'Neath Sleep's Sweet Veil

Next time you catch yourself at the point of slumber (suppose it’s midterm season, and you’ve been getting late nights) — next time you’re alone and reading of an autumn morning and feel your eyes closing and your head nodding at intervals — try and hold yourself there, in that pitching forward, in that interim before you jolt back to alertness. Turn the fall into a flight, if you can; for as long as possible avert the inevitable moment of hitting the ground and falling awake. You’ll find it’s like diving for pearls — you can go progressively deeper before coming up for air. Sharks are few and far between, though it’s not unheard of to drown.

You’ll notice unusual things starting to happen, as you linger in that interim space. With a jump of the heart you’ll wake and swear that the shadows fleeing in the corners of your vision were persons standing in silent conversation a moment before. Or you’ll snap to attention with the distinct sense that a door somewhere has just closed. Strangenesses these are, which are always just beyond perception.

Some have alleged that maintaining this state is like flying through a gray fog. They say that as you fly on through the mist, it solidifies beneath you and becomes like the cloudy ice on the surface of a frozen lake, or like a dim mirror. You then find yourself skimming just over the disk with your shadow flickering on the other side, upside down and looking up at you with burning eyes. The mirror thins and disappears, so the story goes; the ice melts away, and as you fly face to face, mouth to mouth, with your shadow, it reaches out its arms and folds you into its embrace. And intimately bound you sail off into indefinition.

No one, of course, has witnessed this — even if someone had, it would just go to show what happens when you don’t stay on the path.

Stay on the path. There is a fine line between sleeping and waking — learn to keep your balance on this one, and you’ll be on your way to walking along all the fine lines in the world, for they cross and connect in the most wonderful ways. Think of it as a web, and as you walk along your allotted strand pay no heed to the slight thrummings of goings-on far away, the distant dance of predator and prey. Focus on not falling off, and you’ll get somewhere in the end.

“Somewhere” and “end” are relative to you, of course. You may walk for five minutes, or you may walk for five hours, depending on how astute you are. (You’d be surprised how recalcitrant even the brightest people become when they realize they’re not quite awake). But in the end you’ll get somewhere, and that Somewhere is always a house, and that house is always poised precisely between dreaming and waking. Naturally, you should go in.

Buried in everyone’s childhood memories there is an empty corridor, mustily carpeted, where the afternoon sunlight slants in through the windows and glints off the dust motes in the air. You’ll remember it when you see it. It leads through the house from end to end, which is an awfully long way — but you shouldn’t worry about that, since there are so many rooms to explore in the house itself. Plenty of doors, very few of them locked, all there for your exploring pleasure.

And yet somehow people always get bored. They say the house is too empty, too quiet. They say it unsettles them. They don’t like the dust, the wallpaper, the mirrors, the fact that they can find no place to sit, though there’s a bed in every room. What they really want, of course, is to see what’s at the end of the corridor, and they inch slowly but surely toward it.

So when you come to either end of the hall — the ends are the same, by the way, regardless which direction you go; all things are circular at heart, and this place is no exception — when you come to the end of the hall, I say, you’ll find a brass staircase that stops at the ceiling. You’ll grumble, you’ll marvel at the dead end, and you’ll go up the stairs anyway, where you’ll realize that by closely inspecting the ceiling you can make out the seams of a cleverly hidden trapdoor. It isn’t latched.

The Attic is also a library, but it functions primarily as an observatory. The first thing you’ll notice when you climb in is that it’s night up here, where downstairs it was a foggy afternoon; you’ll see the stars through the glass dome and realize, if you’re clever, that these are not stars you know. And then you’ll notice the telescope, the bookshelves, the armchairs, and you’ll wander over to where the fire is burning in the hearth.

I hope you won’t be frightened by my appearance. I’m told my aspect is variable and changes in the firelight, but I’ve never checked — mirrors frighten me so. (Did you know that if you set two mirrors up face to face with each other and look into one of them, they’ll toss you back and forth to infinity?) I prefer to look outward, anyway, which is what the telescope is for; and when I’m not scoping out the sky I like to think, sitting in the fireplace. The flames tickle me, and it’s the best place for ensuring that nothing gets down the chimney.

So we’ll finally meet. I’m no shadow, though the fire may cast me as one. I just play the role of guardian — tollmaster, if you will. I defend against unauthorized passage from this heart to the one next door, if another heart should ever come so close as it floats past on its own journey. And in the meantime, I ensure no one gets out and gets lost. Or found.

Not that I’m a man of few talents. When the job is slow, I like to broaden my mind and cultivate new skills. I climb the sheer walls of secret passions and hike the hidden valleys of the mind. I am a whisperer in dark places, a singer of songs, and something of a freelance travel guide. I adore projecting my voice and sending it up, up, up through the canyons of the mind — sometimes you hear it, don’t you, especially when you’re sinking into sleep, though the echoes may follow you into waking? And I try to be persuasive. Take how you couldn’t help coming along on this journey. In dreams, description suffices to take you to your destination — and I am a master of description, if I say so myself.

I’ll have to fix that door so it doesn’t slam down so loudly. Now, take a seat — can I get you something to drink? And tell me, do you like to dance? It’s against the rules, but perhaps you and I shall go for a whirl after this. We can go out the dome and fall behind the sky, into the space between the stars. But there’s no rush. We have plenty of time. You’ve gone deeper than you think; another minute and I’m afraid you’ll have to stay quite a while.

It’s time to wake up, if you can.