The Dream Hunters Read online

  The Dream Hunters

  Нил Гейман

  Neil Gaiman

  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 o
n 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.

  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.