I have a Dream

I dreamt this awhile ago, but it keeps coming back. So I am telling you. Sometimes that works to get rid of things. I dreamt it three times. Once in an 11th century keep, once in an Elizabethan Manor house, and once in a 1950s subdivision. I will tell it in the Manor because it was in the middle.

There was a large rambling Elizabethan Manor house in a large and wild park. Not a scarily wild park, just comfortably awry with a few large, pretty, tended gardens near the house. The house was occupied by a knight and his lady, and their family. Also living there were the kitchen staff, maids, ladies to the Lady, a few pages, a nurse, a priest, a magician, and me. I might have been a lady to the Lady. I know there were all these people, but I did not see most of them. And in spite of all those people it was a happy, comfortable family place. The house was full of pretty oak paneled rooms and diamond paned windows with ivy, cold stone stairs, carved wooden stairs, small nooks, large fireplaces, and one old stone tower, a remnant of the Old House from less happy times, with arrow slits instead of windows.

The magician and his Lord, the knight, were best friends who had known one another for many years. Together they looked after a Stone. It was a plain, grey, fist-sized rock. Nothing special to look at. But it was important for some reason. The knight, because he was his father's son, had inherited the keeping of the Stone, and was bonded to it. But the keeping of the Stone was a burden, and the magician, as his close friend voluntarily took on part of the burden by bonding himself to the Stone as well. This way, each had only to bear half the weight of it.

So: happily everyone lived in the house with it's curranty kitchen smells and convivial atmosphere. One day just as the sun went down, a man - an important man - rode into the courtyard with two less important men following. I was watching the youngest child, who was perhaps 2 or 3, in the Ladies Bower and working on a tapestry. I saw the man ride up. He dismounted his horse and came to the door, knocking imperiously, for curiously, he had not been admitted. The magician came into the room just as the light faded in the room and the lantern had been lit. He was in a hurry, he looked alarmed. He had already warned the others, and had come looking for me. Time was running out. He told me to take the child and hide, for the Man had come for the Stone, and he would not be kind to any who lived here. We must escape if possible. I was frightened by his urgency. So I picked up the lantern in one hand and took the child's hand with the other and hurried out of the room.

The wall sconces had not been yet been lit in the corridors, they were dark and quiet. There were none of the usual sounds of the household. It was oddly quiet. The only noises came from the Man, searching the rooms of the house. The floors creaked as we hurried through the hallways, each one seemed a resounding racket. I picked up the child to climb one of the many staircases at the north end of the house. She squirmed as we reached the landing, so I put her down again. To the my right a little way was one of the openings to the tower stairwell. The Man was at the bottom of the tower stair. He called up the tower in a pleasant baritone - a beckoning voice, "Basket, come to me". His voice echoed up the stone cylinder. Basket, for that was the child's pet name (though I do not know how the Man knew it) began to quickly toddle away from me toward the arched opening. I started after her. Not wanting to rush and cause the floors to groan again I whispered to her, "Basket! Come back!". The whisper in the quiet filled the space and became vast. The Man at the bottom of the tower chuckled a pleasant baritone chuckle. He had heard me - he was mounting the stairs. I picked up Basket and ran down the corridor to the Long Gallery at the back of the house. The Man was in the corridor now. There was a secret door at the far end of the Gallery. I found the carved swan on the paneling that opened the door. We fell through the door and I closed it as quickly and quietly as I could. The Man was in the Long Gallery now. I put Basket down in the little warm room, yellow and bright with lantern light. Others has used it recently. I extinguished my lamp, and had picked up another when another secret door, opposite the one I had used to enter the room began to open. It was a little door: not more than four feet tall and two feet wide. I was tired from running with Basket and scared. I thought it must be the Man, even though I knew he was behind us in the Long Gallery. Basket toddled over to the door before I could reach her, but it was only the Nurse. She beckoned to us. I put out the second lamp and picked up the last one to light our way through the little door. It led to a narrow wooden staircase that descended into the wine cellars. The Nurse carried Basket, and I came after with the lamp. Seconds after the little door closed, the Man found the swan, and opened the panel into the now dark yellow room. We went silently into the cellars. The Lady and her four other children were there. No one talked. We hurried after the Nurse and the Lady, who seemed to know where they were going. Basket started to whimper. The Lady stopped to pick her up. Three or four cavernous rooms later, the Nurse indicated a blank wall with some casks in front of it. The two boys, though only 10 and 12 managed to move the casks. There was a hole beneath them which we climbed into. The Lady's hem ripped when one of girl children stepped on it, trying to stay close. The tearing sound was loud in the silence. The Man's pleasant chuckle could be heard again, bouncing though the cellars, making it impossible to know how close he was in the dark. The elder boy refused to come down the hole, he stayed behind to roll the cask back over it, hiding our escape route. The Lady didn't realise until it was done. She began to cry silently. We found ourselves in a dark earth tunnel and we ran.

The end.
Though, in the 1950's subdivision, there was a different ending, because the Man caught up with us. You're curious aren't you?

It is really very tiresome to have dreamt repeat themselves. I hope this works.