The Dream Hunters

CHAPTER ONE

A monk lived in solitude beside a temple on the side of a mountain. It was a small temple, and the monk was a young monk, and the mountain was not the most beautiful or impressive mountain in Japan.

The monk tended the temple, and he passed his days in peace and quiet until the day that a fox and a badger passed the temple and spied the monk hoeing the little plot of yams which fed him for much of the year.

The badger looked at the monk and the temple, and he said, «Let us make a wager. Whichever of us succeeds in driving that man from the temple will keep the place as a home; for it has been many years since pilgrims or travellers came to this temple, and it will be a finer place by far to live than a badger's set or a fox's den.»

And the fox smiled with her sharp teeth, and blinked her green eyes, and she swished her brush and she looked down the hill at the temple and at the monk, then she looked at the badger and she said, «Very well. A wager it is.»

«Bach of us will take it in turns," said the badger. «I shall go first.»

Down in his little garden plot the monk hoed his yams, then he went down on his knees and he weeded the wild onions and the ginger plants and the little patch of herbs: then he cleaned the mud from his hands and knees, and he went into the living quarters at the back of the temple, to prepare for that evening's devotions.

That night, the moon hung full, huge and silver, in a night sky the colour of a ripe plum; and the priest heard a mighty commotion outside his door.

There were five men in the courtyard, richly dressed and mounted on five great horses. They were hairy men. Their leader held a great curved sword.

«Who serves in this temple?» he called, in a voice like the thunder. «Let him show himself!»

The monk came forward, into the moonlight, and he bowed deeply. «I am the unworthy guardian of this temple," he said, simply.

«And a skinny, unimpressive runt of a priest you are," boomed the leader. «But who among us can account for the will of the gods? Truly was it said that those who seek after fortune find it as elusive as grasping a rainbow, while those who disdain good fortune and the world often find it beating upon a gong outside their door.»

To this speech the young monk said nothing, but he raised his head a little, and he looked at the horsemen in the moonlight with sharp eyes that missed nothing at all.

«Well, do you wish to know what your good fortune is?»

«Certainly," said the monk.

«Know then that you have been sent for by none other than the Emperor himself. You arc to travel as fast as you can to the Imperial Palace, where the Emperor wishes to speak with you and to confirm that you are indeed the person of whom the augurs and diviners have told him, and then you will be raised from obscurity and appointed to minister to the needs of the imperial court — a position which brings with it great fortune and mighty estates.

«However, know also that if you do not present yourself at the Imperial Palace before the next Day of the Monkey, then the auguries go from good to very bad, and the Emperor shall, regretfully, be forced to issue your death warrant. Therefore wait not a single moment, but depart this place before dawn, or risk the Emperor's severest displeasure.»

The horses stamped their feet in the full moon's light.

The monk bowed low once more.

«I shall leave instantly," he said, and the five horsemen grinned, the moon light gleaming from their eyes and their teeth, and from the metal bridles and decorations of their horses, «but, before I leave, I have one question to ask.»

«And what would that be?» asked the leader, in a voice like a tiger's roar.

«Why the Emperor would send a badger to tell me to come to the Imperial Court," said the monk, who had observed that, while the first four horses had the tails of horses, the last horse of all had the tail of a badger. And with that the monk began to laugh, and he walked back into the temple to begin his evening devotions.

There was a clattering from the courtyard as the riders rode away, and from the mountainside came the yip! yip! yip! of a fox, high and vicious and amused.

The clouds covered the mountaintop before midday the next day, and they were dark, full clouds, so it came as no surprise to the monk when the rain began to fall, a hard, drenching rain that bent the bamboo and flattened the young yam plants. The monk, who was used to the weather on the side of the mountain, remained at his devotions and did not stir, not even when the lightning started — a blinding whiteness, followed by thunder so loud and so deep it felt as if it were being wrenched from the very heart of the mountain.

The rain redoubled. It sounded like the beating of a hundred small drums, such that the monk could scarcely hear the sound of weeping, over the pound ing and rattling of the rain, but he did hear someone sobbing, and he went out into the courtyard, where he saw, sprawled upon the ground where the earth ran like muddy soup, a young woman, soaked by the rain. Her robes, which were of the richest silk, were sopping, and clung to her body like a second skin.

The monk was painfully aware of the young woman's beauty, and her body, as he helped her to her feet and walked beside her into the temple, where they could be out of the rain.

«I am the only daughter of the governor of the province of Yamashiro," she told him, as she stood beside the small brazier, wringing out her garments and her long black hair, «and I was travelling with a party of women and guards to this very temple, when we were attacked by brigands. I alone escaped. I over heard them say that, when this rain lets up they arc going to ride up the mountainside to this temple and burn it to the ground and kill anyone they find here.» While she spoke she ate a bowl of the monk's rice, and a small bowl of yams, gobbling her food hungrily as she stared at the monk with bright green eyes.

«Therefore," she said, «let us flee this place, never to return, before the ban dits come, for if we stay here, we shall both perish. And if we are separated, then you should make your way to the province of Yamashiro, and ask for my father, who is the governor, and has the finest house in the province, and he will reward you mightily. Thank you for the rice. It was very good, although the yams were perhaps a little dry.»

«We must certainly leave immediately," said the monk, with a gentle smile playing at the corners of his lips, «if you will explain one thing to me first.»

«And what would that be?» asked the girl.

«Explain to me how it happens that the daughter of the governor of the province of Yamashiro happens to be a fox," said the monk, «for I have never seen eyes like yours on a human face.»

At that, no quicker than it takes to tell it, the girl jumped over the little brazier, and, when she landed she was no longer a girl but a fox. with its coat sleek and its brush held high, and it darted the monk a look of utter disdain before it leapt upon a stone wall and ran along it, to the shade of a bent old pine, where it paused for a moment, before vanishing into the storm.

Later that afternoon the sun came out, and the monk was able to walk around the temple picking up blown leaves and fallen branches, and repairing the damage of the storm.

He was beginning to perceive a pattern here.

So he was not entirely surprised when, several nights later, as the sun was setting, a troop of demons shambled through the woods to surround the little temple. Some of them had the heads of dead men, and some of them had the heads of monsters, with yellow tusks and staring eyes and huge horns; and they set up a clamor such that you have never heard.

«We smell a man!» they shouted. «We scent man–flesh! Bring out the man and we shall eat him — we shall roast his heart and vitals and brains, feast on his eyes and his cheeks and his tongue, swallow his liver and his fat and his testicles! Bring him here!»

And with that, several of the demons began to pile high the fallen branches the monk had gathered, and they breathed on them with their fiery breath until the branches began to smoke and then to burn.

«And if I do not come out?» called the monk.

«Then we shall come back every night at sundown," screamed a demon with a head like a flayed bat, «and make a tumult, until, finally, our patience at an end, we shall burn down your little temple and we shall pluck your charred body from the ashes, and chomp it down eagerly with our sharp teeth!»

«So flee!» shouted another demon, its face that of a drowned man, flesh swollen, eyes blind and pearl–like, «flee this place and never come back!»

But the monk did not flee. Instead he walked out into the courtyard, and he picked up a burning brand from the fire.

«I will not leave this place," he said, «and I am tired of these performances. Now, whatever you are, fox or badger, take that! And that!» and he began to lay about him with the burning brand.

In a moment, where before there had stood a horde of demons, there was nothing more than a fat old he–badger, who scrabbled and began to run away. The monk threw the burning brand at the badger and struck him on the rear, burning its tail–fur and singeing its rump. The badger howled with pain, and vanished into the night.

At dawn the monk was half–woken from his sleep by a whispering voice from behind him.

«I wished to say sorry," said the voice. «It was a wager between the badger and me.»

The monk said nothing.

«The badger has fled to another province, his tail burned and his dignity in shreds," said the girl's voice. «I shall also leave, if you desire it. But I have lived my life in a den above the waterfall, by the twisted pine, and it would hurt me to leave.»

«Then stay," said the monk, «if you will play no more of your foolish fox tricks upon me.»

«Of course," said the whispering girl's voice behind him, and soon the monk returned to dreams. When he woke properly, an hour later, the monk found fox–footprints on the matting of his room.

The monk caught sight of the fox from time to time, slipping through the undergrowth, and the sight of her always made him smile.

He did not know that the fox had fallen violently in love with him, when she came to tell him she was sorry, or perhaps before, when he had picked her up from the muddy courtyard and taken her inside to dry herself by the fire. But whenever it had happened, it was unquestionably true that the fox was in love with the young monk.

And that was to be the cause of much misery in the time to come. Much misery, and heartbreak, and of a strange journey.