The Sandman: Book of Dreams

by Neil Gaiman

He was old, and ugly, and bald, with a huge bulb of a nose. He was wearing what looked like a long purple bathrobe, and heavy bracelets and pendants, like a pantomime King Herod. He was standing on the metaled drive before the manor, in a pattern of red-and-whitechalked lines that the mist didn't seem to smudge and a circle of candles that defied the wind.

  Tiger's taste in villains ran to the air pirates hunted down by the indomitable Biggies, or (forbidden again) oily foreigners smartly dispatched by Captain Hugh Drummond, but he knew well enough what a wizard was. There were good wizards, like Merlin, and evil ones, like--well, the rest of them. It was as clear to Tiger as the shield of St. George, as plain as the luridly smudged covers of Willy's Yank mags, what heroes did when they met evil wizards.

  Tiger stood on Wych Dyke, raised his arms, and shouted, "Hey, you, mister! Put out those lights!" He felt something then, from the earth. The elms of Arthur's lances supported the sky overhead. And though he never would know it, he illuminated the night, bright in that particular color as Dover Lighthouse.

  The ugly old man's mouth dropped open. He crossed his arms, then held them out straight. His jaw waggled like a wooden dummy's. Two of his candles went out, bang like the White King's dreams. The man turned and ran, knocking over the rest of the candles, floundering barefoot over the wet grass, nearly tripping over his robe. Tiger could hear the door of the house slam shut from where he stood.

  Suddenly he was cold, and very tired. He went back home, slipped inside miraculously unseen, got into bed, and was asleep at once.

  A few days later, when the war news reached Serecombe, Tiger cursed himself for what he had missed, but he dared not speak of it, not even to Willy, and in time he would forget whether he had really climbed the dyke, or only dreamt it.

  Peter Himmels was sick at heart. He had known, deeply, that he would not return from this mission, that he was flying into the holy twilight of the Fuhrer's favorite composer. But he had hoped his two crewmen, brave and loyal to a dream they had not shared, might have survived, at least as prisoners of the English. They were both dead, cut nearly in two, within seconds of each other. The Spitfeuer pilot was very good. Now Himmels was flying through weather thick as mud, carrying his bombs toward a target he had seen only in his dreams.

  Suddenly, like a candle going out, the mist seemed to part before him, and he saw the house with an unreal, impossible, bomber's-moon clarity. Nothing could stop him now; the Spitfire was behind him, out of ammunition or fuel or simply lost in the clouds.

  Peter Himmels had no doubt then of the truth of his dream. He would see his sister, awake and laughing and calling his name. They would both see their parents. And they would all dance together, as long as a dream could last.

  Dickie Lee had made two long firing passes at the Dornier, which was still flying level and constant speed, like a flying sleepwalker. It hadn't even fired back at him. Lee knew he had used up most of his ammunition, and he was dead certain he had hit the plane. It was just possible that she had a dead crew and a jammed stick, though it hardly seemed likely.

  There was one way to find out, and that was to take a look.

  Lee sped past the Dornier, which continued to ignore him. He came around in the easiest turn he could manage without losing close sight of the German.

  Then he flew head-on at the bomber.

  At one hundred yards range, even in the weather and the dark, it was possible to read the identification on the Dornier; it was possible to see the cockpit as a clear white-faceted crystal, fragile glass with men inside.

  At eighty yards, four-tenths of a second from midair collision, it seemed that Lee was looking into the lamped mouth of Despair itself. His consciousness froze up, just for a fraction, just enough for him to have missed firing on that pass.

  But Lee's consciousness had never been in control at times like this. His instinct had sent the order a long time ago. Stuttering lines of red light reached out from the Spitfire. Tracer rounds, the last handful of ammo in the bottom of the box. The guns were clicking dry even as Lee pulled up; he felt the wake of the Dornier suck at him as they passed.

  Lee came around, wings almost vertical. He had no clear idea why; he was out of ammo, and at this range one of the Do 17's side gunners could cut him apart with one burst.

  He saw the bomber at once. It was descending, wings dead level, as if it were making a practice landing on a sunny afternoon. With a start Lee realized that the bomber was lower than the trees. Two seconds later the flash came. Lee called it in, got a decent amount of space under his own backside, and turned for Crowborough.

  A few days later Lee and Chips Wayborne borrowed a staff car and drove to Wych Cross. They were directed, with some hesitation, toward Fawney Rig.

  "Chap at the Post Office said no one's been out to it," Wayborne said. "Can't say I blame him. Look at this place. Looks like bloody Dracula's castle, doesn't it?"

  Lee said, "I see the wreck."

  "Yes," Wayborne said softly, "Yes, I should say so." They drove on, past the PRIVATE PROPERTY TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT signs, away from the silent house.

  They parked the car and approached the plane. It had belly-landed, and half of the right wing had sheared off on a tree trunk, but the fuselage was quite intact. It looked like a bad, but survivable, landing. Chips hallowed, then called out all the German he knew ("Would you like to dance, madame?") but there was no sound.

  They climbed up to the cockpit and looked in. There wasn't much to be said then.

  "Dorniers have a crew of four. That's one short."

  "I was on her until she was scraping the trees. Nobody bailed out."

  Wayborne looked again into the small cockpit. "Fellow could have lived through this. If he were damned lucky."

  "Yes, I suppose so," Lee said. "We'll report it. No hurry."

  "No. No hurry. I tell you, Dickie, if the pilot's out there somewhere, I'd gladly buy him a pint."

  Lee nodded. He was looking directly at the man in the pilot's seat, dead with his hands on the yoke. The two side gunners had been torn by several bullets each, but there was only one wound visible on the pilot's body. A shard of the Perspex canopy, as long as Lee's hand and three inches wide at the base, was embedded in his throat. It had severed an artery, and the man had bled to death. That must have taken several seconds at least. He had, at a fair guess, been alive when the plane had touched ground.

  There was no other way to explain how the Dornier, after losing half a wing in the trees, had made a belly landing as straight as a ruler, aimed with draftsman's precision at the manor with the gargoyles. Another six hundred yards--six seconds, a dozen or so last heartbeats-- and the plane would have been through the house's front door.

  "They had better not call this one a probable," Wayborne said as Lee climbed down from the plane. "Shall I write down her markings, Dickie?"

  "I saw them," Lee said.

  Dickie Lee offered to fly Peter Himmel's flying helmet and decorations across the Channel and drop them on an enemy airfield--a chivalric gesture left over from the last war. It was vetoed, of course. The bodies of the Dornier crew were supposed to be dispatched to a military graveyard, but the order was lost--in an air raid, as it happened-- and rather than let them sit above ground, the people of Wych Cross buried them, without ceremony or markers, in their own churchyard.

  A year later, roses bloomed on Peter Himmels's grave, enormous blossoms of a curious iridescent gray, the petals edged with crimson. The vicar, who was historically minded, called them "gules-and-argents." Someone of a different background might have described them as like fresh blood on torn aluminium. A man from Kew was supposed to come out and examine the flowers, but never did, and the only visitors Wych Cross ever saw went directly to Fawney Rig, going nowhere near the churchyard.

  Lee brought down eight more aircraft. In one engagement he scored two kills, then damaged a third, a Bf 110, and guided it to a safe landing at Crowborough. He bought each of the crew
men a pint. He ended the war as a squadron leader, with the Distinguished Flying Cross. He bought a modest, bright house not far from the Mersey for the survivors of the small black one, but he never went there for more than a short visit. When Crowborough was closed, he bought a bit of it and settled there, alone. In his forty-third year he surprised his neighbors by offering to help coach a junior football team. It was a group of the boys who found him quietly dead of a stroke; he had been

  sitting in a deck chair, by one of the rotting old hangars, looking through the trees toward the Channel, just as if he were waiting for a scramble. Chips Wayborne was head pallbearer, and bought the stone. It read:

 

  SQUADRON LEADER

  JAMES RICHARD LEE

  DFC MC

  1919-1967

  SLEEP WELL, DICKIE.

  In June of 1942, as part of Nazi Germany's T4 Program of forcible euthanasia of the mentally ill, Magdalen Himmels was given a lethal injection. No one involved with the program knew the nature of her disorder, and all German copies of Freud's paper on Wahrschlafssperrung had been destroyed, as merely another lump of "faulty Jewish science." Dr. Rachlin survived the war as a camp doctor in Theriesenstadt, became a professor of psychiatry in Israel, and lived to see the sleepers awaken in 1988.

  In his ninety-sixth year, he wrote: "I have come to think it a great sin to lack hope, but I may say I have little expectation that we shall ever understand this phenomenon. I believe (and I believe also that Ereud would forgive me for sounding like Jung) that we have seen only the surface ripples of something very deep ... a rustling, if you like, of the Great Chain of Being.

  "The Lord does not jest; but I wish I better took his meaning."

  Memory as ever is short. Most people thought he was writing of the camps.

  STRONGER THAN DESIRE

  Lisa Goldstein

  Lisa Goldstein is the winner of many literary awards. Lisa is a small, dark lady with a fine smile and a sharp mind. She wrote Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon, a novel about the fairies leaving England in Shakespeare's day, and about the death of Marlowe, and about books.

  This is a story about Desire, and a wager. Historically, it is, of course, the only explanation for the whole business.

  It is said that nowadays Desire rarely takes a human lover. For Desire, who is male and female, fair and dark, old and young, anything and everything you have ever wished for, or coveted, or needed, is irresistible. And so what would be the point, after all? Love is not a game to Desire, as it is to so many mortals, or if it is, it is a game with a foregone conclusion: Desire always wins. And Desire hates more than anything to be bored.

  In the year 1108 Desire saw a young lord and his retinue leave his castle to go hunting. They rode through the village, the early morning sun glinting on their banners and finery, on their spears and the tips of their arrows. The hounds, red and gray and spotted, sensed the presence of the forest ahead of them and grew excited.

  Desire had not seen anyone as beautiful as this lord in many years. He was tall, with high cheekbones, full red lips, a cap of black hair. His clothes were made of fine wool and colored with costly dyes, and he wore them with a flair that none of his vassals could match.

  And so Desire followed as the party came to the forest and passed under the great trees, the hounds coursing before them. Desire heard the hounds bay loudly as they flushed a deer, watched as the hunters gave chase through the dark and light corridors of the forest, heard the horns ringing, saw the moment of triumph as the bowman brought down the deer.

  The hunters stopped to cut a branch and lash it to the deer's feet, and then rode on. The sun rose up over the forest, shortening the shadows of the trees. Everything was quiet now; the birds had stopped singing, and the hounds sniffed the trail silently, lagging behind a little. The young lord, whose name was Raimon, urged his vassals deeper into the forest.

  Desire surprised a deer. The deer bounded in front of the lord, passing only a few feet from his horse before it disappeared into the shadows.

  Startled, Raimon gave chase. He rode hard down the narrow forest path, then followed as the deer plunged off the path and through the trees. Leaves and light flashed overhead. The sounds of his party faded behind him. The deer twisted and feinted, moving now left, now right as it tried to lose its pursuer.

  The deer began to slow. Raimon urged his horse forward, followed as the deer leapt farther into the forest. Desire stood among the shadows of the trees in the aspect of a woman.

  Lord Raimon saw her and pulled hard on the reins of his horse. The deer hurried away, unnoticed. "Who are you?" he asked.

  "I am Alais," Desire said.

  "I would like to take you back with me, to my castle," Raimon said. "No--I am sorry, I am being discourteous. Will you come back with me? I will make you my wife, will give you everything that is in my power to give. I am lord of this land, of all this forest and everything around it for many miles. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

  Desire laughed. "I will go with you," she said. "But I will not be your wife."

  Raimon helped her mount behind him. He rode slowly back through the forest, and when he heard the barking of the hounds and the laughter of his men he did not hurry to join them.

  At last he saw his party in a clearing of the forest. The sun was setting, darkening the trees against the sky. He rode into the clearing.

  His men turned toward him, and one or two called out. But when they saw Desire they fell silent, and some stirred uneasily. "This is Alais," Raimon said. "She is returning with us to the castle."

  "Where--Where does she come from, my lord?" one of the men asked.

  "Where?" Raimon said. "Why, she comes from-- It does not matter where she comes from. Come--we must hurry. It grows late."

  Raimon and his retinue left the forest and rode through the village. Darkness had fallen; only the moon and stars and the distant lights of the castle remained to show them their way.

  The men stayed a little behind their lord and his new woman, watching them with suspicion in their eyes. They had urged Raimon to marry, to beget heirs to secure his lands. Many had put forward favorites, an unwed sister or cousin. Now, with the coming of this strange woman, all their plans were thrown into confusion. Who was she? Who were her parents, what was her lineage? The men whispered among themselves, careful not to let their lord overhear them; one was even bold enough to speak the word "witchcraft."

  In the days that followed it seemed that their worst fears had been realized. Raimon kept to his apartments.

  Orders came to the servants for meals, for a priest to say Mass on Sundays. And everyone who saw him in his rooms reported that the strange woman, the witch woman, was still there; some had even seen them sharing the bed.

  Finally one of die men had had enough. Ignoring the entreaties of his fellows, he climbed the stairs that led to his lord's apartments and knocked on the door.

  Someone giggled. "Who is it?" Raimon asked.

  "It is I, my lord."

  "Come."

  The man entered. Raimon and Alais lay in the bed, the bedclothes around them disheveled and filthy. Raimon sat; the movement caused a blanket to slip and reveal his naked shoulders and one of Alais's white breasts.

  The man stared at her. "What do you want?" Raimon asked, smiling.

  "I--" The man looked away with an effort. "This is not right, my lord. All of your men say so. You must marry. You must have sons, legitimate heirs."

  "I have asked Alais to marry me," Raimon said. "She refuses."

  "Alais?"

  "Yes. Is that so surprising?"

  "My lord, you know nothing of this woman. Who is she? Where does she come from?"

  "I know all I need to know about her," Raimon said. He looked at her fondly and she smiled, amused.

  "My lord, you must--"

  "I must? Are my vassals to give me orders now? Is the order of this castle to be overturned?
"

  "If it is, it is you who overturned it. You and this woman--"

  "Leave me," Raimon said. "I grow weary of this discussion."

  The man went to the door, hesitated as if about to say something, and then hurried down the stairs.

  Raimon looked at the woman beside him in the bed and laughed. "He's right, you know," he said. "Sooner or later I must marry. Why will you not marry me?"

  "I cannot."

  "I don't care about dowry. I'll give you everything you want. Is that what you're concerned about?"

  "No."

  "Are you contracted to someone else?"

  "No."

  "I will go mad," Raimon said, laughing a little. "I will go mad, and it will be your fault. Why won't you marry me?"

  "I cannot," Desire said again.

  It seemed to Raimon that she shifted slightly on the bed, that her hair grew shorter, her features coarser. He jerked away, alarmed. Her face returned to what it had been, all its strange beauty restored.

  "Who are you?" Raimon said.

  "I am not what you think."

  "No. No, that is quite clear. You are no mortal, I see that now. Who are you?"

  Desire laughed. "I am the most powerful being, man or woman, that you will ever meet. I am the most important thing in the world."

  "You are not God," Raimon said. His heart beat loudly in his chest but he forced himself to speak evenly. "And God is the most important thing in the world."

  "I am even stronger than your God. I am one of the Endless. I am Desire."

  "Desire. Yes, I see." Raimon fell silent. Suddenly he

  turned to her and pinned her to the bed as he had so many times before. "And if I can prove to you that you are not the most powerful thing in the world, prove that there are those who can resist you, then will you marry me?"

  "No one can resist me," Desire said scornfully. "Not even you, and you are a great lord."

  "Will you hazard your future on that? Will you wager marriage?"

  "It is not given to the Endless to marry with mortals."

  "What? Not given? Surely a being as powerful as you can make your own laws."

  "Very well," Desire said slowly. "Show me two people, any two, and I will make them paw at each other like animals in rut."

  "And if they will not?"

  "If they will not, then you have won the wager. I will marry you."

  The next day Lord Raimon and Desire came down from his apartments. He attended to business he had neglected, rode through his estate, received petitions. In the evening, after supper, he waved to his steward to join him at the head of the banquet table. "I would like to hold a feast," he said. "And to invite Count Bertran, our neighbor to the east. See that you send him an invitation."

  "Yes, my lord."

  When the steward had gone, Raimon turned to Desire. "I have begun the wager, my lady," he said.