XL LATER
WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THE FLOOR? THE FISHERMAN WAS standing at the kitchen door looking at me. The cat had jumped on top of me. Come have some breakfast and then we’ll tidy up this mess. . What on earth? You need to disentangle your leg from that rope. I understood without fully understanding. The workbench was no longer against the wall; the medicine cabinet, its doors wide open, was bare. The empty bottles that I recalled seeing neatly lined up in rows by the door were now scattered about. The pillows that had been on the bench lay on the floor. It could not be. I had not dreamed that I slipped out during the night and a bird was pecking and pecking on a tree as I headed to the pond. I had lived all of that. I did not dream that the moon was blue, the grass damp. . The bottoms of my trousers had been wet. They were now dry, but I had felt them sodden against my legs. I had seen the sky reflected in the water. . and I still held in my hand. . what was I holding in my hand? Nothing. It was empty. And what had those stones and the shower of broken glass been? And the fall? Had the real and the imagined merged so that I was no longer able to discern what was true and what a product of my dreams?
The fire was lit, the pitcher of milk was steaming, the entire room smelled of coffee. The honey in the pot — flower juice in a glass prison, the fisherman called it — awaited a spoon, and, skewered with an iron prong, two slices of bread were toasting. The cut I had on my right thumb throbbed. I ate nothing. Did you wrestle with a wolf last night? Don’t tell me your dream if you don’t want to, but I’d like to hear it. I’d like to know why you fell off the bench, and most of all why you slept on the floor, and why you didn’t get up from there. Go on, tell me. I never dream, I lied.
We worked the whole day without pause, tidying up the toolshed and bringing in the wood from the forest. Why don’t you stay? I shrugged my shoulders. You’ve seen for yourself that it’s comfortable enough around here. I could fix up the shed for you and build another one to house all these oddments. You seem lost and I sense you could use a guiding hand. You’re very young. I was inclined to tell him that I enjoyed nothing more than wandering through the world lost. Doing as I pleased no matter how things turned out, with no one giving me any advice. Seeing the sky, the forests, experiencing fear, contemplating the night and having it for a roof.