Dreamhunter (10 page)

Laura was wondering, her brain broached by the silence. ‘Shhhh,’ she said to the shuffling, murmuring rangers. Her hands were covered in dust. There was an idea in the silence. As she grew still, and the rangers hushed, the bubble of sound that insulated them collapsed and the silence swamped her. It had almost come to her, the thing she must think.

Then Laura thought, ‘Rose.’ The name was a blow that bruised her heart. She was alone. Moments ago she was a point on an axis, one child in a line of children —
one beater on the heath, one soldier in the column. Now she was alone.

The shuffling circle of rangers parted to admit Grace, who knelt beside her. ‘Welcome, Laura,’ Grace said.

Above their heads the rangers murmured it too, ‘Welcome.’

‘We have to go out now, and get busy,’ Grace said.

Laura recalled that there were formalities, full registration, the appointment of a guide and — later — a trip to an outfitters. Laura got up and followed her aunt, out of the dry, colourless brightness.

INTO COLOUR AND
sense and sound. The meadow was abuzz. Families who had hung back during the Try had reclaimed their children. They stood about in little groups, consoling one another. Laura saw Rose, her face pressed into her father’s lapels, her gold hair rippling as she cried. Grace broke away from Laura and hurried to them. Laura stopped. How could she move? She had always followed Rose. Rose stepped out, and Laura went after her. Even today. Rose stepped out, then stopped and put out a hand to Laura.

Now a curtain of nothing more than air — or time perhaps — had brushed Rose from Laura as Laura had gone through it. They were two pips in the core of an apple. But someone had cut the apple. Just now. The voices in the meadow above the river were the sound of
a blade hitting a chopping board. Rose and Laura were cut apart. Laura stood, wounded and exposed. Then the rangers came through after her, and they stopped too, stood by her, a retinue for the day’s sole successful candidate.

Following the Try, Laura’s days were taken up by a whirl of appointments. It was scary and celebratory at the same time.

The family went back to Founderston. On the train Rose, quiet and red-eyed, retreated behind a barricade of bags and travel rugs, drew up her feet and seemed to sleep. The family was late home and went straight to bed.

Every day, for the next three days, Laura was up early. She went to the head office of the Regulatory Body to sign forms. She visited shops on the Isle of the Temple — dreamhunter outfitters. Grace bought her walking boots, trousers, silk socks and shirts and a fawn dustcoat. Laura went to a hairdresser to have her hair cut. Laura was out early and in late. She scarcely saw Rose. She wanted to talk to her cousin, but didn’t make
an effort to do so. She was afraid she’d start to tell Rose about all the exciting things that were happening to her — and news, like how that boy from the infants’ beach was among the ten successful candidates from the Try at Doorhandle. Laura had passed him in the doorway at the offices of the Regulatory Body and had managed to give him a polite ‘Good day’. But, when Laura did see Rose, Rose’s silence silenced her. It was a neutral silence — Rose wasn’t punishing her. But it suddenly seemed that, having shared everything, the fact that they didn’t now share everything meant they had to learn how to talk to each other again.

FOUR DAYS AFTER
the Try, Laura and the season’s other successful candidates were conducted into the Place for their first testing sleepover. They went In at Doorhandle, but were first briefed by the Chief Ranger at the Doorhandle headquarters of the Regulatory Body. The headquarters were in a large, two-storey timber building with a veranda that wrapped all the way around its ground floor and was the usual congregation place of rangers who were on their way In or had just emerged from the Place. The ground floor was full of desks, clerks and filing cabinets and, in fact, looked like any ordinary office. The top floor was taken up by a small locked armoury, and several large meeting rooms.

It was in one of these meeting rooms that the Chief Ranger briefed the eleven potential dreamhunters. He had given this talk many times before, and his tone was
one of impersonal efficiency. As he spoke, the eager and restless candidates began to settle, even to sag a little in their chairs. They were tired, and the Chief Ranger’s manner was a bit of a comedown after all the fuss of their last few days.

The Chief Ranger began by telling the children that each must carry their own food, water and bedding. He said that it wasn’t necessary to take a change of clothes — for one thing they’d only be In ‘overnight’, for another they couldn’t expect any rain, or dewfall or any variation in the weather. They wouldn’t be getting wet: the Place was permanently set at what most of its travellers agreed was noon under a layer of thick white mist. A mist that hid the position of the sun, but never touched the ground, nor moistened the air. ‘The only reason anyone might take a change of clothes was if they were walking many hours In and cared to come out smelling sweet. You won’t find any water there,’ he said. ‘You have to carry it. Water is the weight you won’t ever dispense with. Even if you get rich and hire a ranger to carry things for you, he’ll still be burdened with his own supply.’

The Chief Ranger had packages of food on the table before him, which he held up, item by item. He showed them the strips of dried meat, cakes of pressed, dried fruit, strongbread loaded with nuts and chocolate, and ‘dreamhunters’ bread’ — wafers made of rice flour and powdered milk. ‘You’ll learn to live on this,’ he said. He cast his eyes over the eleven — eight boys and three
girls. Several looked soft, were children who had never had to carry anything much heavier than a football or book bag. He took note of the two bandy-legged slum runts, and the remaining nine, who were only a little fitter. Behind the candidates were their guides, rangers and dreamhunters leaning on the briefing room wall, all thin and hardy from the repeated hikes into the Place.

‘Well,’ the Chief said to the candidates, ‘you’ll all build up to something better, I’m sure.’ His eyes lingered on the two who were clearly from wealthy families. They were already ostentatiously outfitted in walking boots and dustcoats. The girl had even had her hair cut short, which the Chief Ranger thought was rather tempting fate. After all, what the majority of these children would discover on this first trip was that they wouldn’t become dreamhunters. Just because they could penetrate the veil of the Place, it didn’t mean they could catch dreams or, even if they could, that they could do so with sufficient vigour to make their dream saleable. Most of these children would find employment as rangers — but the Chief Ranger knew of very few women who took up that option. The girl had sacrificed her hair to her vain hopes. He hoped she wouldn’t regret it too keenly, for he thought she was still rather pretty under her helmet of glossy curls.

He resumed his briefing. ‘You will each take one of these kits, in which, among other, more self-evident items, you will find a signal whistle and a book about its use. I recommend that you study the book and master
all the signals before you even consider going In on your own. Which, I might add, you have no hope of doing until you are licensed. And, to be licensed you must satisfy the Body that you will not be a hazard to yourself or anyone else, either in the Place or out of it, with any dream you manage to catch.’ He looked at each of the children sternly and then went on to talk about the futility of attempting to light a fire in the Place, the importance of consulting maps, and of reporting any
changes
in the landscape. As he talked his eyes roved over the whole assembled group. He wanted to make sure they were listening to him. He looked into each of their faces — and was satisfied by their looks of respectful attention. But, as his gazed moved, he found himself looking more often and longer at that pretty, attentive girl.

Grace Tiebold arrived at the door of the meeting room. The Chief Ranger waved to acknowledge her and watched every head in his audience — even his own rangers’ — swivel to the door.

‘Mrs Tiebold,’ he said, ‘I have just finished with the generalities. I’m afraid that, at the moment, these young people are looking on their trip In as an exercise in orientation — which it is not. Perhaps you would like to explain its purpose? I think a dreamhunter will do a better job of explaining than any ranger.’

Grace Tiebold said, ‘Thank you, I’d like that.’

The Chief Ranger yielded his place, but stayed at the front of the room, watching both the famous dream
hunter, and that increasingly — it seemed to him — attractive candidate.

The girl was smiling at Grace Tiebold — who smiled back, a brief, warm look, then moved her gaze to take in all the expectant, admiring young faces.

Grace began by pulling down the Chief Ranger’s chart. Several of the candidates gasped.

Grace Tiebold said, mildly surprised, ‘Have some of you not seen a map of the Place? You’re shocked. Of course, any map of the Place will be shocking to anyone with any understanding of geography. As you can see, this is a map of no
earthly
geography. It is an interpretation of an unearthly geography by the discipline of earthly mapmaking.’ She looked around at the Chief Ranger and asked if he had a pointer. He found her one and she returned to the map and tapped it with the pointer. ‘As you can see, parts of this chart correspond in many ways to normal maps. There are topographical measurements. These hills and valleys have been surveyed.’ The pointer pattered on the canvas of the map. ‘Here is a forest,’ Grace said. ‘Here is a dry watercourse, here are roads, and ruins. Yes —
ruins
. And then
here
are markings only to be found on maps of the Place. These shadings indicate bands of certain sorts of dreams. And these spots — little dots that on a normal map would show the position of a village or town — here mark the sites of certain famous stable dreams, dreams that any dreamhunter can catch, that are always consistent in their content and intensity.’

The Chief Ranger’s eyes wandered over the large labels of the famous stable dreams. He spotted Convalescent One and Two, Starry Beach, Balloon War, The Great Players, Beautiful Horse and Big Member — a title he wished was rather less prominently visible to these children.

Grace rested the tip of her pointer on one spot. ‘This is Wild River — the dream on which you will be tested.’

IT WASN’T THE
first time that Laura had seen a map of the Place, and she knew that it wasn’t the bands of colour, or the phantom villages, or even Big Member that caused the candidates to gasp — it was the whole
shape
of the map. The interior of the Place couldn’t be measured in relation to known lines of longitude and latitude. Because, Laura knew, the land in the Place represented a much bigger space than the fifteen miles between Doorhandle and Tricksie Bend. Also, the Place had only parallel borders. No attempt to follow the border on the inside had ever resulted in tracing a line from the marker just inside the border at Tricksie Bend around to the one near Doorhandle. The Chief Ranger’s map of the Place consisted of two horizontal ribbons of borderland, separated by a feathering of details supplied by those who had travelled deepest In from either side. Between the feathering was a broad blank space. No map of the interior of the Place could be set inside one of the surrounding country — as a maritime map of a coastline can be set against a corresponding map of
what lies inland from that coast. And that was because the border to the Place was only continuous from the
outside
, not from within.

Laura’s Aunt Grace was saying, ‘This is where we are taking you today. It’s a dream site at map reference A–8. As you can see, the map is labelled in bands A to E from the Doorhandle side, and Z to X at Tricksie Bend, where the Place hasn’t been quite so fully explored. I always wonder if we’ll eventually have to adopt letters from another alphabet when we find there are actually more bands in the hinterland than there are letters to label them.’ Grace Tiebold paused and made a thoughtful humming noise. Then she said, ‘But enough of that. Yes?’

A boy — one of the bandy-legged runts — had put up a hand.

He asked, ‘What’s it for?’

‘A–8?’ said Grace.

The boy blushed and subsided in confusion.

Laura knew that her aunt had purposely misinterpreted the boy’s question. He had probably just asked for the first time that perpetual, teasing question: what was the Place for? Why did it exist?

Grace continued, ‘A–8 is the dream Wild River. It is highly likely you know it already.’

Many of the candidates nodded.

Laura had shared the dream before, a perennial favourite performed at least four times each year in the Rainbow Opera. It was a dream to which older children
were permitted to go — a harmlessly exhilarating dream. Anyone who shared Wild River found themselves as either a young man or a young woman — depending on which point of view they fell in with — taking a ride with friends in a sturdy boat down a river. A very beautiful river with a series of increasingly thrilling rapids. The dream always ended with the boat’s safe arrival, and stately progress, into a calm lake.

‘Wild River is a highly consistent, benign dream. It’s ideal for you to cut your teeth on. What we’re looking to see is,
first
, whether you can catch and retain it at all.
Second
, how strongly and for how long.
Third
, whether any of you will be fortunate enough to catch the split dream, to carry off both protagonists’ points of view.’

There was a murmuring among the candidates, who must all have been aware that anyone who caught the split dream would have their fortunes made. There were only eight dreamhunters who could catch split dreams — of that eight, Grace was by far the most powerful.

‘Even given that you’re all sleeping in the same place, so boosting one another — this a true test, because you all get the same advantage. The test takes account of that. After the test you’ll walk out and catch a train back to the capital. You’ll be taken to the head offices of the Regulatory Body where you will each individually perform your Wild River for the examiners. Because Wild River is consistent it’s possible to grade the quality of your catch.’ Grace asked if they had any more questions.

The bandy-legged boy put up his hand again. ‘Miss,’ he said — rather betraying his charity school education — ‘aren’t all dreamhunters different? Is the river dream one any dreamhunter can get?’

‘Yes. That’s why we use it. If you can catch a dream at all, you will catch Wild River. We don’t really learn much about what sort of dreamhunter you are unless you catch the split dream. In this test we will only measure your strength and the dream’s longevity, and get some sense of your powers of projection.’

Another hand went up and a boy whispered, ‘What say you’re afraid of water?’

‘The dream supplies another
self —
you know that. Though it does happen sometimes that a dreamhunter can change the appearance of a character in a dream so that they resemble someone in the dreamhunter’s life.’

Grace Tiebold went on to tell the boy who was afraid of water about other exceptions to the rule that the dream supplied all its characters. ‘There are a few talents who are able to make
substitutions
. To supply faces and bodies to order. For instance, the dreamhunter Maze Plasir makes half his income from the sale of “bespoke dreams” to solitary clients. He can make the characters in his dreams look like people his patrons desire and can’t have, or like people they’ve lost. Plasir makes wishes come true. And he resurrects the dead. His is a very rare — and, I think, rather
dubious —
talent. I’m sure you — all of you — will find that you’re one or the other same old characters in the usual old boat.’

‘That’s to be hoped,’ the Chief Ranger added, seeing the disappointment on several of the young faces. Some of the candidates, having joined an exclusive club, now wanted to be singular among the exclusive, to find their own strangely configured niche and sit in it like saints.