So Long Been Dreaming (24 page)

“North.”

“North,” the spirit repeated. “I’ll take you to the northernmost margin of the Great Swamp of Ink.”

The will-o’-the-wisp picked up Lacuna and flew into the sky in a grand and luminous arc.

The Thicket of Tickets

Polaris gently set Lacuna down at the edge of the swamp, at the bottom of a steep grassy hill.

“Here is where we part,” the will-o’-the-wisp said. “At the top of that hill you will find a vast briar called the Thicket of Tickets. If you can find your way through the thicket, they say there is a Blue Road that leads to the Northern Kingdom. There you will find others like yourself, and you will certainly live a better life than living in my swamp. Good luck.”

“Goodbye,” Lacuna said as he watched Polaris float back into the murk of the Great Swamp of Ink.

Lacuna climbed to the top of the hill and looked back in the direction he now knew was south: the vast swamp stretched out as far as he could see. He jumped up and clapped his hands together, then he did a little dance, because he realized that he was out of the inky wilderness forever. He looked at it and laughed out loud before turning northward, forever turning his back on the horrible swamp. He then noticed what faced him.

The Thicket of Tickets, as Polaris had called it, was the most dense briar he had ever seen. It stretched out to his left and right all the way beyond each horizon. There was no way to go but through it, or back into the swamp. He walked up to the thicket and examined its tangled mass.

The thicket consisted of coil upon coil of paper tickets, little squares of every colour, each with the words

Admit One

stamped on its surface in a stern black font. The coils were so tangled they reminded him of his hair when he did not comb it for several days; to pry it apart became a painful and daunting task. He reached his left arm in and found he could push the paper aside quite easily, however, so he stepped into the thicket with his entire body.

Lacuna soon found that he could walk through the Thicket of Tickets if he ripped the paper coils whenever he got too tangled. The only problem was that he could not see where he was going. He could not even see beyond his next footstep. He kept walking in faith but worried that at any moment he would step off a cliff, or into a tree or a rock. He stopped and pondered his situation after he had gone a dozen or so steps into the thicket.

“I can’t go any farther,” he thought, “because I don’t know if I’m walking in a safe path or a dangerous one. I also can’t be sure if I’m even heading north or not.” He thought and thought, because he was a clever man and he knew all sorts of tricks that had helped him survive worse situations than this.

Finally an answer came to him.

“I’ll go back to the edge of the thicket and make a fire. Since this is only a paper briar, it will burn easily and quickly, and when all the tickets are burned up, I’ll be able to see and walk all the way to the Blue Road and on to the Northern Kingdom!”

Lacuna started to walk back in the direction he had first come. After he had walked for what seemed like the same amount of time it took him to get this far into the thicket, he realized that he was not yet out. A wave of panic swept over him; he could not tell if he was actually walking in the same direction he had come because he could not see where he was going! He started to run, frantically ripping through the tickets, but by the time he ran out of breath, he was still nowhere near the edge. Or perhaps the edge was but a few steps away – he couldn’t tell! For all his cleverness, the Thicket of Tickets had swallowed him up and he realized that he would just have to take a guess and walk in some random direction.

He walked for what seemed like days. He was hungry and thirsty and he even missed the horrible swamp because at least there were bulrushes and ink that he could eat and drink. He walked and walked, and his legs were painfully tired, but he knew he had no choice but to continue. Lacuna lost all track of time; he didn’t know whether it was day or night. He could only hope that he was heading north, and in his desperate state he began to wonder if north was even the best way to go anyway. Lacuna began to miss the old swamp desperately, and cursed himself for leaving it in the first place.

“Surely I could have tricked Polaris into letting me stay,” he thought. Lacuna wanted to cry, but he was so thirsty and dry no tears would come, which made him even sadder. His feet and legs ached. The edges of the tickets cut his skin in a thousand tiny slices. He was tortured.

Just when he had resigned himself to the idea that he would soon die, but at least he would die walking until he collapsed of exhaustion, the coils of tickets got thinner and thinner until suddenly he found himself in the open air.

He emerged from the thicket at the top of a grassy hill. It was sunny and bright, and his vision was blurry from spending so long in darkness, and he tried wearily to focus. At the bottom of the hill, he could make out what looked like trees. Weakened and half-blinded by the full light of day, Lacuna started down the hill. His aching legs gave out, and he fell, tumbling down the slope in a jumble of arms and legs and bruises.

When he finally stopped rolling, Lacuna’s cheek was resting on the cold, hard ground. He realized it was not grass, but stone. He sat up slowly and stiffly and found himself on a dark blue cobblestone road that ran from the bottom of the hill off into a dense forest. The faint sound of running water could be heard from beyond the trees, and he knew he had come out on the far side of the terrible thicket. Perhaps there would be fish in that stream, he thought.

The bricks of the road were a beautiful sight, bright and rich, though they were startlingly close to the colour of the ink in the Great Swamp of Ink. Although Lacuna was very happy to have found this Blue Road to the Northern Kingdom, he couldn’t help but wish it were a different colour.

After a day of resting and regaining his strength, he turned his thoughts to the Thicket of Tickets.

“If people find themselves trying to cross the thicket like me, they won’t realize how easy it is to get lost in there. I was lucky to survive, let alone make it to the right destination. I had a good idea to burn it, but I thought it too late.” Because he was not a selfish man, but one who often thought of others, he decided to go back and set fire to the dangerous thicket.

Lacuna took a burning stick from his campfire and proceeded up the hill. He cast the stick into the tangled mass of tickets. As he had suspected, the paper caught fire instantly and burned fiercely. He had to retreat down the hill to avoid the intense heat of the fire. From the edge of the forest, he watched the entire Thicket of Tickets burn to a pile of ashes. For a moment, he felt a strange sadness seeing such a curious thicket destroyed by his own hand, but he knew it was for the best.

“Now,” he thought, “no one will face the troubles I had to face if they make it this far.”

Satisfied, he set out on the Blue Road.

The way through the forest was long but pleasant. The road was well-kept and food was more plentiful and infinitely more nourishing here than in the Great Swamp of Ink. On his journey, he picked fruit from wild trees, fished in streams, and gathered dark berries. Lacuna was still lonely, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that the Northern Kingdom was at the end of this road, and even if it were far, the travelling was easy. He sang songs to himself as he walked, to make himself feel less lonely; he sang songs about his loneliness. He dreamed of a place where he could settle down. He tried to imagine what the Northern Kingdom would be like, but the thought of it frightened him a little. Lacuna was very clever, and he knew that kingdoms were not always good. “The Northern Kingdom”
sounded
wonderful; the words felt good on his tongue. But what did he really know of this place he was seeking?

Up until now, Lacuna had drunk water straight out of the stream, but he decided to fill his canteen so he could sip the river water while he walked. When he pulled the canteen from his back pocket and opened it, he realized it was full of the ink that he used to drink when he had lived in the swamp. He smiled, thinking about how he would never have to drink ink again, but he decided he would keep the canteen full of it as a souvenir and a reminder of where he had come from. This way, he would never forget his past.

Finding the canteen full of ink caused Lacuna’s thoughts to drift to the swamp. He thought about Polaris and how he had tricked that old will-o’-the-wisp. Although he had flattered Polaris to trick him, he now realized for the first time that Polaris really was pretty. His brightness
was
dazzling and beautiful, but somehow, in the telling of his trick, Lacuna had not even realized the truth of this.

The Rainbow Border

As he walked and thought, Lacuna noticed a small booth beside the road up ahead in the distance. When he got closer to the booth, he also noticed a strip of seven colours painted across the Blue Road; it looked like a rainbow cutting across his path. An old man in a blue suit and a blue hat sat next to the booth on a wobbly two-legged stool. The old-timer only had one leg. A strange-looking crutch leaned against the wall of the booth next to him.

“Hello,” said Lacuna to the old man. “I’m on my way to the Northern Kingdom. Are you from there?”

“Am I
from
there?” the old man snapped in an angry voice. “No, I’m not
from
there. You don’t know much, do you?” He stared at Lacuna without a trace of humour in his eyes.

Lacuna felt annoyed at this unprovoked attack. He quickly decided that since this old man was not from the Northern Kingdom, and was not very friendly, he would just be on his way.

“I have to be going,” he said curtly, and started down the Blue Road once more.

“Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute!” the old man shouted frantically, jumping up out of his seat, which promptly fell over. Lacuna stopped still, startled by the man’s sudden outburst. The old-timer limped onto the road with the aid of his strange-looking crutch.

“Don’t you see what’s right in front of your eyes, boy?” He was pointing at the rainbow painted across the Blue Road.

“Yeah, so?” Lacuna said indifferently. He wanted to get going.

“That’s the
border
. You can’t just up and cross the border like that. What’s the matter, have you lost your mind?”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Lacuna said impatiently. He began to wonder if the old man was insane. He wanted to be on his way northward.

“Listen to me, boy, because obviously there’s a whole lot you don’t know about this world.
That
is the
border
,” he said, pointing again at the rainbow painted on the road, “and I’m the Border
Guard
. You can’t cross the border until
I
say so.” He shifted his weight from his good leg to his crutch. Lacuna, now that he was up close to the Border Guard, could see that his crutch was actually a huge skeleton key.

“There are rules involved,” the Border Guard added cryptically. “I’ll need your ticket,” he said, holding out his hand.

Lacuna immediately remembered the Thicket of Tickets he had burned to the ground. He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“I don’t have a ticket,” he said quietly.

“You don’t have a ticket?” the Border Guard snapped. “Then you can’t pass. That’s the rules: no ticket, no road.”

“But I have to go to the Northern Kingdom,” Lacuna said, trying to keep the sound of desperation out of his voice. “How am I supposed to get there if I don’t keep following the road?” He was angry and frustrated, and wondered if he should even listen to this strange Border Guard with his crazy skeleton key crutch. After all, how did he know that the Border Guard had any real authority over the Blue Road? Polaris hadn’t told him anything about this. But then again, perhaps Polaris didn’t know about the border. Lacuna considered crossing it without the Border Guard’s permission; he was only an old man with one leg, and he wouldn’t be able to stop a young man like himself. However, perhaps the Border Guard worked for the Northern Kingdom, and not following these rules would get him into trouble when he finally got there.