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oneiromancy
noun
the interpretation of dreams in order to foretell the future.

Sleep deprivation does funny things to your head. Steeped in the romance of Renaissance Italian literature, Ben Lansing isn't coping well with the routines of his first post-college job, his daily commute from Providence, Rhode Island, to Boston, the inevitable insomnia and lack of sleep, or the peculiarly vivid dreams when he does manage to sleep.

For Ben "wished to be a paladin. He wished to mount Ariosto's hippogriff and fly to the moon. He wished to sing a Baroque aria of stunning, shocking brilliance, bringing the audience to its feet roaring, 'Bravo! Bravissimo!' He wished to run mad for love."

When Ben encounters a lost prince squatting in a derelict South Boston warehouse with his little sister and elder brother, exiles of an imaginary Italy, he resolves to rescue Dario and Dario's family--and himself. Stumbling from dream to real life and back again, Ben begins a fabulous quest. Amid visions of futures, pasts, strangely altered presents, he encounters mythic personages--raffish bike messenger/artist Neddy, dilettante translator Kenneth, his own mother and father. He falls in and out of love. He witnesses the flight of the hippogriff and the collapses of the New England economy and his parents' marriage. He discovers what he never knew he was looking for all along.

In Deprivation, a novel as real as a fairy tale or romantic Renaissance epic, neither Ben nor the reader can ever feel certain of being awake or dreaming, walking the streets of Boston or the mazy paths of dreamland. Can you separate wish from fulfilment? Do you want to?

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 2008. It can also be found in the anthologies Wilde Stories 2009: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction (2017), edited by Steve Berman, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection You Will Meet a Stranger Far from Home: Wonder Stories (2012).

This short story originally appeared in Icarus, Issue 14, Fall 2012, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, November 2016.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

An American teenager meets Adonis on a sailing cruise off the coast of Turkey. A merchant of the Silk Road encounters a dog--and a brother--from another world. An old lady on a distant planet attempts to help her great-grandson grow up in a world that will soon forget women ever existed. A Massachusetts boy refuses to visit fairyland. Another American teenager on vacation encounters three fallen angels and is transformed.

Table of Contents:

• Ban's Dream of the Sea - (2012) - short story
• Firooz and His Brother - (2008) - short story
• Haider and His Dog - short fiction
• Jannicke's Cat - (2009) - short story
• Liam and the Wild Fairy - short fiction
• Tattooed Love Boys - (2012) - novelette
• The Arab's Prayer - (2011) - short story
• Then We Went There - short fiction
• Turning - short fiction
• Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel, Salt for Sorrow, Blood for Joy - short fiction