The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

and patted it absently, as if it were a sleeping puppy. “You look very tired, you know, Captain Blach,” he said kindly. “There will be time enough to find your friend. Tarr Village is at least another hour and a half away. Why not rest? We will all need our strength for the
climb
.”
    Svenson wondered what he meant—the quarry? The hills? Could it mean the manor house? Svenson could not say, and he was exhausted. He needed to sleep. Was he safe with them? The woman interrupted his thoughts.
    “What is your lady’s name, Captain?”
    “Beg pardon?”
    “Your friend. You did not say her name.”
    Svenson caught a worried glance from the man to the woman, though her face remained open and friendly. Something was wrong.
    “Her name?”
    “You did not say what it was.”
    “No, you didn’t,” confirmed the man, somewhat after the fact and a touch more insistent for it, as if he’d been caught out.
    “Ah. But you see…I do not know it. I only know her clothes—a green dress with green shoes. We were to meet and travel together. Why…did you know each other’s name before this journey?”
    She did not immediately answer. When the man answered for her, he knew he had guessed correctly. “We do not know each other’s names even now, Captain, as we were indeed instructed.”
    “Now you really should rest,” the woman said, genuinely smiling for perhaps the first time. “I promise we will wake you.”

    Within his dream, a part of Doctor Svenson’s mind was aware that he’d not had a regular stretch of sleep in at least two days, and so expected turbulent visions. This sliver of rational distance might contradict but did not alter the successive waves of vivid engagement thrust upon him. He knew the visions were fed by his feelings of loss and isolation—more than anything by his helplessness in the face of Corinna’s death and then his own chronic reticence and cowardice in life—and then all of this regret swirling together with a world of cruelly unquenched desire for other women. Was it merely that, so exhausted, even in sleep, his guard was so much lowered? Or was it, could he admit, that his feelings of guilt provoked in turn a secret pleasure in the act of dreaming with such erotic fervor in an open train compartment? What he knew was the deep warm embrace of sleep, twisting effortlessly in his mind into the embrace of pale soft arms and sweet caressing fingers. He felt as if his body were refracted in a jewel, seeing—and feeling—multiple instances of himself in hopelessly delicious circumstances…Mrs. Marchmoor stroking him under a table…Miss Poole with her tongue in his ear…his nose buried in Rosamonde’s hair, inhaling her perfume…on his hands and knees on the bed, licking each circular indentation on the luscious flesh of the bed-ridden Angelique…his hands—O shamefully!—cupping Miss Temple’s buttocks beneath her dress…his eyes closed, nursing tenderly, hungrily, at the bared breast of the brown-haired governess, who had moved to sit next to him, to ease his torment, offering herself to his lips…the incomparably soft sweet pillow of flesh…her other hand stroking his hair…whispering to him gently…shaking his shoulder.
    He snapped awake. She was sitting next to him. She was shaking his arm. He sat up, painfully aware of his arousal, thankful for his greatcoat, his hair in his eyes. The man was gone.
    “We are near Tarr Village, Captain,” she said, smiling. “I am sorry to wake you.”
    “No, no—thank you—of course—”
    “You were sleeping very soundly—I’m afraid I had to shake your arm.”
    “I am sorry—”
    “There is no reason to be sorry. You must have been tired.”
    He noticed that the top button of her dress was now undone. He felt a smear of drool on his lip and wiped it with his sleeve. What had happened? He nodded at where the man had been.
    “Your companion—”
    “He has gone to the front of the train. I am about to join him, but wanted to make sure you were awake. You were…in your dream, you were speaking.”
    “Was I? I do not recall—I seldom recall any dream—”
    “You said ‘Corinna’.”
    “Did I?”
    “You did. Who is she?”
    Doctor Svenson forced a puzzled frown and shook his head. “I’ve no idea. Honestly—it’s most strange.” She looked down at him, her open expression, along with the insistent pressure in his trousers, inspiring him to speak further. “You have not told me your