Do you know what the dream was about?

No.

Are you okay?

Yes. I’m okay.

You never had the dream again.

No.

Do you have recurring dreams?

Yes. I suppose that sometimes the unconscious will keep working on certain dreams, revising them, hoping you’ll get it. That’s not the interesting part though.

What’s the interesting part?

The interesting part is that it knows that you havent gotten it. It doesnt really have anything to go on. It’s a mind reader? Sometimes it will just keep trying the same story over and over. It’s stuck. It has no place to go. The recurring dream I’ve had is also pretty unusual—unheard of, really—in that the dreamer is not in it.

Are you in every dream you have?

Yes.

You think people dont have dreams that they’re not in.

People are interested in other people. But your unconscious is not. Or only as they might directly affect you. It’s been hired to do a very specific job. It never sleeps. It’s more faithful than God.

What was the dream?

Why should I tell you?

You’re kidding.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Have you ever told anyone?

No.

So you and I would be the only ones who knew this subliminal story.

You’ve been so sweet since the baby came.

I’m sorry?

Sorry. It’s an expression of a friend of my brother’s. I’m not even sure what it means. It’s all right. The dream doesnt hold some secret concerning me. Or I dont think it does. It’s just a dream. Fateful words. It’s more like an old fable. Or perhaps even an old history. Repeated ad something.

But you’re not in it.

No. Although I may be the dreamer generations hence who is piecing together some reconstruction by her elder’s side at the fire.

Do you believe in a collective unconscious?

I’d be more likely to credit a thing like that if it hadnt become the property of Dr Jung.

Maybe we should get to the dream.

I havent said I’d tell you.

You know you’re going to.

Okay. The women look up from their washing and they understand at once that everything they have loved and nurtured has been put at naught. They have in an instant no past and no future. Everything they’ve taught their children has been stricken from the world without a trace and they are now widows and slaves. What they’ve seen is a mounted army gathered out of nowhere that stands aligned upon the hills above the village. The riders are clothed in skins and their horses wear shields of rawhide painted with circular geometries pale with dust. The men of the village have come from the huts with axe and spear but they will soon lie in pools of their communal blood and the women will be raped and the village torched and burned and they will then march weeping and bleeding and yoked like livestock to a country they’ve never seen, never imagined.

This seems very elaborate for a dream.