The Romance of Atlantis (32 page)

He looked over his shoulder at the city and the mountains and the sky and the palace and said. “That is absurd.” His face became even more mocking and he pretended concern. “Or are you sick?”

I replied, “Yes, I am sick of an old sickness and I fear I will die of it.” Again, my anguish almost overwhelmed me, and I awoke gasping with it, and again I was haunted by it for several days.

The third dream occurred very recently. But I was no longer in Atlantis. I knew Atlantis had gone forever, and with it my few intimates and my sister and all its millions of people, whom I had loved in spite of their corruption and treachery. For it had been my own, and I had been its empress.

The dream was of a strange land, hot, tropical, with lavender mountains and enormous fronded forests which stretched into infinity, and I knew it was a new land and had no inhabitants except for the few of us who had survived the demolition of Atlantis. The sea was a strange sea I had never seen before, and there was a vast silence everywhere except for the raucous shrieking of birds alien to my experience, great colored birds with huge, hooked beaks, and very small monkeys, and catlike animals of a large size, and cattle—if they were cattle—with twisted horns and shaggy coats. The odors of this land were overpoweringly unique to me, some aromatic, some unpleasant, some strenuously sweet with a hot sweetness, and insects filled the green and shining air, insects for which I had no name.

But though I sorrowed and wept for Atlantis I also experienced a joy almost too intense for bearing, for Signar was with me, and I knew he loved me as I loved him. Our attendants had built us huts of gray curling bark, and I was no empress any longer, nor was Signor an emperor. We had labored with our people to establish ourselves in this green, hot land with the curiously hued mountains, and our clothing was primitive and our hands as calloused and worn as those of our people. But we were joyful and at peace. I dreamed I was pounding some nameless grain in a wooden bowl, kneeling, and Signar came to me, touched me gently on my head and said, “This is our empire,” and he bent to kiss me and I knew such delight that I closed my eyes—and woke up.

This, too, does not appear in this book.

I cannot imagine from where these strange dreams emerged, or what their significance is—if there is any significance at all. The only thing I know with certainty is that the dreams were more vivid than my present reality, more poignant, more agonizing and more joyful. They haunt me, coloring my whole existence, and I feel deprived and filled with an ancient longing.

Is this evidence of reincarnation? I know no more about it than the reader. Nor do I know why I wrote of Atlantis when I was only twelve years old, and knew it intimately.

Perhaps Hamlet was right: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”