Perchance To Dream

by Holly Newman

  Perchance to Dream, a Short Story

  Copyright © 2013 by Holly Thompson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover art and graphics by ADKDesigns.biz

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  COVER

  COPYRIGHT

  PERCHANCE TO DREAM

  A NOTE FROM HOLLY

  Clear, coruscating blue rippled before his eyes. Silky, cool water slid over his skin. He inhaled deeply and smelled salt, sand, and seaweed. The scents mingled, creating a rich, exotic perfume when they should have reminded him of the docks.

  He turned over, the movement languid and sensuous. The sky, a lighter blue streaked with shafts of crystalline light, lay above. There, to the right! A flash of iridescent green fin and a swirl of auburn hair. At last! He rolled over again, filling his lungs before kicking his feet and pulling his hands through the strange ether, this breathable ocean. Ahead, flashes of iridescent fin darted through darker green seaweed forests and played amid bright schools of fish.

  As surely as if there existed a tether joining him to this siren of the waves, joining them body to body, soul to soul, he was drawn forward. Slowly he gained upon his playful quarry. Smiling, he conjured images of that lithe, beautiful body in his arms. His hands tingled. He kicked harder.

  A black shadow passed over him dimming the ocean to a murky blue. The playful schools of fish darted left, fleeing before the shadow. He looked up. It was not the shadow of a passing boat. It was within the water, a great roiling inky blackness. It dove down between him and his quarry and a living miasma of hate enveloped him, dragging at his mind and muscles. Fear clawed at his gut. He turned to escape.

  Too late!

  A black wave smashed against him. He tumbled backward, his left shoulder scraping against jagged coral spires. The black wave came again, angry and churning. Looming larger, it picked him up out of the water, out of his beautiful haven, out of the water, and threw him onto the rocky shore.

  "No!" he yelled.

  The bed sheets caught between his legs as he tried to swim away. His arms stroked wildly sending the lantern on the bedside table crashing to the wide wood-plank floor. The mosquito netting surrounding the bed tore from its pinnings and gave a soft sigh as it engulfed him.

  "Sir! Are you all right?" His valet shuffled into the bedchamber from his adjoining apartment. Holding his tallow candle high, he stared down in horror at The Honorable Andrew Montrose.

  Otis Reed's shrill nasal voice pierced Andrew's consciousness between dreaming and waking. He stopped thrashing and opened his eyes. He stared at the mosquito netting. Looking through the gauzy fabric reminded Andrew of looking through breathable blue ether. He rolled over on his elbow. "Damnation," he said, drawing out the word as he ran a hand through his thick, mahogany-colored hair. It felt dry. Surely it couldn't be dry. It had been too real! But dry it was, as was the rest of his body.

  "I was dreaming again," he said flatly.

  "So it would seem." His valet's voice shook, his rheumy pale blue eyes opened wide in fright.

  Andrew ripped the mosquito netting away, looked over at Reed and frowned. "T'was but a dream, man. What is the matter?"

  But he knew. The Caribbean island plantation staff feared he was going mad, while the islanders whispered that he'd been ensorcelled by Merfolk. But for him, it was just a dream. That's all it ever was. Damn.

  Yet his left shoulder ached and stung.

  He swung his feet over the edge of the bed, stood up, rolled his aching shoulder, and walked to the sideboard. He tried to remember what he had done yesterday to account for the pain. He'd spent the day in the estate office. Nothing unusual about that. On the island one day passed much like the last. Only the dreams lived.

  He poured himself a glass of port then turned again to face his man who stood quivering by the bed, a hare about to bolt. "Well?"

  "Was it the same, sir? The . . . the same as last time?" Reed chewed on the knuckle of his scrawny index finger.

  "Yes, or nearly enough," Andrew answered, rubbing his left shoulder. The lingering shoulder pain was new. And the hate. He felt the hate like a caul over him that he couldn't shake off.

  "Same as the time before that?" Reed persisted. He shuffled forward a bare step.

  "Yes, and before you ask, the same as the time before that, too," he said, irritated by his valet's fear.

  He lifted his glass and drank the port in one swallow. The dreams were all the same. Or near enough. They had started within weeks of his arrival at the Earl of Rice's sugar cane plantation. Each night added a piece more to the dream; and each night that damn black wave also came and pushed him out of the water and out of the dream.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The repetitive aspects of the dream were not something he wished to contemplate. To do so would make them real, and he was not ready for that reality. To do so questioned his sanity. And he was sane, dammit! He may well be the disreputable villain his father claimed him to be; however, he was sane!

  They were just . . . dreams.

  Otis Reed licked his thin lips and shuffled forward another step. "The islanders say they have marked you."

  Andrew snorted as he turned to refill his port glass.

  "The Merfolk, sir. The islanders say you've been marked by the Merfolk."

  "I've heard the tales, Reed." He paced the room. "Merfolk?" He dismissively shook his head at his manservant's fears; yet he wondered, and feared, and hoped. "Superstitious fools!" he said instead. "We are Englishmen. We do not listen to babbling superstitious people."

  "But, sir!"

  "There is no but, Reed." Again he absently massaged his shoulder, then he sighed. "Dawn is not far away. Since I'm awake I might as well start the day. Fetch me a tray."

  "Certainly, sir." Reed bowed then edged backward out of the room, pausing by the massive tiled hearth to light a branch of candles before shuffling out.

  As the door closed behind him, Andrew set down his port glass on the sideboard. He pulled off his night shirt, flung it down on the bed, then backed up to a mirror hanging between two windows to see if he could see anything wrong with his left shoulder.

  The shoulder was purpling in places as if he had fallen against rock. Gingerly he reached across his chest to touch the afflicted area with this right hand. His fingertips traced scraped skin and a smattering of new scabs. The area was tender to the touch, as one might expect from a new injury.

  He glared at his own flesh, willing the scrapes and bruises to disappear. When they didn't he lowered his arm.

  "Damn. 'Tis not possible!" he breathed. "Merfolk!" He turned abruptly from the mirror. "Bah! Superstitious nonsense!"

  He walked back to the sideboard to pick up his port glass. This time he noticed a fine tremble in his hand.

  Andrew steered his sailboat toward the secluded cove. He'd sailed by the cove many times in the past and each time he'd felt drawn to its sheltered waters. But he'd not dared approach the cove for he knew a coral reef with jagged spikes that could rip the hull of a boat protected the area. He still wouldn't have ventured here if he hadn't fallen into conversation with an island fisherman mending his net. They discussed the island's shoreline, its sailing pleasures, and its dangers. When Andrew mentioned wanting to sail into this cove the old man t
old him of a break in the coral large enough for a small craft to pass through. But he warned that the coral was not the cove's only danger.

  "Merfolk, they live around there. Best you sail on by."

  Merfolk!

  He hadn't had the dream in a month, but not a day went by that he did not remember it, relive parts in his mind. Sailing into this cove where the locals believed Merfolk existed would surely break the dream's hold on his mind.

  It was almost dawn. He had just enough light to find the landmarks the old man mentioned and line up his boat with them. Looking into the clear water he saw the coral reef and found its break. A small craft could fit through, though barely.

  He sailed cleanly into the cove. He looked back toward the coral fortress walls he'd passed between, then turned to look at the cove.

  And found her!

  Dreams and reality collided. She sat in the shallows, combing her hair with long methodical strokes, hair that fell about her like a veil. Her hair glowed where it floated in the water.

  She looked up at him, her pink bow-shaped lips lifting in a brief smile, a shy recognition of his existence, then she returned to her task. Her eyes remained downcast, but he knew she was as aware of him as he was of her.

  He gripped the boat's railing. In the soft dawn light her pale beauty ethereally shimmered, reminding him of fairy tales and legends and why knights fought for their ladies. She epitomized dreams turned to reality, of a future that might exist separate from the past. A part of him savored her discovery, for she represented a magical release from all that had gone on before, and a lodestone for the future.

  Part of him feared he experienced a waking sleep . . .or a mind gone mad.

  The boat drifted toward a rocky shore. Quickly he lowered the sails and turned toward the stern of the boat to throw out and set the anchor. He hadn't sailed carefully between coral walls just to founder his boat on the rocks.

  What should he do? How did a man address a dream woman? A creature of fantasy? My God, a Mermaid!

  He would address her as he would any other woman he wished to impress. He'd hail her, introduce himself, and treat her with courtly manners and respect. This delicate, beautiful creature deserved no less.

  He turned back to her, but she'd vanished.

  "No!" He clasped the boat's mahogany railing. "Don't disappear! Dammit, where are you?" He searched for her on the shore and in the water, but he saw only the eternal waves lapping the worn rocks on the shore.

  "I won't hurt you. I just wish to talk to you," he called out. Still, she did not appear.

  "Damn!" He quickly pulled off his shoes, tore off his vest, then climbed onto the railing and dove cleanly into the water.

  Everything had a strange familiarity.

  He swam toward the shore, searching the shallows for her. He crawled over and around all the rocks, ran up and down the rocky shore, then examined the steep cliffs that surrounded the cove, searching for stairs or caves, searching for some explanation for her disappearance.

  Searching for some evidence of her existence.

  It was as if she had been only an extension of his dreams and reality returned to remembered wisps of dreams.

  He asked about her at the plantation, in town, and among others on the island; but no one knew any woman, or creature, that might answer his description. But his questions set island tongues wagging. Otis Reed's voice took on a shriller note whenever he addressed Andrew, the house servants wouldn't look at him when he gave them orders or they served him food, and the field hands balked at working in the cane fields nearest the sea.

  On Sunday he walked down to the free market. It was the one day of the week the island slaves could call their own. They could buy and sell goods freely and keep whatever profits they achieved.

  He asked everyone he passed about the woman in the cove. They all shied away from him, from this crazy white man who had dealings with Merfolk. Only the oldest plantation slave, chewing pieces of splintered sugarcane as he sat by his goods at the Sunday free market, nodded.

  "You be cursed to see the Merfolk," he said, then he crossed himself and muttered a prayer under his breath.

  "Cursed?" Andrew repeated.

  The gray-grizzled old man sagely nodded. "Dey say to see a Merfolk, a man he be destined to die by the sea. Dat what dey do say, young mastah," he explained. "You best be stayin' away from dat cove if you be valuin' your life."

  Which was all the more reason for him to return to the cove, for he didn't value his life.

  Merfolk. Creatures of legends and fantasy. Hell, he needed a bit of fantasy in his life, he'd decided. And the Caribbean islands proved an appropriate locale.

  Occasionally thereafter he caught glimpses of her in what he'd come to think of as their rocky cove. But he saw her only at dawn, and only at water's edge.

  She appeared, like him, to relish her solitude. After the first time, he never attempted to intrude on her, nor she on him; though he felt certain she remained as aware of him as he was of her.

  There were no more dreams of roiling black waves; however, he still occasionally dreamed of the water. But now he dreamed through alien eyes. He dreamed of sinuously swimming with dolphins and sitting amongst schools of brightly colored fish. He even saw his boat and himself as if from in the water looking up. His dreams carried a sense of freedom and playfulness such that he had never imagined possible.

  Yet they also carried an air of unremitting sadness.

  Strangely, the more he had these new dreams and the more he sensed this otherworldly sadness in his dreams, the more content he grew with his situation in life. He no longer pined for England or desired its feverish gaiety.

  The white quill pen clinked against the inside of the glass inkwell as the Honorable Andrew Montrose, third son of the Earl of Rice dipped his pen then pulled it out. He smiled as he copied the new sugar production records into the master ledger. The scratching of the quill against the paper sounded unnaturally loud; but for all that, soothing in the afternoon stillness. Again, he dipped the pen in the ink.

  He added a column of numbers to verify the amount he'd entered, then he laid down his pen and leaned back in the hard wooden chair he'd drawn up before the scared old clerk's desk that stood in the center of the plantation office. Behind him stood tall wooden cabinets filled with leather-bound account books recording over seventy years of plantation history. Along the doorway wall at his right a long, narrow table held a platter of fresh fruit, and branches of gutted candles testified to the many hours Andrew spent in this room. Wide, curtainless windows predominated the walls in front of him and to his left that afforded him views of the rolling cane fields in the distance.

  Though plain and practical in its furniture arrangement, the office suited him. At some time in the last three years he'd decided he didn't miss the fancy silks and damasks of London, or any other part of that life he'd led before coming to the Caribbean island. After three years on the island, three years since he'd left London's tawdry gaiety, he'd finally found contentment with life. Not the contentment he'd once thought necessary, but another deeper contentment that filled the soul as well as the mind.

  In three years the plantation sugar production and export in muscovado, the coarse brownish sugar product and in the semi-refined clayed sugar had increased fourfold. They now captured the sugar of molasses, a by-product of the milling processes, and sold that besides operating their own distillery for rum. In addition, the plantation slaves were healthy and well fed, each having a plot of land for provisioning and for them to sell the excess harvests at the Sunday free market.

  A chilling breeze ruffled the pages of the ledger and stirred his mind from contemplation. The room felt suddenly cool and it was only the beginning of October. He looked out the broad row of office windows. Dark clouds gathered in the east. A storm threatened. He might need a fire laid in this evening and the shutters closed. He rose from his chair and turned to grab his serviceable brown fustian jacket from where he'd casually tos
sed it that morning on top of one of the tall cabinets. He slipped his arms into the sleeves and shrugged the comfortably fitted jacket across his broad shoulders, something he could not have done himself if he still wore the tightly fitted jackets he'd favored during his London days.

  He sat down again, straightened his plain white shirt cuffs, then picked up the pen and leaned forward to add another column of numbers.

  "Excuse me, sir."

  Lemuel Tauton, the estate agent, sounded aggrieved, a normal sound coming from him when he perceived someone had thwarted him. Well accustomed to hearing the tone and understanding its implications on his time, Andrew held up his hand to stem the estate agent's interruption until he could finish adding the column.

  Satisfied he'd summed the numbers correctly, he turned in his chair to look at the little estate agent. "What is it, Tauton?" he asked. He leaned back and stretched one leg out in front of him.

  Tauton grasped his hands together at his waist, his torso tipping forward. "Excuse me, my lord, but the Bonnie Marie, a merchant vessel from England, docked this morning."

  "What? Direct from England?" Andrew straightened. "The captain risked a hurricane season crossing? Why?"

  "I cannot say, sir," Tauton replied, the aggrieved tone back in his voice. He unclasped his hands and balled them into fists. "But a cabin boy is here with a packet of papers for you. He says he must personally deliver them to you, the impertinent whelp. He refuses to recognize me as your deputy in all affairs here."

  "Enough!" Andrew cut in. His hand sliced the air, halting the little man's grievances.

  Tauton blinked and rocked back on his heals as if reeling from a punch.

  Andrew shook his head, but let good humor color his tone, jollying the estate agent. "I'm certain the boy has merely mistook his orders. But we must commend him for his fortitude in the face of your displeasure. Send the boy in."