Stranger's Tales

Stranger's Tales

Part Two: The Alchemist

The world started to become a blur. Suddenly, nothing was there anymore, not even a memory.

In a room made out of wood sat a little man with a pointy, red hat. He was about one meter tall and his job was that of an alchemist. Brewing potions and doing other kinds of experiments along the same lines had always been his passion and he spent the biggest part of his life in his laboratory, where many experiments had blown into his face.
The room in which he was situated was, in fact, a laboratory, even though that might not have been apparent on first sight. The mild tones of brown of the wooden bars and walls reminded more of a small hut in the mountains near a little streamlet flowing through an idyllic landscape.
On a closer examination however, a big number of weird contraptions stood out. They were neatly placed in a corner of the room. There were many glass flasks among them, but also pincers, gloves and protective goggles.

The little man who was sitting in the middle of the room at a big desk with a washbasin was handling a very small, dark blue piece of stone from which he was breaking even smaller pieces using a hammer. He then gave them into a mortar and pounded them until there was only some blue dust left. When he had an amount of stone dust that seemed to please him, he nodded contently and dropped the remaining piece of blue stone in a small glass vial which contained a dark liquid. He put a cap onto it and turned it shut before stood up and walked over to a wooden cabinet to his left. He opened the cabinet and stored the glass vial with the tiny piece of blue stone inside. At the same time he took out a bigger piece of stone. This one however wasn’t locked inside a vial and was pitch black. It didn’t reflect any kinds of colours and it therefore didn’t even shine or glisten in the light. It was as if it was absorbing any light that fell on it, no matter how bright it was. It was a lot bigger than the small stone with which the alchemist had worked before, about the size of a fist to be exact. What distinguished this stone most from the one before however was that it started to talk the moment the little man touched it: “What are you doing? Let me go Damnit!”
The alchemist didn’t answer and carried the stone carefully to his working table where he sat down and gave the stone dust from before into a white liquid which then slowly started to change colour. It was now a bright, eye-piercing red.
“Please, don’t do this to me!”
With a voice that sounded deeper than one would expect from a man with such tiny stature, the alchemist opened his mouth to respond for the first time: “Give me a reason not to.”
“I am the sorcerer’s stone!”
“That’s what they all say.”
He didn’t let the stone talk any further after this. Carefully the little alchemist now put it into the red liquid. He waited for a bit and then fished the stone out again using some pincers. He let the red fluid drip from the stone slowly and then took a closer look at it. It wasn’t black anymore, like it was before dipping it into the liquid, it had a blue-grey kind of colour now. It suited the stone’s surface and shape a lot better than the total blackness it had before. Small white crystals were gleaming on it and it was full of tiny, brown stone veins. The shape of the thing however hadn’t changed during the experiment. More importantly, the stone hadn’t said anything anymore after its transformation, probably because it didn’t have the means to do so anymore.

“Extraordinary.”, the alchemist murmured to himself, while he started searching his lab coat for his notebook. He soon found it and grabbed for which was lying on the table he was sitting at. He didn’t grab it right however as he was trying to find the right page in his notebook and the pen rolled onto the floor. The alchemist sighed and jumped down from his chair to pick up the writing utensil from the ground. He stooped. There it was, the pen, which he then picked up again. When he looked up again though, he was in for a little surprise.

Before him stood a black door made out of ebony in which many tiny symbols and pictures were engraved. The door was embedded in a frame which was made out of the same black ebony wood. Without warning, the door sprang up just as the alchemist had noticed it, but the Alchemist couldn’t see what was on the other side. The only thing he was certain of was that it led somewhere that was not his laboratory. A few moments the alchemist was frozen there in his crouching position, but then he got up quickly and started walking around the door while taking a closer look at it.
Even though the door was in the middle of the room, it didn’t simply lead to the other side of the room. It opened into total darkness and a cool gust of wind came out of it, lowering the temperature in the alchemist’s laboratory.

The Alchemist didn’t know what to think of this spontaneous apparition. He was still trying to make sense of it all when, about half a minute later, a man slowly came walking through the door and closed it behind him.
It was a big man with a black fedora hat. He wore a black cloak that touched the ground and as soon as he had closed the door, he started fastening it to his back, including the frame, without saying a word. His eyes were covered by the hat, which was why the alchemist couldn’t say exactly where this stranger was looking at. This person seemed pretty scary to the little alchemist indeed.

“Erm… nice hat!”
“Thanks.” The stranger had a much higher voice than the alchemist, which gave the whole situation a bit of a comedic touch.
“You don’t seem to be too surprised to see me. Normally people run away screaming when they see me coming through the door.”
“Oh, such things happen all the time here.”
“All the time you say? So it’s a dream again… hmmm…”
“A dream? What do you mean by that? Who are you anyway? “
“I’m just a stranger passing through. While we are at it, who might you be? Are you a gnome? A dwarf maybe?”
“I won’t stand such insults! I am a little person and my size is a medical condition. I hate being called by these demeaning nicknames! I am a human just as you are, sir! There are no gnomes, just as there are no talking hippopotami or flying pigs!”
“I apologize deeply for my mistake, sir.”
“Well, then we’ll leave it at that for now. Tell me now, what did you mean by that ‘dream’ which you spoke of before?”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I wish you good luck for now, and goodbye.”
“Good luck with what? Hey, wait!”, but the stranger had already packed his black door on his back and left the alchemist’s laboratory with an elegant, snakelike move through the front door.

The alchemist blinked. If the stranger wouldn’t talk to him now, then there was no use in following him. “What a weird guy… and he even had colour in his face… I should go back to my experiments. It seems to me more and more so that something isn’t right, I just need to find out what it is.”, the little man thought, as he sat back at his desk and started writing into his notebook, the pen firmly in his grasp this time:

Test Nr. 521: Piece of Rock

I followed the usual procedure again, but this time I used an object from outside my laboratory as a subject because my own furniture didn’t have any untested pieces left. I gave the stone into the substance and the result was the same as always. It got a more natural looking colour and started to feel like… well, like a stone is supposed to feel. I conclude that my room is not the only place where this experiment will work. My reserve of this unknown blue stone is getting small now, I should be more careful with it from now on. I’m finishing up my work for today, because, like every day, it is now the time to go out for a drink.

Right on queue, the doorbell rang when the alchemist had finished writing down his last sentence. He closed his notebook and put it on the table, together with his pen. Then he rose from his chair and slowly strode towards the entrance of his laboratory, where he opened the door. Before him stood a full-grown hippopotamus. A black hippopotamus to be exact. It had exactly the colour of the stone the alchemist had used for his experiment a little while before.

“Hey Helmut, what’s up?” the alchemist greeted the black animal. He didn’t seem surprised.
“Come on, we’re late already, let’s go!” Helmut the hippopotamus replied. It opened its mouth and showed its teeth, which were, in contrast to the rest of the animal’s exterior, completely and utterly gleaming white. It did so as if to underline what it had just said.
“The people in the pub will survive if we don’t get drunk for once, don’t you think so too?”
“Say, have you gone mad? We go to this pub every night, always at exactly the same time. What do you think would happen if we’d miss it even once?”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“Well, I for one don’t want to find out, come on now.”

The unequal pair left the laboratory after this exchange. The alchemist’s laboratory wasn’t located in a house, but inside a huge step of a staircase. The whole town in fact was made up of nothing but stairs, bigger and smaller once, and not one bit of colour was visible, excluding the colourfully clad alchemist of course. Everything was in black and white, without the grey in-between hues which old or artistic movies use. Simply black and white, white and black.

The hippopotamus and the alchemist were climbing up a staircase and down again another. After having walked like this for half an hour, the alchemist stopped for a bit. He was out of breath and had to hold on to a bigger step of another staircase next to the staircase they were climbing which was meant to be used as a handrail.
“Wait a second, Helmut, I’m out of breath.”
“What do you mean, you’re out of breath? We have to be at the pub in ten minutes! I never get tired when I just walk around the town, just what is wrong with you?” the black hippopotamus pointed at the ceiling. Other stairs were up there, upside down. The Alchemist could see the pub there, the place where they would be going. They waited for half a minute until the alchemist had somewhat caught his breath again, then they climbed further up the stairs. It seemed strange to the alchemist that he didn’t notice at which point he was suddenly walking on the ceiling, but Helmut the hippopotamus didn’t seem to notice.

The alchemist was panting loudly when he had finally reached the pub. It was situated inside the largest step of the last and highest staircase and this whole ascent seemed to be harder and harder to the little man each day. He opened the door to the pub which didn’t have a name and entered the establishment along with the hippopotamus.

In here, there too was no colour of any kind, but that didn’t stop the guests inside from having a good time. The barkeeper was a rhinoceros which was sitting behind the bar with a look on its face that was grim enough that nobody dared to get close to the counter. In the rest of the pub though, the mood was merry and the guests were celebrating. Four male lions were sitting around a table, drinking wine.
“Exquisite!” sighed one of them “I never tasted a wine that bubbled as good as this, and the flavour is just wonderful!”
“Yes, my dear, it is good enough to kill for.” Another lion besides him said jokingly.
“Don’t say such things.” Commented the third lion with a shocked expression on its face.
“Please leave him be, it was just a joke.” The fourth one tried to intervene.
“Please, please, gentlemen, I beg you!” the first one interrupted him “We didn’t come here to quarrel!”
“You are right of course my friend, as always.” The other three agreed with him. Then they opened another bottle of wine and started having exactly the same conversation again using exactly the same intonations. When they had gone through it all again, they opened another bottle and the same scene unfolded once again.

The alchemist and Helmut the hippopotamus sat down at the same table which was placed in the middle of the pub.
“You know, Helmut, I could listen to those guys forever.”
“Listen to them forever? What’re you talking about?”
“The lions over there, can’t you see them? Those with the wine and their weird repeating conversation.”
“I just can’t understand you, you’re weird.” Helmut sighed and ordered a beer.

The alchemist stared at the ceiling and watched the monkey which was jumping around the candelabras up there which would have been more appropriate in a ballroom than in a pub. The monkey was carrying a tray and it was wearing the uniform of a porter at a hotel. It took the various orders from the customers and was the only one who dared come close enough to the rhinoceros barkeeper to get drinks from the counter.

To the right of the table at which the alchemist and the hippopotamus were sitting a few totally black cobras were standing around a pool table. They played by hitting the tips of their tails against the white ball. A few of them hissed loudly as it became the turn of a cobra which was wearing a cute, white dress. They seemed to be agitated. Why this was so soon became clear as the cobra with the dress sank one ball after the other in the holes without making even one single mistake.
“You won again.” a cobra from the crowd hissed. “I want a revenge game!”
The other snakes hissed in unison to give their consent and the snake in the white dress also agreed. Then, as with the lions, the same events started to repeat in exactly the way in which they had unfolded before.

Left of the table at which the alchemist and the hippopotamus were sitting stood a poker table where three dogs sat. The scene looked almost like the kitschy picture that can be found in every second pub, only, as with everything else, held in black and white. The dogs seemed to be waiting for something.
“She’ll be here soon.”
“Yes, then we’ll finally be able to start playing.”
“I hope I win today!”
“You never win and you won’t win today either.”
“How can you know that?”
“We always play the exact same game with exactly the same cards. If nobody changes the rules, it will always be me who wins.”
“I guess you’re right about that.”

The happy goings on in the pub continued for about a quarter of an hour. The alchemist was drinking one or two glasses of beer together with Helmut the hippopotamus and the two of them were amusing themselves greatly. Then a little girl in pink pyjamas entered the pub. She wasn’t even six years old. The alchemist sprang up on his feet to talk to her, but Helmut the hippopotamus held him back: “Wait, it’s not your turn yet!”
“My turn? What are you talking about? Can’t I talk to a little girl whenever I want to? Who’s making these rules anyway?”
“You really lack common sense, don’t you? You will wait until it is your turn and that’s final. Understood?”
“Alright already, yeesh…”

With a bit of a grumpy look on his face, the alchemist watched the girl with her rosy cheeks and brown hair go through the pub as if she was fastened to some sort of rope and pulled through. At first she came to the table where the lions were sitting at. She listened to their conversation once and then went on to the poker table where the three colourless dogs were sitting, waiting for somebody to play with them.

“Hello you!” said the dogs. “You’re a pretty little girl. Do you want to play with us? We really need another player.”
“Okay, I’ll play with you.” Said the girl. Then she sat down at the table.
The dog which sat opposite the girl now shuffled the deck of cards and then distributed five cards to every player. The girl took a look at her cards and then said: “I’m out.”
“What, already?” protested the dogs.
“Yes, I’ve got the same cards as last time. You win.” While saying that she pointed at the dog who before had been so certain that he would win if the rules weren’t changed.
“You’re right.” Agreed the dogs. Then the girl climbed down from the chair again and went on exploring the pub.

The next thing she came to was the pool table where the black cobras were still playing using the tips of their tails. The girl watched them for a while, but then she turned away from them again, seemingly uninterested, even though she didn’t yet see who would win. Now she stepped towards the table where the alchemist and the hippopotamus were sitting.

“Now it’s my turn!”, said Helmut, seemingly excited.
“Hurry up now. Just tell your joke and get on with it so I can finally talk to her.”
“Don’t be so impatient, it’ll be your turn soon.”

The girl had now reached the table in the middle of the pub. She stood before Helmut and stared at him with expectant eyes.
“Do you want to hear a joke?”, asked Helmut in a friendly tone. The girl didn’t answer however, she just continued staring at the hippopotamus.
“Good then I will tell you one: What’s the difference between a woman and a broom?”, the hippopotamus waited for an answer for a while, but it did not come “- You don’t have to buy jewellery for brooms!”
Helmut laughed out loud when he had gotten his point across. The alchemist just looked at him with an angry looking face.
“Stop that, Helmut, you’re just frightening her! Couldn’t you think of another joke at least once?”
“Oh come on! I tell this very same joke every night. I can’t just change the joke from one moment to the other, you’re being completely unreasonable!”
The alchemist sighed and then turned towards the girl because now it was his turn.
“Hello Annika, nice to see you again!”
“Hello, little uncle.”
“You don’t have to be afraid, I’ll be watching you so Helmut won’t do anything bad to you.”
“Ha-ha, but you’re much too small for that, uncle!” Helmut on the chair next to him started laughing out loudly when he heard that, but the alchemist didn’t seem to be insulted.”
“That might be, but I would still defend you with my life!” He rose from the chair and then hit his chest with both his hands, which made him cough. The little girl laughed and clapped her hands encouragingly.
“You’re the only one who says new things, uncle.” The alchemist didn’t say anything.
“Come on, let’s play.”
“I don’t feel like it today, Annika, I’m sorry. Say, why do you come here every night anyway?”
“I don’t know. I just go to bed every night and then I am on these stairs. Then I go up the stairs and then I’m here and then I see the lions and the cobras and the dogs and you and Helmut.”
“You go to be? Where are you before you go to bed?”
“I don’t remember that. I don’t know who I am anymore, only my name.”
“Annika… yes, you’ve told me that before.” For a while they looked at each other without saying anything. Both of them didn’t really seem to know what was happening. After a few minutes, Annika opened her mouth again:
“I have to go now, uncle.”
“But why do you have to go?”
“I don’t know. But I always have to go at this time.”
“Goodbye, Annika. I’ll be waiting for you tomorrow night.”
“Goodbye, little uncle!”
The girl waved towards the alchemist one last time while she was pulled towards the bar in the same way that she had entered the pub. Then she looked at the rhinoceros, which stared back. After a while, it opened it’s mouth and Annika climbed inside. Then everything went black.

The alchemist lay in a corner of his laboratory. He blinked. He felt as if he had slept for a long time and was now completely rested. “And again everything went black. I’ve got to stop to drink so much.” He thought, while he opened one of his many cupboards and started making coffee using his laboratory equipment. He also made himself a warm breakfast. He was a good cook because after all, cooking was just a special kind of chemistry.

When the hungry alchemist had wolfed down his meal he sat at the desk again to start a new experiment. The one yesterday had shown him that his assumption could also be true for things outside the laboratory. He still didn’t know exactly what all these incidents meant or rather he didn’t want to. What was happening around him was frightening and what had happened the previous day did do nothing to relieve his fears. He was sure of it now. He was living his whole life inside a dream. The dream of a little girl.

The stranger who had come out of that wooden door however didn’t fit in the results that the alchemist had gotten, that man was an unknown variable. His insights up to now told him that only the things that had colour were actually real. Even though the stranger was clad fully in black, that didn’t mean that he didn’t have colour. Depending on how and where the light hit him, the black of his coat looked more like a light grey. Properties that non-real things simply did not have. His chin had also been not black or white, but of the characteristic skin colour of a human.

But how could a real person together with a real door simply come out of nothing? The alchemist had no idea how to explain this. He had seen many things popping out of nothing close to him before, but none of those had had a colour, none of them had been real. He wrecked his brain for a while over this problem. He also had no idea what his next test subject would be.

He had the power to turn things inside the dream into real things, but he was afraid that all the properties that made them special would be lost after they were transformed. If he took Helmut for example and spilled the red fluid over him, he wouldn’t be a talking hippopotamus anymore. He wouldn’t be the alchemist’s best friend after that, but only a normal animal with a red throat and yellow teeth.

The alchemist also didn’t know what would happen to all the real things once the dream was over. It was Annika’s dream, this much he knew, and it was a good possibility that she would simply stop dreaming this dream at some point. Those things always happen to recurring dreams at one point or other. The alchemist was afraid of what would become of him, afraid of the fact that he might simply cease to exist as soon as Annika stopped visiting the pub inside the topmost staircase step in her dreams. He couldn’t simply flee from here, he didn’t know how. He was imprisoned inside the head of a little girl without any way of escape.

At some points the burden his assumption had placed on him had become too much for him already and he had almost given up and hanged himself somewhere, but he had always managed to get his act together again by telling himself again and again that he was just imagining all this and that he might simply be a madman in some institution who was lying in a corner in a white room, trapped inside his own world. He had started his experiments in the hope of being able to disprove his fears, but now they seemed almost proven. He sank back into his chair, his arms lying on the table and his head lying face down on them. For hours he asked himself the same question again and again: What happens to a dream that notices that it’s only a dream?

Soon the evening came and still the alchemist sat broodingly at the table with his head still in his arms without doing anything. The doorbell rang again, just as always at this point in time. The alchemist quietly got up and slowly started going towards this door. As he had suspected, Helmut the hippopotamus was standing in front of him.

“Hello Helmut.”
“Cone on, let’s go, we’re late already“ said Helmut. He opened his mouth and showed his teeth which were shining in a bright white, in contrast to the rest of his body. He always did this when he wanted to emphasize his point.
“I don’t want to go today, Helmut…”
“What do you mean, ‘you don’t want to’? We have to go, now!”
“Why?”
“Why… this question again. Be realistic, it makes no sense if we… if we…“
“If we don’t go there today, like every other day?”
“Exactly… that’s what I wanted to say.”
“What’s up, Helmut, you’re looking pale today.” Joked the alchemist, a bit amused by the strange behaviour of his friend.
“I can’t be pale, I’m completely black.”
“Ha-ha, you got my jo… wait a second! You’ve never noticed the fact that everything in the world has only two colours before!”
“That’s not true… you’ve got colours, and Annika too.”
“Is that really you, Helmut? What’s up with you?”
“I don’t really know either, but I think I’m starting to understand. But come on now, let’s go. If we don’t go, I’ll just become more and more confused.”
“Okay, I’ll come with you if it’s that important for you, Helmut.”

The alchemist was amazed. This was the first time that he had been able to notice a real change in his environment, except the exchanges of words with Annika at least. Something strange was happening with his friend Helmut and he wasn’t really sure he could explain what it was.

Their nightly ascent towards the highest staircase step didn’t go along as usual. Like always, the alchemist was completely exhausted after thirty minutes of climbing the stairs, what was new however was that Helmut the hippopotamus was also completely spent and didn’t have a problem with taking a break for once. They stood there, panting for a few minutes until the alchemist could see Annika advancing towards them, but still far, far behind. After that, Helmut and the alchemist hurried up so they would not be seen by the little girl.

They reached the pub and when they opened the door inside the topmost step, everything was happening as it had always used to. It was a familiar picture of black and white: the three dogs waiting to play poker, the rhinoceros behind the counter, the four lions tasting their wine and the cobras playing pool. As always Helmut and the alchemist sat down at their usual table in the middle of the room and ordered two glasses of beer from the ceiling monkey.

The two of them stayed silent for this night. Helmut because it really looked like he had changed in some way or another and the alchemist because he wanted to give his friend enough time to think about the predicament he was in. Ten minutes passed and there Annika stood again, inside the doorframe of the pub. She made her usual tour through the pub again. She watched the lions, played the same game of poker with the dogs, took a quick look at the cobra’s pool game and then started walking towards the table where Helmut and the alchemist were sitting.

Annika looked expectantly at Helmut, but he just said: “I’m sorry, little girl, but I don’t feel like making jokes tonight.”
Annika was amazed: “What? But up to now you always told me the same stupid joke.”
“Not today, little girl. Better go and talk to your little uncle now.”
“Hello Annika.”, said the little uncle.
“Hello little uncle. What’s wrong with the hippo man? He’s weird today.“
„I don’t know, Annika.“
„Hey, what is the man back there doing?“ Annika pointed to the entrance of the pub. The alchemist looked behind him and immediately recognized what Annika had seen. It was the stranger who had appeared in his laboratory the previous day. He was still wearing the door on his back and the same clothes, but he was holding a burning torch in his hand. The alchemist was surprise at that because the flame on the torch was burning in a bright orange. Before this he had always thought that he was the only one who could make things real.
The stranger let the torch fall down and ran out of the pub which was now covered in flames, burning. All of the animals inside panicked, all but Helmut who ran through the flames to escape, trampling a path for all the others to get away with their lives. Annika started to cry when she noticed what was happening.

“Don’t be afraid, Annika.” The alchemist tried to comfort her. „Don’t cry, I’ll protect you.“ He took her by the hand and ran out through the path that his friend Helmut had made for him and all the others. The others soon followed him outside and together they ran far enough to get some distance between themselves and the pub.

As they were standing in front of the giant staircase step inside which the tavern was built in, they couldn’t really see that it was burning. The entrance was a bright white but that light could have been many things. It surprised the alchemist a little that the flames inside the pub weren’t orange like the flame on the torch of the stranger, but once he thought about it a bit it made sense. If something real burns, then the flames are also real, but if something dreamt up is burning, the flames themselves are also without substance.

Helmut was burning. He must have gotten too close to the flames as he ran out of the pub, which was why the right half of his body was now the origin of a big flame. It was neither black nor white, but it also wasn’t orange. It flickered in different tones of grey like in an old movie, but the alchemist didn’t have enough time to think about the ramifications about that right now. He let go of Annika’s hand and took off his lab coat, running towards his hippopotamus friend. He threw the small coat over the flames and hoped that it would be enough to smother them. He was lucky.

“Thanks, my friend.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Helmut.”
“I wish I had a river to cool off in now.”
“I don’t think you’ll find something like that here. Stairs aren’t exactly ideal riverbeds.”
“Stairs… you’re right, this whole city, it’s nothing but stairs.“
The two of them stayed silent for a while. Then they noticed that Annika was still near them.
“What now?”, asked the alchemist.
“I don’t know. Nothing like this ever happened before?”
“The dream should be finished soon I think.”
“The dream…”

The alchemist didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to tell Helmut anymore right now, it would be too hard on him. He knew that they were both inside Annika’s dream – a recurring dream. But this time the dream had progressed differently from usual. What would happen now? What happens to a recurring dream if it suddenly catches on fire?

“It’s not too late yet.”, murmured the alchemist suddenly.
“Too late for what?”
“To end the dream the right way. Come on now, we have to find the rhinoceros!“

The alchemist took Annika who wasn’t taller than him by the hand and then began searching for the rhinoceros. He had seen how the barkeeper had left the pub together with the other animals, but then he had noticed the burning hippopotamus. He couldn’t see the rhinoceros anymore now, but as he looked for it, he found somebody else. It was the stranger who had set fire to the pub. The alchemist backed off and stood in front of Annika to protect her.

“Don’t even come one step closer, you! Why did you set fire to the pub?”
“I got bored.”
“You could have destroyed the dream!”
“That was my intention.”
“Are you mad? You would destroy all of the things you see here if you broke the dream!“ the alchemist made a big arc with his arm to point out the whole stair city and it’s black and white inhabitants.
“It’s all just a dream.”
“Just a dream? That’s my home you’re talking about!”
“If a dream is important enough, it will survive all my meddling.”
“All your meddling? Does that mean you’ll do more to try and destroy it?”
“Exactly. Stand aside or I’ll shoot.”

Suddenly the stranger was holding a pistol in his hand. It was a black one, like one from a dream. He pointed it at the alchemist, who was still standing in front of Annika to protect her. The alchemist didn’t know what to do. If the stranger shot him, he would die, but if he shot Annika, then the whole dream was over once and for all. Both possibilities didn’t really appeal to him, which was why he turned around, took Annika by the hand again and ran with her as fast as he could back towards the pub.

Bullets flew past them, but none of them hit. The alchemist looked back and noticed his friend Helmut who had run down the stranger from behind. The man had shot while falling dawn, but naturally without being able to shoot with any precision. It’s hard to aim if you get run down from behind by a charging hippopotamus.
As they arrived the topmost step again, Annika and the alchemist could see the black smoke that was coming out of the pub. In front of the entrance stood the owner of the pub – the rhinoceros which they had looked for before. The alchemist didn’t lose any time and ran towards it, together with Annika.

“Goodbye Annika.”
“Goodbye little uncle.

Annika seemed to understand. As much as there was to understand anyway. She went towards the still grim looking rhinoceros which opened it’s mouth as it saw her. Annika stepped inside and again, everything became black.

And again the alchemist lay in a corner of his laboratory and felt completely rested again, as if all the things last night had never happened. As if he had just dreamt it all. He walked towards his cupboard and took out the little vial with the dark liquid in which he stored the blue stone he used for his experiments. He put it into his pocked and sat down at his desk again. He waited. He didn’t know exactly what would happen this night, but it was clear to him that he would have to be cautious. The stranger wouldn’t simply sit there and do nothing. He would try again to hurt Annika in some way and therefore end the dream in a way it shouldn’t end.
As expected, the doorbell rang as the evening came.

“Hello Helmut.”
“Hello.”
“How are you? Any pain from yesterday?
“I’m fine. Dreams don’t feel any pain.”
“You figured it out then?”
“That wasn’t hard with all the stuff that you did yesterday. So we are really just a dream and nothing else? Nothing real?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Dreams can’t think like we do. The other animals in the pub, those are dreams.”
“But if I’m not a dream anymore, why can I still talk?”
“I don’t know. You look like a part of a dream, but you don’t think like one anymore. Maybe you’re in some sort of transition phase.”
“You mean that with time I’ll become a normal hippopotamus?”
“Maybe.”

They didn’t say anything after this. The alchemist knew that his friend was afraid. Helmut would lose his ability to think if things went on like this, but the alchemist didn’t know a way out either.

“Come on Helmut, let’s go to the pub.”
“Okay, let’s go.”

Three quarters of an hour later they arrived at the pub inside the topmost step. As they entered, the picture they saw didn’t look as good: The whole pub was completely black, from top to bottom. The only white dots were the animals who were sitting at the burnt down tables, pretending that nothing at all had happened.

“They’re trying to make everything go the way it did before.”
“Looks like it. Come on, let’s sit down.”

Helmut and the alchemist sat down at their usual desk in the middle of the pub again. The monkey who took the orders couldn’t reach them anymore this night though, the candelabras had fallen down as the pub had burnt. They had to manage without beer tonight while they waited for the little girl. The alchemist was okay with this because he wanted to be sober when the time came to stand in the way of the stranger. At this moment he wished that he hadn’t just toyed with the blue stone as an alchemist, but that he had also experimented with things that would be use in battle, like explosives or flash bangs.

As he thought further along these lines, an idea hit him. He went towards the counter of the pub and ordered a beer from the grim looking rhinoceros. He got a white liquid with white foam on top, as he had expected. He took it with both hands because it was big and carried it carefully to the table in the middle of the pub.

“Can I have a sip?” asked Helmut.
“No, it’s not for drinking.” The alchemist turned him down. “This stuff is all part of my plan.”
“Do you want to make the guy with the nice hat drunk?”
“Of course not!”
“Then what’s this all about? Can you make explosives out of beer? That’s right, you’re an alchemist after all!”
“Nonsense. Making explosives out of beer.“
“Then what will you do with it?”
“I’m turning it into beer. Real beer.”
“Whatever, you’re mad. Do what you want.“

The alchemist now took his little vial in which he carried the blue stone. He poured it into the white beer, together with the dark liquid. Inside the beer, the blue stone started to dissolve. Slowly the beer began to get a colour. It became more and more yellow unless in the end it looked like real beer with wonderful looking foam on top. Helmut gaped as he saw this.

“That looks really good! Can I have a sip now?”
“You just keep your… hooves off it, the beer’s important!”
“Oh man, you just hate me, don’t you?”
“I’m saving all our lives here! I don’t care if you have a beer or not.”

A little while later, Annika entered the pub, just like every other night. This time though the stranger was close on her heels. Annika looked at the lions and then began going towards the dogs playing poker after she saw the lion’s conversation as finished. At this moment, the stranger saw his chance. He was now exactly behind Annika who was still too concentrated on her dream which now was strangely dark to notice him. Slowly his outstretched hands went for her throat as if he wanted to strangle her and therefore end the dream. The alchemist though wouldn’t just give up as fast as this. He took the yellow glass of beer and threw the contents at the lions with all the force he could muster.

The liquid hit all four of them and while the beer was still dripping down at their sides, they began to change. They weren’t the civilized wine testers from before anymore, but natural coloured, wild animals in search of prey. The stranger turned around and saw the animals. He was closest to them and he knew that he would probably look like the biggest possible prey to them, which was why he ran away as fast as he could as soon as he saw them. He ran through the flame eaten door, out of the pub. The four lions were still close on his heels.

“He won’t bother us for a while.” The alchemist grinned at Helmut the hippopotamus.
”Ha-ha, yes, you really showed him who’s boss. I didn’t know that just one glass of beer could turn the world’s most sophisticated wine tasters into wild animals.”

They both laughed while they watched Annika’s tour through the pub further. Besides the pub having burnt down, everything happened as usual. The stranger seemed to be out of the picture, for this night at least. When Annika came to the table where the Alchemist and Helmut were sitting, the conversation started again, like every night.

”Hello Annika.”
“Hello little uncle.”
“It’s nice to see you again.”
“Everything’s black today, uncle.”
“Yes, everything’s black. Don’t worry about it, everything else is normal, nothing really changed.“
“What happened yesterday, uncle? There was this strange man who burnt down everything.”
“That was just a bad dream. I think you have to go now, as always, right? See you tomorrow night, Annika.”
“Yes, I have to go. Goodbye, uncle!“

The alchemist waved at Annika again before she turned around and got pulled towards the barkeeper, but the sound of a pistol being fired broke through this moment of goodbye. It came from the direction of the entrance of the pub where the stranger stood, holding his black pistol in his right hand. His left arm was bleeding and it hung down, as if he didn’t have any control over it anymore. The lions must have gotten him before he had managed to get rid of them. His red blood dripped on the floor and changed the colour of the burnt, black floor. He lowered his weapon because he had hit his mark. He now used his right arm to hold himself steady using the wall.

Behind the counter on the ground lay the barkeeper. His grim expression had gone from his face and in it’s place only surprise could be seen. The alchemist could only follow the whole situation with a horrified expression. It was too late, the dream couldn’t end in the way it should now. Annika just stood there in the middle of the room without doing anything. She was now trapped in her dream. The stranger pulled himself together from his lowered position at the wall and sat at the table where the alchemist was sitting of all things.

“You monster, you killed him!”
“The rhinoceros was nothing but a figure in a dream.”
“Why are you coming to me now? Do you want revenge for the thing with the lions now?”
“Revenge… I haven’t thought of revenge in a long time. No, I don’t want revenge. It’s normal for a dream to defend itself, it’s not my place to want revenge.”
“You mean I only defended myself because I am part of this dream?”
“Maybe…”
”I’m not a dream, don’t you understand that? I’m real! I can think and feel, not like all these laughing stocks all around us. Once the dream is over, what will become of me? Will I just vanish, like the rest of them?”
“If you really are more than a dream, then no, you won’t just vanish. Real things don’t vanish just because a little girl stops dreaming of them.”

The alchemist didn’t say anything. He didn’t really understand what the stranger was saying, but the man seemed to at least have some experience with dream worlds such as this. At least more experience than he himself had.

“Tell me,” he then asked after a while “what will become of Annika now?”
”I’d say she’ll stay here until she wakes up.”
“And what will happen when she wakes up?”
“The thing you thought will happen all the time. The dream will be over.”
“Why was so important for you to end this dream?”
“I told you already, I got bored. It’s not an especially interesting dream and it’s not important to anybody either.”
“If this dream is so boring, then why don’t you just leave the way you came, through your door?”
“As long as the dream isn’t over, I can’t leave. Only when everything here is said and done I can open my door again.”
“Where will you go once Annika wakes up?”
“Everywhere.”

The alchemist took a closer look at the stranger. He didn’t believe anymore that this man was evil and only here because he wanted to destroy the dream of a little girl. The stranger suddenly seemed very, very old to him. How old exactly he didn’t know, but the man in black looked tired. Very, very tired, as if he had been travelling around thousands of different worlds for an unimaginable amount of years. As if he was searching for something that nobody could ever find.

“Can I come with you?” The stranger looked at him, surprised. As far as this could be said at least, because his fedora hat was still covering his eyes.
“You want to come with me?”
“Yes. I know nothing else but this dream. I want to know what other things there are out there and I have a feeling that you must have seen a great many things. I want to go to the places you go to.”
I told you that I’m going everywhere, but that means that I stay nowhere. I wander, travel and nowhere I will ever be more but a stranger, just passing through. I can’t put anyone else through this but me. This way is mine and mine alone. You have to find your own way, little alchemist.”

The alchemist just looked at the stranger. He didn’t understand what this man was telling him, but deep inside he knew that he could never follow this stranger. Helmut the hippopotamus had followed the conversation quietly up to now. Helmut had always thought it to be bad manners to interrupt the conversations of other people, but now that he saw the dialogue between the alchemist and the stranger as finished, he felt that his time to speak up had finally come:

”If the alchemist isn’t a dream, what about me?”

This question stood alone in the room. Nobody seemed to have an answer. Without words the three of them sat at the table. The stranger, the alchemist and the hippopotamus. They were waiting for nothing else but for Annika to wake up so that they could finally find out what would happen to them. After an hour of silence, everything else finally started to vanish. The dream was ending and everything started to black out again.

As he opened his eyes again, the alchemist was lying crumpled up in the corner of his laboratory again. He rubbed his eyes and asked himself first if he had just dreamt all these weird things. When he looked up he had to say that the answer to this question was a definite no because before him stood the stranger who was taking his door off his back at the moment, readying himself for his next voyage.

“So, that’s it then, stranger.”
“Looks like it.”
“Is everything… is everything really gone?”
“Not everything. Just look around, your laboratory is still standing. It is now it’s own world, not a dream anymore. Small maybe, but many big worlds only started as a small dream you know.”
“What about Helmut? He may have been a dream, but he was my best friend.”
“If he still exists, then he’ll probably at the place he always was when the dream started look for him there.”

The alchemist jumped to his feet. If the city was gone, then all the stairs were also gone, and if the stairs were gone, then Helmut would be falling into nothingness without a doubt. The alchemist opened his door and as expected, wherever he looked he saw nothing but white. The staircase in whose step his laboratory was located however still existed. It now had a deep blue colour with many irregular patterns, as if it had been hewn out of one huge lazurite stone. What excited the alchemist most of all however was Helmut’s face. The hippopotamus yawned at him. Helmut’s body was still completely black and his teeth were still as white as innocence itself.

“Helmut!”
“Looks like I’m more real than we both thought.”

The two of them grinned at each other. The alchemist turned around to say goodbye to the stranger, because even though he didn’t really like the man because he had worked against him, his actions had turned out to be correct in the end. It could have become dangerous for Annika if things had gone on like this, this much was clear to the alchemist now. He had become stronger and stronger all the time and at a certain point he would have become stronger than Annika herself.

The stranger however wasn’t there anymore. He must have left the laboratory through his door already. The alchemist showed the laboratory to Helmut and offered him a cup of tea and then he got started on his new line of work. He would find a way out of this tiny world and he would go to other worlds, so that he might one day be able to see the stranger again. He would thank him for showing him his way. A way which he wouldn’t go alone, but with a talking hippopotamus at his side.