Fantastic Metropolis

“It’s been called that ever since I was little. Grandfather named it, I think.”

“So that’s where they went.” That swoopy dangerous feeling again, and so she hid from it, asked, “Who do you dream, then?” It seemed a reasonable question, since they were all so busy dreaming one another.

“I dream a painter, a woman on Earth. She paints a gate.”

So that’s what I do with my life. All this time I’ve really been a gate-maker. Maybe I have another life here, Susan thought then, live in a hill village, have just forgotten, or not woken to it yet. Like the foggy corners of rooms it might come clear the longer I stay.

He’d stopped at a smallish ketch, largely finished; Susan climbed the ladder first as she knew he’d expect her to with his unfamiliar but not entirely unwelcome manners. Once on deck they descended again, down the companionway hatch, another ladder into the cabin.

“I’m working on the cabinets,” he said, showing her.

There were two bunks, one on either side of the hull, built into the bulkheads. One of them had bed linen on it, beautiful hand-embroidered white linen.

“I sleep here sometimes,” Stiv said, “when I’m working late.”

She sat down on the bed, looked around the small cabin, humbled by the detail work on the cabinetry. “You’re too young to be so good.”

“I started at fourteen.”

“And you designed it all too?” Amazing what you could learn if you didn’t spend your high school years in high school. Never mind the television.

“I’m not a master yet, won’t be for years but I learned from one.”

Susan was tired suddenly. It was very tiring, whatever it was, like using muscles that had only just been invented. She didn’t want to damage them. Broken butterfly wings. “The sheets smell like roses,” she said, surprised.

Stiv looked sheepish. “My mother Heloise used to rinse everything in rose water. I still do it sometimes, in memory of her.”

“I have a cat called Heloise.”

Stiv glanced at her curiously as though he wanted to know more, but then shyly not speaking opened the one finished drawer and took out a little model boat, carved painstakingly from ends of lumber and glued together. There were bits of string for rigging, and tiny sails hand sewn from scraps of coloured canvas. It was so small it fit into the palm of his hand, and then hers.

“You made this too? It’s beautiful.”

“It’s yours.”

She turned it around and around in her hand, saw on the back a tiny brass plaque with an engraved name, “Susan.”

“You made this for me?”

“I’d been planning to visit you, meet you, wanted to bring a gift. Only you came first, beat me to it. Can I still come?”

“If you can.”

“I’ll try. Good-bye Susan. Be careful on the way home.”

It was all gone then, and she woke in her loft bed, staring at the ceiling only inches away and yet his smile so warm, and she could still, for just a moment, feel his breath on her cheek.

Welcome home, sailor.

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Ursula Pflug’s Green Music is published by Tesseract Books.