About nightmares

The nice thing about nightmares is that 1) they can't hurt you, and 2) when you look at them in the merciless light of day, they quiver and shrink and crawl into the cracks between the floorboards, leaving only a whiff of brimstone behind to remind you of how they once scared you.

So it is with my own personal writer's nightmare of not being able to write. Now that I have exposed the roots of it, I see how ephemeral it is. Its power over me is waning. Fast, I hope.

To wit, this morning I wrote 335 new words. Decent words. Words that I can build on. And it was fun.

(And Mrs. Mitty, I will get to the Christmas meme when I can...)

***

The dream would catch Miren on stormy nights, when the wind raced through the trees and rain fell in great wet gusts. She would fall asleep with the sound of thunder in her ears, like a thousand horses galloping across the earth. She would ride them down into the darkness and awaken in the gray forest. Always the same forest. Always the same man in the forest.

Each time, it began in hope and ended in despair, a progression of events as inevitable as the journey of the moon across the night sky: the man, appearing out of the gray columns of trees and silver mist…the joyous lift of her heart at seeing him after so long…his face hidden at first, then revealed…that shocking smile, scarred and grotesque…his hand, touching Jona's hair in that wrenchingly possessive gesture.

Herself, slumped against the tree with her soul bleeding out to puddle on the earth like rainwater.

Then she would awaken, sweat-soaked, gulping in great breaths to assure herself that her lungs still worked properly. Sometimes Jona would be awake, too, watching her, green eyes intent and concerned. "Is it the bad dream again, Mama?"

"Yes, sweeting. But it's nothing. Go back to sleep."

Once, Jona had suggested, "Make it change. Make it be different."

Miren had given a bleak laugh. "Remember the mummers' show in the market? How every week you wanted the story to end differently?"

Jona nodded solemnly. "The story was wrong. The prince was supposed to die. He was the real bad man, not the outlaw."

An unsettling insight from a five-year-old, who could not have understood the play's subversive undertones. "But the play always turned out the same, didn't it? The story had already been written. Nothing was going to change, no matter how many times you saw it."

"Is the dream like the story?"

Frost crept across her heart. "Maybe it is, sweeting."

But she'd been wrong, it turned out. About two months after her arrival at the Wild Castle, the dream changed.

(from The Knife-Giver)