Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams
Some of them have their heads on upside down. Some are hiding inside the bellies of others, thinking I won’t notice. Filing into the great hall, they line up abreast to intimidate me with their variety.
They’ve built themselves from everyday shapes: ovals, crescents, billowing sails, spindly legs. Some have beaks. Mostly the constructions are black, white, grey. The tallest one with the bulbous head and crescent horns is midnight blue. His single eye blinks. A red streaming smile floats beside him on the pale aura that accompanies them; it ripples like a backcloth, the pearly white of their fading infinity.
The midnight blue one speaks through the barred mouth of the skeleton nestled within his chest. All these sounds of childhood dreams contain or are contained. Inserted into other bodies, they’ve expanded from the inside, distorting their hosts too. Birds and fish and feathered eyes watch me from the deep layers, translucent, palimpsest, everything remembered and fused in ways I could never have imagined. The one with the haloed skull wears a headdress reminiscent of a tall ship. Perhaps it’s his intention to remind me of our panicked flight to this swampy coast.
Years ago I led them into the caverns below the fortress. They lived quietly for a time. Then they began to send the envoy who steps towards me now. This tall blue creature speaks through his chest skull, which itself contains a birdfish.
When will we be released into the outside world? the envoy asks me. His blinking eye says he won’t believe a word I say and so I don’t reply. I’ve learnt they’ll busy themselves if given enough uncertainty, which they interpret as hope. You told us we’d have more space here. That’s the only reason we agreed to exile.
It was true at the time, I say.
What changed you?
The fortress.
As we told you it would. And yet you must honour your promise, he says with pity that he doesn’t try to hide. We’re the dreams who come in peace. It’s so crowded in the vaults we’ve grown into each other to accommodate everyone. See how many of us have turned inside out or allowed ourselves to be swallowed, taken into another in the hope that through economy you’ll allow us to be reborn. One birth only, that’s all we ask.
One birth only? I think but don’t say. I know this trick. Creation isn’t singular but fractal.
We won’t be any trouble, the envoy says and the volume of his own voice seems to startle him. His twin horns grow until they almost touch. When he blinks his enormous eye, my chest constricts. Look how little space we take up. He nods at his fellow creatures. There must be room for a few of us up here while we gather our strength to sound the outside again. If we change any more, we won’t exist. We can’t be any more efficient with the space you allow us–
He pauses, caught in his lie by the vibration I send through the floor.
I no longer sleep at night. I hear them digging beneath the great hall; their sonic excavations dictate the rhythm of my thought. I don’t know how but they’re also digging out whatever material lies above my fortress. I’m certain I once knew what lay beyond. Sometimes I’m afraid it’s nothing. When times are bad I’m afraid it’s a weight I can’t bear, that I’ve already been buried alive and these diplomatic missions are the sounds of my dying breaths.
Once we were legion, the envoy says.
It occurs to me that these beseeching visits don’t reflect reality. He and his fellows might still be legion. How would I know? I haven’t ventured into the vaults since I installed them there. Certainly the enveloping excavations suggest a great number of these composite creatures. Have I misunderstood? Are they not starving into submission, but preparing to overwhelm me?
Now we’re too few to break down your walls. The envoy makes a great show of turning his horned head to every aspect of my crumbling great hall and I know I’m right. The stone walls are seamed with new mortar but cracks open every day. The problem lies with the ground and the envoy knows it. These creatures hold up the vaults with their timeless resonance. Swampy ground is no place for tunnelling. I knew it when I set sail; the whole enterprise is finite. I’d hoped for a little longer, though my days are empty, and I believe, but have no way to check, that my body’s rhythms have altered to take account of the darkness and inactivity.
All we can do is ask politely, again, the envoy says. But polite you don’t hear.
I dismiss them with the back of my hand.
Us again, says the one whose elephant ears are composed of expanding galaxies. The fish on the tip of his beard arches and flips, hooked through the cheek by wiry hair. He smiles and I sense a change in my fortunes. They’re desperate. The elephant one is the accumulation of my oldest hopes. Before he says another word he begins to cry shrill tears. As each one drops it melts the rock back into magma. He hops around the dissolving ground until the horned blue one tugs his elephant ear. The fish on the end of his beard flips violently then falls still; its eyes glaze and, temporarily numbed, he stops crying. The tall blue envoy speaks again.
We haven’t long left. We’re economising out of existence. We can’t make ourselves fit your conditions of purpose and utility.
The elephant-eared one wriggles free and blurts, We don’t know what we are any longer, we’re just one mixed up dream, too indistinct to be realised. All our colours have cancelled each other out. Our shapes have knocked the edges off of others. Soon we’ll be liquid, if you don’t let us expand just a little. That’s all we ask.
He yelps and runs from the hall. The blue envoy waits, to establish his dignity in contrast, then leads the remaining host out in solemn procession.
The next day, when I know they’re sleeping, I flood the vaults. I’m thrilled by both the planning and execution. It’s years since I felt my strength and power in action. It’s almost enough to prompt me into gathering us all to return, if only to feel myself grow in response to commanding the ship. But I scuttled our battered vessel on the river beach after we arrived. Watery time will have done for it now.
Some of the creatures survive the flood and come again to the great hall, where the water spurts from the holes made by the elephant one’s tears. Perhaps I miscalculated the depth, or the vindictive blue one has found a way to close off the lower vaults and force the deluge up to wash around my feet. He has only a small, blurred cadre with him now. The elephant one has gone and I feel the absence of his sound by the shortness of my breath. I thought he was indestructible. I thought he would be with me forever, might even survive me. The tarnished throne on which I sit wobbles. The dais is breaking into jagged slabs.
The blue one says, We’re nothing but vapour now and I can see you’re glad the burden of us has gone. But we haven’t gone. Being vapour we can go anywhere. We’ve been released from your dreams to drift into someone new, someone about to become a child. We’re gone from you but we’ll condense into waves again and grow. We’ll become new shapes and colours, regain our sounds and rhythms. But not for you. You waited too long. We’re someone else’s dreams now, sounds being born with the cry that heralds the last days of your keep.