Tapping the Dream Tree (18 page)

MR. TRUEPENNY'S BOOK EMPORIUM AND GALLERY

“Try using this,” she says as she gives it to me. “That's where it started for me.”

When I get home I put the drawing beside my bed. I called in sick before I went out this morning, but I'm feeling too guilty to take the whole day off. There are so many projects on the go at the moment and if I'm not there it just means everybody else has to take up my slack and work that much harder. So I change into my office clothes, send this email:

Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 11:49:34.0400

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Your question

>Why do you want to speak to your dog?

Because he used to live with my best friend before she died and I want to talk to him about her.

And go to work.

There's no reply from the Wordwood when I return to the apartment that evening. Fritzie and I go for a long walk after supper. I do a little work on some files I brought home from the office, then try to watch some TV, but I can't concentrate. I keep thinking of the drawing that Sophie gave me, of lucid dreaming and the possibility that it might actually take me into Mabon—in the sense of my dreaming I'm there, of course. I have a bath to try to get rid of some of the day's tension, but it doesn't really help. When I finally go to bed, Fritzie curled up on the end where he usually sleeps, I can't stop thinking.

I lie awake for hours until finally I get up and check my email again. Still nothing from the Wordwood.

When I finally fall asleep, it's almost four in the morning and the next thing I know my alarm's going off. I drag myself out of bed, walk Fritzie, then hurry off to work. Getting home, I find this waiting for me:

Date: Wed, WJun 1999 16:51:57-0400

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Your question

>l want to talk to him about her.

Perhaps he simply has nothing he wants to say.

The Wordwood.

http://www.thewordwood.com/

“Is that true?” I ask Fritzie.

It's not something I ever considered. That maybe he can talk; he just doesn't want to.

Fritzie cocks his head like a curious crow. He knows I'm asking him something, but since I'm not using his primary vocabulary— “Hungry,” “Walk,” “Get the ball”—he can't do anything except wag his tail and look at me. So scratch that theory, Mr. Webmaster.

I try the lucid dreaming again that night, fixing the image from Sophie's drawing firmly in my mind before I go to bed, but I'm so tired that I drop off like I've been drugged. If I have any dreams, I don't remember them.

I think maybe the intense focus everybody's telling me about isn't the way to go with this. Maybe magic can only be approached from the side. Maybe it wants you to slip up on it like an image will in the corner of your eye.

I'm thinking this because I have no luck the next night either. On the fourth, I don't even think about it. Fritzie and I stay up to watch the news, then go to bed after Leno's monologue and the next thing I know we're standing on a cobblestoned street looking at the physical counterpart to the bookshop in Sophie's drawing. By the light, it seems to be late afternoon. There are people around us, window-shopping, or simply out walking. They're of all sorts— from Bohemians to those dressed for the office—and of all nationalities. No one pays any attention to the fact that I simply popped into existence here, though one little girl across the street gives me a happy wave with her free hand, the other held fast in her mother's.

I wave back, then study my surroundings a little more.

What surprises me the most isn't that it worked, that I've dreamed my way into Sophie's city, or at least my own version of it, but that Fritzie's here with me. He looks at me, grinning, tail slapping the cobblestones. I expect him to say something—after all, we're in a dream now; we're in this magical city—but he only gives me that “test the limits” look animals get, then gets up and casually walks over to the nearest lamppost to give it a sniff, checking over his shoulder to see if I'm going to call him back.

As he lifts his leg, I turn away and study the signs on the other shops that line the street. Halfway down the block, on the other side of the street, I spy a sign that reads:

KERRY'S CAULDRON

HOPES MET, DREAMS FULFILLED

I remember the story Holly told me about the Welsh goddess and her magical cauldron. Kerry is close enough to Cerridwen, so far as I'm concerned. And anyway, this is my dream, isn't it? If I want there to be a shop here with a magical solution waiting for me in it, then why shouldn't it simply be here as needed?

I call Fritzie and he trots along at my side as I cross the street. The lack of motorized vehicles reminds me of the Market area back home, but I can hear traffic, cars and buses, one or two blocks away. A bell tinkles when I enter the shop and my eyes have to adjust to the dim lighting. It's like an old-fashioned apothecary inside and has a bewildering smell: herbal, but like a garden, too, and underneath it all, something wild. There are shelves and shelves of bottles holding all sorts of powders and dried herbs, each neatly identified with small, handwritten labels. Bunches of herbs hang from the ceiling behind the long wooden counter with its glass top and sides. I spy boxes of candles, mortar and pestles, sacks and little boxes of oddly-named teas, innumerable packages and pouches with labels in no language I can recognize.

A lace curtain behind the counter is pulled aside and a tall, dark-haired woman steps out from behind it. She looks a bit like a Gypsy—or at least my romanticized image of one: dark complexion, white blouse, flower-print skirt, long black hair spilling in loose tangles from under a red kerchief. Her gaze goes to Fritzie who's sniffing a barrel by the window with great interest.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” I say. “I never thought to ask if he could come in. Come here, Fritzie,” I add, hoping he doesn't decide to pee on the barrel.

She smiles. “True dreamers are always welcome here.”

I don't know what to say to that. Does she mean me or Fritzie?

“How can I help you?” she adds.

That I can answer. It's why I'm here, after all.

“Hmm,” is all she says once I've explained.

Then she lifts a lovely paisley scarf off what I realize is a notebook computer and starts it up.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I don't know that spell,” she tells me, “so I need to look up the recipe in the Wordwood.”

“You're kidding me, right?”

Bad enough a database is sending me e-mail. Why does it have to be in my dream as well?

She looks puzzled. “Why would you think that?”

“I don't want it here,” I say.

“You don't—?”

I'm feeling like a petulant child, but I can't seem to stop myself.

“It's my dream,” I tell her, “and I don't want that… that whatever it is in it with me.”

She gives me a long look and then that smile returns. “This is your first visit to Mabon, isn't it?”

I nod.

“I thought so,” she goes on. “Did you get here by accident, or did someone show you the way?”

“Someone showed me. But—”

“Well, the first thing you need to know is that you're not dreaming. It's true that Mabon exists because Sophie Etoile first brought it into being, but it's taken on a life of its own since then.”

“You know Sophie?”

“Do you know the founders of the country you come from?” She doesn't wait for my answer. “The point is, that Mabon and our life here in the city goes on, whether you're visiting us or not.”

“But the Wordwood—how can you access it here?”

“How can we not? The site's stored in the computers that are housed in the basement of the university library.”

I suppose, in some ways, that explains a lot, but I'm still not comfortable with the idea of the Wordwood being here as well. Before the woman can access its site, I tell her that I've changed my mind. I call to Fritzie and he follows me back out onto the street— somewhat reluctantly, I think, until his ears suddenly prick up. I turn to see what's caught his attention and can't believe who I see coming down the street toward us.

“I was just thinking of you,” Gina says as she draws closer.

She looks the same as always, thin features, tall, rangy frame. She's dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, a black cotton jacket overtop, wearing those crazy red and yellow cowboy boots that she always loved. Her dark curls spill out from under a wide-brimmed hat. Bending down, she accepts Fritzie's wet kisses and lifts her face to me, smiling under the brim of her hat. I see the difference then. That haunted look I remember always being in her eyes those last few years isn't present.

“Are you a … ghost?” I ask.

She laughs. “Are you?”

“No, but I'm not...”

“Dead,” she finishes for me when my voice trails off.

She sits down on the curb and Fritzie half crawls onto her lap, tail slapping the cobblestones. After a moment I sit down beside them.

“I guess it is confusing,” Gina adds.

She turns to look at me, her eyes merry. I can't remember the last time I saw her genuinely happy. She was so sad, for so long.

“So ... do you live here?” I ask her.

She has to think about that for a moment. “I think so. I think someone needed to see me so badly that they dreamed me into being here.”

Me, I think. Only then I look at Fritzie, wriggling on her lap as she pats him. I remember what the woman in the store said when I asked if it was okay for him to be inside. Something about true dreamers always being welcome. I realize that I didn't bring Fritzie here with me; he brought me.

“Did Fritzie ever talk to you?” I ask her. There are a hundred things I want to ask her, but this is what comes out.

She smiles and shakes her head. “But he's a good listener. Aren't you, my brave little boy?”

“I don't understand any of this,” I say.

“That's probably a step in the right direction,” Gina tells me.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you know how you like to make sure everything fits in its proper little box.”

“I don't.”

She ignores me because we both know it's true. “I think it's better to believe in what you don't know. What you don't know encompasses everything. Embrace it and you embrace the mystery of the world, of the whole universe. It brings you closer to the great spirit that made everything and to which everything returns when its time is done.”

I guess being here in dreamland is why that actually seems to make sense.

“What's it like?” I ask her. “The place where we go when we die?”

She gives a slow shake of her head. “I don't really know. I think I'm there and here at the same time and the me that's here isn't privy to everything the me that's there knows.”

“Fritzie brought you here,” I say.

“I know.”

After that we don't talk so much—or at least not about anything important. We go wandering through Sophie's dream city like children on a holiday, curious about everything, unconcerned with the world where things fit into a box and make sense. We're just being pals, the way we were before the world turned dark on Gina and I started figuring out what fit in which box and made sure it stayed that way.

When I finally wake up, I find that Fritzie has crawled up from the end of the bed to lie with his head beside me on the pillow. The first thing I see when I open my eyes is the wall of my bedroom, over the top of his head, looking between his ears. I remember Mabon and Gina, like being there with her really happened. The dream seems so vivid that I have trouble focusing on where I am. This world has the dreamlike quality, not simply at this moment, when I wake, but throughout the day.

I almost quit work that day, I hate being there so much, though of course I don't. I can't. I could never leave everybody hanging like that. But I find myself doodling during the morning meeting, and later on the phone, too. Sketches of what I remember of some of the places I saw in my dream. The funny cafe where we had lunch—all the umbrellas had the same red and yellow pattern as Gina's boots. This odd street we followed that dwindled until it was only the narrowest of footpaths squeezed between two buildings. Fritzie having a staring contest with a cat, the old torn lying in the display window of an antique shop between a stuffed rooster and a stack of old books. And Gina, of course. The way the wind caught her hair, the crinkle of her smile, the laughter in her eyes.