Dream thief

7

… THE HOVERJET DROPPED ONCE more below the scattered cloud cover and Ari saw the ground for the first time in several hours. She viewed a lush green terrain that looked like emerald velvet rolled out in puckered wrinkles. She could see the shining silver threads of rivers winding along the deep gorges. White birds soared over the verdant landscape in vee-formed squadrons. Seeing them from above with the noonday sun gleaming on their wings they looked like strands of diamonds suspended between the blue sky and the green earth, flashing white fire as their wings sliced the misty air.

Ahead and a little to the left of the plane she could see the sharp hills rise to a promontory surrounded on three sides by jungled slopes and by a lake on the fourth. Further ahead, and blue in the hazy distance, the white peaks of mountains rose, creating a jagged line on the horizon as far as she could see.

The hoverjet made a long descent, passing over the promontory with its cluster of villages crowded at the summit and descending in tiers like stairsteps.

Ari felt she recognized the place, though she had never seen it before.

"Daddy, where are we?" she whispered. Her father was not asleep, though he had his eyes closed and his head rested on his chest.

"Hmmm?" He had sunk into black depression and would make only grunting answers to her attempts at conversation. "Could that be India down there? I think it must be."

This brought her father upright in his seat as his eyes snapped open.

"India, did you say?" He leaned across her and peered out the window. "It's hard to tell. It might be anywhere."

"No, that's Darjeeling down there, I know it."

"Could be," he admitted, regarding his daughter carefully.

"What makes you so sure?"

"I just know, that's all. Mother told me about it, described growing up there." Just then, as her mind leaped ahead, it came to her exactly who it was that awaited them at their destination. "Oh, Daddy," she said, gripping his hand. "If we are in India it can only mean one thing. We're going to see the Dream Thief." …

A SHORT WHILE LATER the jet's forward progress slowed and then halted as it dropped to a landing below. The vegetation was so dense and the trees so close-she might have reached out and pulled leaves from their branches-she could not see the ground directly below the plane. They seemed to be landing in the forest some distance east of Darjeeling. How far east she could not tell, but the terrain glimpsed through the tall trees as the jet came down gave the impression of rising into mountains all around.

Then the plane bumped gently down and the engines ceased their droning whine. At the same instant warm, humid air flooded the cabin as the hatch popped open. Ari heard voices from outside speaking in the rapid birdsong of Hindi; this confirmed her suspicion that they were indeed in the land of the Dream Thief.

She blinked as she emerged from the cabin. The sunlight fell hot and bright from directly overhead. The moist air seemed to shimmer in waves before her eyes and the green walls of the broad-leafed forest screeched with the calls of alarmed birds and angry monkeys.

She lifted her eyes to take in her surroundings and saw a scene out of the pages of an archaeological text. Before her rose walls of massive, crumbling stone, black with age and mildew. Further along the wall a large gate stood open and beyond it a narrow tower struck out into the azure, clouded sky. They seemed to have landed in a courtyard of sorts, inside the walls of a castle.

Ari remembered her mother's description of the Dream Thief's palace and knew that she was there. She looked around with eyes filled with wonder. What had been only a dream was real; the buried memory of an unhappy little girl was fact. It had been true all along-not the imaginings of a disturbed and frightened child.

Three men approached wearing military tunics and trousers of linen. Their dark, almost black skins glistened in the sun and their black almond eyes watched the newcomers warily. One of the men wore a holster on his hip. Hocking and the others stood in consultation with the men for a moment and then Tickler came and said, "These men will take you to your quarters."

He made it sound as if they were checking into a hotel. The men, without a word, led the captives off toward the gate and into a further courtyard beyond. This inner yard was smaller; its walls were draped in heavy vines growing out from between the stones of the yard, cracking them and prying them apart, heaving them up at angles to each other. The vines had covered everything-stunted trees, standing statues, stone benches, an ancient dry fountain-smothering all beneath a thick green blanket of glossy leaves, like the sheets thrown over the furniture of a house closed for the summer. Ari got the impression that if she stood very long in the courtyard she, too, would soon be covered to become one of the standing objects she saw around her.

The men marched them across the decaying stones of the yard to a low-roofed portico, then under this to a tier of steps leading up into a darkened entrance. Ari reached her hand out to her father as she tripped going up the stairs. One of the guards caught her in a steely grasp and righted her. His hand lingered on her cool flesh. She jerked her arm away quickly.

They entered a room, dim and cool and quiet as a tomb. Light entered from small clover-shaped windows around a shallow domed ceiling. Dust lay thick and undisturbed on the tile floor of the hall-except for the meandering trails of insects; their footprints in the dust gave testimony to the fact that no one had visited the place in a very long time. They might have been the first visitors in a thousand years.

They were whisked across the hall and into a dark corridor which ended in a long, spiraling flight of stairs. Other, lighter passageways joined the main one at the foot of the stairs, but they went up the spiral which wound round and round and narrowed as it ascended.

At the top of these dark steps they entered a small landing with a circular hole in the vaulted roof overhead. At one end of the landing stood a large wooden door which appeared much newer than its surrounding posts and lintel, with black iron bands forming a large X across its surface.

Her first look at the interior of their cell did not dismay Ari. It was a spacious room, round with lofty, pointed windows and a wide balcony closed only by a curtain of woven wooden beads. There were oriental couches and rattan chairs and several beds piled high with cushions of red, blue, and yellow silk. A toilet stall was concealed behind a silk curtain for the privacy of its occupants. There was a marble table with carved ivory chessmen arranged neatly on its polished surface. Nearby, a great glass bowl with a crystal dipper held fresh water; next to it a smaller bowl offered fruit: small wild grapes, bananas, oranges, and several large, greenish-yellow pulpy things she could not identify.

It appeared as if the room had been newly scoured and furnished for their arrival with all the amenities one might find in a charming old hotel. But when the great wooden door slammed shut behind them she knew that they were prisoners and not guests.

"Well, here we are," she said, trying to sound optimistic.

Director Zanderson stirred himself out of his staring reverie to gaze about the room with tired eyes. "Yes, here we are. A gilded cage for the captive birds."

"Look, there's a balcony," said Ari, running to it at once. "Daddy, come out here; you can see the mountains."

"The Himalayas," he said, joining her. "Yes, we are northeast of Darjeeling in the foothills of the Himalayas, somewhere near the old Bhutan border in Sikkim."

"I didn't know you knew so much geography." Ari turned a fresh, enthusiastic face to her father. The sun lit her hair with golden fire. She was trying very hard to draw her father out and cheer him up in the hope that he would abandon his moody despondency. To see him sunk so deep in his depression hurt her more than anything their abductors could have done to her. "Tell me more."

"I don't know much more. I was only here briefly-with your mother before you were born."

"I never knew that. You said-"

"I know what I said." He smiled devilishly. "There is a lot parents don't talk about in front of their children. They lead double lives, my dear."

"Really. I always suspected as much. But now the truth comes out. You've got to tell me all about it."

Her father sighed, as if sifting through the various recollections of a long and burdensome life for one remnant of a memory saved from some long-ago time. "There's not much to tell," he said at last. "It was not much of a trip."

"I don't believe that. Two people-young and in love, frolicking in these secret hills."

A faint smile touched his lips as he warmed to the memory. "Yes, there was something of that. But there was a sadness, too. Your mother wanted so very much to show me the town where they had lived and the seminary where her father had taught all those Years. She wanted me to see where she had come from, she said.

"But when we reached Darjeeling something happened to her; she became moody and unhappy. We stayed only a few days and looked around, but she couldn't bring herself to show me all she had planned. It was like she couldn't bear to be here. She became very depressed-that was the first hint of her trouble.

"After we left we never spoke of the trip again, though I could tell that it was often on her mind. She seemed to regard the trip as a fiasco, but I didn't feel that way at all. It was years later, of course, before I began to suspect there was more to it than a holiday ruined by unpleasant memories."

Ari remembered the story her mother had told-it seemed years ago now, but only one day by the clock-and how she sat at her elbow as one in a trance, drinking in every word. "Did she never tell you about the Dream Thief?"

Her father gave her an odd look. "What do you know about it?"

Ari described her visit to the asylum with Spence and Adjani and how her mother had rallied during the visit and had, in one flash of lucidity, described what happened to her in the wild hills. Ari told the story word for word the way her mother had told it, while her father sat with a look of rapt attention on his face.

"Yes," he said when she had finished. "I've never heard it quite that way, but that's pretty much the way I've pieced it together over the years-from little things she'd say. Not that she every really tried to hide it; I don't think she was aware of it. She had blocked it out completely. But sometimes she'd slip; her subconscious would send out a plea for understanding."

He turned to look at the faraway line of mountains heaving their mighty shoulders skyward. An expression of deepest grief came over his features. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes and trickled down his broad cheeks. Ari took his hand and pressed it hard. She lifted her other hand to his face. He took the hand and kissed the palm and held it against his lips for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was thick with sorrow. "All these years I thought it was the fantasy of a troubled mind. I never dreamed it could be real.

"The best doctors in the world agreed with me-the treatments, the drugs, the horrible nights of pain when she'd cry out in terror… but it was real, Ari. And it drove her insane."

The air suddenly seemed colder and Ari wrapped her arms around herself and stepped away from the balcony.

Yes, it was real. And it had turned its attention to her, and had brought her within these walls a prisoner. Would she be able to withstand? She wondered, thinking of the one who had escaped, yet the memory of it had eaten away at her sanity until nothing remained but the shell of a formerly beautiful woman.

"Daddy, I'm scared," Ari said, trembling.

He took his daughter in his arms and held her tightly. "I know, dearest. I know."

"What are we going to do?"

"There is not much we can do, Ari. Only pray."

"I've never stopped praying, Daddy. But pray for us now -and for Spence, too. I think he may need it more than we do."