The sleeper dreamed.

It took a long time for the dream to begin. At first, she walked through the rooms of the castle and find nothing but chaos, as if some great disaster had come. Furniture tumbled and broken. Food left congealing on the plates. Dust thick enough to write in.

After a while, she dreamed long enough to see more rooms, but they were all the same. Eventually, the food rotted away completely and the dust grew thick enough to choke on. Sometimes, she heard noises. Not of human activity, but a low vibration, almost a growl. When she turned to look, sometimes she caught the edge of a fleeing shadow. Whatever it was, it never approached her. Frightening, but oddly comforting that she wasn’t alone. This wasn’t quite a nightmare.

Each window she looked through showed the same, unrelenting vista. A vast emptiness stretched out from the castle walls. The front door should have opened into a stone paved bailey, but there was nothing.

Sometimes she approached a room only to find it locked. At first, she let the locked rooms sit undisturbed. There were many rooms to explore. She could return to those later. When she had visited every room – she could tell by the footprints she left in the dust – she began to retrace her steps.

She was resourceful, clever and stubborn. It was her stubbornness that saved her. She learned to pick locks, and those she could not pick, she smashed with a heavy mallet. These locked rooms were usually nothing special. They were only locked because the previous inhabitants had done so out of habit before fleeing.

But some rooms held treasures. In one, she found, quite literally, treasure. Gold and jewels and silks and spices. The fabric was fine and lovely and she spent a dream or two luxuriating in the soft slide of it against her skin. She was so busy playing she did not hear the rumble of her mysterious companion. The spices left an exotic musk in the air, but they, like the gold and jewels, held little interest for her. What good would they do her when she was alone and had no need of food or money?

The last room she unlocked held the truest treasure. Maps and books beckoned, offering knowledge. She came here often and spent hours studying the maps, trying to discover where she might be, and if she found herself, where she might go when she awoke.

For the dreamer understood that this was not real. That this was but a sleeping vision, though she never seemed to wake. She slept and rose and lived within her reverie.

The more she learned from her books, the larger the library grew until it resembled a maze. After getting slightly lost once or twice, she began to unwind a ball of thread behind her, like Ariadne in the maze of the minotaur.

On this day, however, she forgot to unwind her string as she went in search of a new map. The book she had been reading told a tale very similar to her own and gave hints that her dream world was only a step away from the waking world, if only she could find her way out.

She went in search of this new information, looking through book after book on shelf after shelf. Hours later, she glanced up with a start.

“How long have I been here?” she wondered out loud. She often spoke to herself now. She had long ago learned that the silence was oppressive.

When she began her quest, morning light had shone an indirect glow through the library, but now long shadows crept up the shelves. She reached for her girdle, but found no thread attached to her loop. No, she remembered, she hadn’t stopped for her guiding string. She didn’t even carry a lamp to light her way in the descending darkness.

Panic rushed through her in hot and cold waves, but she took a steadying breath and settled herself. “No need to fear. It’s only a library.”

A rustle sounded nearby and a mortal fear clutched her.

“Who’s there?” she called out, to no avail. “Where are you?”

She had never tried to speak to it. She had never heard it in the library.

The rustle faded and she asked, knowing she spoke only to herself, “What are you?”

“I am not a dream,” the voice snarled softly from the other side of shelf.

She started violently. She had been dreaming for months, possibly years, and in all that time, it had never spoken. She had very nearly forgotten what other speech sounded like, but she knew it ought not to be this half-beastly rumble that was all too human in its language.

“You must be a dream. Or a nightmare.”

“I am no nightmare.” It paused. “At least, not to you.”

She walked quietly down the row, wanting to see what lay on the other side. “Are you part of the dream?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I dreamed long before you came here. Perhaps you are part of my dream.”

The row lengthened and grew, curving and twisting around on itself. She turned and turned, but though she heard him walk along side, keeping pace with her steps, she could not find him. There seemed to be no end to it, yet she continued, determined to meet the voice.

“I have so much to ask you,” she said. “So many things I want to know.”

“I have no answers. I may not be able to give you what you seek.”

She stopped, frustrated by the maze. “I seek only to see you. To meet you, a fellow dreamer.”

As if by magic, a break appeared. She would be able to round it and see her companion. She stopped at the edge.

“Why do you stop?” he asked.

“I am afraid.”

“Afraid of me?”

“Afraid of how the dream will change.”

“You were lost. Perhaps I am only here to guide you back to the dream you know.”

“No. The dream will never be the same now that you are here. Now that we are here together.”

“That is true. Before you appeared in my dream, I was a beast, wandering alone through these halls. Since you arrived, I have become a man again. In seeking you, I have become a better man than I was when I was awake, I think.”

She still hesitated. “What if I am not better?”

“You will never know if you do not turn the corner.”

“When I turn, do you think we will wake?”

“I think, perhaps, yes. We have wandered through our dreams in search of a means to awaken. I could not come to you until you searched for something. For a change in the dream.”

“Have you been waiting for me?”

“Yes. But you might not have found me, you know. There are other paths. You might find your way out on your own. You might simply turn the corner and discover you are still in the dream and nothing has changed. Or you could turn the corner and discover something else.”

*     *      *

The dreamer slept. Then woke.

She opened her eyes.

He lay beside her on the pillow and looked at her.

“Good morning. I love you.”