Chapter 27.

Dreams Are the Story of the Soul It was three in the morning.

Sharon walked home.

Sammy had muttered something about him staying late into the night. She'd thought she'd heard a dog bark in the distance, and when she looked again Sammy was, briefly, afraid. Gotta go, he'd said. Gotta feed the imps yesterday's recycling. This whole city shityou fix it for your homework, okay?

Then he was gone.

She walked and had never felt so alone.

She walked the shadow walk, the walk just-out-of-seeing, and sometimes, when her mind wandered, she thought she walked the spirit walk too, and the forgotten things came crawling out between the cracks in the paving stones, and pawed at her, and asked her to remember them.

She collapsed on her bed in the silent house, where once family of five rowinggo on hit me do it then do ithow dare you talk to me like that I am your motherI hate you! I hate you I'm not your brother!

had argued, voices singing in the pipes out of the creaking boiler cupboard, and she pressed her head into the pillow where once a mother rolled over in her sleep, dreaming of flying above the sea, before the memory faded with waking and swore and cursed and finally, fully dressed, she slept.

Even in her sleep, she walked.

She walked in a place where there was no light, and no need for light, seeing without sight, hearing without sound.

She walked through a city, and it was bright, and burning, and behind every light there were faces watching and beneath her feet was the place where other steps had fallen, and then between it all there were a few places, just a few but growing more, where the light had gone out. An emptiness where something else should have been. Here a girder turned to rust, there a bulb that could not be replaced, or a water main cracked beneath the street, gushing up silent and unplugged.

She walked the dream walk, passing through the thoughts of the child who lived two doors over and who dreamed of you're never on time never on time never on time for class while below the old woman slumbered, her mind giddy on blood thinners, who dreamed of smell of paper in a place forgotten long ago.

She walked, and the dreams and half-dreams and downright nightmares of the city scattered before her, the half-heard thoughts of the slumbering streets, and as she walked she felt tiny, and alone, and heard the silence all the more when she passed by the building with the boarded-up door coated in dreamtime mists.

She thought she heard the rustling of spiders crawling into open mouths, chitinous legs on soft lips.

She wondered if she was naked on her first day at work, and decided she probably wasn't but that it would be best not to look.

She heard the crackle of electric wings, far off.

She wanted to go home, and couldn't quite remember where home was. She was in the street, and it was familiar and unknown, the physical reality lost behind the dream walk, her body one place, her mind another, and all around behind the darkened windows the dreamers dreamed of flying glorious free! wonder of wonders up and up and up and nothing I ever dream will ever be so ecstatic her lips on my neck paper drowning in paper did I did I did I do it did I get it done? email email writing email in my sleep email to him and email to her tap tap tap dancing on the screen and it's still not right!

Sharon put her head in her hands, burdened by all the sound, and still it came, the rising whisper of a thousand dreaming minds, a million dreaming minds, the city dreaming, united in sleep, all of it rising up around her and there were footsteps on the earth.

No, not quite right.

Not feet.

Paws.

Each the size of a woman's shoe, splayed out into three points with a sharp claw at each end. The creature's, every stride was longer than Sharon's reach, and where its paws pressed down, whether on the thin floor of reality or the fiction of a dream, they burned the earth.

... didn't mean to make it happen didn't mean to leave...

falling out of the bunk falling out of the bed falling so far so far so long so fast but I tried I tried so hard sir something under the sheets oh god don't let it be a snake please god not a snake in the bed a snake crawling up my leg I can't move I can't move god please She threw her head back, opening her mouth to scream, silent screaming in the silent, roaring night. And there was a voice, louder, more real than anything which had come before and it said, to the sound of scampering feet: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to tonight's episode ofDream Walking! I am your spirit guide for tonight, Dez Cliff Junior, as today we ask ourselves, Shamans? What are they like?"

Sharon thought she saw a figure. He was stepping through a grey-blue mist. There was a flash of white teeth, a suggestion of curly blond hair, a flare of orange-tanned skin, and a voice that whispered: I am with you.

Then nothing.

Chapter 28.

Sally Hello, my name is Sally, I am a banshee. Forgive me not shaking your hand, but my touch turns the blood of mortals to ice within their veins, and at the sound of my voice men writhe and scream. I prefer letter-writing. Email is useful too, but I spent so long learning how to hold a fountain pen in my talons and I struggle with keyboards. I also believe that the art of letter-writing is one which should be preserved, as it creates a more personal, thoughtful missive than many of these modern communication media.

I do not believe I have a problem as such. I am a banshee and being a banshee is all I know, so to suggest that I struggle with this identity is to imply that I either do not know myself or that I have awareness of another way of being, neither of which I believe to be the case. Problem is therefore a negative understanding; rather I am attending Magicals Anonymous for its opportunities and positive effects.

I wish to broaden my mind. Specifically, I am looking for evening classes that are friendly to my particular situation. I considered t'ai chi, but my wings get in the way. Cooking seems very interesting, but there are very few cuisines which cater for the pigeon lover. I would love to do pottery, but my talons ruin the clay on the wheel. But I think now I have found what I want to do, what I really want. I sleep, you see, in the cooling tower at Tate Modern. A lot of banshees use these sorts of perchesgood view, decent air flow and the food tends to come to you, although the family of peregrine falcons I have to share my lair with does rather put off the average seagull. But I digress. A few months ago I was having a dream, and in my dream there was a howling and a screaming and a falling, and I woke and I too was falling, and in my confusion, by mischance, I fell through a window and into the gallery itself. (I'm most terribly sorry for the damage.) The gallery was empty, deserted, but I had never been inside before, and as I tried to sweep up the worst of the glass and remove any shards from between my claws, I saw for the first time the wonders that it held. I don't understand art. I have never been introduced to it, never inducted fully, as you might say. And at first this made the experience the more frightening for, looking at the paintings on the walls, the sculptures on their plinths, the installations and the films inside that empty place, I felt feelings that I could not explain. Why should some splashes of oil on canvas induce fear, or grief? Why would a tin can make one smile? What is it in a jagged shard of metal that cries danger, or of a daub of colour on the wall that expresses longing? I do not know, and neither the peregrine falcons nor the banshees of my kin seemed to understand my concern.

So you see I am not here so much to express a problem, as to enquire into the possibilities of evening classes in Impressionist panting.

Chapter 29.

Tardiness Is the Parent of Sloth She woke at 11.26 a.m. to find her alarm clock had finished wailing four hours ago, and there were three missed calls on her mobile phone.

She fell back asleep for another ten minutes, then woke with a jolt that sent every capillary in her body into overdrive.

11.39 a.m.

And her shift had begun at eight.

Sharon fell out of bed, her bright blue hair sticking upright, yesterday's clothes hot against her skin. She crawled across the floor, grabbed her phone and recognised with horror Mike Pentlace's number, then Gina's number, then Pentlace's again. The house was empty, Trish and Ayesha having both gone out. As she staggered towards the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain with its images of yellow ducks, her mobile played back its dirge of messages.

"Hi, Sharon, it's Mike. Yeah, but I know we talked yesterday, but you're late again and, yeah, but I want to be nice about this but actually, yeah, this is getting unacceptable. Call me, okay?"

"Hi, Sharon, it's Gina here. Just calling to make sure you're okay. So uh... give me a call, okay, babes?"

"Sharon, it's Mike. You haven't called. Call me now."

Toothpaste foaming in her mouth, Sharon's gaze cleared enough for her to look blearily up at the mirror. The toothbrush stopped moving.

A stranger looked back at her. Sure, the eyes were brown and the skin was almond, the hair was black streaked with blue, but the backcombed look of dull-eyed exhaustion that stared out from the dirty glass belonged to some other woman, some older, possibly mushroom-munching woman who had seen such things as no words could recreate. The events of the night replayed slowly through her mind. Sammy the Elbow, the walk through Covent Garden, the empty shop with its too-quiet corners, EVERYTHING MUST GO, learning the names of the walksthe shadow walk, the spirit walk, the dream walk and of course somewhere just on the edge of recollection a merry male voice proclaiming, "I am your spirit guide for tonight!"

She half closed her eyes, toothpaste rolling down her chin, and tried to steady her racing heart. She was tired, she was beat, her feet ached, her legs ached, her neck ached, her brain ached. She put down her toothbrush in the jar and spat out the toothpaste. Slowly, methodically, she washed her hands and her face, and dabbed off with a towel. Then she picked up her mobile phone and, for the first time in her life, pulled a sicky.

"Hi, Mike," she intoned when he didn't pick up. "Sorry I didn't call but this major family crisis came up and I've gotta take today off. Sorry. Bye."

The lie, thin as winter sunlight through dusty air, settled over her with a strange unexpected ease.

Then she called Gina.

"Hey, Gina, it's me. I'm just letting you know I'm okay. Something's come up and I'm really sorry I can't be there today. I'll try not to do it again; call me if you want to and I'll try to make it up soon."

Then she switched her phone to silent, swept her hair back from her face and began to run herself a very hot, very slow bubble bath.

Chapter 30.

To Strive for Perfection in Your Endeavours Is to Achieve Perfection in Yourself Lunch was pizza.

A whole pizza, with pepperoni and extra tabasco sauce.

Sharon ate it in her dressing gown and rabbit slippers, and sat by her computer typing with one hand, feeding herself with the other. The view outside her small window seemed bright and still and friendly. There was a sense in the air of a different world. That strange, unknown world of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. when during daylight hours people moved around the city freely, not trapped in an office or a glass cage. A curious time, which belonged to pensioners going to the butcher, to nannies taking their charges to the park in the holidays, to students wandering between classes, and that strange social stratum known as the self-employed, who felt no need to set their alarms or count the seconds down to the sweaty surge of rush hour, so long as the work was done someday, somehow, somewhere. Sharon wanted to giggle, and the urge to go and do her weekly shopping nearly compelled her out of the house, just to see what the market was like in the middle of a weekday, without men in suits coming back from work or parents with yowling children. She tried to imagine a world without weekend queues and not having to run for the bus. The wrath of Mike Pentlace seemed tiny, the coffee shop far off. She was a shaman and could walk through walls and, dammit, the art of whisking soya milk to a fine froth would have to wait. There was a city to save!

A city to save.

In the excitement, she'd almost forgotten.

How did you go about saving a city?

She googled it.

It seemed as good a place to start as any.

Recycle more, build less, bicycle more, drive less, build skyscrapers, build terraces, preserve historical housing, demolish unused stock, more parks, fewer car parks, more car parks, fewer binsthe answers seemed numerous and diverse, and not one of them seemed to deal with what she had in mind.

Her good humour was deteriorating, as she logged into Weird Shit Keeps Happening to Me, and posted on the wall.

Sharon Li: Hey guys, does anyone know anything about the spirits of the city all disappearing or nothing? Drop me a line if you've got any ideas!

Well, it was progress of a sort.

She drummed her fingers and waited for a reply.

None came.

It seemed surprising that Sammy the Elbow hadn't recommended any proactive policy in her quest to save the citywhatever it was that it needed saving from. He hadn't even suggested she try meditation, which was surely a likely thing for someone supposedly in touch with the spirits.

Sharon sat on her bed and tried to adopt the lotus position.

She could get one foot on top of her thigh, but not the other. She swapped legs and, sure enough, the previously recalcitrant foot rested easily in place, while her other leg got stuck in a frustratingly un-karmic pose. She tried breathing slowly through her nose and on the fourth breath got bored.

She went back to the computer and googled spirit.

Frustratingly, her first few hits seemed to relate to computer software and airlines, and it was a while before pictures of swirling lights, innocent fairies and, to her slight confusion, galloping horses began to populate her screen.

The Internet, she concluded, wasn't getting her anywhere.

This revelation took a little processing since, in nearly all of her education, she'd been reliant on it to get even a C grade. To be so badly let down at the last would, she concluded, be one of the hardest parts of becoming a shaman.

She tried to think about becoming a shaman, and her mind drew a blank. Don't go there, it proclaimed. Be smart.

She thought about the empty building in Holborn where Sammy had held forth.

She thought about a man called the Midnight Mayor who'd stood with his back to the light in an empty place in Clerkenwell and murmured, "Don't look back. Run."

She thought about the silence, the too-thick silence that had set her teeth on edge. A thought drifted in from the outer edges of her awareness, raised one hand and politely asked if it could get a word in edgeways.

It was a good thought.

It involved more walking.

Sharon reached for her shoes.

Chapter 31.

Do Not Judge by Appearance His name was Bryan with a y. The y was importantthe y marked him out as an individualist. His suit marked him out as one of the crowd, and his work as a letting agent absolutely confirmed him to be a sheep in human form. But still, whenever the darkest doubts crept into his mind and whispered that he'd sold his soul for 39,000 a year before tax and a flat in Fulham, he reminded himself that he was Bryan with a y and thus maintained some integrity.

He said, "So, what do you guys do?"