Daydream IV

The sun streamed through her window, caressing her eyelids, and she batted it away impatiently, burrowing her face in the bedclothes. It poked; it prodded; it rolled her onto her back and pried her eyes open. She stared at the ceiling: it felt suddenly foreign in its creamy peach; different; alien. It was horrible, some days, to wake up from dreams and be faced with the mind-numbing reality of white curtains and peach walls.

A memory stirred. Treacle. She had, she recalled, been darting around a woodland glade in her dreams, where shrubs suspended firm red berries in the air; firm red berries that would burst into a cacophony of treacle-like syrup where the teeth pierced the berries’ skin. It was her daily lament that such berries did not exist in reality; such symphonies of honey and toffee mingled in the one fruit.

She padded to the kitchen in search of breakfast, and came out sucking a treacle toffee instead.

Treacle. She had more of one-track mind that she had thought.

It danced upon her tongue and sent her thoughts into spirals: damp rocks (and crinkling toffee foil; where was the bin?); twisting tree trunks with curious knobby formations (ah, there it was; why did her parents move it?); sunlight scattered on leafy forest floors (it was overflowing now; she should empty it); pale mist that smelt like moss (she would find another bin for her wrapper; she felt too lazy to empty the bin now).

And the pool, glinting outside by the kitchen window, became an everlasting stretch of water, its glassy surface only emphasising its depths. She caught her breath. It was easy—so easy—to simply step back; step away; retire to her room; finish her work. It was easy. It was easy.

—She couldn’t do it. Her feet were rooted firmly, as firmly as the trees around her, in the soft and solid soil, and to take her hands off the jagged rock (how rough it felt; yet how smooth at the same time—as if the water had worn it down and then thrown sand upon it) was unthinkable; it would be like tearing away her skin. It would, she realised with playful solemnity, mean death.

The sun was hot. She did not want to die. It was an interesting line, she thought; interesting of Virginia Woolf to have her character utter those lines just before he committed suicide. And another hazy thought arose—she had Woolf to read, did she not? Did she? She couldn’t see a book here; there were no books to be seen (trees, trees, nothing but trees); she could not have any books that had to be read. Else such books would be here! And they were not. She laughed suddenly; quietly; allowed her laugh to be swallowed by the forest lest she be thought insane. (By whom? It mattered not.)

There were no books, ergo there were no books to be read. There was simply a forest, and water, and she, clad in flannel and slippers. The slippers tumbled to the ground as she clambered up a rocky wall, fingers and toes clinging to the gritty surface. She let them un-cling; she let them slip and she felt herself fall—the trees reached out as if to offer her a hand; she refused; she could take care of herself—and felt the water embrace her so tightly that it almost hugged her bones. She was drenched. She laughed again, shaking droplets from her eyelashes. (The water would cling!) It was crazy, to drop from rocky heights into unknown watery depths; it was sheer madness to swim in one’s clothes. It was ridiculous to simply dive when one could swing from the sky and fly into the water. So! She would swing.

It simply required vines, she thought, running her fingers over the grooves in the trees. One of the two knots on the trunks, when hit, would eject vines just thick enough to easily grasp; vines that were slender and strong and felt like roughened leather left out in the rain. It was simply a matter of locating the right knot; simply a matter of choosing carefully.

She paused. Why did she have to choose carefully? She hunted her memory reserves—why did she feel the need to be cautious? Because… because, she told herself, secret knots were no fun unless there was an element of danger, a hidden trap to catch the unwary. What trap would she have? And had she set a trap before? The only means to find out was by pressing a knot, either knot, and she selected one with gay abandon. Her fingers pressed down upon the hard bark and scurried away; her feet scurried away too, inexplicably, out of sheer habit: one, two, three steps; darted over a pyramid of stones; crouched behind another tree—why? She stopped; waited; it would come. She knew it would come.

And come it did; a colossal roar of leaves and soil and roots flying from the ground, flinging tree branches left and right. For a moment it looked like a hurricane; an explosion of trees; and she worried that she had destroyed the tree and the promise of vines. As the leaves settled, she saw the branches bending, swaying, forming a—was it? It was! A cage, a little cubic pen of folded branches, swinging from a bough.

She clapped her hands and crowed, imagining unfortunate wayfarers trapped after trespassing (for they were trespassing; this was her forest; she did not recall letting anyone in). Fools, to be caught by that knot! She danced around the net to taunt imaginary foe. How clever she was, to dart away in time! Well and good! She recalled the right knot now; she touched it and watched vines unfold from the canopy and brush the ground, gliding like green velvet snakes resting against the sky.

She tugged on one experimentally. Yes, still sound; still strong enough to bear her weight and some. She bent her knees and leapt, hugging the vine to her. She held; it held; she would be fine. Leaves crunched underfoot as she slid off and skipped towards a rocky shelf, the vine neatly in her grasp. It was merely a matter of launching herself from the rock with enough force—and she did so, easily, smoothly (would she could do it so gracefully in real life!), feeling tiny granules of rock clinging to her soles. The vine whipped through the air with such speed that she felt almost stationary, suspended over a stretch of water that was merely a blur. It was merely the promise of water, she realised with slight trepidation; merely a suggestion and not proof itself. And trepidation be damned, she thought… and let go just before the vine began to return to the rock.

She heard the vine snap away as she plummeted to the water (more than the promise of water, surely!) and heard the water snap underneath her (the blur did look so solid from above; it could not sound like anything but a snap). She surfaced; bobbed; paddled to the water’s edge. In the distance she could hear an alarm ringing (she had to go soon; she did not have time for another dip) and she wondered whether she could make it stop from here. She would wait it out. It would stop ringing soon, surely, and she would wait till she were dry and then leave of her own accord (she would not subject her forest to the whims of the outside world!).

She sat, idly sucking berries, feeling her skin tingle as the water dried and melted away. A breeze shuttled through the trees, cutting through her. She reached over the kitchen sink and closed the window to stop the unwanted gust of wind; she would have her world still and quiet for the time being. The leaves stopped rustling and she found herself shivering less. She was drying—no, she was dry. She had to go.

A sly smile played upon her lips. Yes, she would go. She would go and she would draw a bath: a lazy, long, luxurious bath; she would keep it as warm as the forest’s waters; she would daydream there. Reality really was only fun, she reflected, when it could be twisted to facilitate a daydream.