The minotaur in the petting zoo was an adorable toddler-calf, at least the last time Nora had seen him — not this creature out of nightmares. And at his side, there was something even more terrible, a vast maw full of fangs and slavering tongues with no body attached; it hovered along keeping pace with the minotaur and its prey. “This won’t do,” Nora said.
Nora and the Nomads
Part 3 of 4
My newest novel, The Bailiff and the Mermaid, is now available in EPUB format from Smashwords and Kindle format from Amazon. You can read the opening chapter here.
That night Nora found herself walking around downtown, near where she’d woken up the previous night. She looked around for any nomads, asking dreamers and dream-people she met if they’d seen them.
“I saw two of them heading into Mythology Park,” Marissa Weller said. “A young couple, it looked like.”
“Thanks,” Nora said. Once she was around the corner, she teleported to the entrance of the park. A couple of years ago some high school students had planted and built Mythology Park as a group project; it was decorated with statues of gods and mythological creatures, and it even had a small petting zoo with cute baby sphinxes, pegasuses, and the like. Nora walked along the paths toward the zoo, past a row of statues of animal-headed gods whose names she couldn’t remember, and accelerated to a pace that wouldn’t tire her (she never got tired in the dream), but at which she could overtake any non-lucid dreamer who wasn’t teleporting. At this speed she could quickly search all the paths in the park, but she found that they weren’t quite laid out the way she remembered them; didn’t this path twist to the left past the petting zoo into the golden-apple orchard?
Indeed, the hedges around her grew higher and denser, and the paths branched and twisted in ways she definitely didn’t remember. She would have quickly grown lost, but she looked up above the hedges and trees, and saw the observation tower. She teleported to its viewing platform and looked down on the park.
Most of it had become a labyrinth, composed of a mix of dense hedges and stone walls. The petting-zoo was subsumed into it, as were the full-scale copies of the Parthenon, Stonehenge, and Angkor Wat. From here it didn’t take her long to spot the nomads — they were running through the labyrinth, pursued by... oh no.
The minotaur in the petting zoo was an adorable toddler-calf, at least the last time she’d seen him — not this creature out of nightmares. And at his side, there was something even more terrible, a vast maw full of fangs and slavering tongues with no body attached; it hovered along keeping pace with the minotaur and its prey. “This won’t do,” Nora said, and teleported into the labyrinth, right between the nomads and their pursuers.
The minotaur and the giant mouth stopped short as they turned the corner and saw Nora standing there with a stern expression on her face, her outer arms crossed, and her middle arm pointing at them.
“What do you think you’re doing, boys?”
“Aww, Miz Nora, we didn’t mean nothing by it.” The minotaur covered his unsheathed member with his hands for a moment before conjuring a loincloth.
“They started it,” the maw said in a surprisingly human voice, and began metamorphosing into the usual dream-body of Leroy Paulsen. “We were over in Stonehenge, practicing our transformations, when suddenly these hedges start growing up into a maze. And Tim hovered up in the air to look around and saw that those nomads were making things all crazy, and he said let’s give them a scare...”
“You boys ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” Nora said. “You may be too young to remember what nightmares were like —”
“No, ma’am,” Tim muttered.
“— but you should know we don’t treat guests this way. Tim Stauffer, turn yourself back into a normal boy and — no, wait. I’ve got a better idea.” A smile spread over her face. “Make yourself look like the minotaur in the petting zoo.”
The minotaur’s bull-face took on a dismayed expression. “Aww, Miz Nora!”
“Or do you want me to tell your parents?”
He started shrinking and losing his upper-body hair and horns.
“And you, Leroy, make yourself look like the centaur-colt, and we’ll go apologize to those poor nomads.”
Leroy grumbled, but complied. Moments later two little fabulous creatures were toddling along behind Nora through the maze. Nora leapt into the air and hovered, looking around; she quickly spotted the nomads, still hurrying and looking back over their shoulders. Soon Nora and the boys overtook them. It was the young man whom she, Ursula and Regina had met a couple of nights ago and his wife or girlfriend.
“Good evening,” she called to them. “No one’s going to hurt you. It’s a dream, you know. And these boys have something they want to say to you, don’t they?”
“We’re sorry,” they chorused. They didn’t sound very sincere, but Nora didn’t feel that berating them further just now was her highest priority. The nomads were looking at one another in confusion.
“Where are we?” the man asked.
“Are those the monsters that were chasing us?” the woman asked.
Nora nodded. “Just a couple of boys playing a prank. They’re sorry and they won’t do it again, right boys?”
“Yes, Miz Nora.”
“And we won’t tell their parents, if... they keep wearing those adorable little forms in the dream for the next three nights, let’s say?”
“Please, Miz Nora!”
“If anybody asks why, you can tell them you lost a bet. And you’ll volunteer as teacher’s assistants for one of the lucid dreaming classes tomorrow after school?”
“...Yes, Miz Nora.”
“All right. Run along now.”
The boys skedaddled and Nora turned back to the nomads.
“We’ve met but not really been introduced, I think. I’m Nora Sanders.”
“I remember you,” the man said. “You and your friends were going to help me find the church, but we got separated...?”
“Wasn’t she our waitress in the diner?” the woman said. “Or — no, sorry, I’m getting you mixed up with someone else.”
“That was me,” Nora said. “I look different in the dream than in the waking — lots of people do.”
“I’m Guenocaria, and this is my husband Telsurius, but it sounds like you’ve already met?” She looked at her husband with a curious expression.
“I think that must have been in a dream, too,” Telsurius said uncertainly. “I can’t remember much about it. And I don’t remember seeing you at the diner, either, but Guenocaria has a better memory for faces than I do.”
“Yes, it was two nights ago as I think I said — you didn’t seem to be lucid, so it’s not surprising you don’t remember it clearly. Are you lucid now, by the way? You know you’re dreaming, right?”
“Yes,” Guenocaria said. “It seems obvious now that you point it out. How do we get out of here?”
“I don’t know my way around this maze,” Nora said, thinking it impolite to point out just now that they were the ones responsible for its existence, “but I can hover above it and get an idea of how we need to turn to get out. You’re welcome to try too, though don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work the first time.” With that she jumped into the air and hovered ten yards or so above the maze. Telsurius and Guenocaria jumped as well, but not nearly so high, and they fell back down at once; then they tried again, and this time Guenocaria jumped nearly as high as Nora and hovered.
“This is so cool! Telsurius, come on up!”
“Just a minute,” he called out, and jumped again, with no immediate success.
“If it were just us maybe we could fly out,” Nora whispered to Guenocaria. “But let’s go back down and walk out with him.”
They descended; Nora said “This way,” and led them through the maze toward the petting zoo, which seemed to be nearer the park’s main entrance. Now and then she and Guenocaria would leap and hover to verify they were going the right way. They hadn’t been walking far when Telsurius suddenly vanished.
“I think he just woke up,” Nora said. “Or he suddenly learned to teleport.”
“Can we try flying now?”
“Sure.”
They leapt and hovered for a few moments, and then Nora began flying toward the petting zoo. Guenocaria followed her, wavering and wobbling erratically; after a few moments she suddenly shot off into the sky, and Nora streaked after her. She found her with her head stuck into a cloud, struggling to free herself from its soft sticky substance; Nora tried hard not to laugh, and barely succeeded.
“Calm down, I’ll get you clear of it,” she said. Guenocaria seemed to hear her clearly, though her ears were embedded in the cloud; she stopped struggling. Nora concentrated and tried to dispel the cloud, but couldn’t, not easily; either someone down below was looking at the cloud and unconsciously maintaining it, or (more likely) Guenocaria’s own sensations of being trapped in it were keeping the cloud thick and sticky and keeping her trapped.
“Here, take my hand...” Nora grasped the nomad’s hand and tugged gently, saying “Try to concentrate on my hand and the sound of my voice... ignore the cloud as much as you can...”
A few minutes later the cloud dispersed and Guenocaria was free. “Thanks,” she said. “What was that?”
“Lick your lips,” Nora advised. “You’ve still got a little here,” pointing to a spot above her chin with her middle arm.
Guenocaria licked and said, “It’s sweet!”
“Yes — some of the children decided the clouds were made of cotton candy, and the adults decided, why not? It’s not like it can rot their teeth here. But come on, let’s go...”
She looked down on the town and parkland. They were no longer near Mythology Park, or downtown; actually, they weren’t far from her house. She flew toward it, towing Guenocaria with her, and landed on the cupola moments later. She opened the door and led Guenocaria into her bedroom. “This is my home,” she said. “Would you like something to eat or drink?”
Guenocaria’s eyes took on a speculative look. “This is a dream, right...? So can I have anything I want?”
“Anything that I know what it tastes like, if you want me to make it. Or you could try making it yourself, using my kitchen if you think that would help, or just imagining hard.” As she spoke, she led the way down the spiral staircase to the ground floor and the kitchen.
“Surprise me,” the nomad said with a smile.
Nora bustled around in the kitchen, preparing a pot of herbal tea (she poured a cup for Guenocaria to drink while she waited), and then her best imitation of an exquisite coconut cake she’d had at a restaurant in Omaha when she went there with Orson last New Year’s Eve. What she was doing wasn’t really “cooking” in the strict sense; the dream-town didn’t have real chemistry any more than it had real physics. It was a kind of meditation technique, to help Nora concentrate and remember what the coconut cake had looked like, felt like, tasted like... how she and Orson had bitten into their slices simultaneously and shared the taste, sweeter to her taste buds than his; how they’d gone up to their hotel room afterward and slept, and found themselves in a version of the dream-town where they were the only dreamers. They’d made love on the front steps of City Hall and in the stacks of the library and on one of the cotton-candy clouds before finally retiring to Orson’s house to lounge around talking lazily until morning.
“Here you go,” Nora said, handing Guenocaria a large slice of coconut cake. “It’s made of memories and love.”
“Mmmm!” Guenocaria exclaimed as she bit into it.
“So,” Nora asked when their mouths were no longer full, “tell me more about yourself... Is this the first time you’ve ever dreamed lucidly? Someone told me you share dreams occasionally, but not every night like us.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream like this before. I used to share dreams with my little sisters pretty often, but I haven’t shared dreams with anyone since I married Telsurius and joined clan Pelerin.” She sounded a little sad.
Guenocaria explained that the nomads traveled in small clan groups, no more than fifty or a hundred people; about once a year, many clans would meet up somewhere, and then there would be courting and marrying, the brides traveling from then on with their husband’s clan. She’d met and married Telsurius after a whirlwind courtship during the big meeting in central Florida last winter, and she loved him and liked most of his family pretty well, but she missed her family, especially her sisters.
“We send net messages, sometimes, but it’s not the same. It’ll probably be years before we’re in range for telepathic communication again; we’ll be at different meetings this year — clan Pelerin is going to a meeting near our old home territory, in Alberta, and clan Questing is going to meet up near Guadalajara with some folks who’ve been traveling in South America for a few years...”
Just then a bell rang, and Nora exclaimed: “Just a moment! I’ll be right back.” She ran upstairs to the skybridge and met Orson.
“I’ve got company,” she said after they shared a long kiss. “Come on downstairs.”
“I’ve got news,” he said, “but I can share it with your guest, whoever...?”
“It’s Guenocaria, one of the nomads.”
“Oh.”
She scarcely had time to introduce Orson and Guenocaria before another distinct bell rang. “It never rains but it pours,” Nora said. “Excuse me just a moment.” She ran to the front door and opened it to find Dalvorius.
“Oh! Come on in. Have you met my husband Orson? I’m sure you know Guenocaria...”
“Hi, Cari,” Dalvorius said. “Where’s Telsurius? Have you seen him?”
“He was with us, but we think he woke up,” Guenocaria said. “He disappeared anyway.”
Dalvorius nodded. “He always was a light sleeper... I just found myself in your neighborhood, Nora, and realized I was dreaming — I think it was seeing your house that reminded me of you, and the dreaming lessons. Thought I’d ring the bell and say hello.”
“Welcome... Would you like some tea or cake?”
“Sure... thanks.”
Orson cleared his throat. “I came looking for Nora, to tell her something, but I guess I can tell you too... it concerns you. Nora, I was downtown, and I came on a couple of groups of people talking about the nomads and what they’ve been doing to the town. Some of them moved the library! At first we thought it was just gone, but then someone found it squeezed in between some dream-people’s houses on a side street, though the facing is granite now, not marble. And they turned Mythology Park into a Minoan labyrinth —”
“I know, I was there,” Nora said, handing him a slice of cake. “And my guest and her husband are the ones who gave us that labyrinth.” Guenocaria cringed, saying:
“Sorry! We didn’t mean to, honest!”
“It’s okay, we’re not blaming you,” Nora said, but Orson didn’t look quite as sure. He continued:
“So folks are planning a town hall meeting tomorrow night, to decide what to do about them. Some want to continue the lucid dreaming classes, but a lot of people want to ask them to leave, or tell them they have to leave.”
“If we are causing harm, perhaps we should leave,” Dalvorius said. “What is the shortest route out of your change-region...? Perhaps we should go back the way we came, and detour around you on our way to Cheyenne.”
“I hope you won’t,” Nora said. “I mean, you might be the only other telepaths in the world we can talk to. We should learn to get along, not run you off! And you haven’t done any real harm — they haven’t hurt anybody, have they?” she asked Orson.
“Not that I’ve heard. All those buildings and things moving around, though —”
“We can repair them, same as we do when a small child messes with things — we’ll have everything back to normal in a week or two, tops. We might not be able to repair our relationship with the nomads so easily if we tell we don’t want them around.”
“I can’t speak for all of clan Pelerin,” Guenocaria said, “but I wouldn’t be offended if you ask us to go away after what we did to your park... Not forever, I hope, but until we learn how to dream lucidly, so we won’t mess things up next time we visit.”
“And we can teach the other clans, when we meet with them,” Dalvorius added, “and warn them not to visit this change-region until and unless they have consistent success with those techniques.”
“Come to the meeting tomorrow night,” Nora urged. “Do you know where City Hall is? I can show you...” She conjured a map and spread it on the dining room table.
“If we’re lucid tomorrow night, we’ll come,” Dalvorius said. “I’ll spread the word.”
The next day, Nora was still eating breakfast when word began to spread about the town hall meeting. “Tonight in the dream-town, as soon as we fall asleep,” Joseph Anderson was announcing to everyone in range. “What will we do about the nomads?”
Nora passed the word to her customers throughout the day, along with her arguments for letting the nomads stay long enough to get more lucid dreaming lessons. Most of the dreamers had already heard from somebody, and all of the nomads had heard from Dalvorius and Talrasia this morning before they left their camp.
Not long before Nora got off work, she felt a welcome presence at the edge of her telepathic range. “Hi, sweetie,” she sent. Orson sent back a wave of love that turned the tips of her glow-ridges green.
He walked into the diner and she brought him the cup of coffee he’d asked for. Moments later she clocked out, took off her apron and sat down beside him. In the flesh he wasn’t quite as imposing as in the dream; his features were a little more irregular and his glow-ridges not so high and sharp. But he was a very good-looking man nonetheless; she knew she was a very lucky woman. Sometimes, early in their relationship, she’d thought that she didn’t deserve him — but one of her friends would always hear her and cheer her up, and those self-deprecating thoughts eventually went away, or at least got a lot rarer.
They sat quietly sharing thoughts for a few minutes, and then walked out to his truck. He gave her a ride to the high school, and came in with her, sitting at the back of the classroom. The nomads already gathered gave him curious looks; Dalvorius said: “Hello, Orson.”
“Don’t mind me,” he said, “I’m just here to watch your lovely teacher.” Nora’s glow-ridges turned yellow.
“Behave yourself or I’ll send you to the principal’s office,” she sent, and he sent back an image of what he’d like to do with her in the principal’s office. She shushed him and broadcast:
“Leroy, where are you?”
“On my way,” the one-time ravening maw sent back. He walked into the classroom a few minutes later, after she’d already started the class. (Tim Stauffer had assisted Anna Gregson with her lucid dreaming class a couple of hours earlier.)
“So,” Nora began, “how many of you dreamed lucidly last night?”
Dalvorius raised his hand, of course, as did four others.
“Good, very good,” she said. “That’s a lot faster than old-style humans would have picked it up. I saw Dalvorius in the dream-town last night, and he told me how he became lucid; what about the rest of you?”
Two of them had had assistance from a North Platte dreamer who pointed out they were dreaming, but the other two — including one of the smaller children — had realized on their own. Nora encouraged them to share their sensations from those dreams with the rest of the class in as much detail as they felt comfortable sharing, and then reviewed the lucid dreaming exercises she’d taught them the previous day. After teaching some more advanced exercises, she broke them into smaller groups, and had Orson and Leroy each lead a third of the class through some of the exercises while Nora led the other third.
Finally, she spoke about the town hall meeting that night. “I don’t know how many of you will share dreams with us tonight, or if you’ll be lucid when you do,” she said, “but I hope all of you who can will come to the meeting. I showed City Hall to Dalvorius and Guenocaria on a map, and they can show you what it looked like I suppose.”
“They have shown us, and told us of your invitation,” said Renshulina, the matriarch. “But is this your own invitation, or has someone in authority — the mayor, for instance, or the city council — asked you to invite us? Is the meeting open to non-citizens?”
“We’ve been talking about that all day. Some people don’t want you to come, but a lot of others want you there, and even some of the people who don’t like what you’re doing to the dream-town and want you to leave think you have a right to be there and speak in your defense. You can’t vote but you should be able to speak.”
“Then we will be there — as many of us as are able to dream lucidly tonight, and find ourselves in your dream-town.”
After the lesson, Orson drove Nora home, and came in with her. She made supper for them and they sat talking about the nomads and the meeting that night, and about the inconsequential things that they hadn’t had time to speak of in the dream the last few nights, when things had been so hectic — his work on the farm, her work at the diner, the books Orson had read recently.
Nora’s cellphone rang, and she saw that it was her mother. “Hi, Mom,” she answered.
“Nora, honey, what’s going on there in Carston? I’ve been hearing third-hand rumors about some foreign telepaths vandalizing your dream-town...”
Nora’s parents lived so far outside town that they not only didn’t share dreams with people in the Carston city limits like Nora, but didn’t share dreams with people like Ursula who were barely in dream-range of downtown. They shared a little dream-village with about a hundred people who lived on the scattered farms within five miles of theirs.
“Yes, Mom, they came to town on Monday, I think it was...” Nora told her about the nomads, the issues with their dreams disrupting the dream-town, the lucid dreaming classes, and their rapid progress in learning lucid dreaming. “So we’re going to have a town hall meeting about it tonight. You want to drive into town and sleep here so you can go?”
“I don’t want to impose on you,” her mom said, which was a relief to Nora because her suite wasn’t that big. Probably she didn’t want to sleep on Nora’s not-very-comfortable sofa, or hear the loud buzz of telepathic conversation in downtown Carston where there might be a hundred or more people in waking telepathic range. “I’ll talk to your dad. Maybe we’ll call up the Wellers and see if it suits for us to sleep over there tonight. If not, call me in the morning and let me know what was decided.”
“All right.”
They chatted a little longer, but Nora broke it off as quickly as she gently could. She’d rather visit telepathically with Orson than out loud with her mom. And the food was getting cold while she used her mouth for talking.
After supper, she and Orson curled up in bed; she lay with his arms around her, letting his thoughts and feelings wash over her.
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