Doorway to Dreams

This story was my entry for the Parsec competition for Confluence 2010, on the theme Color of Silence. I had a very hard time coming up with anything that fit the theme so didn't end up with a lot of time to polish, besides their being a word count limit shorter than I can normally manage, so this was well outside my comfort zone in writing, but it pushed me to be creative and I think I at least managed that: certainly something very different than my novels! Enjoy!

Doorway to Dreams

Valorie wandered across the cracked surface of the Unreal, crunching the world. The damage had permeated every facet of every place by the battle’s end, but the wound in the Unreal was finally closed. The Unreal beasts had returned from the real world to dreams and nightmares. Now it was time to mend her own places.

Her familiar places in the Unreal weren’t quite Valorie’s own design. The originals from which they had been modeled had been introduced to her by the masters: Xalaphon’s arsenal, Yekellan’s vast castle--though she had turned one of the rooms within it into her own under his tutelage--Confillar’s grove. Still, she had added or changed, removed or modified to make her own versions, partial copies yet separate and distinct from the originals. The masters could visit their versions, she hers, and never would they meet save by mutual consent.

None of them was free of the damage. As if the wound made by the Dark Magician was a crack in a vast crystal, it spidered out in all directions endlessly, until the crystalline structure must crumble into dust. Well, not quite. The Unreal wasn’t solid. During the battles, it had acted more like liquid, pouring itself out into the real world, the nightmares foremost to trample everything in their path. And broken or whole, it would always be there for those who could find it.

The grove had the same trampled feel as the real land. Even the bird song was off, discontinuous, its harmonies in discord with each other and with the quiet setting. The grassy knoll was cracked if still green, and her sight slid through the cracks to see the real world as if it lay beneath. Valorie’s body lay still and limp in the real. Though she knew it was always so while she Walked, she rarely saw it. The mind rebelled to see the self, but the cracked Unreal couldn’t fully hold her mind. Her watcher, Master Confillar today, stirred in reaction, perhaps at some twitch of her body, or perhaps at being watched himself. Val forced her attention back to the Unreal. The grove had mended those parts she had noted as broken: a start; but it would be awhile before she could find every cracked leaf, every misdirected breeze. Finding peaceful solitude amidst its unnatural imperfections would be many visits in coming.

Valorie shifted her attention to her room in Yekellan’s castle with a thought and found herself standing amidst rose and indigo chaos. Her bower, he had called it, but she wondered if he thought of it as something else. Yekellan had taught Val to change the world in her mind, how to change her clothes to fit the setting instead of bringing along those her body wore in the real. He had even taught her to be things she was not, including animals and trees. He had taught her many basics of the Unreal, but he had expressed a preference for teaching her more worldly things, and she had quickly found a new master.

Tiptoeing in soft slippers, Valorie made her way across the chipped tile and felted rugs.

Yekellan had as much as admitted, later, that he had brought a dream image of her to a replica of her bower. The dream image wasn’t her, but the thought of him fantasizing, magically experiencing time with her sent a shiver along her spine and broke her concentration. She left the shattered room in disarray.

As Val left, stepping through the doorway into her favorite picnic site, she shivered again. Only after she had settled into the new vision, herself a tree at the edge of the clearing, did she consider what she had experienced in that fraction of time in the doorway. It wasn’t exactly a crack, or if a crack then one patched in shimmering silk: cool, smooth, and filled with discordant tones that echoed in her bones.

The picnic scene was barely more than an echo of the original grove on which it had been modeled. A few minor flaws had crept in from the Dark Master’s interference: a discontinuity in the plaid of the blanket, some autumn leaves in the perpetual spring setting, a chill breeze that should have been warm with the promise of summer. Val set them to repairing themselves, but her thoughts returned to the doorway.

What she had sensed in the doorway wasn’t a crack, she became sure with time. Nor could it be a patch. It was her bower, her doorway. Even if Yekellan repaired the whole of the castle, it would only be a repair to his own version, not hers, which would remain a wreck until she fixed it. She pushed the disturbing questions away. Perhaps Master Confillar would have an answer.

Before leaving, Valorie plucked a blue flower that should have been yellow, and returned to her body.

"You knew the damage could take many forms," Confillar said.

"What?"

Valorie sat up and looked at the flower. No longer distinctly blue, nor yellow as she had hoped, it had wilted to gray in her hand. She shivered once more. "It should have been whole," she told him. "I thought it might fix when I brought it back, not die."

"Many forms, not for you to worry about."

She thought about the strangeness in the doorway but, certain he would say the same again, Val said nothing more.

#


"You’re afraid to tell me about your troubles? You’re so bold otherwise," Honorr complained.

Val denied the accusation. "I just don’t want to trouble you when you can’t help."

"You’re so sure I can’t help," he pouted.

They walked in silence for some minutes, ostensibly on guard duty though it had been more than a week since the last of the Unreal beasts had been sighted. All indications were that the beasts had been sent to oblivion and harmless nightmares, and the Dark Magician fled to the lifeless hills. The patrols continued only while the masters thought the Dark Magician could return.

"It’s just a thing of the Unreal. Nothing for us to worry about."

"You say that as if that’s what you’ve been told, not what you believe."

"The masters said the damage will take many forms."

"The same masters who told you the Moon Dance was a real magic spell?" Honorr grumped, but a smile escaped his lips as Valorie grinned. "Okay, so you turned it around on them and made it Unreal, after all. The point is, sometimes your understanding and instincts are better than their training."

They continued their last round in silence. To ease the tension and keep awake, Honorr swung his sword at a couple of the deeper shadows, laughed at a scurry of small feet fleeing the movement. He would be happy enough to see his recently gained weapons skills rust.

Their replacements greeted them with a wave. Honorr returned it and directed Valorie right off the path into the woods for privacy.

"So, what does your instinct tell you?" he asked before she recovered from her astonishment.

Valorie nodded. "That something is still wrong. Maybe the Magician left something behind."

"A way for the nightmares to become real again?"

"I don’t know. Maybe just something to keep us from fixing what’s left."

"Can you do something about it?"

"I don’t know, but I think I can find it, then the masters can fix it."

"So what’s stopping you?"

"I need someone to sit and Watch while I’m looking, and none of the other Walkers will do it since the masters didn’t approve."

"Does it have to be a Walker?"

"You’d have to stay all night. Everyone knows the Walkers do it, but it might ruin your rep with the ladies."

"I will know I just Watched, and you’re the only lady I care about just now."

"Then let no one disturb my body, and I will Walk. If I’m still gone with the dawn, do all that you can to wake me."

Honorr laid out his great coat and she settled onto it. Even as he sat beside her to wait, her eyes closed, her body went limp, and her search began.

#


Valorie went first to the bower. It remained in disarray, as if a sharp ax had been taken to the whole of the room. Pink bed curtains hung upside down. The headboard was out of alignment with the foot. A once beautiful silver gown lay across a chair in a patchwork of textures and clashing shades of aqua and gray. She turned quickly away, her eyes feeling twisted as if the whole world were skewed.

The doorway immediately drew her attention. It looked normal enough, with the gray stone of the castle hall visible beyond it, but even from several paces away, she sense the disturbance like quicksilver and silk against her bare skin.

Val took a step toward it and found herself instantly in the doorway, drawn there as by a spider’s thread. It was a dark thought, but she smiled. A spider’s web could also be followed. Val reached for it, seeking where it was strongest. Like working her way from the loose outer rings of a web to the more densely woven center, she sought the gray discontinuity.

As she took another step, the sensation started slipping away, but in the next moment she found it again, not just impinging on her senses, but encompassing her, smooth and cold against her skin as if she were clothed with it. She clung to that feeling and dissolved into chaos.

#


Up was echoes, down a scream. The cardinal directions swirled around her like a blizzard, brushing her with silver and gold threads of hope and despair. Valorie herself was neither plant nor animal, nor even a rock or wandering stream. Briefly she was almost one or another, but most often she seemed to be a song being sung. She flowed continually from some unseen mouth (it seemed to have violet lips) and circled around instruments that played neither melody nor harmony but emitted the stench of refuse piles or the perfume of meadow flowers as she was sent spinning into the chorus.

Valorie tried to grasp for anything familiar but her senses were detached from her missing limbs, and a song could hold onto nothing. She spotted a hand like her old one, saw it repeated like an echo in the same pose, a quill between her spread fingers composing without composer or paper. She tried to follow the echoes but was sung instead across a hill of curiosity. That, too, had something familiar to it and she managed to sustain it into an arpeggio until her eyes ached from the roller coaster ride and she had to let go once again.

She tried to remember why she was here, what she had been looking for, but a song didn’t think for itself and the effort only scattered the notes into a cacophony of colors.

#


Honorr wrapped the tails of his coat and Valorie’s over them both as the night deepened and chilled. The rising moon brought a light breeze that stole all heat from his body. It also shook the leaves and spooked the birds, whose plaintive songs suddenly seemed to fill the night.

The time of battle had made Honorr familiar with the woods and the night and the cold. He tensed at something low and hard beneath the woodland’s natural music, some heavier tread.

As quietly as he could, Honorr stood. The moon put the world into silhouette, black and gray, and Honorr knew to trust better his ears and other senses than his eyes. Yes, a metallic click, a shift of stiffened leather not his own. Making sure he remained in shadow, Honorr slowly drew his sword. Valorie’s legs were in the moonlight, her coat a smooth gray in sharp contrast to the course textures of old leaves. The forest sounds seemed to fade as the thumping of his heart boomed loud.

Movement caught his eye: Valorie, slipping into the shadows... No! Being dragged! He dashed toward her head, knowing someone must be there but seeing nothing. "Leave her be!" he shouted, thrusting his sword into the black void. The tip caught something hard and he stumbled back as a blade flashed near his head.

"You won’t touch her!" he shouted, charging forward again, his blade swinging wide. It was no proper way to fight, but it ensured a connect if the thief was close enough. The blade banged against a shape and an "Oof" said Honorr had connected. He charged again, stumbled over feet and landed hard on a body.

For a moment they struggled, swinging blindly, catching leather armor, a pieces of hand or face, and finally a solid blow. The stranger in the dark offered a weak grunt and Honorr pulled him into the moonlight to tie him up, wondering if there were more waiting and watching in the dark.

#


"Why do you limit yourself? The Unreal has no limits but those we ourselves impose."

It could not be said that she heard the words. Perhaps someone was singing them through her, trying to create her as his own song, but it was more as if she read them as notes floating by on a scroll, heavy and black as a tune of bases and barrel drums.

"Let your mind experience it. Enjoy the freedom it offers," the argument continued.

"Chaos is not freedom," she tried to send back with her own tones. "It’s insanity. It lacks meaning or purpose." Her song, though, was pale as fog over a sunset, and the mountains of logic were hiding behind clouds of fear.

It was all illusion of course. She knew that she still Walked in the Unreal and Unreal was no more than illusion until she could take some element of it back to the real as knowledge, insight, or some physical object. Fear, though, felt real enough, and she had forgotten where reality was, was losing even her melody.

"Do you give up so easily, my pupil?" she saw scribbled across some ears, perhaps her own. The new score was full of dissonant cords from burning forests.

The words had meaning of a sort and that was more than she had before so she followed along. Perhaps the Unreal offered a lesson. She tried to keep up as they jammed and this time found a chord that fit.

"You remember. If you can’t control it, move with it," a voice scrawled across a roll of flowery blue wallpaper. "Find the rhythm and the flow."

She imagined herself laying back though she had no sense of up and down, forward or back. The maelstrom continued around her but she did remember the early lesson, to move with the forces she couldn’t control until she found a place to plant her feet, until she found herself.

"Wake up, wake up," floated past, lost behind an engine blast, the upshift of a revving motor like red and gold sparks across her vision.
#


Honorr carried Valorie back to the camp swearing loudly and shouting repeatedly for help as the sun rose. Chilled despite his efforts to keep them both warm, he carried her flopping in his arms. Still she refused to wake. Neither a slap nor a kiss had done better. He was sure a fellow Walker could have done more, surely the reason Walkers were usually chosen as Watchers, but he had wanted to help and she had foolishly allowed it.

"What has she done?" the master demanded as Honorr wondered when he would reach the camp. "This way, this way, you turned off your course. What has she done?"

"She went to search. She was certain something was wrong with the Unreal."

"I feared as much. We suspected a trap, which was why I warned her away."

"You didn’t warn her," Honorr growled. "You said it was nothing to worry about!"

"Nothing for her to worry about."

"Well, you didn’t make the difference clear to her! Now you can worry about her!"

"Until she gives some sign, we, too, can only wait."

#


Valorie felt the instructor approaching, almost familiar, a solid presence that had Walked with her in the Unreal before.

"Move with me. Wrap yourself around me. I will guide you." They weren't quite spoken and she heard no voice, but they reached her as clear words, almost real.

Val imagined reaching a hand out, certain he would know the way out of the chaos, certain it was his own creation.

"That’s right, closer, closer. You were always a quick student. Better than the others at noticing the details. Your castle varies very little from my own."

It had to have a pattern, a meaning, some purpose, Val told herself when the familiar presence had allowed her to regain a measure of calm. He remained an unseen figure, no more than a style at the base of the kaleidoscope, a pattern in the random notes of a calliope, yet even a madman had some direction, some perception of the world that drove him.

"You insisted, a perfect copy, save the one room."

"I could hardly design a woman’s bower. It needed... What are you doing?"

Madness night be creative, but it could not change the very fabric of the Unreal. Those with the training and talent could control their own places. Valorie could make even this into her own place if she could find the way and hold her mind together long enough.

"I’m floating in your dream, your nightmare, relaxing, as you said, finding the flow."

Chaos shifted around her but Walking required concentration and just as she could block out forest sounds or a distant party, she could ignore the madness, ignore even her own lack of shape or form. If she had nothing, she could start anew, build her Unreal body anew. In that moment of understanding, Valorie envisioned a clean, empty room, peaceful and silent, waiting to be filled with her own dreams.

"We’re nearly there," she heard distinctly, the message filling her mind, trying to push out all coherent thought, trying to fill even her empty room with his presence. "Nearly together, where we can find freedom."

"Freedom, yes," she said, working again toward the empty, silent room, certain she could find herself there, build her own place.

"Wait! You must experience the ultimate merge of sound and color, darkness and light. We will merge so completely in all our senses that we will be a single entity, Walk in each others places as our own."

"Trade places even?"

"You understand, my perfect pupil."

"But darkness cannot replace light, nor sound silence. I have no desire to smell with my eyes nor see with my ears. Insanity can't find peace in the sanity of another, only bring them both madness."

"In the Unreal, anything is possible, if you will only allow it!" the muddy colors of an old palate exploded around her. A battle of bands tried to wrap her mind in its chaos once more.

"I prefer that up be up," she conveyed as music swirled on a paint brush and bright colors drifting on an ill-defined melody.

He grabbed for her one last time, a screech of anger, a last attempt to sing her as his own song, mold himself permanently into her mind.

Gripping the new doorway with one of the hands she'd seen earlier, she paused, wondering if any part of her old teacher’s mind was still sane. "I finished the lesson you refused to teach, that all the masters refused to teach. They each taught me their song. Now I have learned to paint my own."

#


"A flower wilting and a doorway changed by other than the Walker aren’t the same thing," Confillar pointed out. "Only the Magician has ever been able to affect the places of others."

"How else to make a flower wilt that was fresh in my vision? I saw them as the same."

"Bright insight on your part, not an obvious relationship to the rest of us, even the masters. You should learn to speak up."

"What will happen to Master Yekellan?"

"Likely the madness you encountered was the result of his body failing, the ultimate risk of Walking untended. Even the one who attacked Honorr apparently didn’t know where his master’s body lay."

"Didn’t trust his own people?"

"Or the Watcher fled and couldn’t get back before some wildcat pulled it away and mauled it. That’s why he wanted your body, knew his master would need one, to claim as his own."