Behind the Wind-Up Dancers

She couldn’t remember why she came here.

The train station bustled, but she felt outside of that sense of purpose, alone. Two trains and a bus after her impulsive decision, and now she could no longer feel the gripping urgency that brought her. Instead she stood uneasily, suddenly hyper-aware that this was not her place, that she shouldn’t be here. She wondered how all these other travelers could stand the loneliness.

Overhead a speaker buzzed with a disembodied voice announcing that the 4:27 from Grand Central was delayed due to technical difficulties. She thought of a clockwork train, unable to move because it’s missing a tiny but vital gear. Such a small piece, hiding behind the wind-up dancers, just barely visible when she looked hard enough-

Someone pushed past her, and the memory slipped away. A clockwork train? She didn’t even know if those existed.

Why had she come here?

She made her way over to a bench, disconcerted by the feeling of panic rustling in her stomach. It had dogged her ever since she woke up this morning. This feeling like she was forgetting something.

Her phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her pocket and tapped the screen. In big letters it said, “Mike’s birthday party; Today 4:30 pm; Notes- remember the cottage cheese dip, it’s his favorite! :)” She looked blankly at the alert, then deleted it.

She flicked through her phone, looking for nothing in particular. She shifted the heavy music box on her lap to a more comfortable position. She dug through her bag for some gum, then changed her mind and put the pack back in. For a few minutes she played solitaire, before giving up and putting the phone back in her pocket. Immediately she took it back out and flicked through to texts. She touched the fourth one down, the only one she hadn’t replied to.

The text was from herself. From this phone, sent at five-thirty that morning. But she couldn’t remember sending it.

“San Vicente train station, 4:30 p.m, platform 2. Bring the music box.”

She closed out of the text and put her phone away. She shouldn’t have been there, no matter what enigmatic texts her phone decided to send her, no matter how restless her dreams were the night before.

She glanced up at the sign for platform two above her, then looked out in the crowd, and wondered if she was just imagining that the man holding a box and walking past her looked familiar.

*

I am dreaming. I remember drifting off to the sound of my old music box; I can almost hear the simple tune still echoing around this strange place if I listen hard enough. I try to pinch my arm and feel a delayed sting, as if I pinched my physical self instead of my dreaming self.  The movement on my physical arm feels strange, and for a moment I amuse myself by tapping my real fingers without moving them in the dream. But the dream around me calls for my attention, so I go back to contemplating it. I can’t remember ever having such a vivid dream, but I am absolutely positive that this is one. How could it be anything else?

The space stretches around me almost infinitely, though I have a notion that it shouldn’t. As if I’d seen somewhere similar, years and years ago, but in smaller proportions. But though the space seems infinite, so do the towers and piles and masses of things that fill every inch of the dreamscape, forming a maze and a city of marvels. I start walking, because it seems like the thing to do. The only walkway I can find is along the train tracks, though they too twist and flip and plunge through the maze. Nothing here is straight. Nothing ought to be straight. I let the train tracks take me through this space, and stare at the dream around me.

Clock towers made of glass and involuted golden machinery flash and click and chime as they loom over me. Their faces gleam with strange lights and tick with absolute certainty around chaotic numbers and strange words- though I strangely pleased to see that they aren’t melted like a cliché. Books pile high around the towers, forming narrow bridges and archways and statues that vault over my head, and occasionally across my path so that I’m forced to climb around them, or pass through them if I remember the manipulability of dreams. Wire trees spring from the ground to twist and curl around delicate paper pillars. Colored lights that look like Christmas drip in streams and waterfalls from what might have been the sky, or perhaps a boundless ceiling; the lights spray out diamond droplets like stars onto my skin until I am encased in stars that eventually fade away. Broken mirrors balance precariously on leavers and looped cranks and buttons to form staircases that lead up and out of sight behind the chaos.

The city teems with movement: splashing lights, wind-up birds singing sweeter than my mother’s old lullabies, origami frogs leaping happily in a pool of shadows, carvings of fire sweeping across arches and pillars and towers only to disintegrate harmlessly into downy ash. But amid the movement there is nothing organic, alive. I stand alone in a desolate wonderland, the air of dejection and heavy memories weigh down on me like the coat of dust on a disused toy. Exactly like a disused toy: there is something touchingly childish about the architecture, the clockwork mechanics, the bright colors, the fascination with movement and flashing lights. And something familiar, too.  Something heartbreakingly familiar, but forgotten and out of reach.

“Hello?” I call out, not really to get an answer but to alleviate the weight of loneliness. My word echoes back to me, mimicking other people and sounds but still unmistakably my voice: Hello? Hello? Hello? I keep walking, vainly looking around me for some sign of another living thing, someone not part of my own unconscious. At one point I think I hear the echoes of children’s laughter, a boy and a girl playing with their clockwork dreams- but when I turn the corner, no one is there. “Hello?” I say again, hopelessly. I slow down, suddenly exhausted. The echoes fly back to me once more, mocking the loneliness of my dreamworld. Hello? Hello? Hello?

“Hello?”

I stop and lift my head. The last echo sounded different, somehow. Without the strains of my own self that had remained woven even in the distinct voices. “Hello?” I call. I look around me, but there is nothing here except memories I can’t remember. “Is someone here? Please, I’m lost.”

I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m lost. I wait, but only those words come back to me out of the dream. My head drops again, and I face forward again, ready to resume my desolate journey.

I stop short. Even though I could have sworn no one was here a minute ago, a boy- no, a man- stands only a few feet away from me. He looks at me with an expression of pure joy.

Even though a moment ago I would have given anything for the sight of another human being, a fierce discomfort and desire to be alone grips me.

“Kylie?” he says disbelievingly. “Is that you?” He steps closer, his hand half outstretched towards me.

I step back. “Do I know you?” I ask. “How do you know my name? Where am I, what is this place?”

He drops his hand. “You... you don’t remember?” he whispers, his face pale. “I know it’s been years, but... but you came back...”

“Came back?” I say uncertainly. “But I’ve never been here before in my life.” As I say it, I remember the flashes of familiarity, the echo of children’s voices, the shape of his face, and feel less sure. “The... the music box,” I say, a delicate chord floating from my waking ears into the dream. “I found my old music box in the back of my closet, and I remembered... No, I didn’t remember anything. I played it and I ended up here.” I look around and notice that the air seems lighter, the layer of dust slowly lifting off the toy. “I’m dreaming, though,” I murmur to myself. “This is a dream.” Though I hadn’t said it loudly, the echoes pick up again: a dream, a dream, a dream.

“Yes,” he says, a little sadly. “It’s only a dream.” He looks into my eyes, then rushes forward suddenly to envelop me in a fierce hug. “You’re here, though,” he whispers into my hair.  “I waited for so long, you have no idea, but I never really thought that...” He sighs deeply. “I’ve missed you so much, Kylie.”

If feels strange to be held like this. Strange, yet almost familiar, the echo of a memory. I don’t want to hold him back, but my arms move on their own accord to wrap loosely around his shoulders. “What’s your name?” I ask quietly.

A shudder runs through him. “Joshua,” he murmurs after a while. He lets go of me and looks away.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I don’t know you.”

He smiles bitterly. “It’s not-” he begins, but abruptly cuts off, turning to look in the distance with an alarmed expression. I look too. I can hear a low rumbling in the distance, far off back the way I came. Like an avalanche or an earthquake, the earth itself groaning and shifting in pain.

The sound doesn’t belong.

“What was that?” I ask as the rumble fades away. He shakes his head.

“I don’t know. It’s not supposed to make that noise.”

“Supposed to? It’s a dream, not a car.”

He snorts. “Who do you think made this city? And besides, when was the last time you heard a car make that noise?”

“Maybe you left the parking break on.”

“Or maybe you did. I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve never heard that sound before.”

The banter feels comfortable, natural, but I don’t want this stranger to be so jarringly familiar. I look away from his smile, and he moves away slightly. We stand in silence for a moment, both of us avoiding each other’s eyes. “How long have you been coming here?” I ask finally.

“Thirteen years,” he says quietly, still not looking at me. “Six when you still came, then seven on my own, building, waiting...”

“Thirteen,” I repeat to myself. There is something significant about that number. Thirteen, the last day. Something about an experiment... thirteen years and so many nights... I can’t remember. “Why can’t I remember?”

He finally glances at me. “What?”

I look around at the wonders around me, the dancing fireflies, the jigsaw puzzle pebbles, the glasses of water humming every time the light hits them. “This place... It’s so familiar, but I don’t know it. If I knew about this place, why would I forget about it?”

“I guess, it’s like...” He trails off, then starts again. “How often do you remember your dreams after you wake up?”

I want to say, all the time. Want to prove him wrong, prove that I had never come here before. Because I don’t want to have forgotten this place, forgotten him. But I can’t. “Never,” I say finally. He raises his eyebrows as if to say, Well? I look away and brush my fingers on a waterfall of christmas lights, sending a spray of diamond stars over both of us. “So why did I leave in the first place?” I ask, looking at him out of the corner of my eye. He shifts and doesn’t look at me. Instead, he starts tracing designs in the air; his fingers leave a glow behind them, like light drawings in low shutter-speed photos.

“I don’t know,” he says quietly. “We had an argument, you didn’t want... But then you just never came back, even though...” He pauses, takes a deep breath, and changes what he was about to say. “I don’t know how you could do it. I could never give this place up if I didn’t have to. It’s so...” He searches for the right word. “Marvelous. You could never have so much in the real world.”

I look around. “I suppose not,” I say uncertainly. “But it’s a little like cheating, isn’t it? None of this is real. It’s just an escape... You have to come back to reality sometime.”

He shrugs. “Says who?” He winks at me.

The earthquake strikes violently, and without warning.

I fall through the waterfall and slam against the clock tower with the crunch and shatter of breaking glass. The dream shakes so much that everything is reduced to a blur and a roar of collapsing wonders. I cover my head as a tower of books topples right next to me; I think I might be screaming. The ground convulses, it tilts and I’m sliding, slipping on a glass floor to hit a solid block of rubble and watching the debris of the book tower skidding towards me.  Desperately I try to imagine a wall there, create one using the dream, but it flickers feebly and dies, and the books slam painfully against my body.

Just as suddenly as it started, the earthquake stops. I don’t move at first, too stunned and bruised to do anything but lie there panting. Slowly, though, the dust settles and I raise my head to look around. What I can see of the city has been reduced to ruins, shattered glass and broken mirrors pulverized into sand, scraps of paper floating on the breeze, wire branches bent and gouging holes in the ground and through the rubble. The remains of some unrecognizable mechanism shelter me from a large metal beam.  Cautiously I edge out of the pile of torn books surrounding me and crawl out from under the wreckage. I stand, but there is nowhere to go: where before the train tracks led through a winding metropolis of clockwork and movement, now it runs on the edge of an abyss too deep to fathom.

Joshua is nowhere in sight.

Panic grips me. I look around, but there is nowhere he could possibly be on this side of the train tracks. “Joshua?” I shout desperately, hopelessly. No answer. “Joshua!” I scream, knowing it’s too late.

I don’t want to lose him.

Then, faintly... was that a sound, over near the edge? “Joshua?” I inch over to the brink of the abyss. There it is again, perhaps a moan, or a sigh, coming from beyond the edge of the chasm. I sit and look over into the dizzying depths, and want to sing with relief. Joshua is lying on a ledge of rubble jutting out from the cliff face, determinedly holding on the the rough surface.

I sober up quickly. Joshua isn’t just holding on to be sure: a wire branch has caught on his leg, dragging it down into that space of infinite gravity, and if Joshua lets go he will plummet into the depths.

“Hang on,” I say. He grins a little bit, but doesn’t answer through the effort and pain. I crawl backward and scramble for something that I could use to bring him back up, but everything is delicate and crumbled from the earthquake. I pick up a length of christmas lights and they dissolve in my hands. I shriek in frustration and kick a fallen clock before collapsing to the ground in despair.

A clockwork bird that has miraculously survived the quake alights on my shoulder and chirps at me. I lift my head and look at it. It repeats the same chirp, and I realize that it’s imitating my words from before: hang on, hang on. I stare at it, resenting that the mechanical bird doesn’t understand that there is nothing I can do, nothing at all. It doesn’t seem to care. It preens, then flies away.

This is a dream.

I sit up suddenly, the echo of a memory singing to me about clockwork birds... and dreams of flying.

I close my eyes and try to concentrate. My panic makes it difficult, but I have to do this or lose him forever. I can’t make that mistake again. I focus on those faint memories, on that feeling of weightlessness and freedom. I open my eyes and gasp: my feet are no longer touching the ground, I am flying, actually flying.

It’s a little like cheating, isn’t it?

I’m falling. I nearly crash to the ground again before I get a hold of myself, remember how to fly. It isn’t cheating if it saves Joshua. I have to believe that.

My heart pounds as I direct myself toward the edge of the abyss. At least if I fall, I won’t be left alone in this place like I was before.

Joshua’s face is turning grey with effort. His eyes close, and it’s clear he can’t hold on for more than a few more seconds. Gently, I wrap my arms around him and pry his fingers off the rough ledge. I try to take his weight, but I have forgotten the branch.

“No!” I shout as I feel my own weight returning, dragging us both down, down and never stopping, never hitting the bottom, forever falling-

I remember birds, and we stop in midair.

With a deep breath, I focus on the branch, thinking of the way the christmas lights had dissolved. The branch obliges, and the resulting dust drifts harmlessly down through the eternity beneath us.

With all the concentration I can muster, I direct us back up, past the ledge Joshua had been trapped on, past the edge of the chasm, over the wreckage, back onto the train tracks. The only solid place in the whole dreamscape.

“We made it,” he whispers as my feet touch down. He lets go of me and limps a step away. He looks back at me with a bemused smile. “You saved-”

I lean forward and kiss him, cutting him off. He responds enthusiastically, his fingers wrapping in my hair and around my waist, and it feels like we’re flying again. Maybe we are.

There’s a rumble in the distance when we break apart. You have to come back to reality sometime.

“I left because of the train,” I whisper. He looks at me, wide-eyed. “The train... we were looking for a piece...” One tiny, insignificant piece to finish our masterpiece, the clockwork train that would travel around the entire dream like a roller coaster, the most stable thing because there were no shortcuts. It wouldn’t work because we willed it to, but because it was constructed to work. I had insisted. “We were laughing... something about making the wind-up dancers find it for us...” The rumbling is getting louder.  “And then we were dancing, just like the dancers...” His hands warm against my skin, my heart pounding... and the sight of the piece hidden behind the dancers, so I let go of him and scrambled to go get it.

“But you didn’t want to,” he said, pulling away.

I grab his arm. “I just wanted to finish the train,” I tell him, trying to make him understand. “I wanted to make it work, because I was tired of the dream just giving us everything. I wanted to have to work for it.” A crash echoes around the dreamscape, and we both look up.  I start talking faster. “But you just wanted to dance... you just wanted to dance, and you pulled me close and you tried to kiss me.”

“And then you pushed me away,” he whispered. “You didn’t want... what I wanted...” He looks away.

“I didn’t want a dream,” I say desperately, pulling him closer. He doesn’t understand, but he has to. “I just wanted it to be real life. I wanted you in real life, but I couldn’t have that. I put the music box in my closet and forgot about it, because I couldn’t bear the dream, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you but I had to...” I kiss his cheek and hold him tightly. A tear drips from my eye and splashes onto his shoulder.

“But you came back,” he murmurs. “That’s all that matters.”

I shake my head, my tears coming faster now. Because I remember. I remember why I took the music box out of my closet. I remember why I gave in to temptation, even subconsciously, and I remember why this night is important. “Joshua, the earthquakes,” I say softly. “The dream is dying, can’t you tell?”

Another crash punctuates my words. “We can build a new one,” he says fiercely. “I’m not letting you get away again, Kylie.”

My sob is muffled in his shirt. “No, we can’t,” I whisper thickly. “This was all we had, Joshua. Thirteen years, don’t you remember?” The booming voice, that first night. Congratulations! You have been selected... as if we were lottery winners. A secret project, testing the value of a dream. As if we won the lottery, only it was a tease, a prize they took away after a free trial period. “Thirteen years of the dream, and then it dies. The music boxes aren’t going to work anymore.” Due to the experimental nature of this dreamscape, we regret to announce that the dream is limited to four thousand, seven hundred and forty-five nights, or thirteen years.

“I’m not losing you!” he says harshly. Beneath our feet the ground starts to quiver.

“I came back to tell you goodbye, and I’m sorry,” I say. But he pulls away, pulling something out of my pocket. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sending you a message,” he says, typing something into a phone that I hadn’t had a moment ago. The ground starts to shake more violently, and I have to grab onto a broken tree in order to stay upright. Through the shaking I can feel something else, my physical body moving as I try to force myself, my real self, to follow what he is doing on my phone.

“It’s too late!” I shout over the crashes and clatter of falling debris and widening chasms, but I will it to not be too late, for this to work, for real life to win over the dream. The phone disappears from his hand as a particularly violent tremor nearly knocks him down. I grab him, and we struggle for better footing amongst the sliding wreckage. The ground tilts again, towards the gaping abyss opening near our feet, and any minute we will be sucked into it. “What about you?” I ask desperately. “Even if I get the message, you won’t!”

He looks at me in despair. “I’ll just have to remember,” he says, and kisses me one last time before our feet are knocked out from under us and we slide into nothingness...

*

She woke up to the sound of her phone buzzing. She wanted to kill whoever it was who was texting her at five-thirty in the morning- probably Mike, reminding her for the millionth time to bring her cottage cheese dip to the party later. She sat up and took a shaky breath. She felt weird and anxious, unnerved by dreams she couldn’t remember. Something about a bird, or a train... But it slid away, leaving only the feeling of panic and urgency behind, and the buzzing of her phone from the top of an old, broken music box.