The Book of Dreams

by O. R. Melling

  Dana and Jean laughed as they recognized the two men. Sigisbert was a dead ringer for the sailing master, George, while Fnör was the spitting image of Trondur.

  Some people are destined to be together, Dana reflected. She glanced sideways at Jean. Didn’t she feel the same way about him?

  “Do you get homesick?” she asked Artán, who was so like Boots.

  “There are times when I long for the green hills of Ireland,” he admitted. “It has been seven years since I last saw them. But I am a monk of Brendan. I would follow him to the ends of the earth. And I suppose,” the eyes sparkled with mischief, “I am to blame for this voyage.”

  “How—?” Dana stopped when the truth struck her. “You’re the young monk who was writing the fairy tales!”

  “Mea culpa,” he said with a nod.

  “Where do you get the story?” Jean asked him. “Do you make yourself?”

  Artán’s features softened as he gazed out to sea. It was obvious he was remembering something.

  “I was not always a monk,” he said with a little smile.

  Jean grinned as he understood. “Ah oui, je comprends.”

  “What?” said Dana. “What?”

  They kept laughing and teasing her, but at last Artán confessed.

  “It was before I took orders,” he explained. “I met a beautiful girl one day in the woods. She stole my heart and almost my soul. I had to choose if I would stay in this world or join her in another.” He let out a sigh. “I made my decision, yet I never forgot the wondrous tales she told me, or the beautiful songs she sang. It was these I recorded in the scriptorium, when I should have been copying the Epistles of Saint Paul.”

  Dana smiled at his chagrin. “It’s just as well you did,” she pointed out. “Think of what you would have missed!”

  “Did the abbot not order the two of you to rest?” Artán said suddenly. “On this boat, as in the monastery, we must obey him.”

  After all their adventures, a rest was welcome. They slept for hours in the crew’s hut, on mattresses of down as soft as any duvet. At noon, Artán brought them steaming chowder, hot griddle-cakes, and cheese.

  As it contained fish, Dana gave her soup to Jean.

  “Do I dream this?” Jean said. “Hot food on the boat?”

  “When the seas are calm we enjoy our comforts.” Artán grinned. “I can light a fire in the big cauldron and cook over it with smaller pots. When you are finished here, you must go to Brendan.”

  Artán handed them their clothes, which had been hung out to dry earlier. Reluctantly, they traded the loaned woolens for their synthetic fabrics.

  Refreshed from their rest, they returned to Brendan’s cabin. The saint was looking livelier too. His eyes flashed with excitement.

  “A new adventure awaits us! After deep prayer, I have been guided to the way we must go. In The Book of Wonders there was a tale about an Island of Glass. This island is the sacred abode of a mighty female spirit who is served by a Druidess. In that cold, white country, there comes a day when the sun does not rise and yet another day when it does not set.”

  Brendan closed his eyes for a moment as he chanted.

  There is an ancient tree in blossom there,

  On which the birds call out the hours of life.

  “The birds again!” said Dana. “They’ve been following me from the beginning. Whatever they mean, they’re important to the quest.”

  “What is this word ‘Druidess’?” Jean asked.

  “That is the Irish name for her,” Brendan replied. “She is called angakuk by her own people. She has certain powers and can walk between the worlds.”

  “Ah oui, jongleuse,” said Jean, “like the Old Man.”

  “A shaman,” Dana said thoughtfully. “Isn’t that what you are too?” she asked Brendan. “Didn’t the giant call you a mage?”

  The abbot shook his head vigorously. “Before this journey, I did not even credit such things! I was a monk, a scholar, the founder of monasteries, but nothing out of the ordinary.” His grimace was both rueful and amused. “Look at me now after one touch of an angel! I have the Second Sight and the Gift of Tongues, I am a sailor tossed upon the ocean in search of marvels, an explorer, and a writer of fabulous tales.” He let out a chuckle. “But no, I am not a mage, though many think me so. I am simply a man who follows God’s will.”

  Out on deck, Brendan barked his instructions like any skipper. Where the boat had been sailing in a leisurely fashion toward the south, they now tacked in the wind and pointed north. The change in course had an instant effect. No longer sluggish in the water, the craft took flight like a bird on the wing, clipping along at speed.

  Brendan looked pleased. “As always when one goes in the right direction, things become easier.”

  They smelled the ice before they saw it, a cold breath that frosted the air. It wasn’t long before small chunks were rattling against the hull like cubes in a tumbler. In the distance, a jagged floe moved slowly like a herd of white beasts across the plain of the ocean.

  “The Sea of Glass,” Brendan said with quiet awe, “even as the book described it!”

  The cold began to seep into their bones. Artán handed out blankets to be worn as cloaks.

  Directly ahead of them a mountainous land came into view. As they drew nearer, they saw it was covered with snow. Between the land and the boat, the river of icebergs rose up like a barrier.

  The crew needed all their skill to maneuver the boat through the floe. The deadly lure and majesty of the ice was breathtaking. Some pieces were sculptures of clear crystal; others were opaque white. The underwater ledges glowed a deep green, while the crags above the surface were a glacial blue.

  “Look for a crystal pillar,” Brendan ordered, “with a wide net. That will point the way to go.”

  Everyone kept watch till at last it was sighted: a shining column of ice surrounded by churning water. Flakes of frazil fanned out around it, looking indeed as if the ice were meshed. Landfall was in sight. In a straight line from the pillar, as if it were a transit buoy, they could see the sheltering fjord on the coast.

  Not a word was spoken as the boat sailed into the natural harbor. The stillness and beauty of the landscape was profound. They were approaching the edge of a glacier where bergs calved into the sea. The water was a silvery blue. A cliff of white ice towered above them. Behind it sheered a stark line of mountains draped in cold mist.

  Sigisbert dug out a ledge in the wall of ice and rammed a plank into it, forming a gangway from the boat to the glacier. Fnör gave them fur jackets as well as crude snowshoes. The latter he hung from their backs until they had need of them.

  “Gifts from the land of Thule,” he said.

  Despite the protests of his monks, Brendan insisted that only he and his guests would go.

  The glacier was not as difficult to climb as Dana and Jean had feared. The ice was quite solid, and layered in places to grant their feet purchase. Where it was too smooth for climbing, the saint went first with a sharp knife to carve out footholds. Like Good King Wenceslas’s page, the two younger ones followed in his steps. At last they reached the plain above.

  An arctic panorama spread out before them. A vast land with a backbone of mountain. Frozen peaks and glacial valleys, ice fields and nunataks, all ranged silent and cloaked in snow. There was no sign of life, either human or animal, in that great white landscape.

  “Where on earth are we?” Dana said. Her breath streamed frostily in front of her. “Are we even on the earth?”

  Jean glanced up as he strapped on his snowshoes. He knew where he was. The recognition had sounded in his heart and soul.

  “It’s Canada,” he said. “Le Nord.”

  Jean finished lacing his snowshoes and stood up.

  “This is Île Baffin, I think. Part of Nunavut. We sail north of Labrador, n’est-ce pas?”

  “That makes sense,” Dana said, thinking about it. “And it explains the Glass Sea and the pillars of ice in Brendan’s legen
d.”

  She had finally managed to strap on her snowshoes and was ready to take her first steps. Moments later she was facedown in the snow.

  Jean hurried over to help her up, trying not to laugh.

  Her face was caked with powdery snow. She spluttered and spat as she laughed.

  “It’s all very well for you,” she said. “You’re used to this. We hardly ever get snow in Ireland. I feel like I’m wearing tennis rackets on my feet.”

  “It will get more easy,” he assured her. “But if you walk too much you get mal de raquette. I tell you when to rest. Mais vite, we must hurry.”

  Brendan had gone ahead of them, gliding over the snow in his long monk’s cloak like a ragged brown swan. He wore a floppy-brimmed pilgrim’s hat and carried a wooden staff. On his back was a satchel packed with provisions.

  They set out after him, tramping across the snowy plain toward the craggy chine of mountains in the distance.

  “Does anyone else live here?” Dana asked Jean. “I mean, besides the shaman? Are there Eskimos here?”

  “This is the land of the Inuit. Their name mean ‘the People.’ They live here for many thousand of year. ‘Eskimo’ is a name the Montagnais give them that mean ‘Fish-Eater.’”

  Dana groaned. “There are so many races here. I’ll never get them right.”

  Jean laughed. “This is good about Canada, non? All the peoples.”

  They chatted companionably as they hiked through the snow. It was their first chance in a while to really talk together, as the quest had taken up most of their time. Jean asked about her background. Dana told him about her childhood in a small town in Ireland, how she was raised alone by her father till she was twelve.

  “That was a big year. Imagine discovering you’re the daughter of a fairy queen!”

  “Like I find I am loup-garou,” he said. “At the same time wonderful and terrible.”

  “Exactly!” she agreed. “Then we came to Canada. I thought I would like it here. I left everything I knew behind, our house, our street, my school, my friends. Things just got worse and worse. I so wanted to go home. I hated it here.”

  Dana looked around at the glittering scene of snow and mountain, the clarity of blue sky and brilliant light. “I thought there was no magic here.”

  He stopped to gaze into her eyes that shone with the same blue brilliance as the sky above. “Who whisper this lie to you?”

  She caught her breath. “My enemy?”

  “Perhaps.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it was you, eh? You tell yourself the lie because you want to believe it?”

  She heard the pain behind his words, something to do with himself and not her. “What lie have you told yourself?”

  He recoiled in that moment, caught off guard. Then he smiled sadly.

  “That grand-père will one day be human again.” They continued chatting as they hiked, but eventually silence fell between them and the only sound was their breath rasping in the thin air. As the hours passed, their fingers and toes began to freeze, despite the thick wrappings. They could feel the chill of the air burning their lungs. The white glare of the snow threatened to blind them. They pulled their hoods down low over their faces. There was nothing to look at but their own feet stepping one in front of the other. The adventure was no longer exciting, but something to endure with every passing minute.

  At last they reached the end of the ice field. Before them rose another wall of ice and snow, the end of a glacier that had streamed down the mountain. It was much higher than the one they had scaled in the fjord.

  “We can’t climb that,” Dana said, dismayed.

  Brendan agreed, and made no effort to ascend. Instead, he walked alongside the icy cirque.

  They followed behind him.

  “It is enough to write the rough white cradles in the snow,” he murmured to himself.

  “That’s lovely,” said Dana. “What does it mean?” The saint’s features were ruddy in the cold. His eyes shone, silver-rimmed.

  “It is something I dreamed. But I believe it means that she is somewhere here, cradled within.”

  More hours passed in that day of endless light and still they tramped beside the glacier. Dana had long since admitted to herself that she wished they hadn’t come north. If only they had gone in a different direction! She could no longer feel her fingers or toes. Could she have frostbite? She was also beginning to doubt the saint’s wisdom. Had he brought them on a wild-goose chase? Then at last they saw something.

  It was like a miracle in that barren land: a branching tree rimed with frost.

  “That is the sign,” Brendan said happily, rubbing his hands together. “There is an ancient tree in blossom there, on which the birds call out the hours of life.”

  That there was neither blossom nor bird on the tree didn’t matter, for they had spotted the opening in the ice just behind it. The jagged crack in the glacier was large enough for a person to enter.

  Removing their snowshoes, they squeezed one by one through the crevice. Inside, they found a chamber with scalloped walls that emitted a cold blue light. Melodious sounds echoed frostily: the crinkling of ice and the chime of falling water. On every side, fissures laced the walls, branching out in snowflake patterns that made tunnels in the glacier.

  Brendan chose a passageway and entered boldly.

  “We must travel hopefully in the belief that all paths lead to the source.”

  Time seemed to stand still inside that translucent passage. From time to time they were startled to spy dark figures frozen in the ice: a woolly mammoth, an arctic fox, and once even a hunter, caught by death with his spear in his hand. Dana let out a cry when she saw him. Would they be trapped in the ice too? That was when Jean took her hand. She steadied herself. Somehow it was easier to accept hardship when he was beside her.

  At long last the passageway brought them to what they sought. They knew they had arrived at the angakuk’s cave when they saw her handiwork, the first sign of humanity on the island. The archway into the cave was decorated with pieces of stone and bone in intricate designs that complemented the ice. Stooping to enter, they stepped inside.

  It was like being at the heart of a frozen cloud. The cave glimmered with ice draperies and embroidered snow. Ledges in the walls held a profusion of objects—the whorled horn of a narwhal, the tusks of a walrus, stone implements and carved statues, harpoons and knives. The floor was covered with the furs of white seal and polar bear.

  The strange beauty of the cave was captivating, but it was the woman who sat inside it that held their instant attention.

  Brown and wizened like an autumn leaf, she appeared to be incalculably old. Her eyes were black stones set in Asiatic features. Her grin was toothless. The skins of the caribou hung loosely on her body. An ornate headdress of beads dangled over her face. Across her shoulders fell a mantle of gray-and-white feathers.

  As she looked upon the angakuk, Dana felt a wave of terror. The power she could sense in the old woman was alien to her. Not of Faerie. Not of Ireland. Not even of Canada. Here was an ancient one of a different race, a different world. How dare they intrude on her? They had not been invited. They had no right to be here!

  As if sensing her fear, the angakuk reached out to Dana. Tiny gnarled hands gripped her like claws. As the shaman spoke, the words echoed around the cave in clicks, whistles, and trills. Dana wanted to explain that she didn’t understand, but her tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  Brendan addressed the shaman in the same birdlike language.

  Cackling to herself, the old woman nodded. The dark eyes flashed behind the strings of beads. She let go of Dana and rummaged through the feathery cloak. Now she drew out two smooth pebbles, handing one each to Jean and Dana. The stones were a bluish-gray color, round, and small.

  She spoke to Brendan, a quick command.

  “Put them under your tongue,” he translated. “Then you’ll understand her.”

  The pebbles had the slight salty taste
of the sea. As soon as they put them in their mouths, Dana and Jean understood the shaman.

  “Stones are the children of the earth,” she told them. “They have been here since time began. They know all the languages of the world. Tell me why you have come.”

  “Wise and noble woman,” Brendan addressed her formally, “before we declare our mission, may I offer you gifts from my people?”

  The shaman’s dark eyes lit up. She grinned with delight. “Are they things you found as you voyaged in your umiak?”

  “They are.” He smiled.

  “Good. They will have power, for your journey is sacred. I have dreamed it.”

  Brendan took the gifts from his satchel and placed them before her, naming each and their origin.

  “Four rods of yew with prophecies cut in ogham. They come from the branches of the lone tree that grows on Inis Subai, the Island of Joy. And in a land where the mountains glow like fire, these gold-and-silver leaves were forged by giant smiths. And the fruits of summer, toirthe samruid, were gathered on the island that is the Paradise of the Birds.”

  As the old woman accepted each gift, she held it to her forehead and bowed toward Brendan. Each time she did, he bowed in return.

  When the greeting ritual was completed, the shaman addressed them frankly.

  “Why have you come to me? I am the Angakuk of the People. When the Inummariit have a question they want answered—Where is the seal? Where is the polar bear? Where is the caribou?—they come to me. I journey to Adlivun to see the Goddess. She knows where all the animals are. They are her children and her gift to us. She tells me where they are and I, in turn, tell the hunter. What animal do you seek?”

  An uncomfortable silence fell in the cave. Jean looked to Dana, his eyebrow raised. She looked toward Brendan, but he didn’t speak. The question was obviously for her alone.