Chapter 5: The Underground Sun and a Trip to the Moon
Tammy was wandering in the dark, wandering for hours. She knew she was supposed to be somewhere, and it was important, urgent maybe. She had to remember what it was. She had to think. There was something in her hands, and she looked down. She was clutching a paper rose in her hand. Her hands looked so--real--so there, so alive. A paper rose. Matt, midnight. She looked at her watch. 11:55. She was wide awake. She looked around. She was in some dark alley. But she had to get toFarnsworth Chapel in five minutes. She ran to the end of the alley. There was a long hill with a trail leading up, and trees on either side of the trail. It was the path up toFarnsworth Chapel. She headed up it. The trees seemed fluid and their shadows long and dim and eerie. She ran up the hill. The light was oddly green,a greenish yellow, like the light before a really bad thunderstorm.
At the top of the hill, she could see the chapel. Behind it was a weird black sky. It looked like the beginning of a very scary movie. Or the cover of a very scary book. She slowed down and walked toward the gate. No one was there. No Matt. She slowed down and looked at her watch. Eleven fifty-nine and fifty-nine second. Poof, there was Matt at the stroke of midnight. A shiver ran down Tammy's spine.
Matt waved. He smiled. "Hi Tammy!" Suddenly, it was much brighter. Almost like daylight. The light was still greenish, but only faintly so.
"Why's the light so green?" Tammy asked Matt. "Hi," she added, as an afterthought. He looked completely normal. Not scary at all.
"I call it the 'Underground Sun.'" Matt said.
"But Farnsworth Chapel isn't underground, it's on the top of a hill."
"It's a reference to the underworld. Hades and Persephone. It's an analogy for dreams."
"My dreams don't usually look this way, they just look normal--either dark for chasing dreams, or bright (blue maybe), for falling dreams."
"That's why I say there is more than one dream world. They're all layered together and you can move freely between them. This is the Hades Underground, this world."
Tammy looked down at her hands. It gave her another shiver. The paper rose was gone. "Hey, my rose is gone! It helped me find you, and now it's gone."
"When you get home, you'll find it where you left it, and it will be useful next time, too."
"I hate the way you say, 'quote unquote real world.' Can we just call it 'Solland' [SOHL-land] and Greenland? I know not all dreams are green, but we can agree that that term will apply to the land of dreams, with Mearddth being one of the worlds of the Universe of Greenland. Solland is just one of the worlds of the other world, but since we are unlikely to leave Earth in our quote unquote real life, Solland is all the land we will normally need to refer to and we can essentially use it to refer to the quote unquote real world from now on. Just to make it easier."
"Okay, I guess, but it is sort of confusing, because Solland sounds like SOUL-LAND and SOUL-Land is closer to Dreamland. And Greenland sounds like a county in Solland."
"You got a better idea?"
Matt said he didn't and Tammy said they weren't likely to be referring to Greenland in their personal conversation, so in spite of the difficulties, they settled on Solland for their their linear waking or "real" world and Greenland for the dream Universe.
"We night not be able to leave earth from Solland any time soon," Matt said. But we can go from anywhere in Greenland to Sol's universe and look around." Tammy was dubious, so Matt said he'd show her. "Let's go to the Moon, first," he said. "Intention," he repeated. "Hold hands so we won't get separated."
"WOW! Look, there's the earth," Tammy said, pointing. The sky was black. "There's no air, how are we breathing?"
"Our Sol bodies are home in bed breathing Solland air. Our dream bodies don't need air."
"Oh yeah." They wandered around. It was as bright as day, though there was still a green tinge to the light. The ground just looked like dirt. Tammy leaned over and touched it. It felt like a mixture of gritty sand and dirt. There were rocks too. She picked one up and looked at it. It was angular and slightly bronze colored. She slipped it in her pocket.
There were craters of all sizes overlapping each other. And hills. They walked up the nearest hill. They could see the curve of the moon falling away on all sides. The sky was black and full of stars, the blue earth a ball on the sky like a large blue moon.
"A waxing gibbous earth," Tammy said, dreamily, imitating Laina. "A good sign." Mr. Sorenson had recently talked about phases of the moon and how they were lit by the sun. Laina, a girl who called herself a white witch, had dreamily instructed them on the Wiccan meanings of the moon. Tammy thought she remembered her saying that waxing moons were good luck, for growth and healing, whereas waning moons were good for losing weight and getting rid of bad habits. But not as 'propitious,' Laina had said, for starting new relationships or new ventures. Oddly, Mr. Sorenson had smiled tolerantly, and let her ramble. At the time, Tammy had thought that it was strange for a science teacher to let someone be so unscientific in class. Hmmmm . . . Tammy didn't believe in astrology or any of that other weird nonscientific stuff in Solland, but here in Greenland, it might have some function. Maybe.
"What does 'propitious' mean," Tammy asked Matt. "Does it mean 'lucky?'"
"Dunno," said Matt. We need a dictionary." One appeared in his hands and he opened it to p and handed it to Tammy.
She read aloud, "One, presenting favorable conditions; favorable propitious weather: two, indicative of favor, auspicious: propitious omens; three favorably inclined; disposed to bestow favors or forgive: propitious gods." She turned to a. "Auspicious, promising success, favored by fortune. I think that waxing gibbous earth is propitious for an auspicious adventure saving the world. We'll be successful." She laughed. "Too bad we don't know what the problem is or what we have to do."
"We'll find out," Matt said. "Soon."
"Just think," he said, with a wave of his hand out toward the entire universe, "all this is underground."
"And all this light," Tammy said, sweeping her arm over the brilliantly lit surface of the moon, "is inside the darkness of our sleep. Such luminance to be inside the darkness." Then, in a totally different tone of voice, like a little girl, she said, "do you think we could go to the Little Prince's asteroid? I want to see if he made it safely home to his Rose."
"The Little Prince's Asteroid?"
"It's probably in a different layer, a different dreamworld. But if we could come here, couldn't we go there too? I know if probably has nothing to do with our mission, but just a quick side trip? Five minutes? Would that be okay?"
"Uh, are you talking about that book by what's his name, St. something or other--didn't he have an airplane and get lost at sea?"
"Antoine St. Exupery! 'On ne voit bein qu'avec le couer. L'essentials est invisble pour les yeux.'" {check this for spelling etc.} It's the best book! Did you read it? My parents read it to me when I was younger, and then we read it in French, with Mde Gouet." (Use another name?)
"I'm a year behind you in French, remember, because I didn't take AP French in 6th grade. I was afraid it would too hard. My parents wanted me to take it, but I thought they were just ebing mean and stupid. I took Life Skills instead. Let me see. Say that French phrase again. Let me see if I can figure it out."
"'On ne voit bein qu'avec le couer. L'essentials est invisble pour les yeux.'" {Check this!}
"One sees well only with the . . . the heart? The essentials are invisible for the eyes?"
"Yup, that's it. Hey--if we can produce a dictionary and read it, can we produce 'Le Petite Prince?' Or "The Little Prince," maybe would be better. Quicker and easier for us since our language skills aren't that great."
"Language skills are better in dreams, but try for the Little Prince. Intend for it to be in your hands."
And there it was, The Little Prince, in Tammy's hands. "I don't get how you can look up a word in a dream that you don't know the meaning of and find out what it is. If you don't know it, how does the sleeping brain find the information if it doesn't have it?"
"Maybe you really do know it. Or maybe you're tapping into the collective unconscious. Or maybe you are able to actually do dream detective work, somehow. Or all of the above. Or something else. I don't really know."
"I thought you knew everything. Lol! OK," she said, flipping open the book, "I want to show you the Little Prince's Asteroid. And then, I want you to read this book, especially the part about the fox, and about looking out the train windows, and . . . well just read it all. I mean later, at home. Do read it, please? And let me know if you like it. Here, look, here he is on his asteroid, and here's his rose."
"Okay, let's go there, now."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 6: What the Rose Said
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