Dream Weaver

By Marina Gerrard

Henry thinks he has picked the perfect day to take the edge off life and the perfect spot to do it in. Not so.

There are unseen forces at work that run interference.

He soon finds out why.

It should have been a perfect day for daydreaming. Except there is that strange slipping and sliding that occurs when he least expects it. When reality seems to go out of sync and he ends up in places he does not remember going. What is it that actually happens in those moments? What does he do to put that look of utter fascination on other people's faces?

These are the very things that upset his apple cart. That leave him disorientated and with a nail-biting kind of worry.

It is summer solstice, the time when a door opens to another dimension and reality becomes flexible, malleable. It so happens that in that other dimension there are those who have something else in mind for him than dreaming the day away.

On the one hand there are the incorrigible, mischievous pranksters who want him to be their new dream master. They are adamant it is his duty to help them out of a pickle that they have themselves created.

On the other hand there are the dream bubbles. They persistently try to point him in the direction of a more urgent and important destiny that he has to fulfil.

And all because he has an ability he knows nothing about. Yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marina Gerrard
• Release date: Nov 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393270164

Book preview

I. WHAT I DO BEST

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Sometimes it’s time for departure without knowing your destiny (Tennessee Williams)

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Morning sat bright and lightweight on his shoulder. The sun came out to play. The day smelled like green laughter. He breathed in deeply and wiggled his toes in the water of the stream, still cool at this early hour. He was in his favourite spot. A little creek off the main bay where it seemed time stood still. There was no wind.

A willow tree dangled its hair just above the softly undulating surface. It touched and withdrew, touched and withdrew, tantalising the fish below. He could see their dark shapes sliding in and out of the reeds that skirted the border he sat on. Duckweed slowly drifted by, gathering and separating. Sunlight glinted off the rippling water. A bit further down a cat lay sunning itself on a large branch that hung over the water. Its eyes were closed. He could almost hear it purr. The day promised to settle into the luscious apple cart shape full of peace, calm and understanding of his need to take the edge off life.

He sighed contentedly and let himself fall back in the long grass. He picked a blade of grass and chewed on it. Lazily he contemplated the cerulean blueness of the sky. Little flocks of clouds came and went.

He closed his eyes and let the clouds and the world float by, allowing his thoughts to gather wool. It was what he did best. Dreaming the day away.

His peace did not last long. Within minutes the edge of life started to prod him in the sides and he started ruminating, mouth chomping busily while he was at it.

There was something on his brain. This produced the sort of unruly hopscotch and a race around of thoughts inside his skull he did not enjoy, a whirl and a twirl around subjects he hated. It did not exactly hurt but it was something he could very well do without. He preferred the inside of his skull to be just as calm and cerulean as the sky above.

Daydreaming on the other hand was his favourite pastime. He loved the way he could make things blur and blend and merge. He would tune them up or pare them down. Zoom in, zoom out. Have fun. Make thingies with pixy ears crawl up the hair of the willow tree. Have them tie the reeds together and swing and sing a water song. Make everything take on outrageous colours. Have trees do the electric boogie. Turn the hearts of flowers into faces and have them giggle. Stuff like that. Silly stuff, true, but it provided a comfort zone. A day undreamed simply was a day not lived.

Of late, though, his comfort had been breached.

For starters there was Nona, his girlfriend. Some of his daydreams revolved around her, of course. Sailing into the sunset of forever or floating on a raft in the Mediterranean, long drink in hand, whispering sweet nothings. But if there was one thing Nona didn’t do it was sail. Or float for that matter. The girl was full of life and bounce. She added spice and zest to his life. He couldn’t fault her for this. Not really. Damn, he was fond of the girl. Very fond. As a matter of fact he loved her to bits but sometimes he felt she was too full of life. For his liking, that was. Not only did she add spice, she also liked to drive matters to the edge. And the only thing she drank was mineral water. If there was one thing he hated it was mineral water. No colour, no oomph, no life. It was all to do with this health kick she was on.

Fried rubber, baked grass, tossed rabbit food, the lot. Not a juicy steak in sight. And coffee was out as well. Same as alcohol. Didn’t leave much, did it. It made him hungry, very hungry, for something, anything. A juicy steak for instance. Dressed with fried onions, scrumptious mushrooms, a piquant sauce. He saw it on his plate, saw himself picking up knife and fork and making the first cut. The image made him drool. He swallowed. His mouth filled with the taste of grass. The image disappeared. He sighed deeply. Nona on the other hand seemed to thrive on lean and mean. It just made her bouncier than ever. Not only that. She put him to the choice. She had tweaked his ample love handles, looked him straight in the eye and said ‘Join me or eat elsewhere’. I mean, I say. What kind of a choice was that, for crying out loud. He was a healthy male. Males and juicy stakes went together from the time the human world began.

Why had he not chosen someone else. Someone more suitable to his appetites. More hand in glove with his need for peace. Mega mismanagement on his part. Glumly he considered his prospects for a future with Nona in it.

But then, when it came to life partners, it didn’t come to choices, did it. That’s when the attraction of opposites came into play. Unfortunately. Most unfortunately in his case. And the attraction was there. Very much so. That’s when it turned out that healthy males also had hearts. And his was playing up severely. She was good to look at. His pictured her in his mind. Very good. All the right bits in the right places. He practically drooled when he saw her, too. What a contest. What a choice for a man. Hands up, your steak or your girlfriend. He sniggered. It turned out the choice was made. There was no choice.

Opposites attract. He sighed. Oh well. She wasn’t really the worst of his worries, was she now. After all was said and done she also provided a lot of comfort. She was warm, she was cuddly, she was, oh hell, she was Nona and that really said it all.

No, Nona wasn’t the problem. Not really. In spite of the small matter of her name. Nona. The ninth. He had a thing about numbers. He didn’t like them. They were too exact. He wasn’t one for exact. But he liked Nona. So that was the end of that. No, what he didn’t like, really didn’t like, was the next item on his list of comfort breachers. His neighbour, Henry flippin’ Forbes the Third, his namesake, except he himself wasn’t the third of anything. He was, if anything, uniquely himself, whatever that was. Just not a number off the conveyer belt of human production. The fact that the guy was his namesake irked him beyond this world. He avoided him like the plague. How on earth someone like him ended up living right next door to him was beyond imagining. He gritted his teeth. He reached out, pulled a handful of grass and stuffed his mouth with it.

The blooming sourpuss was the bane of his life. He was forever on his doorstep. If it wasn’t with one thing it was with another. It drove him spare.

Take the other day. A prime example of the aforementioned. His mouth took hold of it and chewed it to bits. Flippin’ Forbes on the doorstep at seven in the morning. Seven, I ask you! Banging on the door, screaming like a banshee, practically spitting in his face when he opened the door and blearily looked at the messenger of yet another complaint about nothing.

‘What is it now,’ he sighed.

‘What is it, what is it!’ his neighbour raged, spittle flying everywhere.

‘It’s you, of course. What else could it be. It’s you and that bloody noise you’re making at night. I have been braving it out but now it’s enough. I tell you I’ve had it up to here and no further. It’s got to stop.’

‘What are you-’

His neighbour rode roughshod over his reply. So uncouth, so very, very uncouth. He opened his mouth to say so but he could not get a word in edgeways. The man carried on as unstoppable as a steamroller. It peeved him royally.

‘Next thing I see is you capering like a lunatic around that bloody excuse of a pond of yours.’

Capering!

He saw an image of himself capering. It was so ludicrously unlike him that he gaped. Then he collected himself and snarled, which also was very unlike him.

‘That’s enough. What the heck do you do at night when you’re supposed to be asleep. Do you sit there with a pair of binoculars?! What I do in my garden is my business. There is a hedge all around. You must have been on stilts to see anything.’

‘I can see you from my bedroom. But that’s not the point. The point is this noise you make. It wakes me up. Night after night after night. And not just any kind of noise. No, it’s this, this weird kind of singing.’

Singing! He who couldn’t hold a tune if he tried!

‘My dear man, I can’t sing,’ he managed to get in.

‘Can’t sing! You’re telling me! I know you can’t sing but there you stand at that bloody excuse of a pond night after night and open your mouth wide enough to have boats sailing into it and you produce this unimaginable barrage of noise. And you don’t like to keep this trash to yourself. No, you don’t. Apparently you have to annoy everybody else with it. Not only that. This noise of yours is weird. I mean really weird. It climbs over the hedge and knocks on my window and then it barges in, without so much as by your leave. And then it won’t go. It runs around me in circles and keeps me awake the rest of the night. Do you think that’s on?! Do you? Answer me. Do you?!’

His neighbour stuck his face in his, puce with rage and capped his tirade off with ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing!’

An answer rose to the fore of his brain. Irked beyond belief he opened his mouth and allowed it to pop out without thinking about it.

‘Catching dreams. I was catching dreams, all right!’

Forbes pointed at his forehead.

‘Then you should have yourself seen to.’

But he was listening to the echo of the answer he gave. Catching dreams? Catching dreams?

Something clicked and it felt like a piece falling into place.

‘Maybe it’s something I have to do,’ he mumbled to himself.

‘What,’ his neighbour snarled sarcastically. ‘Learn how to sing perhaps?’

Forbes the Third snorted his derision.

‘You can take singing lessons for that, you know. And you can do that in the day,’ he added pointedly.

‘No, no, of course not,’ he replied absentmindedly. ‘At least I don’t think so, but I don’t know-’

‘There’s a place for people who don’t know and if you ask my opinion that’s where you belong.’

‘I-’

‘I don’t care what you don’t know or what you want to do and I don’t care one little snippet about what you do at night but I know other people sleep. I want to sleep too but you won’t let me. I like to sleep at night. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you want to turn into a vampire bat or a werewolf. I don’t care. Do whatever you want to do but don’t do it at night.’

He snapped back to reality.

‘I don’t-’

‘Just go and do it somewhere else. And, if anything, don’t do it at night nor in my view or in my backyard.’

‘But I-’

His neighbour stomped off. After a few seconds his front door closed with an almighty bang.

And that had been that.

Except it hadn’t. His neighbour had a point. He hated to admit it but he did.

Grumpily he spat out the wad of sodden grass. His hand picked another blade of grass and he started a new process of chewing the cud.

Nona and Forbes. Two opposites. One he loved and one he hated.

But they weren’t the problem. Not really. He could cope with them. Sort of. Daydreaming helped. It put things in perspective. Leavened them with humour. Sort of.

No, it was this other thing. The strange slipping and sliding that had started to occur. The ending up in places he hadn’t remembered going. The strange looks he’d been getting on and off. He had shaken it off but it had interfered. It broke the flow. He liked things, life, whatever, to be smooth and undisturbed. This sort of thing disturbed. His life. Him. The worst thing was: he didn’t know what he was up against. All he knew was that it felt different. Like when you’d gotten on the wrong train, looked out of the window and suddenly realised ‘Hey, I don’t recognise this landscape’. It made him feel as if he’d gotten on the wrong day and didn’t know where it was going. Disorientated. Yeah, that’s what it was. It made him feel disorientated.

He could cope with disorientation of the normal kind. The one where he spun reality around to fit his daydreams. Of course he could. He enjoyed that. Hugely. But this was different. This wasn’t normal. It stayed with him. It didn’t go with the flow as his daydreams would. In one eye and out the other. No. It stayed with him. It niggled. He just hadn’t realised how much. Just like flippin’ Forbes to put his finger right on it, wasn’t it. Because it was weird. It really was as if something climbed over the hedge of his life, knocked on his skull, barged right in and then refused to go. It sat there rumbling like thunder in the distance the rest of the day. He had tried to ignore it. Of course he had -Ignoring was his middle name- but now flippin’ Forbes had rubbed his nose right in it and he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Maybe Forbes was right and he was losing it. He worried the thing backwards and forwards like a sore tooth.

He opened his eyes and stared unseeing into the blue expanse above.

He needed peace and he wasn’t getting it. He felt he was losing control, his grip on things.

He swallowed and nearly choked on the grassy cud.

Oh for crying out loud!

He sat up and grumpily rested his eyes on the water. The reflection of the willow tree rippled.

The image disappeared, then it came back in a variety of shapes to finally reassemble in its original form when the water had come to rest. It calmed him down. Reflections always did.

He was fascinated by reflections. They had a depth and a perspective of their own. The touch between one world and the next. The same and yet not. A different world. Within reach but untouchable. They played a large part in his favourite pastime.

He saw reflections in every smooth, shining or polished surface. From a canal to a cup of tea. From a table polished to shine to billboards. In each of them he could see some kind of life going on. It wasn’t as if they became transparent. He thought about it. No. It wasn’t like that. As he looked at them their surface would become soft, malleable, like ice changing over into water, water into gas. And the shading was different. Often shades of grey and muted colour but that was just the starting point. The backdrop to the story he would be telling himself. When the story finished and he came back to himself he would feel uplifted.

Strangely enough, he mused, it never happened with a mirror. In that he only saw himself. Boredom galoredom. Water on the other hand, he waxed lyrical, water was a winner. Sure thing. Reflections in water were a never-ending source of delight. They changed, they solidified. Permanent yet changeable, all stories related to a single source, like that willow tree. He found them soothing. And peaceful.

A soft breeze came off the bay. The water rippled, the reflection of the tree distorted and fragmented, then it was gone, its peace disturbed just as his was.

When had it started, he asked himself, this disorientation? Really started. A week ago, a month, longer than that? He didn’t know. When had he actually started to notice then, pay attention, to the slipping, the sliding, the distant rumble of voices when there was no one around? He hadn’t, had he. Not really. He had shifted it onto his blind spot and waved it away. In short, he had ignored it.

One little event, though, had apparently managed to linger on intact in the dank and murky recesses of his brain and now it popped to the fore. Maybe, he ruminated, picking another blade of grass to chew, maybe it had been the day he fell out of bed. Or thought he had fallen.

He saw himself turning over and flipping the blanket aside. He put one hand on the bed to push himself upright. In that moment the fabric of reality suddenly became malleable, pliable, open. His hand went through the bed as if it had suddenly sprouted holes. He started to fall but in slow motion. His mouth opened in slow surprise. A sound came out but that too had lost its connection to normal time. He could see it forming before him like a long string of o’s that moved towards an unseen point of completion. Briefly, very briefly, he thought he could see something else. In between the o’s, in between the falling and the landing, in the moment before his foot finally touched the floor. A chink, a peep into another world, whatever it was. Then his foot hit the floor and it was gone. The bed was solid, his hand rested on the sheet, his foot on the rug in front of his bed and reality was what it always was. Present. Uncomfortable in the chill of the morning but solid. He did not really know what he had seen or even if he had seen anything. He shook his head and tucked the experience away as one of those things that could happen in the slumberland between waking and dreaming. Things slipped back into place and life carried on as normal.

However.

It was after that things had started doing other things they would not normally do. Things he would never imagine had started to happen. More to the point: he had started doing things he would not normally do. Apparently. For he never remembered what it was he had done or what had happened. Only that it had. Something shifted and what it left was this sense of disorientation. It had taken him a while to realise he was not daydreaming or night-dreaming or even sleepwalking. He only realised something was definitely out of kilter when he saw the look on people’s faces. Apparently others had begun to notice something about him. Before that they would not have given him the time of day and looked right through him. Which was fine by him because it left him in peace. Now they actually looked at him and they had that strange look on their face. A bit like Nona when she thought he was being silly but not quite. No, there was something else in that look, something he could not quite place.

Like that time in the market square when he found himself standing in the empty basin of the fountain in the centre, his mouth closing on a note, a word, something he did not know he had produced, his ears still straining after sounds he