Mattress salesmen and Tibetan yogis share something in common: both groups describe that period of the night closest to dawn, when dreams can be like movies. Longer, more story, more imagery, nothing like the wad of quick incoherent scenes and sounds that come tumbling out of the brain in the earlier hours, or the open-ocean blankness of dreamless sleep.

Mattress salesmen call them “big dreams,” and their customers usually don’t need to have the term explained. A big dream on its own isn’t terribly important. It’s just that to have big dreams, you have to be sleeping soundly. If you aren’t having big dreams, you’re probably tossing and turning. Hence the need for a good mattress. Tibetan yogis divide the night into four periods and advise that dreams coming in the first three aren’t worth bothering with if you’re doing dream meditation. But the fourth period, when dawn nears, is different. If prophetic dreams are going to come, they’ll come then.

When June was jolted awake by Quinn and Ed, she had been having a humdrum, image salad kind of dream. No loss to be prematurely yanked from a dream like that. Not like having a big dream interrupted where the first thing that comes into your mind is that now you’ll never find out how the dream turned out. When June started to wake up it was the other way around: she heard voices shouting about dandelions and so thought she must still be dreaming. Which was good. Since she wasn’t nearly ready to get up and wanted nothing more than to stay sleeping, she’d have no trouble at all getting back to sleep if she was still asleep in the first place.

Then the shouting stopped and for just a moment there was silence and then there was … what? Not a radio or a record player, she could tell that much. From somewhere came a soft and unhurried arpeggio, a brief melody, with tones that were gently rounded yet clear, like a glass cloud. The sound was as evocative as it was brief and for a while after it ended, it continued on an inner playback loop while her mind followed, trying to get a grasp on the nameless mood that arose with the music.

Then she was dreaming again. And in the dream she knew she wasn’t alone.

Angela Hardt lived in a working class neighborhood in northeast Portland that was as much a random image salad of houses and shops and overhead wires and traffic noise as any middle-of-the-night chaotic dream. It was a neighborhood where you lived if you could afford to avoid a worse neighborhood but couldn’t afford a better one. Angela was lucky. She’d found a mother-in-law unit above a detached garage in back of a house that was newly built and close enough to Killingsworth Avenue to make for an easy walk to the bus stop, but just far enough away from it to be almost quiet.

Wooden stairs at the side of the garage led to a landing halfway up where she had installed a huge pot with a geranium that was older than she was. At the top of the steps was her front door. Along the top of the door on either side were two small vases of the kind that are customarily attached to the front of a cremation niche. They held fresh flowers. There was a small plaque on the front door that said,

Starbright Sierra Arcangela
Dreams

June stood on the landing and looked at the plaque. She had said to herself “This is craziness” many times on the bus ride over. But now, standing on the very threshold of that craziness, it seemed unnecessary to say the actual words; the craziness itself spoke for itself. She turned to leave just as the door opened.

“Hello, June! It’s so nice to finally meet you.” Starbright Sierra Arcangela put out her hand and when June took it, she put her other hand on top of June’s and stood there a moment, looking into June’s eyes, holding June’s hand in her hands. Then she took a slow, deep breath, let it out and said, “Please come in.”

They entered directly into the living room, which was small and cozy. A bottom layer of nondescript furniture was topped off with crystals, Egyptian scarabs, scarves with tassels tied around lampshades, a coffee table book on the New Age next to a pottery bowl full of potpourri, a framed painting of a raven perched atop a monumental ankh standing alone in a desert landscape, two huge vases placed on either side of the couch, holding eucalyptus branches wound with silk flowers and strings of tiny white lights, a quiet little water fountain which sat in a corner just below a framed color poster of a lotus flower with text that said, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change… .”

And candles everywhere. June thought the place looked like it had been decorated by someone sent out from Channeler’s Monthly. Starbright Sierra Arcangela took June’s jacket and umbrella and hung them from hooks drilled into the front door. June looked at her ankh-shaped earrings, the moonstone pendant against the iridescent green blouse, the jeans tucked into the black calf high boots and felt like a ageing scullery maid by comparison.

A small, graceful gesture showed June to the couch. Starbright Sierra Arcangela sat on a large wingback wicker chair, loaded with cushions, facing June. “Yuri’s spoken of you,” she said. “I guess I should say that she’s spoken of both of you.” She looked at June’s belly and gave a demure smile. “Are you well? Healthy?”

June shrugged her shoulders. “Well, that’s the thing. Yes, everything’s fine with the pregnancy. Considering I’m pretty high risk at age forty-two, everybody’s doing OK. But, see, two nights ago I had this dream. It was … I don’t know really how to describe it. I was talking to someone, something. There weren’t any words at all. I mean, no sounds. And I didn’t exactly see anything, either. But there was something there and we spoke to each other.”

“And you would like to learn who it was?”

“I think that I might kind of know who it was, that’s the strange part. I just want to know what it meant. So I thought maybe if I asked …”

“Certainly.”

“I’ve never done this kind of thing before. I’m not quite sure how to … you know, what to say, and when. What I’m supposed to do.”

Starbright Sierra Arcangela laughed softly. “Hardly anybody who comes here has done this sort of thing before. I think all I’ll say right now is that he’s very easy to talk to. Hey, I didn’t offer you tea or anything. Would you like some?” June shook her head. “Then give me a minute to relax a bit and the two of you can take it from there.”

Starbright Sierra Arcangel leaned back into the wicker chair. She sighed deeply, then sighed lightly. A few moments pause, then, “Empty yourr hearrrt. Saaaayyy what you willl. Showww yoursellllf to yoursellllfff and I will lisssten. Now you will ssspeeeak your truuuth.”

June wondered if she just got up and excused herself, she could be out the door before the channeler would be able to react. But when she pictured just getting up and leaving she knew she wouldn’t.

“I had a dream. Two nights ago.” June, paused a moment, half expecting that the ancient spirit priest might respond like a therapist – “I see. Go on.” But there was nothing. June said, “I don’t know where I was. It wasn’t a room – there weren’t walls or anything. And I don’t think it was outside either. I don’t think there was anything solid. The light was dim. I sort of felt a little odd, like I was floating. I was just there. It wasn’t scary at all. And I knew that there was something else nearby. I couldn’t see it or hear it, but I knew it was there. I don’t know how I knew. And it knew I was there. It was like we were there together, but just not in the usual way.”

June felt her mouth become dry as she spoke, and wished she had asked for the tea. “Now, I’m pregnant. Not quite six weeks. I’m in my 40’s. No job, no husband. The father is out of the picture. I’m living basically for free with friends of my son. Even if I could find a job, I’d have to quit it anyway before much longer. You know.” June took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then she was quiet for a long time. Ammuna said nothing. When she spoke again, her voice was slow and soft and hesitant. “I can’t bring a child into the world if I can’t take care of it.” She shook her head. “I can’t. So I arranged to get the pregnancy ended. I haven’t told anyone yet where I live. And the thing is that I missed my first appointment. It just went by. I just didn’t go. I wasn’t…. Anyway, so I had to reschedule it. And the new appointment is tomorrow afternoon. And then I had that dream. Where there was something with me.”

Starbright Sierra Arcangela cleared her voice, then cleared it again. Ammuna said, “That otherrr. Youuuur chilllld. Yessss.”

June nodded. “Yes,” she said, almost inaudibly. “But there was more to it than just that.”

“Morrre. Its bodddy, not forrrmmmed yet. But the spiiiirit. The spiiiirit, very old. Very old, you see.”

“It said, ‘What will you do?’ Not out loud. I just knew it was asking that one thing – ‘what will you do?’”

“Whaaat will you dooo?”

“I could tell that whatever was asking the question wasn’t in a state of … it wasn’t emotional. It was like, just asking for information. It was calm. I would say actually that it was peaceful. ‘What will you do?’ And it was like that dim place we were in, where it seemed like we were floating, that place just soaked up the question and echoed it, very quietly. Very quietly.”

For a long while, June said nothing, staring down at the floor. Then, as if she were alone in the room and talking softly to herself, she said “What will you do?” June was lost in her memory and wasn’t aware of time. Then she heard a choking sound and looked up toward Starbright Sierra Arcangela, who must have been weeping silently for a while, because her eyes were red and her face was drenched in tears. She had obviously been trying not to let it show, but that was impossible now. Her body heaved, she sobbed out loud, lifted her legs off the floor and curled up in the big wicker chair. The sobbing turned into a long low moaning and she rocked back and forth with her arms hugging her chest.

June’s mind in two or three seconds catalogued and dismissed as unlikely all the things that might cause someone to feel sudden terrible physical pain – while her body did the instinctive maternal thing. She stood up, stepped around the coffee table to the wicker chair, kneeled beside it and put her arms around the sobbing body. She kissed her forehead, lay her own head on her shoulder and stayed there while the sobbing lessened and then stopped. Her breathing became normal again and after a few minutes June heard a very small voice say, “I’m so sorry. I’m really sorry.”

It was at this moment that June suddenly knew the grief of Angela Hardt as surely as if Ammuna the Hittite had written a note and passed it to her. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry that happened to you. How long ago
was it?”

Angela sniffed and tried to clear her throat. “A little over a year. It was a boy.”

June held her more tightly and kissed her forehead again. “You miscarried?”

“They said I miscarried but that’s not what it was. My baby died inside of me. It just died. It was fine. And then it just died inside me. They had to go in and take it out.” The crying came again, but this time from both of them.