Clockwork City

Dreams and Nightmares

The figure of the phantom faded and shark into a ball of silver light and slowly sank into the pool like a tiny silver sun sinking into the ocean.

Sandra sighed and stopped shivering. It wasn't as cold as it was before.

"Ok but what did the phantom mean," asked Sandra as she followed the Sandman into the cave.

The cave looked dark and forbidding but as soon as the Sandman took out a handful of sparkling silver sand from a pouch and threw it into the cave its walls started glowing as if they had been glass lit up from the inside. Sandra followed the Sandman deep into the cave through a door which he opened with a key he took out from his pocket.

She looked around at the spools of colourful thread everywhere. They walked into a room with many spinning wheels and there were tiny men spinning yarns and yarns of thread. "This is the spinning room," said the Sandman, smiling at the little men who were busy spinning yarn of every colour Sandra could imagine.

"Are they spinning so that you can knit dreams," asked Sandra, looking at the tiny men with conical hats working industrially at their spinning wheels. Some of them looked up from their work, smiled and nodded their heads at Sandra.

"There is a special weaving department too," explained the Sandman as they walked down the aisle with the tiny men spinning spools of colourful thread. The sun shone down from the glass roof and cast pools of light at the feet of the spinners. They threw what looked sparkling sand on the pools of light and grabbed clumps of what looked like gold tinted cotton candy from the floor and started spinning them ito colourful thread. Sandra noticed that the colour of the spinning wheel was the same as the thread spun by it.

The Sandman opened another door with another key and they walked into a room with tiny women knitting. Sandra noticed that they were knitting what looked like handkerchiefs with colourful scenes on them.

"Are they knitting dreams?" asked Sandra looking at the women as they walked past them. Some of them looked up from their knitting and nodded and smiled at her and the sandman.

"Yes, they are, you don't think I could possibly do it by myself. I only knit the most special and difficult dreams to knit. I knit dreams of kings, queens, nobles and artists. I knit the dreams that are not common. I knit dreams that have more detail, scenes and colours."

"That sounds quite cool!" said Sandra, as she watched a woman take some blue thread and start knitting a starry sky.

"Now we need to get some disguises. I think we need to make it as convincing as possible, so that we can fool my brother."

"Do you think it will work," asked Sandra, remembering the worst nightmare she had had. It had been when she had dreamed that her mom was drowning at sea. She tried to help her and she found that she couldn't move at all. She had had this nightmare a couple of times that made her remember it suddenly out of the blue.

"Well, we will never know unless we try, and we have no other choice but to try," said the Sandman as they walked out of the knitting room, leaving the tiny women behind. They came to a narrow passage and walked down it. Sandra followed the Sandman down the winding passage. The Sandman came to a stop by a door which had no keyhole. He took out a tiny snuff box from his pocket and dipped his finger into it. He then traced something on the surface of the door. A strange symbol that looked like an eye appeared on the door and the door opened.

Sandra stepped in through the door. Once she had, the door shut. She looked around her. It was the strangest room she had ever seen in her life. There were colourful threads everywhere. Piles and piles of what looked like the colourful handkerchiefs the women and sandman had been kitting lay in a pile.