Castle Dreams

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.[24]

Crazy dream about a castle.

The phone rang and she reached for it.

“Hello?”

“Hi! Up early, are you?”

“Hello, John, dearest. I had a nutty dream about you last night.”

“Oh? Sexy, I hope.”

“Well, sort of. You were a king in a magic castle.”

“Great. What were you?”

“A witch, I think. I could do magic. So could you. And then … it got scary.”

“What, the dream?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it. Something happened to you, and I woke up in a sweat.”

“You okay?”

“Sure. It was just a dream. Listen, do you want to do lunch today?”

“Why not? And dinner. And more.”

She smiled. “I like the “more’ part. I love you.”

“I love you, Linda.”

“Are we still on for the trip up to Tahoe?”

“You bet. We leave Friday night.”

“It’ll be nice. I’m glad I met you, John.”

“Been nice so far, hasn’t it? Me, a king? You know, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It was strange — the dream, I mean. It was so involved. Did you ever have a dream that seemed so real and so detailed that you think, Where am I getting this stuff?”

“All the time. I dream all the time, Linda. In fact, last night I dreamed that I died.”

“Oh, how awful. Are you okay?”

“Sure. But how can we tell when we’re dreaming, Linda? Maybe this is a dream.”

“I’m getting such a weird feeling hearing you say that.”

She looked out the window. Palm trees, bright sun, the bright blue Pacific. Didn’t she belong here? What could be wrong? What could possibly be …?

“John? Hello?”

The phone had gone dead.

And now night was falling. The sun sank into the darkening ocean. The moon fell out of the sky and the stars threw down their spears.…

“No!”

She dropped the phone and screamed.

She awoke screaming.

The room came into focus. Her room, her suite in the Guest Residence, at Castle Perilous.

Arms wrapped about herself, legs crossed, she sat on the bed and trembled for several minutes. Then she got up and went to the bathroom.

When she came out she poured herself a drink of water from the pitcher on the night table. She gulped it down.

She collapsed back onto the bed and pulled the covers up snugly around her.

And fell back into dream.

Twenty-five Sea of Oblivion

The night wind blew with steady force. The crew hoisted the spinnaker and the big sail bloomed proudly off the bow.

The albatross followed, circling in the darkness, a white form like a ghost in the night.

“I don’t like the looks of that bird,” he allowed.

“Tekeli-li!” came the call of the albatross.

Apart from that, he was still enjoying doing the skipper thing: shouting orders, bellowing his displeasure, slurping coffee, spitting it over the side and complaining.

“Bilge water! Brew me up something potable!”

“Aye, Cap’n! You’d like, maybe cappuccino?”

“Just espresso.”

“How about a pastry to go with that, sir?”

“You have cannoli?”

“Plain or chocolate?”

“By “plain’ I hope you mean vanilla.”

“Yes, sir, I mean vanilla, sir.”

“With the dark chocolate chips, right?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Just the chips, none of the candied fruit nonsense.”

“Sir, I would say that these are your purist’s cannoli, sir.”

“Fine, bring me one. After dinner.”

“What will you be eating for dinner, sir?”

“What d’you have?”

“Milk-fed veal, sir.”

“Well, wring some out and bring me a glass.”

“That’s not very original, sir.”

“I’m still waiting for that coffee, Telly! The longer I wait, the fouler the weather to come!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Telly left the bridge and the skipper to his thoughts.

He had none. He couldn’t think, he could only go through this dumb show, this pretense, this playacting … this —?

Yes, what the hell was it? Where was he? Why couldn’t he remember anything? He was tired of all this.

Perhaps he was starting to remember.

He scanned the sky. That remark about bad weather had been prescient. He saw flashes, then heard far-off thunder.

“Storm off the starboard beam!”

“Tekeli-li!” the albatross cried.

The storm-blast came and whipped the sea to a frenzy. Whitecaps rose like ice-cream cones and white foam curdled and clotted across the face of the deep. The ship rocked in its cradle of the ocean. Mist gathered and snow fell, and it grew wondrous cold. Icebergs, mast-high, floated by.

Saint Elmo’s fire blazed on the masthead and about the rigging.

“Nice touch.”

“Coffee, sir!”

He took the coffee. “Well, it’s about time. Pretty storm, eh? What’s it all about, Telly?”

“What are storms usually about, skipper?”

“Oh, I dunno. About nature, the elements. Life. About man and woman, birth, death and infinity. And like