Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

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Memory and Dream: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Dreams have magic in them. A few of us have the power to make that magic real. A masterwork by one of fantasy’s most gifted storytellers: a magnificent tale of love, courage, and the power of imagination to transform our lives.
This is the novel Charles de Lint’s many devoted readers have been waiting for, the compelling odyssey of a young woman whose visionary art frees ancient spirits into the modern world.
Isabelle Copley’s visionary art frees ancient spirits. As the young student of the cruel, brilliant artist Vincent Rushkin, she discovered she could paint images so vividly real they brought her wildest fantasies to life. But when the forces she unleashed brought tragedy to those she loved, she turned her back on her talent—and on her dreams.
Now, twenty years later, Isabelle must come to terms with the shattering memories she has long denied, and unlock the slumbering power of her brush. And, in a dark reckoning with her old master, she must find the courage to live out her dreams and bring the magic back to life.
Charles de Lint’s skillful blending of contemporary urban characters and settings with traditional folk magic has made him one of the most popular fantasy authors of his generation.
Memory and Dream is the most ambitious work of de Lint’s extraordinary career, an exciting tale of epic scope that explores the power our dreams have to transform the world-or make it a waking nightmare.
It is the story of Isabelle Copley, a young artist who once lived in the bohemian quarter of the northern city of Newford. As a student of Vincent Rushkin, a cruel but gifted painter, she discovered an awesome power—to craft images so real that they came to life. With her paintbrush she called into being the wild spirits of the wood, made her dreams come true with canvas and paint. But when the forces she unleashed brought unexpected tragedy to those she loved, she ran away from Newford, turning her back on her talent-and on her dreams.
Now, twenty years later, the power of Newford has reached out to draw her back. To fulfill a promise to a long-dead friend, Isabelle must come to terms with the shattering memories she has long denied, and unlock the slumbering power of her brush. She must accept her true feelings for her newfound lover John Sweetgrass, a handsome young Native American who is the image of her most intense imaginings. And, in a dark reckoning with her old master, she must find the courage to live out her dreams, and bring the magic back to life.
Charles de Lint - Novelist, poet, artist, and musician, Charles de Lint is one of the most influential fantasy writers of his generation. With such warmly received works as Spiritwalk, Moonheart, Into the Green, and Dreams Underfoot(also set in the town of Newford), he has earned high praise from readers and critics alike, Booklist has called him “one of the most original fantasy writers currently working.” And The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction writes: “De Lint shows us that, far from being escapism, contemporary fantasy can be the deep, mythic literature of our time.” De Lint and his wife MaryAnn Harris, an artist, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, where they are both Celtic musicians in the band Jump At the Sun. “For more than a decade, Charles de Lint has enjoyed a reputation as one of the world’s leading fantasists.”— “A superb storyteller. De Lint has a flair for tales that blur the lines between the mundane world and magical reality, and nowhere is this more evident than in his fictional city of Newford.”— “De Lint can feel the beauty of the ancient lore he is evoking. He can well imagine what it would be like to conjure the Other World among ancient standing stones. His characters have a certain fallibility that makes them multidimensional and human, and his settings are gritty. This is no Disneylike Never-Never Land. Life and death in de Lint’s world are more than a matter of a few words or a magic crystal.” – “There is no better writer now than Charles de Lint at bringing out the magic in contemporary life ... The best of the post-Stephen King contemporary fantasists, the one with the clearest vision of the possibilities of magic in a modern setting.” — “In the fictional city of Newford, replete with the brutal realities of modern urban life, de Lint’s characters encounter magic in strange and unexpected places ... In de Lint’s capable hands, modern fantasy becomes something other than escapism. It becomes folk song, the stuff of urban myth.” —

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When the farmhouse burned, the numena died, and their stories died with them. Only Izzy remembered them, and me.

And Rushkin, I suppose, wherever he might be.

Angels And Monsters

Friend, when I am dead,

Make a cup of the clay I become,

And if you remember, drink from it.

Should your lips cling to the cup,

It will be but my earthly kiss.

—Traditional Mexican folk song

I

Newford, September 1992

For Isabelle, the act of unwrapping the painting of Paddyjack was like that moment in a fairy tale when the crow, sitting on the fencepost, or the spoon one held in one’s hand, suddenly begins to speak, its advice, however confusing, still calculated to restore order, or at least balance. In the world of fairy tales, what was strange was also invariably trustworthy. One quickly learned to depend upon the old beggar woman, the hungry bird, the grateful fox.

So she fully expected the figure in the painting to speak to her, or for its numena to appear at her window, tapping his long twiggy fingers against the glass pane, requesting entry. She remembered a winter’s night, a fire escape festooned with ribbons, the tip-tappa-tappa-tip of wooden fingers on a wooden forearm, three bracelets that she’d woven from those ribbons, one of which lay at the bottom of her purse, the cloth frayed, the colors faded, the other two vanished into memory, or dream. But the painting kept its own counsel and the only sound she heard was the repeated knock at the door of her studio.

It took her another long moment to register what the sound was before she cleared her head with a quick shake. Laying down the painting, she went to the door to find Jilly standing out in the hall, worry clouding her normally cheerful features.

“I was about to give up,” she said. “I’ve been knocking for ages.”

“I’m sorry. I was ... thinking.”

Remembering. Wishing she could reclaim what was gone. Regretting that the world would no longer allow her even that small touch of magic. But perhaps when she began the paintings to illustrate Kathy’s stories, perhaps when she once again breached the bathers that lay between the world of her numena and her own ...

“Isabelle?”

She blinked, returning her attention to her visitor.

“You went all vague on me,” Jilly said. “Are you sure you’re all right?” Isabelle nodded and stepped aside to let Jilly in. “I’m fine—a little distracted, that’s all.”

“Well, I’ve had the weirdest thing happen to me,” Jilly said. She paused in the middle of the room to look around. The studio looked exactly the way it had when they’d left it last night, still furnished in unpacked boxes and suitcases, sacks and bags, all heaped up in various piles.

“I just got back from running a few errands,” Isabelle explained.

“This is why I don’t ever move,” Jilly said. “It’s way too much like work. I don’t know how Christy can stand to do it almost every year—especially with all those books.”

“Imagine if I’d really moved.”

“No thanks. But listen to this.” Jilly boosted herself up onto the counter that held the studio’s sink and a hot plate and sat there with her legs dangling. “John Sweetgrass stopped by to see you at my place this morning.”

“John,” Isabelle repeated.

A deep stillness seemed to settle inside her. She put a hand on the counter to steady herself. Only moments ago she’d been yearning to reclaim the past, but now that it was here, looking for her, she wasn’t so certain what to do about it. After all these years, what could she possibly say to him?

“Except,” Jilly said, “he told me he wasn’t John. He was quite rude, really. The only similarity between this guy and the John I knew is that they look exactly the same.” She went on to relate the morning’s encounter, finishing with, “I mean, isn’t it weird? I know we were never the best of friends—I don’t think anybody really knew John well except for you.”

And did I even know him at all? Isabelle wondered.

“But still,” Jilly said. “It’s not as if I hadn’t just seen him a few days ago and he was perfectly normal—well, perfectly John, anyway: friendly enough, but a little distant. This guy had such a mean look in his eyes. Does John have a twin brother? More to the point, does he have an evil twin brother?”

Isabelle shook her head. “I’ve no idea. He never really talked much about his family, or his past. I know he had an aunt living here in the city and that’s about it.”

“It’s funny how you can know someone for years, but not really know them at all, isn’t it? There’s people I’ve hung around with for years whose last names I still don’t know.”

“Considering how many people you do know, I’m surprised you can remember anybody’s name.”

Jilly smiled. “Yes, well, I’m not exactly renowned for my very excellent memory. I never forget something I’ve seen, but anything that requires words, which includes names, forget it. My memory becomes very selective then, tossing up information only as it feels like it, instead of as I need it.”

“I think it’s called getting old.”

“This is true, more’s the pity.”

Isabelle was trying to match July’s lightness of mood, but it was a losing struggle for her. She couldn’t help but remember what Rushkin had told her, how the numena could be either monsters or angels, and sometimes it was difficult to tell which was which. Except Rushkin had always had his own agenda when it came to parceling out what he wanted her to know, hadn’t he? But what if her turning away from John was what had changed him? What if it wasn’t so much that numena were either monsters or angels, but that they became what we expected them to be? That they could be transformed, monster into angel, angel into monster, by our expectations. If there was only one John—and really, how could there be another, identical version of him walking around?—then she couldn’t even protect herself from him because his painting had already been destroyed, burnt in the fire along with most of the rest of her work.

At that thought her gaze went to the window seat, where she’d been sitting when Jilly had arrived earlier. Except she’d always believed that Paddyjack had burned in the fire as well, hadn’t she?

Jilly’s gaze followed Isabelle’s to the small painting. “Oh wow,” she said, hopping down from the counter. “I haven’t seen this in years.” She picked it up to admire it, then turned to look at Isabelle. “But wasn’t it one of the ones that was destroyed in the fire?”

“That’s what I thought.”

Jilly looked confused. “But then ...”

“What’s it doing here? I don’t know. I was picking up some things that had been left for me by an old friend and that was part of the package. I never thought I’d see it again, yet here it is, as though it was never hanging in the farmhouse when the place burned down. I mean, obviously it wasn’t, though I can remember it hanging beside the fridge in the kitchen—right up until the night of the fire. What I don’t remember is taking it down or giving it away or it even having been stolen. But here it is all the same.”

“So who’s had it for all these years?”

Isabelle shrugged. ‘just this guy who works at the bus terminal.”

For some reason Isabelle felt uncomfortable in sharing the communications from Kathy that had recently found their way into her hands. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Jilly to keep a confidence, but that their arrival was still too fresh, their message too private for her to share. She wanted to deal with them on her own first. Letter and painting and the mysterious book that was still wrapped in brown paper on the window seat.

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