"I
did?
Really?"
Ella allowed herself to be
persuaded.
"Think hard," said Burns, "what was it,
Honora, that
you saw that made you lose the
picture?"
Honora held her hands to her mouth, palms pressed together like someone
in prayer. "I was on my way to the meeting place. I saw the path and the
tennis courts; and then, by the cherry trees, I saw someone waiting. I remember
thinking it might have been Lee, but I wasn't sure. Then I lost my way. That's
all I can say. I lost my way."
"So when I thought I had mistaken Ella for Honora,
it could actually have been Honora on her way to the rendezvous?" said
Lee.
"It's possible; but it's not what I'm getting at. There is some
block for Honora that made her 'lose her way' as she put it; otherwise she was
clearly on the path to meeting up with you and Ella."
"We could try guided
re-entry," suggested Brad.
"No," said Burns. "I don't want to surface any more of
this material just yet. We may run the risk of disturbing a delicate process of
development in dream control. My instincts tell me to let it incubate. Ella,
tell us again how it felt for you." He leaned forward, eagerly.
"I had
the know
,
in the way
we've talked about before, the dreamside way of knowing. That sense which is
more than a belief, it is a confident knowing that such-and-such is so, and in
that way I knew that Lee would be waiting. There was no question about it. I
didn't pause to think of Honora or Brad. The feeling of excitement was
overwhelming. It was elation and anxiety mixed: that's what it was, that's what
caused the kind of paralysis we both felt." Lee was nodding vigorously.
"It was sexual too; we've discussed it and we both felt almost like the
moment before orgasm. The tiniest mundane things were incredibly stimulating,
and exciting things were unbearably so. That's why we hardly did
anything,
we were paralyzed by this feeling. When I touched
Lee's face it was the most I could do; I mean the most. That's why, when he
started quoting Shakespeare I thought it the most clever, profound and
appropriate thing that could possibly have been said at that moment—less so now
but at the time it was overwhelming!"
"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
Traveller
repose and dream among my leaves
—William
Blake
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?"
"I
don't know. For us it's a neutral; a dead force field; a zone of used
possibilities."
"Then we must find another zone or
field."
"I had a fear," said Ella, "of someone
else getting
in."
"Oh?"
"L.
P., can I ask you something?"
Ella chancing the familiar
mode while Burns was in a good mood.
"Ask away, E. I."
"Why are you so anxious to make all four of us
rendezvous?"
"Is it a private
party
?
"
"No;
it's not that. I get the feeling you want further confirmation of what's
happening."
"She means don't you trust us," said Lee.
"Yes
Lee; I know what Ella means. But why shouldn't I trust your accounts?"
"We
misled you at the beginning of the exercises. You would be right to be
sceptical."
"Sceptical
of you two I am not. Perhaps you will forgive my guard against credulity
however, which springs from years of working in a discipline which has never
been more than an Art which believes
itself
to be a
Science. Even so, our capacity for self-deception and the unfaltering pursuit
of wishful thinking are probably the most dependable of human attributes."
"So you do think we're making it all up!"
"Not so. Certainly not
consciously, as in telling fibs to deceive a gullible old academic with nothing
better to entertain him. No. But there is such a thing, to name an example, as
a
folie
a
deux
."
"Madness between two
emotionally involved people," said Brad cheerfully.
"Where
one feeds off the other's delusions."
"So we're liars or we're
mad!"
"I'm not saying you're
either of those,
Ella,
please don't make such a grim
face at me. I'm pointing out that there are possibilities of illusory states of
mind. Even with or without my spectacles I know you and Lee to be emotionally
entangled. We have to consider these things. Now, a third or fourth party
entering the scenario would help to confirm things."
"So if a second person
sees the unicorn in the woods, it still doesn't exist," said Lee,
"but if a third person sees it we'll give it a scientific name!"
"Speaking as someone who
is a great believer in unicorns, I'd still want all three of them to have their
heads tested!"
They all seemed to laugh
longer at this quip than was necessary. The professor concluded the session.
"Let's just say that it's much harder for three to keep up a conspiracy of
self-deception than it is for two." Whatever that meant, they accepted it
in good faith.
Three days later they called
around at the professor's house and found him in high spirits. Still breaking
open bottles left over from the end of term soiree, he announced his plans.
"It's time for us to find
that tree I mentioned."
"What tree?"
"The
one for you all to carve your initials on.
By which I mean to say we now need to identify a new location as our
point of rendezvous, one with which all four of you can have good strong associations,
and which can become a new focus for us on dreamside. We are all going on a
little summer holiday."