Lady of Dreams Read online

  “Tea, Carlin,” I murmured, to quiet at least one moving piece of the picture. The red flutter hesitated, then obeyed.

  Yong-hwa sat back on his heels, studying my face, and said, “I’ll get Jessamy. You seem worse.”

  “I’ll be better soon,” I whispered. I was already feeling less heavy now that I wasn’t in direct contact with him. It took a great deal of effort, but I pushed myself up from the seat of the chaise until I could lean against the arm cushion. Yong-hwa put out one hand to help me and I said pantingly, “Hajima!”

  He took his hand away at once and held up both placatingly. “I’ll get Jessamy,” he said again.

  “In the garden,” I said. “Hedges.”

  He nodded and left me after a moment’s hesitation. Carlin came back in as soon as he left, and fluttered about again to slip my feet from my shoes and put a cushioned footrest beneath them. “You should lie down, miss,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll be better soon. It was just a bit unexpected.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, yet,” I said. “You’d better go before he comes back. I don’t want him to get used to seeing either of us.”

  “If he comes back,” said Carlin.

  It was startling to realise that I’d actually expected him to come back. “Of course,” I said, shaking my heavy head. It was unlikely that Yong-hwa, having left my presence, would remember me for long enough to fetch Jessamy. “Go after him and make sure he finds Jessamy and sends him to me. Stay out of sight and don’t come back in if Ma Yong-hwa is in the room.”

  There was a brief pause before Carlin said, “Yes, miss.”

  I had recovered most of my accustomed lightness by the time Jessamy entered the room, his hair tangled with foliage and his coat torn beneath one arm.

  “Nuna,” he said, flopping down beside me as though he were the same young boy I’d met the first time. He laid his head on my knee and curled his legs up on the chaise. “Nuna. I don’t feel well.”

  “I know,” I said, patting his head. “I know, Jessamy-a. We’ll go home, I think.” I would have preferred to stay out of Yong-hwa’s sight at the cottage, but Jessamy needed a day or two of comforting and that was more important. “Eun-hee wants to stay, but I’m tired. We’ll take her lane puffer if she’ll go home with Ma Yong-hwa.”

  “I’ll take you both back,” said Yong-hwa from behind us, surprising me enough to make me jump.

  Jessamy looked up at me through the crook of my arm, his eyes wide and astonished. “Nuna!” he said. “You jumped! You never did that before!”

  I patted his head again. “Shh. Komawoyo, Yong-hwa-ssi.”

  “Didn’t we say we’d be brother and sister?” said Yong-hwa. “We shouldn’t be formal with each other, Clovis-a.”

  “Dae, Oppa,” I said, the word still sitting heavily on my tongue with its unfamiliarity. Other than Dong-Wook, there wasn’t another man to whom I was close enough to call Oppa. “Jessamy-a, will you help me out to the vehicle?”

  Jessamy shambled to his feet willingly enough, but Yong-hwa was already there, kneeling. When I drew back instinctively, remembering the heaviness I’d felt in being carried by him earlier, he looked at me thoughtfully but rose again without protesting.

  “I’ll bring the machine around and tell Eun-hee,” he said. “Take care of your sister, Jessamy-a.”

  “What’s the matter, Nuna?” asked Jessamy, when he was gone. “Don’t you like Yong-hwa hyung?”

  “He’s a little too tiring,” I said. “Jessamy-a, you’re going to have to tell me more about Ma Yong-hwa later. I think I can walk now, if you help me.”

  We strolled slowly through the cottage, pausing briefly by the kitchen door as it occurred to me that I should warn Carlin we were about to leave without him; but by then Yong-hwa’s vehicle was already pulling up outside the front door, and he was abandoning his own seat to open the back door for me.

  Jessamy giggled a little as he bundled me into the richly padded back seat, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was: Carlin and Eun-hee would have to travel back together. She couldn’t even make him walk, since he was usually the only thing preventing my chaise longue from falling off the back of the lane puffer.

  Yong-hwa shot Jessamy a quick, curious look at the giggle, but said only, “You should sit next to her, Jessamy-a. There are ruts in the lane, and Clovis-a could fall off the seat.”

  “All right,” said Jessamy, climbing over me without regard to my clothes or my limbs. “Nuna, you take up too much space.” I saw his gaze as it went past me to the front door of the cottage, and his face clouded again. “Oh. Ae-jung has come to see us off.”

  “Ah,” said Yong-hwa. “Just a moment, Jessamy-a. I’ll be back.” He closed the door again and set off across the driveway, his stride lengthening.

  Jessamy watched him go with narrowed eyes. Yong-hwa’s interest in Ae-jung had always been obvious to me, and it looked as though it was now obvious to Jessamy, as well. I put my hand on his head with a faint smile, but as Yong-hwa closed the front door behind himself and Ae-jung, I fell into a Dream straightaway. It was so sudden that I didn’t even have a chance to fight it. Jessamy was gone and Yong-hwa was back in sight, his hand still on the doorknob.

  “This is yours, I think,” he said, proffering Ae-jung’s book in one hand and smiling at her. Goodness me! He really did believe in playing fair.

  “This!” stammered Ae-jung. “Where did you get it?”

  “Someone left it for me,” said Yong-hwa. “I thought it might be important to you.”

  “But how did you know?” Ae-jung said wonderingly. “It doesn’t even have my name in it! Just the inscription to my daughter.”

  Yong-hwa shrugged. “I met your father once. You’re very like him in looks, Ae-jung-ssi.”

  A bright smile flitted across her face. “Eomma says so, too. I’m really very grateful, Yong-hwa-ssi. You’re always so kind, and this book is very precious to me.”

  “Ae-jung-ssi,” said Yong-hwa. “There’s something I need your help with tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” Ae-jung said, still smiling infectiously. “Anything, Yong-hwa-ssi! You’ve been so good to me; I’d like to repay you if I can.”

  Yong-hwa smiled a little. “You can,” he said. “If you will. I’m going to confess to the woman I love tomorrow, and I need your help. Will you meet me in the rose garden at the manor tomorrow at noon?”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” I said, under my breath. “The games he plays! So many things go wrong when that girl is around; it would have been far more sensible to tell her straightaway and chance it. What will you do if something goes wrong again? You’ll be sitting there, playing to thin air again!”

  “Nuna,” said Jessamy’s voice. He was sounding scratchy again, and I could feel him leaning against my arm. “Nuna, I want all of your attention. I don’t feel well. You should pat my head and say poor bay-bee like you used to.”

  “Poor baby,” I said in Scandian, patting his head. Unaccountably, even Jessamy’s presence wasn’t driving away the Dream of Yong-hwa and Ae-jung, and although I made a determined effort to pull away from it, I wasn’t sure if I eventually pulled away because of my efforts or because Yong-hwa was returning to the vehicle. “Your friend is being stubborn again, Jessamy-a. His Dreams are very hard to push away from, even with you here.”

  Jessamy muttered something that I couldn’t hear through the Dream and curled up on the seat as he’d done on the chaise longue, propping his head back on my knee again. I patted his head automatically, drawing out of the Dream by degrees.

  With Jessamy mumchance and Yong-hwa watching the lane, it was a silent journey back to the manor. I was untroubled by Dreams now, and when we pulled up in the turning circle of the manor I felt that I could possibly walk without assistance.

  I wasn’t given the chance. Yong-hwa, setting the brake on his vehicle, said, “I’ll come around for you, Clovis-a.”

  And Jessamy, just a
little too loudly, said, “I’ll get her.”

  Yong-hwa looked first surprised, and then a little bit amused, but he didn’t protest when Jessamy shut his own door and walked around the hood of the vehicle to my side. Jessamy was very much on his dignity, or he would simply have crawled over me again and helped me out that way.

  “Don’t be offended, Oppa,” I said. “Jessamy isn’t used to—” I stopped, unwilling to share too much of Jessamy’s dealings with Ae-jung, as much as I thought it was possible that Yong-hwa already knew about them. Jessamy was bound to be hurt with his friend for a day or two yet.

  As I hesitated, Yong-hwa suggested, “Isn’t used to sharing his toys?”

  “I suppose you could put it that way.”

  “Ah.” Yong-hwa smiled a little, looking down. “I thought he might know me better. I told him I wouldn’t break your heart.”

  I gave a small sniff of laughter. I’d forgotten about that. But then, did Yong-hwa think Jessamy was jealous of my attention? I opened my mouth to correct him, but Jessamy was opening my door by then, and it wasn’t so important after all. No matter what Yong-hwa thought or didn’t think, within an hour or two—or perhaps half a day at most—he would forget about me again. There was no need to waste energy in explaining something that would only be forgotten the next day.

  9

  There are others like me, though not many. I know of only two for certain, and both of them are men. The first is the fattest man I’ve ever seen, and probably the richest, too. You can tell how he’s used his Dreams, the things that interest him. With me it’s people. With the Fat Man it’s money, pure and simple. By the time I Dreamed him, the Fat Man was capable only of lying in a daybed, his blubber spread out from one side of it to the other as a beautiful lady hand-fed him his meals. I saw threads of his Dreams spreading out above his head, a vast, far-reaching network even bigger than he was. It was the first time I’d seen what the Dreams could look like to someone who could see them.

  I liked the second man better. Unlike the Fat Man, I Dreamed him more than once. He is Scandian, like me, small and skinny, and almost certainly a spy. The first time I saw him, he was locked in a room, Dreaming a complicated mass of Dreams that spread from Scandia all the way to Eppa and Ilchan—and far beyond, to less friendly countries. He was pale, emotionless, and further lost in his Dreams even than I had been as a child. It was hard to tell if he was very old, or just very tired.

  Mwoh? What did I do? What makes you think I did anything? He wasn’t my business.

  Wounded seagulls?

  Fine.

  The Scandian government was using him, of course—those Dreams were far too valuable not to be used. Perhaps, after all, the government was why he Dreamed that way. Just as the Fat Man was interested in money and I in people, he had been taught to think first of Scandia and her people and had begun to Dream accordingly. It has occurred to me to wonder, once or twice, what the Spy originally Dreamed of, but I doubt even he remembers back that far. We each know, I think, that it’s dangerous for too many people to know about our Dreams; the Spy just didn’t find that out in time. But he was lucky after all. There was a woman in his retinue—a tall, fierce thing nobody liked to work with—and one day the Spy found that her touch did the same thing for him that Jessamy’s does for me. So I made a few tweaks here and there in the Dreams. That’s all.

  Ya. Why are you looking at me like that?

  You know the Spy? Is that how—I said not to look at me like that! It was just a few tweaks. They fit well together, so I did for them what I do for people at Eun-hee’s manor. There was nothing unusual about it.

  Ya. I haven’t finished yet.

  There’s one other, though I’m not sure about her: a woman who tells fortunes in Ilchan. I’ve never come across any other women who can Dream, and I’m not even certain about her. There is something around her, but I’m not sure it’s Dreams.

  Those are the only ones I know of. They were fleeting glimpses into other lives, and maybe they’ve had a brief glance into mine as well. We’ve never tried to contact each other, and we don’t communicate through our Dreams, either. It’s enough to know that there are one or two of us out there, and where there’s no feeling, there’s no sense of kinship to draw us together.

  ***

  Jessamy and I spent the evening together in the garden, but I was troubled by Dreams of Yong-hwa despite that. Much to my surprise, he was looking for us through Eun-hee’s manor; and since, at that stage, it also suited Jessamy to be out of his sight, we were both content to sit beneath the trees while the night grew dark and warm around us.

  Jessamy was preoccupied, but that was nothing more than I’d expected. I didn’t expect it to take more than a day or two, but it would take that day or two for the sting of Ae-jung’s rejection to fade. I put up with his bouts of fidgets, and the grass and flowers that were dismembered in my lap during those periods, and patted his head occasionally when he sank into an uncharacteristically gloomy silence and rested his head against my shoulder.

  Once, he asked, “Nuna, do you know who Ae-jung is in love with?”

  I hesitated, but Jessamy has never lied to me, and I try very hard to do the same by him. I said, “Yes. Do you want to know who it is?”

  “Maybe,” said Jessamy, blowing out his cheeks. “I don’t know. It’s not Yong-hwa hyung, is it?”

  “It’s not Yong-hwa.”

  Jessamy sighed. “That’s good,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter, then.”

  “Jessamy-a,” I said. “Are you wishing ill fortune on your friend’s love?”

  “Mwoh?” said Jessamy. He was hunched back against the tree trunk again. “Yong-hwa hyung isn’t in love with Ae-jung. If he were he would have told her by now. I think he’s in love with someone else.”

  “I see,” I said, smiling up at the stars that glittered through the leaves. I might make a conscious effort to tell Jessamy the truth, but there was no need to tell him all of it. As little as I wanted to discuss Jessamy’s puppy love with Yong-hwa did I feel like mentioning Yong-hwa’s first love to Jessamy.

  When night had well and truly fallen, the sound of cicadas rising around us, Jessamy suddenly sat up straight, his little mouth set determinedly, and threw away the last of the dismembered flowers in one swift sweep. “I’ve decided, Nuna,” he said.

  “That’s nice,” I murmured, holding aloft from the Dream of Yong-hwa that was still pushing insistently at my consciousness. “What have you decided, Jessamy-a?”

  “I’ve decided that I’m going to be happy tomorrow,” said Jessamy, springing to his feet. “Come on, Nuna. We’d better go back in before the cicadas deafen us. I’m going to sleep in your room tonight.”

  “Of course you’re going to sleep in my room tonight,” I said. I allowed myself to be helped to my feet, though between Yong-hwa this morning and Jessamy this afternoon, I could have gotten up by myself. “Carlin is still at the cottage with Eun-hee. Who else will bring me food and carry me to bed if you’re not there to make me heavy? Besides, I need to know more about Yong-hwa.”

  The Dreams woke me before breakfast the next morning, trying to tempt me out of Reality and into lightness. I was feeling particularly heavy, and it was tempting to slip straight into the Dreams to get away from it for a little while. But Jessamy was snoring on the floor beside my bed where he’d fallen during the night, and it wouldn’t be long before he was up and demanding attention. I wanted to be sure that he really would be happy today.

  He’d said that to me so many times since I’d met him—“I’ll be happy tomorrow, Nuna”—and the odd thing was that he always was. The first time he had said it to me was after his favourite dog died, late in the evening after he had spent the day with me on my chaise longue, crying, and he said it to me every time I left Eppa to return to Scandia. Jessamy’s happiness was most often effortless, an overflowing of exuberance that couldn’t be stopped or accounted for, but there were some times when he had to work very hard for it.


  Fortunately—since my chaise longue was still at the cottage—I was comfortably able to walk. I spent some time on the window seat waiting for Jessamy to wake, until, pulling away from a Dream of Hyun-jun, I fell into one of Yong-hwa instead. I slipped in so easily and suddenly that I didn’t realise it was a Dream until Yong-hwa swept past, pulling the Dream after him in such a way that I almost felt the breeze of his passing.

  Ah. Of course. Yong-hwa was up early because he was expecting to confess his love to Ae-jung in the rose garden today. I drifted over to the window and peered critically at the white, piling clouds that sat around the edges of a bright-blue sky. Lucky Yong-hwa. Unless those huge clouds turned dark, it was going to be a glorious, colourful Eppan day of the best kind.

  “The weather is the least of your troubles,” I told Yong-hwa, but I said it softly, because I remembered what had happened last time I spoke aloud in his suite during one of my Dreams. “That girl is trouble and sorrow to any man who isn’t Hyun-jun.” She was probably trouble and sorrow to Hyun-jun, too, but his pain was likely to be rewarded, so I didn’t suffer any pangs on his behalf. Besides, Hyun-jun could probably use a bit of trouble and sorrow to smooth out some of the rough corners of his heart.

  And thinking of Hyun-jun, there was still a Dream of him bobbing along gently beside the one of Yong-hwa, nothing like as strong but just as present. I left Yong-hwa to the tuning of his gayageum and edged myself into Hyun-jun’s Dream instead.

  If I were to guess, I would have said he had at last discovered where Ae-jung was. There was nothing about him of the furious storm front that had swept through Eun-hee’s halls this past week; Hyun-jun was in the brightest spirits I’d ever seen from him. He was in the process of tying his fourth or fifth cravat, if the hopelessly ruined ones on the dressing table beside him were any guide. I threw a look around the rest of the room and laughed softly. Rumpled and discarded clothing covered the bed, the wash table, and the knickknack stands and trailed from the still-open closet door to the bed. Hyun-jun was certainly preparing to meet Ae-jung.