Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

Kathy laid the drawings down. “You don’t really think you brought John over, do you?”

“What am I supposed to think? He just appeared in my life—right after I finished the painting.”

“Yeah, but he’s ...”

“Real?”

Kathy nodded.

“So’s Paddyjack,” Izzy said.

“This is too weird.”

“But he’s here, isn’t he? I painted him. I called him up out of my mind and now he’s real. Just ...” She gave Kathy a pained look. “Just like John.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It happened exactly the same way,” Izzy said. “I painted him, and then he showed up outside the library—exactly the same as in my painting. Right down to the earring. I can still remember meeting him by Rushkin’s studio last autumn and lending him the money to buy a jacket because all he was wearing was a T-shirt and it was cold. But he said it didn’t bother him. Maybe they don’t have the same kind of feelings as we do.”

“I’ve seen guys wearing T-shirts in the middle of the winter.”

Izzy gave her a look.

“Okay,” Kathy said. “Maybe not quite the middle of winter. But some people are like that. The cold just doesn’t bother them.”

“He’s got no past.”

“That you know of. You told me a few weeks ago when you tried to give him that painting that you’re sure he doesn’t tell you anything just so he can seem mysterious.”

“Nobody knows him.”

“Everybody knows him.”

“But only because I’ve introduced them to him. I don’t know where he lives. 17

“You told me he lives with his aunt.”

“Who doesn’t like white girls, so I’ve never been over. I don’t know the address. I don’t even have a phone number for him. I never contact him. He just shows up—and it’s always when I happen to have some free time to spend with him. How does he know?”

“So what are you saying? That he’s got no life except for when you’ve got time for him? For God’s sake, Izzy. I’ve run into him myself dozens of times.”

Izzy sighed. Leaning back, she lay full length across the end of the bed. She turned her head to look at Kathy, the blanket rasping against her cheek.

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” she said. “I can’t believe that Paddyjack is real, but he is. And because he’s real, because I know now that I did bring him across, I know that I did the same thing for John.”

“There is such a thing as coincidence.”

Izzy shook her head. “I know.”

“Then you should talk to him.”

“I do. But he’s a master at changing topics or just not answering questions that he doesn’t feel like answering.”

Kathy leaned her head on her knees and looked down at her. “Even if you did bring him across ...

what’s so wrong about that?”

Izzy shrugged. “It doesn’t seem healthy.”

“Whoa. Where’s that coming from?”

“Think about it. How would you feel if you wrote a story about some great guy and then he becomes real?”

“I’d be careful who I wrote about.”

“I’m serious, Kathy. Don’t you think being responsible for his existence would put a strain on your relationship? I mean, it’s like I’m John’s mother or something.”

Kathy shook her head. “Sorry. I can’t buy into that. I’ll grant you that if it’s true, if you really can paint people into life, it would make you feel pretty weird. But think about it beyond John. You’ve tapped into something magic. You’ve proved that there is more to the world than what we can normally see of it. You should be filled with awe and wonder. I know I get all kinds of little tingles running up and down my spine just thinking about it.”

“But you don’t have John to think about.”

“That’s true. Maybe you could paint somebody for me.”

Izzy sat up. “You’re not being much help.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m being serious.”

“I know you are. So talk to him, ma belle Izzy. What else can you do?”

V

The next evening Izzy made her way to the Silenus Gardens, that part of Fitzhenry Park which was dedicated to the poet Joshua Stanhold. Guided by the pools of light cast by a long row of lampposts, she walked through that silence peculiar to winter. This far into the park the only sound she heard was her own muffled footsteps. A dusting of snow had fallen earlier in the evening, but the clouds had moved on now, leaving behind a sky deep with stars. Her breath frosting in the air, Izzy brushed the snow from the wrought-iron bench that stood directly below the tall bronze statue of Stanhold. She tucked the back of her jacket under her to insulate her from the cold metal and sat down. And then she waited.

She’d thought long and hard about where she wanted to meet John. It had to be somewhere relatively private, so that they could talk without being interrupted, but she also wanted it to be someplace that gave her a sense of empowerment because otherwise she didn’t think she’d be able to muster the strength she was going to need to sustain her through what was to come. The Silenus Gardens was perfect on both counts.

The first collection of poetry she’d ever owned had been Stanhold’s The Stone Silenus. She’d bought it on Kathy’s recommendation, a month or so after they began rooming together at Butler U., and then went on to get his collected works. The images of satyrs and fauns that pervaded his work spoke directly to the heart of the somewhat animistic country girl she’d been when she first arrived in the city—not so much because they reminded her of the lost countryside of her youth as that the images in his poetry seemed to lend a certain approval to the feeling she’d always had in those woods around her home: that they were full of spirits and, moreover, that they were communing with her, if she could but make out what they were saying.

Here in the shadow of Stanhold’s statue was the only place she’d ever found away from Wren Island that gave her an echo of that magical sense that otherwise she only retained in memory. So what better place to meet with a piece of magic that she’d called into being herself?

She didn’t have long to wait. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes after her own arrival that she saw John’s familiar figure come ambling down the path toward her. At least she didn’t have to wonder how he always knew just when and where to find her anymore, she thought. Since she’d brought him into this world, how could there not be a strong, if one-sided, connection between them? She certainly never knew where he was at any particular time unless he’d told her in advance.

John paused on the path in front of her. He regarded her for a long moment before he finally sat down beside her. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jean jacket, impervious, as always, to the cold, but now Izzy knew why that was as well.

“It won’t be long before spring returns,” he said after a few moments of their sitting together in silence. “You can feel it lying under the snow, waiting and expectant. Ready for its turn upon the stage.”

“Have you ever seen a spring before?” Izzy asked. She’d called him across in the autumn of last year.

John turned to look at her. “What makes you think I haven’t?”

“I know, John. I know all about how you came here. I don’t know exactly where it is that you came from, but I do know it wasn’t anywhere in this world.”

His eyebrows lifted quizzically, but he didn’t reply.

“I brought somebody else across,” Izzy went on. “I haven’t seen him yet myself, but Kathy did. She wrote a story about him without ever having seen my painting, so that’s how I know he’s real. She described him exactly like the weird little man I painted.”