Entry 8

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Middle of the night, 0300

I’m awake and alert, my heart rate still elevated, though I’m going through the breathing rituals my mother Alexandra always taught me growing up. She always told me with a wink that she was descended from Piégais nobility, heir to the Calvitic Throne. Per her telling, the breathing rituals had been passed from generation to generation, performed at the outset of the old clan’s big yearly gathering. And there were health benefits too, she would tell me. When I was a boy I don’t think my father Jean-Luc yet knew the family he had married into.

Exhaling sharply and snorting, I press the tip of my tongue into the roof of the mouth and attempt to say the immortal words: “bouaient mauvais.” You’re not supposed to be able to enunciate the words. They’re more of an idea. And again I flutter my cheeks as I draw air in slowly, moaning deeply.

CJ has awoken, confused and somewhat concerned. I tell him to go back to sleep. He wants to know what’s wrong. I tell him nothing is wrong, and the breathing exercises are something they told me about at the infirmary. He asks again if anything is wrong. I say there’s not. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. I take the toughbook into the corridor to write, so as not to keep CJ awake or worry him further.

I had the most dreadful dream tonight. I’m going to write it down and meditate on its meaning. I’m not overly superstitious when it comes to these things, but I do believe that that all matter and energy, including the firings of signals across synapses, are ultimately interconnected. And time itself is a unity in the sense that each moment is connected to the preceding and future moment, thereby representing links in a single chain. And as time is experienced in our minds, as are dreams, so can we envision that everything is ultimately intertwined.

In my dream I awoke as a prince living in the hills of southern Castonella. The throne room I sat in was inside stone castle and adorned with bouquets of squid lilies, Jacquensian tulips, and assorted wildflowers. A scholar laid on an ornate rug four or five feet in front of my throne.

“How do you know you’re present, milord?” he asked calmly. His robes were dark green and his long hair was tied behind his ears. His voice was melodic and soothing, and listening to it was as though I were gazing from the window of a prison onto a peaceful shoreline.

“Have you asked me that already?” I said finally. There was a distinct familiarity to the scene, as though I was reliving one of the many stories from old Castonella my fiancée told me late in the evening after we made love, and I was laid on my back, crimping her thighs and knees with my fingers as she spoke. My fiancée. I’m recalling that I couldn’t remember her name at that moment in the dream.

“Sí, milord,” the scholar cooed. He began fanning himself with an eagle’s feather he took from the low table between us.

“I’m present because I’m here,” I said automatically, the words coming out of my mouth naturally but without thinking.

“Muy bien, milord,” he said, the slow fanning of the feather drawing invisible figure eights in the air. “And where is here.”

Again the words flew from my mouth like doves from a coop: “Because I’m not there.”

The scholar sat up sharply. “This is where we keep stopping,” he said, suddenly becoming somewhat cross with me. “Where is here?”

I found myself inexplicably incensed. “Mind your tone, scholar,” I reproached him. He rose and bowed slowly, respectfully. I continued as he laid back on his carpet: “I’ll show you.”

I picked up my deep blue Castonellan cap, decorated with vibrant Iberian ostrich feathers, and strode to the open window nearest me. From the hilltop castle I looked down upon a bucolic hamlet in the river valley below. A small river snaked between the small houses that clustered around a small market. Livestock and children could be seen being herded around the muddy streets by squat, dirty looking fellows or weatherworn ladies. Shouting broke out in one of the homes, followed by clothes being thrown out of a window and a man climbing through behind them. A typical market day in a small Castonellan town.

I pointed at the town and turned to the scholar. “There,” I said. “I’m not there. So I’m here.”

I turned back to the window and found myself pointing at half an outfit of men’s clothing draped over the windowsill. The shirtless man I had seen from the castle was hopping away frantically with his trousers half on. I was in the room, shouting at a woman I had never seen before. She was shouting back, hands planted on hips and cheeks red. We were speaking in the Castonellan dialect, which I understood at the time but don’t actually know.

The shirtless man paused around the corner of the nearest house and turned around slowly. It was the scholar. I found myself overcome by fury, and felt I had to catch him. I ran to the window and hoisted myself through, stumbling and landing in the mud. But when I stood up, I was no longer in the town, I was on a worn path on Mavis Island.

None of the University buildings were there. The island was mostly empty, except for I was no longer wearing Medieval garb, but baggy breeches and long stockings, green and blue striped, and a matching coat. A sheathed sword dangled from my waist, and on my head was a metal helmet, which I removed to see that a large eagle’s feather adorned it. A musket lay on the ground in front of me, and I was going to pick it up when I saw two men some 50 meters away studying me. They appeared to be Mavisians.

A deafening noise then erupted from behind me, as though a great ship from the future was sounding its arrival. I turned and saw I was at the base of Cape Stanwell. On top of it was an apparition of the scholar, nude, hovering above the peak, as large as an elephant.

In my head I suddenly heard the scholar’s whispering, “she will be taken from you, Pierre. You know this. She will be taken from this place.”

I screamed into the rumbling empty space between me and the scholar: “where will she be taken from? Who will take her?”

The scholar grew larger on Cape Stanwell, and his whispering pierced my ears. “The question isn’t where,” he told me, “but when. You know this.”

“Send me back!” I roared, “send me back to her!”

The scholar’s face turned bright red. “No, Pierre, there is nothing you can do.”

“You lie!” I picked up the musket and found it already loaded. I took gunpowder from the pouch on my belt and primed the pan. I got to one knee to steady my aim, pointed it at the apparition of the scholar, and pulled the trigger.

The boom was nearly unbearable, and the air instantly smelled of burning gunpowder. I was knocked on my back and closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I was hovering near the ceiling of the corridor outside my bunk on Mavis Island. I was watching myself write this very field journal entry on the toughbook, sitting on the ground with my back against the wall. My writing self seemed not to notice me.

After just a few moments of listening to the clicking of the keys I noticed another apparition on the opposite end of the corridor. It was the scholar, glowing a faint shade of blue. He had the musket, and lowered it at my writing self. I tried to scream at myself, but no noise came out. I was also paralyzed, but with all the mental might I had I tried to extend an arm to stop the scholar. I suddenly fell, facing the ceiling, and hit the ground hard as though I were made of matter once again.

I found myself at home in Calvois, naked and sweating on our bed. The windows were open and it was a hot, muggy day. Maria Francesca walked in the door wearing her favorite light blue silk bathrobe, her long brunette hair in a bun.

“Did you have a bad dream?” she cooed, and bent over to kiss me on the cheek. I touched the spot she had pecked and sat up in bed. She crossed her arms playfully and said, “now what did you say you wanted to give me?”

For the first time in the dream, my response didn’t come automatically. I looked down at Monsieur Pierrou still in peaceful slumber, and around the room. There was a bouquet of squid lilies and Jacquensian tulips still wrapped in paper on the bedside table. Maria Francesca saw me observe them and walked over.

“They smell wonderful,” she said blissfully as she sniffed, and walked them over to a vase on the dresser opposite the bed, unwrapping and placing them inside. “But you don’t need to give me anything. Just yourself,” she said seductively, and added, “you know this.”

You know this. The scholar’s words seared the skies of my mind. Maria Francesca walked to me slowly and removed her robe, and in her full natural beauty she tossed it playfully over my face.

I said a prayer to Monsieur Pierrou in my head and pulled the robe off, ecstatic to be reunited with Maria Francesca. But I was no longer in Calvois, I was back in the castle. And the scholar was no longer wearing his robe, but a black executioner’s tunic and hood. I stood on my throne and pointed a finger at him. “You!”

“I’ll ask one more time,” he said impatiently. “How do you know you’re present.”

I knew what I had to say and do. “I know I’m present because I’m here. I know I’m here because I’m also there, and there, and there, and everywhere.”

“And who am I?” he asked with an edge in his voice.

“Don’t interrupt me, scholar,” I shot back. “I wasn’t finished.” The scholar shifted his weight nervously. “I also know I’m present, and here, because if I wasn’t I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

He knew what was happening and kneeled, cocking his neck slightly and pulling his hair to one side. I strode over to the crossed axes on the wall and took one. It was heavy, even heavier than the musket had been. Taking it with two hands, I marched intently to the scholar and took my place behind him.

“Now you know this too,” I growled at him, and swung the axe with all the strength I possessed.

And just as the blade was about to decapitate the scholar, I awoke in bed. Sitting in the corridor, I can confirm there are no apparitions watching me, at least that I can detect. Other than a somewhat metallic smell in the air, all seems fine.

But I know the meaning of the dream now. I have to find Maria Francesca and stop her from coming here, wherever she is. Here.

Signing off, it’s 0330. Tonight I’m rocking out to the Postal Service.

All glory to the University.

Pierre Delgado

And true it may seem like a stretch
But it’s thoughts like this that catch
My troubled head when you’re away
And when I am missing you to death

They will see us waving from such great heights
Come down now, they’ll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
Come down now but we’ll stay