Metronome

by Oliver Langmead

  My notebook feels unimportant now.

  I know I should do something. Find some way to stop her. But here, before her, I have no answers. I am no Sleepwalker – I do not know how to deliberately conjure my dream. I cannot fight or wake June. I cannot fulfil March’s last order.

  The bright young dreamer before me shakes her head. ‘I still owe you, after everything,’ she says. ‘I’m going to go ashore, but I’m not going to wake you again. That was cruel of me. So I’m going to have you put back into your cell, and you can spend the rest of your dream in peace.’ She steps forward, and with one finger pressed against my chin, gently lifts my head. For a moment I believe that she is going to kiss me again, but she does not. ‘You were handsome,’ she says, ‘when you were young.’

  I find my voice at last. ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why do you want to release a nightmare king?’

  This causes laughter in the young Sleepwalker. ‘A nightmare king? Is that what March told you? It’s not a nightmare king, William. That’s not why I’m here.’

  Another realisation dawns on me. It is a tentative realisation, I am sure, but… it would mean that my last bizarre encounter with Thyme would make a lot more sense. Maybe his story was not just a story. Maybe it was his way of warning me about what really lies at the heart of Solomon’s Storm, imprisoned here. I was afraid, before, afraid of the idea that I might be responsible for something as terrible as the release of an ancient nightmare. But this might be so much worse.

  ‘Is it…’ I try, ‘… the Seven Satans?’

  June’s eyes widen in surprise. ‘You’ve spoken to the prophet?’ she asks. ‘Oh, William. You are so wonderful. You keep surprising me. You’re close, but you’re not quite right. They’re not called “Satans”. You must have misheard, or maybe he was telling you a different version of the story. They’re the “Seven Sorrows”. And all seven of them aren’t imprisoned here. Just one. What else did he tell you?’

  ‘The prophet? You mean Thyme?’

  June plays with the golden rings around her fingers as she remembers. ‘It took me a long time to find him. There used to be hundreds of liars. You can find stories about them in some of the old books. They were great, once – they shaped dreams with their stories, turning tales into beliefs. But one by one they were killed off. All except Thyme. The last liar. And it’s very difficult indeed to find a liar who doesn’t want to be found. But I persevered, for the sake of curiosity – the same curiosity that drove me to see what caused the marble beaches of Petra. I’m no nightmare-hunter, William. I’m more of a… historian.

  ‘The thing about liars is that they understand how to craft the perfect lie. They understand that silly things like admitting to a lie doesn’t matter. People will still believe, all the same. But liars also understand that in order for a lie to work, it’s best to plant the seeds of truth in it. Enough that the lie will feel real. And it’s because of this odd paradox – that a good lie must contain some truth – that made the liars brilliant archivists. Nobody hoarded knowledge and rumours like they did. Which, I hope you understand, is why I sought Thyme out. Not for his lies, but for the ancient truths buried in the lies he tells.’

  June smiles at her memory. ‘I found him, and he told me such a brilliant lie. Such an amazing, incredible lie. The truth of it was obvious.

  ‘He told me that when our world was yet to be born, when there was nothing but the endless dark sea, where lord Vishnu slept, curled up in the coils of the great serpent Ananta-Shesha, that Vishnu dreamed the first of our dreams. And before lord Vishnu was awoken – when the lotus was still only a green shoot, rising from His belly – He heard the sound that would be our cycle, the great Ohm, and lord Vishnu turned in His sleep. He was moved greatly by the Ohm. And as lord Vishnu dreamed, He wept seven tears for the beauty of that sound, and those seven tears dropped from His cheeks, and rolled over the coils of Ananta-Shesha, and dripped into the endless dark ocean, which was a sea of dreams. Seven tears – seven sorrows – which joined the first dream, and took on shapes. Seven sorrows that still endure, now. Sorrows from the dawn of our world.’

  For a few moments our eyes meet, and it feels almost conspiratorial between us. Two dreamers having shared versions of the same tale. The differences between them are vast, but the similarities are obvious. The grain of truth in Thyme’s lies is apparent.

  ‘He said something similar to me,’ I tell her.

  She looks out over the island. The yellow beach is close.

  ‘One of them is imprisoned here,’ she tells me. ‘All the clues are there for anyone to find, if they know what they’re looking for.

  ‘Solomon said that it was a nightmare he couldn’t defeat, so he built a cage for it out of fear. But you and I know the truth, William. Maybe it is a nightmare, or maybe it isn’t. But the fact is that whatever is imprisoned here is a piece of God. An actual piece of God from the creation of our world, for anyone to meet.’ When she turns back to me, her eyes are agleam. ‘I’m going to see God,’ she says, and then she rushes across to me and embraces me tightly.

  I do not return the gesture.

  When she releases me, June smiles. ‘When I come back, I’ll tell you what it looks like. Try to stay asleep.’ With a gentle thump, the Driftwood meets the sand of the beach and comes to a stop. I glance out at the trees before us and feel a great lump in my throat. I know that I cannot let June open the prison on this island. I know that the version of the tale Thyme told me was not brilliant, but terrifying. ‘God’s own nightmares’, he said.

  I know that I have to stop her. But I am powerless.

  June calls for someone to take me back to my cell. Then she addresses her crew. ‘I’m going out,’ she says. ‘Dust has command while I’m gone. I shouldn’t be long.’ She waves to me as I am led away, and I am unable to bring myself to return the gesture. I am frightened of her – frightened of what she might do. Worse, I can do nothing to stop her. I am a useless old man. I feel the strength of my youth slowly ebbing away, and as I am led through the low tree corridors of the Driftwood, I feel my hands tingling with affliction.

  *

  Back in my overgrown cell, I watch my hands twitch.

  The thing about getting old is that it is very difficult to notice. There is no one day when you wake up and think to yourself, ‘I am an elderly man now. I should stop doing all the things I was doing when I was young.’ Instead, the things you take for granted begin to slowly get harder, until they become impossible.

  I watch the rivers and valleys that are the map of my hands until movement from the other cell rouses me from my self-pity. I see Slint, half in shadow. He appears to be watching me. There is a set of white stitches across his belly where he has repaired himself. I frown, finding that I am no longer afraid of the nightmare diver.

  I feel powerless.

  After Lily died, I became obsessed with the place where she passed away. I drove the A9 until I knew every yard of it, and I parked up beside the dented barrier where it happened, sifting through the remaining broken glass like an oracle trying to interpret the fall of the bones. As days passed, rain washed the worst away, and men came to repair the barrier and sweep up the last bits of glass, until all traces of her death were gone. It always bothered me how easy it was for the site to return to its former state – just another layby between Perth and Pitlochry – as if it had no significance at all.

  I dreamed about coming to rescue her.

  I sailed over Scotland in my old patchwork boat. The whole country was flooded with water deep enough to settle above the highest buildings, but everything beneath the waterline was perfectly preserved – there were no fish, and no seaweed to distort the view. From my vantage in my little home-made sailboat, I could see the grass moving with the currents, and the A9 itself, populated with cars missing their drivers.

  I followed the road, holding my patchwork boat together with will alone, and I sailed all the way from Perth to the point I h
ad memorised while awake. There, I could see below me the thick traffic, and the collision – the result of an attempted overtake gone wrong. The broken glass from the cars reflected the sunshine, and so did Lily’s white dress – a beacon showing me where she lay across the bonnet of her broken vehicle.

  Removing my shoes, I dived into the water. Like a pearl-diver, I held my breath until my lungs burned, and I kicked until I reached her, and took her in my arms, and launched myself from the wreckage of her car, with bubbles trailing. I dragged her into my boat, gasping for air and praying that there was still life left in her. But she was already gone. It was the crash that killed her. I held her in my arms, pawing at her face as if I might put the life back into her, and waited there until my dream faded, and I woke, helpless and alone.

  My dreams continued, night after night, and I was always too late to save her.

  Inscribed into my wrist is the heart for Lily; it looks as fresh as the day it was first done. I remember those itchy, stinging nights afterwards, when she would soothe my skin with kisses, as if she was sealing her love into the scar as it healed.

  I never could save Lily in my dream. But this is different.

  I clench my fist and watch the heart stretch.

  Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I do have some strength, in dreaming. Not the power of a Sleepwalker, but the power of my youth. All the wanderlust and heady carelessness, that apparent immortality. I am not sure if I can face June, but sitting here ruminating is not going to do anything. What good is it if I do not even try?

  ‘Slint,’ I say, standing, keeping my voice quiet so that the crew outside do not hear me.

  There is no response.

  I try again. ‘Slint. We need to do something about June. Do you think you could break us out of here somehow?’ I try to think, to consider what possible advantages we might have. ‘Maybe… maybe we could get to the prison before she does. I think I saw it from the air. There’s a silver building at the top of the island. And maybe June doesn’t know what she’s looking for. Maybe it won’t show up on her compass. And maybe if we get there first, we could set a trap, or…’

  Slint is impassive, a dark statue.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ I ask him, remembering that moment back on the Smog when he subdued an entire ship full of nightmares. What does Slint have to fear, here? Not other nightmares, and certainly not any dreamers. What is stopping him? The Sleepwalker? ‘June’s gone,’ I tell him. ‘She’s not on board any more. She said she was going ashore alone, and that was a while ago now. There are no Sleepwalkers here to—’

  And like I have flipped a switch in him, Slint moves. With terrible ease, he thumps up to the bamboo bars of his cell and crushes them between his gauntlets. Splinters rain down around him, and the ship groans as if wounded. I stumble back as he lumbers across and tears the bars of my own cell apart, snapping them as easily as if they were twigs.

  I grab the case of my violin.

  Two bearded crewmen rush through, carrying heavy-looking wooden batons. They both stop short when the Slint turns towards them. ‘Oh, shit!’ says one, and, ‘Get back into your cell!’ says the other, but the fright etched into each of their faces is clear.

  Slint’s helmet slowly rotates from one crewman to the other, taking them in with that pit of a porthole; a black pupil set into a gigantic metal eye. He reaches up to his helmet.

  The first crewman runs at him brandishing his baton, and with one casual but almighty shove Slint throws that man bodily against a wall, where he bursts apart in the dust of awakening. The other crewman simply stands, frozen in terror, as Slint unclasps the porthole in his helmet. I hear the hideous creaking as its rusty hinges swing back.

  From within Slint’s porthole comes something… dark.

  Black tentacles, or black spider legs, or some kind of black effluence, leaks into the air, and as it exits, his suit begins to deflate. And where glistening wet tentacles might reflect the light, this blackness does nothing of the sort. It is difficult to look at because there is nothing for my eyes to see. It is a virulent darkness – an abyssal blackness – and as Slint’s suit diminishes and lolls onto the floor in a useless heap, the nightmare’s true form unfolds itself and fills the room, expanding like ink through water.

  It devours the light.

  A low moan escapes the mouth of the remaining crewman. Like a rushing of sentient water, tentacles of darkness lash out and wrap themselves around him, choking and crushing. I do not see his ultimate fate, because that same dark fills the room, and then the corridor outside, removing all vision, until there is only me – stumbling in the stifling quiet – up against my cell’s orange lamp.

  I grasp for the lamp, and notice for the first time that there is a bulbous insect trapped inside, with its tail casting a glow. Tentatively I step back out and into the room.

  There lies Slint’s empty suit, like the discarded skin of a snake. I make my way nervously around it and into the Driftwood’s low corridor, glancing to and fro. My lamp barely casts enough light to see by, as if Slint’s darkness is a thick thing filling the ship like liquid.

  I need to find a way out, an escape. But first I need to return to the ship’s bridge. There might be something important there that June chose to leave behind.

  The walls around me are groaning mournfully, and the corridors I navigate are dark and empty. I catch flickers of recoiling darkness at the corner of my eye everywhere, retreating from my little lamp. There are no crew, only the remains of their dreaming – repair-work left unfinished, a table thrown aside, lamps without insects.

  I can hear screams cut short, but they sound distant. The Driftwood is shuddering around me, as if it has swallowed a dark pill that it is unable to spit out.

  After far too long in the dark, I finally find the bridge. By now bits of wood are falling, and I can see gaps in the canopy. The bridge is as empty as the rest of the ship – its occupants having awakened – and the dazzling set of windows at its nose are black, as if they have been painted with oil. I head across to June’s desk, where I fumble through drawers until I find what I came here for. March’s compass. I brandish it, with relief. She was confident enough to just leave it here.

  ‘You!’

  A grating voice from behind me. Quickly, I pocket the compass and back away.

  Holding my lamp aloft, I can just about make out the shape of Dust. Eerie tentacles of dark lick at him, but he shrugs them off as he advances. The canopy above us is cracking apart, and shards of light fall across his rocky shoulders. ‘You broke my ship!’ he roars. ‘This is your fault!’

  I glance around in panic, looking for a way to escape, and there, so slender, is a slit of light between two of the hull’s trees. I run across, dropping my lamp and noticing in horror how the glow of it is snuffed instantly. The gap between the trees is shuddering and leaking water. Without another glance back, I try and squeeze through.

  I can hear the thumping of Dust as he vaults across the bridge, but with one great heave I slip beyond and splash into the sea.

  The light outside is almost blinding. I am in the shallows here; my feet touch sand. I make loping steps, running as quickly as I can until I am free of the water.

  The Driftwood looks as if it is imploding. From the outside it is like a dying beached whale, its nose buried in the sand. I catch glimpses of tentacle-like flickers of darkness between gaps in the hull, and shudder, even in the bright warmth of the tropical sun. The Sleepwalker’s submarine slowly sinks as I run.

  From among the ruins lumbers a flailing rocky shape. Dust has freed itself.

  Throwing branches and ruined roots aside, Dust pulls itself to its feet and clatters onto the beach. For a moment, I am afraid that it is going to rush me, but then, something else emerges from the ruins of the submarine behind it, stopping it short.

  Emerging from the sea, salty waves splashing against his helmet, is Slint, back in his suit. Bits of trees collide uselessly against him as he strides from the waters, advan
cing towards the stone nightmare with his same casual stride.

  I can feel my heart beating in my chest. I am not sure if I should help, or if I can.

  One enormous stone fist is launched towards Slint. It meets the nightmare diver in his stomach. But instead of slamming against something solid, it slaps against the rubber, and the suit seems to mould itself around the blow. The nightmare inside that diving suit is not a thing of flesh and blood and bone, and there is nothing to break. Slint barely stumbles. And then Slint raises his gauntlets and retaliates.

  He pulls off one of the rocky nightmare’s pebble arms. He kicks out with a boot and the stone nightmare’s leg is smashed into bits of rock. Limb after limb, Dust is disassembled. As Slint casually pulls the rocky nightmare’s lower jaw from its chiselled face, the whole mess of it crumbles away around his heavy boots. Dust is banished.

  The fight is over, and Slint shakes his gauntlets twice to clear them of dust before raising one to his closed black porthole protectively, to shade it against the sunlight.

  ‘Slint…’ I say, finding my voice.

  His helmet swivels around towards me. Behind him, the ruins of the Driftwood are bobbing around and gathering on the shore.

  It worries me that somewhere out there is someone capable of dreaming Slint.

  ‘We should go,’ I tell him. ‘While we still have time.’

  And at this, he finally gives me a response. His free gauntlet rises, slowly as if he were swimming under water. The tip of his forefinger meets the tip of his thumb to form a loop, fingers splayed behind.

  Okay, he is telling me. Okay.

  Solomon's Eye

  The edge of the jungle is thick and impenetrable. With my feet sinking into sand, I search the island’s beaches for a way through. In this manner, I eventually mount a rocky outcrop, and behold the landing site of the crippled Metronome.

  There are cogs and gears and spars of wood like giant splinters being washed up everywhere. And at the end of a massive furrow ploughed through the sands is the bulk of the wreck: the shredded, glittering edges of what was once a clockwork skyship. Though it is no more than a shape now, like a crushed and beaten clock, I can still see the edge of a golden wing at its buried nose, bent upwards and heralding the rest of the Metronome’s figurehead: the fallen phoenix.