Another Dream

It’s always a weird, disorienting moment when you transition from a dream you remember in vivid detail to being in your bed with the alarm going off. At least this dream had the decency to reach its conclusion before I woke up. You can’t buy good service like that.

It was a Narnia dream. I haven’t had one of those before, I don’t think. But I’ve been psyched to see The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe ever since I saw the trailer for it. (Of course I’ve read the books. I’ve also seen the cartoon and the BBC series, to boot, but I still want to see this new movie.) Tilda Swinton as the White Queen is going to rock on more levels than I can count.

Anyway: In the dream, I’m more or less me (albeit younger), but instead of kindly old Professor Kirke, is Tilda Swinton in the role of a very scary woman. Must’ve watched too much Return to Oz because she was giving me the willies worse than Princess Mombi and also had a key around her neck needed to unlock the Wardrobe. (The facts that A} the Wardrobe didn’t have a lock, and B} you can’t deliberately look for Narnia, were not part of my subconscious’s equation.) After several harrowing minutes and a moment of temporary dementia on Tilda’s part, I got the key away from her. It’s worth mentioning that the locket she kept the key in, the first time I saw it, revealed that the key inside was in several pieces (not unlike Aragorn’s Anduril). When I finally got my hands on it, it was in one piece again.

Moving on. Next thing I know, I’m in Narnia watching the White Queen’s (Tilda again) opening campaign for power. She looked happy and healthy until she passed under a garden threshold and the color literally drained out of her. She was with two other ordinary human beings, who she pointed her finger at and they turned to stone. A quick sled-ride later, she was outside a village and petrifying civilians left and right. She announced to the town en masse to surrender, or suffer the same fate as the statues on the street. Panic hit the streets as every commoner with working legs ran in every direction.

Things get weirder. The White Witch points at *me*, and tells me to get to work. A convenient mirror reveals that I’m now bone-white as well (although admittedly it’s not much of a change), and look decidedly sinister. Cheerful, swingy music kicks up as we have wicked fun petrifying every last villager in sight, and all I have to do is point at them and make a *fwisssh* noise.

As she departs the village, leaving a Pompeii-esque museum behind, the credits roll on the first segment of The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe. I’m in a movie theater watching the credits; torn between feeling that I’d love to see more of it in one sitting, and admiring the film makers for taking it slow, wishing that they’d pull the same thing for the next Harry Potter movie.

Like I said. Weird.