Save him!
Save him!
Why are you not doing anything!
Go out there! Get the money! Save him!
My father lies on his bed, breathing in pained rasps, holding me close with one arm the best he can.
He is dying.
“Why are you going?” My ten-year old self asks, eyes red. I inhabit this self. I cannot act or say anything otherwise than the words I remember enunciating that afternoon, many, many years ago.
“Why are you letting him take you?” I cry, indignant, trying to shield my father from the awaiting scythe of the wraith draped in black on the ceiling above, tendrils reaching out like ink dropped into a pool.
“Because... I love you more than anything else in the world...” my father mutters, glancing at me with his single eye. “And if I can choose to save you, I will choose it over... everything else.”
“No, NO, NO!” I yell, as the wraith begins to descend from the ceiling.
“You must go, Amelie... from the Labyrinth of Echoes to FOUNDER SERA’s bridge in the sky, I will always be with you..”
“NO, YOU CAN’T GO!”
The tenebris wraith brings down its scythe upon his neck.
But just before I can see it strike my father, a brilliant hand of white reaches forth and yanks me from the room.
I scream, my voice hoarse, when I find myself come to my senses.
The sounds of the waves reach me first before my eye registers it’s a bedroom. The wind bell chimes.
I’m in René’s bedroom, sitting on an armchair. I find his hand on my left.
“Miss Amelie – are you okay?” He’s nearly falling out of his bed in an effort to comfort me.
I breathe in pained gasps, my chest heaving, my hair tousled like a witch. I look at him wide-eyed for a split second, but quickly finding embarrassment in my own nightmare, close my eyes and plop back.
It’s the one dream I cannot control.
“I’m – I’m okay, it’s nothing. Just something yucky,” I assure him. He puts his hand away and collapses onto the bedsheets, sluggishly turning his head painfully on the pillows.
It was that dream again. But unlike the painful times where I had to sit through the entirety of the ordeal when my father was taken from me, from the moment of his death to the aftermath that followed, the nightmare was cut short – thanks to René.
He looks up to the plain white ceiling. He takes a deep breath.
“A nightmare?” He asks, making an effort to enunciate his words.
“You could say that,” I answer.
“What kind?”
“Memories of myself when I was little.”
“Do monsters chase after you?”
“Not really. It’s just the same scene over and over again...”
“Oh...” he trails off, his voice croaking. “One of those ones where you can’t move?”
I make a slow nod, staring into a thousand yards out the ocean. “Yeah.”
“So you’re like me too...” he says feebly, pulling his bedsheets to the edge, shuffling his body to lean to the side. He looks out to the sea.
“What’s out there, beyond the sea?” He inquires, his voice mixing with the chiming of the clarion bells. ‘It’s so bright and shiny.”
I shuffle the armchair closer to him so I can see his face and his gaze. His eyes are fixed on the seagulls in flight far in the distance, diving to catch fish, and soaring back again into the fathomless blue sky.
“All kinds of weird and interesting places. Lots of people wearing different clothes. Eating different food. Some even speak different words than we do.”
René stays still. “Can you tell me more? About such a place?”
“Of course,” I say, opening a storybook by the side that I’ve prepared for my visit. I’ve read it over and again on the train ride to Argent, thinking of how I would unfold the vistas of the various pictures and photograms within.
I visit Minerva and René twice a week now. This is my seventh visit.
René turns his head minutely to my storybook, craning his ear.
“Today’s going to be a story about the Empire of Jin.”
“The Empire of Jin?”
“Yeah! Your mother and father voyaged there a long time ago.”
“My mother and father...”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“...What’s it like?”
“An Empire of red porcelain roofs by the setting sun, stretching as far as the eye can see. Hazy rivers and beautiful ships, palaces as big as our entire city. Would you like me to show you?”
“Yeah,” he nods, a brief mixture of giddiness and excitement coming over his countenance.
“Hold on tight.”
We close our eyes. Our fingers entwine.
René’s Kaha – the shape of his soul – is a Celendir itself. They say the soul takes shape of whichever creature they resonate with the most, and for René, who sees himself in Ferris, it is a pleasant affirmation of his affinity. A baby Celendir – with the snout of a baby wolf, body of a bear cub and fluffy drooping ears of a rabbit, jump into my arms. It is eager to speak, and eager to listen.
This is a shared dream. As his words flow into mine, and mine into his, weaves of gold begin to outline themselves over the firmament of the heavens, forming into constellations in the comfortable dark sky.
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The constellations shape into the visage of mighty ships and sundering waves, and beyond them, great porcelain-roofed towers laying out in the tens of thousands by an estuary, the mighty palace hazy in the setting sun miles into the distance. Our way behind, the Great Gates of Jin tower as a monument to humanity, reaching to the very bridge and ring of the planet upon which we find ourselves.
I crotchet them into existence one by one, their shapes materializing into tangible forms. René isn’t fully able to take his human form in this dream, instead nestling on my shoulder in his little Celendir form. We float softly down amidst the vermillion tiles, through the ropes with round red lanterns, and land onto a cozy street wafting with the steam from corner-shops and tiny eateries. My goal in the coming weeks is to help him take shape in this dream as a human – in his own body – so he can become comfortable in it, and also be able to exercise dream crafting. With little adventures like these, he will find himself wanting to explore, to do more, than having to be at my side all the time. And when that day arrives, René will be one step closer to immortality.
René’s ears prick and flutter with excitement as we make our way out of that little street and out into a wide avenue, bustling with hundreds, sounds of laughter and haggling raising a symphony of choruses on our ears.
“There, do you see it?” I ask, guiding René’s head and snout towards the great roofed palace in the distance.
“Mmm-hmm!”
“That’s where the Emperor resides. It’s said his powers are so strong that he can push and pull the tides of every shore in the Empire, and that he can freely move the palace and crack and split the earth open whenever he wants.”
“Wow! Can we go meet him?”
“For sure. But first –” I tickle him, making him giggle while I surreptitiously bring forth into existence a food stall behind us, “What did you say you wanted to try?”
“The buns! The bao-buns from the story!”
Bao-buns. What did they taste like? I rifle through my memory and fish a word out of my consciousness which I saw in the storybook. Sweet when filled with red beans; savory when filled with braised meat, and just plain if you wanted to dip the whole thing in a sweet, honey-milk.
I raise three of each for us to try. René bites into it, nuzzling into my hand, making a purr of deep satisfaction, scattering many fluffy fliers to float to the floor below the stall. The stall-woman laughs, and pats his head. She speaks in a language unintelligible to us – well, I make her speak in a language unintelligible to us to keep up the story – but I translate it for René.
“Where do you come from?” the stall-woman asks us, taking our silver taels, or at least, the most believable currency I can conjure in this dream. I actually didn’t remember which currency they used in the Empire.
“From beyond the sea!” René answers, nodding his head, climbing higher up my hair.
“Mythrise?” She asks.
He nods.
“Which republic?”
René thinks for a moment, cocking his head. “Mmm... Serien?”
“Oh! Inland sea! Many canals! Just like us!”
Of course, an ordinary stall-woman in some street tucked away into the Empire of Jin would probably not know about Serien. But this is a dream, not the desert of the real.
“Very good. Very good,” she nods. “We’re having New Year celebrations tonight. Lots of fireworks. Don’t leave until you see it!”
* * *
We didn’t end up seeing the fireworks that night.
I had to pull René out because his coughs in the waking world had translated into the dreaming world, and the more he coughed, the more monsters summoned themselves into being. I shielded his eyes from their terrible eldritch forms.
But today is a day where he could overcome that – to banish the monsters himself.
It is my 17th visit, nearly 9 weeks from when I’d begun. All around us the chorus of cicadas dance and trill. The sea is of deep blue, the sky painted by mighty anvil clouds rising to meet the boundary between sky and the stars. René and I sit by the grassy meadow, far away from the cottage hill and facing the wilderness, graced by forests of verdant green and flanked by snow-capped mountains.
It’d taken us great effort to come all the way out here, but with the help of a wheelchair and clever metalwork by Jules, we were able to race René out to much satisfaction.
But it all depended on what came next.
“Are you ready?” I ask, holding out my hand, my other holding the wide-brimmed hat eager to fly off from my head and into the wind.
René purses his lips and makes a nod. “Mmm-hmm.”
What I am going to pull is something called a reality translation. It’s to mimic every single piece of environmental detail where the dreamer currently resides, and unfold the dream there, as if the dreamer was awake. I have practiced this particular dream for René nearly half a hundred times. I am ready.
As our hands entwine, a velvet dark drapes our vision. As René’s little Celendir form dissolves into existence here, I stop the flow of time with a flick of my finger, keeping my concentration on it.
Little by little, like an artist’s painstaking brushstrokes, I illustrate the meadow and the forests and the mountains and the shining, flanking sea, and the anvil clouds drifting in their heavenly repose. I motion my arm to call forth the wind; I paint each ray of light descending from the sun to hit our back and necks, on my fair skin and on René’s pale himself; I carry the scent of summer flowers and watermelons and pine into the scents, trembling their petals and budding fruit in the miles around, cognizant of each thread keeping them conjured. Just in front of us, I thread into existence a surprise for René, one which I know he would love. Every fur, every gleaming luster of its coat, great musculature and sturdy form, a set of brilliant eyes, heroic jaws and venerable ears, a tail more flat than cylindrical.
I was ready.
I unfreeze the flow of time. René enters this conjured reality in his little Celendir form upon his wheelchair, facing back towards me. I let go his little paw, fixing my wide-brimmed hat, my black hair flowing out to my back in straight cuts.
René’s form sniffs this way and that, covering his eyes with his floppy ears to shield them from the Sun as he turns.
But as he makes a cautious peek from underneath, he sights the surprise I made.
Awaiting patiently in front of him, in full and magnificent form, is Ferris. Or rather, this is Ferris how he was in René’s memories – a full, adult Celendir, towering above the creatures of the world, freed from his shape as a stuffed animal. Ferris’s great mane-like fur, heavy and resplendent, catch the light of the sun and gives off a lustrous sheen. A tiny patch of yellow fur by his side, where the name Ferris is crocheted, gives René all he needs to know. The great Celendir breathes out, trembling the grass below, lowering his snout towards the boy’s tiny form with venerable eyes.
René’s own eyes grow wide, hesitant, not believing the sight in front of him. He takes a tremulous step forward with one paw, another with his left, and hops out of the wheelchair, racing, racing, landing with a smack on top of Ferris’s snout.
“Ferris! You came back!” he exclaims, teardrops pooling in his eyes. “You kept your promise!”
“Of course,” answers Ferris, imposing his words in a deep rumble directly into René’s mind. “I told you I would cross mountains and seas and deserts to find you.” I carefully craft and place the words I conjure to Ferris.
“You liar,” jests René, “you told me you’d find me in mere weeks. You took years!”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no, nothing else matters now...” says René, hugging Ferris closer.
And as he opens his eyes, he finds himself human, standing with his own two legs, leaning into Ferris.
YES! I exclaim quietly in my own head. It worked!
René cannot believe himself, so he stumbles back and is about to fall – but Ferris steadies him with his large snout, hoisting him up again. René attempts to put no weight on his legs, fearing that they would give way, but I impart a strength in them where he can stand on his own if he tries.
I make Ferris nudge him gently back on the grass. “Oooh-woah-woah!” René says, balancing himself, taking one foot back firm on the grass, and another, and another, each step becoming firmer and more assured.
Lost in the moment, René realizes the strength he has in his legs. He looks to his feet, his shins, his calves, his thighs, made whole again and beautiful. Not muscular by any means, but just like a normal boy’s nonetheless. René pinches his cheeks. I’ve tuned the world to allow him to feel pain. René bites his palm. It still feels real.
Argent teardrops descend like pearls from his eyes. His chest begins to heave in roils of laughter, first a slow, muted giggle, then swelling to chuckles, and to great bawls. He raises his arms as if to embrace the sky and sun.
And now that he could take his human form, now that he could walk again, René could take control in this dream, in tandem with me.
He breaks into a pace, then a jog, and into a sprint, as he runs face-first into Ferris’s waiting body. He breathes deeply in his fur and puffs them out with his nose. He giggles, chuckles, feeling the cool grass under his feet and the caressing of the wind on his ears.
Ferris lowers himself and nudges René onto his back, shuffling. René clambers up with some effort, grips Ferris’s shoulder furs into thick bunches, and hurrahs his Celendir companion into a lumbering sprint, faster and faster towards the ends of the cliffs. Ferris’s paws and claws float on cushions of air as they take to the sky, the stars their destination. I throw my wide-brimmed hat into the air like a frisbee, flattening out to a white carpet, and launch myself into the sky with them.
The entire inland sea of Serien is reflected in our eyes as we take further and further to the sky. The sun vanishes at René’s behest and out comes the glorious ringed moon, comets streaking across the sky, and thousands of little orange firelights puff into existence as the cities of night awake from their daytime slumber. The lands below all move and dance and wave their little lights.
From behind and afar, I spy René standing up on Ferris’s shoulder, embracing the world.
In this moment, eternity is his.
And it’s our Magic.