I'm in my late teens, but I'm a small girl--not just small for my age, but miniaturized--about half scale or even less. Two foot six, if I stretch! I look Eurasian, with long straight dark hair--and wings. That's why I'm so small--it's the only way I could be light enough to fly.

I'm acting in a play, in a huge old theater. I'm not on stage, though--I perch up in the balcony, greet a couple of friends. But two middle-aged women below us gossip nastily about me, loud enough for me to hear. I'm used to it. Jealousy. The price of wings.

The play starts with a description of Soviet and American jets, then the new Soviet "superfighters." My cue! I fly across the rotunda, under the chandelier, playing a superfighter, or at least the shadow of its wings. That's it--that's my role. No speaking parts yet, though I have hopes.

But the cast stops after the first act, and says, "the tickets are gone, so we won't perform the second act yet; but you can buy new tickets for just $24 that'll let you see the second act and then the whole thing over again, making 4 times in all, a good bargain." Huh? That's not just a ripoff, it doesn't even make sense! My boyfriend and I walk out in protest. Few others do.

He's a human-looking Hero, muscular, leonine. He's the modern equivalent of the legendary Green Lion. A descendant? His hair is a wild, slightly greenish mane, so I've always wondered.

He says "Let's get the real tickets--I think I know where they're hidden." We slip into the theatre library. I leap to the top shelf, go along it, hanging from it, fluttering to keep my balance, till Hero nods. Is this the place? I lift the scripts and... yes! A fat envelope of tickets. Snatch it, but as I kick off from the shelf, the evil Program Announcer comes in.

And he's a wolverine! Claws and fangs like razors.

He attacks Hero. I dive on him like a hawk, distracting him, despite my small size. Hero hits him hard, once, twice, and he turns to flee. We pursue. Out the library, down the hall... I feel fierce, a gyrlfalcon. No more little angel!

Outside. The wolverine's nowhere in sight: gone to ground. So we scour the countryside, visually tune out the trees and ground and lesser burrows, till we meet at the lip of the only hole big enough for him: Warlock Well. Hero stands like the Green Lion reborn, above the black wellshaft going down to the Wolverine's Underworld. I perch on Hero's shoulder and look down. Prepare to dive. Risky, but I know it has to be done, and we'll persevere--because we are fated to marry, and you can't do that dead.

Together we jump...

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Gyrlfalcon puns on gyrfalcon, literally, "spiraling falcon"--a hawk used in medieval hunting.
• The wolverines are from Andre Norton's Ordeal in Otherwhere, about a matriarchal dream-based people dubbed Wyverns. The dream was decades before I ever heard of the character called Wolverine in American comics.
• The Green Lion was my sister's lover in an earlier dream that night. A strong fierce sexy creature like my boyfriend here. Could be Aslan, the lion-god in CS Lewis's Narnia books. But... Aslan turned ecological and pagan! Just as I was no angel; and glad of it.
• The well-shaft:
  1. Part of the Wyverns' initiatory dream-caves, in Andre Norton's Storm over Warlock (prequel to Otherwhere). It probably means dreamwork itself.
  2. The entrance to the lair of the Morlocks in H.G.Wells's The Time Machine. The Morlocks descend from exploited workers; also, in Norton's book the wolverines help fight a Wyvern matriarchy grown complacently sexist. The echoes of both books hint that the wolverine may have legitimate grievances. Still, the theater scam really didn't add up, and the wolverine attacked then fled--no negotiation offered. Not yet, anyway.

LATER NOTE

This was one of the earliest dreams I wrote out, at age 17. The next day I saw a TV special, "The Eagle and the Hawk." A tiny camera around an eagle's neck gave a bird's-eye view of flight, even of hunting--diving in Idaho canyons for prey. It was the first time anyone had ever managed such live pictures from an eagle's viewpoint. When I saw those pictures, it was a shock--so like the dream. A bit awkward, since up to that year I was a good little scientist, doubting psychic dreams were possible. But dreams like this and The Murders were changing my mind.

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