Dreams Underfoot

stories.

There was nothing special about the edition, other than its size—it was small enough for her to carry around in her purse, which she did. The inscription I’d written to her was inside, but the book was far more worn than it had been when I’d first given it to her. I didn’t have to open the book to remember that famous quotation from Puck’s final lines:

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here, While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream ...

But it hadn’t been a dream—not for me, and not for Sam. I set the book down beside me on the stone bench and unfolded the letter.

“Dear Geordie,” it said. “I know you’ll read this one day, and I hope you can forgive me for not seeing you in person, but I wanted you to remember me as I was, not as I’ve become. I’ve had a full and mostly happy life; you know my only regret. I can look back on our time together with the wisdom of an old woman now and truly know that all things have their time. Ours was short—too short, my heart—but we did have it.

“Who was it that said, ‘better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’? We loved and lost each other, but I would rather cherish the memory than rail against the unfairness. I hope you will do the same.”

I sat there and cried. I didn’t care about the looks I was getting from people walking by, I just let it all out. Some of my tears were for what I’d lost, some were for Sam and her bravery, and some were for my own stupidity at denying her memory for so long.

I don’t know how long I sat there like that, holding her letter, but the tears finally dried on my cheeks.

I heard the scuff of feet on the path and wasn’t surprised to look up and find Jilly standing in front of me.

“Oh Geordie, me lad,” she said.

She sat down at my side and leaned against me. I can’t tell you how comforting it was to have her there. I handed her the letter and book and sat quietly while she read the first and looked at the latter.

Slowly she folded up the letter and slipped it inside the book.

“How do you feel now?” she asked finally. “Better or worse?”

“Both.”

She raised her eyebrows in a silent question.

“Well, it’s like what they say funerals are for,” I tried to explain. “It gives you the chance to say goodbye, to settle things, like taking a—” I looked at her and managed to find a small smile “—final turn on a wheel. But I feel depressed about Sam. I know what we had was real, and I know how it felt for me, losing her. But I only had to deal with it for a few years. She carried it for a lifetime.”

“Still, she carried on.”

I nodded. “Thank god for that.”

Neither of us spoke for awhile, but then I remembered Paperjack. I told her what I thought had happened last night, then showed her the fortunetelling device that he’d left with me in St. Paul’s. She read my fortune with pursed lips and the start of a wrinkle on her forehead, but didn’t seem particularly surprised by it.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Everybody makes the same mistake. Fortunetelling doesn’t reveal the future; it mirrors the present. It resonates against what your subconscious already knows and hauls it up out of the darkness so that you can get a good look at it.”

“I meant about Paperjack.”

“I think he’s gone—back to wherever it was that he came from.” She was beginning to exasperate me in that way that only she could.

“But who was he?” I asked. “No, better yet, what was he?”

“I don’t know,” jilly said. “I just know it’s like your fortune said. It’s the questions we ask, the journey we take to get where we’re going that’s more important than the actual answer. It’s good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there’s more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.”

I sighed, knowing I wasn’t going to get much more sense out of her than that.

It wasn’t until the next day that I made my way alone to Paperjack’s camp in back of the Beaches.

All his gear was gone, but the paper stars still hung from the trees. I wondered again about who he was.

Some oracular spirit, a kind of guardian angel, drifting around, trying to help people see themselves? Or an old homeless black man with a gift for folding paper? I understood then that my fortune made a certain kind of sense, but I didn’t entirely agree with it.

Still, in Sam’s case, knowing the answer had brought me peace.

I took Paperjack’s fortuneteller from my pocket and strung it with a piece of string I’d brought along for that purpose. Then I hung it on the branch of a tree so that it could swing there, in among all those paper stars, and I walked away.

Tallulah

Nothing is too wonderful to be true.

—Michael Faraday

For the longest time, I thought she was a ghost, but I know what she is now. She’s come to mean everything to me; like a lifeline, she keeps me connected to reality, to this place and this time, by her very capriciousness.

I wish I’d never met her.

That’s a lie, of course, but it comes easily to the tongue. It’s a way to pretend that the ache she left behind in my heart doesn’t hurt.

She calls herself Tallulah, but I know who she really is. A name can’t begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that’s the magic of names, isn’t it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name. And connected to the complete person we call up in our mind with the alchemy of their name comes all the baggage of memory: times you were together, the music you listened to this morning or that night, conversation and jokes and private moments—all the good and bad times you’ve shared.

Tally’s name conjures up more than just that for me. When the grisgris of the memories that hold her stir in my mind, she guides me through the city’s night like a totem does a shaman through Dreamtime. Everything familiar is changed; what she shows me goes under the skin, right to the marrow of the bone. I see a building and I know not only its shape and form, but its history. I can hear its breathing, I can almost read its thoughts.

It’s the same for a street or a park, an abandoned car or some secret garden hidden behind a wall, a late night cafe or an empty lot. Each one has its story, its secret history, and Tally taught me how to read each one of them. Where once I guessed at those stories, chasing rumors of them like they were errant fireflies, now I know.

I’m not as good with people. Neither of us are. Tally, at least, has an excuse. But me ...

I wish I’d never met her.

My brother Geordie is a busker—a street musician. He plays his fiddle on street corners or along the queues in the theatre district and makes a kind of magic with his music that words just can’t describe.

Listening to him play is like stepping into an old Irish or Scottish fairy tale. The slow airs call up haunted moors and lonely coastlines; the jigs and reels wake a fire in the soul that burns with the awesome wonder of bright stars on a cold night, or the familiar warmth of red coals glimmering in a friendly hearth.

The funny thing is, he’s one of the most pragmatic people I know. For all the enchantment he can call up out