The Space Between

"Take care how deep you dream, child, or you may not come back at all."

Such a warning was an everyday occurrence for any northern child, and I was no exception. Everyone knows that when the sun drops below the horizon it will reveal itself in the world of dreams, but there are depths in those deep waters where even its light will not reach, and dreams turn black as tar.

All of that I knew well enough. I had no desire to test the depths of that sunless world which had claimed so many dreamers, sages and wisemen before me and would continue to do so well after I was gone. Instead, the place which had caught my attention so completely lied much closer to home in our waking world. And therein lied the danger.

Once we fall asleep, our elwä - our 'self' if you will - separates from us and descends beyond the material world which is earth, sky and water all the way to those dark reaches of dream's embrace. It is between here and there where dwells a desolate wasteland. Not quite waking and not yet dreaming, this place is empty and hollow but filled to the brim with the many-hued echoes of both worlds.

This nameless place ebbs and flows with the tides of primal waters to no one's knowledge. But I had seen it, just once when I was young. Of course, no one believed me. "If you really saw it, you were well into dreaming already, child." my uncle - our sage - had insisted. But I knew what I had witnessed, even as they laughed.

Now there is a part of me wishing I hadn't taken their words as mocking and vowed in my mind to prove the existence of this place. But I did, and from there my mind was filled with this singular ambition. Determination grew to an obsession the more I learned of dreams. No one felt need to be worried, either, since my insistent questions rarely contained subjects they knew to be dangerous. They simply did not think to fear for someone who sought to dream lighter, not deeper.

Over the years I began to understand more. To reach that place, that wasteland of echoes, I could not simply fall asleep. And I couldn't find a way to simply force myself into a half-sleep, at least not at first. The solution, I eventually found out, was to attempt the exact opposite than what I had previously done. Not to fall asleep, but to stay awake.

I cannot remember how many days and nights I remained awake. My skin became clammy and pale except for under my eyes. People commented how deathly and ill I looked, and I would snap at them with a tidal wave of anger which dissipated as quickly as it had risen. I do not think many saw need to worry for me after that, but at the time I was so obsessed I did not think to care.

Eventually I succeeded. As the days went on my body began to succumb to sleep even as I was standing in the woods or butchering a caught hare or simply sitting down as a fit of exhaustion washed over me. Each time I became closer to reaching my goal, but it was never quite enough - until it was.

I was in the woods, resting against the old bark of an ancient oak. It was a grove where the primal waters dwelled close to our waking world, and I hoped the closeness would help. At some point, after nearing the edge of sleep once more, I jumped awake. Something was wrong with the air, and the trees and even the sounds. It was quiet. No bird nor insect sang in the afternoon forest. Something rippled in the air. The shadows were louder, more present, somehow, and the trees perfectly still even though a moment earlier their leaves had sang life to wind.

A tiny ripple flashed before my eyes. A wave not of water nor air, but something else completely, ebbed and flowed in front of me, yet just barely out of my vision, before disappearing again. Another arose around me, closer this time, before blinking out of existence just as I began to notice its existence. In the preceding days I thought I had seen something, at times, but could never be sure. But here they were, the disturbances in the air, stronger and clearer than ever before.

Anxiously I looked for another of those waves and ripples, convinced they were made of those primal waters where our selves went to dream. If I could just touch those waters, I could see it again; that iridescent waste of echoes and dancing shadows. There was no joy even as I neared success. I barely had the energy to stand up and raise my hand to touch one of those ripples with the tip of my finger. But tired as I was, I had missed a root of that ancient oak and stumbled into that primal wave instead.

That was the last of my memories in that old world of mine. When I next awoke, I was in that hollow waste I had desired to bear witness to for so long. I found myself standing on a land that wasn't land, in a world which lied at the edges of the primal sea and the waking world and where everything was a rippling mirage or illusion.

Shapes and shadows and echoes of sounds drifted by me and through me from every direction. Every voice, every silhouette, they were as if underwater - or perhaps I was. Reflections appeared and disappeared at will like mirages above snow or water. There were times I thought I recognized a shape as human or another as some four-legged animal. Other times a vast, long shadow like a serpent with a thousand heads swam right above me as I crouched to hide from it. It's own shadow reflected on the wasteland as a hideous poison green. Any heat I might feel froze me, every bit of cold made me sweat. Nothing made sense and everything shifted without rhyme or reason.

I don't know how long ago it was that I arrived. I have tried to leave numerous times, but I cannot tell where I came in, and if indeed it was possible to return. Was the body I was in now my true, physical form or an illusion born of some lost strand of dream, perhaps molded by my elwä to resemble my waking form? I do not know, and at this point I am too tired to think on it.

My memories crumble the longer I stay in this place. That was why I began to tell my story, even if no one can hear it. This is the only way I know to carve those memories deeper into me. It may only slow the rate of my decay, but there isn't much more to do. I have no need for food anymore than sleep, yet tiredness grips me now just as it did before my entry to this place. I wish I could close my eyes and leave for deeper dreams, but even that doesn't work. I cannot go back, and I cannot move forward. And at this point, I fear, I am far too tired to care.