stroked her cheek. His gaze never wavered as he said, “It’s like a fairy tale, Dream, though not of the sanitized, storybook variety. I’m a King. King of this place.” His arm swept away from her in an all-inclusive gesture she supposed was meant to indicate his home and the surrounding mountain region. “But I was a lonely King, A tired, sad old King.
A King who had grown weary of life, weary of existence itself. Then, on a dark night full of magic, a miracle happened, a Queen arrived at the King’s door.”
Dream swallowed hard. It was hard not to be entranced by King’s words. What woman wouldn’t enjoy being likened to a fairy-tale queen?
She smiled. “But how can a King be a King without subjects to rule?”
The vaguest wisp of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, but there are subjects. A great many of them, in fact. I want you to take a trip with me, Dream. A great journey. Are you up to that?”
She nodded, murmured against his chest.
“Good.” He kissed her mouth. “Now I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“I need you to close your eyes, Dream. Close them and imagine yourself far away from here. Envision yourself floating on a cloud, weightless, insubstantial, a free spirit soaring high above the earth. Glory in that freedom, Dream, revel in it.”
She closed her eyes.
She listened to his voice, let herself be captivated by the imagery it described.
At first what she was experiencing was very similar to the kind of visualizations therapists had tried on her as a way to reduce stress. Her mind filled with an image like the one King described. She was high above the ground, soaring through the clouds over East Tennessee. She was a nude figure, a winged goddess, an image worthy of fantasy tales. It was nice. Soothing. Relaxing. A great way to escape the mess she’d made of her life. And King’s droning, sensuous voice only magnified the sense of exhilaration. Still, she was always aware of it as an exercise- while she swooped over mountains in her mind she nonetheless remained conscious of the mattress beneath her, of King’s arm around her, of the shifting of logs in the fireplace.
But then an astonishing thing happened.
The tactile reality of the mattress began to fade. The crackle of fire dimmed, then was gone. She had a sense of falling…
… of plummeting from a great height. …
Then she felt the wind on her face, buffeting her hair and caressing her body like the ephemeral hand of God. She opened her eyes, looked down, and her mouth opened in a silent scream. A green carpet of treetops was rushing to meet her. What happened next was reflex. She flexed her arms, turned her gaze heavenward, and soared back toward the clouds. She entered the swirling white mist, continued moving upward, and emerged above the clouds. She continued up, up, up. She knew if she kept going she would pass through the earth’s atmosphere and enter the icy blackness of space. The prospect initially frightened her, but intuition told her she would be fine. Nothing could hurt her. Especially not the lack of oxygen she didn’t need in this form.
So she kept going.
Slipping the bonds of the tarnished planet that was her home. Earth receded behind her, shrinking to a globe the size of a basketball. She circled the moon, her mouth open in awe as she surveyed the gray, rocky landscape familiar from old NASA films. She swooped back toward earth and hovered above it, raised her arms over her head, and danced like a ballerina, a solo dancer in the celestial spotlight.
The sensation was beyond liberation.
It was empowering.
More intoxicating by far than the most potent drink ever distilled.
And it was real.
She didn’t question it. There was no point. She was reminded of Karen’s angry words to Alicia about the thing that killed Shane. She was seeing what she was seeing. She trusted her own mind and senses. This was her essence up here in space. Her corporeal body was still on the bed in King’s room, but she could feel and experience everything in an exalted way no physical, flesh-and-blood construct ever could.
King’s disembodied voice spoke to her. “Do you like this, Dream?”
Her face had a hard time containing her exultant smile. “Yes!”
“Good.” She felt his smile. “Come back to earth. I have things to show you.”
She released a squeal of delight, flexed her knees, changed direction, and dove back toward earth. She was free of all fear now, and she moved toward the spinning planet at a speed that should have been terrifying. The earth’s atmosphere was like a lover’s hand this time, warm, welcoming, stimulating. She plunged through the clouds and overlooked a desert vista far from King’s mountain home. She saw a pyramid in the distance, a ruddy, four-sided triangle rising up out of the sand. A burst of excitement emboldened her, and she sluiced through the sky-she’d only seen pyramids in pictures, and she coveted this new experience. The wonder of it all filled her like a dazzling inner light, made her marvel at the limitless possibilities.
She could go anywhere.
Do anything.
See anything.
People in primitive attire milled about the base of the pyramid. She flew low and studied their faces. They were workers. Their bodies glistened with sweat as they struggled with their burdens. Dream realized they were slaves.
“This is a glimpse, Dream.” King’s voice was right in her ear, although she was alone in the air. “You asked about subjects. This is the kingdom of one of my forebears. These are his… subjects.”
Realization dawned in Dream. “You were telling the truth about being a King. It wasn’t just a story.”
“No, Dream, it wasn’t. And what you’re seeing is real, but it’s just a glimpse. It’s the past. We can only have glimpses of it, unfortunately. All those people are long dead.”
The vision faded, broke apart like an old television with bad reception, and there was a sense of displacement, a temporal shift. All of existence was blinding whiteness for a millisecond, then a new scene revealed itself, a remote section of English countryside in the early twentieth century. She flew low between hills, passed grazing sheep, and approached a stately old house. A man who looked nothing like King stood on the porch, yet she realized it was King. A fully formed awareness appeared in her brain.
He could look like anything. He wasn’t human. He was something … more.
Something better, she hoped.
The knowledge should have been frightening, but it wasn’t.
“Here’s another glimpse, Dream. This is from my own past, so we can linger longer here. For days, if we had the inclination. We won’t be that long, however, a few minutes should suffice.”
The man on the porch-King, she reminded herself-turned and went back into the house. Dream passed effortlessly through the front door. It was insubstantial to her, offering no more resistance than a breath of air. The man, who was wearing a tweed jacket and sported an Oxford class ring on one finger, turned down a hallway.
“Leave him, Dream.”
She hovered next to a staircase. “Where should I go?”
“To your left, through that archway, into the kitchen.”
Dream did as he bade. Part of her wanted to fly away and see other wonders, but he was her guide through this process of enlightenment, so she went without hesitation.
The kitchen was large and outfitted in the usual way.
“Where now?”
“See that door next to the pantry?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the cellar door. I want to take you down there.”
Dream experienced her first real twinge of apprehension since the beginning of this astounding journey. It was a precognitive, unsettling feeling. Something disturbing lurked beyond that door. But she decided to trust him. It wasn’t like she really had a choice, right? She was on this ride for the duration. So she passed through the cellar door, glided over a dark staircase, and arrived in a dank room. It was empty, but there was an opening in the far wall, a passage carved from the earth. She understood King meant her to go there, so she did, ignoring the
