Story: Oneiromancy, XIX

(Part O , XVIII , XX)

Sleep. The soporific haven for billions of people all over the world, a refuge from all the troubles of life. A potential battleground if you're the only two active Dreamwalkers in the world, and you've caught the attention of the Tweedy Lady currently stalking that abstracted place and trapping all the flies that wander intrusively into her spider's web.

Stanley and Helen hovered, holding hands, staring out into the broad swathes of colour that swirled all around them. Their long experiences together had bonded them even before the eerie attractive powers of her eyes and his sheepish disposition began to work on them. For the first time, and with surprisingly little training, they stood with some awareness in the Dreamline.

"If the professor is right, and who knows if he's even marginally sane before we even get to 'right', this should be a medium that sees all kinds of scattered fragments of dreams, unconscious chatter, and stray information popping back and forth like flotsam in unpredictable tides. There should be things happening all around us." Helen spoke fairly calmly, even while being momentarily swamped in green swirls.

When the swirls passed they were standing on a paved purple lane that cut through the abstractions all around them, a new gravity acting to keep them on the path.

"Perhaps there are. No-one said we would be able to understand it. It's just like standing in a river, except instead of water we have all these swirls and colours. And textures. Ouch!" He waved a hand in pain. A bunch of the abstractions darted at his hand again, but he and Helen backed off down the road a ways and the swirls hovered there confusedly.

"That could be her", Helen observed, "in her natural state in this place." The swirls began to move toward them down the lane, colours shifting furiously.

"If it's not her, than what is it? There's not supposed to be anything here. Whether it was truthful or not, she said she eliminated everything else. I'll try something." Stanley closed his eyes for a moment, the dream version of his eyes, and a shimmering translucent dome appeared over them before winking back out of existence.

Helen screamed as the swirls began plucking at her. Stanley pulled her further down the lane, the swirls never overtaking them, but neither falling far behind. Stanley's mind jumped to a nasty suspicion as something began to loom out of the colours. Gravity and a path, a purple path at that, and a persistent but not merciless predator. "We're being herded."

"What?" Helen gasped.

The structure was becoming clearer now, a solid silver prison, complete with platinum bars. She stopped. Stanley stumbled to a halt too, and then looked at her boldly."It's either the cell or we try sky diving. What do you think?"

She squeezed his hand as the storm of colours approached. "If we weren't already asleep this would be terrifying. One..."

"You're not wrong. Two..."

"You shouldn't hunch so much. Three..."

"It's part of the teacher training. Jump!"

Stanley Simonson and Helen Ostrander jumped off the purple lane, and plummeted, while the swirls contracted into an angry ball increasingly high above them and seethed.

To be continued...