The Sandman: Book of Dreams

by Neil Gaiman

There was at that time living in Petticoat-lane in Whitechapel a young girl, Jess Kettle, seven years of age with brown eyes and a most impudent grin.... But she prick't her thumb on an old gardener's pruning hook (which she never should have touch'd in the first place) and a great fistula grew up until all the thumb was corrapt'd. The surgeon made them tie Jess Kettle fast in a chair with apron strings and laces and he struck off her thumb with a chisel and a mallet. But the Fright and Convulsion was more than she could bear, and it was discover'd that with that blow the surgeon had struck her understanding out of her head and her hair came out and she turned the color of three-day-old milk and she spake no more. But her aunt, Anne Symcotts, walk'd to Stopp't-Clock Yard and asked everyone she met where she would find John Paramore, the sorcerer, and when she found him she went boldly up to him and entreated his help. John Paramore said she had a face like a spoon, but was very brave and clever. John Paramore sent the aunt to sleep and into the DreameCountries, where she found Jess Kettle's reason and all her bonny looks and her thumb, and she brought them, laughing, out of the Dreame-Countries, right from under the Dream-king's very nose. Or so it was said. And Jess Kettle was her merry self again.

  The Duchess of Cleveland's pearls (of which she was uncommonly fond) had all been given to Mr. Newbolt for safekeeping, and to this end he had taken them into a large cabbage field, thinking to hide them there. But the string had broke and the pearls had tumbled in between the leaves of a cabbage and got lodged there. Mr. Newbolt knew the cabbage field well. It had lain behind his father's cottage when Mr. Newbolt had been a child seventy years before in Leicestershire. Now, as he stood looking about him in the utmost fright and perplexity, a large black raven alighted on one of the cabbages and pecked at something inside it. Mr. Newbolt shouted and waved his arms and the bird flew away. But it did not go far, but went and flapped about the shoulders of a tall, pale man who had suddenly appeared.

  "Ah, sir!" cried Mr. Newbolt. "For pity's sake, help me! I do not know which cabbage to look into."

  "William Newbolt," said the tall, pale man, "you are dreaming."

  "Yes, I know," said Mr. Newbolt. "What of it?" And he continued to peer in a desperate sort of way into the cabbages.

  "William Newbolt," said the tall, pale man, "do you know me?"

  Then Mr. Newbolt looked up and saw the cold, white Leicestershire sky and the cold, white gleam of the man's face. And the one was very like the other and Mr. Newbolt began to wonder if, in fact, they might not be the same thing, and the black winter trees that marked the boundary of the field and the black shadows beneath them so resembled the man's black hair and clothes that it seemed impossible that they should not be made of the same stuff.

  "Yes, I know you," said Mr. Newbolt. "You are that scrawny, handsome man--Lord! I have forgot his' name!--the writing master that killed a cat belonging to an alderman and in the same evening ran away with the alderman's daughter. Sir, did not Mrs. Behn call you Lysander and write a poem on your beauty?"

  The tall man sighed and passed a long white hand through his long black hair.

  "Of course he is dead, the writing master," said Mr. Newbolt thoughtfully. "They hanged him. I forget for what. Still perhaps that does not signify now. They say that Morpheus is an idle king. His walls are old and crumbling. His gates are unguarded. His servants are not watchful."

  A little rain of bitter sleet fell sharply and suddenly down on Mr. Newbolt alone. Mr. Newbolt looked around, puzzled. The tall man appeared to be so full of wrath that, had Mr. Newbolt had his wits about him, he would have been very much afraid. (Mr. Newbolt knew something of the wrath of great princes, having had in his time cause to speak to three--Charles, the first and second of that name, and Oliver Cromwell). But Mr. Newbolt did not have his wits about him. Mr. Newbolt's wits were all asleep in his bed in Friday street, and so he only smiled dimly at the tall, majestical person.

  "What do you say?" asked the tall man.

  "Oh," said Mr. Newbolt, wringing a stream of icy water out of his clothes and catching it in a little crystal cup that he had just discovered he had with him, "/ do not say so. You do not attend properly, sir. Other people say it."

  "Where do they say it?"

  "In the town. It is what is commonly reported in the town."

  "Who reports it?"

  "Everybody. But mostly 'tis the wastrel John Paramore."

  The tall man folded his arms and a great wind came up out of nowhere and toss'd all the trees about, as if all the world had been put in a great fright by the tall man's frowning at it. Mr. Newbolt stepped up to the tall man and, catching hold of his long black robe, tugged at it.

  "But, sir! Will you not help me look for the Duchess's pearls? She will be horribly angry."

  "Aye," said the tall man with satisfaction, "that she will." And he stalked away.

  In his place came a hundred fat pigs who ate up all the cabbages and swallowed all the pearls. A hundred men next appeared and slit the throats of the pigs and poured the blood into a hundred basins, then the basins were all taken away to be made into pigs' blood puddings. At that moment someone arrived to say that Mr. Newbolt must make haste--the Duchess was asking for him. When he arrived Her Grace was at dinner with all her cronies. A china dish of pigs' blood pudding was set before each. The Duchess said nothing at all. She only looked at Mr. Newbolt and held up her silver fork and wagged it three times at him. Between its silver prongs, glistening bloodily, was a great white pearl.

  "I can explain," said Mr. Newbolt.

  At the King's palace of Whitehall a great masque was held, in which Apollo, Mars, Minerva, King Solomon of the Jews, and no end of other great and noble personages were to come upon the stage, wearing golden robes and faces like stars and suns and moons, and make speeches about Charles II and lay their tributes at his feet. A tall, thin actor called Mr. Percival (who when out of costume rather resembled an upturned mop that had just heard something very surprising) was employed to take the part of Morpheus. Just before the performance two gallants came to him with a little pot and said how making speeches was thirsty work and would he like some beer? He, not suspecting any mischief, thanked these kind gentlemen and drank it up.

  But it was a purging ale.

  The consequence was that when poor Mr. Percival went upon the stage to make his speech (about how Morpheus had long dreamt of such a King as Charles n and how he now bestowed his sleepy blessings on humanity) no one could hear the sound of his words above his farting.

  At which the King and all the court laugh't like anything. But those who laugh't loudest were those who had heard of John Paramore and what he did and whom he cheated to do it.

  That night the King of England had a dream.

  He dreamt that he was paying state visits to other monarchs and had reached a throne room, as vast as Hampstead Heath, where a tall, pale king sat upon a black throne, complaining of the bad behavior of some Englishmen who had lately journeyed through his realm.

  The pale king seemed quite in a rage about it. He said it had been the cause of a quarrel between himself and his sister and showed the King of England no end of documents and letters and Memorials he had had from persons he called "High Authorities," accusing the pale king of negligence because of something the Englishmen had done.

  The King of England looked at the documents but found they were complicated, so he put them aside for the Duke of Buckingham to read and to tell him what was in them.

  "I am not at all surprised at what your Majestic tells me," cried the King of England. "My subjects are the most unruly that ever poor prince was burdened with, and the men of London are the very worst. For years they rent my realm in pieces with bloody civil wars, wicked rebellions and the impudent government of Oliver Cromwell, and when their republican humor was spent they sent me a letter, begging my pardon for cutting off my father's head and asking me to be their king again ..." (The tall, pale king seemed about to speak, so the King of England hurried on.) "... It is
their damp, island climate which is chiefly to blame. The cold and the rain chills the guts and the brain and makes men first melancholy and then mad and then ungovernable. Madness is, as everybody knows, the English malady. But I have colonies, you know. A great many in the Indies and the Americas, and I have hopes that, in time, when all the philosophers and preachers and mad rogues have gone there, then nothing but good, obedient subjects will remain. Does your Majestic have colonies?"

  No, said the tall, pale king, he had none.

  "Then your Majestic should get some. Straightaway." The King of England leaned over and patted the pale king's hand. He was rewarded for this by a very small, very chilly smile.

  The pale king asked if it was difficult to make the troublesome subjects go there.

  "Oh, no," said the King of England, "they go of their own accord. That is the excellent thing about colonies."

  The King of England felt a little sorry for this sad, pale king. He seemed so young, so all alone in his great silent, starlit palace, with no ministers to advise him and no mistresses to comfort him. And besides, thought the King of England--as he took a glass of wine from a little silver tray and glanced up at the person who had brought it to him--his servants are so odd....

  Paramore remarked that in the past week nine separate persons had come to him. "Each of these men told me they had dreamt of seeing me hung. Faith! This king pokes about in this person's dream and that person's, but he can get no foothold."

  Trismegistus said something in reply, but it so happened that Paramore had that very day resolv'd to learn Hebrew (so that he might read Trismegistus's books of magic), and so he had no time just then to hear what the old man said.

  A little later Trismegistus said another thing, but once again Paramore did not listen to him. At the end of two hours Paramore look't up and discovered that Trismegistus was gone from the room, but in leaving it (and this was odd) he had knocked over two stools. Paramore went to look for the old man and found him lying on his bed with his eyes closed.

  "Mr. Trismegistus! Ah, sir, you should not have gone to sleep without me! I am your watchman, sir. The constable that preserves the good order of your dreams. Now, what's here?"

  Paramore said the spell and looked into the glass. Trismegistus stood before two black doors, each as broad as the world and as high as the heavens. Above them and beyond them was nothing but black wind and dead night and cold stars. These doors (which were more vast than anyone could conceive) began to open.... With a sudden scream Paramore flung the glass from him and it rolled away to rest in the dust beneath a broken sixpenny mirror.

  "Good morning, your Majestic!" cried Doktor Silberhof, her little silver spectacles dancing on their silver chain as she walked briskly up to the tall black throne. "They tell me that you have some news for me. And not before time."

  "The Jewish magician is dead, Doktor Silberhof. He died in his sleep last night."

  There was a pause for the Lord of Dreams and Nightmares to look quiet, composed, and full of grandeur, and for Doktor Silberhof to look merely puzzled.

  "And that's it, is it?" she asked.

  The Lord of Dreams and Nightmares gazed down at her from heights both literal and metaphoric. "Paramore, we pseudo-magician, must sleep soon and when he does ..."

  "But, your Majestic! Suppose that he does not!"

  "I shall not suppose any such thing, Doktor Silberhof. The pseudo-magician never yet, in all his life, denied himself any thing that he wish'd for."

  "But in the meantime, your Majestic ..."

  "In the meantime, Doktor Silberhof..." The Lord of Dreams and Nightmares smiled. "We wait."

  Three days later Mr. Newbolt's mother was washing his small, three-year-old hands with a warm, wet cloth. It was a summer's day in Lincolnshire and Mr. Newbolt stood in his mother's cool, shadowy kitchen. Through a bright, hot doorway he saw flowers, herbs, and sleepy, humming bees.

  Mr. Newbolt's maid was washing his shriveled, eighty-year-old legs. Mr. Newbolt lay in a bed in a silent, candlelit room in Friday-street. The maid straightened herself and put a hand to her aching back. In the other hand she held a warm, wet cloth.

  Mr. Newbolt knew dimly that one washing took place in the Dreame-Countries and one in the waking world, but as to which was which Mr. Newbolt neither knew nor cared.

  Mr. Newbolt dreamt that someone with a thin, anxious face came to see him and talked to him for a long while about a matter of great importance.

  "... and so what am I to do, sir?"

  "About what, John?" asked Mr. Newbolt.

  "King Morpheus," said Paramore.

  Mr. Newbolt considered this for a long while and then he said, "You have made him angry, John."

  "Yes, I know. But what can I do?"

  "Why," said Mr. Newbolt, "nothing that I know of. He talks of broken rules and robberies and insults (I hear him, John, in my dreams). I daresay he will pursue you to the ends of the earth and beyond ..."

  They sat in silence a while longer and then Mr. Newbolt said kindly, "You look a little pale, John. You are not well. Let Mary make you a posset."

  Paramore laughed a strange sort of laugh. "No, no, I am quite well."

  After this Mr. Newbolt appeared to fall asleep again (always supposing that he could truly have been said to have woken up in the first place), but just as Paramore was at the door, Mr. Newbolt roused. He said, "Were he only like his sister--what a difference that would make! For there never was such a sweet and gentle lady! I hear her footsteps, as she goes about the world. I hear the swish-swish-swish of her silken gown and the jingle-jangle of the silver chain about her neck. Her smile is full of comfort and her eyes are kind and happy! How I long to see her!"

  "Who, sir?" asked Paramore, puzzled.

  "Why, his sister, John. His sister."

  Outside in Friday-street a thin, cold rain was falling. Paramore looked up and saw a rough, country giant of a man walking toward him, wearing a curious hat which covered his eyes and which the man had apparently fashioned for himself out of old paper. Perhaps the man pushed against him, for Paramore (who had not slept all week) suddenly found that he was steadying himself against a wall. Just for a moment Paramore let his head rest against the wall, but as he did so he noticed that inside the red bricks there were tiny grains of golden sand....

  There was an orchard walled with rose red brick. Once the walls had been covered with roses, but it was winter now and all that was left was the thorns. There was grass; there were many apple trees. But grass and trees were all wintry now. In the mazy pattern of winter sunlight and blue shadows stood a pale king all dress't in black. His black arms were crossed. The toe of his black boot tapped upon the ground. He raised his head and look't at John Paramore....

  Paramore woke with a start. He walked very slowly back to Stopp't-Clock Yard. In that gray rain London seemed no more than the dream of a city and all the people in it ghosts. That evening someone came to Paramore and told him that Ralph Clerrihew (an Islington candlestick-maker whom Isaac had brought back out of dreams four weeks before) had disappeared from the face of the earth.

  On the next day (which was Wednesday), at three o'clock in the afternoon, Paramore was descending the staircase in the Jew's house in Stopp't-Clock Yard. At the first step he felt tired to death. At the second step he felt tired to death. At the third step he touched some particularly frail part of the wood and the staircase shuddered, letting fall cobwebs and dirt. Paramore looked up and saw, without surprise, tiny grains of golden sand falling into his face ...

  The next step was a barren orchard with a pale, smiling king.

  In that moment Lord Morpheus stole back a Mortlake laundress--the mother of four little ones. On Thursday, in the time it took for Paramore's eyes to close twice, Lord Morpheus took back a negro seaman and a famous prostitute named Mrs. Aphra Pytchley; on Friday it was a baby and an albino doll-maker from Wapping; and on Saturday a glove-maker and his wife. On Sunday Paramore fe
ll asleep for a full quarter of an hour, but Lord Morpheus took back no one at all. Paramore could only suppose that Morpheus meant it for a joke--to ape a greater divinity by resting on the Sabbath. But in none of Isaac's books was there the least hint that Morpheus knew how to make jokes.

  By the following Saturday in all the coffeehouses and taverns in London men vied with each other to tell the most grisly tales of the things that Paramore did to himself to keep himself awake. But even if these tales were true, then they did no good--for by the following Saturday Morpheus had taken back all the revenants but two.

  At the house in Stopp't-Clock Yard the dead Jewess went into her father's little closet, where all his books and powders were kept, and found Paramore slumped upon the ground, his head nodding between the pages of an open book.

  "Paramore!" she cried. "Get up!"

  Paramore got slowly to his feet.

  "I never knew a man could look so tired," she said.

  "Oh ... I am not tired. It is this house. It is so dark. It makes a man sleepy."

  "Then let us leave it instantly and go elsewhere! Where shall we go?"

  "Oh..." he began. But somehow he forgot what he wanted to say.

  "Paramore!" She took his face between her hands. "I was born in the Ghetto at Venice, where curious people come to look at the Jews. There I have seen great Spanish ladies, all dark and soft and glowing, like sunsets. Paramore, would not you like to see a lady the color of a Spanish garden on a summer's evening?"

  Paramore smiled a ghost of his crooked smile as it once had been. "I prefer women the color of English gardens on a winter's afternoon. That is my melancholy English humor."

  The dead Jewess laugh't and began to speak of English humors....

  There was an orchard walled with rose red brick, where a great multitude of birds had settled in the barren trees-- birds of the commonest sorts, blackbirds, mistle thrushes, robins, finches, and wrens. But something made them take fright and all flew away together. The pale king lifted his head and smiled. . . .

  "Paramore!" She struck his cheek with the flat of her hand and he started awake. She pushed him against the wall the better to hold him up. "You are every bit as clever as he. How will you fight him? How?"