Dreamhunter

by Elizabeth Knox

  A WEEK LATER Laura’s fever had gone, but had left her as worn out as her ordeal of walking.

  The doctor had been in that morning. Before he’d left her, she’d asked him to tell her aunt and uncle not to tax her with questions. He’d said he would do that for her, but in a few days she’d be as right as rain. He was the family’s doctor and specialised, he’d said, in exhausted dreamhunters, but he was distressed to see one exhausting herself so early in her career. He had got up to leave, and patted her foot under the covers. He’d said, ‘You’ll be back on your feet in no time. If you’re anything like your father, you’re as tough as a bug.’

  Her illness and its dispensations couldn’t last for ever.

  Rose appeared in Laura’s room after lunch. She was flushed, as if she’d been running, and was wearing her school coat and hat. When she saw Laura looking at the coat Rose took it by the lapels and gave it a little shake. ‘When Da went back for his car and the camera I remembered to tell him to look for my coat.’ Rose came and sat on the end of Laura’s bed. ‘They’re sending me back to school. Da is developing that film — they mean to have a look at it tonight, I think. I’m being kept out of everything, as usual. I know you’re not going to say much to them, but, Laura, you are going to talk to me, aren’t you? They keep bushwhacking me — they told me the cab would come at two, but it’s here already. I have to go. But look, I figure that, if they’re in such a hurry to send me away, then there’s still something they’re frightened of.’

  Laura grabbed Rose’s hand. Then she had a fit of coughing.

  ‘We only have a minute,’ Rose said. She looked over her shoulder at the door. Then she helped Laura sit up and gave her a sip of water. ‘Tell you what —’ Rose said. ‘You let me know what’s on the film. Put it on a postcard. Then meet me Wednesday week, in the sculpture room at the museum. I have the day off.’ Rose leant over Laura’s pillow and kissed her.

  ‘Bye,’ Laura rasped. ‘Wednesday week, the sculpture room.’

  THERE WAS JUST over two minutes of film, showing, in ghostly black and white, the remnants of a burnt building. A ruin sketched as if in black ink against —

  ‘Is that water?’ Chorley said to Grace.

  ‘No, it’s sand,’ Laura said.

  ‘A dry seabed, I think,’ Grace said.

  The first shot came to an end, then a second began, the same view, but the camera was unsteady.

  ‘He’s picked it up,’ Chorley said.

  The camera turned, slowly rocking, through one hundred and eighty degrees, till it showed a range of grey hills.

  ‘That’s the view back the way he came,’ Grace said. ‘That’s a kind of map.’

  The film came to an end, the projector flicking through what was left on the reel — Chorley’s cataloguing marks — and lighting their faces in flashes.

  Two

  Six days later Laura was back in Doorhandle. She dropped her bag at her boarding house, and asked her landlady to lay a fire in her room. Then she went out again.

  She ran along Doorhandle’s plank pavement towards the rangers’ station. It was raining heavily. She ducked through fountains from jutting downpipes. The duckboards were slippery, the spills of summer oozing out of their timber — dog piss, liquor, horse shit, ice-cream. The boards seemed coated with saliva, not rain, a surface on which even Laura’s rubber-soled walking boots sometimes slithered. It was dark, the guttering on all the verandas drooped, and dribbled fringes of rainwater. Everyone was indoors. There were no people or animals in Doorhandle’s streets, but still those streets were noisy with drumming, splashing, splattering, never-ending rain.

  By the time Laura reached the rangers’ station the rain was through the shoulder seams of her coat. The station was warm; its rooms were steamy and smelt of wet wool. It was crowded, and everyone there seemed set to head In. There were queues before the counter in the supply depot, and all the customers were cradling ration packets and the bottled lime juice they used to keep their water sweet. The shelves were thinly stocked. The station had been like this for days, as everyone who had the option of escaping the awful weather packed up and walked off into the only reliable dry Place.

  Laura didn’t plan to go In that day. She would spend a night at the boarding house, climb into her bed and listen to the rain on the iron roof of her gable room.

  But first, she had to buy a special kind of map.

  Laura already had a book of charts, what she was after now was a book of profiles. These books contained views of the landscape of the Place from the points of entry at Doorhandle and Tricksie Bend. The pages in books of profiles were made of semi-transparent paper, so that the next view of hills appeared faintly through the view on the page before it, as it would to anyone shifting their focus from the hills in the foreground to a range further away. The profile books were essential to anyone who planned to penetrate deep into the Place. Because the pages were transparent, the reader had only to flip the book over, and go back through it, in order to plot a course back out again. Each newly issued book of profiles represented the landscape of the Place for as far as anyone had journeyed In from either end. The latest issue — the one Laura wanted — was entitled simply Profiles: Seven Days In from Tricksie Bend. Laura wanted to see whether she could plot a course to the dry seabed of her father’s film using a combination of his shot of the hills back the way he had come, and the landforms in a book of profiles.

  The books were an expensive item and Laura had to join the queue in order to ask for one at the counter. As she waited her turn, she looked about at the gathered rangers and dreamhunters. Even after all her trips In, and her examinations, Laura wasn’t quite used to the sight of this collection of thin, fit, brown, crop-haired people. They were the other family to which Laura’s father and Aunt Grace belonged. As Laura mused over this family likeness she noticed a boy trying to catch her eye. He was a few bodies behind her in the queue beside hers. He had been staring at her till she felt it, and looked back at him.

  He was one of the boys who had been examined with her, the boy from the infants’ beach, the one who had written out his name and address on the back of her copy of Maze Plasir’s business card. Laura had lost Plasir’s card, and couldn’t remember the boy’s first name. She gave him a small smile of acknowledgment and looked away.

  His line was shuffling forward faster than hers; he would soon be beside her. She racked her brains. His name was Mason. What Mason? Something Mason?

  ‘Sandy!’ Laura thought, and giggled with relief at the very moment that Sandy Mason finally fell into step with her.

  ‘What is so funny?’ he said, and grinned.

  Laura told him she had only just remembered his name and that she been running through the options. ‘It’s Sandy Mason, isn’t it?’

  ‘Alexander,’ the boy said.

  ‘But you wrote “Sandy” on Plasir’s card.’

  The boy blushed. ‘Sandy isn’t a good professional name,’ he said.

  They reached the counter at the same moment. He deposited his armload of rations, and watched carefully while the clerk added up the total. Laura paid for her book and an oilskin satchel in which to keep it. They came away from the counter, Sandy with his purchases in a flour sack, Laura with a sealed and wrapped package clutched to her chest. Sandy licked his lips. He said, ‘Have you earned anything yet?’ He was looking at the book, longingly.

  ‘No,’ said Laura. ‘But I am writing an article for the Ladies Journal — “My Winter Dreamhunting”.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No,’ said Laura.

  Sandy Mason’s blush spread up into his ears. ‘I suppose it was rather a rude question,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Laura.

  ‘Do you always put people on the back foot?’ Sandy was clearly preparing to defend himself.

  ‘Well — if it helps them get their other foot out of their mouth,’ said Laura.

  For a moment they continued to stand dumbly in the middle of the store, clu
tching their purchases and getting in people’s way. Then Sandy showed what he was made of by trying to continue the conversation. He said, ‘How are you, then?’

  ‘Not bad,’ said Laura. ‘And how are you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Still Trying, it seems. I’ve been working at Pike Street Hospital, amplifying my uncle — I told you about him, the one who works with the surgeons, supporting the anaesthetic.’

  Laura nodded.

  ‘But apparently I am not “opened” enough yet to be much of an amplifier. My uncle says I should spend a few months catching different things and “opening” myself. He’s sponsoring me, which makes it easier.’

  ‘Good,’ said Laura. ‘Plasir didn’t seem to mind taking that boy unopened.’ A moment after she had said it, Laura realised that it could be taken two ways. Sandy was looking shocked. She clapped her hand over her mouth, and then apologised. ‘I was only trying to use your term — “opened”. I mean — I didn’t mean anything else.’

  Some rangers went past them, one saying, ‘Excuse me,’ pointedly.

  ‘We’re in the way,’ Sandy said. He gestured with his chin at the door, beyond which was a wide veranda, littered with umbrellas and covered in muddy footprints. Laura followed him out.

  It was cold outside, and the street was uninviting beyond the veranda’s beaded curtain of dribbling rain.

  ‘I really didn’t mean — you know,’ Laura said again.

  ‘Good. For a moment I thought you were one of those girls who’ll say anything for a laugh.’

  Laura, irritated again, said, ‘What can such girls be thinking?’

  Sandy lost his temper with her. ‘You’re impossible to talk to — you’re so scratchy!’

  ‘Well — if I agreed with absolutely everything you said, that would be scratchy too, believe me,’ Laura told him. ‘I had a friend like that. He was very accommodating — and very abrasive.’

  ‘You had a friend?’

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Laura said, then, ‘He’s gone now. But not because I was impossible to talk to.’

  ‘Do you mean your father?’

  ‘Fathers aren’t friends,’ Laura said, impatient.

  ‘No, they’re not. My father is more of an opponent. He made me wait two years past the legal age to Try. He set impossible conditions — which I met, actually.’

  ‘I thought you were nearer my age,’ Laura said, though she knew he was not. She didn’t want him talking down to her.

  ‘Do I look your age?’ Sandy said. It seemed his disgust in her was complete. ‘No, I do not. I look as though I should be doing better already. I should be a brown-skinned veteran with speciality dreams and keen clients.’ Sandy was shifting from foot to foot, a picture of frustration and impatience. He said he had a thirty-five-metre penumbra already, unopened, and his uncle should be working for him by now.

  Laura was surprised. ‘Who measured your range?’

  ‘The examiners. They do that. Didn’t they give you your figures?’

  ‘No, they didn’t.’

  ‘They’re supposed to. Why wouldn’t they? You know, that was what was behind the trouble we had with that boy who went with Plasir. Range. After our examination he was nagging everyone else for their results, their figures. It was like the bloody changing sheds —’ Sandy remembered he was talking to a girl and blushed again.

  ‘That boy seemed to think he knew what Plasir wanted,’ Laura said. She was wondering about Plasir, whom she knew she’d have to talk to. Her father had mentioned Plasir in his letter. He said Plasir knew things. Laura hadn’t even begun to think how to approach the man.

  The boy was saying, ‘Plasir’s penumbra — his range — may be tiny, but he can overdream almost anyone.’

  Laura suddenly realised that there was a great deal she didn’t know about differences in talent. Her father and aunt had almost always talked as if it was all a matter of degree — great and small. She tried to explain her thought to Sandy, and then said, ‘You’ll have to give me a full rundown, I think.’

  ‘Sure. But, you know, it really isn’t surprising that your father and aunt didn’t go into a lot of detail. For them it was a case of them and everyone else. Your aunt’s a split dreamhunter, as catchy as flu, and has a three-hundred-metre penumbra. And your father once overdreamt eight dreamhunters who all had his own Starry Beach, and on their first night with it. His penumbra was estimated at somewhere between three-fifty and four. He was a god, basically — if you don’t mind me saying. Even if he only ever caught single point of view dreams.’

  ‘I’m going In tomorrow to catch Starry Beach,’ Laura said. She watched Sandy swallow, and try to collect himself. He began to apologise. He said he realised that it might be hard for Laura to hear people talk about her father. Laura saw that he thought she had changed the subject because her feelings were hurt.

  ‘My uncle is organising a memorial service,’ Laura said. Then she put out her free hand and touched Sandy’s upper arm. She had a moment of surprise at how little her fingers were able to encompass — how big his arms were compared to her own. Then she remembered she had meant to say something, had only touched him to get his attention. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said. She removed her hand and they stared out at the rain. After a time he told her that he’d taken a room at Mrs Lilley’s.

  Laura’s room was at Lilley’s too — no surprise, really. Lilley was the kind of landlady who kept an eye on her lodgers, so her house was often recommended to the parents of young dreamhunters. ‘Shall we go, then?’ Laura said. She didn’t wait for him but held her package up over her head and darted down the station’s steps and out on to the plank pavement.

  They arrived at the boarding house wet and breathless to find that another lodger was entertaining his parents in the parlour, and Mrs Lilley’s daughters were setting the table in the dining room. They had nowhere to go but to their respective rooms. Laura noticed that Sandy seemed to feel he had to make something up to her. He climbed backwards up the stairs in front of her, beginning several sentences, clutching his side — he had stitch — and getting nowhere.

  Laura interrupted him. ‘Do you have a fire?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I can give you some coals in my warming pan,’ Laura said. She unlocked her room, left the door ajar and him outside — mindful of the house rules which said that there were to be ‘NO visitors in lodgers’ rooms at ANY hour’.

  Laura took the warming pan from its hook and used the poker to roll some coals out of her fire. She called Sandy in to pick the pan up. Then, as he hesitated in the doorway, she said, ‘My feet are wet. I want to change before tea.’

  ‘Dinner,’ said Sandy.

  ‘Dinner at teatime,’ Laura said.

  ‘And there’s the difference between us,’ Sandy said. ‘You’re used to having tea while I am having my dinner.’

  Laura told him to go away. She closed the door on him and sat on her bed to remove her wet boots and socks. She put her boots on the hearth and hung her socks from the mantel by placing her parcel on their tops. She was feeling irritated, but happier. She’d been preoccupied with her big problems — her father’s letter, what he had meant, who she might confide in once she understood what he meant — so was grateful to be presented with a minor puzzle, Sandy Mason’s behaviour.

  Sandy was as displeased and contrary as Rose could be when things weren’t going well for her. Most of what Laura said seemed to offend him, yet he seemed troubled if she let him know he’d offended her. He seemed to want to prove to her that his manners were better than hers. Or, if not his manners exactly, then his morals. Sandy thought he was somehow better than she was, more mature, more realistic. All his carry-on seemed to imply that, since she wasn’t trying to make money, she was only playing at being a dreamhunter, perhaps in an effort to make herself seem more substantial to herself. Perhaps he thought she was some kind of dabbler — and that it was significant that she came from a household where dinner was served at eight. But, Laura d
ecided, she would let Sandy think what he liked. He could imagine she was a posh girl with a hobby if that’s what he wanted to imagine. Laura didn’t like being alone — when she was alone she felt all bent out of shape by her burdens. Squabbling with Sandy Mason made her feel human, nearly as human and alive as she had felt while asking her sandman questions.

  Three

  In the morning the rangers at the border post beyond Doorhandle were having trouble with some youths throwing stones. They were locals, who had decided to alleviate their cabin fever by winding up rangers. They had hidden themselves in some bushes by the roadside a little way beyond the stone cairn. In fact they had removed some stones from the cairn as ammunition, and were now throwing them at anyone who came near the landmark.

  The rangers couldn’t catch them. They couldn’t get past the border without crossing over into the Place. Stones were sailing through the air at them from a spot only twenty yards away — where they couldn’t ever walk. The rangers had sent someone to the sheriff ’s office for help, and were loitering about just out of range, with a gathering of dreamhunters intent on going on In that morning. The dreamhunters were feeling the cold. It was still raining, and they had umbrellas, but they had left their heavy winter coats back in their rooms — they wouldn’t need them once they were across the border.

  Time passed, and the gathering of dreamhunters clustered under their umbrellas like mourners at a rainy graveside. There was no sign of the sheriff. Doorhandle was having a delightful moment — letting the employees of the Regulatory Body, who had virtually taken over the village ten years before, feel its power for a change. The news of the stone throwers made its way back to the shelter, so the dreamhunters who had been filling in their intentions stopped there, where there was a fire in the stove. They waited to hear that the problem had been sorted out, the culprits chased off or collared.