Even in the Dreamlands, he remembered that he loved her. Many parts of his waking life were blurred or forgotten there, but the memory of his love for the woman who slept beside him followed him into his dreams, stayed with him as he journeyed across dark seas and endless plains of dead, sere grasses, from the low white deserts to the highest plateaus of red rock. And so when those other women, the ones with shining black eyes and skin furred like burgundy velvet pressed against him, whispering of their loving arts, he turned away, saying simply: No. And the laws of the Dreamlands are such that they could do no more, but withdrew and stared after him, sullen and jealous.

There had been a time, when he was younger, before his wife began to die, when he had sampled those women’s skills, and well as every other delight and treasure that his dreams had to offer. And there were delights and treasures in abundance for one dreamed as he did. For he had traveled as few dreamers could, remaining conscious and aware, choosing his own path as he dreamed. He had traveled from continent to continent, sailing the dark seas and laughing as he watched it change from blue to purple to red, or commanding the huge birds of the Dreamlands to carry him where he willed. He learned as he traveled, until he had mastered the laws of dream form and dream substance, learned to summon the winds, call down fire, and grow mighty monoliths of stone with a single word. He had stood with those few others from the waking world who walked the Dreamlands as though awake. And in mastering his dreams, the power and the joy he felt had bled into and infected his waking hours as well, until both worlds had become equally wondrous, and waking only a transition from one pleasure to another.

But then she had fallen ill, this woman he loved, his wife of many years, and the waking world had become a blur of grim doctors, shadowy X-rays, and worsening prognoses. His visits to the Dreamlands grew darker, too, tainted by the moist rasping he heard as he fell asleep: the sound of his wife fighting for breath as she lay beside him. As his mood darkened his power over the Dreamlands began to taint them; green plains grew brown and dead, the purple seas darkened to black, and a charcoal-gray sheet of clouds slid across the sky. He stopped idly travelling the Dreamlands then, and a new purpose took hold of him. Everywhere he went, from the airless peaks of the highest mountains to the farthest reaches of the inky seas he sought the same thing: his wife.

He knew it was a hopeless quest from the start. The Dreamlands, even those portions easily accessible to him, were vast, constantly changing, and peopled by an innumerable and motley crew of dreamers and the dreamed. One thought allowed him to hope: certainly two persons, drawn together and bonded in waking life, would be drawn together in dreams as well. So perhaps the Dreamlands inhabited by his wife bordered on or even overlapped his own. It was a slim chance, but one that drove him on.

He was never sure, while dreaming, why he searched. During his waking hours, when he allowed himself to think of it, he told himself that it was because dreamers always wore their true faces, revealing their inmost and most essential selves. He had often felt that he had never truly known his wife, that there had always been some secret inner core of her self that he could never know or touch. In spite of their love, which was deep and passionate, a strange and sullen look here, a secretive smile there, made him feel that she had a secret face, a self hidden in depths that he would never be allowed to know. By finding and knowing her in her dreams, he hoped to reach that secret self. This was what he told himself.

There was another possibility, but he pushed it away whenever it entered his mind. He had encountered in his travels through the Dreamlands a rare few persons whose sleeping bodies had died while their spirits were deep in dream, and thus were trapped in their dreams forever. They had never waked, and walked the Dreamlands undead, neither able to reach the waking world nor to pass on to the lands of the dead. Was it possible that he really intended to find his wife only so that he could bind her to the Dreamlands, bind her and prevent her from waking until her bodily death, so that he would never lose her?

It was true that, were he to do so, she would be his forever, whenever he closed his eyes. But it would be a monstrous, unconscionable crime to consign her to an eternity of half-life, a half-life that would not end even with his own death. It was unthinkable that this was his true motivation, and so he did not delve too deeply into the reasons for his search.

But search he did, over land and sea. His search was fruitless, and after several months (or was it years? It was hard to count time in the Dreamlands when the numbers and positions of the suns kept changing) he became sad, yet more determined. He even tried in the waking world, once, to awaken his wife as she slept, in the hopes that as she awoke he might catch some fleeting expression or mumbled word that would direct his search. But she awoke and seized him so passionately, pulled him under her, into her, and rode him with such ferocity that he was afraid, and did not try it again. Reluctantly then he searched for her among the pleasure-houses in the south of the Dreamlands, even in the lowest and cheapest of the carnal dens, but did not find her there.

At last, he came to rest in a cove by the eastern shore of the sea. There was a stone inn there, kept by an old man who wore the same curiously flat, expressionless face of all the natives of the Dreamlands. As a great dreamer he was welcome there, as news of his youthful adventures always preceded him.

He still sailed and traveled, still searched for his wife, but less frequently, spending most of his time seated by the shore, watching the great white birds as they wheeled overhead, and trying not to look at the black cliffs that faced him across the waters of the cove.

He did not like the cliffs, and had never visited them, even in his adventuring days. They rose straight out of the sea on the other side of the cove, sheer black granite walls, ringed at the bottom with jagged rocks and pocked with the dark holes of cave mouths. Dreamland legend held that the caves were populated by terrible creatures with a thirst for blood and flesh, so fierce and powerful that they were dangerous not only for the natives of the Dreamlands, but for living dreamers as well. To the eye, nothing lived in the caves at all, although a sickly green phosphorescence sometimes played about the cave mouths at night. Even the great birds did not roost there. But apparently lifeless or not, still he did not like the stories or the look of the cliffs themselves, so that when he found himself gazing on them he would shudder and turn away, and resolve to leave the cove for another search.

It was on one of these increasingly rare journeys that he encountered another dreamer, one like himself, who was aware of his dreaming state and traveled as though awake. He wore jeans and a tattered T-shirt adorned with a multicolored apple. Such clothes were odd, even outlandish in this part of the Dreamlands, and his lively, angular face also marked him as one from the waking world.

They stopped to speak, as dreamers will when they find each other, and exchanged greetings. The other laughed when he spoke of his waking world. “I build machines,” he said. “Machines that think,” and he laughed again. But then his face grew grave as he listened to the searcher. Yes, he said, he had heard of the dreamer’s quest, of his ongoing search for his love. But he could not understand it, and advised him to abandon it. The true face of another, he said, was best not sought. If it was meant for him to find his wife, it would happen on its own, in accordance with the laws of the Dreamlands. To force things would bring ruin.

And then the newcomer’s face grew even darker, and again he spoke of ruin: ruin that had already come. He pointed to the dead grass, to the dry and blasted tree under which they rested.

“Do you not see?” he asked. “Your quest, your sadness, what it has done?” He stood, bowed his head, and then raised his hands.

Immediately countless buds, brilliantly green, appeared on the dead branches above them. They unfurled into living leaves, so that in a moment the entire tree was alive with rich green color, as a carpet of lush grass spread in all directions away from his feet, the clouds rolled away to reveal a yellow sun, and the sky was alive with singing birds.

The dreamer sank to his knees. So long had he been consumed with his search that he had forgotten the beauty and power that had once been his. He had poisoned his dreams and turned these lands into a desert, and this realization made him burn with shame and weep for the lost years. He rose and thanked the newcomer, and swore that he would restore his Dreamlands to the wondrous beauty they had once had.

They bowed courteously and said farewell, and the searcher told the newcomer of his secluded cove, warning him away from the black cliffs. But the other only laughed again. He did not fear any creature of dream, he said, for they all lacked the substance and power to harm anyone from the waking world. And he strolled away through the newly green grass, whistling, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

The searcher continued his journey, but his heart was no longer in it. What he had heard and seen still caused him to burn with shame. Was it possible, as the visitor had said, that his search had been wrong from the start? Should he simply enjoy his time in the Dreamlands, as he had once done, and care for his beloved in the waking world? His search had taken him farther afield in the Dreamlands than anyone of whom he had ever heard, and his face flushed with a new shame to think that all that distance and time had been squandered on a foolish and wrong-headed quest. At last he turned his face towards the cove once again, resolving to abandon the search, take his leave of the innkeeper, and never return. He would regain his former joy in dreaming, and once again embrace all that the Dreamlands offered.

Upon reaching the cove, he gathered his belongings and said his farewells, then walked along the shore to look one last time at the cove as it darkened with the setting of the last sun. This place reminded him too much of the time he had wasted, and although he would travel far and wide in the Dreamlands in the future, he planned never to return to the cove.

The sea moved back and forth on the shore with its usual sigh and rasp, and for the first time he stopped to listen to it. Like everything in the Dreamlands, the sound was not quite the same as it would have been in the waking world. It had an odd, almost human sound in its suck and roar as the waves broke on the rocks, but there was something else, almost as if another sound was hidden behind it, a rasp and rattle that matched the cadence of the waves.

The next instant he had dropped his pack and was running along the shore, crying aloud to the great white birds that circled overhead. His promise to abandon his quest was forgotten, for he had heard the sound of his wife’s breathing, fighting for breath as she lay asleep beside him, and that sound was coming from the black cliffs. In response to his call, one of the birds dove from the sky, dropping like a bullet towards him, seizing his cloak in its talons and bearing him aloft.

“The cliffs!” he cried, and the bird bore him across the waters of the cove towards the towering black walls. They grew swiftly larger, nearer, and he could see the cave mouths, could see their faint green glow becoming stronger as the sky darkened. One hundred yards away, then fifty, then he was reaching out to grasp the ledge. But suddenly the wind shifted and a carrion stench blew towards them from the caves, and the bird shrieked and wheeled away in terror, releasing him as it fled.

He fell forty feet, shredding his fingertips to the bone against the black granite before they caught on a tiny ledge. He swung hard against the cliff face, bloodying his nose and lips, then hung there by his fingers, panting. He knew that he should focus his mind, remember that this was a dream, heal his injuries and command the wind to carry him upwards. But his thoughts were in a whirl, and he could not concentrate. He would have to climb the cliff the hard and stupid way, the way of an unconscious dreamer, one who knows not that he dreams, but thinks that the Dreamlands are the waking world. He began to toil upward, sweating and bleeding in the dark as the sharp rocks flayed more strips of flesh from his hands and knees. The sound of his wife’s breathing was very loud now, coming from one of the cave mouths above. Time was precious: if she was in the hands of the dread creatures reputed to haunt these caves, both her dream and waking lives were in danger.

At last he reached the ledge, pulled himself onto it, and stood shaking and covered with blood. The cave opening was clearly defined by the sickly green light flickering from it, and he paused only a moment before gathering his courage and cautiously venturing inside. The green glow came from the walls, wet and dripping with a phosphorescent slime. By their light he crept forward, finally stopping as the tunnel abruptly widened into a wide, vaulted chamber. The sound of her breathing was all around him now, and dark forms moved stealthily in the deeper shadows of the walls. A tangled, tattered shape lay on the floor in the center of the vault, awkwardly angled and humped beneath its covering of blood and shredded cloth. It was a human body, but so mangled and chewed as to be almost unrecognizable. Cold sweat broke out on his skin, but he gritted his teeth and bent to examine it. Mixed panic and nausea rose in him as he tried to decipher the remains of the face. If this was his wife…

A moment later he knew the truth, as he drew forth the tattered and bloody remains of a T-shirt, bearing the design of a multicolored apple. He gently replaced the rags, and paused to bow his head and breathe a silent prayer for this dreamer, who would never wake again.

A low growl reminded him of his surroundings. The shadows were alive with movement, and a moment later a few of the slouching forms came forth into the light. They were filthy, misshapen creatures, manlike, but with high, arched backs and protruding, doglike muzzles. The faces and paws of all of them were wet from their fresh kill, and their evil, slanted eyes reflected the green light as they started towards him. He took a step backwards, and realized that some of them had already crept around to his rear and were blocking his escape. The one closest to him sank down on its haunches, preparing to spring, and he tensed for the battle to come, speaking crackling, living flames into his hands with a single word.

The battle never came. There was a single coughed command from the shadows, and the dog-things flinched, then drew back and cringed as another figure stepped forward.

Its back was narrow, high and arched, its shoulder blades protruded behind it like the blades of knives, and its face protruded in an ugly muzzle, but he knew her. She was twisted and filthy, covered in gore from her jaws to her belly, and she held a greasy, bloody knob of bone in one claw, but he knew her, and she him.

Her back creaked, vertebrae resounding with loud cracks as she drew herself up to her full height, and her lips writhed back over her fangs as she smiled a scornful, defiant smile. She gestured with the chewed bone at the creatures which groveled and whined before her as before a queen, and her voice was a gravelly, rasping whisper.

“This is my tribe,” she said.

“This is what I am.”

He did not answer. He fled the fastest way, racing back down the tunnel before the cowering creatures could recover, fling himself over the cliff and shriek himself awake a moment before he struck the rocks below.

He awoke with a start, and fell out of bed as he fumbled madly for the lamp. He yanked at the cord and stood, blinking in the sudden light, pouring with sweat and shaking in horror. The familiar, mundane details of the bedroom did nothing to comfort him. His wife coughed in her sleep, murmured a moment, and then awoke, rubbing her eyes and looking at him, confused. On her face he could see revealed the exact moment when she remembered her dream, and the next moment when she realized that he had been present there. A look of shock passed over her face, and her throat moved as she started to speak, but abruptly closed her mouth instead. Her expression changed, and he felt sickened as, even without the jutting muzzle and jaws, he recognized that proud and defiant look. She turned to face the wall, then abruptly doubled over in another fit of coughing.

He moved into the guest room that night, explaining that the sound of her breathing was keeping him awake. She said nothing, but tightened her lips and nodded. In another month, she entered the hospital for the last time, and a few weeks after that she died suddenly.

By then he had found a new place to live in the Dreamlands. It was an endless plain of short grass, far from the sound of the ocean, and with no cliffs, no caves. He had raised a strong stone house there, a fortress of basalt blocks with walls a meter thick. He never strayed far from it as he walked and watched the wind blowing over the plain, the words of the sympathetic doctor always in his mind.

“I’m sorry, sir. She died in her sleep.”

Even now, years later, he stays there alone in his fortress on the plain, never journeying, seeking no adventure and no company. When night falls over the Dreamlands and the endless plains of grass turn black, he returns hastily to his house, bars the massive oaken door, and lights many lamps. And until he wakes again, he sits alone and reads the ancient books that line the stone walls and tries not to listen to the stealthy sound of claws, scratching at the door.