edited by Ziv Wities
The shop fronts glitter along Dreamwright Street, where all the best people come to buy their dreams. Sunlight winks off polished glass, clear as crystal; off the lovingly applied varnish of the wooden window frames; off fragments of mica embedded in the very cobblestones.
The customers, too, sparkle. Light leaps from the gemstones they wear, from their polished shoes, from the braid on their servants’ livery. Clear eyes reflect the dancing light, and their bright teeth send back radiance as they smile. The customers of Dreamwright Street sleep well in their high mansions, and they sleep deeply, and when they arise, their minds are clear and scintillating as a wellspring.
A gleaming brass bell sounds a note that shimmers in the air like the light through the clean windows, and old Habsor looks up from his ledger behind the counter of polished wood. Seeing the customer, he hurries forward, bowing, his dreamwright’s conical cap flopping over at the point, as if it bows too.
“My Lord,” says Habsor. “A pleasure.”
“Good morning, Habsor!” says the customer in the hearty, bluff voice of a man who sleeps well and dreams of being a god, and wakes and finds himself a lord of the greatest city in the world.
“And… can this be… your youngest, already so tall?” says Habsor, stooping as best his aged limbs permit to look the customer’s companion in the eye. The little girl, well-trained in etiquette, does not curtsey to the tradesman, but inclines her head.
“My precious Ani,” says her father. “Come to get her first proper dream, to share with her friends on her birthnight.”
“My Lord, you flatter me by choosing my humble establishment.” He gestures to the spotless, well-appointed room with its frescoes of dreamscapes, painted by prominent artists.
“Only the best, Habsor. Only the best.”
“Your Lordship is too kind. Shall we?”
In the window, Habsor hangs the discreet sign informing other customers that he is not currently receiving, and bows the father and daughter into a back room, even more beautiful than the main shop, though smaller. He does not fool himself that it is remotely comparable to the rooms the girl has grown up in; he is a wealthy tradesman, but no more than that.
When they are seated, and Habsor has served his customers sparkling waters and bright cakes, he asks them, “What dream can I craft for you today?”
“I want to fly,” says the child. Her father watches her, indulgence written on his face. “I want to fly in a chariot drawn by ten eagles, and cast down thunderbolts on those turning up their faces from below.”
“That is a very particular request,” says the dreamwright. “May I ask if there is a special reason?”
“For my friend Suan’s birthnight,” says Ani, “we had a flying dream, and I think it is the best kind of dream a person can have. And we have a fresco at home with the eagles and the thunderbolts.”
“I believe I remember it,” says Habsor. He has occasionally come and consulted at the lord’s home, in light of the business the family gives him. “I can certainly accommodate that request.”
“I was sure you would,” her father says.
“I will have it sent round this evening,” says Habsor, and after a few abbreviated pleasantries, such as are appropriate between customer and tradesman, bows the pair out again. They have not discussed price, nor will they. His Lordship’s man of business knows the going rate, and will pay Habsor’s bill without troubling His Lordship with such details.
Habsor locks his shop, pushes through the curtain behind the counter, unlocks his workshop, and sets to. The dream fluid must be compounded fresh if it is to produce the finest dreams; none of your warehoused dreamstuff for His Lordship and his family. Habsor prepares the base medium under a prism which brings in sunlight from the street outside, then unlocks the several heavy bolts on the rear door of his shop and steps through it.
The alley behind Dreamwright Street is grimy, worn, and cluttered—cluttered, especially, with those who come to sell their dreams. Ragged, shivering in the shadows of the alley, they look up with what little hope they have left at the opening of the door, like a sick old dog who nevertheless will lift his head when the master is eating.
“Flyers,” says Habsor. “Flyers only.”
Many of the heads go down again, but a few stagger to their feet and shuffle forwards. One lad is more active than the rest, standing quickly, stepping up lively, pushing his way to the front. His eyes are not yet dulled, though his face is dirty, and his clothes are the grubby leavings of a bigger and older man.
“You,” says Habsor. “You’ll do.” As a dreamwright, he goes through life always a little weary, and this untapped youth’s vigor will spare him some mental effort in the compounding of the fluid.
He pulls the boy by his shoulder into the workroom. The others subside, not even registering disappointment anymore. They will sell, or they won’t; they will eat, or they won’t. Soon, they will lose all hope, but also their motivation to leave the alley; there will be no more coins to take to sick or hungry family, or to spend on drink or food for themselves. Periodically, the dreamwrights, at their joint expense, have the alley cleared of those too miserable to produce any longer. Having them die and rot in the alley would be unpleasant, and might taint the others’ dreams.
In his workroom, Habsor, fastidious, places a drop-cloth over one chair and seats the boy in it, then takes the other. He sets aside his cap and lowers the apparatus over their heads. The boy reaches up to adjust it, and Habsor scolds him, then moves it himself. The apparatus is delicate, expensive. It gleams with silvery metal and polished glass, and the crystal bearings on its many spider-joints spark even in the dim light of the workroom. The coppery crowns which cap the heads of the operator and his source are studded with small topazes, painstakingly matched.
“You’ve not done this before?” says Habsor.
“No.”
Habsor had thought he might have been drawn upon before, perhaps by another dreamwright; the youth’s eyes, although clear and undimmed, had not widened in wonder on entering the workroom, as first-timers’ eyes usually did. But perhaps he was merely incurious.
“Sit still, then, and when I tell you, think of a chariot, flying, with eagles drawing it. Flying above a crowd.”
Habsor places the flask of fluid at the appropriate station, adjusts the valves, and says, “Begin.” He falls at once into the trance of his trade.
The work goes smoothly, easily. The boy’s ready flow suggests some fragment of a dreamwright’s talent, which, had he been born into the correct level of society, might make him worth apprenticing. The emotional side of the dream will take care of itself, so he ignores that and focuses on perfecting the decorative detail. He builds the platform, the golden chariot, imitating as well as he can remember the one in the lord’s fresco—though it needs only to be close enough that the girl and her guests will fill in the rest. The eagles, next, and then the thunderbolts. Last of all, the crowd of peasants beneath, their gaping faces turned up in terrified worship of the lord’s daughter as she passes overhead. They bear a certain inevitable resemblance to the dull-eyed crowd in the back alley.
The dream fluid condenses—a fine, clear sapphire blue—in the upper sphere of the apparatus, and slides through labyrinths of tubing before dripping into the flask. It’s a smooth, easy draw, with good pressure, and no impurities to filter. Seeing its clarity, he makes no more than a perfunctory check, swirling it under his nose and sniffing. No need to taste such limpid dreamstuff and reduce the volume provided to the client.
Finished, Habsor closes the glass valves, caps off the flask and escorts the lad to the back door, where he drops a silver coin into a grubby, eager hand.
***
It is the next day, and Habsor is writing up his invoice when the door of his shop bursts open, the bell jangling in a frenzy, as if attacked by a frustrated parrot. Men in the lord’s livery march in, grim-faced, and two of them haul him, protesting and pleading for explanations, from behind his counter and out into the street. He is not given the opportunity to lock up his shop, or even to place the discreet sign in the window.
Outside, he sees a man run past, an expensive coat at odds with the rags beneath it. Behind him puff city guards. Customers and dreamwrights alike watch the running man, their eyes troubled, but they carefully do not look at Habsor.
He is conveyed by carriage and by silent guards to a cell, where, after a panicked wait during which nobody will talk to him, he is joined by the lord, backed by a city magistrate. The lord’s face is the face of the mountains when thunder is in the air.
“My lord,” grovels the desperate Habsor, “please tell me what I have done. Was the dream not satisfactory?”
“Not satisfactory?” the lord barks out. “I should say it was not satisfactory! Ani has had to be retrieved three times already today from servants’ quarters and slums, where she was distributing my clothes and possessions, and asking everyone about a ragged boy. She dreamed she was that boy, she says, staring up at the terrifying sight of a chariot in the sky. She is weeping now, weeping for the lives of the poor, weeping for their fears and the loss of their dreams. And across the city, the other daughters of the nobility are doing much the same.”
“But… how?” asks Habsor.
“You, a master dreamwright, ask me this? What did you do?“
“I did only what I have done a thousand times. I changed no step in the preparation of the dream. Only… the boy I used was new.”
“Boy?”
“It is necessary, My Lord, to harvest the raw stuff of dreams from some person or another. I chose a new boy, one of those who wait in the alley behind Dreamwright Street to sell me their dreams…”
“Take him,” the lord orders the guards. “Bring back this boy, along with the dreamwright. We will get to the bottom of this. And when we do, Habsor, you will be fortunate indeed if you are still permitted to serve the city brewing nightmares for the interrogators’ stock.”
Habsor shudders. The brewing of nightmares drinks a man’s soul by daily sips, until he runs mad at last. Better to join the hopeless in the alley than to serve in such a way. Better to leave behind his wealth and his fame, and flee the only city in the world where dreams are brewed. He begins to evolve panicked plans.
They enter through the front of the shop, and Habsor, hands trembling, fumbles with his key in the lock of the workroom. It will not turn. Frustrated, he tries the handle, and the door swings open. The care he has taken to oil the hinges deprives it of the ominous creak which would suit his state of mind.
Within, he fears to find the delicate apparatus shattered or plundered, but all is intact and accounted for. Still, there are signs that someone has been in the room; items are not in the exact places where Habsor always lays them. When he checks the apparatus, he can tell it has been used.
Worse, the bolts on the back door have been thrown back. He hurries to the portal, cracks it open, then flings it wide.
The alley behind Dreamwright Street is empty of the unfortunates who sell their wonder and their hope. A few possessions, so mean and tawdry that even those with so little do not value them enough to carry them away, lie scattered on the dirty and uneven stones.
He turns to the officer in charge of the guards, eyes wide. “I do not understand,” he says. “My shop has been entered, but nothing has been taken. And all the dreamers are gone.”
The officer snaps to a guard, “Go, question the neighboring tradesmen. Perhaps they saw something.”
“I saw something,” says a voice from the door. Habsor’s colleague, Tuman. “I saw a young man, well dressed, enter your shop. I took him for a customer, thought that was why I recognised him. It was only just now I remembered having seen him, dressed in rags, in the alley yesterday.”
“A young man?” queries Habsor.
“A boy, really. Brown hair, about so tall…” Tuman gestures.
Habsor recognises the description as fitting his source of the previous day. “He entered through the front, used my equipment, left by the back, and seemingly took the other dreamers with him. But why?”
Habsor contemplates his apparatus. A single sapphire droplet oozes, hanging from the end of the distillation tubing. He touches his finger to it, brings it to his lips.
His eyes closed, he tastes a dream of freedom.
He has never considered using dream-brewing so; his craft has been dedicated to the contentment of the city’s lords. But this dream is a vision—a call to action, to freedom, to change. With all his mastery, he knows it is a call the city will heed. And even in Habsor’s own long-contented heart, a spark of rebellion glows; and there is more warmth to it than in all of Dreamwright Street’s manic gleam.
© 2024 by Mike Reeves-McMillan
2282 words
Author’s Note: This story was inspired by M. John Harrison’s story “Green is the Color,” though I can’t remember exactly how.
Mike Reeves-McMillan lives in Auckland, New Zealand, the setting of his Auckland Allies urban fantasy series; and also in his head, where the weather is more reliable, and there are a lot more wizards. He also writes the Gryphon Clerks magepunk series and the Hand of the Trickster sword-and-sorcery heist comedies, as well as short stories, which have appeared in venues such as Compelling Science Fiction and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.
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