The Door of Dreams

by Greg James

  Willow backed away. Eyes wide. Speechless. Afraid.

  The creature moved towards her; a shadow lengthening at the end of day. “Come to the one we serve. You would call her Lamia.”

  It flung out its arms and rushed at her as a torrent of shadow and darkness. Willow turned and ran; crashing back through the trees, feeling their branches scratch and pull at her, as if trying to hold her back. The shadows shrieked, howled and laughed behind her. She could feel the coldness of their touch on the nape of her neck, running down the length of her spine, and snatching at the heels of her feet.

  She burst out into the open. There was the grandfather clock atop the small mound at the heart of the clearing – and there was Henu standing beside it. She ran to him. Her heart was pounding and her lungs ached.

  “Come to me,” the voice called again.

  She looked back and saw the sinuous figure crossing the clearing towards her, flanked by wings of encroaching shadow. Henu stood between it and her; warding prey from predator.

  “Hold!” he said, raising a hand.

  “Begone, tree-mage. Our quarrel is not with you.”

  Henu took a leather-bound flask from a pocket it in his robes and swallowed from it before he spoke again, “I think it is my quarrel. She is my friend.”

  “Be wise, tree-mage, or our shadows will feast on your bones.”

  “I said – hold!”

  The last word was both a command and a thunderclap. The creature staggered as if it had been struck. It let out a thin shriek.

  “You will not have her,” the Wealdsman declared. His eyes shone with a fierce starlight and he began to move towards the creature. Willow’s fingers clung for a moment to his robes before he slipped free of her grasp. He was driving the creature before him as if he were herding a wild animal back out into the wilderness. “Go back to your nest and take your foul shadows with you!”

  He took another deep swallow from his flask and then cast the remaining fluid at the creature. It fell as diamond rain; burning the creature with every drop. It screamed, high and long, and then it was gone; evaporating in the space of a second. The shadows which had walked with it hurried back in among the trees, fleeing the Wealdsman’s wrath.

  Silence fell in the clearing.

  Willow got to her feet, shaking and swaying, “What was that thing?”

  “A No-man.”

  “Why was it after me? I mean, is this a dream, Henu, or is it real? Please tell me.”

  “Don’t you know yourself, friend Willow?”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t.”

  “Then, I think, you had better come with me,” Henu said, “there may be more of them in the woods tonight.”

  Chapter Four

  Henu led Willow back to his cottage where he gave her some more stardraught to drink. It calmed her nerves and made her feel better. Willow saw her face in a mirror carved into the wall. Reaching out, she wiped a palm across its surface, cleaning away dust which had settled there. There she was. Her long, dark hair was mussed and tangled from running through the trees. Scratches and nicks marked her brow and there were tear-stains on her cheeks.

  Willow Nicole Grey.

  Mom’s first name had been Nicole. Dad’s last name was Grey. They were both there in her name, always with her.

  When you lose someone you love, she thought, a part of you dies with them. A part of the way you understand who you are is taken away. A door is closed. The path is lost.

  Mom had been dead a long time, since she was a little girl. Dad was still alive though – and now she couldn’t go back to him. She desperately wanted to, more than anything. It had all gone wrong. The escape she’d wanted. Now she had it, she didn’t want it. Willow slammed her palms hard against the glass of the mirror. It didn’t crack but she felt it tremble, ready to break into pieces. Willow turned away from the mirror, from herself.

  I’m stupid and selfish, she thought, I tried to run away and now I’m away, I want to be back there – in a world where I was dying anyway. I must be crazy.

  Henu was waiting for her with a look of deep concern etched on his face, “Friend Willow, are you well?”

  “Yes ... no ...” she muttered, “I think I’m okay. Don’t worry.”

  “You miss your world, your family?”

  “My Dad. Yes, I do. I want to get back there so bad right now.”

  “I see. Well, I think I can help you.”

  “How?”

  “There is a place we can go where we can commune with Tirlane, with the land itself, and have it tell us a way for you to go home.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” he nodded and smiled, “if we set out now, we can be there by morning. Here, take these boots. You cannot walk the whole way barefoot.”

  Henu turned back to filling two cloth satchels with provisions while she put the boots on. They were a little on the big side but otherwise fine.

  “Henu, will there be more of those No-men things on the way?”

  He stopped his packing for a moment and sighed, “Maybe. They usually hunt at night.”

  “Do you know why they’re after me? You would tell me if you knew, right?”

  “Yes. Yes, I would. You can be sure of that,” he said.

  Willow let the Wealdsman finish packing the satchels in peace.

  She could tell he didn’t want to say anymore.

  *

  Outside, it was peaceful in the dark woods. The shadows moved naturally and did not whisper to one another this time.

  “We must be careful and quiet all the way.” Henu said.

  “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”

  Henu led the way into the trees, “We need a little light to guide the way, I think.”

  He took something out of his pocket, opened his hands and let it rise into the air; a fluttering, darting point of light caught inside a small glass globe.

  “What is that?” Willow asked.

  “A Kindling,” Henu said, “it will light our way and let us know if No-men are close by, or worse.”

  “What could be worse than a No-man?”

  “I hope you do not find out,” said the Wealdsman, “come, let us go.”

  They made their way to the edge of Beam Weald at a run. Night fauna scattered in their path. The shadows which had seemed to crowd in before now seemed to retreat from their approach as the Kindling danced ahead of them through the air.

  “Dawn approaches,” Henu said, “see, how the darkness grows weak and falls away where it was strong before.”

  I’ve been away all night, Willow thought, Dad must be going out of his mind.

  “Where’re we going to, Henu?”

  “The Summerdowns.” he said, “where the soul of Tirlane resides. It will tell you where lies the way home.”

  Chapter Five

  They came to the borders of the Summerdowns as traces of azure were beginning to colour the horizon. Willow could see the land was lush and verdant; with dew seeming to glisten on grass, stone and tussock alike. There was a fine mist which threaded itself around their ankles as they moved through the low hillocks. It did not feel as cold and bitter as she had expected. Instead the mist was feather-soft, gentle and almost warming to the touch. Her feet had been feeling the cold to the point of numbness despite the boots. It was good to feel some warmth in her toes once again.

  “Dawn is here,” Henu said, “and if we are fortunate we may see the Wisps arise to sing their greeting to it.”

  “Are those burial mounds?” she asked, pointing at some of the surrounding hillocks.

  Henu beamed, “Yes, these are the resting places of Tirlane’s dead.”

  “I never thought a graveyard could feel so pleasant,” she said.

  “Why should it not?” Henu asked, “Death comes to all of us, but why treat it as a cold and barren thing? In it is an end, true, but it is also a beginning. Can you not see how the grass is green, the earth is warm and the mist soothes rather than chills our bones? Here, the dead
give life back to us.”

  “Death is coming for me,” Willow said, absently stroking at her brow, pretending to touch the tumour beneath.

  “Not today,” Henu said, “I think death has a while yet to wait for you. Look there, friend Willow.”

  Ahead there was a flicker of light which Willow thought to be the sun on the horizon. Then she saw it was not the sun but a light which was much closer.

  “It’s a fire!” she cried.

  “Hush now,” he said, “it is the Wisps. They are emerging to greet the dawn. Be calm and quiet lest you frighten them away. They may burn as bright as the sun but they are shy, gentle creatures. We are privileged to see them sing their greeting to the dawn.”

  As Willow watched, the fire separated into tall, swaying tongues of light that parted the swirling mists. They passed through one another, flowing together and apart until they formed a circle around Henu and Willow.

  “Do not fear them,” the Wealdsman said.

  In the next moment the song of the Wisps began and all of Willow’s fear evaporated. They had no mouths with which to sing, but the embers which they spun and wove seemed to carry notes of pure music. Glissandos swept around Willow in flickering pirouettes. Brighter motes, glowing with fire, cast out melodies to dance, soar, and slowly descend. Willow could feel their song in her heart and its melancholy touched at the roots of her soul.

  In her mind’s eye, for a moment, she saw a colossal gate of stone which looked like it had grown out of the ground and heard a single iridescent word sound inside her head – Harrowclave.

  “It’s beautiful,” Willow whispered to Henu, “they are beautiful.”

  “They are Tirlane,” Henu said, “without them, we would be utterly lost.”

  “They’ve shown me the way home, Henu. A gate at a place called Harrowclave.”

  “Then that is where we must go.”

  “Not yet, Henu, I want to hear more of the singing.”

  But suddenly the song of the wisps stopped. Willow felt some of the world’s light die as the song hung unfinished in the air. She didn’t need to ask why it was no more though because she could see dark shapes moving not so far away. There were No-men whispering their way across the Summerdowns; coming towards them.

  “Have they come for me again?” Willow asked, “what do they want? I don’t understand.”

  Henu rested a hand on her shoulder, “The Wisps will help us. Their strength is greater than you might think. Watch and wait.”

  The Wisps flowed forward, reversing their circle until, this time, it surrounded the No-men. They drifted in on the shadowy creatures, shrinking the space between them and their foes down to nothing. Willow found her hand squeezing Henu’s as the scene unfolded before their eyes; were their pursuers to be defeated and driven away? Had this been her fault? In a dream, what could she be sure of?

  If this was a dream ...

  The Wisps closed in tight, forming themselves into a crown of murmuring, rising fire. Willow waited, hoping to see them fall in on the No-men and watch the vile shadows be consumed – but instead something changed. The No-men had moved into ranks and formed a phalanx.

  “Henu, what’re they doing?”

  The Wealdsman’s eyes went wide, “They are forming themselves into a Great-No.”

  The No-men, surrounded by the burning light of the Wisps, had been forced so close together that they could barely be distinguished from one another. Their blackness steadily became one; a mass of shadow encircled by searing flame.

  For a time, the mass seemed to contract in on itself as if being crushed by the force of the Wisps’ power. Then, like the beating of a monstrous heart; it expanded and it grew. The pulse of the Great-No shook the ground and shattered the hold the Wisps had over it. The Great-No reached out, uncurling a host of tarry tendrils and ensnared the nearby Wisps. The deep glow of each wisp so caught went out as it was strangled into smoke. The spirits of Tirlane evaporated as yet more reeking tendrils extended and closed around their flickering hearts, extinguishing them forever.

  “Stop it!” Willow screamed, “It’s killing them, Henu! It’s killing them! We must stop it!”

  “We cannot help them,” Henu said, weak-voiced and mortified, with his hands clasped tight around his Kindling. The orb was fighting him, wanting to rush at the gestalt monstrosity which was slaying its kin. “There is nothing we can do against a Great-No.”

  “Can’t you use the stardraught?”

  “It would be like trying to drive back the night with a lone candle-flame.”

  “I won’t let them to die, Henu. I’m going to stop this.”

  “Friend Willow, what can you do? No ... wait ... come back!”

  She was running straight at the Great-No.

  Chapter Six

  “Stop!” Willow shouted.

  The Great-No struck out at another wisp, putting out its light.

  “I said, stop!”

  A thin, black limb paused in mid-strike before retracting into itself. Willow felt the eyeless gaze of the Great-No turn to her. She shook with a fear remembered from childhood nightmares as its darkness heaved and poured towards her.

  It halted. It stopped. She waited.

  It waited too; making no move to attack her.

  Willow licked her lips, hoping what she said next would work.

  “Return to where you came from. Go back. Go away!”

  The Great-No’s surface fluctuated like oil poured across water.

  “I said, go away!”

  And, with a shudder that made no sound, the Great-No began to ebb away, flowing back through the mist and across the lower hills of the Summerdowns, returning from whence it came.

  “Friend Willow,” Henu said, now standing at her side. He was looking at her with undisguised awe. “I thought you would be taken by the darkness. How did you do that? What power is in you that you can command the shadows so?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, trembling from head to toe.

  It shouldn’t have worked but it had done.

  I could’ve been killed, but somehow I knew it would work – how?

  Willow could feel smoke stinging her nostrils as sunlight crept across the Summerdowns. It was all that remained of many Wisps. The few who’d survived the Great-No were gone, having fled back into the heart of the Summerdowns. She thought that she could hear them inside her head, calling to her one last time. “Remember us, Willow Grey, even a dreamed world is a precious thing. A part of who you are. To let us die unloved is a wound made unto thyself.”

  “I will,” she whispered, “I will remember you.”

  A dream that speaks. A dream that knows it’s a dream – this is all so crazy, if it’s true.

  Willow looked at Henu and saw lines etched on his face which had not been there before.

  Had they been made by the fate of the Wisps?

  “Where do we go to now, Henu?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  It felt like a question which asked for more than mere direction.

  “There is a place across the grasslands,” he replied, “perhaps we will be safer there.”

  Willow followed him out of the Summerdowns. As they crossed its borders onto the plains which made up the heartland of Tirlane, she felt an aching in her breast. She had found a pure place – a realm of peace and rest. It’d touched her with its reality. She’d heard and felt its song. It’d left a piece of itself inside her; and then she had seen it ruined, tainted, and despoiled. As they crossed the plains, Willow tried her best not to weep.

  *

  They walked through wild, feathery grasslands which gradually thinned out into uneven, sparse expanses of open ground. To the north, Willow could see a jagged line of mountains barely outlining the horizon. To the west were the evergreen trees of Beam Weald and, beyond them, she was sure that she could make out the heights of hills. Henu was leading her east across ground which was hard and broken in places as if by a long drought. They passed hollows which might’ve been lakes.
There were scatterings of shaped stone and carved wood which might once, long ago, have been dwellings. She didn’t ask because Henu had been so quiet since the Summerdowns as if he were still listening; hoping to hear the rest of the Wisps’ broken song. It would never come though. She knew that.

  The day wore on and Willow could feel herself getting tired and sore. Her soft, spoilt feet weren’t designed for this kind of punishment.

  “Can we break for a bit?” she asked.

  Henu stopped walking and turned to her, “Of course we can, friend Willow. You’ll have to forgive me but what happened ... it upset me very much. I have been able to think of nothing else all day long.”

  Willow looked at the lowering sun and guessed it must be getting late in the afternoon.

  Yeah, it was definitely time for a rest.

  She sat down and kicked off her boots, “That’s better, much better.”

  As she scrubbed her feet in the frail grass, Willow yelped from a sting of pain. “Damn it. I’m getting goddamned blisters on my feet. I’ve not walked this much in years.”

  “Sit still, please,” Henu said, “I can help you.”

  He took out his flask of stardraught and gently poured a little of it over each foot.

  “Aaaah! It tickles!” Willow cried out, kicking her feet out before scrubbing them in the grass some more. “You could have warned me, Henu.”

  “Yes, I could have but never mind, it has healed you.” Henu smiled.

  Willow checked each foot and saw he was right. The blisters were completely gone.

  “Is there anything that stuff can’t make better, Henu?”

  He met her gaze and knew, somehow, she was asking about the cancer in her head.

  “Some things,” he said, more soberly, “they are beyond its power.”

  Henu avoided her eyes and began to dig provisions out of his bag. He handed Willow a pale fruit which looked like a plum.

  “What’s this?” Willow asked.