Charles De Lint - Dreams Underfoot

“Don’t you even care?” she demanded.

His only reply was to start walking again. She hesitated for a long moment, then hurried to catch up.

She walked with her arms wrapped around herself, but the chill she felt came from inside and it wouldn’t go away.

They crossed bridges beyond her ability to count as they made their way into the central part of the city. From time to time they passed the odd streetlight, its dim glow making a feeble attempt to push back the shadows; in other places, the ghosts of flickering neon signs crackled and hissed more than they gave offlight. In some ways the lighting made things worse for it revealed the city’s general state of decay—cracked walls, nibbled streets, refuse wherever one turned.

Under one lamp post, she got a better look at her companion. His features were strong rather than handsome; none of the callousness she sensed in his voice was reflected in them. He caught her gaze and gave her a thin smile, but the humor in his eyes was more mocking than companionable.

They continued to pass by dejected and lost figures that hunched in the shadows, huddled against buildings, or bolted at their approach. Jack listed their despairs for her—AIDS victim, rape victim, abused wife, paraplegic—until Moira begged him to stop.

“I can’t take anymore,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I thought you wanted to know.”

They went the rest of the way in silence, the bridges taking them higher and higher until they finally stood on the top of an enormous building that appeared to be the largest and most centrally placed of the city’s structures. From its heights, the city was spread out around them on all sides.

It made for an eerie sight. Moira stepped back from the edge of the roof, away from the pull of vertigo that came creeping up the small of her back to whisper in her ear. She had only to step out, into the night sky, it told her. Step out and all her troubles would be forever eased.

At the sound of a footstep, she turned gratefully away from the disturbing view. A woman was walking towards them, pausing when she was a few paces away. Unlike the other inhabitants of the city, she gave the impression of being selfassured, of being in control of her destiny.

She had pale skin, and short spiky red hair. A half dozen silver earrings hung from one ear; the other had a small silver stud in the shape of a star. Like Jack, she was dressed casually: black jeans, black boots, white tanktop, a black leather jacket draped over one shoulder. And like Jack, her eyes, too, seemed like a reservoir for the moonlight.

“You’re not alone,” she said to Jack.

“I never am,” Jack replied. “You know that. My sister, Diane,” he added to Moira, then introduced her to Diane.

The woman remained silent, studying Moira with her moonbright eyes until Moira couldn’t help but fidget. The dreamlike quality of her situation was beginning to filter away. Once again a panicked feeling was making itself felt in the pit of her stomach.

“Why are you here?” Diane asked her finally.

Her voice had a different quality from her brother’s. It was a warm, rounded sound that carried in it a sweet scent like that of cherry blossoms or rose buds. It took away Moira’s panic, returning her once more to that sense of it all just being a dream.

“I ... I don’t know,” she said. “I was just crossing a bridge on my way home and the next thing I knew I was ... here. Wherever here is. I—look. I just want to go home. I don’t want any of this to be real.”

“It’s very real,” Diane said.

“Wonderful.”

“She wants to help the unhappy,” Jack offered, “but they just run away from her.”

Moira shot him a dirty look.

“Do be still,” Diane told him, frowning as she spoke. She returned her attention to Moira. “Why don’t you go home?”

“I—I don’t know how to. The bridge that brought me here ... when I went to go back across it, its roadway was gone.”

Diane nodded. “What has my brother told you?”

Nothing that made sense, Moira wanted to say, but she related what she remembered of her conversations with Jack.

“And do you despair?” Diane asked.

Moira hesitated. She thought of the hopeless, dejected people she’d passed on the way to this rooftop.

“Not really, I guess. I mean, I’m not happy or anything, but ...”

“You have hope? That things will get better for you?”

A flicker of faces passed through her mind. Ghosts from the distant and recent past. Boys from high school. Eddie. She heard Eddie’s voice.

Either you come across, or you walk ....

She just wanted a normal life. She wanted to find something to enjoy in it. She wanted to find somebody she could have a good relationship with, she wanted to enjoy making love with him without worrying about people thinking she was a tramp. She wanted him to be there the next morning. She wanted there to be more to what they had than just a roll in the hay.

Right now, none of that seemed very possible.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I want it to. I’m not going to give up, but ...”

Again, faces paraded before her—this time they belonged to those lost souls of the city. The despairing.

“I know there are people a lot worse off than I am,” she said. “I’m not sick, I’ve got the use of my body and my mind. But I’m missing something, too. I don’t know how it is for other people—maybe they feel the same and just handle it better—but I feel like there’s a hole inside me that I just can’t fill. I get so lonely ...”

“You see,” Jack said then. “She’s mine.”

Moira turned to him. “What are you talking about?”

It was Diane who answered. “He’s laying claim to your unhappiness,” she said.

Moira looked from one to the other. There was something going on here, some undercurrent, that she wasn’t picking up on. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“This city is ours,” Diane said. “My brother’s and mine. We are two sides to the same coin. In most people, that coin lies with my face up, for you are an optimistic race. But optimism only carries some so far. When my brother’s face lies looking skyward, all hope is gone.”

Moira centered on the words, “you are an optimistic race,” realizing from the way Diane spoke it was as though she and her brother weren’t human. She looked away, across the cityscape of bridges and tilting buildings. It was a dreamscape—not exactly a nightmare, but not at all pleasant either. And she was trapped in it; trapped in a dream.

“Who are you people?” she asked. “I don’t buy this ‘Jack and Diane’ bit—that’s like out of that John Mellencamp song. Who are you really? What is this place?”

“I’ve already told you,” Jack said.

“But you only gave her half the answer,” Diane added. She turned to Moira. “We are Hope and Despair,” she said. She touched a hand to her breast. “Because of your need for us, we are no longer mere allegory, but have shape and form. This is our city.”

Moira shook her head. “Despair I can understand—this place reeks of it. But not Hope.”

“Hope is what allows the strong to rise above their despair,” Diane said. “It’s what makes them strong. Not blind faith, not the certain knowledge that someone will step in and help them, but the understanding that through their own force of will they cannot merely survive, but succeed. Hope is what tempers that will and gives it the strength to carry on, no matter what the odds are ranked against them.”

“Don’t forget to tell her how too much hope will turn her into a lazy cow,” her brother said.

Diane sighed, but didn’t ignore him. “It’s true,” she said. “Too much hope can also be harmful.