Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘Kiki needs the cylinder.’

‘I’m sure she does,’ I said, ‘if I even knew what that meant.’

I fed Birgitta several more Jaffa cakes then sat her in the tub and scrubbed out the grime that had turned her tortoiseshell wintercoat into a matted mess. She sat impassively in the tub as I washed her as you might a dog or an infant, and didn’t murmur as I clipped off her matted head-hair, then rubbed lice oil into her scalp and changed the bandage on her thumb. I then dressed her in clean clothes and tidied up, made sure there was plenty of paper and pens within easy reach and told her I would be back to give her breakfast.

Once I’d locked the door firmly behind me, I returned to my room, made a cup of Nesbit-brand cocoa, then took off my clothes and settled into bed. It wasn’t late, but I was tired. I picked up my notebook with the intent to fill in my journal but then thought I had better not in case of prying eyes, so just laid back and gazed at Clytemnestra, who stared back at me with her unalterable pigment-based psychopathy.

I had survived my first full day in Sector Twelve but only just. I was suffering Hibernational Narcosis that presented as a déjà-vu memory reversion. This, enough as it was, was not the sum total of my problems: I had lied to Toccata about my relationship with Aurora, possible RealSleep activist Hugo Foulnap was masquerading as a Consul with Toccata’s knowledge, and I’d discovered it was feasible nightwalkers weren’t quite as dead as it seemed. Given that The Notable Goodnight had asked me if I’d seen any learned behaviour from Mrs Tiffen, they’d probably figured it out too. Quite how this fitted in with Project Lazarus I wasn’t sure – if it did at all – but rolling out universal rights to Morphenox would increase the quantity of nightwalkers, and if they could be redeployed to do more than just simple tasks, this could be a potentially valuable workforce asset for HiberTech.

But all my problems seemed trivial in the light of the most important task facing me: keeping Birgitta alive, safe, warm, well fed and away from prying eyes. Perhaps if I got her to Springrise and took her to the press, all would be well. Then Morphenox and the nightwalker phenomenon could be scrutinised, questions could be asked, Birgitta studied. But that bred a bigger problem. Food. Ninety-one days of food. If I let Birgitta get hungry, she’d revert to cannibalism, and I’d be first on the menu. I tried to think of a credible scheme whereby I could access the well-guarded pantry and snaffle some food, but before long my trail of optimistic thought dried up. Her discovery was not a question of if , but when. And when she was discovered, that was me done for good. Prison, out of a job and worse, far worse, the lasting disapproval of Sister Zygotia. I’d end my days as a community Footman, wandering the Winter on a capped ten euros per hour, waiting for my luck to finally turn sour.

I needed escape, and when I found it two hours later, it was trebly welcome. It relieved my fatigue, removed me from my troubles, and returned me to Birgitta. Not to the living nightwalker Birgitta locked in her room, whom I would protect with my life and reputation, but the dream Birgitta lodged within my subconscious.

On the Gower.

Again.

It felt as though a bar or block had lifted in my mind and that my dream cogs, long gummed with disuse, had finally found a way to move. I dreamed of the white-softened town, the snow pure and unsullied after a recent fall. I saw Jonesy dressed as the front half of a pantomime horse and surrounded by her collection of thumbs, all sixty-three of them, then Mother Fallopia glaring at me severely, standing over a sleeping Birgitta, amongst dozens of paintings of Charlie Webster also looking at me severely.

And then I was outside and could see Aurora moving amongst the drifts entirely naked, her body hair a light mousy colour, no more than an inch long except where it thinned to the naked strip of skin that ran along her spine in the shape of a poplar leaf, the linea decalvare so beloved of classical painters. She turned and was suddenly Toccata, sitting at a table with me on a large platter, basted in honey glaze and with an apple in my mouth.

But while these were all a little odd, they were just plain, standard dreams. I knew they were dreams and they were dismissed as such. I had been waiting, as though labouring through endless trailers and adverts at the cinema, knowing that finally, with a burst of sound and light, the main attraction would begin and I could settle down, and relax, and enjoy.

And it did – with a joyous blur of colour and light, away from the lower subconscious and into the exaggerated reality of the higher Dreamstate.

We were back in the Gower, the Argentinian Queen on the beach by the shoreline, the blue paintwork showing through the rust, cable stays loose and swinging in the breeze. Everything was precisely as it had been before, like watching a movie for the second or third time – predictably familiar and unwavering in the precision of its repetition. The sand, the sun, the large orange-and-red parasol of spectacular size and splendour, Birgitta in her one-piece swimsuit the colour of freshly unfurled leaves. She looked at me, pushed her hair behind her ear, smiled, and everything at that moment was perfect once more. All was Summertopia, and nothing could shake the sense of overwhelming bliss. The child ran past with the beach ball and the peal of laughter, and that was her cue. The same words, the identical inflection.

‘I love you, Charlie.’

‘I love you, Birgitta.’

And despite the disjointed Dreamstate I found myself in and the impossibility of the situation out in the real world, I did. Not for what I could see in front of me on this lazy weekend a decade in the past, but here and now, secure in the knowledge that I was loving her in a protective way, deep within the dreary midwinter of Sector Twelve and the shabbiness of the Sarah Siddons . Hiding her, looking after her needs, attempting to find a way forward into something that might resemble survival and justice.

I looked at my hands again and touched my symmetrical head, the rasp of stubble against my fingertips. I felt my nose: straight, aquiline, distinguished.

‘I like being Charles,’ I said.

‘You’re Charles now, my Charles,’ said Birgitta with a delightful giggle. ‘Try not to think about the facility and HiberTech Security. Just today and tomorrow, forty-eight hours. You and me. What Dreams May Come.’

It was the same line. Repeated word for word.

‘What Dreams May Come,’ I replied, then, by way of experiment, added: ‘While Krugers with Lugers take potshots at hotshots.’

Birgitta frowned.

‘What?’

‘…is enough to make mammoths with a gram’s worth of hammocks feel down with a clown from Manchester Town.’

I then did a cartwheel in the soft sand. I hadn’t done one for a while and saw stars for a moment, but when I looked at Birgitta again she had an expression of such abject confusion that I felt quite concerned.

‘You’re Charles now, my Charles?’ she said in an uncertain tone.

‘I am for the moment.’

‘You and me? What… Dreams May Come.’

I’d changed the dream. Not just lines, but actions . And I’d changed Birgitta’s responses, too.