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Jadra Iamamad stared intently at his left hand. He had been looking closely at it now for nigh on 2 hours since awakening that morning. He held it up and compared it with his right hand. He shook his head, a mixture of astonishment and disbelief, however there could be no doubt about it. A rather extraordinary thing had occurred whilst he had slept. It was truly momentous. He wanted to dance and shout and raise his voice to the heavens and praise the mighty Gods who had bestowed such an honor upon him.

Ha! They call Jadra Iamamad a fool, a madman, but it is the God’s who have spoken now. Who are the fools now? It is the God’s who have chosen!. And he fell prostrate upon the earth.

Not for long though, for Jadra knew what he had to do. He had been entrusted with this mighty honor and he must guard it carefully. He ripped off his shirt and tied it carefully around his left hand in order to protect it from spying, prying eyes. And there were many such eyes in Jadra’s world. He could feel them upon him even now. He knew full well there would be many who would wish to deprive him of the special privilege the Gods had bestowed upon him.

He had to take his hand to the cave.

Jadra could not restrain himself from doing a small dance.

Carefully, carefully now Jadra, he whispered gleefully.

Dory was in fact only seeing one parrot: it was a bit exhausted and its head seemed like it had a toothache… but it had no tooth.

“Hum.”

Dory was startled by the masculine voice. She hadn’t heard any sound from someone coming or felt any breeze indicating movement. As she turned her look at the man, she was even more startled by his face. A young face with bright amber eyes, and some funny tattoo on his forehead. She was unable to find any association with the shape which seemed to change in every moment. She was a bit hypnotized by it’s multi-dimensionality.

“hum” the man said again.

“Are you looking for something here?”

His voice was deep and warm, very reassuring and she wasn’t feeling alone now, the tunnel was indeed feeling very crowded, the presence of the man was awesome.

“Well it seems I’ve found you…” she said.

“Enchanté. My name is Georges.” he said, a smile illuminating his face.

“I just came out of the Faded Cabbage, a very nice tavern in Dalmot… I felt some dizzy portal appearing and felt the impulse to go through it, and here I am.”

It was all nonsense to Dory, except the cabbage part that reminded her of the coleslaw. Her belly was growling.

“Actually I’m quite hungry, and I’ve nothing to eat…”

“Oh” he said. He just looked in her eyes, making her feel more dizzy or blurred, she was feeling so out of her reality.

The smell of coleslaw was filling the tunnel…

“I have some… what do you call that ?”

Illi was getting bored waiting for Dory under the door on the cave ceiling with this motley crew. Sanso was looking slightly bemused, but smiling happily, as if he was enjoying the company after years of travelling alone. India Louise was yawning and fading in and out, there one minute and gone the next, and then back again. The parrot had flown off to look for Dory.

Watching India Louise drift in and out was making Illi fuzzy. She started to drift in and out as well. She started to piece together the out-bits until they all stuck together and formed a picture.

She was squatting next to a hole, a dry hole in the desert with the hot dry wind flapping her shawls. A boy, her son she thought, was leaning towards her, earnestly talking, and then a decision was reached…..

Then the scene changed and she was in a swirling mist, a pea souper, must be London. Illi’s thought intruded slightly into the scene, making it wobble and the images jumble up. Illi saw a tuppence on a grey pavement and as her eyes rose she could just make out through the mist a sign for an exhibition of artifacts. Illi felt herself drawn to the picture on the sign and felt the hot dry wind and the flapping of the shawls in the wind on her face again. The flapping was getting louder and louder and Illi opened her eyes.

The parrot was back, and Dory was with him.

Dory slept all the way to the cave, dreaming about being a traffic policeman. It was one of those never ending hopelessly chaotic dreams, in which small bits of progress were immediately cancelled out by an influx of more of whatever the problem was. The more she blew her whistle and ranted at the cars, the worse the cars became entangled.

You! You there, go THAT way! NO not that way…OY YOU! keep to the left…keep in line there keep in line…OY NOT THAT WAY!

Ususally in dreams like this Dory woke up in the middle of the frustration and chaos, but this time the dream changed course abruptly. Dory simply walked away from her podium in the middle of the busy Italian intersection.

Let them all go wherever they bloody well like, she said. Not my responsibility.

When Dory woke up, the van had arrived at the cave, she was feeling refreshed and cheerful, and was looking forward to her excursion inside the cave.

By the time Illi had finished reading the newspaper article she felt thoroughly confused. Mechanically she folded the newspaper neatly and then lit a cigarette, resting her elbows on the breakfast table and her chin in her hands. She gazed through the ribbons of blue smoke and the dust drifting through the sunbeams, wondering if she was dreaming, dead, or alive. It was becoming so hard to tell the difference.

Oh well, I’ll think about it later, she thought, and mentally popped it into her clue and riddle box. Her mind wandered back to the story she’d just been reading, and the charming illustrations. The drawing of the young man in the white robe had seemed familiar, and she liked his name too…Sanso, The Wanderer.

As she imagined him, she felt herself lurch ever so slightly sideways, and as she did, the image in her mind of Sanso became suddenly life-like…incredibly so! He was looking at her in astonishment, and taking a step backwards, saying Lordy! not another one appearing out of thin air!

Illi looked around and found herself not in the sunny breakfast room but in a sandy cave, with a little girl in a wooly jumper, a young man in a white robe holding a large rusty key, and a parrot.

Suddenly Illi didn’t care anymore whether she was alive or dead, dreaming or awake. This was beginning to look like fun.

Everything started to happen at once. As Sanso sat up, craning his neck looking at the door in the ceiling, a terrific flapping and squalking noise approached from behind him, starting as a distant vibration and rising in an unbearable crescendo as it rounded the last bend in the tunnel. Suddenly the noise stopped as Sanso felt a weight on his shoulder, and then a thud on the sandy floor. Bugger this, the parrot screeched in his ear. Bugger this bugger this bugger bugger bugger…

Sanso was momentarily speechless, as his eye fell on the key. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, feeling the rusty weight of it. He turned to look at the parrot on his shoulder, who thankfully had stopped his shrill squalking.

This must be the key to that door, he whispered to the parrot. Let’s try it and see.

Wait for Dory dear Wait for Dory!

Bugger this, sighed the parrot, Here I am bringing the key, remembering everything everyone else forgets, running the show here and I don’t even have a name in this silly story.

Sanso was very hungry. He’d been living on the fungus that grew inside the dampest parts of the cave, but the recent stretches of tunnel had been much drier, sandy even. He hadn’t found a cave entrance for days and longed to step out of the cave into air and sunlight and green things, and find something fresh and juicy to eat.

Beginning to feel quite despondent, and with the hunger and thirst making his body ache terribly, he sat down, crumpled into a heap on the sandy floor. He lay back, stretching out flat and slept for what seemed like days.

He woke up mumbling the name Eggleton, which reminded him of a dish he’d encountered at one of the cave entrance worlds. He’d wandered into a beautiful strange green and rainy land, and followed the delicious aroma of something that seemed so delightfully familiar, that he couldn’t quite place, something that reminded him of mornings. Coffee! He remembered now. The smell of coffee had led him to a door with big brass numbers on it: 57. He opened the door and peered round it, wondering if he’d be welcome. It had seemed as though nobody was there, but a table was laid for one, with scrambled eggs on toast (freshly cooked as if whoever had prepared it had known eggsactly when he would arrive) and a steaming pot of black coffee.

Sanso stretched and realized his many aches and pains had been eased by the sleep on the soft sand on the cave floor, and the dry atmosphere, and slowly opened his eyes. Lying flat on his back, he was looking directly up at the tunnel ceiling. There was a door in the ceiling, strangely parrallel to the floor, an odd position for a door, he thought. His heart lurched and his stomach growled again with hunger as he noticed the large brass numbers on the door: 57.

That morning Fiona’s boyfriend asked her to marry him. He even had a date in mind. Over the weekend she had told him how she was feeling. She thought she had spoken plainly enough and he had gone away. She had a bad weekend but yesterday felt she was starting to be more herself again. So it came as a surprise, and she had to explain again.

And then she went to bed, and pulled the covers over her head, and let the sound of the rain falling outside soothe her.

She had a funny dream. She was in a courtroom seated on a little wooden chair, wearing a beautiful dress made of exquisite lace. In her arms she held a baby. She had dreamed of the baby before, but in the previous dream she had felt only repulsion for the funny little thing with its exhausted tiny body, and extra long hair. This time she was holding it protectively.

On one side of the courtroom were a group of people looking very serious and professional. She felt them to be mainly doctors and lawyers and they wore dark suits. On the other there were people chanting and waving placards. Some were meditating, others were dancing and they looked like crazy hippy people.

The two groups of people were fighting over something, shouting backwards and forwards, and it seemed to be something to do with her. She was getting more and more tense as she sat on the little chair with her head down and listened to the two sides, till it seemed she might explode.

Suddenly she looked up and she saw a funny Chinese gentleman, smiling and winking at her. He held out his hand to her and, holding the baby gently with one arm, she took it gratefully and they escaped from the bedlam.

When Fiona eventually decided she could emerge from beneath the covers the rain had stopped.

Bugger this! she said

She put on music loudly and danced around the house doing the housework…..

Yann was looking at the box in which he had put the pebbles for Fiona… it was closed and all was needed now was to wrap it in that red paper and put the address on it… tomorrow he would have sent it.

For now all he wanted was to try again that obe thing and meet Quintin in the chalet…

Yann had been having these strange dreams and impressions since he’d been in that cave during his last trip to Scotland. In the cave he had that strange impression of a dragon roaring, but he’d rationalized that with the noise of the falls, it was quite deafening. It’d been raining for so much time that the amount of water streaming through that cave was amazing… the visits had been suspended because they feared floods and they couldn’t really explore the cave then. All he could do then was picking up a pebble for Fiona, a pebble he had still to send her

After that, he’d had the weirdest impression to be observed by dragons… they felt quite big, and event though he tried to tell himself it was some effect of his imagination, he was still uneasy about that.

The imagery of dragons had continued with his discussion with Quintin, who told him he had drawn that very cave… in which there were dragon eggs and their keeper. A strange harper woman. When he’d been shown the painting, Yann had that feeling of déjà vu, and the kid attending the newborn dragon on the upper right of the picture had aroused an intense desire to do that very action.

“The tunnels had been changed again”, he thought first.

That weird thought made him laugh and he couldn’t tell to Quintin why… yet.

And last week there was his friend Anastasia who was coming back from a trip to Budapest where she had seen so many dragons in the hotel, in the museums, and there was that parade, they were calling that the dragon’s parade, and it was music and parties all the Saturday night. She enjoyed that tremendously. She even told him she had the impression of being a dragon when looking in the mirror right after that night.

Sanso stood at the entrance to the cave, looking out over the valley. He loved the rich orange-red rocky cliffs and towering stone pillars, and recognized them at once. He remembered this place! A vague nostalgia swept over him, he’d loved it here, hadn’t wanted to leave…… A song started playing in his head …… ‘we wept when we remembered Zion’… mmm mmm mmm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……… when we remembered Zion….

What an extraordinary cave it was, Sanso thought, when he’d wiped his eyes and his nose on his indigo blue shawl. Every time I see a light at the end of one of the tunnels and follow it to the cave entrance, it leads me to another time and place.

The rain started to fall, gently at first, and then the valley was filled with the strange pale green light of an approaching thunderstorm. Reluctantly, Sanso made his way back into the cave.

As Arona put her map carefully away she suddenly realised she was not alone. An odd looking creature was sitting on a rock a short distance away. Arona’s eyesight was not that strong, and she found it hard to make out clearly what sort of a creature it was, but she was amused to notice how it seemed to be talking and laughing to itself, nodding it’s head and sniffing the air. Perhaps it has been taking some of the hallucinogenic plants which grow so abundantly in this terrain, she thought to herself. The creature was now looking to the sky, as though rain were falling, and the sniffing was becoming more intense. How odd, thought Arona, and so convincing was the creature that she looked upwards herself, yet saw only the brilliant blue sky she knew to be there. Poor little fellow, she thought, it has really lost the plot.