The Theft of the Dreams of The Crow
A story of three poisons, five lives, and an outcast
DAMASCUS · MID-AUGUST · 1983
Yet again, she’d gone to bed worried and hungry, and she couldn’t sleep.
But this time, it was different.
Like the tailor’s sharpened blades, polished glinting scissor blades searching for chalk on satin cloth, from the beating depths of her skull, her ears strained out for sound unheard.
The clock on the wall clicked and scratched, slowing and stretching moments into half finished shadow paintings.
Stifling dusty summer heat rippled the margins of the air, in the absence of any breeze, as night turned to ever-glowing streetlight.
Secretly peeking out from the hooded darkness of her makeshift bed, every sense strained hopelessly, hopefully, waiting for the tread of her father’s feet returning.
Hoping to hear the silver melody of jangling keys, stopping at the front door below her tiny window.
From where she watched the amber labyrinth of the narrow street below.
She’d grown used to hiding herself in shade, but never really comfortable.
That appearance of poised comfort, of mute satisfaction, was the main ingredient of her daily façade.
A practised smile, with a clear and sparkling gaze.
As though here were a light so bright that no shadows could be cast.
Chaste and chastened, her heart and mind were congealed, a darkened orb of impenetrable, glistening silence.
Kept polished behind the mask of humble contentedness she wore daily and nightly, protecting her against the tendency of her grandmother to scold, fuss and bustle around.
Rattling and patrolling and preening her territory if excited, or annoyed, rustling and bustling at the nest, harrying and rattling the domestic pot. Wrestling a seemingly eternal supply of frustrated toil and fuss, with whitened, hardened knuckles. Skin washed to bleached, blood pale and washed out, paper thin.
Like a shadow cast by a candle’s moving flame, her consciousness cast outwards, weightless and soundless.
She pretended to sleep, and lay still. Breathing shallow and quickly.
Frozen electrically awake.
She held onto the familiar knot of fear and loneliness gnawing at the core of her spleen
Feeling like a crab hanging onto the rocks, pounded by a storm’s ripped and harried waves.
On the brink of sleep, strange things can happen.
Waking dreams, moving shadows.
Sometimes you can’t sleep, no matter how tired you are.
A voice distantly drifted in from the alley, shadows cast of figures unknown. Voices dusky and filled with ominous purpose.
“ah… this is only missing a fragment… we have a good portion of it …
… it seems there are far more ways than one… to steal the dreams of the crow.”
Every hair stood up upon the back of her head.
She felt as though she’d dreamed this before.
She couldn’t, daren’t move. Frozen.
From out of the darkness, floating like faces in clouds, emerging from behind the patterns washing inside her mind.
Every word conjured a picture, a taste, a smell, almost like being touched.
Like a cold draught on midsummer’s skin.
Like being haunted.
Words can be dreams caught in flight.
Like prehistoric biting insects frozen in amber, buzzing off the page.
Trapped, like pressed flowers, eternally blooming, colours and shapes straining to live once again.
For a witnessed moment, waking into a dream. Ready, prepared, to be reborn and awake.
Meaning hopefully stored away, hopelessly ready, waiting, beating, to take flight. To plant seeds of action, perception, and live again.
Bursting like the air trapped in a diver’s lungs. Forever gasping, drowning.
Pulsing heartbeats and bodies hidden beneath ink strokes.
Inscribed by a dancing, darkened feather quill.
Drawn from shadows cast by heavy wings of emptiest velvet night, soaking up the sun’s loving warmth.
Glistening with rainbows hidden under darkness, dancing with muted iridescence.
Shattered, splintered and twisted through the echoing orange sodium lamp light, the enjoyment in the distant voice beating between the darkened terraces rattled across the flagstones sharp and clear, like the angry, jealous, celebratory crowing of cunning, sharpened hunger on carrion.
”Oh I’m no collector. I’ll tell you want we want with it. We shall get to the science.
What we have here is the method that was used by ancient seers the world over. Without a doubt. This is what we’ve been looking for.
Finding, let alone catching a ghost, or a spirit… well… that is fraught with conjecture. Mystery. Oh they’ve tried, alright.
But let me tell you this.
Without doubt there are dreams. It is incontrovertible.
Thus, it is a scientific fact that they can be.
And they can be measured.
And if they can be, and can be measured, perhaps it may indeed be so… that they can be changed… perhaps even stolen...”
The other voice - her father’s - was softer, and more apologetic “Well, I wouldn’t doubt it, crows were the seers’ familiar of antiquity for a reason… legend has it they kept them to know them”
“Let us not waste time. Do you have the manuscript?”
The sound of paper being shuffled echoed down the alley. Like a fortune teller’s cards.
She edged towards the window, able to get her nose out between the bars. She could just see their cloaked backs, and their hats. A glitter of expensive watch on the wrist.
The feathery dark silhouette of a fat handful of banknotes, projected by the street lantern fixed to the wall with an iron bracket.
Crossing shadows cast up the wall, a sheaf of bounty proffered, and accepted.
And in return, a plastic sheathed single sheet of paper, old and frayed, delicately passed across in return.
A brief rippling handshake reflected in the glass window of a passing car.
The ceiling fan rattled gently, beating like a broken helicopter.
Beating wings pulsing blocking out the light on the ceiling, swooping sweeps of shade, dancing characters painted by darkened feather. A rotating whirling, self-writing mystery.
Carved ghostly into the light cast by fire’s banishment of darkness.
The silhouette of wings flashed across the ceiling, and with a solid bounce, the crow heavily alighted upon her chest. The flexing claws of its powerful feet bustled and pulsed over her, carefully checking her over.
Beak and eyes darting silently, cold and deadly. Ever intelligent, checking her perimeter, orbiting to inspect her face.
It circled upon its tail. Settling as though her heart were the eggs in its nest.
Her eyes met its eye. Charcoal black, grey-blue and holographically irridescent, its darkest rainbow feathers settled, wings stowed.
The crow tucked its head into the familiar position, sleeping half awake. As it had never needed to learn how to.
Ever since before it had been born, it had been dreaming. Like a serpent coiled upon itself. NIghtmares. Visions of death. A tightrope of light, the umbilical electrical branching fire.
