palace of winds

I dream a family reunion, all of my mother’s relatives gathered at a sprawling, remote farmstead. In a cool, half-lit warehouse we fill our plastic plates at the long buffet, then wind through a warren of rooms to the one filled with picnic tables. We sit with the B– family, who aren’t relatives at all but are, inexplicably, at the party.

Later, bottles in hand, we pile into wagons and are pulled out through the farmfields, flushed and laughing, each tractor heading toward a separate horizon. They are fall fields, all dead and golden, and far out in the dry straw our wagon comes upon a little carnival game. As we approach it the curtains draw back and a wooden attendant jerks to life, beginning his patter. There is a small target at the back of the booth; you must hit three bulls-eyes in a row to win a cake — German chocolate, a thick rectangle slathered generously with coconut frosting. It’s an impossible task but my mom’s cousin Adair steps up, laughing and passing off his beer to pick up the darts. He throws nonchalantly and each, unbelievably, strikes the target’s center.

There is a drawer at the back of the booth; its clockwork triggered, it comes out and out and out and at its very back is a large wooden chest, ornately carved. We lean toward it and there is a sense of growing brightness from within; it doesn’t open, but we half-dive and are half-pulled inside.

I arrive with my brother and little sister elsewhere: a world of old magic in its twilight.

Two nights ago I dreamt of my sister with her pregnant, jutting belly, skin stretched so tight you could see the whole outline of the baby beneath, the curled limbs and face scrunched in discomfort. She was stroking the twisting baby; Soon, soon.

She went into the hospital early this morning. I haven’t heard anything since, but I am all excitement.

The same night I dreamt S– and I were strolling in the sun along an oceanfront beach, and ran into a young Tom Hanks and another celebrity. S– went off with the other one, and Tom and I sat just beyond the tide, making out.

Yesterday S– and I planned a June trip to Fort Lauderdale. I have not yet had a random encounter with a hot young celebrity, but I will keep you posted.

My dreams last night were all tangled. Full of escalators. I was a child with a baby who disappeared in an errant wind, leaving me with an armful of black blankets. I sat at the base of one of the endless escalators and despaired, not knowing where to even begin looking for her. An old woman with gold hair crouched next to me and explained something about the interconnectedness and endurance of souls, and something about letting go, and showed me how to enter the collective consciousness of the universe but I still wanted that baby back.

Later I was preparing for a space mission, and met my partner on the way into the massive apartment complex where we were staying. We collided, literally, and immediately began bantering as if we’d known one another forever. He was charming and handsome but soon turned menacing, violent, eyes hard and staring and I kept fending off his fists, backing through restaurants and bathrooms and hallways while he whispered threats and I caught his wrists again and again and again.

I was feet behind a friend on a crowded beach, both of us walking in a thick crowd, and I was trying to call but as I scrolled and scrolled through my cell phone’s address book the number was inexplicably not there.

I had a dream the other night that Sara gave me a puppy. A corgi, specifically, a gorgeous blue-speckled corgi with huge foxy ears and big dark eyes. I thought, in the dream, that she was a blue merle, and maybe she was, but the great mysterious internet seems to suggest that blue merles must have irregular blotchy spots, and she was regularly and perfectly flecked, or ticked, or speckled, or whatever. Regardless, she was beautiful and ever-so-cuddly, and I was quite distressed since dogs aren’t allowed in my apartment. I had no idea how I could keep her, but very much did not want to give her up.

I think, periodically, about getting a cat. It’s clearly a bad idea since I’m never home, but I always turn to this perfectly sound explanation with a faint trace of guilt, because even if I were home more often there is a part of me that still would not want a cat. There are lots of cats out there who deserve good homes, but I really like being able to go out of town without a second thought, and never having to worry about hair or vomit or a litter box. That and I still can’t really think about my cat, can’t even think his name, without feeling like someone has pulled all my insides out. I almost didn’t make the horse decision for it.

Anyway, mostly I like the total lack of responsibility. Same sort of reason having kids (ever) doesn’t quite appeal to me. (That and the expense. Children are dreadfully, dreadfully expensive.) Is this something people get over before they get pets or have kids? Or is it something that just evaporates after the pets or kids have been acquired?

I have decided, for now, that I will not get a dog unless it is that blue-speckled corgi. Which is really a moot point because my new apartment doesn’t allow dogs either, but it’s one less decision to make down the road. Or one more window for fate: if that puppy materializes, I’ll know it’s time to move again.

Also, totally unrelated, IT IS STILL COLD and I demand that it STOP RIGHT NOW PLEASE. I’ve lost track of the number of days in a row that I’ve stepped outside in the morning and had my nose freeze shut a little. I want to get back to playing with my horse, please. Please? Pretty please?

The mood in the airport is one of veiled tension. There are all of the old trappings of the way things were — the scattering of kiosks full of last-minutes, all gum and sunglasses and cheap trinkets. The unmanned information counter. The bright posters promising eternal sun over sparkling seas and better teeth and perfect reception. And then there are the old checkpoints with the new guards. Young and nonchalant and a little terrifying for it. The lazy weight of their power. Their laughing assurance.

This is the last gateway; if we can make it through and onto our flight and into the air we will be free from here — this city, this country, this planet. My sister is at my elbow, my mother just ahead of us. We are a happy, dutiful, unassuming family; we are happily going on vacation, unaware of the way the world is turning now, the change sweeping through. Of course we plan to return. Why wouldn’t we?

And so we make it past the guards and are swept along in the general tide of traffic, but then the hallway bends and beyond us my mother is lost for a moment from sight, and then she is just lost. Vanished. We pretend not to have noticed, walking on, but shortly I see my mother’s work badge clipped on a storefront display. I take it as we pass, and a few stalls later I pause by another display, deftly removing two of my mother’s pins from a little rack of earrings and slipping them into my pocket with the badge. They are the only clues she’s left us, the badge she dropped and the valuables taken from her, already on display for sale.

If they have seen me I will be stopped for shoplifting, and it will be clear that I am suspicious about my mother’s disappearance. If I’m caught with these items, it’s over. And so when I see guards moving through the crowd up ahead, working leisurely my way, I turn and begin retracing my steps as my sister continues on. I slip my hand into my pocket and trace the hard corners of the badge, my heart in my throat. Do I dare keep it? Do I dare drop it? As I am passing through the Walmart clothing section I let the badge and pins fall, praying that no good samaritan will see and try to return them to me. I walk faster, veer right, heading into the tall labyrinth of the garden center. It is nearly deserted here, harder to hide. I reach the end of an aisle to discover a maintenance man. He looks up from his pitchfork and bucket and though we’ve never met we recognize each other at once. He steps forward and we fall silently in pace together, and a moment later he takes my hand. I am doomed but my relief at this small contact is staggering. Our fingers slide together, dark and light and dark, and he leads me onward, buying me what time he can. In other circumstances, in another life, if we make it out of here alive, we will be lovers, will be delirious with each other, will build a quiet private life on some secluded shore and make dozens of fat, happy babies.

After I am found I am taken to the children’s barracks, a big room with rows and rows of beds all crowded together and kids eight to eighteen, the scared and the devastated and those already hardened, snide, the old hats, the hopeless. All the orphans of this new regime. My brother finds me, Mark with his thatch of blonde hair and sharp ferret’s face behind round silver glasses. Mark, twelve, who should be too old for whining, for the fuss he raises, but behind it is fear and I quiet him, help him find a bed, tell him things will be all right.

Later the mothers are brought around, part of the charade that things are okay, that everything is above-board. We see her only briefly but already she looks older, exhausted, a little hopeless. We don’t get a chance to speak and I do not know what they are doing to her, what work they are making her do, what life they’re robbing, but I know she will not last long. And I know soon they will be taking me to the other place, me and the other girls, and if there is to be any chance for any of us we must act soon.