"East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon": "Melissa"

pholstery? Seriously? A jacket of upholstery fabric? I'm supposed to rip apart that slipcover and make a jacket? I cannot say I ever imagined anything like that when I decided to nap on the sofa after lunch! Okay I am surprised, sure, but the dream was really cool so I am going to go with it.

When the dream began I must have been under water because I was watching three mermaids dance around a cauldron. They were singing, too, but all I could understand was that the cauldron was called 'The Cauldron of Dreams' and that it sits at the heart of a labyrinth. As they danced the mermaids used their hands to shape the steam rising from the cauldron into loose cords which they spun into thread before weaving it into fabric. (An interesting 'twist' on the Three Fates and Macbeth's witches!) When the fabric was woven they cut it and stitched it into a jacket which they bade me wear.

Before I could ask why the fabric they had woven looked like the slipcover on my sofa they told me that the prince I sought was imprisoned in a castle 'east o' the sun and west o' the moon.' I love that fairy tale and I was certainly intrigued at the idea of finding a 'prince,' whoever he is, so I started walking.

The wind, like a Botticelli zephyr, pushed me along and soon I was inside a castle. I was shocked, but not really, when I saw that the 'prince' was actually my Crow. There was no time to waste on shock, however, because my princely Crow was telling the assembled court that he would only marry the woman who could remove the stain from his shirt. Girl after girl, woman after woman - how had so many come to find the castle? - tried to clean the shirt, but just as in the fairy tale their efforts only worsened the stain.

The room was emptying and I knew I had to try, but what could I do that all those others hadn't? Then it came to me - the secret was the vessel in which the shirt was washed. That's why I'd seen the mermaids around the cauldron. I knew then I had to wash the shirt in that Cauldron of Dreams.

I woke up feeling such joy because as soon as I thought about the Cauldron of Dreams the carousel horse from the warehouse and a magnificent, brilliantly blue bear appeared in the entrance to the room carrying the Cauldron of Dreams between them. The shirt turned such a blinding white that I was not able to see the face of the man, the prince, my Crow became when I tossed the shirt over him.

I suppose I could feel upset and frustrated that I did not see his face, but it just feels wonderful that there appears to be something I can do for my Crow, who has helped me in unbelievable, loving ways. It will be really very interesting to see how wearing a jacket made from a slipcover can help my Crow, but I've learned that anything can happen and probably will. We shall see.

St. Clair Shores: "Melissa"

asmine scents the breeze caressing me as I write in the quiet before dawn. After quite a long spell the dreams returned last night and I am very happy; things often sort themselves out better than I can imagine when I remember and listen to the dreams, to the dreaming.

This dream was another set at night. The moon shone in a sky of deep crystalline blue, its reflection glittering on the body of water at my feet and the moist sand along the shore. I looked to my right and to my left for some sort of marker to help me identify my surroundings. In the distance off to my right I saw a building - a cabin? a lodge? - with a sign, so I walked toward that.

The sign simply read 'St. Clair Shores.' Some sort of device had been painted in the middle, but the paint had worn off so the image was unrecognizable. While I stood there wondering what 'St. Clair Shores' could mean I noticed clumps of trash strewn on the sand and afloat on the water. I looked around for a stick or a pole, something to scoop the junk out of the water and up off of the beach, intending to place the trash in some waste bins I could see along the side of the building.

All I could find was my black Waterman fountain pen! While I stood with the pen in my hand, reflecting on the irony of finding a Waterman fountain pen on a beach I heard the call of my beloved Crow and looked up to see him land on the 'St. Clair Shores' sign.

He danced a bit atop the sign, bobbing and prancing, bowing his head to me. He soon began to sing, as he had so long ago in that first dream, "Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble." So I set to work moving along the shore, clearing debris, following my Crow as he hopped and flew away down the shoreline.

Soon I saw where he'd been leading me all along and I laughed to see the little girl from previous dreams. She stood in the shallows, watching an island through a spyglass. At our approach she turned and spoke excitedly, "There are things like bubbles beside the island, but I don't think they're bubbles. I think they're eyes!"

I could imagine a number of creatures whose eyes might be seen just above the water, none of which I felt ready to meet. As I looked out across the water, however, I could see the figures of the Faery Queen and her King, who appeared to be helping little people out of the water and into the cup-like buds of magnolias, bobbing on the water.

The royal couple made signs of blessing over each petite sailor before draping sparkling medallions around the neck of each and letting the tiny floral boats slip into the current. Soon a miniature flotilla was sailing toward our shore.

Wings: "Melissa"

Last night I was translated. I was transported into the strongest most dizzying dream yet and the first thing I thought when I woke to hear a crow call at my bedroom window was "Maybe this is how Bottom the Weaver felt after his midsummer night's dream?"

Seriously. As my dream began I found myself inside that warehouse again. There was a searing pain in my shoulders, I could not feel my hands, and I was completely baffled why I felt that way because I was upright. I seemed to be standing so the pain made no sense. (Then again dreams are hardly ever logical on the face of it.) When I tried to move, to shift, I realized that my wrists were bound behind me, against the warehouse wall. I could not understand what held me to the wall as I felt no shackles, no chains, no straps. No restraints.

A hideous evil cackling exploded and echoed throughout the warehouse. When I recoiled from the sound pain ripped again between my shoulders and I heard a thumping or a scraping noise behind me. I willed my hands to work and dug frantically at the wall to grab whatever was behind me. All I could feel were feathers. I took a breath against the pain and twisted to my right, to my left. I saw what held me to the wall. I saw, but I couldn't quite believe it.

Wings. I had wings. They were my restraints. Barely had I realized this when the cackling reached a fever pitch. I picked out two voices, shouting near a greenish glow several yards away, and I tried to identify what I was seeing.

I saw wings silhouetted against the glow. The glow was from a screen of some sort. A rope or a tail twitched on the floor beneath the screen. It sounds crazy but the only way to describe it is to say that the pair of demon-cats had turned "the bitter glass" on its side and "programmed" the labyrinth design from the wall to be the field for a video game they found wildly entertaining.

As near as I could see, their sport was to taunt and torture and obstruct the progress of some character as it made its way to the center of the labyrinth. When my mind shut out the various taunts I began to hear the game character's voice - MY voice! Here I was hanging pinned to the wall, seemingly helpless to stop their taunts, a life-size version of their game.

You know, I am not quite sure how I did it or when I decided to do it, but I did it. With a heave and a howl I ripped myself away from those wings. I felt more outrage than pain - so much more outrage - and I just kept whispering with every painful gulp of air, "People aren't made to be broken. People aren't made to be broken."

The demon-cats were silent at first, stunned, but when I picked a scrap of paper from the floor and plucked a feather from the abandoned wings they stood and began to close in on me. I dipped that feather in my blood and scratched the words I'd been whispering onto that paper. Those demon-cats swiped at me, but I was faster. They howled and hissed and scratched when I dropped my little message onto the mirror and said, "Game over."

Their howls were canceled by the breathtaking sound of rushing wings as the crow landed between us and stood to face them. Somehow I knew I was to climb onto the crow's back. I did and he lifted us out of there into the moonlit sky. We flew forever it seemed. I didn't care at all. The flight was magnificent; the crow's power was formidable. I cannot describe how it felt, after the scene in the warehouse, to be flown through the moonlight. Even as we spiraled up and up and up around the tallest tree in the world toward the crow's nest I felt only wonder. (Imagine that. At my age I felt wonder!)

He watched over me. He tended me once I'd climbed from his back to stand in the nest. I was astonished to see the nest lined with white roses -- white roses from the warehouse! I cannot even think how many times he must have flown back and forth with the roses he needed to do this. Why line his nest so? Why bring me to his nest? Even with those sorry wings I abandoned I was no bird! Who is this crow to me?

The top of the tallest tree in the world swayed in the wind and the crow's nest became my cradle. From under the shelter of his wings I watched the stars swirl above us, higher still. I heard his heart. I fell asleep. He moved his wings and combed his beak through my hair to wake me. He had brought me back to the warehouse. The demon-cats were gone and I smelled the roses at the window. The crow hopped away then back again with a playing card in his beak. He flew to perch on my shoulder. I took the card and he gurgled in my ear before he flew off out the door.

The card doesn't look like any I've ever seen but I love it. My crow - I've begun to consider him mine! - is perched near a woman who is maybe the Faery Queen -- Yes! She is the Faery Queen who fell in love with Bottom! She took him to her bower; the crow took me to his! It is a twisted up version of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"! But why? Is my crow meant to be the King of the Faeries? The way he cared for me I don't think he's playing a prank, even though in Native American lore crows are pranksters. I will have to study this.

Maybe if I run through the pieces of the puzzle I have so far I'll find a clue of some sort. I see "the bitter glass the demons hold" maintains the reference to Yeats' "The Two Trees." I think the crow refers to "Macbeth." Maybe the symbolism of the crow's nest in the world's tallest tree is meant to connect to the symbolism of the two trees of Yeats' poem and that of the trees at the end of "Macbeth"? But why the dream play? Why? How does that play connect to any of this? I've seen the play and the movie, I even have a-- Yes! I have a copy of it to check! It was my grandpa's. My dad gave it to me. It's about a hundred years old this copy, maybe older.

Now this is interesting. This is very interesting. It doesn't explain anything - yet - but it is interesting. In the cast of characters of Shakespeare's dream play there is a Duke Theseus. Since the image of myself as a sort of Medusa appeared in the last dream I've been brushing up on Greek mythology. If I remember correctly Theseus, with the help of Ariadne, made his way into the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur. The labyrinth again. The 'fingerprint of a god.' The key to the warehouse. Labyrinth .... warehouse... they must connect somehow.

Wait. I just remembered something else associated with the labyrinth. Daedalus designed the labyrinth and showed Ariadne how Theseus could escape. After that escape the King (Minos) imprisoned Daedalus and his son Icarus in the labyrinth. The only way for them to escape was to make wings for themselves and fly away. Warehouse ... labyrinth ... wings?How am I to understand all of this? What does it have to do with me?

I'm glad I like puzzles. Need to work on my drawing though.