smallestopener | Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

Ingress had a brilliant birthday. She’s eleven. Eleven is nearly grown up! It’s also the year when children in the stories she’s read come into their own. Adventures begin, schooling starts, worlds are saved… she can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Her party earlier was such fun. Door was almost nice to Puck; Ingress had worried a little about that after she invited him. But he was very nice and charming, and Tom was nice, too, and Puck helped Ingress steal lots of roses off the cake while Havelock talked to Tom and Door, and it was brilliant.

She ate far too much icing sugar, but Tom had the peppermint potion waiting for her when the party was over. She feels much better now. And she’s eleven!

It sounds so good in her head. Eleven, eleven, eleven.

She should have asked Mary to stay the night with her, she thinks, as she tosses and turns. She’s never going to fall asleep, even with staying up past her bedtime. Tom and Door insisted she go to bed after she started yawning. They can be so silly sometimes.

She tosses one more time, and she thinks, again, how impossible it will be to go to sleep tonight. Her eyelids flutter and close. It is not long before she’s deep in dreams.

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Through the trees there's an open space; like a room set down in the midst of the trees. Three green-shaded lanterns hang from a wire overhead, unlit now in the warm light; the man is seated on a stump, his back against the workbench, his eyes closed for a moment.

Just for a moment.

It would be wrong to say that Ingress has never seen Eddie Dean look this tired (http://no-prisoner.livejournal.com/13124.html?thread=226884#t226884). But it's been a very long time; more than half her short life.

"Eddie?"

Her voice is small under the tall trees.

She's so glad to see him, whether this is real or not or something in between. There are people who touch your heart and never leave it. Eddie is one of those people for Ingress.

"Is that you?"

There is a yo-yo in her hand. She grips it tightly.

It's a good question. This is a face that gets around. But here and now, it's still his.

"Ingress?" He opens hazel eyes and regards her, puzzled. A little worried. "What are you doing here?"

There are many paths through these woods, and all of them end in the clearing in the end. But some of them are far too short.

"I was playing dress up, and then I was in the stables. I was on Mal's boat, and it got dark by the lake. I had to fight my way to the lights. The lion helped me get here."

She bites her lip and frowns. "I thought I was dreaming. I'm not too sure."

His expression eases. "You got big."

"I like your hair." Gold ribbons lacing through the blue.

"I'm eleven, now," she says, and she twirls around, her white skirt belling out with a rustle.

She pats her hair. "A friend got me ready."

"I've missed you."

"Eleven," he says, wondering. "Do you still like stories?"

"I'll always like your stories," she says, and she sits down beside him. There is room, and she is not so very big yet.

"I still know the one about Oriza."

"There are a lot of stories about Oriza."

He puts his arm around her and gives her a squeeze. "Will you walk with me? A little ways, anyway?"

There's always been something a little sad about Eddie Dean, deep down; especially when it comes to these moments. Little fragments of something he never had. Bittersweet.

Maybe today it's a little easier to see, because she's older, and so is he. Maybe that's why.

"Of course," she says. Ingress sounds older than eleven. There is a part of her, deep down, that is old old old.

She takes his hand and smiles up at him.

"I'm your kid, too."

He smiles, then, and stands, and stretches. "One second to close down shop."

He reaches down and takes down the lanterns; one, two, three.

(One, two, three; the Soldier goes off to the barracks.)

He lays them on the workbench, beside metal blanks and small sharp tools, cutters and templates and grinders and carvers. He passes a hand across the surface and they fade into the wood, and the bench itself begins to melt away, becoming stone and leaf and living wood.

He's dressed as he used to for bartending in the old days, in jeans and a crisp white shirt, and he reaches for her hand as the rosebushes start to bloom. "This is a story about a little girl," he says. "Her name was Chloe. She was the sister of Oriza, and Oriza raised her."

Every storyteller knows--telling a story is all about making choices. Making choices and committing.

Her dress is now the loose tunic and pants of a Herald-in-training, but instead of gray, they stay shining and white. You can cheat in a dream.

The roses bloom, and she remembers the face of her mother.

"Do I know this story?"

She does and she doesn't. Rose spoke of Chloe, but that was a long time ago. Only it hasn't happened yet.

Her free hand trails against the tree trunks. The moss there feels like velvet.

"Maybe you do," he says.

"Maybe you will."

They pass through the doorway, and the workshop, the making-place, the three lights under green shade, fades away behind them. That part of his life is over now.

"Chloe grew up in a tower. Not alone, but a little lonely. Her father had left a long time ago, and one by the one the rest of her family did, too. And when she was older--a little girl, still, but older than she was, they left the tower, too, Oriza and Chloe, the last of the children of Gan to leave their spinning and enter the world."

"There are a lot of stories about little girls," Eddie adds. "A lot of them are about getting to become a princess, but Chloe was already a princess. And the others--and even some of the princess stories--all seem to be about the same thing."

"Thou shalt not leave the path."

"Do you know what I mean?"

Ingress nods. Purple butterflies flit and flutter off the path. She could follow them, if she wanted.

She doesn't.

"Like Little Red Riding Hood. Don't talk to strangers, don't get eaten by the wolf."

Her free hand holds a knife now, its handle redder than any riding hood could be. The blade is sharper than a wolf's incisor. She knows how to handle her weapons.

"I don't need to wait for the woodsman."

"Chloe left the path," Eddie says. "She left her sister and she got lost in the woods."

"I don't know why," he says, musing. "I could say there was a witch or a handsome stranger or anything at all, but I don't know why and that is the truth. Sometimes in stories for grown-ups you don't."

He looks around them. "Sometimes in the woods there isn't really any path to leave, outside your head. Just spaces between the trees. So how do we know she really went astray?"

"But she certainly went alone."

"What happened to Chloe?"

Ingress thinks she doesn't want to know. This might not be a happy story.

"I don't know, Loompa," he says, gently "There are a lot of different endings, depending on who's telling it, and I don't know which one is true. A story oughtta have an ending, I guess, and I could pick one, but I'm more worried about telling you the truth than a pretty story. You're old enough, I guess."

"Maybe you're old enough figure one out for yourself."

"Mine has a place to stop, anyway. Sort of a half-assed ending. Do you still want to hear it?"

"Yeah, I'm old enough."

The roses change from red to white and back again when her fingertips brush them.

"There has to be a stopping place."

Yeah. There has to be. And when they reach it... they part ways. He's resolved.

He can't keep doing this. No more adventures, no more risks, no more sneaking back and changing things. It's over.

One more story.

"Chloe walked through the woods," he says. "And she passed through the swamps. The marshes and the fens, following what she hoped was a path; one of the old lost Ways that run through all the worlds. It was in the marshes that she found the Chapel of Diamonds."

It was beautiful on the outside, but on the inside it was just an old church, cold stone and bare wood, and there was a man there. A knight, and a priest--a guy who'd laid down his sword and taken up religion. His name was... George."

"He told her who he was, and that he'd known her father, and fought with him, in the old wars. He asked her to stay, to pray with him and keep him company. And she looked at his face, and his eyes, and what she saw was that he was a good man at heart... but hard, and stern, and even cruel. And she said, 'No.'"

"And he told her that if she went on any further into the woods, he couldn't help her, and neither could her father, even if he ever came back. She would pass into the lands of the King of the Lost. And she said, 'I don't care.'"

"And seeing that there wasn't any use, he sighed, and he gave her a sword," he says. "It was her father's. Its name was Firebrand, and if I had more time I could tell you a lot of stories about it."

"And Chloe took the sword, and went on."

"Fair can seem foul, and foul cam seem fair. It's so hard to figure it all out."

She walks beside him in silence.

"At least she had a sword. If you leave the path, you must fight your way back."

"Mustn't you?"

He shrugs. "Who says there's anything so great about the path, anyway?"

He sees himself for a moment, ready to cut Roland Deschain's throat for a spike of heroin and a bucket of fried chicken. For one moment of normal again. One taste of the old times.

One more story.

The trees are changing; space opening between them. The paths becoming highways, widening and merging. "Chloe walked on. And in time, she came to the river, and from the water to a waterfall, and at the pool where the water fell she met the King of the Lost."

"He was a wild man, dark and handsome. with the horns of a stag. He was dressed all in leather and fur and his eyes were far from anything human. And he said to her, 'I am the King of the Lost, and you have come into my land unbidden. Now you belong to me.'"

"And Chloe said, 'no.' And she held up her sword, and he bowed."

"He said to her, 'when you are tired, when you are hungry, when you are lonely... I will come for you again, child.'"

"And Chloe said, 'I don't care.' And he bowed again, and gave her leave to wander a little longer, and that was all she ever took from him."

"I don't know why he did it," he says, thoughtful. "Maybe he was afraid of Firebrand. But maybe he had his own reasons--because there are a lot of stories about him, too, and he's only a monster in some of them. And he never treated with Flagg, anyway, that I ever heard of, and that's worth something."

"I think he felt like making an ally. That's how wild houses and baronies and fiefdoms stay strong."

She shivers at the mention of Flagg. She barely remembers that name from other stories told long ago. She knows he is the cold howl in the dark. He is the blacknes that awaits the valiant, the hero, the girl trying her best. She'll face the King of the Lost any day.

A purple butterfly lands on her hand.

"Can I stay? Will you tell me more stories?"

What I tell you three times is true.

"This is the last story," he says. "And when it's over... the rest of the way I go alone."

They pass now under the wide branches of an apple tree; behind here, the path slips down a gentle heathery slope to an open place. A clearing.

"From the waterfall, along the water's edge and deeper into the woods. In the darkest, deepest woods she found a fool. His name was Bob, and he had been sent into the wilderness for one too many bad jokes at court. Kings can be touchy."

"When he saw her, he fell to his knees and plead for her hand in marriage. She was very beautiful, like all the daughters of Gan, and he was very silly, and you can get away with a lot if you make it a joke."

He pauses under the shade of the tree; here time is space is thought, and here is the gentle edge of night; the sweet twilight.

(Just as the brutal tangolight that comes just past sunset is cruel, though we love the day and fear the night. On the edges, things shift and trade places.)

"And Chloe laughed, and said 'no.'"

"And then Bob made his true offer. Because, he said, he couldn't give her a place to shelter or his protection or any fine gifts. He had no home and no kingdom and nowhere to lay his head. But they were lost there, together, and he would go with her as long as she would have him, and he would keep her company, and give her what comfort he could."

"And Chloe said, 'I don't care,' and she went on, and Bob followed after. And he gave her--" Eddie reaches up and plucks one from the tree and tosses it to her; one for himself. "An apple."

"And for the first day and night Bob never stopped talking," Eddie goes on, "and Chloe said nothing. And on the second day and night Bob said nothing," he tells her, "and neither did she."

"And on the third day, Bob said, 'do you know where we're going? Only you walk with such purpose.'"

"And Chloe said, 'don't you know the way out of the woods?' and Bob said, 'Alas, I do not.'"

"And Chloe said, 'it's easy.'"

He grins.

"'The way out of the woods is to keep walking.'"

He bites the apple. With purpose.

Ingress laughs, for Bob sounds like a nice fool, and Chloe a wise and brave woman. She hopes Chloe will change her mind about letting him help her and be sweet to her. It's easier going when you're not all alone.

She holds the apple to her face and breathes in the sweet scent. Apples are symbols of promise - life encapsulated within red skin, succulence to hold the cold of winter at bay.

They also taste delicious and keep you going as you make your way through the forest.

"I'll keep walking. You know why?"

Eddie Dean's last story is over. From here on out, she has to make it up for herself.

(In his favorite version of this story, there's only one man, with three faces. In that version of the story, Chloe becomes--Chloe is--the sun, crossing the sky bravely and eternally, carrying her father's brand; and the one who loves her lags behind, drawing near and falling back, turning from light to shadow, and once in a long, long while stealing a kiss.

But it's only one version of the story. And there are so many stories about the moon.)

He wonders what she'll do with what he's made for her; he wonders what she'll make for herself, too.

"What's that, Loompa?"

Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

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