The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

wondering how long it would take. She had traveled so far in such a small amount of time. It was as if her rooms at the Boniface were as far away, and as much a part of the past, as her island home. She sniffed. At least she was back to the sea.
    * * *
    Miss Temple felt her flesh going numb, and yet when she looked down again the water had not climbed. She craned her head toward the open hatch to find the wheelhouse awash with rising water, with the sodden dress of Caroline Stearne swirling just under the surface. Yet why were they not sinking? She turned to the others.
    “Is it possible we are
aground
?” she asked, through chattering teeth.
    As one the other three echoed her look into the wheelhouse, and then all four searched around them for some clue. The water was too dark to reveal its depth. Ahead and to either side they could only find the open sea, while the view behind was blocked by the dirigible’s billowing, sagging gasbag. With a sudden burst of energy Cardinal Chang hoisted himself over the metal strut and clambered onto the canvas bag itself, each step across it pushing out gouts of trapped blue smoke. He dropped from Miss Temple’s view at the trough of each wave that passed beneath, and then she lost him altogether.
    “We could be
anywhere
,” said Doctor Svenson, adding after a silence where neither woman spoke, “speaking cartographically …”
    A moment later they heard Chang’s whooping cry. He was bounding back toward them, soaked to his waist, the canvas significantly flattened by his efforts.
    “There is land!” he shouted. “God help us, it’s land!”
    Doctor Svenson averted his eyes as he lifted Miss Temple over the metal struts, and then did the same for Elöise, Miss Temple taking the other woman’s hands. They helped each other over the dying gasbag, not halfway across before they were wet to their knees, but by then they could see it—a scumbled line of white breaking waves and a darker stripe of trees beyond.
    Chang was waiting for her in the water and Miss Temple jumped into his arms. The sea was freezing, but she laughed aloudas it splashed against her face. She could not touch the sand with her toes and so she pushed herself away from Chang, took one look at the shore for a target, and then ducked herself under, the cold tingling the roots of her hair. Miss Temple swam, kicking her legs, unable to see in the dark water, the tears and sweat on her body dissolving in the sea, knowing she must hurry, that the cold would take her otherwise, that she would be even colder once outside the water, soaked and in the wind, and that from all of these things she still might perish.
    She did not care about any of it. She smiled again, certain for the first time in so long exactly where she was, and where she was going to be. She felt like she was swimming home.

Time spent in an imaginary city calls forth a startling array of generosity and patience. To these people, places, and events this book is indebted, and to each I offer my thanks, grateful for the opportunity to do so.
    Liz Duffy Adams, Danny Baror, Karen Bornarth, Venetia Butterfield, CiNE, Shannon Dailey, the Dailey family, Bart DeLorenzo, Mindy Elliott, Evidence Room,
Exquisite Realms
, Laura Flanagan, Joseph Goodrich, Allen Hahn, Karen Hartman, David Levine, Beth Lincks, Todd London, the Lower East Oval, Honor Molloy, Bill Massey, John McAdams, E. J. McCarthy, Patricia McLaughlin,
Messalina
, David Millman, Emily Morse, New Dramatists, Octocorp@30 th & 9 th [RIP], Suki O’Kane, Tim Paulson, Molly Powell, Jim and Jill Pratzon, Kate Wittenberg, Mark Worthington, Margaret Young.
    My father, my sister, my cousin Michael.

About the Author
    Playwright Gordon Dahlquist was born in the Pacific Northwest and lives in New York City. His second novel,
The Dark Volume
, will be available from Bantam Books in spring 2009.