Dream Guy (29 page)

He waited. He tossed. He lay with his eyes open and with his eyes closed—on his side then on his front. He tried to name every country in Europe in alphabetical order. He listed his favorite bands in alphabetical order. He listed every teacher in school in alphabetical order. He listed superheroes and cartoon characters. He tried every conceivable way he could think of to bore himself to sleep. Then he thought of Nell and how she looked, but her features had become somehow blurred. With that realization, the tears came. With the tears came sleep.

The first thing Joe was conscious of was the sound of the wind. It ripped around him. He was lying on rock in the clothes he had chosen. He sat up. Above him, a row of five immense but headless statues sat impassively, facing some distant horizon. He turned to see what was before them and the breath was knocked from him. He was in the midst of a mountain range with no sign of human life. The peaks undulated away, wave upon wave of rock, glowing orange, copper and silver as the sun rose and strengthened. The sky above was cloudless and so intense a blue that it seemed outer space had invaded the atmosphere. He was on the top of the world. The cold was so dry he could feel his skin turning to parchment, the moisture in his lips and fingers shrinking from its intensity.

He walked to the edge of the plinth where he had been lying. Before him was a precipice of weathered limestone, cracked and slivered by wind and ice, as lined and worn as a man who has gazed for a lifetime into the sun. Behind the five statues was a smooth peak, an unnaturally even cone guarded by the seated figures and crisscrossed with several tracks.

Standing on the dais, Joe looked again at the statues.

Their heads had fallen and rolled from their shoulders and now lay between Joe and the statues like randomly tossed dice, their features smooth and unreadable with weathering, their eyes sightless. A stone lion sat on its haunches at one corner of the dais. And blending with the tearing, rending sound of the wind came the unmistakable rumble of a huge cat breathing. Joe walked toward the statues and climbed down the steps to the boulder-strewn ground. The lion was still, its eyes as blind as those of the gods it had guarded, but Joe was sure he still heard its purr.

An ear-rending shriek slashed the air, and Joe looked up.

An eagle was soaring high above, circling over the mountain, its shrill cry angry and mournful. He took a step and the parched shards of rock and pebble shifted beneath his feet with a rasping crunch.

He watched the eagle as it surfed the air currents, expressing its displeasure at the arrival of an interloper in its world. Its wingspan was immense and for a moment, Joe feared that it would swoop down and lift him up by its talons, only to drop him off the side of the mountain. But it glided past him, its yellow eyes penetrating, the wind ruffling at its dark feathers and pale head before gaining height once again and landing on the lap of one of the statues, where it seemed to have shrunk to the size of a baby. It glared down at Joe, frozen by its passage. Then it took flight again and he followed it. It led him around the mountain, which had been shaped long ago by human hands. On the southern face, he came to a terrace guarded by an immense pillar on which stood another eagle, this one carved from silvery stone, polished to a high sheen by the breeze. Joe found himself walking through a plantation of sculpted heads—a bearded man here, a young, clean-shaven king there. He stopped in front of a detached-looking woman with a garland of fruit and flowers wreathing her brow. The tilt of her head and her stern mouth reminded him of the way that girls would respond, “Whatever,” when being ticked off by a teacher who they knew had no real power over them. Her eyes were widely spaced, the bridge of her nose flat, although she had lost most of the rest of it. When Joe stood beside her, he reached the bottom of her eyes.

Joe continued exploring. There was no sign of human habitation, no trace of human occupation of the mountains apart from this strange statuary. He had come to the desert, but what he was meant to do now, he had no idea. He traced relief carvings etched into solid rock and ran his fingers over the ridges and ripples of a maned lion surrounded by stars. There were four terraces carved out of the mountain’s sides, one at each point of the compass, and with nothing else to do, as the sun rose, Joe began to sketch each of the terraces, choosing first an overview then a specific detail.

He ended up returning to draw the woman’s head. She was the only female he had found there, and perhaps because she looked so petulant, he was drawn to her. At least there was some sort of emotion, some sign that the carvings had come from the human imagination.

Only gradually did he hear her humming. He had become so accustomed to the roar of the wind, the thrum of the lions and the whistling shrieks of the eagles that he scarcely noticed another sound among the noises reverberating around the mountain. At first, it was an occasional nasal drone, building gradually into a full-fledged melody, plaintive and swooping. It was catching. He’d completed a sketch of her whole head and was now trying to pin down a detail of her headdress when he registered that his movements were accompanying the meandering tune. He stopped.

“Continue,” came a gravelly, rasping voice.

He searched for the source of the voice, and it was then that he noticed that where the statue he had been sketching had previously had sightless stone eyes, now, two dark liquid irises were focused on him. He tried to continue but he had lost the tune. She began to hum again, and he joined in as he was completing an outline of the garland.

“Show me.”

Joe held up the pad before the statue.

“I’ve never seen a likeness of myself before. At least, not in this incarnation.”

“You’ve had many incarnations?”

“I used to. And really, people never give up worshipping me, otherwise they would not gamble.”

“What’s your name?”

“I have many, but you will know me as Fortune, or Luck, or Chance. You may call me Tyche.”

Perhaps this was a moment where a bow would be appropriate, but it seemed a little late for formality.

“Can you help me?”

“They all say that. You humans are very dull. I only have to mention who I am, and you bombard me with requests.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just wondered if you knew what I should do next. I was told to go to the desert because I’m an apprentice Dream Master. Is this the desert? Should I be doing something?”

“You’re the next Dream Master! Why didn’t you say so?”

Joe forbore to mention that he just had.

Tyche was much warmer now that she knew who he was. “You’re in terrible danger. I suppose you know that.”

Joe nodded. “I need to defeat this Eidolon guy.”

“I can’t help you there. That depends on your own ingenuity. Have you completed your three tasks?”

“Not yet. I wanted to ask about one before I went any further.”

“Oh, here we go. You don’t want to give up your heart’s desire, I suppose. It hasn’t occurred to you that once you’ve become a Dream Master, you can dream it back into existence with no difficulties at all.”

“It had occurred to me, actually, but that isn’t the point. Once I reach that stage, it won’t be my heart’s desire, will it?”

“You’re one of the perceptive ones.” There was a flicker of respect in the shining eyes of the goddess. “So what is the problem?”

“My fondest wish is to bring back to life someone who has died. Is that possible, or is there some catch?”

“Yes, of course there’s a catch. That clause is irrevocable. It’s not like the first one. The difference is that a heart’s desire will change, but the fondest wish won’t, so you can never go back to it and make it work. You lose the mastery if you do.”

“So if I seemed to turn my back on it, then became the master and tried to make it happen, I’d stop being the master.”

“Isn’t that what I said?” The goddess rolled her eyes with impatience. It looked as though they might fly out of their sockets.

“I’m just making absolutely sure that I understand this malarkey.”

“Malarkey! You call ancient lore that has lasted thousands of years ‘malarkey’? You’re a cheeky so-and-so.”

“You haven’t answered the other question. Can I bring someone back from death?”

“You can. It’ll take it out of you, and you won’t be dreaming for quite a while if you play that sort of game, but you can weave that dream if you have to. You can’t do it too often. Wrecks my plans a touch, I must confess.”

“Do you plan?”

“Not in detail. Broad-brush stuff. Sometimes someone will take my fancy, and I’ll give them a helping hand. The problem with you humans, though, is you think you can do without me. There’s the one God business, for starters, then the ones who don’t believe in a single god tend to think they can make their own luck. I used to get frankincense and virgin sacrifices. Now I’m lucky to get my face drawn by a spotty youth.”

“I can’t believe you really want frankincense. It’s just smelly. And what can you do with a clutter of dead virgins messing up your altar? I bet I know what you really want.” At that very moment, Joe had no idea what the statue really wanted, but he knew he needed her on his side.

“Oh yes? What do I really want?”

Joe sketched quickly. As his fingers flew over the page, he carried on talking. “I don’t know how long it will last—I suppose that’s up to you—but I think I can get you what you want, if you let me have a little rest.” He finished sketching, tore the sheet out of his notebook and held it up for the goddess. She saw what was unmistakably her head, minus the fruit and veg topping, sitting on the shoulders of a pneumatic woman wearing dominatrix clothes—a tight black T-shirt, leather trousers, thigh-high boots with buckles and knife-skinny heels.

The dark eyes blinked to conceal their interest, but she said next, “So where am I, clever clogs?”

Joe drew frantically, positioning her in the middle of Piccadilly Circus, leaning casually against the fountain under Eros. All around her were men and women gazing hungrily at her magnificence.

“London, a summer’s evening, loads of people falling for you, worshipping you.”

“What do you want in return, little boy?”

If she was resorting to cheap jibes, it meant he had her. “While I’m Dream Master, you’re on my side. Absolutely no chance for my enemies. Not an atom of luck. You don’t even smile in their general direction.”

She didn’t much like it, but she was seduced by the vision of escape from the barren emptiness where she was trapped. After a little cajoling and flattery, she agreed.

“Done. Now how are you going to become Dream Master, little shrimp?” It wasn’t a nice epithet, but the perspective of an eight-foot-high head was naturally a little different from the average human point of view.

“Get rid of my heart’s desire and turn my back on my fondest wish. How will I know that I’ve become the Dream Master?”

“I suppose you want celestial choirs and brass bands. A fanfare. Bunting and a parade.”

Joe could see she was going to ramble on. He didn’t feel too confident interrupting a goddess in full flow, but it seemed important to correct her misconceptions. “No. I just want to know how the Dream Master deal works.”

A little nonplussed, Tyche paused. “Haven’t they told you?”

“Who are they? I’ve had one person help me out with some research and otherwise, I’ve been on my own. I don’t know anything.” Joe made sure his tone was clear that he was getting fed up with this state of affairs.

“I’d better start at the beginning. You’ll know once you’ve become Dream Master. You won’t really have to sleep to make dreams happen. They’ll be much more vivid, and you’ll have more control over what goes on in them. When I say more control, I suppose I mean total control. You will be master of your imaginings. The only thing is, you have to abide by the rules set by previous Dream Masters. Initially, I had a hand in drawing up a few guidelines, along with my relatives, but the Dream Masters began interfering. It became a death-bed prerogative, if you like.”

“Who was the last Dream Master?”

“Some English milord, died in 1596. He didn’t have time to appoint a successor. It was in a boar hunt organized by Eidolon. Our evil friend there had set up some youth to become the apprentice, but the youth disappeared. Unfortunately, Eidolon had set in motion the whole chain of events that led to the death of the master. Bit of a mess, really. He found this boar that had been killed. He dismounted to inspect the carcass, and its mate turned up, was a bit upset, charged him and the master didn’t make it. Too quick.”

“How do I find out about these rules?”

“I don’t know. I should think they will tell you in a dream. Are you going to get on with freeing me or are you going to carry on asking questions forever? I’d quite like to get out of this head.”

“Sure,” said Joe and held the paper. He curled up on the ground and drifted away, to London, where he’d only been a handful of times, but at least those times had been memorable enough for him to get to Piccadilly Circus. He sat on the steps of the Eros fountain and looked around. Then she appeared, about six feet tall, her classical features obscured by white foundation and black eyeliner, her hair no longer bound, but instead a great teased black spikiness, her lips outlined in garnet lipstick. She wore black leather and had a kilt pin holding her coat together.