The Palace that Moved

By way of an introduction to this piece, I should make it clear that it is my recollection, in as far as it was possible, of a dream. It was Miki's idea that I should try and and convert it into prose. Some years ago she used to catalogue all her dreams, and I found the idea fascinating. So here it is....


The drummer turned around.
"I didn’t recognise you without your beard“ I said.
"Then how did you know it was me?“ he replied.
I pushed my way through the crowds in the dressing room, and was suddenly out in the sunlight in what may have been Palma harbour.
I began to make my way up a steep, steep hill, the midday sun sapping my energy, beating down relentlessly on my back.

I crested the summit and gazed down at the Blue-black marble edifice shrouded by a great cedar canopy that I instinctively knew was the Palace. It seemed I had arrived as they were closing it up. Two men, guards, I supposed, went around securing doors and windows.

Suddenly, strangely, two guards took up position at the far corners of the gigantic edifice and pushed....amazingly, the entire structure glided, sleek and fast along gossamer-thin rails and into a gigantic hole in the hillside, a massive hanger door coming down silently to mark its passing, closing with a sound like the softest kiss.

I walked back down the hill and tried to enter one of the ancilliary buildings that had been seemingly abandoned by the Palace as it had glided mysteriously away.. I checked my step as I looked carefully at the marble tiles of the entranceway....they were morphing, tile after tile hurtling by in some kind of hysterical race, constantly in a state of flux, and then, gradually slowing and assuming a solid form.

When I felt the flux state had passed, I cautiously entered, and in the atrium was confronted by fabulous gardens with lush rockpools and water channels. I wanted to dive into one of the channels to see where it would take me , but was unable to do so.

As I walked on, I came upon a vast area of white marble pools, all cascading into each other. I was dressed for some reason, in only grey boxers, and slipped into the water, effortlessly sliding from one to the next, over and over, finally reaching a water chute which took me into the depths of the building. I climbed out of the waterway, dripping wet, and discovered I was adjacent to a basement office. Feeling a little self-conscious, I resolved to get out fast, before anyone saw me. I made my way down the stairs, down, and down, but at the bottom, I found only a dead end, and a dirty tiled floor on which rested a disused multigym, a relic of a broken new years resolution, perhaps.

I retraced my steps upwards again, and passed on the stairwell, an old derelict who had clasped to his chest a strange, emaciated child. The childs big, round eyes bored into mine as the two strange companions descended below me.

I quickly passed the landing where the office was, still in my dripping boxers, and eventually found at ground level, a small triangular window that I managed to squeeze out of.

I clambered up the muddy hillside, aware of two young girls singing a strange nursery rhyme just ahead of me. I suddenly felt some trepidation about being discovered in the presence of these children, in such a state of undress as I was. I hurried on past them, further up the hill. Turning, I looked down and saw that it had not in fact been the girls singing, but a small folk group, set up and playing to no-one in particular, their peculiar brand of music, with a repetitive, haunting refrain.

Up, up, I climbed, and eventually, gasping for breath, looked down on the majestic sweeping arc of the bay, golden sand underscored by an azure sea, the hi-rise and villas like granite stubble growing down to meet it. And I wondered.......

Is this really Palma?

Kev Moore