Upon a Dream

He is looking at himself in the water. She cannot see his face, only his back that is dusted with blossom petals from the endless orchard. He dips his hand in the ribbon of water cutting through the trees then brings a palm-full toward his lips.

He tenses and begins to turn. The water from his hand crashes into the creek.

Isleen awoke.

The storm had made its way into her cabin. She shouted for assistance from her sleeping crewmates, pulling herself from her cot, and splashed hurriedly up the steps to the main deck to find the captain hollering orders; his demands caught in the seaspray and tossed overboard.

The routine was, unfortunately, becoming rather common the closer to the kingdom’s borders they got, and Isleen was efficient in keeping the ship from being swallowed up by the sea, until the waves at last conceded to the sun that broke through the clouds above her.

As thankful as she was for that sun, she felt jaded by it for not having allowed her more rest to be with her dream.

She’d never seen him before.

Isleen had dreamed of the orchard as many times as there were trees in it—yet he had never been there.

That day seemed particularly long, seemingly in spite of this curiosity of Isleen’s, keeping her an arm's width from sleep until stars were bright overhead.

As she finally slipped into bed, she ignored the mutterings of her crewmates, whose service to the captain was becoming all the more begrudged—their determination to overthrow the cruel kingdom’s stewardship lessening more and more with each storm they endured in approaching it.

And so Isleen slept.

She sees him sitting and leaning against the trunk of a tree, his legs outstretched, head resting lazily on the bark. His eyes hold the pink of the blossoms and the blue sky arching overhead.

“Hello,” Isleen calls.

His eyes widen and search for the source of her voice. When he sees her, she nearly retreats from the intensity in his gaze.

But it is not violence that she sees. No, it is fear that slowly shifts into curious disbelief.

“What are you doing here?” He stands, his voice as smooth as the creek between them.

Isleen looks around at the sea of blossoms and smiles coyly. “I’m dreaming. I suppose it is I who should be asking what you are doing here.”

“Who are you?”

“I reckon I’m the owner of this orchard.”

He crosses his arms, though the motion is hardly barring. “Well, that cannot be—I have always been here, and I do not know you.”

“Well,” Isleen leaps nimbly over the creek to close the space between them, “that’s an easy fix.” She extends her hand for him to kiss, though the action is well above her station—but this is her dream, is it not? “I am Isleen.”

He takes it delicately. “Isleen,” he lifts her hand to brush her knuckles with his lips, “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

She bows her head. “And you are?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but then his brows furrow. His eyes wander away from her, and he frowns. “I suppose I have not considered that.” His gaze slips to where he still holds her hand, then finds her eyes. There is a softness in his that has her falling—peculiarly unafraid of the comfortable landing.

“I might be waking soon,” she says, letting him go.

“Where will you go?”

“To the ship,” she says, then tilts her head, “you say you live here?”

“Yes…” he says lowly, though his mind seems to have meandered elsewhere. “This is indeed all I know.”

“This never-ending spring?”

He nods.

“Where do you go when you dream?”

“I… I do not dream at all, for I do not sleep.” His frown suddenly rights itself into a smile. “Perhaps you are the dream—my very first.”

She laughs, and his eyes beam with what looks like delighted surprise.

And then he is gone.

And Isleen found herself staring at the wooden planks of her cabin ceiling.

The dream felt oddly more like a memory as she went about her day, manning the ship—like something tangible.

“We’ll breach the borders of the kingdom before sundown,” someone said above the roar of the waves surrounding her.

Sundown. Isleen thought of it almost giddily, eagerly letting it consume her once it came down upon the ship.

And there he is again.

He looks expectant—standing in the middle of the rows of blooming trees, his hands laced behind his back.

“Isleen,” he says through a soft smile.

“Hello again.”

“What brings you back here?”

She shrugs. “I happened to fall asleep.”

“Dreaming again?”

“I seem to be.”

“Would you care to walk with me, Isleen?” He extends his arm to her. She steps close and places her hand in the crook of his elbow.

And so together, they walk. He asks her where she goes in her waking, where she has been, and she has no reason not to indulge him. It is all within her mind as it is—her thoughts are his to pluck at his will. And perhaps it is the way that he drinks up each of her words like they are a medicine that has her so willing to tell.

Eagerly, she asks him to tell her about himself, but he shakes his head.

They stop before a withered blossom tree. It looks as any tree might at the end of spring—but that doesn’t seem to be the way for this place.

“After you left, you got me thinking,” he says quietly. “I’m afraid that is an odd thing, for me to be thinking, and especially thinking about thinking. And then I found this tree.” His eyes narrow. “I think… I am confused. But I am not certain what about.”

Isleen approaches the tree and observes the branches. It is indeed dying. She turns to see him sitting with his back against another, heartier tree, wringing his hands.

“I’ve distressed you,” she frowns and looks back to the dying tree. “Is this because of me?”

“It’s conceivable.”

“Then I am sorry.”

He shakes his head, smiling placidly. “I was quite content before.”

“Before?”

“You,” he says flatly.

“Oh,” Isleen shifts on her feet, her face heating. “I take it you mean that I robbed that comfort from you somehow?”

“Somehow…” he muses, then he stands when she means to turn from him. He catches her hand. “I only mean that when you wake… when you leave… I will now know what it is like to be without something as warm and perhaps as crucial as the sun above me. The sun that has never left me for a moment.”

“I see,” she says, looking at her feet—at the incredibly green grass beneath them. “Well then, may I rescind my apology?”

He laughs warmly. “I suppose you can. Why?”

“Because I’ve been glad to have found you as a friend—in a dream or otherwise. Even if it means I made you think a bit too hard.”

He grins, but it fades into something ponderous. “Friend… I think I know that word.”

“I would hope so.” She smiles, but it falters at his sudden distress.

“You say that word like it is good, but I do not remember it that way…”

Isleen speaks, but the words are lost to the air, for the day steals her away again.

And all that day she begged the sun to shoo.

But as Isleen gained calluses and tangled hair, he thought of her.

He paces the paths of the orchard, muttering to himself the word that has plagued him—friend. It is not until he is before the withered tree again that it dawns on him.

He had had a friend. In a time before…

But what did that word mean to him—before?

He wonders desperately, unsure what directions his thoughts can even go. What is he even trying to recall? People, names, a place other than this orchard? His friend would certainly have had a name, just as Isleen does, wouldn’t he?

He hears her sudden greeting and his heart lifts. She approaches, and he can smell the salt in her hair.

Salt. That is another thing he remembers.

Salt and the sound of birds.

Birds?

“What troubles you?” Isleen’s voice is a warm breeze he has never felt in this orchard. But he must know what a warm breeze is, then, to compare her to it.

“I wish I could say.”

She smiles kindly and gestures for them to walk together. He would gladly follow her to the end of this pink sea. And so together, and aimlessly, they wander the orchard.

Perhaps a night passes, perhaps eons do.

“May I ask you something, Isleen?”

“Certainly.”

“What does a bird sound like?”

“What sort of bird?”

“Oh dear…” he laughs, “I was concerned to ask at all, and now I most definitely regret it. I hardly know what a bird is, let alone that there are enough to make different sounds.”

She chuckles, but squeezes his arm assuringly where she holds on to him.

He looks down at her, eyes snagging in her hair. “Is there a bird that has something to do with… salt?”

“Salt…” she ponders. “A gull!” She lets out a high sound that might have begun as a replication but turns into a laugh. His eyes are quickly on the cyan sky above as he tilts his head back with his own laugh. “Does that help you?” she grins.

“Yes!” he beams. “I remember that sound!” He pulls away only to grab her hands. “The sea,” he breathes, “I remember the sea.”

She grips his hands tighter. “What else?”

“A… shore. I know grass and trees… but trees that change. Seasons.” His heart is ringing like a bell between his ribs. “Isleen.”

She opens her mouth, maybe to say his name back, but of course, she does not know it.

He pulls her closer, eyes wide. “Conrad,” he gasps. “That is my name.”

“Conrad,” she whispers.

Before he can revel in the feeling of his name being said by his sweet Isleen, a cloud passes overhead, graying her face. Confusion marks both of their expressions.

“Oh no.” Her tone sinks, and he follows where her finger points.

The creekbed has gone dry.

He turns to her, but she is no longer standing beside him.

“Isleen,” he cries out.

She does not hear him.

She gasped as she awoke, clutching her chest as if her lungs were withering along with the world in her mind. There were busy voices coming from above, and she hurried with her clothes to make herself useful.

“Not far now,” someone said tiredly beside her as she worked.

Isleen scoffed. “I don’t imagine how our measly fleet will uproot a century of tyrannical stewardship…”

“That kingdom was doomed as soon as it was abandoned by their king-to-be,” someone else jeered, pointing to the crumbling castle in the distance that rested at the edge of an island’s cliff. It was a tombstone, if anything. Unused for over a hundred years. “I’m here for my payment and nothing more.”

“How can such a peaceful kingdom have fallen into such terrible hands?”

“Slim-pickings. I hear no one compared to the benevolence of Prince Conrad. And then he disappeared, leaving his kingdom to ruin.”

Isleen dropped the ropes she’d been handling, sending a beam careening toward her crewmates. There was a commotion of shouts, and she fumbled to gain hold of the rope again, hardly wincing even as it dragged across her palms.

After a moment of her mouth fumbling and no words finding their way out, she managed to call to the captain, “Are we docking at the island?”

“Course not. No point. The fight is on the mainland. Besides, a storm’s on its way.”

“But, captain,” but the captain was no longer in sight.

The ship seemed to be moving suddenly at an immense speed—too fast for Isleen’s stumbling thoughts to keep up.

Was that her Conrad’s castle being illuminated by the break in the clouds?

There was no reason to believe it, for he was merely a dream.

But had he not recalled the sound of gulls, the shore, the sea?

On either account, the island was growing smaller and with a tether to Isleen’s heart, pulling taut the further they sailed.

So Isleen waited for the cover of night that would usually carry her to him, and chose a tender-boat as her vessel instead.

The waves were not kind to her, and rain entwined with the seaspray that coated her skin, but at last she found herself clamoring over the great rocks at the shore’s edge with nothing but the starlight to illuminate her path. Alone, she made her way up the winding road carved into the cliff face toward the castle.

The castle was indeed like a barrow, overgrown with wild briars and thorned roses. With her cutlass, she carved her way through and toward the great doors—the foliage biting like the guard dog it was.

At last, salt and rain stinging her wounds, an echoing silence greeted her as she pushed the doors open on their rusted hinges.

She was not entirely sure why she called out his name then—perhaps to hear it returned from the stony walls, perhaps as a plea.

It was not reasonable to be disappointed that no one called back.

And yet her heart told her another story.

She ran through the halls, her wet boots splashing on the marble, and peered in each chamber, calling his name again and again, loud enough that she might pierce her very dreams where he might hear her.

And if she was searching for a ghost, then let her be haunted.

Her feet took her at last to a barred door. With an effort from her blade, she managed her way through and found herself trudging up a winding staircase.

And there at the top opened a small chamber. She was at the peak of the highest tower, and yet it too was consumed with vines and blooms. Rain dripped through the ceiling, creating silver puddles on the leafy floor.

She followed where the starlight peeked through the cracks of the crumbling walls, and cried out his name once more.

For there he lay.

Conrad was draped across a dusty bed, canopied by blooming branches and cradled with crawling honeysuckle. He was fast asleep, his features serene and unmarred by the century of grime around him.

“Conrad,” she cried through a desperate smile, placing a hand on his shoulder.

He did not stir.

She shook him gently, then more eagerly, shouting his name until she wept, falling upon his neck, for it seemed he could not hear her. “Wake up, Prince.”

When no sign of life emanated from him still, she placed her fingers where his pulse should be, then above his still lips where she might feel his breathing.

The silence was as consuming as the vines choking the castle.

“Oh Conrad,” she cried, laying herself beside him and cupping his face in her hands. “You are home. All you need is to open your eyes.”

But he did not.

And so she laid by her prince, staining his pillow with the rain and her tears, until her thoughts slipped away from her.

All is gray.

The orchard is a brittle expanse. There is no sound of the trickling water of the creek. The blossoms do not even hold their color where they have fallen upon the yellowing grass.

Isleen walks numbly down the dead rows.

And then she sees him.

“Conrad!” She bounds toward him and falls to her knees, for he is lying upon the grass, his head wilting to the side.

His glazed eyes find her, and he speaks her name like a prayer.

“I am here,” she says as she brings his hand to her lips.

“I heard you calling,” he breathes, his smile as weak as his body appears. “I remember it. All of it. Who I am, who sent me to this place.”

“I am so sorry, Prince. Your kingdom has missed you dearly,” Isleen says softly. “They have needed you.”

“Isleen, I said I have never dreamed, but I think I am falling asleep at last.”

Isleen shakes her head, sobbing into his hand, for she knows it is not sleep awaiting him, but death.

“No,” he whispers, as if reading her thoughts plainly, brushing a tear from her cheek, “I have been dead. And you are bringing me to life again.”

“Me?”

Strength leaves him, and Isleen holds his head in her lap as his next words crawl from his lips in a final breath.

“I know who I am because you found me.”

His eyes close.

And the world bleeds away—neither of their voices to be heard in that orchard again.

For on a bed within a darkened chamber of a forgotten castle, two bodies lay decorated with the first blooms of spring.

The sun trickles in.

A gull’s song is carried upon the warm breeze.

And two pairs of eyes flutter open to greet the new morning’s light.