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Chapter 1

"Wake up, sir, you've arrived."

Chuck blinked awake with a start, flailing against the soft bonds that contained his hands. It turned out to be a blanket. Panting, Chuck thrust it aside and twisted around in the padded airplane seat to look up at the stewardess. She was a middle-aged woman who looked calm and motherly in her soft, pearl-gray uniform. She favored him with a gentle smile. Her hair, light brown shot with a few silver threads, was folded up under a gray pillbox hat that was adorned with a silver feather lying on a cloud. The same insignia was embroidered on the breast of her uniform and on the headrests of each seat. Chuck looked around warily. He didn't recognize the logo, nor could he remember having gotten onto a jet. The last place he remembered being was lying on his back in bed, holding very still, fighting down feelings of depression and self-loathing. He had counted backwards from a hundred, as he'd been told to do. The last thing he recalled clearly, somewhere around counting down to seventy-two, was a warm and floating sensation.

Chuck twined his fingers together and stretched his arms forward, popping the kink between his shoulder blades. The whole jet was decorated in the same soft gray: the walls, the carpet, even the ceiling. He looked around for his fellow passengers, but found that the capsule-shaped chamber was empty except for the two of them. Was he the last to get off? How odd—where was he? He glanced through the jet window, but outside it was dark. Instead, he got a glimpse of himself in the glass. The face that looked back at him was serious, long and narrow, with troubled, dark blue eyes set deeply under straight brows. His straight brown hair was sun-streaked with blond. His mouth was almost feminine in the sensuous lushness of the lower lip, but the jaw was square and decidedly masculine. He looked about eighteen years old. Chuck stared at his reflection in confusion. That wasn't right, was it? He clawed at memories that eluded him. How could a reflection be wrong?

He looked up at the flight attendant, who was busy fluffing up his discarded pillow with an expert hand.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"The Dreamland, sir. Just where you were going."

"You mean I'm dreaming you?" he asked.

"Not just you, sir." The motherly woman picked up his blanket and folded it over the armrest of the chair. Chuck stood up in the aisle and brushed at his sweatshirt and blue jeans, hesitant, uncertain what to do. "You'd better go, sir. They're waiting for you." The flight attendant held her wrists up even with her head and flapped both pointing forefingers toward the exit. She smiled brilliantly. "That way. And thank you for making your flight an Astral Flight. We'll be looking forward to serving you when you return."

Cautiously, Chuck followed her gesture and went to the front of the jet, where he looked around in confusion. The cockpit door stood ajar. The pilot had already gone. No one sat before the banks of dials and knobs. He started back toward the seat to ask the stewardess for help, when his way was blocked by the gray carpet. It came rolling up the aisle, shoving him toward the exit. Chuck hopped out the door onto the nearby stairway to avoid getting tangled in it.

"Hey!" he yelled. Couldn't they even wait until he was gone to start cleaning up?

He walked down the steps to the concrete apron, following yellow-painted arrow signs pointing toward an open door through which brilliant white light was pouring. Workmen in white coveralls and painters' hats passed by him, carrying tools and buckets. Curiously, Chuck watched a pair approach carrying a long, wooden ladder. One of them propped the ladder against thin air. It settled firmly, as though it was resting against a solid wall. The other climbed up it and took down the arrow signs he had just passed. Puzzled, Chuck looked back toward the plane.

He had to blink a few times to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him. The plane was not a real plane. The body of the chamber from which he had just come was a plywood capsule supported by wooden studs and braces. The airport around it was a mere painted backdrop, like a movie set. Was it constructed to fool him? Why was someone going to so much trouble to deceive him into believing that he had been in an airliner? Who? He felt despair. If it wasn't a real plane, how was he going to get back home?

He felt an emotional twinge. Did he even want to go back home? There was nothing for him there. All that thoughts of home summoned up was an overwhelming sensation of being a failure. Everything went wrong, and it was all his fault.

Chuck stopped to think, hoping to recall more details, but the workmen moved their ladder. They reached up to take down the arrow sign beside him. In a moment, he'd be lost again, just because he hesitated too long. Before they could remove any more of his guideposts, Chuck ran toward the doorway full of light.

As soon as he was inside, he became confused all over again. This was an airport. Men, women and children hauling bags, suitcases, teddy bears, coats on hangers, boxes and carts walked purposefully up and down the carpeted, pale-gray painted corridor that stretched three stories high and off out of sight to either side. Square yellow signs with black printing hung over his head. He couldn't read most of them. They were either in a foreign language, or blurred when he tried to concentrate on them. How would he know where to go?

A small, thin man Chuck thought might be in his sixties hurried over and gripped his arm in wiry fingers.

"So, Chuck, you decided to come in after all," he said. He had very dark, knowing eyes, sharply defined cheek and temple bones and, half concealed in a thick white beard, a quick smile that made Chuck think the old man knew far more than he did about everything. He was dressed in a tunic woven out of rough, gray wool thread, a pair of dark-colored, baggy trousers and leather sandals. "I thought for a moment you weren't going to make it."

"I didn't have a choice," Chuck said, resentfully. "They were taking away my signs. I was afraid I'd be lost."

"You did have a choice," the old man said. "You always have a choice. I'm glad at least your sense of self-preservation is intact, if not your curiosity."

"Who are you? What am I doing here? How do you know who I am?"

"Ah, there's the curiosity," the small man said with satisfaction, poking Chuck in the chest with a forefinger. "Your wits are working after all. I'm Keir, your spirit guide. You wanted to expand your mind, you said. You wanted to get it together, you said. Learn who you really are, you said. Find the real you, you said. Astral travel as the path to enlightenment. Eh?"

Spirit . . . ? "Ah, yes," Chuck said, excitedly. Something was coming back to him now. "You mean it worked? I'm here! That's great! But how did I get here? That's not a real plane out there."

"Of course not. It was merely a construct to help transport you here. Any means that works is good enough. Like chopsticks. It could be anything that would help you to understand that you have been conveyed from one place, the Waking World," Keir picked up something invisible with both hands, "to another, which is here, the Dreamland." He set down his invisible burden, and looked up at Chuck for understanding. Not finding it in the puzzled young man's eyes, he waved a dismissive hand. "It's all symbolism, not real stuff. As you'll see. Come with me."

"Have I met you before?" Chuck asked, as they walked. "You don't look familiar."

"Everything is going to look different here," Keir said. "Even you. Oh, yes, we've met. You've known me before. But I'm not going to remind you of how. It isn't necessary. The important thing is the here and the now. Don't overanticipate. Try always to be in the here and now. You might find it to be the most vital thing you do, to keep safe. Please come along."

They stepped out into the carpeted corridor, joining the throng of travelers. As soon as they were out of the gate area, counter, doorway and all were promptly taken apart, folded into a box, and hauled away by the ubiquitous workmen. They started to unfold a different scene that when it sprang up looked every bit as real as the gate had. Chuck kept looking back over his shoulder, watching in fascination as solid walls compressed down into a space much smaller than they should have fit, and three-dimensional objects came out of flat portfolios that couldn't have concealed a newspaper. The workers picked up their boxes and hauled them away as if they weighed no more than a carton of cornflakes. It was the most remarkable thing he'd ever seen. He wanted to watch some more, but Keir kept tugging him along. Chuck was aware of the guide's voice asking him questions, but he was too interested in his surroundings to pay attention. More marvels sprang up at each new turning. Was that woman really walking a fur coat on a leash? And that party of huge fish in Hawaiian shirts! What were they doing? There was so much to absorb.

Something Keir said finally drilled through to his conscious mind. Astral projection! Was he really astrally projecting, or projecting astrally, or whatever you called it? He had tried so often, for so long, to make it happen. He wanted to be raised to a higher plane, where meditation would bring him true peace of mind. His life had hit a dead end. If he couldn't find a way to untie the knot of misery that choked him even now, he might as well be dead. Chuck could recall being on the edge of suicide again. Again? He racked his memory for details. He couldn't remember anything about his past clearly, but somehow he was sure finding himself was a matter of life or death. His own.

He was so desperately unhappy that it made him feel hollow. That was why he had gone to so much effort to learn to meditate and look inside himself, in hopes of finding peace. He couldn't mention his attempts to anyone he knew, because they'd think he was absolutely nuts. If he failed again, he didn't want anyone else to know. It looked—he hardly dared think it—as if he'd gotten this right.

Practice, the guidebooks said. And he had. He remembered reading up on several techniques. Trying some of them made him feel silly even though he was alone. Others were downright uncomfortable, either to his physical body or his upbringing. When he found a method that made him feel at ease, he had worked on it nightly. Only once he had succeeded in lifting himself out of his physical form, or at least thought he had. It had lasted for only a brief moment. He had felt as though he was flying. Then, he was whisked right back to his bed in his room. That single, exhilarating moment of weightlessness was so uplifting to his spirits that it made him delve further into parapsychological and metaphysical studies. If he was capable of that kind of joy, surely he could find the key to setting his life onto a more positive path.

He really could not recall how he had come into contact with Keir, but he did remember something about the instructions for attaining the altered state of consciousness that ought to work. He knew if he could do it right he would meet his spirit guide and go on a journey to himself. He really wanted to succeed, but hardly dared that he could.

It looked as if this time he had made it, Chuck thought again, looking around with satisfaction. This astonishing place couldn't be a figment of his imagination. He wasn't that detail-oriented. But it wasn't at all what he had thought the astral plane would look like. What had that flight attendant called it, the Dreamland? He didn't feel as though he was out of his body, but this certainly was not where he had lain down, nor was it anywhere he'd ever been in his life. But, now what? To tell the truth, now that he was here, he had no idea how to begin to straighten himself out, and he only had one night to learn. Who knew if he could ever achieve this state of consciousness again?

Keir's voice interrupted his thoughts, jerking him back to the present.

"Did you bring any luggage?"

Chuck reluctantly returned his attention to the way ahead. He thought hard. Again, that film over his memory got in the way. "I . . . I don't know. I don't think so."

Keir sighed. "You probably did. Almost everyone does. Especially people with personal agendas like yours. They usually have lots of it."

The small man escorted him down endless square passages, some of them carpeted and some not, some of them with moving walkways, decorated with murals, paintings, sculpture, filled with music, the sound of falling water, or the rumble of engines. All around Chuck were more wonders, the most astonishing collection of people and things. Waiting in line at another gate was a host of unlikely beings, including cartoon characters. As he went by, he recognized Hopkins the Rabbit, the main character in his favorite childhood Saturday morning TV series. The giant bunny shifted his green briefcase to his other paw and looked at the outsized wristwatch on his arm. Chuck gawked. To his amazement, Hopkins looked up and met his eyes. He seemed to recognize Chuck, too. He gave a wink and a buck-toothy grin, turned sideways and became a tall, thin black line. He was still only two-dimensional, even here.

As they went around the next corner, Chuck hesitated, eyes wide. The chamber ahead was filled floor to ceiling with water, pale green and alive with waving fronds of seaweed. There was nothing holding the water back from flooding the rest of the hallway, yet it stood there like a wall. Keir plunged in without hesitation. Chuck held back, fearing he might drown. Keir didn't stop. Chuck pulled in a huge gulp of air before plunging forward after his guide.

Men in business suits wearing bowler hats and carrying briefcases walked or swam by. A blue-and-green-skinned mermaid hovered behind a desk resting on the floor and chatted in a stream of bubbles with a giant, brown crab while humans, animals and fish waited their turns in line. At small white tables with wrought-iron legs in an underwater cafe, dignified women in business suits sat and sipped tea, ignoring the fact that their hair was waving around them in the current.

They seemed so at home under the water, yet they looked as normal as Chuck. He wished he felt as comfortable in his surroundings as they did. He reminded himself they were only dream creations, but he was a real person. If he inhaled, he would die. The next section of dry corridor was hundreds of yards ahead. Too far. Chuck felt his lungs twisting with cramp. He couldn't possibly make it, and looked in vain for a pocket of air. He tried to get Keir's attention, but the guide strode ahead, jauntily buoyant, as if he walked underwater every day. Probably he did. Chuck hopped and paddled after him, hoping to catch up before his air ran out. The section of water-filled corridor seemed to stretch from an oversized fish tank to a river. He ran and ran, never getting close enough to hail Keir.

When his lungs could no longer squeeze any oxygen out, Chuck's vision closed into a narrow black tunnel. All his muscles quivered like rubber bands, refusing to hold on. Chuck's knees gave way. He stumbled to the ground. The breath rushed out of him in a burst of bubbles. This was it. He would die in his sleep. Unwillingly, he gasped, and snorted in surprise. Instead of the inward wash of water he expected to fill his lungs, the water was as permeable as air. If it was a little warmer and more humid than his last breath, he found it just as sustaining. Chuck was so relieved he stopped in his tracks to pant. Women in veiled, velvet hats, Victorian brocade and bustles and the hairy faces of goats pushed around him, and shot him looks of annoyance.

"Sorry," he muttered, and picked himself up to run after Keir.

* * *

"Look for what you think belongs to you!" Keir shouted over the rumble of the baggage carousel.

Chuck hopped up and down, trying to see over the shoulders of the throng surrounding the conveyor belt. It ran for miles all over the beige-painted stadium-sized chamber, up toward the ceiling, down into depressions and pits. People crowded three and four deep at every loop. Uniformed porters with two-wheeled carts and stevedores running with sweat hauled suitcases off the rumbling belt and swung them around, where they were promptly seized by someone, yet the mob never got any smaller. Chuck scanned the astonishing array of cases, boxes and containers rolling by. Most of them were black, many travel-scarred in some way. None of them looked familiar.

"Mine won't get lost, will it?" he asked anxiously.

"Oh, no," Keir assured him. The spirit guide stood at a slight remove from the crowd, untouched by the bustle. "You'll have all the baggage you came with, more's the pity."

Chuck watched as the porters helped a man take dozens of huge, matching brick-red suitcases off the conveyor belt. They strapped most of them to his back and legs with rope and sturdy belts. The last remaining case they put into his arms. The man staggered away, looking like a one-person depot. Chuck worried that he'd be as overloaded.

Something hit him in the knees. To his surprise, he'd moved all the way up to the metal bumper surrounding the river of luggage just as a teal-blue carryall caught his eye. That was his, he knew it! So was the blue steamer trunk behind it. He was glad and relieved to see them. With difficulty he hauled the two pieces off, then snagged a few small, mismatched document cases rolling by that looked too familiar not to examine. Yes, he was sure those belonged to him. He couldn't read the tags, but his hands seemed to know every scar and nick as he ran a loving hand over their surfaces. Oh, he'd had these for a long time. He couldn't recall how he knew that, but he knew. He felt an attachment, even an affection for them.

Chuck waited fruitlessly for a while, staring at the rolling conveyor belt, and decided that this was all the luggage he had coming. He wasn't as badly off as he could have been. He glanced at the people around him, some dealing with ten, twenty, even three dozen pieces. As he turned away from the barrier, an anxious, tawny-skinned man in a sarong and a woman in a fussy red and black dress and high heels with a poodle crowded in past him to take his place.

The steamer trunk had tiny wheels on its underside. Chuck piled the other boxes on top of it, and attempted to push it out of the crowd. It didn't budge. None of the wheels wanted to go in the same direction. No matter how hard he tried, it would not roll forward, or in any other direction. He looked around for a porter. The entire uniformed cadre seemed to be at the far ends of the room. Chuck waved, but no one even glanced his way. He didn't dare leave his bags to go get their attention. If he wanted his luggage moved, he was going to have to lift it bodily. He stooped, gathered the whole mass in his arms, and stood up. A small part of his mind told him what he was doing was impossible, but he quashed the thought. He was doing it, wasn't he? The mass was heavy but not unbearable. Chuck tottered through the churning mob of people toward the waiting Keir. A low bump in the floor caught his toe, and Chuck found himself staggering wildly after the weight in his arms.

"Help!" he cried. The spirit guide stepped forward and helped him lower his burden to the floor. He tucked the smaller valises under his arm while he took the steamer trunk and tied it to Chuck's back. Chuck kept looking over his shoulder in disbelief. No one could hold four suitcases with his elbow as if they were newspapers. But when Keir heaped them in Chuck's arms once again, the carryall and the document cases puffed out to three very heavy dimensions.

"Take it slowly," Keir told him, giving a final pat to the top valise. "No one gets more than he or she can handle."

Chuck doubted that as he took a gingerly step. The pile was manageable, but clumsy, as if something kept shifting inside each piece, throwing off his balance.

"I hope I can get all this home with me," Chuck said, peering around the jumble at his companion.

"Oh, no," Keir said. "Your object is to leave as much behind as you can."

"Then why did I pick it up at all?" Chuck asked, surprised and a little resentful.

"You can't help it," Keir said, with a wise, little smile that irritated Chuck. "You have to start out this way. You'll lighten the load. I promise you. This way, now."

Keir put his hands on Chuck's shoulders and turned him until he was facing toward a row of high, mahogany-framed doorways in the far wall, each with elaborate carvings around the arch, and its own incomprehensible sign overhead. Their bags in hand, people streamed out of the hall. Chuck wondered which way to go. With a little toss of his head, Keir started walking. Chuck had no choice but to follow.

The boxes propped on his arms cut into his muscles and jabbed sly corners into his ribs. It seemed that at each step the weight lurched a different way. Chuck found himself trotting in an impromptu cha-cha, trying to avoid dropping anything. He gritted his teeth and struggled to take the shortest path possible. It was difficult. Sweat dripped down strands of his hair and rolled into his eyes. He blinked angrily. Why did he need so many things for his journey? Keir said he'd be abandoning them sooner or later. Why couldn't he do it now? As much as he loved them, he could do without them. He tilted the pile to one side, hoping to dump off at least the top two briefcases. They'd never be noticed, in this heaving crowd.

Contrarily, the valises' weight shifted so they fell back against him. Their touch reminded him that they were something familiar in a strange place. The top one nestled into his chin and neck like a kitten seeking a caress. Chuck relented. He just couldn't abandon them. They were his. Hating himself for being so weak, he settled his burden into the neatest pile he could, and kept walking.

Just ahead of him, a woman in a neat forest-green pantsuit stumbled. Some of her bags dropped to the floor. She stopped short to frown down at them. Chuck started forward to help her pick them up, when she suddenly threw all the rest that she was carrying into the air. She shrieked with delight, and skipped toward the portals, free. Chuck tried to emulate her, but his arms refused even to try. He watched her go, full of envy.

Suddenly, the woman stopped, spun about, and hurried back to her pile of discarded luggage. She picked it all up again, looking frightened.

"Too soon," Keir sighed, having reappeared beside Chuck. "But it shows a willingness of spirit. That means everything in the end. Keep that in mind."

Chuck looked forward to attaining even that one moment of liberty. Still, he should be happy to be here at last. It was so exciting to know he had finally succeeded in his goal of reaching an altered state of consciousness. He had found the guide who would help him solve all his problems. This dream landscape gave him power. In spite of the heavy load he was carrying he had more energy than he ever did in his daily life. He was about to set out and explore the world inside himself.

"Where will we go first?" he asked Keir.

"We must board the train," Keir said, guiding him into the leftmost portal. "But first we must pick up the others."

"Others?" Chuck demanded, twisting his head to look at Keir even as he was steered along. "What others? This is my vision quest. You're my personal guide!"

"I'm their personal guide, too," Keir said. He gave Chuck a little smile.

"That's not fair!" Chuck protested, feeling cheated. "I'm supposed to have a mystical experience, and you're the one who's guiding me through it. Alone."

Keir raised a wiry gray eyebrow. "And who is your mystical experience supposed to put you in touch with? Rocks?"

Chuck was defensive. "Maybe."

He didn't want to be with other people yet. If he got too close to others he felt vulnerable. They might try to change him, maybe against his will. He wanted some time alone, to explore the inner workings of his soul, to get to know the innermost layers of his personality and fix what was wrong. Had he gone to all this effort only to be part of a crowd? Why would he come all this way for group therapy?

"Don't be so precious about your psyche, son," Keir said, with a lift of his bushy eyebrows. Chuck was disconcerted. Keir seemed to be able to read Chuck's mind. "You can't knock the rough corners off yourself without rubbing up against others. To evolve to a higher self, you have to change."

How could he do that and still remain himself? Chuck wondered, feeling as though he was swimming in waters too deep for him. He wanted to become more himself, not less. But Keir left that question unanswered.

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Framed