She had three, or rather, one large dream that was broken into three pieces whose borders were slightly blurred and made the transition seem somewhat flawless. Nevertheless, three separate vignettes played in her head that night.
In the first, she found herself walking through the library again, though this time the building was dark and a constant dread accompanied her, causing her to stop and look over her shoulder every so often at a mysterious growl emanating from a row far away. As she roamed the passages, more labyrinthine than she recalled the library being, she took note of the books around her, none of which had any sort of writing adorning the spine. Later, once she had awoken and recalled the circumstances of this dream, she remembered being told that in dreams, one cannot read. The object of the book may be there, but its pages are filled with scribbled nonsense or, in some cases, nothing at all.
She found herself called and wove her way through the rows like a stitching needle threading a knitted scarf, closer and closer to the noise that drew her attention. Finally, the source of the growl seemed to be just around the next corner, but it had changed, in both tone and ferocity. It had become, instead, a loud drone, and as she leapt around to the last row, where something should have been waiting, she found nothing. There was a darkness there that seemed out of place, something darker than shadows that seemed to grow and intensify its state of nothingness, a black void drawing her in, all-encompassing.
Thus she found herself in the second dream, which began on a dark plane, absent of everything but the deafening drone. Suddenly, before her, as if it had been there the entire time, there was a giant moth, standing over her with terrible, bulging eyes that saw in every direction at once. It saw her, too, she realized, but it paid her no attention. She felt small, insignificant. Something important was in front of her, refusing to acknowledge her existence. Instead it simply waited there on a dark floor barely distinguishable from the rest of the dream world around her, sounding out its low, vibrating hum that rattled every atom in her body. Abruptly, it stopped and turned its enormous face down toward her, reaching out with its proboscis, itself a moving tower that touched her, felt out for her, withdrawing a spark of energy from her body, placing a bit of another in its stead. Then it pushed her, and she could feel herself falling, helpless, until she crashed back onto the comfort of her bed.
Then the third dream began with a knock on the door, rousing her from an awakened dream. When she finally answered it, which seemed to take much longer than she'd expected, she found a boy waiting for her. He appeared to be the same age as her, clad in a night shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, and he smiled as if recognizing her from some far off place.
"There are three of us now," he said. "Three in all the world."
Looking back, it felt as if she had replied somehow. She certainly would have if she'd had any say in the matter, but whatever she may have said in that dream was lost forever, and she awoke in the comfort of her own bed, the covers thrashed away, kicked to the floor sometime in the night.
After waking, an image stayed with her, ingrained in her thoughts--not the image of a person or of an object, but of words, of two sentences that floated in her mind like dialogue from a comic book word bubble.
There are three of us now. Three in all the world.
The words seemed familiar, as if she'd seen them, albeit in a different form, before, and she began tearing through the old notebooks stacked atop her night stand, stopping only when she'd found what she was looking for--a handout from a Native American history class she had taken the year before, covered in statistics of American Indian casualties of various epidemics brought to the New World by European settlers, chief among them smallpox.
The handout itself was a ragged old thing, born from a copy machine and a dozen separate parents, each supplying their own little sliver of knowledge. On the back page, situated near the bottom was a faded chart, evidently copied from a text book plagued by crumpled pages, and on the chart were first hand estimates detailing the survivors of a particularly brutal smallpox outbreak in 1838, noting: "a splintered group of fifteen were all that remained of two villages along the Missouri River, ten women from a larger town near the Heart River, and a kingdom of three on the edge of the Great Plains."
"There are three of us now," she said softly to herself, needing to hear the words resonate in her ears once again. "Three in all the world. A kingdom of three."
She knew right then, the words of the boy in her dream still heavy on her tongue, that she had found her story.
In the first, she found herself walking through the library again, though this time the building was dark and a constant dread accompanied her, causing her to stop and look over her shoulder every so often at a mysterious growl emanating from a row far away. As she roamed the passages, more labyrinthine than she recalled the library being, she took note of the books around her, none of which had any sort of writing adorning the spine. Later, once she had awoken and recalled the circumstances of this dream, she remembered being told that in dreams, one cannot read. The object of the book may be there, but its pages are filled with scribbled nonsense or, in some cases, nothing at all.
She found herself called and wove her way through the rows like a stitching needle threading a knitted scarf, closer and closer to the noise that drew her attention. Finally, the source of the growl seemed to be just around the next corner, but it had changed, in both tone and ferocity. It had become, instead, a loud drone, and as she leapt around to the last row, where something should have been waiting, she found nothing. There was a darkness there that seemed out of place, something darker than shadows that seemed to grow and intensify its state of nothingness, a black void drawing her in, all-encompassing.
Thus she found herself in the second dream, which began on a dark plane, absent of everything but the deafening drone. Suddenly, before her, as if it had been there the entire time, there was a giant moth, standing over her with terrible, bulging eyes that saw in every direction at once. It saw her, too, she realized, but it paid her no attention. She felt small, insignificant. Something important was in front of her, refusing to acknowledge her existence. Instead it simply waited there on a dark floor barely distinguishable from the rest of the dream world around her, sounding out its low, vibrating hum that rattled every atom in her body. Abruptly, it stopped and turned its enormous face down toward her, reaching out with its proboscis, itself a moving tower that touched her, felt out for her, withdrawing a spark of energy from her body, placing a bit of another in its stead. Then it pushed her, and she could feel herself falling, helpless, until she crashed back onto the comfort of her bed.
Then the third dream began with a knock on the door, rousing her from an awakened dream. When she finally answered it, which seemed to take much longer than she'd expected, she found a boy waiting for her. He appeared to be the same age as her, clad in a night shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, and he smiled as if recognizing her from some far off place.
"There are three of us now," he said. "Three in all the world."
Looking back, it felt as if she had replied somehow. She certainly would have if she'd had any say in the matter, but whatever she may have said in that dream was lost forever, and she awoke in the comfort of her own bed, the covers thrashed away, kicked to the floor sometime in the night.
After waking, an image stayed with her, ingrained in her thoughts--not the image of a person or of an object, but of words, of two sentences that floated in her mind like dialogue from a comic book word bubble.
There are three of us now. Three in all the world.
The words seemed familiar, as if she'd seen them, albeit in a different form, before, and she began tearing through the old notebooks stacked atop her night stand, stopping only when she'd found what she was looking for--a handout from a Native American history class she had taken the year before, covered in statistics of American Indian casualties of various epidemics brought to the New World by European settlers, chief among them smallpox.
The handout itself was a ragged old thing, born from a copy machine and a dozen separate parents, each supplying their own little sliver of knowledge. On the back page, situated near the bottom was a faded chart, evidently copied from a text book plagued by crumpled pages, and on the chart were first hand estimates detailing the survivors of a particularly brutal smallpox outbreak in 1838, noting: "a splintered group of fifteen were all that remained of two villages along the Missouri River, ten women from a larger town near the Heart River, and a kingdom of three on the edge of the Great Plains."
"There are three of us now," she said softly to herself, needing to hear the words resonate in her ears once again. "Three in all the world. A kingdom of three."
She knew right then, the words of the boy in her dream still heavy on her tongue, that she had found her story.
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