Dreamscape: Chapter Four

Chapter Four - The Dreamscape, the Slatemoor, and other Intrusions

The first part of my dreaming was largely uneventful. There was the usual dream that replayed every night in which Kalia stood before me in her nightgown, begging for me to kill her, and to do so quickly. Her voice shook quietly with the terror of someone who had seen things I could never imagine, and what made me desperate to obey was more what she didn’t say than what she said. I never wanted to, at first, but my efforts to convince her otherwise were futile, and she always convinced me eventually. The real horror was that I couldn’t find any way to take her life as she frantically paced.

“Merritt,” she said urgently as I began to check my pockets, clawing them open and sifting through my belongings. Occasionally poison pills appeared in them during these scenarios.

I turned my head, curious yet dreading what she had to say. Kalia didn’t usually speak to me after she had finished her piece. “I’m trying, Kalia, I am, please just don’t-”

Kalia shifted so she was facing me and locked her ice blue eyes with mine. Those eyes, so familiar yet so distant, because they would never melt and display the person behind. “No, Merritt. I know this might be unsettling for you, but please, try to listen.” Her blonde hair spilled over one side of her face and I moved instinctively, brushing it behind her ear for her.

I realized then, with a sudden, shifting shudder, that I had never been able to touch her in my dreams. Usually, my hand just passed through her, as if she was made of mist and not an actual human being.

As if she were not my sister.

“Kalia-” I began cautiously, though I had no idea what to say.

“Merritt. Listen. I don’t have long, Merr.”

“What do you me-”

“Please, shhh. I have to tell you something.” Maybe it was the urgency in her tone, perhaps the expression on her face, I don’t know, but I stopped trying to ask questions and stared directly at her. “Thank you. Merritt. I’ll tell you, I promise, I’m just not sure how to begin… I’m always in your dreams, Merritt, I know, but… that’s not really me.”

“Obviously it’s not you, you’re just a figment of my imagination! You’re not really here!” Her ignorance irked me - it always had - but it was often difficult for me to get my true point across.

“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you, Merr; I am here this time. I’m here, with you. In your dream.”

I stood frozen for a moment before her words sank into place and began to affect me, dragging me down, pulling at my neck. Kalia… here… that would be something. Something I would have liked. But I was naturally suspicious, skeptical of things with any degree of absurdity, and much as I wanted to believe her, this would not be spared my doubt.

“What do you mean?” I said warily, wearily. Small questions, harmless questions - these were the ones that would make people talk.

“There was an Opening,” my sister replied matter-of-factly, twisting familiar words into shapes I could not decipher.

“An opening?”

“Opening.” She put stress on the first syllable. “You’re getting stronger, Merritt. Soon you will know.”

“Know… what?” I hated this, loathed not feeling in control, despised my own ignorance. I had never been a know-it-all, but there was a difference between knowing and understanding, and for the third time in my fourteen years, I didn’t understand.

Kalia raised her arms, imitating the bronze statue of Parlin that stood in our town square. We used to love to clamber on it, sitting on her shoulders, looking up at her head which was crowned with a golden wreath of leaves, until Vaelin Hermine, a boy from Kalia’s year who thought he knew everything, told us that we were being disrespectful. We weren’t, though, unless having fun is impolite.

In some places, I supposed it was.

I realized then, with a jolt of fear, that she was fading away, becoming the shadows and the mist until I was not sure what was girl and what was empty space. “Goodbye, Merritt…”

“Kalia!” I wanted answers. She couldn’t just march into my head and demand that I listen to her, and she knew that, but that was what she had done.

“I told you my time with you would be short. I must go now.”

I drew my arms back suddenly, stopping just before I would have touched her. There was nothing more I could do. She was there, she had been there, and then she was gone. Again. My sister had disappeared.

“I wouldn’t be too upset if I were you. Openings become wider, for better or worse, when you have hope and trust that they will.”

I whirled around. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it until I saw her face. Dark stormy eyes as fierce as tigers, long wavy hair. A body holding a personality as big as the planet.

Scarlett.

I don’t know if we stood there, looking at each other, waiting to pounce, for hours or barely a minute. I found my voice, eventually, though I couldn’t find the words, couldn’t pin them down with my tiger claws. “What…”

“I know what you’re thinking,” the girl whispered soothingly. “You’re thinking that this can’t possibly be happening and you’re just going to accept that this is a dream. Brush it off like a speck of dust. But tell me honestly, Merritt: Do you want this to just be a dream?”

“I… I don’t know. I’ve seen my sister - my dead sister - and… and so many things have happened…”

“I’ll tell you one thing, Merritt: Kalia is not dead.”

Somehow, this wasn’t so difficult to believe, even though I had seen her die with my own eyes. “You’ve seen her? How is she?”

“Yes, I have seen her. And you know perfectly well how she is; you’ve just seen her for yourself.” Scarlett sighed, clearly exasperated.

“But… she’s gone… dead,” I clarified. Why was this so difficult to get my point across?

Scarlett shook her head slowly. “I really don’t know how best to show you. Maybe Jasper was right about not bringing Kalia into this, though I’d hate to admit it to him.” With a sudden burst of enthusiasm, she thrust out her hand for me to take, which I did, somewhat reluctantly. It felt cool and smooth and… startlingly real. “Come with me.”

She began to run, her hair flowing out behind her as she held up her thin pale nightgown with her free hand. After a few minutes of this - her sprinting as if she was lighter than air and me running frantically alongside her gasping for breath, I managed to relax, and felt the whole process become much easier. Scarlett turned to me and smiled as approvingly as she could. “There you go. You’re getting it. Jasper said you weren’t ready, but I knew it, I knew you were.”

To understand the feeling, you must know that all around us was a murky neutral grey, not bright enough to be blinding but not dark enough to be threatening. The whole experience was extremely odd and, though I hate to admit it, a bit overwhelming. There was no sky above us and no ground below us, and as I ran I could not hear the steady click click clack of the heels of my black boots on the ground.

“Who’s Jasper?” I asked eventually, noticing that Scarlett had mentioned him several times.

“No wonder you haven’t gotten far in life; you’ve been asking the wrong questions,” Scarlett responded.

“Where are we going?” was my next query, ignoring her comment.

“That’s not the right question either, Merritt Hart. I expected better from you.”

There was something almost comical about that, a nine-year-old telling me she was disappointed in me. I supposed she had heard her fair share of that, though, from her mother. How they could be related, I had no idea. I could see the resemblance between Benjamin and Mabel, but Scarlett didn’t share any of their features. Which led to another thought, as thoughts often do: “Scarlett, is Cressinda Jamille really your mother?”

Scarlett turned suddenly and squinted at me for a second. “Yes,” she replied tersely, turning away again. I could tell she didn’t want to be bothered about that. For what reason, I couldn’t say.

Our steps matched, I noticed, and then with a twinge of guilt I wished I hadn’t. That was something Kalia and I would always try to do, both stepping with our left foot followed by our right. We could never do it unintentionally, as much as we wanted to have some sort of sisterly mind bond or whatever.

A memory, one of love and brighter times, reduced to “whatever.”

“Oh, yes. Here we are,” remarked Scarlett, jerking me back to the present. “The last part of the journey is always the most difficult.”

“In life?”

“In the Dreamscape, I meant, but yes, in life too.” A philosophical nine-year-old.

“We’re at the end of our journey?”

Scarlett turned to look at me reproachfully, as if I should know already. “Yes, of course we are. I keep forgetting how little you know. And that’s not an insult, Merritt Hart,” she added quickly as I opened my mouth in dismay. “I am simply more… how should I put this… familiar, with the Dreamscape. We are currently in the Dreamscape, by the way, but on the edge of it, in a very thin area.”

“Is the Dreamscape real?” I asked.

“Is anything real?” she replied flippantly, words shooting off her tongue.

As I opened my mouth to respond, though I wasn’t sure what to say, she nodded, her hair floating around her. “But yes, it’s not a physical place - I mean, we’re here, but we’re also asleep in our beds. It’s more like it’s all around us, simply farther. Think of it this way, Merritt. You’re walking in our garden, taking normal, average steps. And then, while thinking about it, you step farther. More.” She had a way of injecting another meaning into her words, aiming her syringe carefully, and I couldn’t make sense of what she’d just said.

“But wouldn’t I just be farther along, on the path?”

“You would be. If you weren’t meaning to travel to the Dreamscape.”

“Can you go there if you’re not asleep?”

Scarlett grabbed my shoulders and twisted me around so I was facing her. It wasn’t painful, exactly, more like a sharp nudge of reality. “Very few are aware that they are in the Dreamscape when they’re there, Merritt Hart. You weren’t, until today. That’s one of the main differences between us Navigators and everyone else, Merritt: The Navigators are aware.”

“Navigators?”

“Don’t worry about that now; Cecelia will deal with that when you are ready. For now, we just want to make sure that you believe.” She squinted at me in a way that I can only describe as fierce, though I don’t know how a squint can be fierce. “Believing is the first step.”

Scarlett paused, giving me a moment to collect my scattered thoughts. This nine-year-old girl, whom, along with her siblings, I was to take care of, spoke in a way that told me and everyone listening that she was certain that what she was saying was true. She seemed to radiate confidence, and had such an air that anyone who disagreed with her knew they would receive a withering look.

I wanted to accept her explanations - they could hardly be called explanations, really - but did I really? Or was it only because I saw Kalia, that my common sense was clouded? Confliction drizzled through my vision.

“You Narrate your story, don’t you?” she said, just out of the blue.

I stared at her, taken aback. “Um. I’m sorry, what?”

“Don’t try to pretend you don’t; you know what I mean.”

“What… what do you mean?”

Scarlett rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner. “I mean, you go through life and you Narrate your story as you go. As if you were telling it to an outsider, or some even do it as if they are the outsider. It’s common among Navigators,” she offered by way of explanation.

I did indeed Narrate. Sort of unconsciously. But how would she, of all people, know that? “Do you… Narrate?” I asked, tasting the word on my tongue, trying it out.

She swept her hair out of her face. “No,” she answered proudly. “I’m unusual.”

I smiled slightly. Scarlett was Scarlett; there really was no way to describe her.

“Now. As I was saying, we’re near the end of our journey - of this part of it, at least. We’re going to the Slatemoor. The area between the Dreamscape and the Hollow Melody, the waking world.”

I pondered, trying to think of a question that would stump this all-knowing girl. I searched, deep inside me, sending down a hook to fish up a question.

I don’t know why some things give me immense satisfaction. I do know that stumping people is one of them.

“Scarlett?”

“Hmm?”

“We’re in the Dreamscape when we’re asleep, in the Hollow Melody when we’re awake, but… where are we when we daydream?”

Scarlett bit her lower lip and glanced around her. “I don’t know, actually. Maybe the Slatemoor, I guess.”

The question seemed to have done the trick. She took every step after that with care, like she was walking on an iced-over lake, hesitating with even the simplest decisions. Unnecessarily tentative. I smiled at that.

“How do we get from the Dreamscape to the Slatemoor?” I asked her a few minutes later. I was tired of asking questions and appearing uninformed, but I was also tired of not-knowing, and my curiosity won over.

“How does one get from the Hollow Melody to the Slatemoor? You must step farther.”

“But that’s going from the Hollow Melody, Scarlett.”

She rolled her eyes at me and pouted. “Yes, I am aware, Merritt Hart. To get from the Dreamscape to the Slatemoor, you must step nearer.”

“How in the name of Parlin can one step nearer?”

Scarlett stared at me as if the answer was obvious. “That, Merritt, is for you to interpret. You are aware of yourself in the Dreamscape - you have been forever, as far as I know. So this is certainly something you can deal with.”

“How have I been aware in the Dreamscape?” This was all too much. My thoughts choked me, as they often do, wrapping themselves around my throat.

“You retain all of the things that happen in your dreams. Most don’t, but Navigators do. Now, Merritt Hart, we must travel to the Slatemoor.”

My head was spinning, all of my thoughts swirling and twirling around me in a tornado. I waited for them to settle in their puddles, cautiously pulling on rain boots to splash through, opening my mouth to taste a single droplet. My arms were extended and my eyes closed and the wind spun more and more ferociously. Unwanted raindrops were blown into my open mouth and most of them tasted a single thought: I am not a Navigator. Scarlett is mistaken.

And then, in the midst of all that, a tiny raindrop tumbled, whispering: She does seem to enjoy saying my name unnecessarily. Why I was thinking that, I don’t know, but it was present, hovering above all else. I thought of how I thought of Cressinda Jamille as Cressinda Jamille, not Mrs. Jamille, not Mistress Cressinda, not Her Majesty. And how she would call me by either my full name or simply, girl.

It was nice to hear my name again, but hearing my last name as well stripped away any familiarity.

And throughout all my thoughts, there was still my doubt, weighing me down. That came first.

“I-”

“Merritt. Did you or did you not just see your sister?”

“I did, but-”

“Step nearer.” I felt my breaths become more and more ragged, my lungs straining to keep up, as she stepped neatly backwards and disappeared.

I peered over the side as if she had fallen, although there was no side to peer over. My hands clasped the nonexistent railing as my stomach dropped.

Scarlett was gone.