Another World of Dreams-The Escape

Chapter 7 - Wanted

Just as the distant mountains of her dreams materialized, Kaan stood up from the bed, pulling Liv back to reality.

"What are you doing?" she asked, yawning.

"I'm hungry."

"There are a few slices of dried apple in my bag and it won't be long before we taste Elijah's stew."

"I don't eat fish." Kaan sat down on the mattress and studied the scratched wooden floorboards. "There is a yellow house opposite the Elf Bosket, with a shop on one side and a gnome bakery on the other. The scent of baked bread, Liv, is so wonderful that it can rip me from my dreams. When the wind blows from the east, it's everywhere in the bosket. I've tasted their bread a few times, even pastries, but it was either old leftovers or thrown at us by visitors. Today, as we hurried towards the harbor I smelled something similar in that big street."

"You mean the Main Street? And you want to go there? That's stupid and dangerous."

"I'm not afraid."

"And how would you pay for the bread?"

Kaan tilted his head and looked at her. A pair of hungry eyes beat any argument, they cut through reason and arouse compassion in all of us. Liv was no exception.

"Fine," she said, "but act like you go there every day."

A quarter of an hour later they walked out of the bakery carrying a loaf of bread and a cinnamon pretzel each. Liv had slipped a red candied apple in her pocket without paying for it, as was the right of a half-blood living outside the law. Kaan bit a small piece of his pretzel and chewed gently.

"It's not what I expected," he said and took a big bite, crumbs flying out of his mouth.

"That's a sweet pretzel with cinnamon in it," she explained. "Cinnamon is a spice from far-off islands in the South Sea," she added.

"It tastes bark," he mumbled, his mouth full of pretzel. "But I like it."

People from every corner of the continent swirled past them. Many of them were merchants from Norma. It was not easy to distinguish them from the locals, but Liv could tell them apart. Tiny details on their gray-brown outfits, such as a button or a handkerchief, were of bright colors and shone brighter than a rainbow on a cloudy sky. Eastern men with turbans bigger than tablecloths stood a stone's throw away, arguing in a foreign language. A group of silent women wearing black dresses marched like soldiers down the street in two columns, their faces painted gray and their lips the color of blood. Everyone's hair glistened with grease and was arranged in a tight knot. The seasoned ladies in the line's front had a dozen rings stuck through their lips and noses. Liv recognized it as a sign of seniority. The adolescent girls in the back only carried a thin iron ring in the corner of their lower lips.

"The Nuns of the Night," she muttered with a voice of someone swallowing kerosene once they were out of earshot. "My governess joined their order after she left my family."

Kaan was not listening. He paid no more attention to the nuns than to the beggars in the gutter. Two girls on a balcony caught his eyes. They wore hats with so many bows that their ribbons could tie together all the elves in the Dream Park. He walked up to a cross-street and looked out over the glistening sea. It was a hundred times more beautiful than the gray ocean in his dreams, where the rain never stopped falling. On the horizon, the shape of a slim creature rose from the water, then dove beneath the surface. He wondered if it had been a naiad. To his own surprise he realized that he felt at home amongst the strange people on the street. Off the coast of Anland, he was free. A few miles out at sea, he and Liv were equals.

"I'm ready to go back to the Rising Cloud. Let's hide in the cabin until we reach Northport."

Liv took her eyes off the line of nuns disappearing behind a house corner, grabbed Kaan by the hand and led him through an alley to the harbor. She stepped out on the quay, but the elf pulled her back and pushed her against a wall. A coach as shiny black as oil thundered past them at less than an arm's length distance. The coachman clung to the reins and screamed at a galloping chestnut mare. A stride away from the quayside, the horse stopped short and kicked a line of nearby barrels into the sea. The carriage swung around, its rear wheel spinning in the air above the water. The horse continued to stomp its hooves, white saliva pouring from its mouth.