Night Lands

by Rosemary Gooding

Night lands is what Mary’s Dad called Dreams. Mary liked to dream and she

wrote her dreams down every morning. Mary was shy, Mary did not do well

at school and her report said she never concentrated. It seemed as if she

was always in the clouds.

Mary said very little and although she did what she was told it was only the

minimum. Her sisters watched her on occasions seeming to stare into

space. “Is there anybody there?” they asked.

“I’m off to my bedroom”, and that was the last the family saw of Mary until

the morning.

“She’s off to Night lands”, Dad said.

Mary had a dream maker and she believed in her dream maker. I shall be a

famous writer she announced before bed, and repeatedly asked her dream maker to provide her with dreams that she could write down in the morning. Mary could lucid dream and it had taken her two years to establish this technique and discipline.

When she sat at her school desk, she would pinch herself and say “Am I dreaming? And, as the pencil rolled towards the wastepaper basket, she realized something else was guiding it forward.

When break time came the other children tried to encourage Mary to play games with them but she did not want to play in their world.

“Am I dreaming?” she said to herself”, looking at her hands. “Tonight, I shall dream I am the best in the team, and I can throw the ball through the net.”

Mary grew up and she found “a room of her own” and became a published

novelist. She never forgot her escape into Night lands and if ever she feels

devoid of ideas she begins to lucid dream again.

Rosemary Gooding

June 2023