Celephaïs: The Dreamer

Klar always wanted to be a Dreamer.

Ever since he was a little boy he would focus on an ant, a leaf, a pebble, willing it to change into something else. At night before he slept he would stare into the darkness, willing a light to shine, or a sword.

Nothing ever came of it, except getting swatted on the head a few times for daydreaming, but he never lost that secret wish.

He thought of it once again as he rubbed his shoulder, that hand on the haft of his shovel as he caught his breath.

The sun was slipping westward, already close to the soaring minarets of Celephaïs, shadows creeping longer and longer.

It’d been a hard day—weren’t they all?—but the field was all done, plowed and seeded, and the packed dirt walls of the perimeter drainage ditch study enough to handle the coming rains.

The soil was good this year, a rich brown pungent with the scent of fresh life.

He could almost feel the seed corn wriggling with delight, bursting into explosive growth.

“It’ll be a bumper crop this year, Clyde,” he predicted, but the deino merely kept chewing its cud.

Clyde wasn’t the brightest deino he’d ever met, but he never complained and he kept that plow moving all day come rain or shine.

He patted the deino on the neck, receiving a head-butt in return, and unhitched it from the mouldboard plow. The plow was too heavy for him to lift by himself, but it was balanced so that the force of his arms would lift the pointed prow out of the soil and place most of the weight on the rear wheels.

It took practice, but practice he’d had: decades of it.

He looked over at Chek, his second son, and saw that he had already finished his plot and was scraping mud off the plow. Looked like Chek had finished a little before he had.

“Everything OK?”

“No problem, pa,” came the response. “Just cleaning it up a little… big patch of mud in the middle—damned heavy, too.”

Klar chuckled.

“Why do you think I offered to let you take the cooler plot, in all that nice shade?”

“Hey, apologize to Barrol, not me! He did all the heavy work.”

Barrol was their other deino, and now stood placidly chewing something, all four legs covered in drying mud. It wouldn’t bother him, of course, and that was hardly enough weight for him to even notice, but they’d just as soon not track all that mud into the barn if they could help it.

He whistled to Brute, their enormous wolfhound, who rose from where he’d been lazing in the shade to stretch and yawn. Brute snoozed most of the time, but Klar knew he always slept with one eye open, and woe to any fox that came after their chickens.

Brute’s mate, Boka, was back at the house with a boxful of puppies, one or two of which he’d be keeping for Brute to train… the dog was getting old.

The plows were stored safe in the shed a few minutes later, and they started the walk home. There was no worry about hurting the crop since they’d only plowed and seeded today, and it was far easier to just walk across the fields than take the balks. That’d change once the shoots popped up, of course.

The city was mostly in shadow now, black against the setting sun, but the orange light still illuminated the forest on the other side of his fields. The Tanarian Hills started here, just the first foothills, too hilly and rocky for cultivation but covered in verdant forest.

He’d cut these fields out of the wilderness himself, he and his family—his wife Myrn, and later his sons Brytos and Chek and daughter Kyrantha. It had been hard, those first years when he and Myrn were here alone, and later when the baby came… but they’d persevered.

He glanced at the trees once again. The sunlight was strange, somehow. The sunset looked normal, puffy clouds all lit up in orange, but the trees looked… different.

“Somethin’ funny with the light,” he commented offhand, but Chek just gave the trees a glance and shrugged.

“Doesn’t look strange to me,” he said. “The sunset, maybe?”

Klar grunted and kept walking until he could close the paddock gate behind the deinos. Clyde and Barrol stuck their heads deep into the water trough, slurping it up.

Myrn and Kyrantha would be putting the chickens back in the henhouse for the evening, or already inside making dinner.

It was just the four of them now that Brytos was in the Watch.

He was proud that the boy had become a constable. He was a strapping youth, and quick; he’d go far in the Watch, Klar thought. But he missed his son’s smile, his laugh, and, lately, his strong back.

They entered the mudroom and sat on the edge of the floor, built high off the ground, to pull their boots off. There were dozens of pairs there… those dusty ones at the back belonged to Brytos, he thought. He should really clean those up and put them away. Brytos might want them next time he came home.

He could hear Kyrantha and Myrn talking in the kitchen, a comforting sound.

The world shivered, the edges of his vision shimmering as through water for the briefest moment.

He blinked; it was gone.

The sunset was almost gone, too, the sun below the horizon and the orange glow faded to a somber maroon, the minarets of Celephaïs black in the dusk.

He blinked again and listened, but there was nothing but Brute’s breathing and the distant cry of crows heading home.

He and Chek washed up and changed into cleaner clothes, and by the time Klar was done, the food was already being served. Myrn was doing something over the stove, and Kyrantha was sitting at the table, pouring a rich stew over a heaping plateful of rice.

Klar pulled the salad closer and used the tongs to fill up four smaller plates, one for each of them. The salad came from their garden, of course: lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, bell peppers, and few other bits and pieces to delight the palate.

“I think I’ll send a load of peppers and broccoli to the market tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll take the carrots and radishes in myself the next day.”

“On Garibon’s first wagon?” asked Chek. “You need help getting it ready in time?”

Klar chuckled. Garibon lived a few kilometers up the road, and some years ago had the bright idea of offering to carry people and goods into the city and back, for a price. He had three wagons running now, and a lot of people found it awfully convenient to be able to just pay him a couple skelf—or a few pence at the end of the month—instead of carrying a dozens of kilograms of produce on their backs all the way to Celephaïs.

“While you were playing in the mud I took a little break and picked half a dozen bushels. All ready to go.”

“I wondered where you’d gotten off to!” snorted Chek. “Figured you were just relieving yourself. Wish you’d told me, though… I wouldn’t have minded a little break from that mudpuddle.”

“Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty more mudpuddles. Maybe next time.”

“Gee, thanks, pa. And maybe next time you can plow the soggy one.”

“Nah. Mudpuddles are definitely for young boys, not proper men such as myself.”

“Proper!?” broke in Myrn. “You, proper!? Who are you and what have you done with my husband?”

They broke up laughing, and Kyrantha almost choked on her tea.

That night he awoke in the darkness, alone but for the warmth.

What had awakened him? Some noise?

He looked at the wolfhounds: they’d hear anything long before he did.

Brute and Boka were alert, standing with ears sharp, hunting for something unseen. It wasn’t a threat or they’d behave their haunches up and fangs exposed. Just something that made the uneasy.

Just like him.

Myrn?

He looked over at his wife, her long black hair clearly visible even in the dimness of the midnight stars. She was breathing slowly, her lower lip quivering slightly with each exhalation.

He sat up.

Something was off.

He reached for the blanket to get up and check the house, when the world shivered again, a spasm of reality that left him disoriented and dizzy.

Off balance as gravity shifted, he fell to the floor, sliding along the rough-hewn boards until he hit the wall that was somehow below him, bright in shades of yellow and blue.

Brute whimpered, ears flat, teeth bared, head searching back and forth and finding nothing. Behind him Boka stood over her pups, protecting them from anything that might come.

A thump, color vanished.

He slid back from the wall to the floor.

The Dance of the Oneiroi!

A dreamquake, a spasm in reality as a Dream was birthed.

Nobody really knew how common they were, save perhaps the King. When the reality of the Dreamlands itself changed, they changed with it, new memories of a new past replacing the old. Usually.

Sometimes somebody might recall some previous reality, or some object, some flotsam of the eddies of transformation, might remain to fascinate and awe. Or maybe it happened all the time, and they just never noticed.

He climbed back into bed, reassured by Myrn’s quiet breathing.

Nothing had changed… had it really been a dreamquake?

Or had he just fallen out of bed?

He glanced over at the dogs, but they were quiet once more, seemingly asleep.

He listened intently, and heard nothing but the wind and the insects. In time, he slept.

* * *

He always woke with the sun, but it looked like he’d overslept this morning.

Time to feed the deinos and get started on plowing the pair of fields farthest from the house, up close to the forest. They were the newest, too, which meant they still had plenty of rocks and old roots left. It’s be another day of hard work getting that ground plowed and seeded right.

He heard the rooster crowing away, and the heavy footsteps of Chek.

His head throbbed with pain, and his vision was blurry. He wondered if he’d caught something. He really didn’t feel like getting out of bed, but he did anyway. No sleep for the farmer.

He looked behind him—Myrn was already up and about.

He sat up, swinging his legs off the bed and onto the floor, and caught himself. His head pounded and he closed his eyes and hung his head for a moment at the sudden pain.

When he opened them again, head still hanging down, he saw his body for the first time… his belly ballooned out over his thighs, the hard muscles of a farmer gone.

He blinked, shook his head, reached out to feel his own stomach.

Fat.

He was fat.

And the arm he’d used to poke his own bulk was itself flabby, bags of soft, pale flesh hanging down from the arm that had only yesterday been tanned and muscular.

“Myrn!”

His voice came out in a squeaky rasp. He cleared his throat, tried again.

“Myrn! Could you come here for a moment?”

There was a bang in the kitchen as something was set down with considerable force, and then footsteps.

“What?”

She demanded an answer, hands on hips, lips tense with suppressed anger.

“Wha…? Why are you… so angry?”

“Get your lazy ass out of bed and get off to work! We’ve all been up for hours while you’ve been snoring away.”

Astonished, Klar could only gasp like a landed fish, unable to gather his wits before his wife has turned and stalked away again.

He followed her into the kitchen, expecting to see her making breakfast, or taking bread out of the oven. There was no food on the table, and she was sewing a linen dress, a basket of other clothes at her feet.

She didn’t even look up as he entered, merely grunted something indistinct.

Still wondering what he’d done to upset her so, he walked to the front door to scratch Brute and Boka on their heads. Boka was busy feeding the pups, lying on her side as they pushed and shoved over each other in search of morning milk.

He heard a gasp of surprises from behind him, and turned to see Myrn staring at him, eebrows raised, mouth open.

“He didn’t bite you!”

“He… wha…? Brute?” he sputtered. “Why would Brute bite me?”

Myrn, shaking her head and muttering to herself, returned to the kitchen without replying.

He gave the dog another scritch and sat down on the edge of the mudroom to pull on his boots, glancing outside to check the weather.

And froze in disbelief.

An expanse of dry dirt and dead trees met his eyes, stretching away for hundreds of meters to the distant line of trees farther up into the hills.

No cornfields. No freshly turned earth, no line of pumpkin plants, or cucumbers, or herbs.

No paddock. No deinos.

He rose on shaking legs to stumble outside.

The house was much the same, log and slat construction with mortar packed into the cracks, a turfed roof that slanted back into the earth on the north side.

The chicken coop.

A cow—not three cows and a barn, like it should have been, just one single cow.

He heard someone behind him, and spun around.

It was Myrn.

“We’re out of fish again, Klar. Buy some on the way home, if you can spare any from your drinking.”

She snorted in disgust as she spit it out.

“Way home? Drinking? I don’t…”

“Drunk again, and so early?” she sneered. “Go on, take it and off with you. Late again and they’ll fire you, and then where’ll we be?”

“Late? Who…?”

He shook his head in confusion, took a deep breath.

The dreamquake… it had to be the dreamquake.

“Myrn, love, please, sit.”

He sat down on the mudroom edge again, and grasped her by the arm to join him. She yanked her arm out of his grasp with a yelp and spat at him: “My love!? You haven’t called me that for two twelves of years. Got me confused with one of those nighthawks at the pub, have you?”

“Please, just sit, Myrn,” he asked again quietly, and patted the floor next to him. She did sit, grudgingly, her feet atop her sandals in the mudroom. She kept as much space between them as she could.

“Did you feel the dreamquake last night?”

“Dreamquake? Here? There was no dreamquake last night… everything’s the same as it’s always been. And we’ve all got work to do, no time to sit here jabbering away.

“Now off to the tannery.”

“Tannery!? I’m a farmer, not a tanner!”

“You? A farmer?” laughed Myrn. “You barely know which end the milk comes out of.

You said you would turn all dirt into fields and crops, and we needed to move out here to make our own farm, but you never did, no matter how much I pushed you.”

She was getting angry now, nostrils flaring and lips thin.

“You took the little we had saved and spent it on drink. No matter where you work you get fired, because you drink. Every time. Chek and Kyrantha and I work our hands to the bone, even Brytos, thank the Gods he escaped, sends half his pay, and you drink it all up!”

He blinked, hearing every work and unable to process it.

He rarely drank; perhaps a cup with dinner once in a while, or at the Festival of the Horned God. But to drink away his family, his farmland, his crops—his dreams—he couldn’t conceive of it.

He stood, and then fell to his knees in the dirt in front of her, grasping her hands and holding them tight even as she tried to pull away.

“Myrn, I swear to you by Nath-Horthath that I am not the man you speak of. I am not a drunkard, or a tanner, but a farmer, and by the Gods I shall prove it to you to you all!”

He stood, still holding onto one of her hands, and looked out over the barren scene.

“Have we a plow, and hoes, and axes?”

She looked up at him, this time her mouth gaping open in surprise and wonder.

“A plow? Yes, old, perhaps, but serviceable. All the tools we brought with us years ago, to build a farm…”

“Do I still have time to catch Garibon’s wagon into the city?”

“Garibon?” asked Myrn, cocking her head and frowning. “Who?”

“Garibon! The wagons into Celephaïs every day? Our carrots and radishes?”

She pulled her hand back out of his.

“Never heard of no Garibon, and Gods know we have no carrots to sell! Would that we did.”

Klar looked out over the barren land before him.

He’d tamed this land once, and by the Gods he’d do it again.

He was older, and fat, for Gods’ sake, but he had Chek to help him, and Kyrantha.

“Do we have enough to buy a deino? Twelve laurels, no more than twelve and six.”

Myrn gave a bitter bark of laughter.

“Twelve laurels? I’d be thrilled if we have twelve pence to spare!”

Klar emptied his wallet into his hand.

Three pence.

He handed them to Myrn silently and bent to lace up his boots, ignoring the expressions on the faces of his wife and their two children, as they stared at this man who no longer acted like the father they knew.

If this were a dream, thought Klar, then he would Dream it properly.

* * *

His first step was seeing what he had to work with.

He found the plow easily enough, in a dark corner of the ramshackle barn. It was the first plow he’d had, years and years ago, designed to be pulled by a deino or a horse. He had neither.

He did have hoe and axe and pickaxe, though, and by that evening he’d cleared the scrub and rocks from a broad rectangle of ground.

“This will be for vegetables,” he explained to Myrn, who had brought him a cup of cool tea in the afternoon. “Lettuce and broccoli here, and over that way will be spinach, pepper, beets…”

“The stream is a long ways from here, Klar,” she warned. “Who’s going to carry all that water every day?”

“Trust me, Myrn. There is water,” he smiled. “See that bent pine over there? I’ll make a well right near it, you’ll see. Enough water to turn all this green.”

“I can’t tell if you’re really a different man, or just plumb crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “You sure sound like the man I married, but… Maybe there really was a dreamquake after all.”

“There was, I’m sure of it.”

“Brute seems to think you’re a different man. Yesterday he’d snarl every time you got close to him or Boka. You kick him all the time.”

“Me? Kick Brute?” He was flabbergasted. “I would never kick Brute!”

He eyebrows shot up and she pursed her lips.

“Maybe you wouldn’t, now, but you sure used to. Used to hit us all, too.”

“Hit you!?” He almost dropped the tea in astonishment. “Hit you? I have never… I would never…”

“You did,” she said quietly. “Especially when you’re drunk. Which is—was—often.”

He fell silent.

“Looks like I’ve got some hard work ahead of me,” he sighed. “And not just here in the field.”

She took the empty cup from his hand and glanced at his blistered, bleeding palms.

“Let me get you some salve and cloth to wrap your hands in. Your hands aren’t used to honest work.”

“Yet,” he added.

“Yet,” she agreed.

That evening she helped him wash and bind his hands, and when they sat down for dinner he noticed a jug of ale on the table. It was far enough that it wasn’t obviously his, but close enough he could easily reach it.

He reached out for it, and watched Myrn out of the corner of his eye. Her fork had come to a stop and was slowly descending again, forgotten, as she followed his hand and the jug.

“Anyone want some ale? If not I’ll stopper it up.”

Dead silence for a moment, then Chek cleared his throat.

“You don’t want any?”

“Just tea for me, I think… good cooking’s always better with tea, don’t you think?”

He pressed the cork in and set the jug down on the floor where it would be out of the way.

Myrn let her breath out and suddenly noticed the forkful of food she was still holding in the air.

Conversation started, hesitantly, as painful as his unused muscles.

After, he left Myrn speechless by thanking her for making dinner, though it had been a sad affair of little more than some greens and rabbit stew.

He picked up the jug of ale, and as his wife and children watched, expecting him to swig it down and collapse in a drunken stupor, instead walked the family altar, and poured a cup for their household god. He knelt, and set the ale on the altar as an offering, head bowed in silent prayer.

* * *

Several days later Myrn didn’t shy away when he gave her a kiss.

He and Chek dug deep near the pine, where the well had been, and it was as he had remembered. They had water now, all the water their gardens and fields would need.

He was sure it had been a dreamquake, and Myrn and the children were beginning to believe him. Finding buried water in this barren waste had almost convinced them. Quitting drink had convinced them even more.

He needed seed now. The tiny amounts they had wouldn’t even be enough to feel themselves, let alone produce enough to sell at market.

Klar suggested asking one of the nearby farmers to loan them seed, but Myrn shook her head.

“They’ll never loan to a drunkard, Klar. And they’ll not believe you’ve changed, either.”

He needed a deino to plow the fields. It wasn’t impossible to do it by hand, of course, but it was backbreaking toil, and his hands were bleeding raw already.

Once the ground was plowed, he’d need seeds. To buy seeds he needed money.

They were broke, though, relying on what they could trap or hunt in the woods, and the pittance Brytos brought each month.

That night he woke again in the pre-dawn darkness, but this time there was no dreamquake. He knew how to do it.

“I’m going up to see Master Garibon,” he announced at breakfast. “He lives up near the bend in the river, just below the ford.”

“Garibon? Near the ford?” Myrn shook her head. “Never heard of him.”

“Chek, would you come with me? It’s a short walk; if I’m wrong we’ll be back soon enough.”

“And if you’re right?”

“Then I think everything will work out wonderfully.”

Chek was unconvinced, but half an hour later they were walking up the road, deeper into the Tanarian Hills. The river, still young and fierce as it came out of the hills, ran close to the road, and Klar recalled it had flooded several times over the years.

Garibon’s house stood near the river, on an embankment that kept it out any floodwaters.

“Master Garibon!”

There was a muffled shout from the far side of the house, and a moment later a stout man came toward them. He stopped short when he saw who it was, then started walking toward them once again more slowly.

“Master Klar. And Master Chek.”

“Master Garibon, sorry to call unannounced. Have you a few moments we can talk?”

Garibon scowled. “About what?”

“About a business proposition that I believe will profit us both, and handsomely.”

“You asking me for money, is that it?”

“No, please. No money. And no ale, either,” pleaded Klar. “Ask Chek; I’ve changed.”

Garibon looked at Chek, who nodded.

“Well, I’ve never known Master Chek to lie, and you do look a lot healthier than I’ve ever seen you,” admitted Garibon. “From the look of those hands and your sunburned face, you’ve been doing honest work, too.

“I’ll listen to what you have to say.”

An hour later they had a deal.

It took two full days to get their wagon wheels fixed and the axles greased, and another day to get the benches installed and the harnesses and traces repaired, but finally it was done.

Klar already knew who his best customers would be, and what the market would bear, and the following morning they launched the new venture.

Drawn by two of Garibon’s horses, the wagon travelled from Garibon’s homestead at the base of the falls to the city walls, picking up people carrying their loads to market, or (thanks to Garibon’s well-known trustworthiness) transporting their produce for them. They made one round-trip in the morning, and a second in the evening, and by the next morning everyone knew.

For many of the farmers in the region it was well worth two or three skelf for a ride to the markets of Celephaïs and back again. Once Chek had proven trustworthy more and more of them began entrusting their goods, and receiving payment for them when the wagon returned once more.

Word began to spread that it had not been Chek, but actually Klar the Drunkard, a drunkard no more, who was behind it all.

Two months later there were three wagons running the route, and they’d had to hire a few people to help keep things moving smoothly. Garibon was scouting a possible new route from Celephaïs down toward Cornwall, where a whole new town was coming into existence around the new madrasah erected there by the King. He was delighted with the handsome return he was getting on his share of the business.

* * *

“Thank you, Treana,” Klar said, smiling as he held out his cup for a refill.

His six-year-old granddaughter beamed, carefully holding the heavy teapot in both hands as she poured.

Klar tasted the tea and smacked his lips in appreciation, earning a giggle for his trouble.

Sitting on the porch bench, he looked out over the fields: the green vegetable fields closest to the house, bursting with vitality, with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and more hanging ripe. Beyond stretched a towering forest of corn, countless stalks waving gently in the breeze, tassels glinting in the late summer sun.

Treana’s mother was there, picking fresh greens for dinner, three-year-old Conal staying close but more engrossed with the progress of a huge caterpillar. Instead of holding onto Kyrantha’s skirt he had one hand on Marpo’s back. He was beginning to spend more time with the young wolfhound than his mother.

Klar felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into Myrn’s face as he covered her hand with his own.

Had the dreamquake itself been a dream, a nightmare that knocked sense into him?

Perhaps he was a Dreamer after all, and as he looked out over his Dream made real, he was content.

END