The Dream Hunters

CHAPTER TWO

Now in those days there were many things walking the earth that we rarely see today. There were ghosts and demons, and spirits of all kinds; there were beast gods and little gods and great gods; there were all manner of entities, beings, and wraiths and creatures, both kind and malevolent.

The fox was hunting on the mountainside one night, after the moon had set and the night was at its darkest, when she saw, by a blasted pine tree, several bluish lights glimmering. Quiet and quick as a shadow she slipped toward them. As she approached, the lights resolved themselves into strange creatures, neither alive nor dead, which glowed with the flickering blue of marsh gas.

The creatures were talking to each other in low voices.

«So we are commanded," said the first creature, blue flame glistening on its naked skin, «and the monk shall die.»

The fox stopped moving then, and concealed herself behind a clump of ferns.

«Aye," said the second, its teeth sharp as tiny knives. «Our master, who is a Yin–Yang Diviner of great power, from his studies of the stars and of the patterns of the earth, has seen that, come the next full of the moon, either he or the monk shall be dead — and if it is not the monk, then it must be our master.»

«How, then, shall he die?» asked the third creature, its eyes shining with blue flame. «Hush! Is there any thing listening to our counsel? For I feel eyes upon me.»

The fox held her breath, and pushed her belly down into the earth, and lay still. The three creatures rose higher into the air and stared down at the dark woods. «There is nothing here but a dead fox," said the first creature.

A fly alighted on the fox's forehead, and walked, slowly, down to the tip of her muzzle. She resisted the urge to snap at it; instead she just lay there, eyes unfocused and blank, a dead thing.

«This is what our master intends," said the first of the creatures. «For three nights running, the monk shall have evil dreams. On the first night the monk shall dream of a box. On the second night he shall dream of a black key. On the third night he shall dream that he unlocks the box with the key. When, in his dream, he opens the box, he shall lose all connection to this world, and without food, and without water, he will die soon enough. His death will not be held to our master's conscience.» And then it looked about it one more time. «Can you be certain that we are not overheard?»

The fly crawled onto the fox's eyeball. She did not blink, although the tickling felt like madness in her mind.

«What could hear us?» asked the second of the creatures. «A fox's corpse?» And it laughed, high and distant.

«But it would not matter if someone did hear us," said the first of them, «for if someone did overhear us, and spoke of what he heard to another, no sooner would the first word leave his mouth than his heart will burst in his breast.»

A cold wind blew over the mountaintop. The sky began to lighten in the east.

«But is there no way the monk can escape his fate?» said the third.

«Only one way," said the second.

The fox strained to hear another word, but there was nothing, no more words were spoken. All she could hear was the whisper of the wind as it stirred the fallen leaves, the sighing of the trees as they breathed and swayed in the wind, and the distant ting ling of wind chimes in the little temple.

She lay there stiff as a fallen branch until the sun was high in the sky. Then she swished her tail, and snapped at the ants who were crawling over her paw; she made her way down the side of the mountain, until she reached her den. It was cool in her den, and dark, and it smclled of earth, and in the back of the fox's den was her most precious thing.

She had found it several years before, tangled in the roots of a great tree; so she had dug, and chewed, and dug some more, for days, until she had it out of the ground, and then she had licked it clean with her pink tongue, and had polished it with her own fur, and she had taken it back to her den, where she venerated it, and cared for it. It was her treasure. It was very old, and it had come from a far country.

It was a carving of a dragon, carved from jade, and its eyes were tiny red stones.

The dragon brought her comfort. In the gloom of her den its ruby eyes glowed, casting a warm radiance.

The fox picked her treasure up in her mouth, carrying it as gently as she would have carried one of her own kits.

She carried the statue in her mouth for many miles, until she came to a cliff at the edge of the sea. She could hear the seagulls screaming above her, and the pounding of the cold waves on the rocks below her. She could taste the salt on the air.

«For this is my most precious possession.» she thought. «And I give it up, give it to the sea, and all I ask is the knowledge of how to save the life of the monk. For if I do nothing he shall dream of a box, and then of a key, and then of a key opening the box, and then he will be dead.»

And then she nuzzled the pale jade statue over the cliff–edge, gently, and watched it tumble hundreds of feet into the churning sea. Then she sighed, for the little statue of the dragon had brought serenity and peace to her den.

Then she walked the miles back to her den and, tired beyond all imagining, she slept.

This was the dream the fox dreamed.

She was in a barren place of grey rock and brown rock, where nothing grew. The sky was grey as well, neither light nor dark. Poised on a great rock in front of her was a huge fox, jet black from the tip of its muzzle to almost the end of its tail, which was as white as if it had been dipped into a paint–pot. It was bigger than a tiger, bigger than a war–horse, bigger than any creature the fox had ever seen.

It stood on the rock as if it were waiting for something, and its eyes were dark pits in which distant stars glinted and burned.

The fox clambered and sprang from rock to rock until she stood in front of the fox of dreams, and she prostrated herself in front of him, rolling over to show him her throat.

Stand, said the great fox. Stand and have no fear. You gave up much to dream this dream, child.

The fox got to her feet. In her dream she was not shaking, although she was more scared than any little fox has ever been.

«My dragon," she asked. «Was it yours, Lord?»

No, he told her. But it was lost, long long ago, by one whom I called friend, hack before the true dragons left this place to swim in the sky. My friend lost the statue, and it troubled him. Now the sea shall wash it back to him, and he will sleep more peacefully, at the bottom of the Great Deeps, with the rest of his kind, until the next age of the world.

«I am honoured and grateful to have been permitted to be of service to your friend," said the fox.

They stood there in silence for some timeless moments, in the dream–place, the tiny fox and the great black fox. The little fox looked about the rocky waste.

«What arc those animals?» asked the little fox.

They were the size of lions, and they snuffled about the rocks, their long noses rooting and snuffling in the barren ground.

They are Baku, said the great fox. They are the Dream Eaters.

The little fox had heard of the Baku. If a dreamer wakes from a dream of ill–omen or a portent of dark things, the dreamer may invoke the Baku, and hope that the Baku will eat the dream, and take it and what it foretells, away.

She stared at the Baku, as they moved across the rocky desert of dreams.

«And if one were to catch a Baku after it had consumed a dream," asked the fox. «What then?»

The great fox said nothing for some time. In the hollow of an eye one distant star glittered. Baku are hard to catch, and harder to hold. They are elusive and crafty beasts.

«I am a fox," she said, humbly, and without boasting. «I also am a crafty beast.»

The great fox nodded assent. Then he looked down at her, and it seemed to the fox that he could see everything she was, everything she dreamed, and hoped, and felt. He is only a human, said the great fox. While you are a fox. These things rarely end happily.

And the fox would have told him what she thought of this, and opened her heart to him, but with a flick of his tail the great fox leapt from the rock down to the desert floor below. And it seemed to the fox that he grew and he grew, until he was the size of the sky, and the huge fox was the night, and stars twinkled in the blackness of his coat, and the white tip of his tail was the half–moon, shining in the night sky.

«I can be crafty," said the little fox to the night. «And I can be brave. And I would die for him.»

And the fox imagined that a voice in her head was saying, almost tenderly. Then catch his dreams, child, as she awoke.

The sun was the golden of the late afternoon, and it burnished the world as the fox stepped into the brush and made for the little temple, stopping only to devour a large frog she found at the edge of the stream, and to crunch it down, bones and all, in a couple of mouthfuls. Then she drank the cold, clear water of the mountain stream, lapping at it thirstily.

When she came to the little temple, the monk was chopping firewood for his brazier.

Remaining a safe distance from the monk, for his axe–blade was sharp, she said, clearly, as people talk, «May you dream only propitious dreams in the days to come, dreams of good omen and great fortune.»

The monk smiled at the fox. «I am grateful for your wishes," he said. «Although it is not for me to know if my dreams shall be dreams of good fortune or otherwise.»

The fox stared at him for some time with her green fox eyes. «I shall not be far," she said at length. «Should you need me.»

And when the young monk looked up again from his firewood, she was gone.