Free Cupid's Revenge by Melanie Jackson

though much worse because something predatory will almost always find a confused ghost and accidentally—or deliberately— enslave or consume them. I didn’t want this to happen to Mr. Seymour. If possible, I’d bring him back to the wakeside. But if all else failed, I would help him to find Death and move on. And I had to do it before his physical body died or he’d be stuck alone on the dream-side until something stronger ate him up. I can help the dreaming, but not the dead.

Chapter 1
     
    ‘Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams’.
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson

    I pushed my way out of the heavy velvet curtains and into the meadow of ruby red grass that swayed gently under the breath of a southern zephyr smelling of Coppertone suntan oil. This time I was sure I’d gotten it right. The wandering one had been located.
    My linen skirt rustled as it moved through the field and I had to keep a hand on my sunhat because the playful breeze was determined to whisk it away. I found myself wishing that I had time for some kite-flying.
    The man sitting on a camp stool at a large easel put down his paintbrush and smiled at me in a vague, distracted way.
    “Hello, Thomas,” I said in my calmest voice. “I’ve been looking for you.”
    “Hello,” he said back, brow wrinkling as he tried to recall my name and face. “Do I know you?”
    “We’ve never been formally introduced. My name is Nicodemus Smith.” I didn’t offer my hand.
    “Oh.” A line appeared between his sandy colored brows. “You’re my first visitor today. I came out here to paint the meadow. I always thought that grass would look like this over here.”
    I nodded. Thomas’ medical records said that he was colorblind. It was probably this ailment that prevented him from noticing that the traffic light he ran was red instead of green.
    “Do you know what that building over there is?” he asked, pointing a paint-smeared finger over my right shoulder. “It’s really pretty and I keep thinking that I’ve seen it before.”
    I turned to look.
    The poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was a frequent visitor to the Narcoscape in the nineteenth century. Little is permanent dreamside and only rarely will some construct survive the death of its creator. But Coleridge’s Xanadu is still there, the pleasure domes still shining brightly in the sun. Most drug-users dream of pink elephants and melting faces, but Coleridge’s opium-induced dreams had been beautiful and the remnants were still a joy to everyone who saw them. Enough high school and college age kids still read his poems that Kubla Khan’s Pleasure Dome was actually something of a tourist attraction on the dreamside at the start of the Fall semester.
    There are other vestiges of extinct cultures in the Narcoscape. There is a fine Incan temple brought into existence by the collective will of a people so strong and sincere in their beliefs that it survives even today. The Greeks have a place too—a sort of artistic ruin of the Parthenon. There is a sacred pagan grove that had gone feral for centuries, but is now once again tame and the place where neo-druids come to worship at the solstices and equinoxes. The Hindus and Buddhists have their places too.
    And there is an enormous Egyptian pyramid that overlooks almost everything in the Narcoscape. Unlike the Greek temple, this one shows no sign of erosion. Of course, worship of the old gods was never completely abandoned even with the birth and ascendance of Allah. Understandable when these old gods are still accessible to anyone who wishes to worship them.
    “That’s The Pleasure Dome,” I said. “Would you like to go see it?” We didn’t really have time but it was important to build trust before I asked him to follow me.
    “No thank you,” he said. “I have to wait here.”
    “Why is that?” I asked, glad that he had broached the subject. Things generally go better when the client is ready to discuss matters.
    “I have to