A Wild Ride Through The Night by Walter Moers Read Free Book Online

it’s recently been undergoing alterations. Departments keep being transferred to different floors, builders are at work everywhere, walls are being demolished and new ones erected. You don’t feel as thoroughly at home there as you used to. Are you with me so far?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Gustave, ‘I think so.’
    ‘Good,’ said the old woman. ‘Now, imagine you suddenly need to go to the
men’s room
!’
    ‘ To the men’s room?’ Gustave repeated uncomprehendingly.
    ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Pancho whispered.
    ‘Ssh!’ Gustave hissed.
    ‘So you set off,’ pursued the old woman. ‘Of course you know the way to the toilets—you’ve directed people there a thousand times—but now you find your way barred by a maze of walls that weren’t there before. Whole departments have been uprooted, and you have to change floors several times. All at once it dawns on you:
You don’t know where the toilets are
.’
    Gustave tried to picture the situation. There was something amusing about it, but also something alarming.
    ‘Now comes the worst part: just then, the owner of the store—
your boss!
—comes up to you and asks you
the way to the toilets
.’
    The old woman paused and gave Gustave a searching stare. ‘You see? We’re in just the same situation here and now.’
    ‘Oo-hoo!’ cried the owl.
    Although Gustave held the old woman’s gaze, he couldn’t think what she was getting at. Pancho made some impatient noises.
    ‘Don’t you understand?’ the old woman blurted out. ‘I’m your
dream princess
!’
    ‘You’re a dream princess?’ said Gustave, still politely. Pancho seemed to be right: the poor old thing was deranged. He searched around for some suitable way of bringing the conversation to an end.
    ‘Not only that: I’m
your own personal dream princess
!’
    Gustave had a rather different conception of his own personal dream princess. He pictured her as golden-haired and considerably younger—just like the damsel he’d ‘rescued’ from the dragon, to be precise.
    He felt an icy little stab in the chest
.
    The old woman sighed. ‘Listen, my boy. Everyone has someone to guide them through their dreams. Men have a dream princess, women a dream prince. That’s what we’re called—I didn’t invent the term myself. Personally, I think it’s a pompous and inappropriate job description. I’d prefer
dream consultant
.’
    She cleared her throat.
    ‘That’s why I seem so familiar to you. You’ve often come across me, but always in a different guise. Those are the rules: a different guise for every dream. This time it’s
this
idiotic get-up.’ She gave her heavy robe a disapproving tweak and tapped her little crown.
    ‘Do you remember that dream where you climbed a tree made of meat with a red raven perched on top? I was the raven.’
    Gustave seldom if ever remembered a dream, and he certainly had no recollection of one with a red raven in it. ‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘Are you telling me that this is all a dream? The forest, you yourself, my horse—all just a dream?’
    ‘Ridiculous!’ Pancho snorted and stamped his left hoof impatiently.
    The old woman groaned.
    ‘You asked me a question and I answered it. I advised you to ride on, but you stayed. I lied to you, but you wanted the truth. I even pretended to be a witch. What else do you want me to do?’
    ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Gustave. ‘Everything seems so … well, real.’
    ‘A talking horse? An enchanted forest? An old woman who tells you she’s a dream princess? You call that
real
?’ The old woman, who couldn’t help laughing, choked and had another coughing fit.
    ‘But if none of this is real,’ Gustave objected, ‘then
you
don’t exist either.’
    The old woman’s face suddenly stiffened again.
    ‘Believe me, my boy,’ she said gravely, ‘that’s a problem I’ve been debating for a very long time—whenever I’ve a spare moment, in fact.’
    Gustave tried to argue logically.
    ‘If you’re