they even had a name for this time-defying metropolis.

It would be called Everville.

Ah, Everville!

How many nights had Maeve listened to her father talk of the place, his eyes on the crackling fire, but his gaze on another sight entirely: the streets, the squares, and the noble houses of that miracle to be.

"Sometimes it's like you've already been there," Maeve had remarked to him one evening in late May.

"Oh but I have, my sweet girl," he had said, staring across the open land towards the last of the sun. He was a shabby, pinched man, even in those months of plenty, but the breadth of his vision made up for the narrowness of his brow and lips. She loved him without qualification, as her mother had before her, and never more than when he spoke of Everville.

"When have you seen it, then?" she challenged him.

"Oh, in dreams," he replied. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Do you remember Owen Buddenbaum?" "Oh yes.

How could anybody forget the extraordinary Mr. Buddenbaum, who had befriended them for a little time in Independence? A ginger beard, going to gray; waxed mustache that pointed to his zenith; the most luxurious fur coat Maeve had ever seen; and such music in his voice that the most opaque things he said (which was the bulk of his conversation as far as Maeve was concerned) sounded like celestial wisdom.

"He was wonderful," she said.

"You know why he sought us out? Because he heard me calling your name, and he knew what it meant."

"You said it meant joy."

"So it does," Harmon replied, leaning a little closer to his daughter,

"but it's also the name of an Irish spirit, who came to men in their dreams."

She'd never heard this before. Her eyes grew huge. "Is that true?"

"I could never tell you a lie," he replied, "not even in fun. Yes, child, it's true. And hearing me call for you, he took me by the arm and said: Dreams are doorways, Mr. O'Connell. Those were the very first words he said to me."

"What then?"

"Then he said: If we but have the courage to step over the threshold......

"Go on."

"Well, the rest's for another day."

"Papa!" Maeve protested.

"You be proud, child. If not for you, we'd never have met Mr. Buddenbaum, and I believe our fortune changed the moment we did."

He had refused to be further drawn on the subject, but had instead turned the conversation to the matter of what trees might be planted on Everville's Main Street. Maeve knew better than to press him, but she thought much about dreams thereafter. She would wake sometimes in the middle of the night with the ragged scraps of a dream floating around her head, and lie watching the stars, thinking: was I at the door then? And was there something wonderful on the other side, that I've already forgotten ?

She became determined to keep these fragments from escaping her, and with a little practice she learned to snatch hold of them upon waking and describe them aloud to herself. Words held them, she found, however rudimentary. A few syllables were all that was needed to keep a dream from slipping away.

She kept the skill to herself (she didn't even mention it to her father), and it was a pleasant distraction for the long, dusty days of summer to sit in the wagon and sew pieces of remembered dreams together so that they made stories stranger than any to be found in her books.

As for the mellifluous Mr. Buddenbaum, his name was not mentioned again for some considerable time. When it was finally mentioned, however, it was in circumstances so strange Maeve would not forget them until the day she died.

they had been entering Idaho, and by the calculations of Dr. Hodder (who assembled the company every third evening and told them of their progress), there was a good prospect that they would be over the Blue Mountains and in sight of the fertile valleys of Oregon before the autumn had properly nipped the air. Though supplies were low, spirits were high, and in the exuberance of the moment, Maeve's father had said something about Everville: A chance remark that might have passed unnoticed but that one of the travelers, a shrewish man by the name of Goodhue, was the worse for whiskey, and in need of some bone of contention. He had it here, and seized upon it with appetite.

"This damned town of yours will never be built," he said to Harmon.

"None of us want it." He spoke loudly, and a number of the men-sensing a fight and eager to be diverted-sauntered over to watch the dispute.

"Never mind him, Papa," Maeve had murmured to her father, reaching to take his hand. But she knew by his knitted brows and clenched jaw this was not a challenge he was about to turn his back on.

"Why do you say that?" he asked Goodhue.

"Because it's stupid," the drunkard replied. "And you're a fool." His words were slurred, but there was no doubting the depth of his contempt. "We didn't come out here to live in your little cage."

"It won't be a cage," Hannon replied. "It will be a new Alexandria, a new Byzantium."

"Never heard of either of 'em," came a third voice.

The speaker was a bull of a man called Pottruck. Even in the shelter of her father's shoulder, Maeve trembled at the sight of him. Goodhue was a loudmouth, little more. But Pottruck was a thug who had once beaten his wife so badly she had sickened and almost died.

"they were great cities," Harmon said, still preserving his equilibrium,

"where men lived in peace and prosperity."

"Where'd you learn all this shit?" Pottruck spat. "I see you readin' a lot of books. Where'd you keep 'em?" He strode towards the O'Connells' wagon. "Going' to bring 'em out or shall I bring 'em out fer ya?"

"Just keep out of our belongings!" Harmon said, stepping into the bull's path.

Without breaking his stride, Pottruck swiped at Harmon, knocking him to the ground. Then, with Goodhue on his heels, he hoisted himself up onto the tail of the wagon, and pulled back the canvas.

"Keep out of there!" Harmon said, getting to his feet and stumbling towards the wagon.

As he came within a couple of strides, Goodhue wheeled around, knife in hand. He gave Hannon a whiskey-rotted smile. "Uh-uh," he said. "Papa.

.. " Maeve said, tears in her voice, please don't."

Harmon glanced back at his daughter. "I'm all right," he said. He advanced no further, but simply stood and watched le Goodhue clambered up into the wagon and joined ttruck in turning over the interior.

The din of their search had further swelled the crowd, but none of the spectators stepped forward in support of Harmon and his daughter. Few liked Pottruck any more than they liked the O'Connells, but they knew which could do them the greater harm.

There was a grunt of satisfaction from inside the wagon now, and Pottruck emerged with a dark teak chest, finely polished, which he unceremoniously threw down onto the ground. Leaping down ahead of his cohort, Goodhue set to opening the chest with his knife. It defied him, and in his frustration he started to stab at the lid.

"Don't destroy it," Harmon sighed. "I'll open it for YOU."

He took a key from around his neck and knelt to unlock the box. Pottruck was down from the wagon now, and, pushing Harmon aside, kicked open the lid.

Maeve had seen what lay in that box many times, it wasn't much to the uneducated-just a few rolls of paper tied with leather thongs-but to her, and to her father, these were treasures. The city of Everville lay waiting to be born upon those sheets of parchment: its crossroads and its squares, its parks and boulevards and municipal buildings.

"What did I say?" Pottruck spat. "You said books," Goodhue replied.

"I said shit, is what I said," Pottruck said, rummaging through the rolls of paper and tossing them hither and thither as he searched for something he recognized as valuable.