The Sandman, page 26
Brave Persian warriors battle hungry lions and fearsome djinni. An invading army riding war chariots and Soviet tanks is met by heroic soldiers armed with spears and AK-47s, while angry gods and helicopter gunships hover in the war-darkened skies. Some of the images are obscured by bloodstains, while other parts have been damaged by bullets and fire. The tapestry reeks of smoke and gunpowder. Cleaning and restoring it to its former glory will be difficult—I will have to reweave the more damaged sections myself, using more modern materials while utilizing traditional crafts—but the task ahead of me is not impossible.
I clip a small sample from the damaged portion of the dream and slip it under the electron microscope in order better to comprehend the elements necessary to duplicate the weave. Looks to be a mixture of hope, fantasy, romance, pride, and tradition. Not that unusual a blend, really. I jot down notes for Kroll to use for reference as he spins the raw materials into thread.
Satisfied I have the composition correctly identified, I proceed to clean the dream as best I can before placing it on the loom for repair. This is, in fact, far trickier than replacing the damaged portions. If I am not careful and use too much force or too caustic a cleaning agent, I may permanently alter—if not completely eradicate—the elaborate designs worked into it. It requires a steady hand and sure touch to remove the effects of a few centuries of abuse from such a fragile thing as a dream.
By the time Kroll has finished spinning the raw materials into fine thread and dyeing them the proper colors, I have finished cleaning the dream and placed it in the handloom. As I work the treadles and guide the shuttle along its race, the loom’s ancient rhythm fills me with the magic of the woof and the weave.
The loom’s rhythm is that of the sea. It is the sound of the womb tides each mortal rides before birth. It is the rhythm of bodies as they create life. It is the sound of Making. It is as if I am listening to the beating of a giant’s heart, and I allow myself to fall into a trance.
Whiteness. Pungent smells and frightening, bestial sounds that do not come from animals. A memory of pain. Dull, repetitive pain.
The vision is so sharp, so immediate, it startles me from my trance with an audible gasp. My first concern is for the dream I am working on. To my relief, I see that the restoration is a success. While the tapestry will never be mistaken for new, it is once more whole. The colors are a bit faded and the bloodstains are still visible, if one knows where to look, but it does not affect the overall impact. In a way, it serves to enhance the mystique. This is an old dream, but one with many years of use still in it.
Although I am still shaken by my vision, my hands do not tremble as I free the dream from the loom. I lay it out on the floor so I can get a better look at it. Kroll nods his head in admiration.
“Great job. Some of your best work yet, boss.”
“Thank you, Kroll. I value your opinion on these matters.”
Just then the tapestry flexes itself, like a cat in front of the fireplace. The figures woven into the dream begin moving and making noise. The lions roar, the djinni laugh, the armies clash their swords against their shields, the AK-47s fire celebratory bursts, while the helicopter gunships hum like giant dragonflies.
I nudge the dream with my boot tip. “There you go. You’re free to return to your people.”
The dream-tapestry wastes no time. It leaps into the air, flapping its outer edges like a manta ray cruising the sandy bottom of a lagoon. Like the bird-of-paradise before it, it slips through the open window and, within seconds, is well on its way home.
I clap my hands together and smile down at my assistant. “What do you say to knocking off for lunch, Kroll?”
“I’d say it’s about bloody time.”
I LIKE TO take my lunch on the window seat, looking out at the wondrous garden below. The garden, like everything else in Lord Morpheus’s palace, changes from day to day. Sometimes it is a Japanese meditation garden, complete with elaborate designs raked into the sand, other times it is an English country garden. Once it was a topiary, and I distinctly recall the day it was a cactus grove. On this particular day it is a French garden, like the one at Versailles.
I look down on the neatly manicured grass and the regimented lines of trees and flowering shrubs as I eat my box lunch. The mingled fragrances of orange and cherry blossoms, of rosebushes and honeysuckle in full bloom tickle my nose, erasing the smell of human excrement my vision had summoned so vividly.
As I sip from my thermos of iced tea, I glimpse movement at the corner of my eye. Something dark and yet pale at the same time. Without thinking, I turn my head to look.
That’s when I see them—a man and woman, each dressed in clothes black as the space between the stars, each with flesh as white as alabaster. The man is tall, gaunt—almost unhealthily so—outfitted in a long cape. His hair is dark and tousled, as if he has just left his bed.
The woman is shorter, not nearly as thin, wearing jeans and a cutaway tuxedo jacket, an undertaker’s mourning derby atop her own unruly mane. The woman is talking, laughing, her hands clapping at some joke. The man looks preoccupied, his features dour. Although he is a stranger to me, there is a haunting familiarity to his features. With a start, I suddenly realize who I am looking at.
It’s him.
After all this time—Has it been years? Decades? I cannot remember exactly when it was I became the Mender—I am finally looking upon the face of my master. The face of the Shaping Lord himself: Morpheus, he whom mortals know as Dream.
And if he is Lord Dream, it occurs to me, then the woman with him must be his elder sister, Lady Death.
Even as I think these thoughts, the pale woman turns her gaze from her brother. I glimpse her smile and the sign of the ankh that marks her right eye. Even though she has no way of knowing that I am sitting here, watching her, she smiles in my direction. She is beautiful. Possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, or will ever see. I quickly look away.
Lunchtime is over. Time to get back to work.
I OPEN THE next job lot—this time the dream is in the form of a shattered Ming vase, decorated with heavenly storm dragons and good luck bats so stylized they resemble exotic flowers instead of animals. I try to focus on the job at hand, rearranging the broken pieces and mixing the necessary fixative to glue it back together, but I cannot shake the image of Death looking at me and smiling as if I were an old friend she was looking forward to chatting with.
Luckily the shattered dream-vase is not a difficult repair job. I find my mind wandering as I meticulously paste it back together with a brush made from the eyelash of a newborn camel.
Not for the first time, I wonder where it is I come from and go every day. By the time I am aware of my surroundings at the start of the day, I’m already well within the confines of the palace. And, as far as my memory is concerned, the moment I step over the threshold of the Restoration Department at the end of the day, everything goes blank.
I should be able to recall if I go home, relax with a beer, and tell my wife about my day. However, I don’t even know if I have a home to go back to, much less a wife. I can remember what transpires within the walls of the palace perfectly well—but everything else remains a gray, amorphous mist. I don’t even know where or how I came about my prodigious knowledge of the restoration and repair of dreams. It is as if with each working day I am born anew, like Athena leaping from Zeus’s brow.
Only once in a while do I have bursts of—I hesitate to call it insight. Visions is a better word. Visions like the one I had earlier. They’re always brief, always confusing, and seem to involve pain. Maybe I’m better off not knowing. I keep telling myself that. But I really don’t believe it.
The rest of the day passes in a haze. I repair the dreamvase without a hitch, even though my heart is not really in it, and set about repairing a dream in the form of a medieval stained-glass window depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. The saint’s face has been eaten away by both man-made and natural forces, leaving the features indistinct. As hard as I try, I cannot replicate the saint’s original appearance, so I substitute those of a young actor who died on the street. Aesthetically, it works.
I am surprised when the lights go off, blinking like an owl in the face of strong daylight. Kroll is standing there, his little green felt coat draped over one arm, regarding me oddly.
“Quitting time, boss.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.” I get to my feet slowly, moving like an old man with winter in his bones.
Kroll is still watching me, frowning. “Boss—you okay? You seemed, I dunno, a little preoccupied today. You comin’ down sick or something?”
“No. I’m fine, Kroll. I was just—thinking.”
Kroll shoves his tiny, muscular arms into the sleeves of his coat, pulling peaked cap from his pocket and onto his head. “All that does is lead to trouble, if you ask me.”
“Kroll—? May I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead. Shoot.”
“Where do you go?”
“Go?”
“You know. After work.”
“I go to my quarters in the east wing. That’s where most of us who aren’t native to the Dreaming end up. I share my space with this pixie gal named Shian. She ain’t stuck-up about my kind like those damn faerie-folk Lord Morpheus is so bleedin’ fond of.”
“She sounds—nice. I’m happy for you, Kroll.”
“‘S funny, you askin’ me that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The old Mender, the one before you—used to ask me things like that.”
“He did?”
“She. The Mender before you was a woman.”
“Oh.”
“See you tomorrow, boss.” With that, Kroll opens the door and disappears into the corridor.
I stare at the door for a long time. It is time to leave. The windows are darkened, the lights are off, the vast cavern of the Restoration Department empty. It is time for me to go home. But to what?
Taking a deep breath, I open the door and prepare to step into the gray nothing that has claimed me every day for as long as I can remember. But, as my foot crosses the threshold, I find myself not in limbo but still in the halls of the palace.
The corridors look different after dark—more sinister and treacherous than during the workday. It’s as if the palace can tell that I am not supposed to be here and has altered itself to reflect this. Although I have worked in this place for as long as I can remember, I have rarely strayed beyond the Restoration Department. I know there are countless others in service to the King of Dreams because Kroll is fond of relating palace gossip, and I occasionally catch glimpses of the various courtiers, courtesans, and servants from the windows overlooking the garden. But, during all this time, I have never dealt with anyone but my trollish assistant.
As I round a corner I collide with a tall, gangly figure, knocking him to the ground. To my amazement, it is not a man but an animated scarecrow, its limbs made of wood and draped in a baggy pair of overalls. In place of a head is a pumpkin carved to resemble a jack-o’-lantern, a lit cigarette held between its jagged lips. Next to where it’s sprawled is a bucket of soapy water with an industrial string mop stuck in it.
“Hey, buster! Wanna watch were yer goin’?” the scarecrow snaps. “Y’coulda smashed m’ noggin’, and I just carved it two days ago!”
I help the scarecrow back to its feet. “I-I’m terribly sorry, Mister, uh—?”
“Mervyn. Just Mervyn,” says the pumpkinhead, taking a drag on its cigarette. The smoke fills its hollow skull and seeps out through the eyeholes. “I’m the janitor around here. And who might you be? I don’t recollect seein’ you before. . . .”
“I am the Mender of Broken Dreams.”
Mervyn’s carved features somehow take on the approximation of surprise. “So you’re the Mender, eh? I’ve heard Kroll go on about you! What are you doin’ out and about at this hour?”
The words come out before I realize what I’m saying. “I’m looking for Lord Morpheus.”
Mervyn’s jack-o’-lantern countenance grimaces even more than I thought possible. “Are y’sure y’wanna do that, pal? I mean, the boss is an okay guy, as immortal manifestations of power go, but he’s a little, uh, standoffish. Y’just don’t go lookin’ for him, if y’get m’drift.”
“It’s very important that I talk to him.”
Mervyn shrugs and points down the hallway. “You’ll find the throne room down this hall and to the right. At least that’s where it was a half hour ago. Nothing’s in the same place from day t’day around here anyways, but he’s especially fond of movin’ the damn throne room every time the mood hits him.”
“Thank you, Mervyn! Thank you very much!”
The scarecrow simply shrugs and returns to mopping the polished onyx floor. With every swipe of the mop the floor turns from onyx to sparkling sapphire. “‘S’yer funeral, Mac.”
THE THRONE ROOM is still where Mervyn said it was. The great doors fashioned of horn, five times the height of a man, carved with the symbols of dreams, are shut. No palace guards stand ready, nor is there any sign of a majordomo or page who could announce me. Timidly, I move to rap on the door, only to have it open before me. From the darkness beyond the threshold there comes a voice, both frightening and familiar. It is a voice from my dreams.
“Enter, Mender. You are very much welcome here.”
The doors swing inward, and I step inside the throne room, feeling very small and naked and vulnerable. “L-lord Morpheus?”
The Shaper of Dreams lolls on his throne of horn, watching me with the casual interest a child gives to a shiny-backed beetle. He is still dressed in black, although his clothing is casual to the brink of insult: threadbare jeans, a French-cut T-shirt, and square-toed motorcycle boots.
“You would speak with me, Mender?”
“Y-yes, milord.” As I approach the throne I’m astounded at how young he is. Until I look into his eyes. Only there is one reminded that this is the Third Born of the Endless, younger brother to Destiny and Death, a being old beyond human measure. “There is something I must know—something I believe only you can explain.”
“And what is your question?”
“What am I?”
The slightest of smiles touches the lips of the Shaper of Dreams. “You have served me well, Mender. Your skill at repairing even the most abused and sullied of dreamstuff is a marvel, even to me. Your work pleases me, Mender. And for that, I shall grant you a boon and answer your question.”
“Thank you, milord!”
Morpheus rises from his throne, the shadows pooling about his shoulders to form a cape. “Do not be so quick with your thanks, Mender,” he sighs. “Come. Follow me.”
Together we walk down a long, dark hallway, toward a distant light. Although Morpheus is slight in build, he radiates the presence of a monarch secure in his power. He glances down at me, his deep-set eyes unreadable.
“Before I answer your question, there is one I would pose; what do you think you are, Mender?”
“Since I can never remember where I come from and where I go at the end of my work, I think I must be a dream of some kind. Am I right?”
“Most astute, Mender. You are correct. Does that bother you?”
“What?”
“Being a dream. Does it bother you?”
I frown, rubbing my chin. “I don’t know. I guess I should be—I mean, if I’m a dream, that means I’m not real, right?”
Morpheus laughs then, startling me. When he laughs his eyes almost belie their age. “My dear Mender! Surely you, most of all, know that dreams possess a reality all their own! In many cases, they are far more substantial than the dreamers themselves!”
He points a chalk-white finger at a wall, which ripples like water. “Every human born has the keys to my kingdom within them. For many the Dreaming is simply a place to escape the pressures of being mortal. For a handful of poets and madmen it is the land of portents, signs, and inspiration. But for others, it is the one place where true happiness can be found; where beggars ride as kings, the spurned find love, the hungry feast.”
The rippling wall steadies, becomes a looking glass. In it a heroically muscled man dressed in a loincloth hacks away at a three-headed dragon.
“The brave warrior you’re watching is a computer systems analyst from Passaic, New Jersey,” Morpheus informs me. He snaps his fingers and the sword-wielding computer nerd is replaced by a vision of Marilyn Monroe, circa “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” She is surrounded by a squadron of horny young men clad only in white gloves and formal bow ties, each burdened with bouquets, jewelry cases, heart-shaped chocolate boxes, and rock-hard erections. Marilyn coos and bats her eyes appreciatively at such evidence of lust and adoration. “This dreamer is a preoperative transsexual in Dallas, Texas. There are millions upon millions of other such dream sequences I could show you—all the same, all different. But of all these billions of dreamers, few have spawned dreams substantial enough to become a member of my palace staff. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Mender?”
I feel twin surges of pride and anxiety swell within me. “I-I think so, milord.”
Morpheus points to the light at the end of the hallway, now uncomfortably close. “Would the dream like to see the dreamer? I have the power to enter the Waking World when and where I so choose.”
We step from the Dreaming into the Waking World side by side, as if traversing dimensional barriers is of no more import than walking into the backyard. And, I guess, for him that might very well be the case.
Whiteness.
My vision from earlier comes rushing back to haunt me, filling my eyes with white glare, clogging my nose with the smell of urine and feces. Instinctively, I shield my face. Gently, Lord Morpheus takes my hands and pulls them away from my face.
The blinding whiteness strobes then fades. I find myself staring at the white walls of what is obviously an institution of some sort, lit by a bare bulb held in a wire cage. The smell of piss and shit comes from the narrow bed against the wall. On the bed, curled in on itself like a giant fetus, is a human.
I clip a small sample from the damaged portion of the dream and slip it under the electron microscope in order better to comprehend the elements necessary to duplicate the weave. Looks to be a mixture of hope, fantasy, romance, pride, and tradition. Not that unusual a blend, really. I jot down notes for Kroll to use for reference as he spins the raw materials into thread.
Satisfied I have the composition correctly identified, I proceed to clean the dream as best I can before placing it on the loom for repair. This is, in fact, far trickier than replacing the damaged portions. If I am not careful and use too much force or too caustic a cleaning agent, I may permanently alter—if not completely eradicate—the elaborate designs worked into it. It requires a steady hand and sure touch to remove the effects of a few centuries of abuse from such a fragile thing as a dream.
By the time Kroll has finished spinning the raw materials into fine thread and dyeing them the proper colors, I have finished cleaning the dream and placed it in the handloom. As I work the treadles and guide the shuttle along its race, the loom’s ancient rhythm fills me with the magic of the woof and the weave.
The loom’s rhythm is that of the sea. It is the sound of the womb tides each mortal rides before birth. It is the rhythm of bodies as they create life. It is the sound of Making. It is as if I am listening to the beating of a giant’s heart, and I allow myself to fall into a trance.
Whiteness. Pungent smells and frightening, bestial sounds that do not come from animals. A memory of pain. Dull, repetitive pain.
The vision is so sharp, so immediate, it startles me from my trance with an audible gasp. My first concern is for the dream I am working on. To my relief, I see that the restoration is a success. While the tapestry will never be mistaken for new, it is once more whole. The colors are a bit faded and the bloodstains are still visible, if one knows where to look, but it does not affect the overall impact. In a way, it serves to enhance the mystique. This is an old dream, but one with many years of use still in it.
Although I am still shaken by my vision, my hands do not tremble as I free the dream from the loom. I lay it out on the floor so I can get a better look at it. Kroll nods his head in admiration.
“Great job. Some of your best work yet, boss.”
“Thank you, Kroll. I value your opinion on these matters.”
Just then the tapestry flexes itself, like a cat in front of the fireplace. The figures woven into the dream begin moving and making noise. The lions roar, the djinni laugh, the armies clash their swords against their shields, the AK-47s fire celebratory bursts, while the helicopter gunships hum like giant dragonflies.
I nudge the dream with my boot tip. “There you go. You’re free to return to your people.”
The dream-tapestry wastes no time. It leaps into the air, flapping its outer edges like a manta ray cruising the sandy bottom of a lagoon. Like the bird-of-paradise before it, it slips through the open window and, within seconds, is well on its way home.
I clap my hands together and smile down at my assistant. “What do you say to knocking off for lunch, Kroll?”
“I’d say it’s about bloody time.”
I LIKE TO take my lunch on the window seat, looking out at the wondrous garden below. The garden, like everything else in Lord Morpheus’s palace, changes from day to day. Sometimes it is a Japanese meditation garden, complete with elaborate designs raked into the sand, other times it is an English country garden. Once it was a topiary, and I distinctly recall the day it was a cactus grove. On this particular day it is a French garden, like the one at Versailles.
I look down on the neatly manicured grass and the regimented lines of trees and flowering shrubs as I eat my box lunch. The mingled fragrances of orange and cherry blossoms, of rosebushes and honeysuckle in full bloom tickle my nose, erasing the smell of human excrement my vision had summoned so vividly.
As I sip from my thermos of iced tea, I glimpse movement at the corner of my eye. Something dark and yet pale at the same time. Without thinking, I turn my head to look.
That’s when I see them—a man and woman, each dressed in clothes black as the space between the stars, each with flesh as white as alabaster. The man is tall, gaunt—almost unhealthily so—outfitted in a long cape. His hair is dark and tousled, as if he has just left his bed.
The woman is shorter, not nearly as thin, wearing jeans and a cutaway tuxedo jacket, an undertaker’s mourning derby atop her own unruly mane. The woman is talking, laughing, her hands clapping at some joke. The man looks preoccupied, his features dour. Although he is a stranger to me, there is a haunting familiarity to his features. With a start, I suddenly realize who I am looking at.
It’s him.
After all this time—Has it been years? Decades? I cannot remember exactly when it was I became the Mender—I am finally looking upon the face of my master. The face of the Shaping Lord himself: Morpheus, he whom mortals know as Dream.
And if he is Lord Dream, it occurs to me, then the woman with him must be his elder sister, Lady Death.
Even as I think these thoughts, the pale woman turns her gaze from her brother. I glimpse her smile and the sign of the ankh that marks her right eye. Even though she has no way of knowing that I am sitting here, watching her, she smiles in my direction. She is beautiful. Possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, or will ever see. I quickly look away.
Lunchtime is over. Time to get back to work.
I OPEN THE next job lot—this time the dream is in the form of a shattered Ming vase, decorated with heavenly storm dragons and good luck bats so stylized they resemble exotic flowers instead of animals. I try to focus on the job at hand, rearranging the broken pieces and mixing the necessary fixative to glue it back together, but I cannot shake the image of Death looking at me and smiling as if I were an old friend she was looking forward to chatting with.
Luckily the shattered dream-vase is not a difficult repair job. I find my mind wandering as I meticulously paste it back together with a brush made from the eyelash of a newborn camel.
Not for the first time, I wonder where it is I come from and go every day. By the time I am aware of my surroundings at the start of the day, I’m already well within the confines of the palace. And, as far as my memory is concerned, the moment I step over the threshold of the Restoration Department at the end of the day, everything goes blank.
I should be able to recall if I go home, relax with a beer, and tell my wife about my day. However, I don’t even know if I have a home to go back to, much less a wife. I can remember what transpires within the walls of the palace perfectly well—but everything else remains a gray, amorphous mist. I don’t even know where or how I came about my prodigious knowledge of the restoration and repair of dreams. It is as if with each working day I am born anew, like Athena leaping from Zeus’s brow.
Only once in a while do I have bursts of—I hesitate to call it insight. Visions is a better word. Visions like the one I had earlier. They’re always brief, always confusing, and seem to involve pain. Maybe I’m better off not knowing. I keep telling myself that. But I really don’t believe it.
The rest of the day passes in a haze. I repair the dreamvase without a hitch, even though my heart is not really in it, and set about repairing a dream in the form of a medieval stained-glass window depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. The saint’s face has been eaten away by both man-made and natural forces, leaving the features indistinct. As hard as I try, I cannot replicate the saint’s original appearance, so I substitute those of a young actor who died on the street. Aesthetically, it works.
I am surprised when the lights go off, blinking like an owl in the face of strong daylight. Kroll is standing there, his little green felt coat draped over one arm, regarding me oddly.
“Quitting time, boss.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.” I get to my feet slowly, moving like an old man with winter in his bones.
Kroll is still watching me, frowning. “Boss—you okay? You seemed, I dunno, a little preoccupied today. You comin’ down sick or something?”
“No. I’m fine, Kroll. I was just—thinking.”
Kroll shoves his tiny, muscular arms into the sleeves of his coat, pulling peaked cap from his pocket and onto his head. “All that does is lead to trouble, if you ask me.”
“Kroll—? May I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead. Shoot.”
“Where do you go?”
“Go?”
“You know. After work.”
“I go to my quarters in the east wing. That’s where most of us who aren’t native to the Dreaming end up. I share my space with this pixie gal named Shian. She ain’t stuck-up about my kind like those damn faerie-folk Lord Morpheus is so bleedin’ fond of.”
“She sounds—nice. I’m happy for you, Kroll.”
“‘S funny, you askin’ me that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The old Mender, the one before you—used to ask me things like that.”
“He did?”
“She. The Mender before you was a woman.”
“Oh.”
“See you tomorrow, boss.” With that, Kroll opens the door and disappears into the corridor.
I stare at the door for a long time. It is time to leave. The windows are darkened, the lights are off, the vast cavern of the Restoration Department empty. It is time for me to go home. But to what?
Taking a deep breath, I open the door and prepare to step into the gray nothing that has claimed me every day for as long as I can remember. But, as my foot crosses the threshold, I find myself not in limbo but still in the halls of the palace.
The corridors look different after dark—more sinister and treacherous than during the workday. It’s as if the palace can tell that I am not supposed to be here and has altered itself to reflect this. Although I have worked in this place for as long as I can remember, I have rarely strayed beyond the Restoration Department. I know there are countless others in service to the King of Dreams because Kroll is fond of relating palace gossip, and I occasionally catch glimpses of the various courtiers, courtesans, and servants from the windows overlooking the garden. But, during all this time, I have never dealt with anyone but my trollish assistant.
As I round a corner I collide with a tall, gangly figure, knocking him to the ground. To my amazement, it is not a man but an animated scarecrow, its limbs made of wood and draped in a baggy pair of overalls. In place of a head is a pumpkin carved to resemble a jack-o’-lantern, a lit cigarette held between its jagged lips. Next to where it’s sprawled is a bucket of soapy water with an industrial string mop stuck in it.
“Hey, buster! Wanna watch were yer goin’?” the scarecrow snaps. “Y’coulda smashed m’ noggin’, and I just carved it two days ago!”
I help the scarecrow back to its feet. “I-I’m terribly sorry, Mister, uh—?”
“Mervyn. Just Mervyn,” says the pumpkinhead, taking a drag on its cigarette. The smoke fills its hollow skull and seeps out through the eyeholes. “I’m the janitor around here. And who might you be? I don’t recollect seein’ you before. . . .”
“I am the Mender of Broken Dreams.”
Mervyn’s carved features somehow take on the approximation of surprise. “So you’re the Mender, eh? I’ve heard Kroll go on about you! What are you doin’ out and about at this hour?”
The words come out before I realize what I’m saying. “I’m looking for Lord Morpheus.”
Mervyn’s jack-o’-lantern countenance grimaces even more than I thought possible. “Are y’sure y’wanna do that, pal? I mean, the boss is an okay guy, as immortal manifestations of power go, but he’s a little, uh, standoffish. Y’just don’t go lookin’ for him, if y’get m’drift.”
“It’s very important that I talk to him.”
Mervyn shrugs and points down the hallway. “You’ll find the throne room down this hall and to the right. At least that’s where it was a half hour ago. Nothing’s in the same place from day t’day around here anyways, but he’s especially fond of movin’ the damn throne room every time the mood hits him.”
“Thank you, Mervyn! Thank you very much!”
The scarecrow simply shrugs and returns to mopping the polished onyx floor. With every swipe of the mop the floor turns from onyx to sparkling sapphire. “‘S’yer funeral, Mac.”
THE THRONE ROOM is still where Mervyn said it was. The great doors fashioned of horn, five times the height of a man, carved with the symbols of dreams, are shut. No palace guards stand ready, nor is there any sign of a majordomo or page who could announce me. Timidly, I move to rap on the door, only to have it open before me. From the darkness beyond the threshold there comes a voice, both frightening and familiar. It is a voice from my dreams.
“Enter, Mender. You are very much welcome here.”
The doors swing inward, and I step inside the throne room, feeling very small and naked and vulnerable. “L-lord Morpheus?”
The Shaper of Dreams lolls on his throne of horn, watching me with the casual interest a child gives to a shiny-backed beetle. He is still dressed in black, although his clothing is casual to the brink of insult: threadbare jeans, a French-cut T-shirt, and square-toed motorcycle boots.
“You would speak with me, Mender?”
“Y-yes, milord.” As I approach the throne I’m astounded at how young he is. Until I look into his eyes. Only there is one reminded that this is the Third Born of the Endless, younger brother to Destiny and Death, a being old beyond human measure. “There is something I must know—something I believe only you can explain.”
“And what is your question?”
“What am I?”
The slightest of smiles touches the lips of the Shaper of Dreams. “You have served me well, Mender. Your skill at repairing even the most abused and sullied of dreamstuff is a marvel, even to me. Your work pleases me, Mender. And for that, I shall grant you a boon and answer your question.”
“Thank you, milord!”
Morpheus rises from his throne, the shadows pooling about his shoulders to form a cape. “Do not be so quick with your thanks, Mender,” he sighs. “Come. Follow me.”
Together we walk down a long, dark hallway, toward a distant light. Although Morpheus is slight in build, he radiates the presence of a monarch secure in his power. He glances down at me, his deep-set eyes unreadable.
“Before I answer your question, there is one I would pose; what do you think you are, Mender?”
“Since I can never remember where I come from and where I go at the end of my work, I think I must be a dream of some kind. Am I right?”
“Most astute, Mender. You are correct. Does that bother you?”
“What?”
“Being a dream. Does it bother you?”
I frown, rubbing my chin. “I don’t know. I guess I should be—I mean, if I’m a dream, that means I’m not real, right?”
Morpheus laughs then, startling me. When he laughs his eyes almost belie their age. “My dear Mender! Surely you, most of all, know that dreams possess a reality all their own! In many cases, they are far more substantial than the dreamers themselves!”
He points a chalk-white finger at a wall, which ripples like water. “Every human born has the keys to my kingdom within them. For many the Dreaming is simply a place to escape the pressures of being mortal. For a handful of poets and madmen it is the land of portents, signs, and inspiration. But for others, it is the one place where true happiness can be found; where beggars ride as kings, the spurned find love, the hungry feast.”
The rippling wall steadies, becomes a looking glass. In it a heroically muscled man dressed in a loincloth hacks away at a three-headed dragon.
“The brave warrior you’re watching is a computer systems analyst from Passaic, New Jersey,” Morpheus informs me. He snaps his fingers and the sword-wielding computer nerd is replaced by a vision of Marilyn Monroe, circa “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” She is surrounded by a squadron of horny young men clad only in white gloves and formal bow ties, each burdened with bouquets, jewelry cases, heart-shaped chocolate boxes, and rock-hard erections. Marilyn coos and bats her eyes appreciatively at such evidence of lust and adoration. “This dreamer is a preoperative transsexual in Dallas, Texas. There are millions upon millions of other such dream sequences I could show you—all the same, all different. But of all these billions of dreamers, few have spawned dreams substantial enough to become a member of my palace staff. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Mender?”
I feel twin surges of pride and anxiety swell within me. “I-I think so, milord.”
Morpheus points to the light at the end of the hallway, now uncomfortably close. “Would the dream like to see the dreamer? I have the power to enter the Waking World when and where I so choose.”
We step from the Dreaming into the Waking World side by side, as if traversing dimensional barriers is of no more import than walking into the backyard. And, I guess, for him that might very well be the case.
Whiteness.
My vision from earlier comes rushing back to haunt me, filling my eyes with white glare, clogging my nose with the smell of urine and feces. Instinctively, I shield my face. Gently, Lord Morpheus takes my hands and pulls them away from my face.
The blinding whiteness strobes then fades. I find myself staring at the white walls of what is obviously an institution of some sort, lit by a bare bulb held in a wire cage. The smell of piss and shit comes from the narrow bed against the wall. On the bed, curled in on itself like a giant fetus, is a human.
