Lady of Dreams

by W. R. Gingell

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  And then I dropped my glass.

  Hyun-jun jerked to a stop, flinching away from the flying glass, his eyes wide and wild, and a Dream flashed across my vision with devastating suddenness. In that Dream, Yong-hwa, laughing, his eyes fairly glittering, dashed for the double doors with his arm around Ae-jung’s waist to prevent her tripping over her own feet. Behind them, my glass fell like a star, sparkling, to shatter on the floor. Yong-hwa looked over his shoulder for a brief moment, utter surprise on his face, and in that moment lost Ae-jung. She was gone through the doors in an instant, and when he hurried through after her, I saw the tiniest flash of her skirt disappearing into one of the side rooms.

  “Clumsy,” I murmured, my tongue unwilling to form the word. The Dream, as deep as it had been sudden, had frozen nearly all my bodily functions. “Should have been faster.”

  Perhaps it was just as well; Yong-hwa had only just progressed far enough down the hall to be in sight of one of the smaller doors granting access back into the ballroom when Hyun-jun also burst through the double doors.

  I heard Yong-hwa’s hiss of laughter as he slipped quietly back into the ballroom, neatly avoiding Hyun-jun’s searing gaze. Then the Dream abandoned me as suddenly as it had swallowed me, spitting me out at a heady height from the dance floor below. The world tilted around me, the banister at my hips too low to keep the dance floor at bay, but something warm around my waist held me fast. Another warm something banded across the front of my shoulders and throat.

  “It’s all right, Carlin,” I said, my eyes on the floor that was so far away, and yet so perilously close. “I’ve dropped everything it was necessary to drop.”

  I saw the top of Yong-hwa’s head as he reentered the ballroom, saw his eyes rising to search the balcony, then Carlin lifted me bodily away from the banister and back into the recesses of the balcony.

  “Carlin,” I said, after a brief pause. “Am I sitting on your lap?”

  The two arms stayed around my waist and shoulders while there was another brief pause. Then Carlin said, “Yes, miss.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s only room for one person on this seat.”

  “That’s all well and good,” I said crossly, “but I don’t see why you’re sitting on it as well.”

  “Sorry, miss,” said Carlin. “It was a bit of a rush and I didn’t think you’d want him to see you.”

  “Why not? He’ll only forget me in a minute or two.”

  “I don’t know, miss. He was looking very . . . curious.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. My mad spurt had passed, and I was feeling a little heavier than usual. It was tiresome and left me inclined to find fault—with Yong-hwa for not managing the thing better, and with Carlin for stopping me from falling and keeping me from view. “I’m not going to share my chair with you. Either put me back on the chaise or put me down properly on this chair. I’m feeling very unreasonable and I won’t be nice to you tonight.”

  “All right,” said Carlin, his arms loosening around me.

  “And Carlin?”

  “Yes, miss?”

  “I can hear you smiling. Stop it.”

  I was back in the hall, my couch caught in the press of people, when Ae-jung rapidly made her way through the throng with the ease of long practise. She threw frequent looks behind her, by which I gathered she was still being pursued by either Yong-hwa or Hyun-jun. As was my wont, I lightly pinched the outer folds of her skirt in passing, entranced by the unfamiliar feeling of my Dreams passing by close enough to touch in Reality. She was gone in an instant, lost in the shifting throng, and I sat for a long, thoughtful moment, looking down at my hands. I wasn’t supposed to see my Dreams in Reality. There wasn’t supposed to be any sensation of touch. They were Dreams, things for playing with and amusing myself with, and even at Eun-hee’s estate I tended to keep to my room when I was playing my games with her guests.

  I was still gazing down at my hands when a blue coat stopped by my couch, the cuff turned up with a contrasting pattern and the long fingers of a rather beautiful hand half-curled below it.

  “Pretty,” I said, pinching the cuff between my thumb and forefinger and shooing my discomfort away like a bothersome Dream. The press shifted a little, but the blue coat didn’t move, and before long a black coat stopped by it in an abrupt surge.

  “Yong-hwa-ssi,” said Hyun-jun’s voice. “Did you see—”

  He stopped just as abruptly as he had begun, and the blue coat said, “Ye?”

  I blinked at my fingers, still pinching the blue cuff, and from that cuff my eyes travelled up until I found myself looking at Yong-hwa’s profile. I felt something of the same mild shock I’d first felt at being nose to nose with him in my Dream. He was so extremely present.

  “There was a girl—did you see a girl in a—”

  “Ye?” said Yong-hwa again. His face was serious but his cheeks were sharp.

  “Never mind!” muttered Hyun-jun. His eyes dropped and surprised me by focusing on me for a brief moment. He said, “I know you.”

  “Ye,” I agreed, my eyes flicking up to Yong-hwa. He was still gazing in the direction in which Ae-jung had gone. “I’m in one of your books.”

  Hyun-jun looked narrowly at me for another instant, then bowed brusquely. “Ye. I’ll be going first.” To Yong-hwa, he said, “Aren’t you going?”

  “I don’t quite know,” said Yong-hwa, and I realised that the way had cleared sufficiently for my footmen to gather themselves in another attempt to carry me out. Why hadn’t Yong-hwa moved on, then? I found that I was still holding his cuff and hastily let go, my hand dropping back onto the couch. I was carried on the next moment, whisked away through the hall while Yong-hwa stood still, his arm bent to look frowningly down at his cuff, the flow of people cutting around him as he stood like a rock in the stream.

  5

  I’m not a curious person. Nosy, yes. Curious, no. Despite that, I’ve sometimes wondered how it was I inherited my peculiar talent. Common sense would say I inherited it from my mother; after all, Jessamy is normal, relatively speaking, and my mother abandoned not only her husband but her child. What would cause a mother to do so other than lack of feeling?

  I’m not so certain. The only thing that remains of my mother in my memory is a vague suggestion of immense energy. Father, now—there’s something distinctly mechanical about Father. Jessamy, as accepting and loving with Father as he is with me, either doesn’t notice, or refuses to believe in the coldness of either of us. It’s one of the few things on which Father and I agree: when Jessamy is with us, there is at least the façade of family warmth. It’s exhausting and I don’t particularly like it. I don’t like Father, but at least when we’re alone we can decently ignore each other without worrying about hurting anybody’s feelings. If either of us were capable of fond feelings, we would probably quite like each other, and it says something for the similarity of our dispositions that the only person either of us cares for at all is Jessamy. Even that—If I had to guess, I would say that our love for Jessamy is more an exercise in unending persistence on the part of my brother than any ability that either Father or I possess to love another human. Jessamy simply loves and won’t accept anything but love in return.

  I’ve never seen my father’s eyes anything but sharp and unyielding; and yet, in his own pragmatic way, he’s as far from being a part of this world as even I am, for all my Dreams.

  ***

  When Eun-hee and I returned from town, Dong-wook was there to seize Eun-hee from the carriage and spin her in circles, after which he was promptly boxed over the ears. He took this abuse with the sunniest of smiles, which only reinforced my belief that he enjoys such punishment, and said an irreverent “Hallo, Nuna!” to me. I’m several years younger than he is, but he’s never called me anything but Nuna when he happens to see me. He sees me slightly more often than most people do, and he’s among the few people who, upon seeing me, hav
e an immediate fear-based reaction. Because he’s Dong-wook, he counters this reaction by treating me like a stern older sister, there to be irritated and treated with ironic politeness. It’s his way of protesting a fear he neither understands nor admits.

  Since they would be occupied for quite some time—Dong-wook by flirting with Eun-hee in his own particularly bold, invasive sort of way, and Eun-hee by fending off the attacks in her own efficient sort of way, while basking in the warmth of them—I allowed myself to be carried away into my Dreams. Carlin was waiting for me on the stairs, as infallibly present as the Dreams that waited for me, and I vaguely felt his warmth against my right side as I was carried into my suite.

  Further adding to the sensation of warmth was the happy fact that my Dreams this afternoon began with Jessamy. He was in his office, looking over colour proofs for a particularly bright children’s book, but his attention was, at best, divided. I glanced over the proofs with a professional sort of scrutiny, but was more interested to see what it was his eyes were flickering away to see every few minutes. He was leaning far across his desk with his cheek propped up on one fist, gazing through his open door more often than not. When I floated up behind him and leaned lightly on the desk to follow the line of his eyes, I found myself looking into the open, empty office that belonged to Ae-jung.

  My eyes dropped back to Jessamy’s profile, and one side of my mouth twitched upward. What was that in his hand? It was a note. I looked more closely at it and saw the characters of Ae-jung’s name at the bottom. What had that been sitting on? My eyes flicked over Jessamy’s desk and stopped at the empty lunch box that was half-hidden beneath the colour proofs.

  Ah. That was interesting. I glanced back at the note, shamelessly reading over Jessamy’s shoulder, and smiled again. So Ae-jung had made Jessamy a packed lunch, had she? “Because,” as the note said, “you didn’t get a chance to leave the office yesterday.”

  “Poor baby,” I said to Jessamy. I said it softly so as not to disturb him, but he made a vague, instinctive curl of the head toward his shoulder regardless. “You’re a lost boy.”

  I wasn’t really surprised when, after another few fruitless minutes of staring heedlessly at the proofs that were sprawled across his desk, Jessamy rose abruptly, put on his hat, and left the office. I was even less surprised to find that he was walking in the direction of the boardinghouse at which both Hyun-jun and Yong-hwa were staying. Ae-jung would be finishing her work with Hyun-jun any time soon, after which Jessamy could hope to walk her home—or at least to the office. She was a few years older than he was, but Ae-jung wasn’t a bad person for Jessamy to begin his love life with. It was a wonder something similar hadn’t already happened to him; that warm heart of his was bound to bring him to trouble and grief in love at some stage.

  I followed in a desultory sort of way, but the closer we got to the boardinghouse, the more I began to feel the certain tug of three other focal points. Two of them were strong, but the third was powerful enough to sweep me ahead of Jessamy like a leaf driven before a gale. Disturbed, I forced myself to slow and waft along beside him instead. The two weaker foci were Ae-jung and Hyun-jun, the strongest Yong-hwa, and I utterly refused to be tugged in his direction while my Dreams held Jessamy.

  “These Dreams!” I muttered to myself. “Why are they being so difficult?” Not only were they unexpectedly sticky, they were behaving in a way they never had before. And here I was flying on ahead of Jessamy again! That was distinctly off-putting.

  By way of fighting back more effectively, I let myself be drawn forward, but slipped toward the Ae-jung-tinted Dream instead of the Yong-hwa-tinted one. A moment later I was in the room with Ae-jung and Hyun-jun, the pull of Jessamy approaching swiftly and the tug of Yong-hwa constant from the next room.

  Ae-jung was tidying the desk at which she now worked, straightening neatly typed pages in a leather wallet and running a soft brush briskly over the typewriter. I watched her with some interest. She wasn’t beautiful—by Eppan or Scandian standards—but there was something about her honest, pleasant face that attracted notice. Something about the sweetness of her expression, perhaps, or the kindness in her eyes. I laughed to myself just a bit. Poor Jessamy! He’d tried so hard not to fall in love with her, but he hadn’t been able to resist that kindness. That was a shame, because it was obvious that Ae-jung was already half in love with Hyun-jun. Even now she was looking up every few moments to where he stood at the window.

  I turned my gaze on Hyun-jun and saw that he was up to his old trick of watching her in the window’s reflection. His hands were clasped behind his back as usual, but, less typically, the fingers of the hand that was clasped in the other were twitching in an erratic rhythm. Even his hair looked a little wilder and less certain than usual.

  “Ah. This is interesting,” I said. “Go on, then. Say it.”

  But Hyun-jun didn’t speak until Ae-jung, after a wary glance at him, began to make her way toward the door. She must be used to going at the correct time without a word of farewell.

  Hyun-jun said abruptly, “It’s a nice afternoon.”

  “Dae?” Ae-jung paused by the door, surprised, but Hyun-jun only hunched his shoulders and scowled.

  “Nothing,” he said, as abruptly as he had begun. “Nothing at all. Go home. I’m busy.”

  “Always the same,” I sighed. “So boring. You should have spit it out while you had the chance. She’s actually going, you know. She can’t read your mind.”

  And Ae-jung was going: she walked through the door and vanished into the hall even as Hyun-jun turned to improve on his speech and discovered her gone. I couldn’t quite decide if she was really so unaware of her charms as not to notice the interest of three men, or if she was merely stupid. Still, it was amusing to see Hyun-jun dithering by the window, his dominant foot shuffling minutely back and forth until he flung himself away from the window and darted after Ae-jung. At that rate he would catch up with her in the lobby; and at that rate it was quite possible that he would fairly shout his intention of walking her home into her astonished face.

  “Most women don’t enjoy being shouted at,” I said to his retreating back. Jessamy should be turning into the courtyard by now—also with the idea of walking Ae-jung home. I sank through the floor to follow the action and found myself being walked through—first by Ae-jung, at a moderate pace, then by Hyun-jun, at a furious one.

  “Ugh,” I said, shivering. “Bad manners.” I hated being walked through; it was too akin to being really dead for comfort, and I usually took better care that it didn’t happen. I shook off my discomfort and swept across the floor after Ae-jung and Hyun-jun just in time to see them at the door. Hyun-jun wasn’t quite quick enough and, in reaching out to catch Ae-jung’s arm, only caught the door that she opened. His outraged glare went from the door, so suddenly there against his palm, to Jessamy, who was framed by the doorway, a particularly engaging grin on his cheerful little face.

  “Oh, this is delightful,” said a voice. It wasn’t until I felt the discomforting warmth of a person about to walk through me that I realised I hadn’t, in fact, spoken. Yong-hwa was behind me, his cheeks sharp and his eyes glittering with enjoyment. “Puppy or cockerel?”

  “Too close to call,” I told him over my shoulder, as he took another step forward. Or at least, he tried to take another step forward. I felt warmth, and a slight pliability along with the sensation of force, and Yong-hwa fell back with an entirely startled look.

  “Mwohya?”

  I froze, more taken aback than I remembered having felt in my life thus far. “What on earth . . . ? Stop that!”

  Yong-hwa had moved forward again, one hand raised and outstretched, and though I twitched myself sideways as soon as I saw what he was about, I still felt a trail of warmth as the fingers of his hand brushed against my back. I turned on my ethereal toes, eyeing him warily, and for a moment we stared at each other face-to-face, Yong-hwa’s eyes seeming to look right into mine, bright and inquisitive.

/>   “This is . . . disturbing,” I said, trying to shake off the sensation that I couldn’t breathe sufficiently to fill my lungs. I stepped to the side to escape that unnerving gaze, and Yong-hwa, after an equally bright, inquisitive look down at the hand that was till outstretched, turned back to the tableau at the door.

  “I’m going to walk you home, Nuna,” Jessamy said. A bold start; I approved.

  Consternation and surprise vied for position on Ae-jung’s face. I breathed the ghost of a laugh, forgetting the uneasiness of the moment, and beside me Yong-hwa also laughed, softly and infectiously. Jessamy was as oblivious to Ae-jung’s distress as he was to both Hyun-jun’s presence and Yong-hwa’s, and offered her one of his sunnier smiles.

  Hyun-jun, still frozen behind Ae-jung in the doorway, glared his indignation at Jessamy.

  “Oh!” said Ae-jung, trying for a steady voice if she couldn’t quite manage a happy one. “Well—but I’m going back to the office, Jessamy-a.”

  “That’s even better!” said Jessamy at once. He gave Ae-jung another of his grins, this one as guilty as it was mischievous, and added confidentially, “I really should be going back there, too. I’m not supposed to be out yet.”

  Ae-jung wasn’t proof against that grin. She grinned back at him and said, “Dae,” with a far more convincing cheerfulness. Jessamy stood aside to let her down the front stairs, and they walked away from the speechless Hyun-jun, who was opening and closing his mouth behind them in an excess of pique. I would have suspected Ae-jung of deliberately toying with him if I hadn’t been perfectly certain that, like Jessamy, she had seen neither Hyun-jun nor Yong-hwa. Still, deliberate or otherwise, her obliviousness was having an effect on Hyun-jun that was amusing and probably very good for him.

  I followed them, of course. It could be argued that it’s highly invasive to follow one’s brother and watch in amusement as he conducts his first love affair, but I care even less about that than I do about invading the privacy of partygoers who chance too close by my chaise longue. Jessamy in love was simply too adorable. By turns gruff and sweet, scowling and smiling—in short, still Jessamy in every essential way, but with a new eagerness toward Ae-jung that I recognised even in this form. That eagerness was present toward everyone he loved, whether Father or me, Yong-hwa or Ae-jung.