The Evening of May 28th, 2022
Within the walls of the palace, I felt the heat and confusion of dialogue around me-- an undulation of bodies in an endless debate with each other: parent arguing with child, marriages teetering on divorce, a strange tension of ecstasy that at any moment could overwhelm, spill out into panic. Amongst these people was my love, who stood beside me still unclear but tethered to my affection. She nodded and spoke with gestures I didn't recognize and though her lips moved in the rhythm that I had come to know with tenderness, I could not hear her words. I was unsure if the noise of this great human hive was drowning her fragile speech or if she wasn't speaking at all. For though I had deemed to separate myself and her from this collective, the tension that permeated the others was also in us. I feared that at any moment, she would vanish, and I desperately clung on to the conversation, willing with all my lucidity that she understood me and would stay. But, as if in reaction to my dread, out of spite, her ghostly visage began to vibrate like the harsh pluck of a string, and she was gone.
Panicking, I lept down a flight of stairs leading out from the terrace onto the palace grounds, desperately following the trail that I intuited would be the procession of her wisp. The lawn ahead of me stretched out into the vast hills that loomed dark and silhouetted against the night sky. Out on those borderlands stood the unoccupied sentries of light that contained me within the dome of the dream. I turned aside and traveled west to the edge of the lawn, which ceased abruptly at the curb of the pavement. Here stood the thick black shroud of unknowing. It hung suspended in the air, draping itself over all things but especially the western sky. The dead beacons stood vigilant at this impenetrable, dense wall of fog and tar, which stood vague and incapable of comprehension. In its strength, I averted my gaze like one who is struck by the sun though no light save the decaying yellow glow of the dead beacons pierced me. I resisted the urge to cower on the cold gravel floor, to squeeze my eyelids tight and cover myself in fear like a child soon to be devoured by a nightmare. The terror of that dark curtain was overwhelming, and slowly at first but soon in a flight of fear I retreated back onto the trimmed grass and ascended up the steps of the palace.
The harsh warmth of the party was somehow more bearable, less terrifying but still lonely. The crowd had dwindled down to a few, and they were faces that I didn't recognize. I deeply missed my love. I would have given anything to hear her whisper. An intuition entered my heart that drove me to the southern hallways. The looping chatter of the crowd and its music receded behind me, its echoes bouncing ahead into the empty chambers until, reaching a corner that turned sharply to the left, it altogether ceased, and I was left alone to wander. Here, the air was tight and the sound of my footsteps fell inaudible on the soft carpet. I cursed myself for not bringing my camera - I fumbled into my bag and pulled out my camera, but it was out of film (the battery had died) - I snapped a shot and the framing was awful - I snapped a shot and the framing was perfect, but I remembered where I was, and I knew that my willpower could not carry these photographs into the waking world.
Eventually the maze of passageways and rooms gave way to a larger hallway that returned to the main ballroom, but this time at its eastern wing. At its end lay two great doors, which opened out onto another terrace. I peered back into the crowd and found a few lone figures so distant and vague that I might have mistaken them for decorations if they weren't so oddly positioned and their voices didn't still faintly carry their way to me. I stepped through the threshold of the great doors and felt the fresh air again on my face.
I was now on the edge of a vast garden, its borders lined with rows of tall shrubbery which surrounded a mighty maple tree, gnarled and twisting in a contrapposto, its flaking bark branches stretching out over the hedges. Hidden at the center, perhaps beneath the canopy of the tree was a cold white light that painted the many arms in azure and cerulean highlights so that the maple's form was striking against the black curtain that wrapped around the landscape of the mansion. Here stood the Great Fairytree of Slumber, existing always in some corner of the dream, now opened to me for just a brief moment in time before it would retract its hand and remain lost in the shroud forever like a memory with no bridge to reach it. Surrounding it on all sides were the Reception Gardens, whose shrubbery peaks were like sharp-tipped daggers tinged white with the glow emanating from within.
I meandered around the borders, veering east directly ahead and then to the north, not daring to proceed south in fear of the curtain. I desired to peer inside, although the hedges stood tall and dense so that only in the sharp angles between their high peaks could I perceive the lower branches and what appeared to be a wooden pergola gazebo. Daring to turn east and then south, I eventually came across an opening among the foliage, outlined by a delicate white wood not dissimilar to the structure I spotted inside.
As I stepped through yet another threshold, my eyes were drawn to a neat stone path that traveled from the entrance to the far end of the shrubbery where the white pergola stood. At its feet was a humble decoration of white flowers. Against its frame on either side were hanging orbs of light, at first warm in their greeting, but slowly cooling as I approached until they were harsh and cold against the scenery. I turned and looked again at the borders: to the south, the light from these orbs danced bright against the black curtain, but to the north, the shrub peaks were distinct in their darkness against a pale blue sky. My mind wandered, and I became so entranced within the bramble of needles in the foliage, the strangeness of the structure itself that I neglected to realize the Fairytree standing yet beyond another layer of dense garden.
I was beginning to lose my grasp of the geography, and indeed the palace was nowhere to be seen in the thick natural labyrinth of hedges. The sounds of the music and dancing which had trailed behind me as I exited the stuffy interiors had quickly faded from thought in my curiosity to explore the garden, and now the compressed green thicket suppressed all sound beyond save the gentle wind occasionally grazing the peaks of packed shrubbery. I would have felt trapped if I had any desire to return to that palace, but removed from my love, I saw no reason to do so apart from the company of those who dwelt inside. My heart told me that the party was quickly evaporating, and if I did return, I would be alone in its halls. The Fairytree then became a point of orientation, and I surveyed the grounds around me for an exit though I found none.
It was then that my desire answered me as it had denied me when my love vanished, and I stood paralyzed as my vision was cloaked in a dim light. I could still feel my body unmoved, my feet rooted in thin soil under trimmed grass, but my mind lay removed on the other side. I was beneath the boughs of the great maple, looking up in awe and fear as its great wooden tendrils stretched out above my head and over the zenith. I could feel the heat of a powerful light radiating just below me. It wrapped itself under my chin and lapped my cheeks before casting itself onto the branches, the lowest of which stood almost stark white before becoming lost in the overwhelming layers of leaf above.
Slowly, drawing itself up out of the soil like the first snowdrop petals of spring was a chorus of voices, gay in their timbre but somehow unfriendly. I imagined squirrels in chatter and reclusive badgers and bird folk though none perched among the twigs. I would have seen them for myself if not for the power of the tree, which held me locked in its gaze. I was in ecstasy more pure than the party before, and yet lonely, for the excitement was not shared with my love. And there was a modicum of hesitancy in my euphoria so that I could not describe it as joyful, for it was tinged with mischief, not wholly malevolent, but untrustworthy.
How long I stood fixed in this strange merriment under the Great Fairytree of Slumber I cannot say. Intoxicated within layers of false joy and dream, like heaps of blanket on my body, I lost all sense of time, drifting into a state of unknowing deeper than a dreamless sleep. At some unrecalled future, I was perhaps in a carpeted living room under a low-hanging ceiling. Dim tungsten lights too faint to overpower the night outside drenched the leather couches and wooden floors. Here also was a maze of passageways with many staircases moving up and down into dark rooms with no doors. I tiptoed about in my dress shoes, fearing to wake the others. A mess of wine glasses lay strewn on kitchen counters.
But the feet can only go so far. I grew tired of the adventure and especially the loneliness, longing to remember her. I sauntered aimlessly along the cracked concrete road knowing that I was approaching the end of the dome. Now the light that was once pale and undefined emanated defiantly from beyond the dark looming oak trees. I ignored the red gleam that followed my trail.