Dear T,
I’ve returned to the sea. Why? I think you know. The dreams, T. They continue unabated. Incessant. Each morning I wake with the embers of images, scents, and sounds. Later come memories. Memories, yes, for I know not how else to describe them. They’re long as the night, vivid, and stitched in series: seven hours of doings and idleness differing from my waking day in manner alone. In them I crawl and burrow, forage and frolic like some self-knowing beast. I see lights dancing in the dark woods, hear bats chatter as they dart. See creatures most unnatural.
The woods of which I speak are those we visited, weeks past. Those by the moor and heath. I should have known the dreams I had in your property would haunt me past departure. At least those ones were brief.
At least those ones were dreams.
See how you’ve made me doubt myself? I speak of ‘memories’ like someone moonstruck, a lunatic for whom a cell awaits, and that well padded.
Why can’t I ignore them? Slough them off like sleep-skin over coffee like the sane? I’ve tried. They will not fall away. Instead, they seep into my waking day like oil on cloth, and I cannot remove them. Were they not so dissimilar from those of my daylight hours I believe I’d begin to question which were real.
But I’ve a solution. Three days past I ‘dreamt’ of a witch in hut of piled branches built at the base of a beech tree. She was short and her features were bestial — not strange at all for the night place. She’d ears like a cat’s and long whiskers, but her limbs were human, as was her speech. And I heard her speak, that night in that hut, by the light of a candle. She spoke of “The kingdom’s affairs” and “The plight of the folk”, spoke of creatures I know from the pages of children’s books, spoke of these matters with you.
Yes, you, T. I know your voice and face, though the latter was quite altered. I told you, letter last, that I regarded the reason for your invitation north as suspect. Here was the proof! She spoke to you as if to an old friend and took your advice! What sway have you on witches and the fae?
So it is I’m here again, to find that witch’s hut and have her break this curse. I know where it is, T. I know the tree. I’ve roamed these wild places many nights.
I set off east along the sand on Saturday, barefoot and flirting with waves. I’d five kilometres to walk before turning inland past the Markgrafenheide holiday village and entering the woods.
I don’t believe in omens, good or ill, but when I saw a Cormorant half buried in the sand, my nightly self was startled. Had it drowned and washed ashore, this able diver?
No matter, scorned my day self. Onwards.
A stretch between breakwaters up ahead was strewn with the smashed shells of mussels. I went scant metres before being forced to alter course, my bare feet cut upon their blades.
No matter. Onwards.
By the village, I washed my feet and pulled on boots. The firm ground felt odd after ninety minutes of shift. By a house there, on the ground, I found a dead Martin. It seemed half crushed, this agile bird.
I entered the woods and walked the tusk-churned ways once more. The lake to the left, the brook, the open field, right at the peatland. There. I knew I would find it, T! I hurried over, fell to my knees — it was much lower than I remembered — and entered.
Empty. There was nothing inside save soil and light. I checked the alcove that housed the candle — not a single drop of wax. Impossible.
Impossible? Do I assert that what I dreamt must real be? That’s lunacy. And yet … the hut was there, at the base of a beech, in a place that I’d not walked with my companion those weeks past. I could only have known it existed because of my dream.
What if this, then, isn’t real? The sun-world, where the witch’s hut’s a husk, devoid of life. By night, that place was teeming and I apprehended all.
I returned to my accommodation that night to think. I fell asleep in my chair and slept soundly, waking with the birds and commotion of waves. I’d no memories of dreams, no marks upon my body, nothing to say I’d been elsewhere.
Was it broken then, this curse? Had seeing the hut in sunlight made that hidden world a myth?
The long, unbroken slumber has restored me. I’m no longer tired. Yet I feel something’s been lost. The dreams that were not dreams and self that lived them have moved on. How bitter to think it’s they who’re free of me.
Kindly refrain from any further lessons. My heart cannot take it.
With adamant sincerity,
C
