Solomija and the dream under the pillow

A literary legend written for Ask the Signs. The witches are fictional and nothing in the story predicts a future.

For a month Lidia had dreamed of a man on a bridge whose face she could not see. She came to Solomija to ask whether he was the one.

In Konotop they said the witches read cards better than anyone, but Solomija read them as if she were already halfway inside a dream. She had sleepy eyes, a scarf embroidered with stars, and a voice so quiet you had to lean toward her. Her room was full of pillows: stuffed with lavender, with hops, with meadow hay and with feathers, and each one, she claimed, dreamed something different. She took no money for readings. She took stories. Whoever came had to tell her one of their dreams, and she wrote it in a book that already had so many pages it would not close.

Lidia came in February, on an evening when the snow creaks and the stars are sharp as needles. She was twenty-eight, worked in a pharmacy, had good friends and a comfortable flat, and for a month she had dreamed the same dream every night. She stood on a wooden bridge over a river, and at the far end of the bridge stood a man. She walked toward him, he walked toward her, and always, just as she was about to see his face, she woke up. "Is he the one I am meant for?" she asked, sitting down on the hops pillow. "All my friends have someone already. Perhaps he is waiting for me and I only have to find him?"

Solomija yawned, apologized for yawning, and wrote Lidia's dream into her book, very carefully, together with the color of the sky above the bridge, which she asked about specifically. Then she laid the cards out on a checked blanket. The first was the High Priestess: a woman seated between a black column and a white one, a scroll on her knees, a curtain embroidered with pomegranates behind her and a crescent moon at her feet. "Knowledge that lives inside," whispered Solomija. "The High Priestess does not leave the house to look for answers. She sits and listens until the answer comes to her. Mostly at night."

The second was the Nine of Swords: a figure sitting up in bed in the dark, covering their face with both hands, nine swords hanging on the wall above. Lidia flinched. "Night worries," said Solomija gently. "Look, the swords hang on the wall. None of them touches him. These are thoughts that seem sharp at night and wound nobody. This card says your dream comes from anxiety, Lidia. From the fact that everyone around you has someone and you do not." The third was the Sun: a laughing child on a white horse, sunflowers behind a wall, a red banner in one hand. "And this is morning. The one that comes after every night, even the longest."

"But who is standing on the bridge?" Lidia would not let it go. Solomija smiled sleepily. "We will check. The old way." She gave her a pillow stuffed with lavender and several slips of paper. Lidia was to write on them the names of men she had thought about, even in passing, fold the slips and put them under the pillow. In the morning, without looking, she was to draw one out. The girls of Konotop had done this forever, at Andrew's night and on Christmas Eve. While Lidia was writing the names, Solomija turned toward the stove, and the witches of Konotop turn toward the stove only when they are up to something.

Before sleep Lidia said, as Solomija told her, the old sentence you say when you sleep for the first time in a new place: "In a new place, dream me the one who is meant to be dreamed." She fell asleep quickly, because lavender works better than any spell. And again she stood on the bridge. But this time she was in no hurry. She walked slowly, looking at the river, at the willows, at a sky of exactly the color she had described that evening. And the man at the far end of the bridge came closer, until at last she saw that he was not a man at all.

On the bridge stood herself. A little older, perhaps twenty years, with a gray streak in her hair and laugh lines around her eyes. She was laughing. She held out her hand and said something Lidia remembered word for word: "Do not rush so. I am waiting for you anyway. Everything that matters, you will have time for." And then they both stood on the bridge looking at the river, and it was so good that Lidia woke with wet cheeks and a smile she could not wipe off through all of breakfast.

In the morning she pulled one slip of paper from under the pillow. It was blank. Lidia turned it over several times, then looked under the pillow, where all her name slips lay untouched, folded into little squares. "You put it there!" she protested, but more with laughter than anger. Solomija yawned and did not even pretend to be sorry. "I did. A blank slip is the most beautiful name in the world, Lidia. Not written yet. And who is to write it is no longer up to me or the pillow."

Then, pouring her melissa tea, Solomija said something Lidia repeated to her friends many times afterwards. "People think dreams show them the future. Dreams show what you are afraid of and what you are missing. What you were missing was not a man but the calm of knowing you will have time. Before you meet someone on the bridge, it is good to meet yourself there first. Otherwise you will run at whoever comes so fast that you never see their face."

In Konotop they say Lidia stopped asking that year when she would finally meet someone. She signed up for a dance class she had not dared to take for years, went to the sea alone, and discovered that she liked eating breakfast in silence. Did she meet someone? Apparently yes, but that is a different story entirely and Solomija keeps it in her book under a separate date. All that is known is that when she met him she did not run. She walked slowly, looked at him carefully, and that is why she saw his face at once.

And the blank slip is still in Lidia's drawer. When a girl comes to Solomija wanting to know who she will dream of, Solomija gives her a lavender pillow and a handful of paper slips, and then turns toward the stove. She says it is the oldest divination in Konotop and that it always comes true: it shows you someone you truly need to meet. Sometimes that is another person. And sometimes it is yourself, a little older, laughing, waiting on a bridge.

Love is not waiting under a pillow. Before you meet someone, it is worth meeting yourself.

Cards from this story

Her whisper for today

Tonight, put the phone outside the bedroom and see what you dream instead.

Whispers are lines to carry, not forecasts. They say nothing about other people, money or health.

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