• The Land of Nod

    A hand on my knee shakes me awake after what feels like mere moments of sleep. Familiar large eyes, dark and piercing, watch me by the faint light of the moon through old lace curtains.
    “Are you ready?” Kier asks, standing on my mattress. I sit up, rubbing bleary eyes, and Kier wobbles as the mattress shifts.
    “Ready?” I ask, blinking at him lethargically, “Ready for what?”
    He hops off the bed, landing nimbly on perpetually bare feet. I push off my heavy duvet, but stay sitting in bed. I repeat my question.
    Kier turns to me, his cat eyes staring unblinkingly, and merely offers his hand. I wait a moment before taking it and letting him pull me off the bed. The old wood floor is cold under my bare feet and the slight breeze from the open window makes me shiver. Kier pulls me away from the bed and toward the door to the closet, standing barely ajar. He pulls it open and it offers its accustomed creak as he steps gracefully into the shadows.
    Stumbling, I follow, led on by strange fingers, an extra joint making them impossibly long.
    “What are you doing, Kier?” I whine, shaking off his hand. “This is just the closet. I don’t get it.”
    He grabs my hand back, insistent, and tugs me with him through the hanging clothes. Deeper in the closet is a rectangular outline of gentle light. There is a faint rushing sound coming from behind it, a door, I realise, as I make out the shape of an old polished doorknob. Kier reaches for it without hesitation, but I tug at his hand, frightened by my pulse’s increase. I know for certain that my closet should have only the door leading into it. None should lead back out by a different way.
    “Wait…” I attempt, “What did you mean, ‘are you ready’? Where are we going?”
    He shakes his head, lays his hand on the doorknob, and pulls it effortlessly open. A white beach is revealed through the doorway where gentle light washes the fine sand and calm pulsing water, painting the landscape an ethereal silver. I let him pull me along, acting the part of a faltering prosaic rag doll, my jaw hanging loosely open. He hauls me right up to the edge of the shore, where the warm waves lap at our bare feet. There he stops and turns his head to both sides, scanning the empty beach as if searching something out.
    I tug my hand free- he’d held it too tight in his earnest insistence- and step forward, letting the water wash sedately over my feet and ankles. In the sky the moon is too big, and this must be what causes the night to be so brightly lit. It is beyond strange but I find myself grinning anyway; Kier has never brought me someplace so terribly beautiful before. I turn to look at my friend, who stands just slightly shorter than me. He is stick-thin, and his features, concentrated on his dire search, are distinctly feline, like his dark, almond shaped eyes and small upturned nose. His ears stretch back just a little too far; end in a point that is nothing like mine. His hair is shaggy, black, and always shimmering, no matter how dull the light around him is.
    The extra joint to his fingers and the animalistic features of his face mark him as different, but he’s never looked at as strange when I am near him. No one ever looks at him, and I think he must be sad about it. He is ignored. I know I would be dejected, I would feel alone, but he has told me before that he never feels alone, even when he is. Because, he says, there is always something there, even if we don’t think there is, even if we don’t see it. Like him, there is always something there.
    I think about this now, that something might be watching me which I can’t see, and I shiver. Kier grabs my hand again, his touch urgent, and I jump, startled. He drags me away, along the damp sand of the white beach, toward a distant dot, and I hear a quiet apology. His constantly hoarse whisper was once unnerving to me, years ago, when I first knew him. Now, it seems natural.
    “I should have opened a different door,” He says, “I am sorry, Is.”
    ‘Is’. He’s the only one who can call me Is. He’s the only one who has ever bothered with a nickname at all. I don’t answer him and the dot grows larger as we draw nearer to it. It is a little boat, barely big enough for two people. A rowboat with no oars. He climbs hurriedly inside but I hesitate a moment instead of following. Forever the demanding leader, he pulls me in anyway. I bump my knee on the edge of the boat. The tiny pain already feels like a bruise as I sit down. He doesn’t apologise, but I’ve already forgiven him anyway.
    It seems as though the waves carry us out across the water. The boat doesn’t rock as it goes, but glides effortlessly. In front of me, Kier stands placidly, looking as though he has done this many times before. Perhaps he has. I am calm as well, though I feel that I should be frightened. The night sky seems to shift as the water should, but I am merely mesmerized.
    “Kier,” I say, my voice as distant as I feel, “Where are we going?” He is quiet and doesn’t answer. Perhaps he doesn’t hear me. More likely he chooses to ignore my questions. He has said before that I ask far too many of them. He has told me that he can’t possibly have so many answers, that I shouldn’t have so many questions, logically.
    “Kier, answer me.” I try to sound commanding, “Where are we going?” I stare up at him, waiting, and finally his eyes fall from the horizon to meet mine.
    “Nod,” he says simply, “The Land of Nod.”
    I open my mouth to ask another of my questions, “But, whe- ?”
    “Shush,” he says, and sits down. And that is it. We sit in silence, seated safely in the steady boat, watching the lurching sky, the bloated moon. Leastways I watch all this; Kier seems satisfied gazing into the water, barely broken by the boat’s hull. I look down too, but it is a dull view and I cannot see whatever it is that holds Kier’s patient attention.
    He looks up then, past me, and stands suddenly, making the boat shift. I turn to see what it is that has him so excited. In the near distance is a pale shoreline. Even from here I can see figures on the beach. We draw closer and I see they are tossing flower petals from white woven baskets. Kier steps closer to the little prow, a rare, pointed grin splitting his face, and he jumps from the boat, splashing up to his knees in the water, and I get out too to help him drag the boat onto the sand, only to realise that that is not the reason why he got out of the boat. It glides onto the shore of its own volition.
    The figures throwing petals turn to toss them over our heads. Kier is still grinning while I brush the bits of flower from my hair. He grabs my hand again – I wish he would stop doing that, I am too old to need him to hold my hand. Leading me on anyway, we follow the two figures that hold their empty baskets against their chests. They keep to a path of little lights along the ground, a single line of bright pin pricks in the sand.
    I shake off Kier’s hand and crouch down, reaching a finger toward a light in curiosity. But Kier pulls me back up by my wrist before I can touch it, his smile slightly faded. Shaking off his hand again, I let myself fall a bit behind our little group, slowing my steps so I don’t have to walk next to my friend. For some reason he is making me angry. I feel tired. Not because it is so late at night and he has woken me to come with him to his mysterious ‘Nod’, but because I am tired of him.
    Does he sense this, I wonder as he turns to look back at me, a look of concert crossing his feline features. I try to force a reassuring smile, but know I do not want to smile. That is, I do not want to smile until I begin to see where it is we are heading. The path of lights continues to urge us on, but now we have a destination and I hurry a little to catch up.
    Ahead of us there is warm light, a dazzling array of pin pricks similar to those leading us on. Below the lights I see a gathering. Dancing figures, couples and groups, spin and whirl under the miniature cloud of stars. Kier grins at me and starts to run. Dismayed, the sudden shocking feeling of being left behind clenches my throat and spurs me forward, barrelling after him.