Part 13 (2/2)

What a strange dream!

It seemed the basket flew!

Sometimes it seemed I heard the smiting of air, as though in the beating of giant wings. At other times I heard great birdlike cries, from above and ahead, or to one side or the other. And then I would lose consciousness again.

I decided that I must awaken, and in my own bed, on my own world.

The light seemed too bright, through my closed eyelids. I must, foolishly, have forgotten to draw the shade last night.

I was on my stomach. I pressed down with my finger tips, to feel the sheets and, beneath them, the familiar mattress.

But it seemed that something hard was beneath me, not the mattress, but a surface less yielding, more severe.

I kept my eyes closed. There was light. It was rather painful. How foolish I was! I had forgotten to draw the shade last night.

But the light did not seem to be coming from the proper direction. It should be coming more from behind me, to my left, where, as I was lying, or thought myself to be lying, my window would be. But it was not.

It was coming rather from before me, and my left. I must have somehow, in my sleep, twisted about. I felt disoriented.

Everything did not seem to be the same. Many things seemed different.

I then, as I became more certain, but not altogether certain, that I was awakening, or awakened, became quite afraid.

I was not yet ready to open my eyes.

I remembered one thing quite clearly from my dream. I had been banded.

It had been put on me. I had worn, almost from the first, a light, gleaming, about-a-halfinchhigh, close-fitting steel collar. It locked in the back.

Not opening my eyes, frightened, I moved my fingers upward, little by little, toward my throat. Then, with my finger tips, I touched my throat. It was bare!

Again I felt my throat.

No band was there.

I did not wear such a circlet. I was in no neck ring, or such device.

My throat was bare. No closed curve of steel, locked, inflexible, enclasped it.

I was not collared.

It would be hard then to describe my emotions.

Should they not have been of elation, of joy, of relief? Perhaps. But instead, perhaps oddly, as I lay there, somehow half between waking and sleep, I perceived a sudden poignance, as of irreparable loss.

As of isolation. As of loneliness. I felt a wave, cold and cruel, of misery, rising within me, a forlorn, agonizing cry of alienation, of anguish. It seemed that I had suddenly become meaningless, or nothing. But then, in an instant, how pleased I tried to be, as I should be, of course. I attempted, instantly, to govern my emotions, to marshal them, and break them, and align them in accordance with the dictates to which I had been subjected all my life.

Yes, how relieved I was!

How wonderful was everything now!

It had been, you see, a dream!

There was nothing to worry about.

It was over now.

I might, now, even open my eyes.

But the surface on which I lay did not seem soft, nor did the material beneath my finger tips seem to have the texture of cotton sheets. The light, too, was wrong. I must have twisted about in my sleep. Something seemed wrong.

Memories of the dream recurred, the movements, the metal wagon, the chains, the hood, the basket, the wind through its coa.r.s.e, st.u.r.dy fibers.

My head, it seemed for the first time in days, seemed clear. I now experienced, it seemed for the first time in days, a consciousness I recognized as familiar, as my own, neither confused nor disordered. I did not have a headache. I did not know how long I had slept. It might have been a long while.

But the surface seemed wrong, the direction of the light seemed wrong.

Somehow I must be disoriented.

I opened my eyes, and gasped, shaken. I began to tremble, uncontrollably.

I lay upon stone.

That was what was beneath my finger tips. There were no sheets. There was no mattress.

I lay upon stone!

I rose to all fours.

I seemed to be in a sort of cave, carved into the living rock of a mountain, or cliff.

I looked to the opening of where I was housed, for it was from thence that came the illumination.

There was no window there. Rather there was a large aperture. It was regular in form. It was like a portal. Surely it was not a natural opening. It was in shape something between a semicircle and an inverted ”U.” It was flat at the bottom, rather squared at the sides and rounded at the top. It was some six or seven feet high and some seven or eight feet wide. It was barred. The bars were heavy, some two or three inches in thickness.

They were reinforced laterally with heavy crosspieces, an inch or so high, every foot or so.

My consciousness, suddenly, was very vivid, very acute. I seemed to be in a tiny brown tunic.

How had this come about? It was no more than a rag.

I would never have donned such a garment!

I would never have permitted myself to be seen so, so bared, so displayed, so exposed in such a scandalous garment!

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