She looks up to a sky that is round and iridescent like a soap bubble. This is a dream. The unearthly sky is the giveaway. The landscape’s familiarity calms her. She’s walking up the hill to the forest reserve. The incline in her dream is much steeper, but her body feels weightless. She reaches the wall of aspens and evergreens and continues along the path. There’s someone ahead who she recognizes that looks lost. She hasn’t seen him since – well – she can’t quite recall. Details of the awake world are vague. She calls out his name. He turns and approaches, looking relieved and puzzled to see her.

​

This isn’t my dream, he says.

​

I know, it’s mine. What are you doing here? She asks.

​

I’m not sure. I’ve never visited anyone in a dream before, says the Visitor.

​

I must have brought you here. Let’s go for a walk.

​

The pathway divides the forest from the plots of allotment gardens and trails down to where the forest and the gardens on the hill dip at the horizon. Beyond are the grey and purple mountains. 

​

Where are we? the Visitor asks. It’s beautiful.

​

This is where I’ve thought about you quite a bit. Maybe that’s why I’m dreaming of it.

​

What do you think about?

​

What I’d say to you if I ever got the chance.

​

You’ve had plenty of chances.

​

Yes, but this is a dream. Here I have no choice but to say exactly what’s on my mind. I can’t filter my thoughts. And I won’t get caught off guard by any rebuttal you may have.

​

I see, go on.

​

The words well up in her chest, the unsent letters written on yellow notebook paper that begin composed and unfold down the page into illegible scribbles. She opens her mouth, but the words in her chest deflate and leave her breathless. He takes her hand, and they continue along the hillside in silence. Flecks of phosphorescent dust float in the air like spring pollen. Above them geometrical patterns emerge in the negative space of the leaves and branches. As they gain elevation the sky darkens to a texture like oil on asphalt. They’re breaching her atmosphere.

​

I’ve missed you, the Visitor says. She squeezes his hand. It’s all she can do. Even in a dream that is her own he renders her silent and swells her heart. His feet leave the ground – his center of gravity shifts elsewhere – returning to his own mind perhaps. He’ll return to his own dreams and wake up in a bed they no longer share. She tries to pull him back to her Earth but the muscles in her arm and hand atrophy. She lets him go and the Visitor drifts away like dust.

​

She wakes and blinks away tears. The hand he held is clammy and cramped. She wipes it over the bedsheets. He came to her in a dream. That’s all it was. She has no time to interpret the visitation. Today is Sechseläuten, the Burning of Böögg.

​

The lake is silver and wrinkled by the winds and clouds. The townspeople are gathered in the square around the pyre where Böögg is perched. Böögg is a ragdoll and an oracle. On the vernal equinox he is burned to drive away winter and welcome in spring. It is believed that the faster the pyre and Böögg burn the longer and warmer the summer.    

​

The wind is high. A violent gust knocks over beer glasses and sweeps debris into the air. People scuttle about the chaos. Men on horseback canter round and round the pyre with blazing torches. The horses are alert with heads held high, ears forward, and a springing gait synchronized with the drums that beat faster and faster. It continues for some time in a way that makes the action feel suspended. 

​

We apologize, says a voice over loudspeaker, the burning of Böögg is cancelled. Böögg is gone.

​

The Foreigner looks up to the pyre and sees that Böögg is no longer there. The crowd is obedient and disperses. With nothing left to do – it’s still a local holiday – the Foreigner joins her Friend for a drink.  He’s an outsider like her but has lived here several years longer. He runs a bed and breakfast on the outskirts of town. The indoors is a respite from the wind. They are in the main room of his lodge. Has the burning been cancelled before? She asks. He shakes his head. But it’s just a tradition. It doesn’t really mean anything, he says, though he himself sounds unconvinced.

​

Something had been building in the crowd that afternoon. Maybe it was simply frustration caused by the harsh winds and the ritual’s delay. But it felt as though the lighthearted festivities were gradually giving way to something sinister. Something arising within the people. Yet the cancellation – or Böögg’s disappearance – caused this to dissipate almost immediately. As if they collectively snapped out of a hypnotic trance. Whatever had taken hold of them exorcised.

​

Last year a woman died, says the Friend, his boozy gaze unfixed. One moment she’s calmly watching the Sechseläuten and the next she’s screaming and running into the fire.

​

The Foreigner nods along as though she understands the why Böögg stirred the stoic people enough to become so undone. Where had Böögg gone? No one seems to question how the ragdoll disappeared. Before she responds the hairs on the back of her neck stand. Something within her knows better than to ask.

​

They exchange a few half-hearted jokes and empty laughs, eventually withdrawing to their beers.

​

She remembers her first night there not so long ago, in the armchair by the fireplace with a book. It is late and he is quietly cleaning around her, sweeping the wood floors. A turn table in the corner spins jazz noir. He sets the broom aside and asks if she’d care for a drink. She nods. He leaves and returns with a bottle of red and two glasses. He shares how he moved to the town several years ago after his wife disappeared. One day he awoke to her side of the bed made and her shelves and drawers emptied. She disappeared without a trace or an explanation. He promptly quit his job – as the night manager at an upscale hotel – sold his house, taking his savings to open his own small bed and breakfast here. His move was as swift and untraceable as his wife’s. Running the inn made him a recluse, he hardly needed to interact with the locals. His connections were mostly with travelers – brief and fleeting – and with her.

​

He asks how long she’ll be staying in town. She shrugs. I ended up here by chance. She doesn’t elaborate. But it’s quiet and beautiful. A breath of fresh air. He then offers her a job that she accepts. A modest wage with a room and hot meals. They take each other to bed on occasion when the inn is empty.

​

She is awoken by an earthquake shaking the walls of the inn where she passes the night. She escapes through an open window and finds herself alone in a medieval village in the dark until she runs into the Visitor on the street.

​

He accompanies her down the cobbled lanes and canals past the whitewashed almshouses and step-gabled facades until the sun rises and reveals a lime green and peach sky. The colors move in whirling globs. She is dreaming.

​

I’m afraid, the Foreigner says.

​

Of what? Asks the Visitor.

​

Of Böögg.

​

If no one else is afraid, how come you are?

​

Because I’m the only one who seems to notice how strange it is. But I’m not supposed to ask where he’s gone. I’m not sure why.

​

Well– for example–when you’re lucid dreaming, you can’t tell the characters in the dream that you know it’s a dream. It’s like waking up a sleepwalker. It’s dangerous.

​

 How come it’s dangerous? She asks.

​

They change.

​

How so?

​

They stop being just characters.

​

Are you saying that what I perceive as reality is just a dream? 

​

It could be.

​

Impossible. It’s too real. I’d know otherwise.

​

How did you realize this is a dream?

​

The sky, of course.

​

And what was the sky like that day of the burning?

​

I don’t know. It was overcast.

​

They come to a stone-and-brick bridge and stop to admire the way the sunlight glitters atop the blue when crocodiles emerge and leap like a pod of dolphins in and out of the water. She leans over the railing to take in the view that strikes awe within her because she had not known crocodiles behaved in this manner. Some crawl through the rails to rest on the bridge and bask in the sun. She assumes the crocodiles come out at this time because it’s early and the streets are still quiet. She forgets about the Visitor who is no longer by her side.

​

The toll of bells shifts her focus, and she follows the sound to a square with a church. The doors swing open and out comes a wedding reception. The Visitor comes down the steps hand-in- hand with his new wife. His wife is beautiful and everything about her is human except she has the head of a mouse. Underneath her white dress is a round and swollen belly. The newlyweds are encompassed by doting guests and a shower of dewy pink petals. The Foreigner forgets she is in a dream and wails. The bells come to a halt and the petals shrivel and brown and crumble to the cobblestone. The wedding guests look at her aghast. The Visitor shakes his head at her.

​

The Foreigner wakes and the back of her throat aches. The clouds are lead colored and the snow falls heavy and slow, dusting the terracotta rooftops white. Chimney smoke rises and curls around the snowfall and all the grayness makes her listless. From bed she watches, pretending it’s a cozy December morning instead of a late-April omen.

​

The snow falls for three days. The tulips and the asters and the bellflowers that had come into full bloom now hunch under the weight of the snow paled and withered. The birds stop calling to each other. The air is still. For those three days there are no guests at the inn and there is not much work to be done.       

​

The Foreigner and her Friend are in the living room on the couch reading to themselves. He absentmindedly plays with her hair. She feels the callouses of his hands on her head and the weight of the book in her lap. Everything feels real. It is real, of course it is real. She feels nauseous.

​

Does it bother you? She asks.

​

Does what bother me?

​

That your wife just disappeared. Why don’t you ever question where she’s gone?

​

He withdraws his hand from her hair and stands. You shouldn’t have asked that, he says. Before he leaves, he turns back to her. You need to be more careful, he warns. He doesn’t elaborate.

​

That night in the Foreigner’s dream the Visitor is there and there is no setting in this dream. It is an infinite white space. The Visitor caresses her cheek with his thumb. I’m sorry. Please come home, he asks. 

​

The Foreigner looks away from him and shakes her head. I can’t.

​

Please. I want you to meet my son.

​

After she is finished with her work for the day the Foreigner goes for a walk. She finishes work early because the inn still has not had a guest since Sechseläuten. She returns to the site of her dream with the Visitor on the hill. Coming back to a place she imagined so vividly makes the reality dull and flat in comparison. Everything has felt dull and flat. The sky remains covered by the clouds. Her Friend is now uneasy and apprehensive around her. He evades her gaze as if she were Medusa. He addresses her only for things such as a bed needing the sheets changed or the pantry needing restocking.

​

She now knows that she loves her Friend. Realizing made no difference. If he hadn’t broken her heart, she would have never known otherwise. She loves the way he accepted her and took her in as she was. She loves his once soft and gentle mannerisms.

​

But because she loves him, she can never leave. The hairs on the back of her neck stand. An icy chill runs down her spine. She knows what she must do.

​

She walks down the hill to the path that leads into town and to the square where the pyre stands like a sharpened guillotine. She walks up to a man sitting with a newspaper outside the cafe and she asks him where is Böögg?

​

Everyone in the square stops. In an instant they become re-animated. Heads snap and eyes lock in on her sharp and malicious and with intent. They seize her. The drums and the horses and the crowds are back. The wind blows. All the while she feels herself metamorphosing. Her bones and muscles atrophying, her hair thickening and weaving into braided wool. Her limp body is handed to a man who carries her up a ladder that rests against the pyre. Her ragdoll abdomen catches a jagged edge of wood and tufts of cotton billow out. Once she is perched the pyre is torched. The flames and the smoke rise and engulf the wood.

​

A profound sense of calm rushes over her. Her arms are spread wide, her chest and heart open. She uses her last bit of mobility to tilt her head towards the overcast sky. She can see a beam of midday sun cut through the clouds making a gash. The gash in the clouds reveals a sky and it is a heavenly sky.