Adventure Two: The Man with the Red Wings
Now, it is well known that a person cannot die in their dreams. However, Belamy was unsure to what extent she could injure herself in a dream that was no longer being dreamt. As she and the unknown other fell quite rapidly toward the earth, the ground dissolved below them and was replaced by a clear, blue pond. It was so well-created that when the two of them passed cacophonously through the water and came sputtering up, it was as if the pond had been sitting there always.
Belamy, wind-rushed and dripping, pulled herself onto a grassy bank and helped the unknown other out of the water. Now that there was no longer any worry of falling, Belamy could take a good look at her new acquaintance.
It was a man; that was sure enough. He was tall and long-limbed, with wet hair that was probably brown when it was dry. He was wearing a long funny coat that came down to his knees and was a dark wet blue. He had a face that was used to daydreaming often, but the strangest thing about this fellow was that he had an enormous pair of bright red wings attached to either of his arms.
"You foolish girl," was the first thing the man said to Belamy after she had helped him out of the water. His feet slushed about in his shoes. "Why weren't you watching where you were flying?"
"If you had been watching where you were flying," she remarked, "you could have avoided me as well. And I am not foolish."
"We are both foolish," the man decided.
"Nobody is foolish," Belamy said. "How could I have known that I would have to watch out for a flying man?"
"I could say the same," he said, "about a flying girl."
The man untied the bright wings from his arms, and laid them carefully out to dry. He inspected them, quietly.
"They are ruined," he said finally. "I have drowned them."
Belamy crouched next to the wings and peered at them very closely. From afar they looked very solid and as two single masses, but she now discovered that they were made up of hundreds and hundreds of flower petals that had been sewn together with care, and were now beginning to crisp and curl from drying in the hot sun.
"I'm very sorry," she said. "I will hate to see those beautiful flower wings crumble."
"They were unable to serve their purpose, anyway," the man said shortly.
"I'm Belamy," she said. "I was on my way to help my friend find ground prey, before I flew into you."
"Sybil," the man said. "And I was attempting in vain to reach my dearly beloved."
"Are you in love with a bird?" Belamy asked him, curiously.
"No."
"A pilot?"
"No."
"A cloud?"
"Never," Sybil said. "Clouds are too fleeting. My beloved is a blazing force whom I gaze upon during the night. These wings which I sewed together from the brightest tulips were inspired by her dazzling light. But they are pale under her everlasting sparkle."
"Why, she is a star!" Belamy said.
"A planet," he corrected her. "I have watched her move in the retrograde. I suppose I was foolish to think I could reach her. Creatures on wings do not fly anywhere close to planets, but I did not think they wished to. Now I know that even if they did wish to, they would not be able to. The journey is impossibly far."
"A planet is very, very large," Belamy said. "I have learned that things of enormous size can call other things to them. Perhaps she will call you to her."
"Perhaps," Sybil said, but he was not convinced.
"If you wouldn't mind telling me," Belamy said, "may I know how you met your planet?"
Sybil let out a deep sigh as if preparing for a long story. He sat on the grass and gazed at the blue sky. Belamy joined him.
"I am an astronomer, you see," Sybil started. "My job is to observe the night sky and tell everyone else about the goings on outside of our world. And believe me when I tell you this, there are a lot of things going on outside of our world. I have seen a lot of things that could have come straight from the imagination."
"I believe it," Belamy assured him. Sybil continued.
"Before I was an astronomer, one night when I was very young, I saw my beloved for the first time. She had been twinkling from the corner of my eye, and when I looked up, I saw the universe. I had never really looked at the night sky before that moment, but once I saw her, I could no longer ignore the universe around me. Noticing this change in me, my father bought me a telescope. A real telescope that was so powerful, he told me, that you could see all the way across the universe. Now I know that if you could see all the way across the universe, you would be staring back at yourself. But from that day forward, I never took my eyes off the night sky, and I have wished forever to meet my beloved."
"That was a beautiful story," Belamy said. "Do you know your planet's name?"
"I have never been close enough for her to tell me," the astronomer said.
"That is a very sad story, too," she said. She could not remember ever having dreamt of this red planet, so she did not know how to help her new friend. After a few minutes of thinking, she had an idea. She remembered a dream she had once dreamt long ago, about an automobile repair shop that, when she looked into the workshop, was filled with space ships, rather than automobiles.
"Sybil," Belamy said, "if I could find you someone who could fly much higher than the birds, perhaps they would be able to take you to your planet."
"Nonsense," he said. "Who can fly higher than a bird?"
"An astronaut," she said.
"An astronaut," the astronomer repeated, wonderingly. "A star sailor. Is there such a person?"
"I know where to find one," Belamy said. "I can take you there."
"Is it far away?" asked Sybil.
"It is in another land," she said. "But I know how to travel to distant lands very quickly."
Sybil gazed down at this girl, who said such fantastic things. "How are you able to do this?"
Belamy met his gaze. "I cannot explain how."
Now, the astronomer was a scientist, and being so, was a natural skeptic. Unlike Rowen the wolf, who was very trusting, Sybil did not trust anything that could not be explained. And he did not know how this girl could be able to travel to different lands while he had never left his own.
"Are you a magician?" he asked her.
"If I were," she said, "would you come with me?"
Sybil looked into the sky, in the direction of his red planet. He could not see her, but he knew she was there, hiding.
"I would," he said, "if you really were to help me reach my beloved."
"Then follow me," Belamy said. "I will take you to an astronaut."
Leaving the drying flower petal wings behind, Belamy and the astronomer walked into her bedroom. For the second time that day, Belamy stood before the square on her wall with a character she had never dreamt, out of a dream that had grown from her sleeping mind.
"I do not believe it," Sybil said, astonished. "How did you make this little room appear?"
"I didn't," Belamy said. "We walked here."
"You made this room appear the same way you made that pond appear," he insisted. "You truly are a magician."
"Are you still willing to follow me?" Belamy asked him.
"Yes."
Before she could enter her dream world again, however, Belamy had to crack open her door and give the air a small sniff again to see if her mother had started dinner; and she had. Belamy, against her better judgment (which she always seemed to ignore when she was in the midst of an adventure), turned once again toward the astronomer.
"We shall have to be quick," she told him. "I am expected home soon."
"I am ready," Sybil said.
Belamy instructed him to lie on his belly with his arms outstretched, and to close his eyes. She had a plan, for she could not guide the astronomer through to the next land as she had the wolf, which was by the mane. This one had little hair on his neck, which Belamy thought was a handicap of the lesser mammals.
When Sybil was in the correct position, with his eyes tightly shut, Belamy also lay on her belly, but so she was facing the astronomer. She took both of his hands in hers and slid herself backwards across the wood floor through the blue-chalk square on her wall, pulling him after her.
She continued to pull the man until he said to her, with his eyes still shut, "This terrain is of a very peculiar nature. It is not much like the one I am used to."
"Then," Belamy said to him, picking herself from the ground, "you may open your eyes."
When Sybil did so, he gazed upon a different world. There were no mountains that he could see, but there was a city of gold which spanned the horizon like mountains would from a distance. The city was far away across the grassy plain they stood upon, but he could still see towers that had been built so high that their tops were buried in the thick white clouds and triangular roofs that pointed toward space that were supported by dozens of round pillars, and fountains that spouted sun-glanced water straight up into the sky. He saw a city, in short, which had been built for skygazers.
"It is a marvelous place," Sybil said.
Belamy, on the while, had been staring at a shop just a hundred yards away across the plain. It was made of two buildings; one was a waiting room made of glass, which Belamy could see contained chairs for people to sit in while they waited, a long counter, and prices listed above it, though of what she could not make out. The second building dwarfed the first. It towered beside the glass waiting room, and was made of silver so shiny that it hurt Belamy's eyes to look at it. One impossibly giant door was slid open to reveal what looked like a multiply-scaled version of an automobile repair shop. But in place of automobiles, there were many tremendous space ships, bigger than those that were used for voyages by sea; some were tipped on their sides while skilled repairmen worked on their wooden hulls. Some were raised on lifts so that they could be inspected from below. Others were repaired, and were sitting pristine outside the workshop, with sails billowing.
"The city is not where we must go," Belamy told him. "This is our destination."
Sybil turned to the girl, and finally noticed the large shop beside her.
"Those ships are far larger than any I have seen," he said.
"They are what astronauts sail in to reach the stars," she replied.
"Star ships," Sybil said.
The pair walked until they had reached the workshop, and were standing before the repaired ships. Most were still waiting for their owners to come back for them, but one was already being boarded. It was covered in paintings of planets and moons and stars.
"Look," Belamy said, pointing in the direction of the ship and its owner. "We can ask that person if he will give you a ride to your planet."
Belamy hurried, with Sybil closely following, toward the busy person who was going up and down the gangplank to inspect the job that had been done. As they neared him, they discovered that this person was not a him, but a her, and a very small her at that, with long dark-blonde hair sticking out from under a hat.
"Lady," Belamy called up to the small person from below the gangplank. "Excuse us."
The person looked down from her position and peered at the girl below her with a commanding look on her face; so commanding, in fact, that it took Belamy a few moments to realize that this was no lady, but a young girl, not much older than herself.
"Captain," the girl replied, leaping gracefully down to meet Belamy and landing with a peculiarly hard sound on the earth. "I wear this hat just so everyone will know. And this," she added, touching a badge on her lapel. "Star Sailor" it read.
"Why, you are just a young girl," Sybil said to her.
"I am not a girl," she replied. "I am a statue. Can you not see?"
Sybil was puzzled, but Belamy gave a knowing nod. She was just about the person's height, and could see that her eyes did not reflect any light.
"Ah, yes," she said. "Sybil, look. She is made of stone."
And indeed she was, but she was so smoothly carved, and with such great detail, that one could not at first tell.
"Remarkable," Sybil said.
"Aren't I?" the stone girl agreed. She seemed very fond of herself. "I was carved in the city of gold across the plain, many years ago, by my father the sculptor. He did such a good job of me that I awoke with a conscious mind as soon as he put the finishing touches on my face. I like my chin particularly, don't you?"
Belamy and Sybil inspected the stone girl's chin, and quite agreed.
"It is a perfect chin," Belamy said.
"Mine was not made so well," Sybil added.
"My name is Belamy," the girl of flesh and blood said. "And this is Sybil. He is an astronomer, and he is looking for someone who can take him to a certain planet."
"Sybil?" the girl scrutinized the astronomer. "How peculiar! For my name is also Sybil. Sybil is not a man's name."
"It is," the astronomer said stiffly, "for I am a man, and it is my name."
"Who were you named for? Your mother or your father?" the stone Sybil asked.
"Neither," the astronomer replied. "My name is neither my mother's nor my father's."
"Well I was named for my mother," the stone Sybil said. "And we are two and you are one. If it is indeed a man's name, then you are in the minority."
"You are lying. Just as well, you were made by sculptor; you have no mother," the man Sybil said.
Belamy could see that a battle would soon follow, and she feared that the person made of stone would surely make the fight a short one.
"Captain Sybil; Astronomer Sybil," Belamy said kindly, "don't let's quarrel. How will you ever tolerate each other if one must endure the other's company in space? It must take such a long time to reach another planet."
"Several weeks," the star sailor said, eyeing the astronomer. "And I do not allow free passage on my space ship. What do you carry with which to pay me?"
"I have a telescope," the man Sybil said, retrieving one from his long coat. "It can be used as a spyglass when we are space sailing. And I have several maps of the night sky. I am a skilled navigator from here on earth, and I can keep a ship sailing on course across four directions of the sky.”
“Do you not mean the four directions?” Belamy asked.
“There are five,” the stone Sybil corrected her. She took the telescope delicately from the astronomer's hands and inspected it as she added; “But we don’t talk about that last one.”
“We are talking about north, south, east and west?” Belamy said, doubtfully.
“And the fifth,” said the man Sybil. “But we don’t talk about that one.”
Before Belamy could inquire further, the stone Sybil collapsed the astronomer’s telescope with a smart snap.
"This will suit me well," she decided. "You may accompany me on my ship, Sybil. Which planet is it that you wish to visit?"
"She is a small red planet," the astronomer told her. He pointed to where she would be, come nightfall. "That is where she is in my sky."
The captain nodded. "I know her well," she said, peaceably. "Follow me aboard, astronomer."
Belamy was so happy the two of them were finally getting along that all thought of directions vanished from her thoughts. After a short farewell, Belamy watched the painted ship take off into the sky with its two Sybils. Soon, all she could see were the white sails, and then a small dot, and finally nothing. She returned home only slightly late for dinner, and while she was eating, a vision came to her mind of the City of Gold on the horizon of her most recent dream land.
Before bed tonight, she thought, I will have to visit it.
Adventure Three: The Heroes of the Golden City
Copyright 2010
