Weaveworld

hesitant. They circled the same territory over and over, but there were no inspirations as to how they should proceed.

The only token they had of their adventures to date was the carpet fragment, and it offered up no clues.

The exchange dwindled, half-finished sentences punctuated by longer and still longer silences.

Around eleven, Brendan came home, hailing Cal from below, then retired to bed. His arrival stirred Suzanna.

‘I should go,’ she said. ‘It’s late.’

The thought of the room without her made Cal’s heart sink.

‘Why not stay?’ he said.

‘It’s a small bed,’ she replied.

‘But it’s comfortable.’

She put her hand to his face, and brushed the bruised place around his mouth.

‘We’re not meant to be lovers,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re too much alike.’

It was bluntly put, and it hurt to have it said, but in the same moment as having any sexual ambition dampened he had a different, and finally more profound, hope confirmed. That they belonged together in this enterprise: she the child of the Fugue, he the innocent trespasser. Against the brief pleasure of making love to her he set the grander adventure, and he knew – despite the dissension from his cock – that he had the better of the deal.

‘Then we’ll sleep,’ he said. ‘If you want to stay.’

She smiled. ‘I want to stay,’ she said.

They stripped off their dirty clothing, and slipped beneath the covers. Sleep was upon them before the lamp had cooled.

It was not empty sleep; far from it. There were dreams. Or rather, a particular dream which filled both their heads.

They dreamt a noise. A planet of bees, all buzzing fit to burst their honeyed hearts; a rising swell that was summer’s music.

They dreamt smell. A confusion of scents; of streets after rain, and faded cologne, and wind out of a warm country.

But most of all, they dreamt sight.

It began with a pattern: a knotting and weaving of countless strands, dyed in a hundred colours, carrying a charge of energy which so dazzled the sleepers they had to shield their minds’ eyes.

And then, as if the pattern was becoming too ambitious to hold its present order, the knots began to slide and slip. The colours at each intersection bled into the air, until the vision was obscured in a soup of pigments through which the loosed strands described their liberty in line and comma and dot, like the brushstrokes of some master calligrapher. At first the marks seemed quite arbitrary – but as each trace drew colour to itself, and another stroke was laid upon it, and another upon that, it became apparent that forms were steadily emerging from the chaos.

Where, dream-moments ago, there’d been only warp and weft, there were now five distinct human forms appearing from the flux, the invisible artist adding detail to the portraits with insolent facility.

And now the voices of the bees rose, singing in the sleeper’s heads gave names to these strangers.

The first of the quintet to be called was a young woman in a long, dark dress, her small face pale, her closed eyes fringed with ginger lashes. This, the bees said, is Lilia Pellicia.

As if waking to her name, Lilia opened her eyes.

As she did so a rotund, bearded individual in his fifties, a coat draped over his shoulders and a brimmed hat on his head, stepped forward. Frederick Cammell the bees said, and the eyes behind the coin-sized lenses of his spectacles snapped open. His hand went to his hat immediately, and took it off, to reveal a head of immaculately coiffured hair, oiled to his scalp.

‘So …’ he said, and smiled.

Two more now. One, impatient to be free from this world of dyes, was also dressed as if for a wake. (What happened, the dreamers wondered, to the brilliance that the strands had first bled? Were those colours hidden somewhere beneath this funereal garb: in parrot-bright petticoats?) The dour face of this third visitor did not suggest a taste for such indulgence.

Apolline Dubois the bees announced, and the woman opened her eyes, the scowl that instantly came to her face displaying teeth the colour of old ivory.

The last members of this assembly arrived together. One, a negro whose fine face, even in repose, was shaped for melancholy. The other, the naked baby he held in his arms, drooling on his protector’s shirt.

Jerichau St Louis the bees said, and the negro opened his eyes. He immediately looked down at the child he held, who had begun to bawl even before his name was heard.

Nimrod the bees called, and though the baby was surely not yet a year old, he already knew the two syllables of his name. He raised his lids, to reveal eyes that had a distinctly golden cast to them.

His waking brought the process to an end. The colours, the bees and the threads all retreated, their tide leaving the five strangers stranded in Cal’s room.

It was Apolline Dubois who spoke first.

‘This can’t be right,’ she said, making for the window and pulling back the curtains. ‘Where the Hell are we?’

‘And where are the others?’ said Frederick Cammell. His eyes had found the mirror on the wall, and he was scrutinizing himself in it. Tutting, he took a pair of scissors from his pocket and began to snip at some overlong hairs on his cheek.

‘That’s a point,’ said Jerichau. Then, to Apolline: ‘What does it look like out there?’

‘Deserted,’ said the woman. ‘It’s the middle of the night. And …’

‘What?’

‘Look for yourself,’ she said, sucking spit through her broken teeth, ‘there’s something amiss here.’ She turned from the window. ‘Things aren’t the way they were.’

It was Lilia Pellicia who took Apolline’s place at the sill. ‘She’s right,’ the girl said. ‘Things are different.’

‘And why’s it only us who are here?’ Frederick asked for the second time. ‘That’s the real point.’

‘Something’s happened,’ said Lilia, softly. ‘Something terrible.’

‘No doubt you feel it in your kidneys,’ Apolline remarked. ‘As usual.’

‘Let’s keep it civil. Miss Dubois,’ said Frederick, with the pained expression of a school master.

‘Don’t call me Miss,’ Apolline said. ‘I’m a married woman.’

Immersed in sleep, Cal and Suzanna listened to these exchanges, entertained by the nonsenses their imaginations had conjured up. Yet for all the oddity of these people – their antiquated clothes, their names, their absurd conversations – they were uncannily real; every detail perfectly realized. And as though to confuse the dreamers further, the man the bees had called Jerichau now looked towards the bed, and said:

‘Perhaps they can tell us something.’

Lilia turned her pale gaze towards the slumbering pair.

‘We should wake them,’ she said, and reached to shake the sleepers.

‘This is no dream,’ Suzanna realized, as she pictured Lilia’s hand approaching her shoulder. She felt herself rising from sleep; and as the girl’s fingers touched her, she opened her eyes.

The curtains had been pulled apart as she’d imagined they’d been. The street lamps cast their light into the little room. And there, standing watching the bed, were the five: her dream made flesh. She sat up. The sheet slipped, and the gaze of both Jerichau and the child Nimrod flitted to her breasts. She pulled the sheet over her and in so doing uncovered Cal. The chill stirred him. He peered at her through barely open eyes.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, his voice slurred by sleep.

‘Wake up,’ she said. ‘We’ve got visitors.’

‘I had this dream …” he muttered. Then, ‘Visitors?’ He looked up at her, following her gaze into the room.