BY DAVID PARTINGTON
Copyright is held by the author.
WHEN KATHRYN opened the door to see if the rain had finally stopped, a neatly wrapped and slightly damp parcel flopped down at her feet. Strange. She hadn’t been expecting a delivery.In the darkness of early dawn, with eyes still bleary following a late night, she could just barely make out her name written across the front in ornate calligraphy and a return address in elegant foreign characters that she couldn’t decipher.
She tore off the brown paper, uncovering a delicate box made of mauve cardboard. Intrigued, she went to the living room and sat down in a tall armchair by a lamp. Inside the box, wrapped in tissue paper that smelled faintly of incense, was a brass bell with a long wooden handle about ten inches tall. She certainly hadn’t ordered a bell, and yet if someone had sent it as a gift — perhaps under the misapprehension that she needed a useless object to collect dust — there would doubtless have been a card. She could already feel herself becoming irritated. After pulling a bit of paper off the clapper, she gave the bell a ring.
The sound was unexpectedly deep and resonant, like a gong, and filled the room with an unearthly calm. After giving it another ring, a gentle languor came over Kathryn’s limbs, causing her to put the bell down on a side table and loll back in the chair. Her irritation over the unsolicited package melted away. Feeling transported, she let her eyes wander over the delicate Byzantine design etched on the bell’s surface.
Bright morning light now began pouring through the window, and a woman in a long gown, with a veil covering the lower part of her face, stood in the living room entrance like an apparition. She bowed her head to Kathryn and did a little curtsey as if she were a servant whom the bell had magically summoned.
Kathryn was so at peace that this vision, far from alarming her, felt almost expected. Though most of the woman’s face was covered, Kathryn was mesmerized by her penetrating green eyes, with irises so pale they seemed to almost shine. As the beautiful stranger stood in the doorway, dressed in rich fabrics coloured like an ancient tapestry,the room was saturated with stillness.
Faint, distant sounds created a sort of music in the air, bringing to the surface a happiness that Kathryn had long forgotten and that even now, like the melody itself, she couldn’t quite pin down in her mind. The woman in the doorway, communicating in a wordless language that spoke directly to Kathryn’s heart, said that she was a messenger who had come to take her back to her true home, there to lead a life of bliss. The woman gestured toward the window, on the other side of which four men wearing turbans stood in dazzling sunlight holding an ornate sedan chair. Beyond them, the front lawn was transformed by the appearance of palm trees, swaying in what Kathryn intuited was a tropical sea breeze. As the veiled woman motioned for her to follow, Kathryn’s spirit soared in anticipation of the delights that awaited her.
Then, as she reflected on the step she was about to take, she was momentarily transfixed in her chair.
“Oh, here you are!” said Matt, standing at the entrance to the living room where the veiled woman had just been. “You were so quiet I thought you’d gone out.”
The spell was broken. The bright light was gone, and Kathryn was back in her everyday existence, with no palm trees or mysterious visitors — just her husband holding a dish towel with a wry look of amusement on his face.
She felt a tremendous loss, as if an umbilical cord connecting her to something ancient, profound, and somehow familiar had been severed. She looked to the side table for the bell and, not seeing it, started rummaging around frantically in a pile of old magazines by the chair. “Did you see a bell?” she asked.
“No,” said Matt. “Is there one missing? I didn’t know we had a bell.”
Kathryn tried explaining what had happened, but the longer she spoke, the more ridiculous it sounded.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Matt. “Lots of people have silly dreams. There’s no reason to feel ashamed.”
“I’m not ashamed,” Kathryn protested. “Why don’t you tell me about one of your silly dreams?”
“My silly dreams?! Oh, I don’t go in for crazy stuff. In my dreams, I always follow sensible protocols and procedures . . .”
Her nostrils flared as she shot him a dark look.
***
Throughout breakfast, Kathryn was so distracted she could hardly speak, feeling as if she’d just emerged from an opium den, but all the while wondering if her dream had perhaps been more like a vision of something real. Matt, meanwhile, wouldn’t let it go, finding it hilarious that she’d actually looked for the bell after she’d woken up.
Normally, Matt would have driven Kathryn to the lab where she worked, then continued along to the University of Toronto, where he was a teaching assistant. Today, however, Kathryn desperately wanted to get away from Matt’s hard-headedness. Even if it was a delusion, she wanted to relish her vision of the other life — the life of tranquility and pleasure — that was calling her. She told Matt that she’d walk to work.
“Are you sure? They say it’s going to rain.”
“It’ll be fine. You can pick me up at the usual time.”
“OK, but before you go, have a good look around for the magic bell!” said Matt, backing out the front door. Kathryn took a not-so-playful swing at his head. Matt ducked, then roared with laughter. Walking down the driveway, he turned to blow a kiss, then got into his car, chortling the whole time.
Now deeply annoyed, Kathryn grabbed her jacket and tote bag and headed out the door.
Matt and Kathryn had been married for four years and seemed like a match made in heaven — or some sort of atheist equivalent. Their shared scientific outlook made their marriage seem like an oasis of reason in a desert of weak-mindedness. Both spent their lives fact-checking everyone they met, believing they were providing a valuable service, with no idea of how annoying it made them.
As Kathryn reached broad and busy Sheppard Avenue, the wind picked up. She turned up her jacket’s collar, pulling it close around her short, blonde hair. Though the storm had stopped, dark clouds suggested Matt was right about more rain being on the way. He was insufferable when he was right.
She wished she hadn’t mentioned the dream to him, believing he would tease her about it for weeks if not months. Even so, she could hardly blame Matt for laughing at her, given that she would undoubtedly have laughed at him if he‘d woken up raving and wild-eyed.
But now she put Matt out of her mind, eager to resume her reverie. After stopping at a phone booth to tell her co-workers she would be arriving late, she decided to follow an irresistible urge and go off the beaten path. Leaving the roar of Sheppard Avenue behind, she headed instead down a quiet side street.
As the sun winked out from behind a blanket of clouds, the wind, broken by rows of tall sycamores and blooming hawthorns, fell away. Kathryn unzipped her jacket and inhaled deeply.
Faint sounds coming from a row of small stores reminded her of the music from her dream and filled her with longing. Though she reasoned that the “music” was likely her imagination playing with random background noises, she was determined to investigate.
The stores sold mainly eastern imports — not wicker furniture so much as food, carpets, and curiosities. Pulled along as if under a spell, she passed some barrels of luscious fruit, then entered a humid, softly lit food market. Inside were displays of Rangoon rice, Greek olives, Jaffa oranges, grapes, pomegranates, and wooden crates with labels depicting robust,black-haired women with arms full of produce. Intoxicated by the whirl of exotic fragrances, Kathryn felt she might be closing in on something important. As she walked down an aisle of dates and figs, someone spoke.
“Can I help you?”
She turned and saw a woman peeking over the shelf. To her astonishment, she had green eyes with pale irises, just like the woman in her dream. “Yes, I believe you can!” said Kathryn, stepping around to view the woman full-on.
“I’ve seen you before,” said Ariadne. Slender, olive-skinned Ariadne wore no veil and dressed like any young woman who might have worked in a store. She looked Kathryn up and down as if she were a long-lost sister.
“Oh!” said Kathryn.
“Princess!” said Ariadne. “We need to talk.”
“Princess?”
“Let’s go someplace.”
“What if you get customers?”
“I don’t work here.”
Ten minutes later, the two women were sitting in a nearby coffee shop discussing Kathryn’s dream. It turned out that Ariadne had an incredible story of her own from the previous night.
“I dreamt that I sent you the bell,” she said. “It was my writing on the package. When you rang it, I came to answer and deliver a message. You were supposed to come with me to get your reward, which was a lifetime of bliss.”
“A lifetime of bliss?”
“That was my understanding.”
The whole thing made Kathryn feel a little giddy — and Kathryn was someone who hated feeling giddy. “This is just getting stupid!” she began, attempting to get a rational grip on things. “Let’s look at the facts. What do we know? I had a dream — a pretty one, but it was still a dream. I saw someone who looked like you; meanwhile, you had a dream about a princess who looked a bit like me. And then we met. That’s a million-to-one chance, but so is winning a lottery, and people win lotteries every day.”
“So, if it was all a dream, what am I? A figment of your imagination?”
“Prove to me you’re not,” said Kathryn, narrowing her gaze and pursing her lips.
“OK, let’s see if I can wake you up!” Ariadne grabbed a fork.
Kathryn pulled back before she could be jabbed. “Seriously, even if there was some sort of truth to this — and I’m not even sure what I mean by “truth” in this context — how could we ever get back to the dream?”
“Ahh! That’s the question”, said Ariadne. She went on to speculate that since they had been drawn to meet each other in the market, maybe they were being directed by unseen forces.
Kathryn raised an eyebrow. “Sounds a bit woo-woo.”
“OK, so what brought you here?”
“I thought I heard music from the dream and was trying to track it down. What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing.”
Kathryn was grateful that Ariadne didn’t mock her. “OK, never mind.”
***
Twenty minutes later, the conversation was wrapping up.
“Well, I’m sorry to have let you down,” said Kathryn. That came out a bit snide, so she adjusted her tone. “No, really, I am. Maybe I would have left with you if I’d known what was going to happen.”
“You would have drunk the milk of paradise.Look, I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do; all I can think of is that I have to get back. Every moment away breaks my heart.”
“Yes, that’s how I felt this morning when Matt entered the room.”
“Who’s Matt?”
“My husband. He came in just as I was about to leave with you.”
“I think I ought to speak to him.”
“No, no. God no. Matt already thinks this whole vision of Shangri-La or Xanadu, or whatever you want to call it, is idiotic. He doesn’t believe anything unless it’s been published in peer-reviewed journals.”
“Very admirable, I’m sure,” said Ariadne without conviction.
“He takes great pride in that.”
“Then you’ll have to leave him behind.”
“Leave Matt?”
“Don’t say it hasn’t already occurred to you.” That stung a bit because it was true.
“The real question is, if you were somehow able to come to me again in a vision, would I go with you?”
“And . . . what’s your answer?” asked Ariadne.
Kathryn bit her lip as she considered the question. “Look, if you find a way, let me know and I’ll see.” She gazed down at her empty cup.
Ariadne leaned back and sighed. “So, it’s all up to me.”
***
When the two women parted, Kathryn, though exhilarated about meeting someone from a dream, was also a little depleted and feeling sorry for Ariadne. To her surprise, she’d begun to feel a real bond with her — despite the fact that Matt would have considered her flakey. If only he could have a similar experience, she thought, then they’d both be back on the same page.
When she got back to Sheppard Avenue, dark clouds were looming again. She stopped at the phone booth and called the lab to say she wouldn’t be in because of a family emergency.
Then, as distant thunder began to rumble, she called Matt at the university. She didn’t mention Ariadne, of course; just saying that she was walking home early and would see him in the evening. That didn’t stop Matt from getting in a little dig. “Well, don’t fall asleep in any chairs,” he joked. “I don’t want to hear any more crazy talk.” He was still laughing when she slammed down the receiver.
It was all very well for him to be skeptical of something when there were no eyewitnesses, but he wouldn’t accept the testimony of his own wife. As the wind picked up, Kathryn trudged along the wet sidewalk for several minutes, furious that she’d married an idiot.
Shangri-La was looking better by the moment. The rain was pretty steady now. She thought of what Matt had said about falling asleep in the chair again. It was worth a shot. If he didn’t believe it, that was too bad for him; if she ever got another chance at happiness, she was grabbing it regardless. At that moment, she decided to take a taxi home. Turning to face traffic, she hailed the first cab she saw and climbed into the back seat.
“I know exactly where to take you,” said the driver.
“Oh?” Kathryn said, then drew a sharp breath as her eyes met those of the driver in the rear-view mirror.
Ariadne, dressed as she was in the vision, turned to face Kathryn. “Things are falling into place,” she said, pulling down her veil and revealing a radiant smile. “I’ve figured it out!”
***
When Matt arrived home that evening, he knew that Kathryn hadn’t been back to the house because the newspaper was still lying on the porch. Taking it to the living room, he turned on the lamp and sat down. But it was too hard to focus, knowing that Kathryn was out in the rain. He’d been too hard on her. That much was obvious. Lowering the paper, he noticed something on the table next to him. It was a bell etched with a Byzantine design. He put down the paper and turned the bell over in his hands, admiring its proportions. Then he sat back and gave it a ring.
***
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David Partington is an omnivorous mammal and retired zookeeper, with work published in The Literary Hatchet, Jake, Ruth and Ann’s Guide to Time Travel, and elsewhere. Experts advise anyone encountering Mr. Partington to exercise caution; sudden movements or flash photography may cause his behaviour to become unpredictable.