The Autumn Castle Read Online Free PDF

and her feet were bare. A pair of dream-shoes and dream-jeans and a more level dream-ground would have been
     useful. A rancid smell wafted toward her. She turned her head but saw nothing behind her. She walked on. She was nearly at
     the path when she glanced up and saw that she was about to drop a bare foot into a stinking mess of rotted flesh.
    She shrieked and scrambled back, falling onto her buttocks. A pig, it was just a pig. Dead, eyeless, its stinking flesh black
     and the ground beneath it stained.
    A light
click-click
sounded behind her. She turned. The crow again. A shudder moved through her body as she imagined it plucking out the dead
     pig’s eyes. She got to her feet, shaking and confused. She had fallen down and felt no irritation of her old injury, so she
     must be dreaming. But everything seemed so real and fluid, not at all like the surreal and disjointed images she was used
     to in dreams. A thread of panic wormed into her stomach.
    Just be calm. Maybe unconscious people dream differently than sleeping people.
    The crow cricked its head to gaze at her, its golden eyes wary. She headed off toward the path, trying not to look at the
     dead pig. It would be really good to wake up now, to be back in the apartment with the broken spaghetti bowl.
    But she banished the thought as soon as it occurred to her. A return to the apartment was a return to the pain and, oh, it
     was going to be excruciating after that bruising she’d taken against the corner of the table. No, she would stay a while in
     this pain-free world; enjoy the relief if not the scenery.
    She checked on the crow and was startled to see a wolf sitting where the bird had been. She swallowed a shriek.
    “Okay . . .” she said to the large gray creature. “I know this is just a dream, and it’s my dream, so you can just get lost.
     I don’t want you in my dream.”
    And then it spoke to her: opened its mouth and said something. Not English and not German—or, at least, not any version of
     German she recognized—and she took comfort in that. Dream gibberish, at last.
    “Yeah, whatever, Mr. Wolf. Just stay away.”
    She wished she hadn’t left the forest. Everything had been fine in the forest. She warily glanced at the path, and saw two
     figures with a cart and horse. The wolf wasn’t following her. She picked her way toward them.
    “Vienc si!”
This was the wolf, calling out behind her.
    Christine turned. “I don’t understand,” she said.
    “Vienc si!”
he said, but she realized he wasn’t talking to her at all. He was calling to the men with the cart.
    She whirled around to see them running toward her. They wore plain brown tunics, belted in the middle, and peculiar woolen
     hats. Christine put up her hands and said, “Now, just wait a second. I don’t mean anybody any harm.”
    One of the men was upon her an instant later. She struggled with him briefly, but then the second man was there, throwing
     a sack over her head and bundling her over his shoulder.
    “Hey. Hey, this is my dream! Stop it! Put me down.”
    She heard muffled voices, but couldn’t make them out. The men carried her for a few moments and then dumped her, she presumed
     in the back of the cart. She kicked, but they had tied off the sack. “Let me go!” she shouted. The sack stank like animal
     sweat and urine and she held her breath for as long as she could.
    “Jesus,” she said. “Jesus, that stinks.”
    They bumped up the path. She hoped the wolf was gone at least. Next time she got the opportunity to talk to someone, she would
     have to try German.
    She twisted around, trying to make herself comfortable. A tiny pinpoint of light came through the sack up near her forehead.
     She pushed her finger through the hole to make it bigger, and peered out. They were crossing into the castle grounds, under
     a raised iron gate whose spikes pointed toward the earth. The walls rose above—pale gray, but stained with sunset colors—then
     disappeared behind