Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘Ichabod and the cold water tank?’

‘That’s the one.’

I told her that Moody had said the area was known as the cradle of fable.

‘With good reason,’ she replied, ‘and I think the Gronk is due to return – to feed on the shame of the unworthy.’

‘Rich pickings here, I take it?’

She rolled her eyes.

‘She’ll be totally spoiled for choice in the Twelve. Bondsmen and part-time Consul Jim Treacle is my choice if the Big G comes to call, but on the Burden of Guilt stakes, he probably doesn’t even come close to some of the oddballs kicking around. There’s Jonesy, who lost sixty soldiers under her command, Toccata who is barely herself half the time, Fodder is definitely hiding something and most of the porters here have suffered fatal losses, probably through boredom or incompetence. But my money’s on the Twelve’s very own one-man obnoxs-a-thon, Deputy Hooke. I’m Laura Strowger, by the way.’

‘Charlie Worthing,’ I said.

We shook hands rather than Winter embraced; you don’t with kids unless they’re family.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘good luck on your hunt for the Gronk.’

She thanked me and returned to her work, and I walked through to the Mrs Nesbit’s café, a good-sized room of plain rustic decor: oak beams, half-panelled walls, antique copper pans and with two large windows that looked out on to the square. There was a drowsy and a potential client sitting in a cosy alcove near the crackling log fire, discussing Impressionist painters, the usual precursor to assisted slumber. From there she might move on to literature, poetry, the lute, and – failing all that – more intimate means. Few needed to. Given the traditionally high level of drowsying skill, most clients were unconscious somewhere between Dylan Thomas and Longfellow with a few lasting as far as W. H. Auden. Lutes rarely even came out of their cases.

The drowsy’s eyes had the vacant, deeply-fatigued look of a winsomniac; someone who hadn’t been to the nourishing abyss of slumber for years. She looked oddly familiar, and appeared to be in her sixth decade – and that was unusual, because serial overwinterers rarely made it past their fourth. Stupidly, I raised my hand and waved in recognition, and she, expressionless, did the same.

The remaining occupants of the lounge were winsomniacs, perhaps a dozen or so. They were sprawling rather than sitting, and oozed a sense of unexcited apathy. A pair were playing chess using lightweight pieces, several were reading books, but most were simply dozing, eyes and mouth partially open, saliva dribbling down their cheeks. They languidly swivelled their eyes towards me as I walked in, then just as languidly swivelled them back and carried on with what they were doing, which was the quiet side of almost nothing.

‘Welcome to Mrs Nesbit’s,’ said the winsomniac closest to me. He was dressed in long hessian robes, open sandals and wore dried Spring flowers entwined in his beard. He had green-rimmed spectacles and a kindly, pious face wrinkled into folds by sleepless Winters and the elements.

‘Hullo,’ I said, breaking the one rule of engaging with the sleep-shy: don’t.

He introduced himself as Shamanic Bob.

‘Deputy Consul Charlie Worthing,’ I said.

‘Passing through?’

‘Yes; here to meet with Moody.’

‘You’ll get more sense from lichen. What’s with your head?’

Unlike talking to The Notable Goodnight, where I needed to be polite, this was an answer I could have fun with.

‘It’s the final stages of an excruciatingly painful and incurable genital wasting disease. Luckily, it’s only spread by skin contact. Sorry, I should have said that before I shook your hand. Remiss of me – apologies.’

Shamanic Bob smiled.

‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I think I deserved that.’

‘Yes, I think you did.’

He stood up, moved forward and drew me into the Winter embrace. The last time I’d been hugged by a shaman was about a decade before, and little had changed. He smelled of dry hessian, mould and biltong. He was also bony. Really bony. Like a sack of pickaxe handles. After we’d stood there for so long that I thought he’d fallen asleep, we parted.

‘Do you want a coffee?’ he said. ‘We stock Nesbit Budget Grind. What it lacks in taste it makes up for in adaptability. Mixed into a paste it makes a very resilient tile grout.’

‘That’s very kind, thank you.’

‘The machine’s up there, and while you’re about it, make one for me. Anyone else?’

There was weak assent from the entire room. Enthusiasm was a dirty word to winsomniacs. I walked across to the bar and made a large cafetière of coffee, then placed it on a central table. The winsomniacs made weak and ineffectual attempts to help themselves, so I handed them around. The sleep-shy were like that. Always getting other people to do stuff for them.

‘On the house,’ said Shamanic Bob as I handed him a coffee, then took one myself. It tasted like coal-tar soap mixed with charcoal and rust.

‘Are you a follower of The Book of Morpheus, Worthing?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be honest,’ I said, ‘I’ve nothing against anyone who believes, but I think it’s a dangerous nonsense.’

‘An unbeliever is but an opportunity,’ said Bob with an unrealistic level of optimism, ‘and a man surrounded by an abundance of opportunity is a rich man indeed. What brings you to Sector Twelve, Deputy? Are you here to… dream ?’

I realised who they were, then. They were the polar opposite to those of us on Morphenox: using illegally-obtained dream enhancers, they shunned the featureless blackness that was the Morphenox hibernation experience, and rode out the Winter on a chemically-induced froth of energy-sapping subconscious escapism. And, given the rules surrounding Winter Asylum, they could do it for free, with legally mandated food and shelter.

Parasites, basically – of the worst sort.

‘Oh,’ I said, without much subtlety, ‘you’re dreamers .’

‘Correct,’ said Shamanic Bob with a faint smile, ‘but don’t be thinking we’re victims of our lifestyle, we’re here by choice. And believe you me,’ he added in a lower voice, ‘this is the place to score some D-Reem. One hundred per cent pure, uncut. We have a contact in HiberTech; we swap it kilo-for-the-gram with Tunnock’s Teacakes.’

D-Reem was an escalator , a dream enhancer. Slang made it all cool and groovy, when actually it was all just monumentally dumb.

‘Do you dream, Deputy?’ he asked.

It was an easy assumption I was on Morphenox. I didn’t dream. Or at least, nothing serious. Just the odd scrap during nightly nap.

‘I’ve not dreamed since I was in single digits,’ I said. ‘I’m okay with that.’

‘If you’ve not dreamed, you’ve never truly slept. Dreams are the place where you can be yourself; do anything, be anything. The mind set free – Morphenox muffles the mind and smothers the imagination.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘You should ride the dream train,’ continued Shamanic Bob with a smile, ‘pop an escalator and see what you’re missing. It’s the dark and dirty cousin of Morphenox, but there couldn’t be one without the other. It’s night and day, my friend, hope and despair, Eldon and Manning, darkness and light. We’re the flipside of sound slumbering, the crusty night-seepage you scrape off and sweep under the mattress.’

‘I’m not sure I understand,’ I said, at the same time doubting my implied presumption that there was something to understand.

‘Do you know your Don Hector history?’ he asked with what passes for enthusiasm amongst his calling. ‘What the good doctor was doing for twenty years before he introduced Morphenox to the grateful masses?’