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“Dad? Can you tell me a story?”
“Of course, son. What story do you want to hear?”
“Tell me about your grandpa and the man in the bubble?”
“All right, then, let me think… The year was 1920, soon after the end of the Great War, and my grandfather had just come home to London. He’d gone through a lot, in the war, so afterwards he liked to spend time out in the woods, and one day when he was out flying, he heard—“
“Daaad, you skipped a bit! You have to tell why he could fly!”
“Very well, you young tyrant. A few years earlier, while he was in the trenches with the British army, a bomb had gone off almost right next to him. My grandfather always said that it knocked him way up into the sky, and he might’ve floated right up to heaven if an angel hadn’t led him back to his body. After that, whenever he lay down to sleep, he could go fly like the angels, and no one else could see him.
“Now, one day when he was out flying through the woods outside of London, my grandfather heard someone crying out like she was in pain, and he flew over to see if he needed to wake up and come help her. But when he got there, there was no one around! My grandfather was about to leave when the voice came again.
“‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Can you hear me?’ The voice was coming from above him. My grandfather looked up, and there was a bird on a branch looking back at him.
“‘Yes. Can you see me?’ my grandfather asked the bird.
“‘Yes, I can,’ she said, and it was definitely the bird talking.”
“What kind of bird was she, Dad?”
“Come to think of it, I don’t know — my grandfather never said. He asked her why she’d been crying, and she told him that she was a servant of the Lord of Dreams, and that an evil man had captured her boss and was keeping him locked up in the basement of a nearby manor. The bird begged my grandfather to help her free her lord and friend, and my grandfather agreed.
“He flew through the manor until he found the way down to the basement, passing through locked doors and walking past guards. Inside, there was a sphere made of great panes of glass connected with metal beams, and in the sphere there was a man. My grandfather told the man about his conversation with the bird and asked him how he could get him out, because the bird hadn’t known. The man told him — he didn’t open his mouth, but my grandfather could hear him anyways, the same as the bird — he told him to look at the floor, where there was a circle drawn in chalk. He said to go around the back of the sphere and break the circle where it couldn’t be seen from the door, and the man would be able to get himself out after that.
“My grandfather had never been able to touch anything while he was flying before, but the man in the bubble taught him how. He broke the circle, went to tell the bird, and went home, and that night as he was sleeping the man appeared in his dreams. He told my grandfather the same thing the bird had, that he was the Lord of Dreams, and his name was Morpheus. And he said that he owed my grandfather a great debt for setting him free, and that if he or any of his family ever had bad dreams that wouldn’t leave, we could call his name, and he’d make the nightmares go away.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“D-did you ever call Morpheus to take away a nightmare?”
“No, actually. I never needed to. I hardly ever have bad dreams, and I’ve never had the same one twice.”
“What about Grandpa?”
“I don’t know. He never said.”
“...I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. It’s good to talk about him.”
“Mmm.”
“...Are you having a nightmare?”
“...Yeah.”
“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to. Are you going to call on Morpheus?”
“...Yeah. I’m gonna.”
“I wish you well. Good night, Steve.”
“Good night, Dad.”
In fifteen years Steve Miller would never have abided the thought of seeking help from a mystical being, be it family folktale or Greek god. Even the day before, when he’d remembered the story, he’d scoffed under the sunlight. But that night, a little boy who wasn’t yet clinging to skepticism gazed into the shadows, thought of dragons and water, and called out into the dark of his bedroom.
In another world, silence would kill that last hope of comfort, and Steve would turn away to the safety of the concrete.
But here and now… someone answered.
And things changed.