Read Online Very Best of Charles de Lint, The by Charles de Lint - Free Book Online

explanation for the terror that gripped her—once, sometimes twice a week. It just came, an awful, indescribable panic that left her shivering and unable to sleep for the rest of the night.
    It was on the days following such nights that she went into the garden. The greenery and flowerbeds and statuary all combined to soothe her. Invariably, she found herself in the very center of the garden where an ancient oak tree stood on a knoll and overhung a fountain. Lying on the grass sheltered by its boughs, with the soft lullaby of the fountain’s water murmuring close at hand, she would find what the night fears had stolen from her the night before.
    She would sleep.
    And she would dream the most curious dreams.
    “The garden has a name, too,” she told her uncle when she came in from sleeping under the oak one day.
    The house was so big that many of the rooms had been given names just so that they could all be kept straight in their minds.
    “It’s called the Mondream Wood,” she told him.
    She took his look of surprise to mean that he didn’t know or understand the word.
    “It means that the trees in it dream that they’re people,” she explained.
    Her uncle nodded. “‘The dream of life among men.’ It’s a good name. Did you think it up yourself?”
    “No. Merlin told me.”
    “ The Merlin?” her uncle asked with a smile.
    Now it was her turn to look surprised.
    “What do you mean the Merlin?” she asked.
    Her uncle started to explain, astonished that in all her reading she hadn’t come across a reference to Britain’s most famous wizard, but then just gave her a copy of Malory’s La Morte d’Arthure and, after a moment’s consideration, T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone as well.

    * * *

    “Did you ever have an imaginary friend when you were a kid?” Sara asked as she finally turned away from the window.
    Julie shrugged. “My mom says I did, but I can’t remember. Apparently he was a hedgehog the size of a toddler named Whatzit.”
    “I never did. But I can remember that for a long time I used to wake up in the middle of the night just terrified and then I wouldn’t be able to sleep again for the rest of the night. I used to go into the middle of the garden the next day and sleep under that big oak that grows by the fountain.”
    “How pastoral,” Julie said.
    Sara grinned. “But the thing is, I used to dream that there was a boy living in that tree and his name was Merlin.”
    “Go on,” Julie scoffed.
    “No, really. I mean, I really had these dreams. The boy would just step out of the tree and we’d sit there and talk away the afternoon.”
    “What did you talk about?”
    “I don’t remember,” Sara said. “Not the details—just the feeling. It was all very magical and…healing, I suppose. Jamie said that my having those night fears was just my unconscious mind’s way of dealing with the trauma of losing my parents and then having to live with my dad’s brother who only wanted my inheritance, not me. I was too young then to know anything about that kind of thing; all I knew was that when I talked to Merlin, I felt better. The night fears started coming less and less often and then finally they went away altogether.
    “I think Merlin took them away for me.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “Who?”
    “The boy in the tree,” Julie said. “Your Merlin. When did you stop dreaming about him?”
    “I don’t really know. I guess when I stopped waking up terrified, I just stopped sleeping under the tree so I didn’t see him anymore. And then I just forgot that he’d ever been there….”
    Julie shook her head. “You know, you can be a bit of flake sometimes.”
    “Thanks a lot. At least I didn’t hang around with a giant hedgehog named Whatzit when I was a kid.”
    “No. You hung out with tree-boy.”
    Julie started to giggle and then they both broke up. It was a few moments before either of them could catch their breath.
    “So what made you think of your