Dream Dancing & Walking

 

            Ralph’s got a jazzy head on him. And he’s in a lucid spot, walking that littoral between here and there. It looks to him like a forest, but not the Great Forest.

            “Let’s see what we can see,” he murmurs to himself, or to the dream angels.    
            There’s always an angel to record speech, right, in dreams?
            He came to a crossroad. A sign read “Choose Your Own Adventure.” There were two arrows on the sign. One pointed left, and it said, “War of the Colors.” The other arrow pointed to the right, and it said, “Just Go Back to Where It Began.”
            “I would like to do both,” said Ralph, and there was the path, ready, before him on the left. It was paved in moss, intensely green and soft, like walking on a cool damp rug.
            Through the trees, looking straight up, he saw a sky of shockingly deep ultramarine blue,
            The trees were comical, like blueberry bushes or rhododendrons, or maybe some kind of  potted succulent plant.
            He saw that the green strove upon the blue. “What does it mean?” he asked the recording angel.
            “Dance,” said the angel. Just one word.
            So,  Ralph danced with the angel, spinning and dipping, until he was quite dizzy. Meaning tickled behind his mind.
            “I see,” he said, catching his breath. “Green desires blue. It has made a new thing. Heaven's blue mixed with Earth's green.”
            “What does it mean?” he said to the angel.
            “Let it be,” said the angel. “Now walk back down the path.”
            So Ralph turned on his heel and walked back down the path to the sign and found the other path waiting at the right side. Very soon the strange forest disappeared, and he was walking down a gravel road between utterly ordinary alders and maples. The road was dusty and the air was hot, like one of those desperate last days of summer. Grass was yellowed. Leaves appeared pinched and thirsty.
            And it seemed as he walked that he began to recognize within himself his younger self. He grew smaller and smoother, more and more as he walked the dusty gravel road.
            The path his steps took left the gravel road then, and made a sharp turn into the dim light of the forest. He was quite young now, no bigger than a human man.
            He forgot how he had come here, and what he had been.
            The forest was very pleasant after the dusty road in the hot sunshine.
            There was a small spring. Kneeling down to drink, he saw that the clear water issued from great depths. But the water was good to drink, and he bathed his feet in the trickle that ran from it.
            In a bright spot among the trees he found blackberries which had dried on their vines, into a sort of raisin. He ate them, and they were good too.
            The trees became larger and were tighter together. Very little sunlight made it to the forest floor. A white birch trunk shone in the half-light, then another, like sentinels of some kind.
            In the distance he saw a strange building, and he was drawn to it, though some might have been afraid.
            It sat flat on the ground, for the supports built of timber had rotted away long ago. The outside was covered in ancient scraps of tarpaper. The roof sagged, the chimney, merely a rusty metal pipe hung off at a weird angle. The door lay on the ground. There was a wooden set of three steps, sagging and broken. It smelled of dry rot.
            On the steps sat a human child. A girl. She had cried until she had no more tears. Her face was dirty with dried tears; her hair was a long brown mess.
            Ralph approached, fearing nothing.
            A pair of blue eyes watched him picking his way between the trees and undergrowth.
            “Why are you crying,” he said when he got to the girl on the steps.
            “I’m lost and no way I walk is the right way,” she answered. “Do you know the right way?”
            “Yes,” he said. “I do; I will lead you. Take my hand, little girl.”
            So, she came to him and held his left hand, leaving the right hand free. Then they walked a pathless half mile or so, until a humble sort of house with the remains of a summer garden behind it could be seen beyond the brush.
            “That’s where I live,” she said, sighing.
            A woman was in the garden, looking toward the forest and frowning, hands on her hips.
            “Go to her,” he said, staying out of sight himself.
            As she ran to her mother, the forest around him began to drift away, like a memory, leaving only a stubborn single image.

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