The Locket

I’m in no hurry to greet the day, and the wan light of the wintry morning is not summoning. My dreams have slipped away, so I decide to slip into a conscious dream, in this drifty, liminal state the French used to call dorveille, which means sleepwake and is not to be confused with reveille, its angry bugling cousin.
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But where shall I go? I think of childhood scenes of frights and delights, of old romances, of island lagoons, of the path of moonlight on water, of a library where flying books must be kept in birdcages when not in use.

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I decide to go to the Bazaar of Lost and Found Souls. This is a great open market, rich in scent and color, where you may find many surprises, even parts of your soul you didn’t know were missing. At once I am in a sunny space, bright with the tentlike hangings of the vendors. Shall I go first to the passage of the book antiquaries, or the concourse of the bird-sellers?

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The bare earth underfoot is dry and powdery. Each footstep raises puffs of dust. Looking down, I notice I am not wearing my regular boots. My shoes are made of soft padded stuff and they curl up at the ends. I realize that my clothes match. They are loose and baggy, capped with a turban. I have a great curved dagger with a wide blade tucked into a silken sash around my middle. I also have a dark pointed beard. I touch the stiff hairs on this unfamiliar, sharp-featured face. In this stranger’s body, I am accompanied by his people, a giant African bodyguard, and a pair of young women, one slim and one round, whose charms can only be imagined behind their veils and concealing garments.
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This is mildly intriguing, but I feel that wandering the market as this fellow – I sense his pride and power – will interfere with the experiences I look for in this bazaar of memory and desire. I notice a small dog, a bundle of energy and excitement. I follow the dog as he runs to a pile of rubble beside a wall. There is a small opening there, much too small for a man. But the dog is eager to go down, and I go with him, moving bricks and stones to widen the tunnel until I find this is no longer necessary. I lose awareness of the dog; perhaps I have become the dog. At the end of the vertical descent, the passage widens, leading gently down to a large, bright-lit area that seems to be a workspace. Men in white aprons and coveralls are arranging things on large tables. They do not seem to be aware of my presence.

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A lady in a blue dress comes tripping lightly down a flight of steps to the left of the men. She is very lovely. Her auburn hair is tied up under a little hat that is the same blue as her dress, the blue of a perfect summer sky. Her dress is buttoned to the throat and has puffed shoulders as well as a high collar. It belongs, I suppose, to the Victorian era. The lady in blue looks at me, and holds out her open palm.
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Her smile is like sunrise.

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“We must put you somewhere safe.”

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She is holding a locket. I don’t much care for the idea of being trapped inside, but it is impossible to distrust this lady. It seems to me that her name is Miss Morningstar. She reminds me of a lady in blue I met once before, when I traveled to a spiral galaxy on the other side of the obvious.

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When I enter the locket, I don’t feel confined at all. I am in a place of wonderful light. Can I be inside a jewel, or a crystal, on the front of the locket?

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The light grows and grows. I am carried, with it, into the shape of a man. He is handsome and well-formed, and dressed in a style that matches the lady.

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“Daur,” she whispers, touching the side of the face I now inhabit. This sounds like a name for the fellow with curly shoes.

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We are standing in an airy room with a terrace overlooking an elegant square. I notice horse-drawn carriages outside.

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I don’t yet know who I am, in this scene. I don’t even know whether she projected me from her locket into a body that lives in this time, or conjured a form for me to inhabit.
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These Victorians know a thing or too. Wait a minute. The gardens and the house fronts outside the window are quite familiar. Can this be Tavistock Square, in London? If so, can it be that –

[interrupted by workaday events in the world of January 15, 2010]