Xanadu
by Migratory


'It's easy,' she said. 'You just go on a magic quest to my brother's house and say please and pay him with something dreamy...'

But already she was slipping away from him, and he was too sober to hear her.


Samuel sometimes felt that the girl was haunting him. If he saw a girl with red hair pass him by he'd always think for a terrible moment it was her, even as he realised that the colour was just normal, human. His girl's hair was redder than that, and when he saw her his eyes weren't clouded with the ordinary.

He'd sent her an invitation the first time he'd tried laudanum. She'd answered. She'd liked him.


'You go into my realm first, and play with my big white birdie. Then you say 'please can we go to see dream' and I say 'yes' and we hold the helm and say 'brother I am in my gallery with a nice man and we want to come and see you' and we'll bother him until he says yes.'


As he began to lose consciousness all he could focus on were her eyes. One green, one blue, not like colours he'd seen anywhere awake and sober.


'You are a friend of my sister.' It wasn't a question, but Samuel answered it anyway.

'Yes, my Lord.'

'I understand you've come here seeking a poem?'

'Yes, my Lord. I have brought payment.' Samuel held out the bone dice that usually lived in his desk.

The king took them, then said, 'In my castle is a library. In it you will find those pieces that you long to write, that you have been unable to write. If you wish it, you may have one hour with them, and take back what you can into the waking world in memory.'

Samuel hesitated. 'Thankyou, my Lord, but I did not come seeking to steal words, even from myself.'

Dream nodded, and Samuel thought he saw some sign of approval. 'Then why did you come?'

'Because I believe that preserved somewhere in dreams is a place I would very much like to see.'


He wasn't sure how long he spent in that place. Time in dreams seldom flows at the same rate as time in the waking world, and laudanum will distort it further. He wandered across the landscape at will, but for much of the time he sat and observed.

He composed.

She was present somewhere there. Occasionally he thought he saw her in the distance, and once he was sure he heard her laughing, but she didn't approach.


He didn't see her again for nearly a year.

I forgot it, he said. I paid for it with my dice and I lost it.

Delerium listened in silence, then put her hand on his. She kissed his cheek and ideas and memories started coming to him.

He wrote.

About a man.

And a boat.

And a big white birdie.