Dreams on the wall of her unmoving world

There it was, as it had always been. Anna could see it in the corner of her eye as she closed the groaning back door behind her. It was already perfectly pictured in her mind before she had even turned around to face it. A smooth gray surface with moss climbing onto it, eroded by rain and floodwaters over the countless decades. The rock had been there when Anna’s mother was this age. It was there when Anna’s mother needed to sit down for a rest and sing to the babe on her lap. The rock was damp with morning dew, but Anna had expected that. It was still cool from the night’s breezes when she touched it, and its flatness invited any creature to sit upon it. So she took the invitation, as she did every morning, to rest and watch the water of the lake.

Birds and bugs danced over the still body. It was her favorite time of morning, when the sun was lazily stirring in the absence of the moon, but not yet reaching over the tops of trees. The critters of the wood were not yet exposed in the light of its rays, so they were not afraid to be out on the banks. Everything was dim and cloudy, which was refreshing after such an intense summer’s heat, but it still made Anna frown. Her mother had always said that “even one cloud can make for a bad day,” so Anna watched the sky above her with scrutinizing eyes. It did not take her long to surmise that they were too small for rain. Grateful, Anna relaxed her mind along with the rest of her body.

As she kept her eyes on the slow-moving clouds, she became aware of the ground beneath her shoes beginning to shiver. Small rumblings were echoing from far away, and Anna felt a little smile rise to her lips. It would definitely be a fine day now. She could already imagine it when she closed her eyes: a tall beast approaching the lake with its rough-textured shell high above the trees, legs reaching down as thick as tree trunks. The small town on its shell, full of colorful houses and people gathering like fleas on a canine. Townbeasts were always best for business.

She opened her eyes after a few minutes. And, sure enough, the trees were making space for something huge. They were bending, their branches snapping, as a great mass made its way toward the lake. Anna was sitting on her hands to curb her excitement when the beast finally came into view. But as it approached, she was surprised at how large the town on its back was. The townbeast’s shell was barely visible beneath all of the erected structures, and the people moving around atop kept bumping into each other like mosquitoes fighting over a deer’s hide. The beast was sluggish in every movement, its plated legs shaking with each step. All of its limbs were trembling as it slowly advanced towards the lake, one agonizing step at a time. Anna was so used to seeing townbeasts walk with several legs in the air at once, but it seemed to be a great effort for this one to move at all. This townbeast was lower to the ground than any that had come to the lake before. Not that it was young and small, for it was clearly full-grown; its height reaching way above the trees that surrounded it. But it was crouching and unsteady, like an old dog with bad hips. 

It finally reached the lake’s edge after several prolonged minutes. As it bent down to take a drink of the cool water, it lurched with a great groan. Anna covered her ears and grit her teeth as the beast’s beak opened to make a sound like dozens of metal sheets being torn. Its front two legs buckled, and the creature’s body fell forward, headfirst. The people on the shell were clamoring, but not panicking. Once it was clear that the creature was going to be completely submerged in the murky waters, those people started jumping off its back and into the lake, swimming for shore before they would be dragged under inside their houses. The lake was spilling over as soon as the beast’s head was underwater, and the overflow only grew in volume as more and more of its massive body slid beneath the surface to join. What water did not immediately soak into the soil was flooding the shore. Anna stood up from her sitting rock to find herself ankle-deep in lake water. She stopped watching the townbeast and its residents as she rushed inside her shop to save anything that she could. She was not quick enough to reach her house in time, and much of her furniture was washed away. The others living along the shore awoke to find their own shops and houses flooded as well, if they were not already awake to witness it. 

The townspeople and shorespeople soon were able to do their expected business, once the shock of the atypical situation had settled. Townspeople would always need to resupply, and these ones were especially in need of that. The shorespeople were informed that the townbeast was a weaker one, and the townspeople were used to it taking long rests and stumbling. Shorespeople would always need to make a living, so tourists were more than welcome.

The flood had ruined her bedsheets, and her mattress was damp when she went to sleep, but that did not matter. Anna had saved most of her work, and the longer that the townspeople stayed, the more they bought. Her biggest attractions were always her paintings of the townbeasts passing through. Ever since she had a camera—to capture them before they were gone—they became her favorite subjects to paint, because they were so eye-catching to potential customers. More eye-catching, she found, than paintings of other animals or local foliage. Townbeasts rarely ever ran into each other. They were quite solitary creatures. So townspeople loved to compare their own beasts to the paintings and point out the differences. Some beasts were bluish, while others were greenish. Some would have sharp beaks, or dull ones. And their scale patterns all being slightly different was the real crowd-attractor. 

The paintings of the townbeasts did not sell, though. They were merely window dressing. Anna’s real speciality was listening. She had lived by the lake her whole life, so she loved hearing stories from the townspeople about the places they had seen. She would dream about going to those lands she could only imagine, and those dreams became her art. Her creativity would fill in the gaps of her knowledge, and the landscapes always became surreal. Her ability to turn the familiar into something new and strange became her brand, because townspeople had seen everything, and she needed to show them the unique. She couldn’t just run a tourist trap like most of the people on her shore; she needed to have no competition at all.

The flood made her process work better than ever, because Anna was able to offer special deals. She offered to make custom art for the townspeople while they waited for their beast to emerge from the lake. The customers would give her stories of the places they had been, and she would paint them in surrealism. It worked like a charm, and once word of her art got around, the townspeople couldn’t get enough of her. The days dragged on into weeks, and then months. It became clear that the townbeast in the lake would not be moving on soon. Several months after the flood had passed, she had received payment for dozens of paintings and had been told so many stories that her head was swimming. She felt closer to the rest of the world than she had ever been before.

When rumors about the townbeast began to spread, Anna started keeping an eye on it. She could occasionally see the creature’s beak break the surface to take in breaths. And the shell of the creature, with the buildings, would rise as well. Its legs, which stuck out of the lake, would twitch in reaction to anyone touching them. The townspeople even brought some of their own food to the beast. Everyone would not stop chattering about how this one was acting so differently. Anna ignored the wild speculations. Sometimes townbeasts needed a rest during hot summers such as this, and this one was only using the lake to cool itself off. She did not have time to worry about the townbeast too much, and the townspeople didn’t seem anxious either. On a regular day, she would only have a couple of hours or days at most to advertise her art. But at this rate, she would be able to sell something to all of them. 

One day—a day that she had planned to spend working on her commissions since she had so many still left to finish—she was sorting through her notebook of dreams and interviews with the townspeople. She was starting to picture in her mind a desert with an oasis of vibrant flowers when she heard the shop door open. As Anna looked up to see who it was, she quickly realized that it was another townsperson. One she had seen around the shore, but never in her shop. His clothes were colorful, with each article being made from a different material. He clearly hadn’t made them himself. They were purchased from everywhere else the town-beast had visited.

Anna got up from her chair and politely smiled; the customer-service smile with teeth and crinkled eyes, which she practiced in the mirror as a child. She had not been expecting customers today, but she was always ready to make a sale. She modestly brushed the eraser shavings from her lap, but realized that the man wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the walls, at one of the paintings of a townbeast.

“You interested in art?” she said with the sugary voice she used around customers and children.

The man was quiet for a long moment, staring at that piece that had caught his eye. It was based on a picture she took while a townbeast was leaving, so she’d been able to paint it at its full height—ten long, shining legs spread out. Taller than the trees that surrounded them, the shell seemed wider than the clouds in the sky. It looked like this beast was made of wood, being brown as rust. Except for its legs and beak, which looked gray as boulders. The structures built by its townspeople were less than barnacles on its shell.

“Is this real?” he asked, not looking away.

“Yeah, all of these are.” She gestured to the other paintings that lined the wall, then waved to the other side of her shop. “And these are based on true stories of real places.”

The man turned around and squinted in concentration. “They don’t look like anything I’ve seen.” He sounded more skeptical than Anna would have liked. 

“Of course they don’t. I live here; I don’t travel like you do. I try to capture the feeling—the way they appear in my dreams,” she clarified, still with that sugary voice. Though her smile was faltering as she tried not to scoff.

“You don’t travel?” he said with disbelief. Despite her words nudging him toward asking more questions about her dreams or the paintings so she could talk herself up, he once again focused on his own ignorance.

“No, but—”

“That must be nice.”

She hesitated, then recovered, clearing her throat and talking sweetly. Trying to see if she could get something out of this tourist.

“If you want, I could paint this lake for you. Since you find it so nice. Or the shore, so it’s like you never left.”

“Left?”

“Once your townbeast gets up, or another one comes through. I’ve heard some townspeople considering moving to a new beast.”

“There won’t be any more coming through here.”

Anna’s smile finally fell. “What?”

“Townbeasts don’t like to be around each other. You know this; you’ve seen so many. With one sitting in the middle of the lake, the others will avoid resting here.”

She was quiet. But only for a second. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Edmund.”

Even his name was annoying. “Edmund, if you’re not going to buy something, get out.”

He tried to say something more as she pushed him through the doorway, but she shut and locked the door before she had to hear another word from his frustrating mouth.

Anna tried to focus only on her paintings in the days after that, and was even able to finish a few commissions. She shrugged off her encounter with Edmund because she was doing just fine. And so was everyone else.

Later in the week, when she went to get some water from the lake, there was a mass of shorespeople and townspeople alike huddled together around the rocky beach. They were all talking at once, so she couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. She pushed through the crowd, only to freeze in place when she saw the water. The townbeast was not lifting its head up to breathe anymore. The water around its body was turning purple and dark green. It smelled so bad that she wanted to retch.  The buzzards and bugs had already started swarming the creature to pick at its soft, pear flesh.

It was not long before everyone was getting ready to leave. Anna sat on her rock while they bustled about the shore, still staring at the dead townbeast. How could a townbeast possibly be dead?

To her annoyance, Edmund was walking toward her. He was holding an empty bag.

“Do you need help packing your things? We have extra bags,” he said with a small smile.

“I can do it myself,” she scowled in return.

“Are you sure? It’ll be difficult to carry all of those paintings yourself.”

“I don’t care about my paintings. I can always make more.” She felt the moss-coated rock under her palm, like she was stroking a pet. Edmund was quiet. Her mind was buzzing with countless memories, too busy for her to even stop and cry. Her mother was gone, and she was going to leave her home behind. The one where her mother had raised her and taught her how to run a business. The place where her mother was buried, only ten minutes from the shore.

“I’m not a traveler like you,” she looked at Edmund with a sharp glare in her puffy eyes.

“I . . . don’t know how to live on the ground. Not like you do,” he said, quieter than she’d ever heard him speak before.

Anna couldn’t see any trace of insincerity in Edmund’s eyes as he rubbed his arm and returned her glare with a sad look. She got up from her rock and picked up the last thing that wasn’t packed away, the painting Edmund had first seen when he walked in. 

“Keep it,” she said, and tossed it to him. It hit Edmund’s chest, and he clutched it with clumsy hands. “I probably won’t be able to paint again. Even if there is another lake where I can set up, I’ll have to start over.”

Edmund put the painting in his bag. “We’re all starting over. But I think there’s an easier way to do things.”

She picked up her own bags and followed him as he started following the throng of people leaving the shore. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, once we get to the next lake, another townbeast will probably pass through for a drink in a few days. If you get on it, you wouldn’t need to start over from scratch.”

Anna didn’t respond yet. After glancing back at her sitting rock, she looked over at Edmund. “I’ll sleep on it,” she said, feeling a little smile rise to her lips.

A few days of walking passed by, with Anna sticking close to her friends from home and avoiding Edmund because she still was not sure how to think about his offer. Nor did she know what she would tell him. When the whole group stumbled upon bushes with huckleberries, Anna and the other shorespeople reassured the townspeople that the fruits were safe to eat.

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Edmund stepped forward, but he was smiling playfully.

Anna responded by popping the purple berry into her mouth, the sweet flavor spilling onto her tongue and cooling her throat. It was beyond refreshing.

“See?” she said to Edmund in particular.

Soon, everyone was gathering berries, a bit happier thanks to the enjoyable activity and the delicious food. Even Anna was enjoying herself as she showed Edmund how to pick the huckleberries without crushing them in his hands.

“I never got your name, shoreswoman,” he said suddenly, with a chuckle.

“Anna.”

“Ed.”

Anna got used to the presence of Ed. She found herself guiding him in particular as the group traveled, choosing to show him—out of every other townsperson—how to survive on the ground. One day, as she walked alongside him, he told her a story.

“Once our beast walked up a mountain. Back then, there were fewer of us. It went up to a peak. Not the very top, but close. We felt like we could see everything. There were farms and forests and hills and valleys. Anything you could think of, there it was. As small as we are to the townbeasts. It took forever for it to get that high, since it couldn’t climb well. I’m not sure why it went up there at all. There was nothing to eat or drink. It just laid down for a while.”

For once, Anna didn’t write anything down while he spoke. She wanted to remember the story the way that he told it. Once he was finished, she decided to tell him about one of her dreams.
“I had a dream once where I was with my mom, and we had fallen off the back of a townbeast. The ground seemed so far away as we went down. Then we were back at home, at the lakeshore. Except it was infested with townbeasts, and they were all fighting each other.”

When the group was a couple of weeks into their journey, the ground started shaking beneath them. A small townbeast crossed their path. It was still taller than the trees around them, but its shell was not as wide or as densely populated as the ones Anna had seen over the years. No one had to say anything. The group immediately chased after it, following until it stopped to rest. Then, they started climbing on it and setting up their homes while the creature slept in the cover of night, greeting the people who were already living on it and sharing the story of why shorespeople and townspeople were hiking together in the wilderness. Ed showed Anna how to climb onto a townbeast’s shell without slipping on its scales and disturbing it.

The next day, the townbeast had gone to a fruit grove to graze for a few hours. Anna got to try wild apples for the first time, with Ed helping her pick them and discern ripeness. Afterwards, once the beast was finally done eating, it headed for a lake. There was quite the buzz on the beast’s back once the shorespeople could see the body of water in the distance.

Eventually, the townbeast reached the sought-after destination. Once it bent down on its legs to drink, her friends from home started jumping off and running along the rocky shore. Anna was still standing on the shell, though. She looked over to Ed, always standing by her side.

“I think I want to stay up here. At least until it comes back to this place,” she told him, and was surprised when his smile faded. When it returned, it was sad.

“I was hoping I could talk with you some more, but I guess it wasn’t meant to happen.” His words were choked up, like he was about to cry.

“Ed, I’m traveling on this townbeast with you.”

“Not with me,” he cleared his throat and sat on the edge of the shell. “Some of the other townspeople think it’d be best for some of us to go down to the shore and stay there. Last time there were so many of us on one . . . we killed it. They aren’t meant to carry so much.”

Anna watched him jump down to the ground, getting to her knees and gripping the edge of the beast’s shell as the creature pulled itself up, the sound drowning out every other noise.

Ed became smaller in the distance. But even as he appeared as a tiny speck, she could still tell what he was doing. Greeting all of the shorespeople with his annoying smile.

Anna rested on the shell of the beast, running her hand over the hard scales. They were smooth under her palm. She looked down and saw the moss and algae that clung to the sharp corners, starting to pick the growths off with her nails. The beast sighed a heaving breath, and Anna fancied that it was appreciative. 

The sun rose behind the trees, turning the sky pinkish. The birds and bugs danced in the sky, even as it filled up with clouds. The rain was harsh and heavy, and though the drops were cold, the tears that leaked down Anna’s cheek were warm.