The Relic Factory

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It was like pickpocketing in heaven.

I went to sleep with nothing criminal in mind. My shoes were beside the bed, behaving like shoes.

Then I dreamed, and somewhere in the dream I remembered that I was asleep. This gave me a little freedom. I used it to visit the Akashic Records.

They were a library.

I had expected something quicker.

The shelves extended into distances that grew longer while you walked toward them. After an hour, I passed a chair. After another hour, I wished I had sat in it.

My body was back in bed. It had no idea how much walking I was doing on its behalf.

Eventually I found Gaudí.

His soul was a large leather-bound book standing between two smaller souls. One of them smelled faintly of oranges. I left that one alone.

I pulled Gaudí from the shelf and held him against my chest.

He was heavy in the way a house is heavy when you are remembering it.

Another subjective hour brought me to Piet Mondrian. His soul-book had a very straight spine. I felt that I should wash my hands before touching it, but there were no sinks in that century of the library.

I took him anyway.

Carrying the two books, I found an intersection where nobody seemed to go. Four corridors met there and reconsidered their lives.

I put the books on the floor.

I did not consider this necromancy. The souls were static. Neither man had been interrupted while eating breakfast in the afterlife.

I wanted no advice.

I wanted their patterns.

One man had left behind a way for stone to grow. The other had discovered how much silence could fit between two black lines.

I thought they might get along if nobody introduced them.

Near my childhood there had been a hollow that filled with water in spring. All summer it looked finished. Dust collected there. Tiny animals appeared to have surrendered permanently.

Then the rains came.

The hollow remembered what to do.

That was approximately my plan.

I would supply the rain.

I opened both books. The first phrase in each rose toward me with the patience of something that had never needed a mouth.

I read them aloud.

I cannot remember the words now. They went somewhere without me.

Still speaking, I bent down and pushed my hand into the floor. It yielded like mud, although it was made of dreaming.

I gathered a handful.

For a moment I held it above the open books.

It was warm.

I threw it into the intersection, where it landed with the small, ordinary sound of somebody beginning an enormous mistake.