Dreamhunter Duet: Dreamquake Part 34

Rose was already up on the balcony. Grace gave her the baby, who was howling louder than the fire siren.

Lazarus called, "Is she all right?"

"She's fine," Grace shouted down. "She was fast asleep. She's only angry because I woke her." Then, "Where's Chorley?"

Lazarus and Sandy's brother pointed at Chorley, who came out where his wife could see him and waved to her. "I'm going to go down into town and take a look around," he said.

"Take your camera," Grace and Rose said together.

Laura's son was trembling. She rubbed his arms. "Wasn't that strange?" she said in a bright voice, hoping to rea.s.sure him.

"It's all over now, son," said Sandy.

The boy looked from one parent to the other, his eyes round and bright. He said, "Was the ground angry? Was it trying to get up?"

GLOSSARY.

claim Whenever a DREAMHUNTER finds a new dream, he or she must register it with the DREAM REGULATORY BODY and stake a claim on it. A claim will give a dreamhunter one-year exclusive rights to perform the dream. However, any dream that the Dream Regulatory Body chooses to cla.s.sify as a DREAM FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD cannot be claimed.

Colorist A Colorist is a secret persuader who will insert into another DREAMHUNTER's performance some impressions at the dream's beginning or end, when the audience is less fully absorbed in the performance. The audience absorbs the Colorist's impressions and thinks these are their own thoughts or feelings. A Colorist's dream is usually a print of a dream taken from a GIFTER, who has altered it to deliver a desired message. Coloring is illegal.

dream for the public good A dream deemed too valuable for commercial use alone, usually a healing dream, will be cla.s.sified as a dream for the public good by the DREAM REGULATORY BODY. The Department of Corrections also cla.s.ses THINK AGAIN DREAMs as dreams for the public good. Any DREAMHUNTER may catch a dream for the public good and can perform it in a DREAM PARLOR or a DREAM PALACE. But each time the dream is caught, the dreamhunter's contract with the Dream Regulatory Body rules that the dreamer must spend several nights dreaming it in a hospital. Exceptions to this are dreams such as Convalescent One and Starry Beach, discovered before the formation of the Dream Regulatory Body; anyone can catch them and negotiate their sale at market prices.

dream palace A larger building, often purpose-built, in which dreams are performed is a dream palace. According to DREAM REGULATORY BODY regulations, to qualify as a dream palace the building must have over fifty beds. Dream palaces are often round or ovoid and consist of several tiers, balconies with bedrooms opening off them. In the center of the palace auditorium is the dais, where the dreamer sleeps. Only DREAMHUNTERs with large PENUMBRAs perform in dream palaces. Dream palaces are a vital part of the life of Southland; attendance of dreams is a social occasion, and most fashionable people own formal nightwear. The Rainbow Opera is Southland's largest and most magnificent dream palace. It was built for Grace Tiebold.

dream parlor Any place with fewer than fifty beds dedicated to the performance of dreams is a dream parlor. Many of the hotels and hostels on Founderston's Isle of the Temple became dream parlors during the early years of the industry. Dream parlors can have as few as five beds. Tickets to attend general exhibition dream parlors are much less expensive than those to DREAM PALACE performances, though there are specialist dream parlors with prices dependent on the market for their dreams. Maze Plasir, a GIFTER, is the proprietor of an expensive and exclusive dream parlor on the Isle of the Temple.

Dream Regulatory Body Established in 1896 under the Intangible Resources Act, the Dream Regulatory Body (also known as the Regulatory Body or just the Body) is a department of the Secretariat of the Interior, and the responsibility of the Secretary of the Interior, Cas Doran, who was the main author of the Intangible Resources Act. The Regulatory Body employs RANGERS to patrol THE PLACE. The Regulatory Body also holds Tries to identify new DREAMHUNTERS and undertakes the testing and training of successful candidates of each TRY. All dreamhunters, DREAM PALACES, and DREAM PARLORS must be licensed by the Body. The Body also has contracts with other government ent.i.ties to supply dreams for health care and for programs of education and rehabilitation in Southland's prisons.

dream sites Dreams are sometimes found in general areas in THE PLACE and can be caught by a group of people. This is the case with Wild River and is one of the reasons that it is used to test the successful candidates of each TRY. But some dream sites are very confined; their dreams are hard to discover, and can often be caught by only a particular kind of DREAMHUNTER. Maze Plasir's Secret Room is a confined-site dream. So is Tziga Hame's The Gate. That dream's site was so confined that Hame could claim never to be able to find it again.

dream trails Roads, paths, and scratchy routes in THE PLACE, dream trails usually lead to popular, tried and tested dreams.

dreamhunter Anyone able to enter THE PLACE, catch one of the dreams to be found there, carry it back into the world,and share it with others is a dreamhunter. Dreamhunting has been an industry in Southland for twenty years and is a major form of entertainment and therapy.

Gifter (or Grafter) A Gifter is a DREAMHUNTER who can take his own memories of a real person's face and manners and graft them onto the characters in the dreams he catches. Gifters are usually employed by people who want what they can't have, or who have lost someone they love.

healer Any DREAMHUNTER who can catch and convey vividly the great healing dreams is a healer.

Hame Any DREAMHUNTER with a big PENUMBRA is known as a Hame. The name comes from Tziga Hame, possibly the greatest dreamhunter.

loaded A DREAMHUNTER with a freshly caught dream is sometimes said to be loaded. Each dream is like a charge, discharged over a number of sleeps.

map references in the Place On maps of THE PLACE, the main references are bands and sections. Because the Place is vast, and its interior unexplored, it is mapped in bands from either end. Each band represents a three- to five-hour journey on foot, depending on the terrain. From Doorhandle the Place has been mapped from bands A to I. The Tricksie Bend end is less thoroughly explored, and has been mapped only from Z to U. From the Doorhandle border one enters Band A; from Tricksie Bend one enters Band Z. Each band is divided perpendicularly into sections. The sections are a kind of longitude to the lat.i.tude of the bands. The sections begin with 1 to the west of Doorhandle and minus 1 to the east, and the same at the Tricksie Bend end, so that the map will work if its references were ever to join in the as yet unpenetrated interior. Grace Tiebold's first dream, Pursuit, is at A minus 1, In and a little east of Doorhandle.

master dream A dream that can erase other dreams, a master dream is particularly powerful and vivid. Examples are Buried Alive, Secret Room, and Contentment.

mounter Any DREAMHUNTER who can OVERDREAM another and erase the dream he or she is carrying is a mounter.

Novelist Any DREAMHUNTER who can catch a SPLIT DREAM is a Novelist. The people who share a Novelist's dream will sometimes pick up one point of view and sometimes another, or switch back and forth all night between the two. Split dreams are richer and more complex than other dreams. Grace Tiebold is the most celebrated Novelist dreamhunter.

overdream When a powerful and fully loaded DREAMHUNTER, especially one having a MASTER DREAM, erases another dreamhunter's performance, this is known as over-dreaming.

penumbra A DREAMHUNTER's projection zone is known as his or her penumbra, a term borrowed from astronomy, where it describes the partial shadow the moon casts on the face of the earth during a total eclipse. (The "umbra," or totality, is the dreamhunter himself or herself, asleep and haloed by the shade of a dream.) An average public performance-sized penumbra is around eighty yards. Some dreamhunters, such as Maze Plasir, have small penumbras and still have good careers because they have other specialties, and their projection zones deliver hypnotically intense dream experiences. Grace Tiebold has a three-hundred-yard penumbra. Tziga Hame's, at four hundred, is the largest on record. Grace Tiebold and Tziga Hame cannot sleep just anywhere when LOADED with a dream.

the Place The territory where the dreams come from is called the Place. It is infinitely more vast than the hundred or so square miles of the mountain range it encompa.s.ses. Only a very few people can enter the Place. Of these, some become RANGERS and some DREAMHUNTERs who can make their fortunes from dreams caught, carried out, and shared with others.

No one has established how long the Place was there before being discovered. Protected by its own remoteness, and the spa.r.s.e population of the Rifleman Mountains, the Place had its first verifiable appearance on a day in November 1886 when a young violinist named Tziga Hame disappeared from a coach traveling between the village of Doorhandle and Sisters Beach.

rangers Employees of the DREAM REGULATORY BODY, rangers patrol THE PLACE, maintain its trails, and perform search and rescue when necessary. Rangers are those who find that, although they can enter the Place, they can't catch dreams.

Soporif Anyone who is close to a Soporif DREAMHUNTER when he falls asleep will fall asleep with him. Soporifs often work in hospitals, enhancing the effects of anesthetics. For example, Soporifs can be helpful by entering the operating room before the surgeons and their a.s.sistants and lying down near the prepared patient. George Mason is Southland's best Soporif.

split dream A dream that has two points of view is a split dream. Only a NOVELIST will be able to catch both points of view at the same time and deliver them to the audience. Examples of split dreams are Homecoming, the Second Sentence / Sunken, and Grace Tiebold's famous first split dream, Pursuit.

Think Again dream A dream cla.s.sified by the Department of Corrections as a DREAM FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD and used for educating and rehabilitating prisoners is a Think Again dream.

Try Twice a year, in the fall and spring, the DREAM REGULATORY BODY holds Tries, at which people, the majority of them teenagers, attempt to enter THE PLACE. Only one person in three hundred will cross over into the Place.

Wakeful A purple-red fibrous paste, Wakeful is a powerful stimulant with a pleasant perfume. It is dangerous if used for too long or in large doses. DREAMHUNTERS often chew Wakeful to stay awake when they have walked days into THE PLACE to catch a dream they don't want to waste before they have an audience.

ALSO BY ELIZABETH KNOX.

Dreamhunter: Book One of the Dreamhunter Duet.

The Vintner's Luck.

Black Oxen.

Billie's Kiss.

Daylight.