Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“See?” Mark said. “It really is fate. That’s what Mully’s stories did for me.”

Isabelle turned to the older guard. “So it’s okay if I take these with me?” He hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Oh hell. Why not. Just don’t tell anybody how you got them.”

“Thanks—both of you.” Isabelle replaced the parcels in the plastic bag. “Don’t forget this,” Mark said, handing her the photograph.

Isabelle looked at it. Her memories didn’t need keepsakes to jump-start them.

“Why don’t you keep it,” she said.

“Really?”

“It’s the least I can do for you. Thanks again.”

She shook hands with both of them and left the office, the plastic bag clutched against her chest. It was an incredible coincidence how things had worked out, she thought as she walked across the bus terminal toward the exit. Or maybe it truly had been kismet and Kathy’s magic hadn’t entirely deserted her after all.

XI

Rolanda couldn’t stop dreaming about the strange young girl who had appeared so mysteriously in the Foundation’s office yesterday evening, appeared and then just as mysteriously vanished. The dream was as odd as the girl herself had been. It consisted solely of Cosette sitting on the edge of Rolanda’s bed, staring at her. Whenever Rolanda woke up and looked, the end of the bed was empty—which was how it should be, of course. Yet no sooner would she drift back into sleep again than the dream would return.

Finally Rolanda got up and decided to finish the financial report she’d been working on last night. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well make herself useful.

She brewed herself a strong cup of coffee in her own kitchen, then took it downstairs. She froze at the door of the office, and not simply because of the odd smell in the air. Her gaze fixed on the small figure curled up on the sofa. Cosette was still wearing the sweater and shoes she’d gotten from Rolanda earlier and she was using the arm of the sofa as a pillow. Her hands were clutched close to her thin chest, her torso and lower limbs forming a tight Z.

Rolanda slowly walked over to her desk and set down her coffee. Her hands were trembling and she spilled some of the dark liquid on one of the file covers, but she didn’t bother to mop it up. All she could do was stare at her mysterious visitor and wonder at the odor that permeated the room. Finally she went into Shauna’s office, where she collected a blanket. Returning to where Cosette was sleeping, she laid the blanket over the girl.

“I’m not asleep,” Cosette said.

Rolanda’s pulse skipped a beat. Slowly she sat down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. What are you doing here? she wanted to ask. How did you get in? But all she said was “I guess the sofa’s not all that comfortable, is it? I’ve got a bed upstairs that you can sleep in if you like.”

The girl regarded her with a solemn gaze. “I can’t dream, you know.” The abrupt shift in conversation didn’t phase Rolanda. She was used to it in this place.

“Everybody dreams,” she said. “You just don’t remember yours, that’s all.”

“Then why can’t I paint?” Cosette asked.

“I’m not sure I get the connection.”

Cosette sat up and pulled a still-wet canvas out from under the sofa. Turpentine, Rolanda thought when she saw it. That was what the odd smell was that she’d noticed earlier. She hadn’t been able to place it before because it was so out-of-place here.

“Look at this,” Cosette said. “It’s awful.”

Rolanda would have chosen the word primitive to describe it. In darkened tones of blue and red and purple, Cosette had rendered a rough image of a woman sleeping in a bed. The perspective was slightly askew and the proportions were off, but there was still a power about the simple painting, a sense of brooding disquiet that was completely at odds with the artist’s obvious limitations in terms of technique.

“I wouldn’t say it was awful,” she began, and then she looked more closely at the painting. The shape of the headboard ...

It was her bed, Rolanda realized. Cosette had painted her, sleeping in her bed upstairs. She hadn’t been dreaming. The girl really had been in her bedroom watching her.

“But you wouldn’t say it was good either, would you?”

Rolanda had a difficult moment trying to bring herself back to the conversation. The idea that Cosette had crept into her bedroom, had actually been sitting there, watching her, was unsettling. How had the girl gotten in? The front door was locked. And so was the door to her own apartment.

“Well, would you?” Cosette asked.

Rolanda cleared her throat. “How long have you been painting?” she asked.

“Oh, for years and years. But I can never get anything to look the way it really is. Not the way that Isabelle used to. If I was her, I’d never have given that up.

She spoke with such earnest weariness that Rolanda couldn’t help but smile.

“Have you ever taken any courses?” she asked. “Because it’s a long process, you know. Most artists take fine arts at a university or at least study under another artist. I can’t think of any who were already completely accomplished at your age.”

“I’m older than I look.”

Rolanda nodded. “You said that before.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“I believe you.”

“I just look like this because this is the way Isabelle brought me over. I’m not really a child.”

“Who is Isabelle?”

Cosette pointed to the painting of The Wild Girl that hung on the wall across the room. “That’s one of her paintings. It’s the one she did of me.”

“But that painting’s been here for years ....”

“I know. Didn’t I tell you I was older than I looked? It’s been fifteen years since she first brought me over.”

Rolanda felt as though she were in one of those old black-and-white comedies where conversations always went at cross-purposes. She regarded Cosette. It was true the girl looked like the subject of Isabelle Copley’s painting, but she couldn’t have sat for it. She simply wasn’t old enough. Rolanda wanted to confront Cosette with the impossibility of what she was saying, but the first thing you learned when you came to work for the Foundation was not to be confrontational with the clients—especially not at the beginning. They might be lying, you might know they were lying, but you didn’t call them on it.

By the time a child came to the Foundation, their life was already such a mess that the first priority was to make sure they were healthy and safe. Everything else was dealt with later.

“What do you mean about Ms. Copley bringing you over?” she asked instead. “Where did she bring you over from?”

Cosette shrugged. “From before.”

“Before what?”

“I don’t know. There are stories there, but they don’t belong to us anymore. We have to start a new story here. But it’s hard because we’re not like you. We can’t dream. The red crow doesn’t beat inside our chests.”

Rolanda found herself wishing she had the luxury of enough time to call someone: one of the other counselors. Alan Grant, whom Cosette had mentioned earlier. Or even this artist, Isabelle Copley. She knew she was missing something, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. She might have put Cosette’s odd conversation down to drugs, except that Cosette showed none of the usual signs of a user.

She was so matter-of-fact, so normal. Except for what she was talking about.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” she told the girl, “but I’m not sure I understand what you mean about ...

well, any of this. Red crows and coming across from before and the like. But I want to understand.”