Free To Make Death Love Us by Sovereign Falconer Page A

completely tailored out of Paulette's desires and inmost thoughts that it had a meaning only she
could embrace.
    In this dream
Paulette dove into a dark pool. She went down deeper and deeper, toward death, it seemed, but the
farther beneath the surface of the water, the lighter she seemed to get, as if the mounds of fat,
the huge shiver­ing bulk of her, disappeared into nothingness. Less and less she weighed, until
she became something she had never been, until she became the girl she had always seen in her
eyes but had never found.
    She was thin now,
with sparkling eyes and alabaster skin. She could dance and leap, and she could run faster than
the unicorn. Oh yes, he was there in the dream, too. And Paulette stood beside Colonel John, in
his dream a man now grown, and they held hands in the silver of the moonlight and her voice
joined his in calling for the ones they loved.
    Escape. That was
the word that seemed to echo through the dream. The wind through the strange forest seemed to
whisper that one word.
    Escape.
    Glum Pepino, the
Romany who suffered for all, the Rubber Man, moved out of the forests of night and his voice
joined theirs, his mind sang in their hearts. It was a very real touching, this movement of dream
in the dark. Their minds, when seized, stirred as if prodded by elec­tricity. Their hearts raced
and sweat formed on their fore­heads. As gentle as their shared dream was, it somehow exacted a
terrible toll for their bodies, contorted in the grip of some great and terrible pain.
    Escape.
    And the dream went
ever on, changing. Now it was a part of Colonel John's dream and now it was a part of Paulette
the Fat Woman's dream. Pepino rushed into their dream night, his life spilling at their feet in a
pool of reproach and interrupted sleep. Always hungry, that had been Pepino's lot, hungry as much
in mind as in body, and in this shared dream world where they all traveled, Pepino found Eden. He
found a world where all he saw or touched could be eaten. The sky itself was candy. Pepino was a
black bear, fat in the beginning of winter, once honey-hungry, now sated because he had eaten the
au­tumn moon. Beside Colonel John the Giant and Paulette, a beautiful woman/girl, sleek and quick
as a gazelle, Pepino became full beyond measure because life came rushing at him in an
overwhelming swoop. He feasted in an instant on every bit and morsel of it. A bit of the moon, a
slice of the sky, all bursting with hunger, destroying beauty on his tongue.
    Oh yes, and the
unicorn danced for him, too. And they were all joined in a dream until it reached back for the
loveliest one of them all, blind, horribly deformed, Se­rena. She moved in her own dream, and
even as she moved in it, she gave herself, out of kindness, a small portion of wishes she could
never have, her own, some­times terrible, needs.
    The dream moved in
colors and hues that had long since left Serena except as memories. The unicorn came galloping
toward them from the emerald green forest. Its eyes were deepest sea blue, its mane the gold and
silver fire of the sun. On its back was a rainbow with colors the world had yet to see. All the
things in the dark that only her fingers had sensed, suddenly reemerged into a golden, shining
light. She saw through her eyes, many-eyed, many-sighted, and her heart was touched and she led
them through the dream.
    Their bodies became
as one. To act, to do, to move as one, finally, to escape, to go to the dreamworld Serena
promised them life could yet be. That was the promise that grew and grew, getting so strong in
their minds that their bodies strained under the very weight of it. Their hearts raced, a fever
raged in their blood, hotter and hotter. The air rattled in struggling chests. The dream grew and
their own fears, their sense of helplessness, di­minished in its path.
    The bright
dreamland beckoned them the last step, the final commitment to the dream of doing, acting as