372: Field Of Dreams

In Which Assistance Is Offered

I was at the farm… the farm in the labyrinth, only it wasn’t in the labyrinth. The barn was the same and there was the haystack and the field of corn, but it wasn’t bounded by maze walls… the field of corn stretched on, and a little ways away on the other side of the little road there was some gently rolling pasture land.

I was a little disappointed. I might have hoped, after so much love and affection from Amaranth, to have had a dream that reflected that in some fashion. I also could have dreamed of my mother, after digging up some buried feelings and memories.

I was also disappointed to see that my pitchfork wasn’t in the haystack… I would have liked to feel it in my hands again, if only in a dream.

There was no pitchfork, but there was something bright and orange and round resting near the base of it, like a child’s ball. There was nothing more interesting than that around me… no scarecrow hanging on the pole over the rows of corn and no crows, monstrous or otherwise… so I went over to get a closer look.

It was some kind of big melon or something, and there was a bug crawling on its rind… a little wiggly one, like the tiniest kinds of ants. Actually, there was more than one… another joined it, and two more. A lot more were crawling around from the other side of it. The bugs were swarming all over it. It was practically covered before long.

“Remind you of anyone?” somebody asked.

I looked up to see a man there, sitting on top of the haystack. I thought at first he might have been the scarecrow, out of the shadow at last… he was skinny and lithe looking, and he had a hat with a wide brim, but it wasn’t the right kind of hat. The scarecrow had been wearing something more like a floppy straw hat, a farmer’s hat. This guy was wearing a suit, kind of retro-fashionable, in a turn of the century kind of way, and the hat was straight-up cavalier chic. It was only missing the feather.

He got to his feet and began a graceful shuffle down the side of the stack, sending bits of hay tumbling down in tiny avalanches but keeping his feet.

“A bunch of insects crawling around on the skin of a fruit,” he said when he reached the ground next to me. He shook his head. “Who’s that remind you of?”

“Um… other insects?” I said, and he laughed.

He looked about my age, maybe a little older. His eyes were dark under the brim of his hat. His face was smooth, very smooth… almost elven smooth. I didn’t know him, but I thought I recognized him somehow. He was a bit specific to have come from some kind of central casting office in my head. He might have been any of the dozens of guys I’d seen in classes and not paid any attention to, I supposed.

“You were expecting the fox girl, weren’t you?” he asked.

“I don’t dream about her that much any more,” I said.

“Don’t you?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“You know… when humans first landed on their island, they didn’t know what to make of the people,” he said. “There are ‘beastmen‘ all over, but humans expect beasts to be beastly, not to build beautiful shrines and drink tea. The locals didn’t know what to make of them, either… so after a brief spell, they mostly made corpses of each other. The humans decided they were just another type of monster, but one that mocked humanity’s culture and achievements. There was a serious debate among the temples as to whether they were infernal, or just, you know… wicked that way. There was more than one lexicon written where their word for themselves, for ‘being‘ or ‘person‘, was translated as ‘demon’.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “Really. It’s fascinating the nonsense I can come up with when I’m asleep.”

He knocked the melon with the toe of his boot and it rolled over, barely disturbing the swarm.

“That really doesn’t remind you of anyone?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Huh,” he said. “What if they started building cities? Laying roads? Think that might jog your memory a little?”

“Oh, I get it,” I said. “Very clever. Very allegorical. We’re like a bunch of tiny bugs crawling around on a piece of fruit.”

“We?” the man said, cocking an eyebrow.

“Okay, I am,” I said. “You’re just some dream guy giving me a random, generic piece of insight. You know, this isn’t at all like my normal dreams… this standing around and talking and stuff. I usually get more like flashes of emotion and movement that I don’t really make sense of until I wake up.”

“Yeah, that’s a dream, alright,” the man said. “If you want insight, what you need to realize is that none of this,” he said, pausing as though for dramatic effect, “is real.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “I kind of worked that out for myself, though. I mean, that’s what dreams are, mostly. Not real.”

“I’m not talking about this in here,” he said. “I’m talking about all that out there.”

“All of what out where?”

“Everything you’ve got going on when you’re awake,” he said. “Your little girlfriend with your picnic lunches. Your little boyfriend. The other one. Your academic career. Your little fight for equality. Your hopes. Your dreams.”

“I thought you weren’t talking about dreams,” I said.

“I’m not talking about this dream,” he said. “I’m talking about your plans for the future.”

“What makes you think I’ve got any?” I asked. “Plans, or future.”

“Oh, I know you’ve got a future,” he said. “It’s going to be a piece of glory.”

“You’ve seen it, I suppose,” I said.

“I’m seeing to it.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re my guardian angel,” I said sarcastically.

“You’re not as sharp as she is,” he said, and he turned and started walking away down the road.

“As who is?”

“Who do you think?” he asked without stopping or turning around.

“I don’t know, tell me,” I said.

“Sharpest woman I ever met,” he said. “Hard to believe you came from her.”

I didn’t take the bait, though the hook it was dangling on might as well have been shoved into my guts and yanked around a bit for good measure. He was talking about my mother.

“This isn’t a normal dream, is it?” I asked.

The man stopped and turned around, grinning a way-too-broad grin.

“If it makes you more comfortable, we could take off our clothes,” he said. “Or I could belt you one… throw you to the ground, kick you in the face. Would that be a normal dream?”

“Who are you?” I asked him. “Did… did my mother send you?”

“Nobody sent me,” he said.

“You’re real, though,” I said. “I mean, you’re not somebody I dreamed up… you’re doing something, magic or something.”

“You’re getting sharper,” he said, tipping his hat a bit. “Keep it up and we just might not be here all night. What makes you think it’s magic?”

“Because if this were a divine visitation… which I wouldn’t believe it was anyway… I’d be in a lot more pain and if you were using telepathy, you would.”

“Sharp as a tack,” he said.

“You knew my mother,” I said.

“Once upon a time.”

“Is that why you’re here?” I asked.

“I’m not here because of your mother, Mackenzie,” he said. “I’m here because of you.”

“What, are you supposed to set me on the right path or something?”

“No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”

“What, then?”

“I guess I felt like stopping by and seeing you,” he said. “It seemed like it was about time we got acquainted, you know?”

“I don’t know,” I said, a little irritated at the seeming assumption that I’d know what he was talking about. “Who are you?”

“An old friend of your mother’s,” he said. “I guess you might say I was her teacher.”

“You look kind of young to have taught her anything,” I said.

“Well, I can’t do anything about that,” he said. “It’s your dream.”

“Fine, let’s get acquainted,” I said. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Isn’t much to tell,” he said. “I thought maybe we could talk about you for a spell.”

“What about me?”

“I saw you out on that field today,” he said. “You didn’t do so hot.”

“That’s because I didn’t feel so hot,” I said. “I felt cold.”

“That was a big problem until you decided to throw a little power at it,” he said. “You know, that’s one of your biggest weaknesses, Mackenzie.”

“Cold,” I said. “Yeah. I know.”

“No, not the cold,” he said. “The cold is an inconvenience. The cold is something you can overcome. Your weakness is accepting it, not fighting it, not pushing back… and not just against the cold. You cowed the mermaid once, when you thought to dig in your heels and give her a good hard shove back.”

“You were watching me then?” I asked, creeped out.

“No, but I can see it now,” he said. “We’re in your head, after all. Cold or no cold, you should have been able to lay that elfblood out flat. Do you know why you didn’t?”

“Because she’s a better fighter than me?”

“Better, nothing… you could have swung that stick like a dwarf with a hammer and anybody who was in its path would have no choice but to get out of the way quick. But you let it take control, you let it guide you, and it didn’t want to do anything but defend, defend, defend. It didn’t have anything to say about attacking.”

“It’s a defensive weapon,” I said.

“So you should have took charge on the attack,” he said. “You wield a weapon, you don’t let it wield you… that’s where things went wrong with the pitchfork.”

“What do you know about my pitchfork?”

“Yours?” he said. He laughed. “Maybe if you show me you can handle it.”

“Does that mean you have it?” I asked.

“Maybe I do,” he said. “And maybe I’ll think about letting you have it back, if you can give me some kind of indication that things won’t just turn out the same way they did the last time you got a hold of it.”

I started to ask what I had to do, but then I stopped… I was being way too calm and accepting of some guy I didn’t know standing inside my head, looking at my memories, and trying to get me to sit up and beg like a damned puppy. Didn’t I have enough people doing that already? And then there was the claimed connection to my mother… my mother had never mentioned anybody like this guy. I didn’t remember seeing any pictures of him.

In fact, I couldn’t remember my mother ever talking about guys.

“Look… just how stupid do you think I am?” I asked.

“Well, now,” the man said, scratching his chin. “I don’t normally like to lie without a powerfully compelling reason to…”

“There’s only one man I know of who would have been a part of my mother’s life,” I said.

“Right, only one you know about,” he said. “So I could be one of any number of other men who passed through her life.”

“But you aren’t, are you?” I said. “Because that explains why you’re so young, and how you could come into my mind without frying your own brain, and why you look so familiar…”

“Say it,” he said, leaning towards me and grinning a great jack o’ lantern leer of a grin. There was a fire behind his dark eyes. “Say it out loud.”

“Deny it,” I said. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

He held out his hand, two fingers up in a V sign, and lit them on fire.

My mouth went dry.

“The question is, what are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“Wake up now,” I said.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” he said. He extinguished his hand. “I’m your family, baby girl… the only real family you’ve got. Maybe I haven’t always been there for you, but then, how could I be when you were living in that woman’s house? As soon as I found out you were out on your own, I came looking for you and now here I am… well, not exactly here, really. But I can still keep an eye on you. I can still watch out for you.”

“I don’t need watching out for,” I said.

“No?” he asked, raising an eyebrow again. “Listen, baby girl… I know about your deal on Saturday, and you don’t have to worry. If things go badly for you, I’ll take care of it. A man like me can’t do much in a world like this without attracting too much of the wrong kind of attention, but a person like ‘Tender’ Mercy… well, no matter how legal her operation is, nobody’s going to look twice if she ends up a bloody smear.”

“I don’t need your help,” I said.

“Not yet,” he said. “I’m just telling you that if you do, you’ll have it… unconditionally, unquestionably. That’s what families do. That’s what family’s for.” He tipped his hat again, then turned and started walking down the road. “I’ll be seeing you. We’ll talk about your pitchfork some more.”

---

Discuss this story.