Daydream VI

‘I want to create a new world.’

Her voice echoed in the empty house; bounced against the blank flat white of her word processor’s screen. She had many worlds, true, but she did not want to write them today. She was bored of visiting. Her enjoyment of worlds lay in their creation: the slow unfolding of landscape and detail until she could creep up to a closed door and know that her world lay behind it. (It would, like all good secret worlds, disappear once she opened the door. But it was the knowing that was enough; it was the sheer bliss that came with knowing that such a world existed.)

It would be a library, she thought. It would be a classic library: crimson curtains, dark wood shelves, a chair upholstered in moss-green damask by the fireplace. And the books! The books would be leather-bound (green and navy and maroon covers, tinged with mottled ivory where the leather had rubbed away) with rough, porous pages that carried the faint scent of smoke and ink. She ran her fingers over the spines and the pages, delighting in every bump and every fibre. She would read, definitely; she would toss herself into the chair and snuggle up with a book—any book—and read the hours away.

But she needed to explore first. She needed to learn every inch of her new library; needed to acquaint herself with it and perform perfunctory introductions (one had to be polite, after all!) so that they would not be strangers. She looked down. The floor would be, was, wooden floorboards, polished, warm to the touch, whorls and loops scattered through the wood in memory of tree trunk knots. It would be cold in winter, though, and so it needed… a rug. A rug, taken from a mysteriously Other shore, stowed below-deck in a solid wooden ship and carried, solemnly, ceremoniously, by the intrepid adventurer-scholar into the library. It would smell faintly of tar and salt—the smell of sea journeys could not be ripped from it by mere carpet cleaning—and of a cinnamon-like spice, sweet and peppery. She patted the rug experimentally. Yes, it would do. It was a brilliantly rich colour, like stars had exploded and stained the threads with star-blood—such a deep, golden colour could not be anything but the essence of stars, or sunrays stolen and pressed into the fibre. She could lie on the carpet forever, soak the dying sunlight from its threads, but the rest of the library needed outfitting.

On the mantelpiece, she placed a tiny clock (unwound; she would not have it ticking while she read) and a glass vase of flowers (curious things; they would open in the morning and close at night as if they, too, slept and woke). Better. It was getting better. She turned around slowly. Tall, dim lamps in every corner, casting the faintest pools of light before the shelves; a low table with a small stack of books (and a tall stack of yellowed writing paper, held down with a fountain pen and a small block of chocolate); large, shuttered windows and a high, arched ceiling with old wooden beams creaking in the eaves. Yes, it was all falling into place.

She lit the fireplace. The air exploded with warmth and she stepped back, memories of the flames tingling on her skin. The room seemed larger now, as if the fire had illuminated corners she hadn’t previously seen. More books! Her feet skipped over and her hands roved over the titles, tracing the gilt letters with a fingernail. She pulled books out, rifled through the contents, breathed in the musty, mildly mildewed smell (it was like Shakespeare, Keats, Dickens in a bouquet; it was an Austen-like Scent of Sensibility). It amused her that she was so averse to germs and yet happily inhaled the microbes that no doubt existed in old books—but that was the romantic in her; the poor, quiet, repressed romantic of whom she was rather ashamed (her brand of romanticism was so syrupy, so absurdly sentimental that she could not help but be embarrassed when it crept out). There was nothing romantic about people sneezing. Books, on the other hand! She moved to pull out another, but it stuck. Its title was blank; her inability to find out its contents drove her mad and so she tugged it fiercely. It slid out with a smooth pop and a clatter like horses’ hooves on pavement. She whirled around to peer out of the window. There could be no horses on pavement here; her library was surrounded by acres of grass; acres of grass and a lake of soft purple water.

When she turned back, the shelf had disappeared; it had melted into a wall of pale blue plaster and the longest, darkest tunnel she had ever seen. Where did it go? And what was it? The servants’ passageway, or—surely not—a tunnel to a basement crammed with… with… dead bodies strung from the ceiling or torture instruments with fresh blood drying or half a corpse or dismembered heads stacked up storeys high or—

Her imagination flailed and fainted.

It was simply a secret passageway, she told herself sternly. An innocent secret passageway, leading to somewhere equally innocent and probably rather dull. (She refused to consider anything else; her imagination was sometimes far too morbid for her tastes.) Was there a lantern she could use? Yes, why not: an old glass and iron-wrought creation that smoked because she had not the technical knowledge to operate such an old lamp. She coughed. The smoke was stinging her eyes; surely such lamp had a mechanism of some sort—a flap, perhaps—to release the smoke? She opened a browser to consult Wikipedia (veritable mine of truth!). Ah. One had to trim the wicks properly; that was doable, easily so. She took a pair of scissors from her desk drawer, blew out the lantern and snipped the wick. There was a little scattering of ash on the lantern’s base—why, she wasn’t sure; ash did not come from lantern wicks—and she blew it away, watching it explode like bursts of dusty doves into the still air.

She held the lantern up and the hallway was suddenly flooded with the shadows she cast. An insect stopped buzzing. She followed its twisting, turning, ever sloping path; ran her hands along the bumpy plaster; and came upon a trapdoor in the ceiling. How quaint, she thought; how very classic. It succumbed to her pushes and she peeked out.

Above her a teal sky was set free, splashing over her like ripples in a lake. She scrambled out and landed on cottonwool grass. It was spongy grass--not unpleasant, but rather odd—and she bounced on the balls of her feet through the grounds, examining flowerbeds with unpruned dandelions nodding merry greetings. They were sweet flowers; curious flowers; petals that curled out to observe passing ants and seeds blowing in the wind. She sat, cross-legged, in front of the flowerbeds and engaged in idle chitchat with every one of them. Did they know that she had a glorious library inside? She had a fire waiting—indeed, yes, a glorious fire crackling like cellophane—and some paper to scribble upon; they were all most welcome to join her. They would shrivel if they were too close to a flame? Ah, that was a pity. It cannot be helped; one must carry on as best one could. Would they like her to pick them, cut them from the ground and keep them in water so that they could at least see the inside for a little while? No; she supposed not; borrowed life in a closed room—as beautiful as that closed room may be—was no pleasant existence. She was only asking, just in case.

She left the flowerbeds with their gossiping petals and skipped around, peering through the windows at her library, until night came out from under each tree and spread itself along the ground. She burrowed herself in the sponge-like grass to watch the stars peek out; to look and look at the burning of ten billion white and lovely candles in the sky. She could almost hear the stars smouldering; curling, twirling, clinking against the night sky like ice cubes chiming in a glass of lemonade.

Her lantern was flickering; the wick was at its very end. She hurtled down the passageway (she was afraid of the dark, even in daydreams) and flung herself onto the sunlit rug, breathing heavily. As she rolled over to reach for the chocolate, the lantern burnt down to the last of the wick, and the room went dark. She peered around and realised just how dark it was. Her room was lit only by the glow of her laptop screen; if she did not touch-type she would have to squint to read the keys. What was the time? Past midnight already! She rearranged the pillows at her back and flicked her lamp on. She wasn’t sleepy yet; she would read until the first faint gleam of dawn knocked on the window. She pulled a book from her bedside table and snuggled deeply into her quilt; her carpet; her moss-green armchair by the library’s fire (perhaps she was more drowsy than she cared to admit); and closed her eyes to read from leather-bound, gilt-lettered titles instead.