A Dreamer\'s Tales

L >> Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett] >> A Dreamer\'s Tales

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The last man in London came to the wall by the river, in an ancient cloak
that was one of those that once my friends had worn, and peered over the
edge to see that I still was there. Then he went, and I never saw men
again: they had passed away with London.

A few days after the last man had gone the birds came into London, all the
birds that sing. When they first saws me they all looked sideways at me,
then they went away a little and spoke among themselves.

"He only sinned against Man," they said; "it is not our quarrel."

"Let us be kind to him," they said.

Then they hopped nearer me and began to sing. It was the time of the
rising of the dawn, and from both banks of the river, and from the sky,
and from the thickets that were once the streets, hundreds of birds were
singing. As the light increased the birds sang more and more; they grew
thicker and thicker in the air above my head, till there were thousands of
them singing there, and then millions, and at last I could see nothing but
a host of flickering wings with the sunlight on them, and little gaps of
sky. Then when there was nothing to be heard in London but the myriad
notes of that exultant song, my soul rose up from the bones in the hole in
the mud and began to climb heavenwards. And it seemed that a lane-way
opened amongst the wings of the birds, and it went up and up, and one of
the smaller gates of Paradise stood ajar at the end of it. And then I knew
by a sign that the mud should receive me no more, for suddenly I found
that I could weep.

At this moment I opened my eyes in bed in a house in London, and outside
some sparrows were twittering in a tree in the light of the radiant
morning; and there were tears still wet upon my face, for one's restraint
is feeble while one sleeps. But I arose and opened the window wide, and
stretching my hands out over the little garden, I blessed the birds whose
song had woken me up from the troubled and terrible centuries of my dream.

BETHMOORA

There is a faint freshness in the London night as though some strayed
reveler of a breeze had left his comrades in the Kentish uplands and had
entered the town by stealth. The pavements are a little damp and shiny.
Upon one's ears that at this late hour have become very acute there hits
the tap of a remote footfall. Louder and louder grow the taps, filling the
whole night. And a black cloaked figure passes by, and goes tapping into
the dark. One who has danced goes homewards. Somewhere a ball has closed
its doors and ended. Its yellow lights are out, its musicians are silent,
its dancers have all gone into the night air, and Time has said of it,
"Let it be past and over, and among the things that I have put away."

Shadows begin to detach themselves from their great gathering places. No
less silently than those shadows that are thin and dead move homewards the
stealthy cats. Thus have we even in London our faint forebodings of the
dawn's approach, which the birds and the beasts and the stars are crying
aloud to the untrammeled fields.

At what moment I know not I perceive that the night itself is irrevocably
overthrown. It is suddenly revealed to me by the weary pallor of the
street lamps that the streets are silent and nocturnal still, not because
there is any strength in night, but because men have not yet arisen from
sleep to defy him. So have I seen dejected and untidy guards still bearing
antique muskets in palatial gateways, although the realms of the monarch
that they guard have shrunk to a single province which no enemy yet has
troubled to overrun.

And it is now manifest from the aspect of the street lamps, those abashed
dependants of night, that already English mountain peaks have seen the
dawn, that the cliffs of Dover are standing white to the morning, that the
sea-mist has lifted and is pouring inland.

And now men with a hose have come and are sluicing out the streets.

Behold now night is dead.

What memories, what fancies throng one's mind! A night but just now
gathered out of London by the horrific hand of Time. A million common
artificial things all cloaked for a while in mystery, like beggars robed
in purple, and seated on dread thrones. Four million people asleep,
dreaming perhaps. What worlds have they gone into? Whom have they met? But
my thoughts are far off with Bethmoora in her loneliness, whose gates
swing to and fro. To and fro they swing, and creak and creak in the wind,
but no one hears them. They are of green copper, very lovely, but no one
sees them now. The desert wind pours sand into their hinges, no watchman
comes to ease them. No guard goes round Bethmoora's battlements, no enemy
assails them. There are no lights in her houses, no footfall on her
streets, she stands there dead and lonely beyond the Hills of Hap, and I
would see Bethmoora once again, but dare not.

It is many a year, they tell me, since Bethmoora became desolate.

Her desolation is spoken of in taverns where sailors meet, and certain
travellers have told me of it.

I had hoped to see Bethmoora once again. It is many a year ago, they say,
when the vintage was last gathered in from the vineyards that I knew,
where it is all desert now. It was a radiant day, and the people of the
city were dancing by the vineyards, while here and there one played upon
the kalipac. The purple flowering shrubs were all in bloom, and the snow
shone upon the Hills of Hap.

Outside the copper gates they crushed the grapes in vats to make the
syrabub. It had been a goodly vintage.

In the little gardens at the desert's edge men beat the tambang and the
tittibuk, and blew melodiously the zootibar.

All there was mirth and song and dance, because the vintage had been
gathered in, and there would be ample syrabub for the winter months, and
much left over to exchange for turquoises and emeralds with the merchants
who come down from Oxuhahn. Thus they rejoiced all day over their vintage
on the narrow strip of cultivated ground that lay between Bethmoora and
the desert which meets the sky to the South. And when the heat of the day
began to abate, and the sun drew near to the snows on the Hills of Hap,
the note of the zootibar still rose clear from the gardens, and the
brilliant dresses of the dancers still wound among the flowers. All that
day three men on mules had been noticed crossing the face of the Hills of
Hap. Backwards and forwards they moved as the track wound lower and lower,
three little specks of black against the snow. They were seen first in the
very early morning up near the shoulder of Peol Jagganoth, and seemed to
be coming out of Utnar Vehi. All day they came. And in the evening, just
before the lights come out and colours change, they appeared before
Bethmoora's copper gates. They carried staves, such as messengers bear in
those lands, and seemed sombrely clad when the dancers all came round them
with their green and lilac dresses. Those Europeans who were present and
heard the message given were ignorant of the language, and only caught the
name of Utnar Vehi. But it was brief, and passed rapidly from mouth to
mouth, and almost at once the people burnt their vineyards and began to
flee away from Bethmoora, going for the most part northwards, though some
went to the East. They ran down out of their fair white houses, and
streamed through the copper gate; the throbbing of the tambang and the
tittibuk suddenly ceased with the note of the Zootibar, and the clinking
kalipac stopped a moment after. The three strange travellers went back the
way they came the instant their message was given. It was the hour when a
light would have appeared in some high tower, and window after window
would have poured into the dusk its lion-frightening light, and the cooper
gates would have been fastened up. But no lights came out in windows there
that night and have not ever since, and those copper gates were left wide
and have never shut, and the sound arose of the red fire crackling in the
vineyards, and the pattering of feet fleeing softly. There were no cries,
no other sounds at all, only the rapid and determined flight. They fled as
swiftly and quietly as a herd of wild cattle flee when they suddenly see a
man. It was as though something had befallen which had been feared for
generations, which could only be escaped by instant flight, which left no
time for indecision.

Then fear took the Europeans also, and they too fled. And what the message
was I have never heard.

Many believe that it was a message from Thuba Mleen, the mysterious
emperor of those lands, who is never seen by man, advising that Bethmoora
should be left desolate. Others say that the message was one of warning
from the gods, whether from friendly gods or from adverse ones they know
not.

And others hold that the Plague was ravaging a line of cities over in
Utnar Vehi, following the South-west wind which for many weeks had been
blowing across them towards Bethmoora.

Some say that the terrible gnousar sickness was upon the three travellers,
and that their very mules were dripping with it, and suppose that they
were driven to the city by hunger, but suggest no better reason for so
terrible a crime.

But most believe that it was a message from the desert himself, who owns
all the Earth to the southwards, spoken with his peculiar cry to those
three who knew his voice--men who had been out on the sand-wastes without
tents by night, who had been by day without water, men who had been out
there where the desert mutters, and had grown to know his needs and his
malevolence. They say that the desert had a need for Bethmoora, that he
wished to come into her lovely streets, and to send into her temples and
her houses his storm-winds draped with sand. For he hates the sound and
the sight of men in his old evil heart, and he would have Bethmoora silent
and undisturbed, save for the weird love he whispers to her gates.

If I knew what that message was that the three men brought on mules, and
told in the copper gate, I think that I should go and see Bethmoora once
again. For a great longing comes on me here in London to see once more
that white and beautiful city, and yet I dare not, for I know not the
danger I should have to face, whether I should risk the fury of unknown
dreadful gods, or some disease unspeakable and slow, or the desert's curse
or torture in some little private room of the Emperor Thuba Mleen, or
something that the travelers have not told--perhaps more fearful still.

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN

So I came down through the wood on the bank of Yann and found, as had been
prophesied, the ship _Bird of the River_ about to loose her cable.

The captain sat cross-legged upon the white deck with his scimitar lying
beside him in its jeweled scabbard, and the sailors toiled to spread the
nimble sails to bring the ship into the central stream of Yann, and all
the while sang ancient soothing songs. And the wind of the evening
descending cool from the snowfields of some mountainous abode of distant
gods came suddenly, like glad tidings to an anxious city, into the
wing-like sails.

And so we came into the central stream, whereat the sailors lowered the
greater sails. But I had gone to bow before the captain, and to inquire
concerning the miracles, and appearances among men, of the most holy gods
of whatever land he had come from. And the captain answered that he came
from fair Belzoond, and worshipped gods that were the least and humblest,
who seldom sent the famine or the thunder, and were easily appeased with
little battles. And I told how I came from Ireland, which is of Europe,
whereat the captain and all the sailors laughed, for they said, "There are
no such places in all the land of dreams." When they had ceased to mock
me, I explained that my fancy mostly dwelt in the desert of Cuppar-Nombo,
about a beautiful blue city called Golthoth the Damned, which was
sentinelled all round by wolves and their shadows, and had been utterly
desolate for years and years, because of a curse which the gods once spoke
in anger and could never since recall. And sometimes my dreams took me as
far as Pungar Vees, the red walled city where the fountains are, which
trades with the Isles and Thul. When I said this they complimented me upon
the abode of my fancy, saying that, though they had never seen these
cities, such places might well be imagined. For the rest of that evening I
bargained with the captain over the sum that I should pay him for any fare
if God and the tide of Yann should bring us safely as far as the cliffs by
the sea, which are named Bar-Wul-Yann, the Gate of Yann.

And now the sun had set, and all the colours of the world and heaven had
held a festival with him, and slipped one by one away before the imminent
approach of night. The parrots had all flown home to the jungle on either
bank, the monkeys in rows in safety on high branches of the trees were
silent and asleep, the fireflies in the deeps of the forest were going up
and down, and the great stars came gleaming out to look on the face of
Yann. Then the sailors lighted lanterns and hung them round the ship, and
the light flashed out on a sudden and dazzled Yann, and the ducks that fed
along his marshy banks all suddenly arose, and made wide circles in the
upper air, and saw the distant reaches of the Yann and the white mist that
softly cloaked the jungle, before they returned again to their marshes.

And then the sailors knelt on the decks and prayed, not all together, but
five or six at a time. Side by side there kneeled down together five or
six, for there only prayed at the same time men of different faiths, so
that no god should hear two men praying to him at once. As soon as any one
had finished his prayer, another of the same faith would take his place.
Thus knelt the row of five or six with bended heads under the fluttering
sail, while the central stream of the River Yann took them on towards the
sea, and their prayers rose up from among the lanterns and went towards
the stars. And behind them in the after end of the ship the helmsman
prayed aloud the helmsman's prayer, which is prayed by all who follow his
trade upon the River Yann, of whatever faith they be. And the captain
prayed to his little lesser gods, to the gods that bless Belzoond.

And I too felt that I would pray. Yet I liked not to pray to a jealous God
there where the frail affectionate gods whom the heathen love were being
humbly invoked; so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol Nugganoth, whom the
men of the jungle have long since deserted, who is now unworshipped and
alone; and to him I prayed.

And upon us praying the night came suddenly down, as it comes upon all men
who pray at evening and upon all men who do not; yet our prayers comforted
our own souls when we thought of the Great Night to come.

And so Yann bore us magnificently onwards, for he was elate with molten
snow that the Poltiades had brought him from the Hills of Hap, and the
Marn and Migris were swollen with floods; and he bore us in his full might
past Kyph and Pir, and we saw the lights of Goolunza.

Soon we all slept except the helmsman, who kept the ship in the mid-stream
of Yann.

When the sun rose the helmsman ceased to sing, for by song he cheered
himself in the lonely night. When the song ceased we suddenly all awoke,
and another took the helm, and the helmsman slept.

We knew that soon we should come to Mandaroon. We made a meal, and
Mandaroon appeared. Then the captain commanded, and the sailors loosed
again the greater sails, and the ship turned and left the stream of Yann
and came into a harbour beneath the ruddy walls of Mandaroon. Then while
the sailors went and gathered fruits I came alone to the gate of
Mandaroon. A few huts were outside it, in which lived the guard. A
sentinel with a long white beard was standing in the gate, armed with a
rusty pike. He wore large spectacles, which were covered with dust.
Through the gate I saw the city. A deathly stillness was over all of it.
The ways seemed untrodden, and moss was thick on doorsteps; in the
market-place huddled figures lay asleep. A scent of incense came wafted
through the gateway, of incense and burned poppies, and there was a hum of
the echoes of distant bells. I said to the sentinel in the tongue of the
region of Yann, "Why are they all asleep in this still city?"

He answered: "None may ask questions in this gate for fear they will wake
the people of the city. For when the people of this city wake the gods
will die. And when the gods die men may dream no more." And I began to ask
him what gods that city worshipped, but he lifted his pike because none
might ask questions there. So I left him and went back to the _Bird of the
River_.

Certainly Mandaroon was beautiful with her white pinnacles peering over
her ruddy walls and the green of her copper roofs.

When I came back again to the _Bird of the River_, I found the sailors
were returned to the ship. Soon we weighed anchor, and sailed out again,
and so came once more to the middle of the river. And now the sun was
moving toward his heights, and there had reached us on the River Yann the
song of those countless myriads of choirs that attend him in his progress
round the world. For the little creatures that have many legs had spread
their gauze wings easily on the air, as a man rests his elbows on a
balcony and gave jubilant, ceremonial praises to the sun, or else they
moved together on the air in wavering dances intricate and swift, or
turned aside to avoid the onrush of some drop of water that a breeze had
shaken from a jungle orchid, chilling the air and driving it before it, as
it fell whirring in its rush to the earth; but all the while they sang
triumphantly. "For the day is for us," they said, "whether our great and
sacred father the Sun shall bring up more life like us from the marshes,
or whether all the world shall end tonight." And there sang all those
whose notes are known to human ears, as well as those whose far more
numerous notes have been never heard by man.

To these a rainy day had been as an era of war that should desolate
continents during all the lifetime of a man.

And there came out also from the dark and steaming jungle to behold and
rejoice in the Sun the huge and lazy butterflies. And they danced, but
danced idly, on the ways of the air, as some haughty queen of distant
conquered lands might in her poverty and exile dance, in some encampment
of the gipsies, for the mere bread to live by, but beyond that would never
abate her pride to dance for a fragment more.

And the butterflies sung of strange and painted things, of purple orchids
and of lost pink cities and the monstrous colours of the jungle's decay.
And they, too, were among those whose voices are not discernible by human
ears. And as they floated above the river, going from forest to forest,
their splendour was matched by the inimical beauty of the birds who darted
out to pursue them. Or sometimes they settled on the white and wax-like
blooms of the plant that creeps and clambers about the trees of the
forest; and their purple wings flashed out on the great blossoms as, when
the caravans go from Nurl to Thace, the gleaming silks flash out upon the
snow, where the crafty merchants spread them one by one to astonish the
mountaineers of the Hills of Noor.

But upon men and beasts the sun sent drowsiness. The river monsters along
the river's marge lay dormant in the slime. The sailors pitched a
pavilion, with golden tassels, for the captain upon the deck, and then
went, all but the helmsman, under a sail that they had hung as an awning
between two masts. Then they told tales to one another, each of his own
city or of the miracles of his god, until all were fallen asleep. The
captain offered me the shade of his pavillion with the gold tassels, and
there we talked for a while, he telling me that he was taking merchandise
to Perdondaris, and that he would take back to fair Belzoond things
appertaining to the affairs of the sea. Then, as I watched through the
pavilion's opening the brilliant birds and butterflies that crossed and
recrossed over the river, I fell asleep, and dreamed that I was a monarch
entering his capital underneath arches of flags, and all the musicians of
the world were there, playing melodiously their instruments; but no one
cheered.

In the afternoon, as the day grew cooler again, I awoke and found the
captain buckling on his scimitar, which he had taken off him while he
rested.

And now we were approaching the wide court of Astahahn, which opens upon
the river. Strange boats of antique design were chained there to the
steps. As we neared it we saw the open marble court, on three sides of
which stood the city fronting on colonnades. And in the court and along
the colonnades the people of that city walked with solemnity and care
according to the rites of ancient ceremony. All in that city was of
ancient device; the carving on the houses, which, when age had broken it,
remained unrepaired, was of the remotest times, and everywhere were
represented in stone beasts that have long since passed away from
Earth--the dragon, the griffin, the hippogriffin, and the different
species of gargoyle. Nothing was to be found, whether material or custom,
that was new in Astahahn. Now they took no notice at all of us as we went
by, but continued their processions and ceremonies in the ancient city,
and the sailors, knowing their custom, took no notice of them. But I
called, as we came near, to one who stood beside the water's edge, asking
him what men did in Astahahn and what their merchandise was, and with whom
they traded. He said, "Here we have fettered and manacled Time, who would
otherwise slay the gods."

I asked him what gods they worshipped in that city, and he said, "All
those gods whom Time has not yet slain." Then he turned from me and would
say no more, but busied himself in behaving in accordance with ancient
custom. And so, according to the will of Yann, we drifted onwards and left
Astahahn. The river widened below Astahahn, and we found in greater
quantities such birds as prey on fishes. And they were very wonderful in
their plumage, and they came not out of the jungle, but flew, with their
long necks stretched out before them, and their legs lying on the wind
behind, straight up the river over the mid-stream.

And now the evening began to gather in. A thick white mist had appeared
over the river, and was softly rising higher. It clutched at the trees
with long impalpable arms, it rose higher and higher, chilling the air;
and white shapes moved away into the jungle as though the ghosts of
shipwrecked mariners were searching stealthily in the darkness for the
spirits of evil that long ago had wrecked them on the Yann.

As the sun sank behind the field of orchids that grew on the matted summit
of the jungle, the river monsters came wallowing out of the slime in which
they had reclined during the heat of the day, and the great beasts of the
jungle came down to drink. The butterflies a while since were gone to
rest. In little narrow tributaries that we passed night seemed already to
have fallen, though the sun which had disappeared from us had not yet set.

And now the birds of the jungle came flying home far over us, with the
sunlight glistening pink upon their breasts, and lowered their pinions as
soon as they saw the Yann, and dropped into the trees. And the widgeon
began to go up the river in great companies, all whistling, and then would
suddenly wheel and all go down again. And there shot by us the small and
arrow-like teal; and we heard the manifold cries of flocks of geese, which
the sailors told me had recently come in from crossing over the Lispasian
ranges; every year they come by the same way, close by the peak of Mluna,
leaving it to the left, and the mountain eagles know the way they come
and--men say--the very hour, and every year they expect them by the same
way as soon as the snows have fallen upon the Northern Plains. But soon it
grew so dark that we heard those birds no more, and only heard the
whirring of their wings, and of countless others besides, until they all
settled down along the banks of the river, and it was the hour when the
birds of the night went forth. Then the sailors lit the lanterns for the
night, and huge moths appeared, flapping about the ship, and at moments
their gorgeous colours would be revealed by the lanterns, then they would
pass into the night again, where all was black. And again the sailors
prayed, and thereafter we supped and slept, and the helmsman took our
lives into his care.

When I awoke I found that we had indeed come to Perdondaris, that famous
city. For there it stood upon the left of us, a city fair and notable, and
all the more pleasant for our eyes to see after the jungle that was so
long with us. And we were anchored by the market-place, and the captain's
merchandise was all displayed, and a merchant of Perdondaris stood looking
at it. And the captain had his scimitar in his hand, and was beating with
it in anger upon the deck, and the splinters were flying up from the white
planks; for the merchant had offered him a price for his merchandise that
the captain declared to be an insult to himself and his country's gods,
whom he now said to be great and terrible gods, whose curses were to be
dreaded. But the merchant waved his hands, which were of great fatness,
showing the pink palms, and swore that of himself he thought not at all,
but only of the poor folk in the huts beyond the city to whom he wished to
sell the merchandise for as low a price as possible, leaving no
remuneration for himself. For the merchandise was mostly the thick
toomarund carpets that in the winter keep the wind from the floor, and
tollub which the people smoke in pipes. Therefore the merchant said if he
offered a piffek more the poor folk must go without their toomarunds when
the winter came, and without their tollub in the evenings, or else he and
his aged father must starve together. Thereat the captain lifted his
scimitar to his own throat, saying that he was now a ruined man, and that
nothing remained to him but death. And while he was carefully lifting his
beard with his left hand, the merchant eyed the merchandise again, and
said that rather than see so worthy a captain die, a man for whom he had
conceived an especial love when first he saw the manner in which he
handled his ship, he and his aged father should starve together and
therefore he offered fifteen piffeks more.

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