2. The Flight Beyond Fear
This ‘behind-the-scenes’ episode of Dreamhouse Row was intentionally scheduled for the 31st of December 2024 (NZDT) when the New Moon was transitioning through the constellation of Capricorn.
Written Transcript
In the fathomless depths of cosmic sleep, where all sentient minds roam during moments of active dreaming, the Master of the twelve dreamhouses analysed his opponent’s next move. Fair-skinned this Master was, almost certainly hailing from Celtic stock, with a barrel-chested, muscular frame that hinted at many long-lost glory days inside the boxing ring. But this weighty, stolid, mass of a man had long since hung up his fighting gloves in favour of a comfortable retirement, for he was hovering around his late seventies now (at least in physical appearance); and if there was one thing that he had learned about himself – throughout the many epochs and aeons that had passed since his immaculate conception – it was that he very much preferred to spar within the four-sided ring of a chequered chess board. No mess, but just as fierce. Precisely how he liked to rumble.
‘Mind like a steel trap,’ his feminine counterpart would often comment to herself, although she frequently underestimated just how sharp his faculties were – and just how deadly, too.
The oft quoted adage ‘as within, so without’ could not have been more applicable to the man, because he was as meticulous with his internal decision-making as he was with his external presentation. Indeed, as he sat in his high-backed chair at his stout, square gaming table (both of which were carved from clear crystal quartz), it was evident to anybody watching that he had impeccable taste. Dressed in semiformal evening attire, with his fine white hair combed neatly to one side, his midnight-blue shirt was unbuttoned at the top and his sleeves were rolled up to his forearms: a not-so-subtle declaration to any stray, wayward dreamers that he was unapologetically ‘off duty’ for the time being. But even without his neck-tie and cuff-links on display, or the matching dinner jacket that now hung casually from the back of his chair, the Master’s elegance and gravitas was undeniable – and irresistible as well. Like an iron filing to a magnet, one’s inner eye couldn’t help but be drawn towards him; be drawn into him.
With his left elbow resting on his crystalline armrest, and his left hand cupping his chin, the wily old man was so engrossed in the chess game before him that he had become almost oblivious to the sweeping majesty all around him. For his stout, square gaming table was actually situated in the middle of a wide, colossal bridge – a bridge that had been entirely fashioned from an infinite plane of obsidian (an infinite plane of black volcanic glass). And so smooth and polished was this gargantuan structure that everything standing on top of it, and everything cartwheeling above it, was reflected in perfect symmetry upon it’s pristine surface: a mirror-image of an inverted world. Having neither an endpoint nor a start-point, though, the causeway of this impossible bridge stretched endlessly ahead of the Master, towards a place that can only be described as the distant future; and the causeway, of course, stretched endlessly behind him as well, towards a place that can only be described as the distant past.
But this feat of architectural engineering was not the most arresting aspect of this liminal scene (not even by half). For around the bridge, rotating like a water-wheel around a dry spoke, there spun the vivid panoply of the twelve galactic dreamhouses – the infamous Great Twelve; turning, as they had always done, in a perpetual clockwise orbit; immeasurably vast, and iridescent too. Indeed, this band of imaginal dwellings cut their circular path through the sable expanse of infinity itself; looping, like a panoramic roll of stained glass windows, around the curved and boundless edge of the dreaming realm. Just there! Rising up from the West, a few miles hence, the dreamhouse of Cancer was the first dwelling to shimmer above the horizon line – and a resplendent vision it was as well; all ghostly blue against the pitch-black void. But further up the wheel, arcing directly over the seated Master, the residence of Libra held the entire astrological procession in a state of perfect balance; like a veritable North Star, like Polaris itself, it shone like a crown jewel. Then moving, ever moving, rolling down towards the other side, the palatial estate of Capricorn made it’s slow, methodical descent towards the farthest reaches of the far-flung East; inch by imperceptible inch, it marched directly opposite it’s Cancerian complement – just a fraction above the horizon line. And so the translucent dreamhouses spun. And so they would always spin.
Sensing the inimitable arrival of the caprine quarter, the Master paused his intense scrutiny of the chess game to look down at his Breitling watch, and he calculated that in exactly forty minutes and thirty-seven seconds the quantum door to the Capricornian estate would be positioned at ninety degrees to his right. A most opportune time to admit another dreamer . . . if he felt so inclined.
It was then that he became aware, once more, of the deafening roar of a waterfall, for the living waters of the collective subconscious coalesced and churned beneath the wide, colossal bridge; continually cascading downwards – ever downwards – into the bottomless realms and reservoirs that not even the Master himself could traverse. But all of this atmospheric noise was muted to a soft, quiet tinkle when a familiar woman finally spoke.
‘Do you think they’ll ever see it the way we do?’ came her sultry, melancholic voice, echoing across the volcanic glass; and for the first time in nearly half an hour the Master swivelled in his chair to behold his opponent . . . his eternal other half . . . his Anima.
When time stands still it can be a fickle minx to catch, but if anybody had been privy to this stellar interaction between man and woman they would have seen, for the briefest of moments, that the revolving troop stood still.
I’m A. K. Bonn . . . and this is Dreamhouse Row.
* * *
The Mistress stood at the very edge of the bridge – only a centimetre away from the sheer, abysmal drop – with her back towards her partner. Staring down into the vacuum below, she watched the up-and-coming dreamhouses of Gemini and Taurus as they followed the same ascending path of the Cancerian dreamhouse in front of them. She watched them both roll up from the south, slowly but surely, one after the other, determined to make their own appearance above the horizon line. It would be another couple of days before the Geminian domain arrived in the West, directly at eye level, and then another couple of days again before the Taurean domain stepped up to take it’s place. But these two imaginal dwellings were no less impressive for being situated further down on the spinning wheel, at seven and eight respectively; if anything, they seemed even more spectacular when they were viewed from on high, from the precipice of the bridge, for the pull of gravity somehow magnified their splendour as they curved upwards from the deep. And besides, they were positively glistening tonight as they lifted up and away from the churning, collective maelstrom down under; because enormous cataracts of pristine water had rushed all over their hard edges and then thundered down their sides, leaving a phosphorescent sheen of pure, distilled imagination all over their vast exteriors. In fact, if one possessed the all-seeing sight of the oracle or the sage, great droplets of electric blue and neon red and fluorescent green could be seen dripping from their turrets, chimneys and gables. So it couldn’t really be argued with: the dreamhouses of Gemini and Taurus were always a sight to see, no matter their position in the marching band.
The woman whom the Master called ‘Anima’ breathed in the mists of the falling dream as the music of the celestial abodes played a background lullaby around her. Billions of incandescent fireflies flickered inside each whirling dreamhouse overhead and underneath, and she surveyed all of these pinpricks of light with a sad and weary resignation. For each incandescent firefly was hers and the Master’s joint responsibility; each incandescent firefly was the travelling mind of an active dreamer. And it was New Year’s Eve as well – a particularly busy evening. Do you think they’ll ever see it the way we do? she asked again, but this time the question was put forth as a silent, unspoken thought.
‘Some of them will see it – we know at least One who has,’ replied the old man, but he refrained from saying anything else out loud, to savour the sight of his lady.
Anima’s cocoa-brown skin, shaved woollen mane, and svelte hourglass figure was her best guise yet. A sequinned plum-red dress fell away from her shoulders to reveal the entire length of her spine, and then it wrapped itself around her pert derrière before coming to a stop just beneath her knees. To complete the magnificent ensemble, a pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos – in exactly the same plum-red – had been fastened to her dainty feet; thin strips of Italian leather rising up from each heel to criss-cross around her ankles and finish, mid-calf, in a tight, tidy bow. Only Anima knew that the stilettos were second-hand (mint condition, granted, but still second-hand); because at the age of fifty-five million she didn’t dress like a star for him, or even for herself. She dressed like a star for the legions of single mothers whom she had had to guide through the darkest hours of night; for the legions of single mothers whom she had had to steer through the hardest valleys of rock bottom. Those were the ladies who inspired her the most, and the ladies whom she loved to work with the most: the smart ones who knew how to make ends meet; the strong ones who knew how to survive on a shoe-string budget; the savvy ones who knew how to break the mould to break themselves free.
The Mistress turned lightly on her feet and sashayed back towards the gaming table, her studded heels tapping a crisp staccato beat as she made her way across the breadth of the glassy bridge. When she at last took her place in the vacant high-backed chair opposite the Master, her generous cleavage making even the chess pieces blink, she squarely asked the old man: ‘Why haven’t you re-admitted my dreamer from September, Animus? The one who stole my bleeding heart? You remember it – the dreamhouse of Scorpio, the Waxing Crescent Moon, the handful of mixed berries.’
Animus completely ignored her, for he was once again engrossed in the chess game before him.
‘Nearly four lunar cycles have waxed and waned since that night,’ the Mistress said sharply, her tongue now becoming an unsheathed blade. ‘And I distinctly remember you saying that you would meet that troubled soul again in the dreamhouse of Taurus . . . well the Full Moon transitioned through the dreamhouse of Taurus just last month – in November. It would have been a perfect opportunity, no?’
Animus leaned forward and calmly slid one of his ebony rooks up the chess board, five squares vertically, directly towards the Mistress. ‘You actually loved that one,’ he said absent-mindedly.
‘I love all of them,’ she replied coolly, the light of a billion fireflies flickering behind her. ‘And I hate all of them.’
‘Anima,’ the old man tempered, now sitting himself upright to give her his undivided attention. ‘I daresay that you need them . . . as do I,’ he continued. ‘But need can often feel like love and hate in equal measure, do you not agree?’
The Mistress remained silent and glanced down at the polished obsidian floor beside her, the dreamhouse of Virgo catching her eye as it’s reflection bounced up from beneath the quartz table. She suddenly looked very tired and fragile – and very much in her mid-fifties.
‘I haven’t re-admitted your September dreamer because I have a duty of care towards the traumatised ones,’ Animus explained matter-of-factly. ‘But I haven’t forgotten about it, my dear. And I will lead that troubled soul through the mansion of Taurus whenever the time is right.’ It was then that he beheld the woman before him with a rare and profound tenderness, for he was unexpectedly moved by the beauty of her liquid-gold eyes and berry-stained lips and Saharan skin. ‘It’s your turn,’ he said softly.
Anima forced herself to look at the chequered board and then realised, almost immediately, that the Master had out-manoeuvred her. The word check-mate resounded in the charged, muted space as they both shared the same telepathic thought, but Anima wasn’t the type to surrender easily – or surrender at all, in fact; so without lifting her head, she simply blinked up at her partner with a dry, laconic expression and stubbornly held his gaze; letting her body language, rather than her words, communicate her admittance of defeat. That grin, she silently mused to herself, looking across at the wily old man. Those eyes, he silently noted to himself, looking straight back at her.
‘Have it!’ Anima exclaimed theatrically, unable to quell the amusement that now bubbled up within her, or the smile that now spread across her face. She picked up her ivory King from it’s ambushed square and playfully waggled it in front of the Master, but before she allowed him to take the winning piece from her, she tapped an acrylic, plum-red nail against the porcelain figurine and then placed the entirety of it’s crowned head between her teeth. Like a dog with a bone, she bit down hard.
In an instant the King’s ivory head became molten, dissolving upon Anima’s tongue as a sweet white chocolate, and then from the gaping orifice of it’s decapitated body there began to ooze a thick, viscous glut of salted-caramel sauce.
Satisfied with this final move – the only move she had left to play – Anima plonked the headless chess piece directly in front of the Master and licked her manicured nails clean; her smile almost erupting into a rich, throaty laugh.
Never in a million years had Animus, the Master of the Great Twelve, received – or declined – such a provocative invitation to display his own showmanship; and so without wasting a single second to enter stage right, he slammed a muscled, leaden fist onto the crystalline table and proceeded to push himself up with raw, brute strength.
The sinews of his back cramped and his shoulder-blades warped as he rose, half-bent, shape-shifting. Where just a moment before he had worn the fair weathered skin of a Celtic male, he now wore the tawny, orange pelt of a wild cat – black stripes marking his silky, furry coat like savage lines of barbed wire. Then he pounded his other muscled, leaden fist into the chequered board (pulverising the last remains of the white chocolate King in the process), but where he had shown human knuckles before, he now showed protruding claws; and where he had shown a fleshy palm, he now showed a padded paw. Whiskers sprouted next, and then a wet pink nose, before the Master-that-was-now-a-tiger-cub leapt fairly and squarely into the middle of the gaming table; mere inches away from his opponent’s face.
Anima leaned back in her chair as a handful of ebony and ivory chess pieces went clattering to the glassy floor, and she was surprised to find that her pulse had slightly quickened with adrenaline.
The tiger cub, smelling her well-masked fear, immediately unleashed a scratchy, abrasive yowl – too high in pitch to be an aggressive growl, but too low in pitch to be a safe, domestic meow. Proceed with caution came the telepathic command, but Anima didn’t know whether or not to retreat or retort.
She cautiously offered her left hand in both greeting and submission: palm-side facing down, fingers ready to be kissed (in exactly the same way that a noblewoman might offer her hand to an attending gentleman).
The tiger cub squinted his quicksilver eyes in immense satisfaction at this gesture, and he gave in return a chuffing, burring vocalization that was the closest sound to a ‘purr’ that a wild cat could emit. Deftly padding forward, careful not to step over the edge, the four-legged fiend then licked his rough, sand-paper tongue along the length of the Mistress’ ring finger . . . along the length of her fiercely independent, ringless ring finger.
At this much bolder provocation of his, Anima finally laughed out loud; allowing herself to release the very last vestiges of her prior melancholy in a joyous, husky wheeze. ‘Please,’ she chuckled when she at last regained her breath, dramatically rolling her eyes.
Not at all ready to give her the last word though, the cub promptly leapt off the stout, square table with a laissez-faire flourish, and as he did so he morphed – mid air – into a fully-grown Siberian tiger. Roaring as he landed, his four paws smashed into the obsidian bridge with an otherworldly force; and where each paw made contact with the polished volcanic glass, a violent chain-reaction of cracks and fissures ricocheted outwards in every direction: a network of seismic fault-lines. ‘As you wish – Mistress,’ the majestic creature growled, placing a pointed and loaded emphasis upon his lady’s formal title; then with one whip of his lightning-rod tail, he smacked the side of his table and chair and sent both items of furniture careening towards the edge of the bridge.
The Mistress watched on in amazement as the heavy quartz furnishings slid across the causeway like ice-hockey pucks across a frozen lake; weightless, unencumbered and anti-gravitic. But her amazement was not in response to the grandiose display itself – she could pull-off the same stunt with one flick of an eyebrow. No, what caused her mouth to gape wide open was the fleeting sight of a solitary chess piece, still sitting atop the table as if it were glued to the chequered board itself. Was Animus aware? she asked herself, but before the question had finished formulating within her mind as a definitive line of inquiry, she already knew the answer. Mind like a steel trap resounded the oft-repeated phrase, yet it hadn’t been uttered verbally. She didn’t know which one of them had thought the sentence first, but it didn’t actually matter. Of course Animus was aware! As with most things in this realm and the twelve others, his final move was nearly always a final test.
Narrowing her eyes, each one of her pupils now the smallest aperture of a telescopic lens, the Mistress zoomed-in on the lone chess piece as it sailed towards the precipice; and when the red dot of her laser vision locked-on to it’s crowned ebony head, she knew that she had hit the jack-pot. With her breath slightly hitching in anticipation, she quickly scanned the length of the porcelain figurine to be certain of what she was seeing, and as sure as eggs were eggs, she could clearly make-out the unmistakeable shape of a bosomed chest and a royal tiara; for it was not the ebony King that she was looking at, but a much better prize indeed. In fact, as far as she was concerned, it was the only prize worth winning in this particular game . . . which her partner Animus knew full well.
The crystalline table and chair suddenly shot off the edge of the bridge to the sound of a cracking whip, and then they plunged – without pause – into the abysmal drop below; lost forever to the coalescing waters of humanity’s deepest dreams. But arcing high above that unfathomable gulf, briefly suspended between a flight and a fall, the penultimate chess piece – the black, ebony Queen – twirled and swirled in a graceful pirouette; almost, it seemed, as a respectful hommage to the vivid panoply of the twelve galactic dreamhouses, spinning all around it. As the light of a billion fireflies flickered upon it’s porcelain dress, the miniature monarch danced it’s last dance alone, and the Mistress – Anima – witnessed all of this pomp and ceremony with spellbound appreciation, as one black sovereign witnessing another.
But within moments there came the descent – and with the descent there came the deafening roar of a waterfall. For when the ebony Queen began to plummet into the abyss, the muted noise of the collective subconscious simultaneously amped back up to full volume, thundering from beneath the bridge like an ecstatic, applauding audience. ‘Encore!’ the living waters seemed to cheer. ‘Encore!’ the twelve dreamhouses seemed to clap. And it was to this cacophonous round of applause that Anima clicked back into action.
Yanking up her sequinned dress, she momentarily exposed the lace garter around her thigh to pull out a very different kind of stiletto; and with the quick, confident assurance of a seasoned professional, she then expertly wielded this small, lightweight dagger to slice away the thin strips of Italian leather that were criss-crossed around her ankles and calves. Crouching down like an athlete ready to sprint, Anima placed the dagger’s tapered blade into one of the bows at her mid-calf and gave it a sharp nick. To both her pleasure and her pride, the thin strips of plum-red leather responded exactly as she had intended them to, for they didn’t fall away from her leg as tough bits of animal hide, but rather as sleek satin ribbons; effortlessly pooling around her feet like a delicate heap of intestines. ‘Guts for garters,’ she muttered to herself, shifting her weight onto her other studded heel to repeat the same procedure on the second knotted bow. But when the second pile of ribbons effortlessly pooled around her feet, she clutched the plum-red fabric and held it to her chest, crying ‘garters for guts!’ instead. For although she was the Mistress of the Great Twelve, and she could bend the laws of time and space to her will, she was incorrigibly scared of heights . . . which her partner Animus also knew. See, it wasn’t speed or patience that she needed, because timing was her forte. But hell’s bells – when it came to the heights? She could definitely do with some more courage.
Anima splayed her hands onto the glassy floor beneath her, hastily kicking off both heels, and then she launched – like a sprinter from a starting block – from her crouched, pent position. It was then that the obsidian bridge seemed to slide of it’s own accord beneath her feet, for she skated across that gargantuan structure as if it were nothing more than a high-speed conveyor belt. Reaching the precipice in just three sweeping strides, she vaulted over the edge with perfect, perfected poise: arms extended above her head, biceps pressed against her ears, fingers touching tip-to-tip; a human arrow. And then she, herself, became the ebony Queen, the penultimate piece, the better prize. She, herself, became the soaring monarch; briefly suspended between a flight and a fall. But when Anima surrendered to the gravity of the dive – with both her head and body folding over her feet – she spun, spun, spun towards the thunderous waters below with a tour de force of consecutive somersaults. Garters for guts she rejoiced from within, for her greatest fear had once again become her greatest joy . . . as it always did, and as it always would.
Golden-brown feathers unfurled from her bare arms, and eviscerating talons replaced her dainty feet, as she nose-dived, head-first, towards the infernal abyss. Rapidly reaching a state of terminal velocity, she relished this moment of free-fall because it was her favourite part of conquering the heights: the flight of the eagle – and the mercy of the swift kill.
The sought-after chess piece came easily into view as Anima focussed and then re-focussed her telescopic eyes. Her tiny target was only a scant few metres in front of her beak now, as both she and the porcelain figurine plummeted in tandem towards the abysmal depths; and all the while the blazing dreamhouse of Aries lay miles below and ahead, insisting on making itself partly visible through the cascading sheets of water that drained into the basin of the south. But the-eagle-that-was-formerly-Anima refused to get distracted by the miraculous view beneath her, and instead directed the red dot of her laser vision onto the bosomed chest and royal tiara of her prey. The gap was steadily closing between them now, but not as quickly as she would have liked!
It was then that a jet of hot perfumed air came blasting up from the deep, which not only turned the mists of the falling dream into a humid swathe of rose-scented steam, but it also took her by surprise. With her feathers ruffling and her liquid-gold eyes glinting, the eagle delighted in this amorous tickle from down under, for the unruly quarter of Aries had just blown her a champion’s kiss; and it was precisely this ostentatious display of affection that gifted her with the winning advantage. See, the thermal blast from below had enveloped the beautiful bird like a welcome embrace, but for the solitary chess piece – for the black, ebony Queen – it had hit as an infernal wall of heat; slamming the porcelain figurine back up towards the heavens, back from whence it had fallen, and straight into the eagle’s outstretched talons.
Anima tore the miniature monarch from the clutches of gravity and then beat her magnificent wings to catch the rising thermal homeward, savouring every millisecond of the collaborative effort between her and the Arian domain. And it was not the first time that evening that the deafening roar of the collective subconscious sounded like an ecstatic, applauding audience. ‘Encore!’ the living waters seemed to cheer again. ‘Encore!’ the twelve dreamhouses seemed to clap once more. And to her, this was the true prize; the unity, the joy, the sublimation of fear – this was the true prize. In fact, as far as she was concerned, it was the only prize worth winning in this particular game . . . which her partner Animus also knew.
Looking down from on high, from nearly ten thousand feet above, the Siberian tiger stood at the precipice of the obsidian bridge and beheld his opponent . . . his eternal other half . . . his Mistress. As he watched her soar in an ascending spiral, elevating gracefully up towards him from the fathomless depths, a loud, resonant gong reverberated in the farthest reaches of the far-flung East and he knew that the quantum door to the Capricornian estate had at last landed in place; ready to admit another dreamer.
With one whip of his lightning-rod tail he began to close down their theatre of miracles, drawing one galactic curtain down on top of another, until the vision of the translucent dreamhouses could no longer be seen. And when everything had been packed away – when nothing could be perceived beyond the wide, colossal bridge save the dense expanse of pitch-black void – the tiger felt the unmistakeable press of cobblestones beneath his paws.
It was then that the scent of a burning, scintillating sparkler came wafting from behind him, from the middle of the causeway; and it was this tell-tale, lit-match smell that announced the arrival of a stray, wayward dreamer. A sharp intake of breath soon followed thereafter, for the new arrival – the new sleeping traveller – had just begun to register the wide cobbled road . . . and the crystal chandelier overhead . . . and the four-legged beast that stood at the edge of the limelight, partly in shadow.
‘Good evening, dear dreamer,’ the hungry tiger growled, turning himself around from the dark vacuum beyond to face both his ward and his prey. And if anybody had been privy to this stellar interaction between the Master and the terrified dreamer they would have sensed, for the briefest of moments, that the invisible troop stood still.
‘Welcome to Dreamhouse Row,’ he finished . . . and the nightmare officially began.
