights-errant, who didn’t want to bring them into the City for fear of attracting their horde. The photograph had been a source of dizzying pride for my young self, because it meant that my father was one of the bravest people I knew. At other times, it just made me wonder why he couldn’t describe something he had once beheaded, and held in his hand as a trophy.
My indigo finished, Mother took the napkin and wiped my hands with it. My brother still picked at his. A waiter brought us a silver platter filled with sugar-dusted pastries, their centers soft with warm fudge and grünberry jam. We’d already finished off supper, brought under silver domes that gushed steam when the waiters raised them with their white-gloved hands, revealing chopped fungus, meat dumplings, sour cream, and fermented salad. Mother told Velag to finish the indigo before he touched the pastries. Father ate them with as much gusto as I did. I watched him lick his powdered fingers, that had once held the severed head of a Nightmare.
When it was time for respite, the cabin lights were shut off and the ones in the corridor were dimmed. I was relieved my parents left the curtains of the windows open as we retired, because I didn’t want it to be completely dark. It was dim enough outside that we could fall asleep. It felt unusual to go to bed with windows uncovered for once.
I couldn’t help imagine, as I was wont to do, that as our train moved through Evening’s forested fringes, the Nightmares would find a way to get on board. I wondered if they were already on the train. But the presence of my family, all softly snoring in their bunks (Velag above me, my parents opposite us); the periodic, soothing flash of way-station lights passing by outside; the sigh of the sliding doors at the end of the carriage opening and closing as porters, waiters, and passengers moved through the corridors; the sweet smell of the fresh sheets and pillow on my bunk—these things lulled me into a sleep free of bad dreams, despite my fear of seeing the creature we’d named bad dreams after, face-to-face, the next vigil.
When I was six I stopped sleeping in my parents’ room, and started sleeping in the same room as my brother. At the time of this change, I was abnormally scared of the dark (and consider, reader, that this was a time when fear of the dark was as normal and acceptable as the fear of falling from a great height). So scared that I couldn’t fall sleep after the maids came around and closed our sleep-shutters and drew the curtains, to block out the western light for respite.
The heavy clatter of the wooden slats being closed every respite’s eve was like a note of foreboding for me. I hunkered under the blankets, rigid with anxiety as the maids filed out of the room with their lanterns drawing wild shadows on the walls. Then the last maid would close the door, and our room would be swallowed up by those shadows.
In the chill darkness that followed, I would listen to the clicking of Nightmares’ claws as they walked up and down the corridors of our shuttered house. Our parents had often told me that it was just rats in the walls and ceiling, but I refused to believe it. Every respite I would imagine one of the Nightmare intruders slinking into our room, listening to its breathing as it came closer to my bed and pounced on me, not being able to scream as it sat on my chest and ran its reeking claws through my hair, winding it into knots around its long fingers and laughing softly.