Perchance To Dream

 

Clear, coruscating blue rippled before his eyes. Silky, cool water slid over his skin. He inhaled deeply and smelled salt, sand, and seaweed. The scents mingled, creating a rich, exotic perfume when they should have reminded him of the docks.

He turned over, the movement languid and sensuous. The sky, a lighter blue streaked with shafts of crystalline light, lay above. There, to the right! A flash of iridescent green fin and a swirl of auburn hair. At last! He rolled over again, filling his lungs before kicking his feet and pulling his hands through the strange ether, this breathable ocean. Ahead, flashes of iridescent fin darted through darker green seaweed forests and played amid bright schools of fish.

As surely as if there existed a tether joining him to this siren of the waves, joining them body to body, soul to soul, he was drawn forward. Slowly he gained upon his playful quarry. Smiling, he conjured images of that lithe, beautiful body in his arms. His hands tingled. He kicked harder.

A black shadow passed over him dimming the ocean to a murky blue. The playful schools of fish darted left, fleeing before the shadow. He looked up. It was not the shadow of a passing boat. It was within the water, a great roiling inky blackness. It dove down between him and his quarry and a living miasma of hate enveloped him, dragging at his mind and muscles. Fear clawed at his gut. He turned to escape.

Too late!

A black wave smashed against him. He tumbled backward, his left shoulder scraping against jagged coral spires. The black wave came again, angry and churning. Looming larger, it picked him up out of the water, out of his beautiful haven, out of the water, and threw him onto the rocky shore.

"No!" he yelled.

The bed sheets caught between his legs as he tried to swim away. His arms stroked wildly sending the lantern on the bedside table crashing to the wide wood-plank floor. The mosquito netting surrounding the bed tore from its pinnings and gave a soft sigh as it engulfed him.

"Sir! Are you all right?" His valet shuffled into the bedchamber from his adjoining apartment. Holding his tallow candle high, he stared down in horror at The Honorable Andrew Montrose.

Otis Reed's shrill nasal voice pierced Andrew's consciousness between dreaming and waking. He stopped thrashing and opened his eyes. He stared at the mosquito netting. Looking through the gauzy fabric reminded Andrew of looking through breathable blue ether. He rolled over on his elbow. "Damnation," he said, drawing out the word as he ran a hand through his thick, mahogany-colored hair. It felt dry. Surely it couldn't be dry. It had been too real! But dry it was, as was the rest of his body.

"I was dreaming again," he said flatly.

"So it would seem." His valet's voice shook, his rheumy pale blue eyes opened wide in fright.

Andrew ripped the mosquito netting away, looked over at Reed and frowned. "T'was but a dream, man. What is the matter?"

But he knew. The Caribbean island plantation staff feared he was going mad, while the islanders whispered that he'd been ensorcelled by Merfolk. But for him, it was just a dream. That's all it ever was. Damn.

Yet his left shoulder ached and stung.

He swung his feet over the edge of the bed, stood up, rolled his aching shoulder, and walked to the sideboard. He tried to remember what he had done yesterday to account for the pain. He'd spent the day in the estate office. Nothing unusual about that. On the island one day passed much like the last. Only the dreams lived.

He poured himself a glass of port then turned again to face his man who stood quivering by the bed, a hare about to bolt. "Well?"

"Was it the same, sir? The . . . the same as last time?" Reed chewed on the knuckle of his scrawny index finger.

"Yes, or nearly enough," Andrew answered, rubbing his left shoulder. The lingering shoulder pain was new. And the hate. He felt the hate like a caul over him that he couldn't shake off.

"Same as the time before that?" Reed persisted. He shuffled forward a bare step.

"Yes, and before you ask, the same as the time before that, too," he said, irritated by his valet's fear.

He lifted his glass and drank the port in one swallow. The dreams were all the same. Or near enough. They had started within weeks of his arrival at the Earl of Rice's sugar cane plantation. Each night added a piece more to the dream; and each night that damn black wave also came and pushed him out of the water and out of the dream.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The repetitive aspects of the dream were not something he wished to contemplate. To do so would make them real, and he was not ready for that reality. To do so questioned his sanity. And he was sane, dammit! He may well be the disreputable villain his father claimed him to be; however, he was sane!

They were just . . . dreams.

Otis Reed licked his thin lips and shuffled forward another step. "The islanders say they have marked you."

Andrew snorted as he turned to refill his port glass.

"The Merfolk, sir. The islanders say you've been marked by the Merfolk."

"I've heard the tales, Reed." He paced the room. "Merfolk?" He dismissively shook his head at his manservant's fears; yet he wondered, and feared, and hoped. "Superstitious fools!" he said instead. "We are Englishmen. We do not listen to babbling superstitious people."

"But, sir!"

"There is no but, Reed." Again he absently massaged his shoulder, then he sighed. "Dawn is not far away. Since I'm awake I might as well start the day. Fetch me a tray."

"Certainly, sir." Reed bowed then edged backward out of the room, pausing by the massive tiled hearth to light a branch of candles before shuffling out.

As the door closed behind him, Andrew set down his port glass on the sideboard. He pulled off his night shirt, flung it down on the bed, then backed up to a mirror hanging between two windows to see if he could see anything wrong with his left shoulder.

The shoulder was purpling in places as if he had fallen against rock. Gingerly he reached across his chest to touch the afflicted area with this right hand. His fingertips traced scraped skin and a smattering of new scabs. The area was tender to the touch, as one might expect from a new injury.

He glared at his own flesh, willing the scrapes and bruises to disappear. When they didn't he lowered his arm.

"Damn. 'Tis not possible!" he breathed. "Merfolk!" He turned abruptly from the mirror. "Bah! Superstitious nonsense!"

He walked back to the sideboard to pick up his port glass. This time he noticed a fine tremble in his hand.

Andrew steered his sailboat toward the secluded cove. He'd sailed by the cove many times in the past and each time he'd felt drawn to its sheltered waters. But he'd not dared approach the cove for he knew a coral reef with jagged spikes that could rip the hull of a boat protected the area. He still wouldn't have ventured here if he hadn't fallen into conversation with an island fisherman mending his net. They discussed the island's shoreline, its sailing pleasures, and its dangers. When Andrew mentioned wanting to sail into this cove the old man told him of a break in the coral large enough for a small craft to pass through. But he warned that the coral was not the cove's only danger.

"Merfolk, they live around there. Best you sail on by."

Merfolk!

He hadn't had the dream in a month, but not a day went by that he did not remember it, relive parts in his mind. Sailing into this cove where the locals believed Merfolk existed would surely break the dream's hold on his mind.

It was almost dawn. He had just enough light to find the landmarks the old man mentioned and line up his boat with them. Looking into the clear water he saw the coral reef and found its break. A small craft could fit through, though barely.

He sailed cleanly into the cove. He looked back toward the coral fortress walls he'd passed between, then turned to look at the cove.

And found her!

Dreams and reality collided. She sat in the shallows, combing her hair with long methodical strokes, hair that fell about her like a veil. Her hair glowed where it floated in the water.

She looked up at him, her pink bow-shaped lips lifting in a brief smile, a shy recognition of his existence, then she returned to her task. Her eyes remained downcast, but he knew she was as aware of him as he was of her.

He gripped the boat's railing. In the soft dawn light her pale beauty ethereally shimmered, reminding him of fairy tales and legends and why knights fought for their ladies. She epitomized dreams turned to reality, of a future that might exist separate from the past. A part of him savored her discovery, for she represented a magical release from all that had gone on before, and a lodestone for the future.

Part of him feared he experienced a waking sleep . . .or a mind gone mad.

The boat drifted toward a rocky shore. Quickly he lowered the sails and turned toward the stern of the boat to throw out and set the anchor. He hadn't sailed carefully between coral walls just to founder his boat on the rocks.

What should he do? How did a man address a dream woman? A creature of fantasy? My God, a Mermaid!

He would address her as he would any other woman he wished to impress. He'd hail her, introduce himself, and treat her with courtly manners and respect. This delicate, beautiful creature deserved no less.

He turned back to her, but she'd vanished.

"No!" He clasped the boat's mahogany railing. "Don't disappear! Dammit, where are you?" He searched for her on the shore and in the water, but he saw only the eternal waves lapping the worn rocks on the shore.

"I won't hurt you. I just wish to talk to you," he called out. Still, she did not appear.

"Damn!" He quickly pulled off his shoes, tore off his vest, then climbed onto the railing and dove cleanly into the water.

Everything had a strange familiarity.

He swam toward the shore, searching the shallows for her. He crawled over and around all the rocks, ran up and down the rocky shore, then examined the steep cliffs that surrounded the cove, searching for stairs or caves, searching for some explanation for her disappearance.

Searching for some evidence of her existence.

It was as if she had been only an extension of his dreams and reality returned to remembered wisps of dreams.

He asked about her at the plantation, in town, and among others on the island; but no one knew any woman, or creature, that might answer his description. But his questions set island tongues wagging. Otis Reed's voice took on a shriller note whenever he addressed Andrew, the house servants wouldn't look at him when he gave them orders or they served him food, and the field hands balked at working in the cane fields nearest the sea.

On Sunday he walked down to the free market. It was the one day of the week the island slaves could call their own. They could buy and sell goods freely and keep whatever profits they achieved.

He asked everyone he passed about the woman in the cove. They all shied away from him, from this crazy white man who had dealings with Merfolk. Only the oldest plantation slave, chewing pieces of splintered sugarcane as he sat by his goods at the Sunday free market, nodded.