The Dream Hunters Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Far to the south and the west, in his house in Kyoto, the Master of Yin–Yang, the onmyoji, burned a lamp at a small table, upon which he had placed a square of painted silk, and upon it a lacquer chest and a black wooden key. Arranged according to the five cardinal points of the compass were five small porcelain plates, upon three of which were powdered matter, upon one of which was a bead of liquid, and upon the last plate there was nothing at all.

  The onmyoji was a rich man. He was a high official in the Bureau of Divination, and many sought his advice and his favours. The governors of many provinces were grateful to him, and believed that his influence and his fortune–telling had given them their fortunes or their high positions. He had the ear of the Chancellor, and of the Ministers of the Right and the Left. But he was not a happy man.

  He had a wife, who lived in the northern wing of his house, who ran his household judiciously and efficiently and who treated him in every way as a wife should treat a husband. He had a concubine, who was barely seventeen, and who was very beautiful: her skin was as pale as the palest plum–blossom, her lips were dark as plums. His wife and his concubine lived together, under the same roof, and they did not quarrel. But the onmyoji was not a happy man.

  He lived in what was widely said to be the seventeenth–finest house in Kyoto. Spirits and demons of the air, Oni and Tcngu alike, were ordered by him, and would obey his orders. He could remember every detail of two of his previous lives. As a young man he had travelled to China to study, and he had returned with his hair prematurely grey but with an unequaled knowledge of portents and omens. He was respected by those who were his superiors, and feared by those who were his inferiors. But, with all this, the onmyoji was not happy.

  And this was because the onmyoji was afraid.

  Ever since he could remember, since he was a tiny child, he had been afraid, and every thing he learned, every scrap of power he obtained, he had gathered in the hope that it would drive away the fear. But the fear remained. It waited behind him, and in the heart of him; it was there when he slept and there to greet him when he woke in the morning; it was there when he made love, and when he drank, and when he bathed.

  It was not a fear of death, for in his heart he suspected that death might be an escape from the fear. And there were days when he wondered if, by his arts, he were to kill every man, woman and child in the world, that the fear would be gone, but he suspected that the fear would still haunt him even if he were alone.

  It was fear that drove him, and fear that pushed him into the darkness.

  The Master of Yin–Yang sought knowledge from the defilers of graves. He met with misshapen creatures in the twilight, and he danced their dances, and he partook of their feasts.

  On the outskirts of the city, where thieves and brigands and the unclean lived, the Master of Yin–Yang kept a dilapidated house, and in that house there were three women: one old, one young, and one who was neither young nor old. The women sold herbs and remedies to women who found themselves in unfortunate situations. It was whispered that unwary travellers who stopped in that house for the night were often never seen again. Be that as it may, no man knew of the onmyoji's involvement with the three women, nor of his visits to the house on those nights when the moon was dark.

  In his head, and in his heart, the onmyoji was not an evil man. He was fright ened. And the fear stole the joy from any moments of pride or happiness, and leeched the pleasure from his life.

  One night, several weeks before the events previously related, when the moon was at its darkest, he had asked the three women in the dilapidated house the questions that troubled him most.

  The wind blew through the broken screens, and howled in the rotting eaves.

  «How can I find peace?» he asked the oldest of the women.

  «There is peace in the grave," she told him, «and a momentary peace in the contemplation of a fine sunset.»

  She was naked, and her breasts hung like empty bags upon her chest, and on her face she had painted the face of a demon.

  The onmyoji scowled, and tapped his fan into the palm of his hand impatiently.

  «Why do I have no peace?» he asked the youngest of the three women.

  «Because you are alive," she told him, with her cold lips. The onmyoji was most afraid of the youngest of the three women, for he suspected that she was not alive. She was beautiful, but it was a frozen beauty. If she touched him, with her cold fingers, he shuddered.

  «Where can I find peace?» he demanded of the woman who was neither young nor old.

  She was not naked, but her robe was open, and down her chest curved two rows of breasts, like the breasts of a she–pig or a rat, her many nipples black and hard as so many lumps of charcoal.

  She sucked the air in through her teeth, and held it in, and then, after too long a time, she exhaled. And she said, «In the Province of Mino, many, many long days of travel away from here, to the north and the cast, on the side of such and such a mountain is a small temple. It is of so little importance that it has but one monk tending to it. He is afraid of nothing, and he has the peace you desire. Now, I can weave it so that when he dies you will gain his strength, and you will fear nothing. But once I have woven, you will have only until the next full of the moon to cause his death. And he must die without violence, and without pain, or the weaving will fail.»

  The onmyoji grunted, satisfied. He fed her several small delicacies with his own hand, and stroked her hair, and told her that he was satisfied with this.

  The three women withdrew into another part of the tumbledown house, and when they returned again it was almost dawn, and the sky was begi
nning to lighten.

  They handed the onmyoji a square of woven silk, pale as moonlight. On it was painted the onmyoji and the moon, and the young monk.

  The onmyoji nodded, satisfied. He would have thanked them, but he knew that one must not thank creatures of their kind, so he placed their payment on the floor of their house, and hurried home, to be there before daybreak.

  Now, there are many ways to kill at a distance, but most of them, even if they do not involve direct violence, involve the infliction of pain.

  The Master of Yin–Yang consulted his scrolls. Then he sent his demons to the mountain where the monk lived, to obtain for him things that the monk had touched. (That was where the fox had overheard them.) And here, and now, the onmyoji sat in front of the little table, with the lamp upon it, and the lacquer box, and the key. One by one, he added a pinch of the substance in the little porcelain plates to the fire of the lamp — a pinch for each of the five elements. And the final pinch was from the last thing the demons had stolen from the monk: it was from the plate with nothing in it, which contained a scrap of the monk's shadow, that the demons had stolen from him.

  With each pinch of powder the onmyoji added to the flame, it burned higher and brighter; and when he added the final pinch of nothing, which was the monk's shadow, the flame burned so high it filled the onmyoji's chamber with light, and then it was gone, leaving the room in darkness.

  The onmyoji kindled a light and was pleased to observe that on the silk square that covered the table there was an unpleasant stain, as if something dead had been lying there over the face of the young monk.

  He observed this with satisfaction. Then he went to his bed and slept the night peacefully, and without fear. He was, for that night, content.

  In the monk's dream that night, he was standing in his father's house, before his father had lost his house and all he owned in his disgrace, for his father had had powerful enemies.

  His father bowed to him, and the monk remembered, in his dream, that his father had died by his own hand, and he also remembered that he, the monk, was still alive. He tried to tell his father this, but his father indicated, without words, that he could not listen to anything his son could tell him.

  Then he produced from inside his robe a small lacquer box, and he held it out for his son to take.

  The monk took the enamel box, and his father was no longer there, but he gave no thought to this, for the enamel box took all his thoughts (although, in his dream, he thought he saw the flick of a fox's tail through an open door).

  He knew there was something important inside the box. There was something he needed to sec. But the box resisted all his efforts to open it, and the more he tugged and pried the more frustrated he was.

  When he woke he felt troubled and discomfited, wondering if the dream was an omen or a warning. «If it was an evil dream," said the monk, «then may a Baku take it.»

  Then he rose, and went out to bring in water, and began his day.

  On the second night the monk dreamed that his grandfather had come to him. although his grandfather had died, choking on a mochi, a small rice cake, when the monk was little more than a baby.

  They were standing on a tiny island that was little more than a black rock in the sea. His grandfather stared out to sea with blind eyes. The sea birds wailed and cawed over the howl of the sea–wind and the splash of the spray.

  His grandfather opened one old hand, to reveal a small black key. Slow as a mechanical toy he put his hand forward. The monk took the key from his grandfather. A seagull screeched three sad descending notes, and the monk would have asked his grandfather what they signified, but the old man had gone.

  The monk held the key tightly. He looked about for something that the key would fit, but the island was barren and empty. The monk walked about the island slowly, seeing nothing.

  And then it came to the monk that he was being watched, in his dream, and he looked around him, but there was nothing in his dream, save for the distant seagulls and a tiny figure on a distant cliff which might, the monk thought, have been a fox.

  He woke with his hand closed about a nonexistent key, still feeling that the eyes of a fox were upon him.

  The dream was so real that, later in the day, as a cold wind tumbled the first red and orange leaves from a maple tree into the temple's tiny vegetable garden, where the monk was tending the white and yellow gourds that grew in profusion, he found himself looking about him for the key, and only slowly realising that he had never touched or seen it in the waking world.

  That night the monk expected another dark dream. As he closed his eyes he heard something at his door. And then he slept.

  But for the first part of the night, he dreamed of nothing at all. And in the second part of the night he dreamed he was standing upon a bridge watching carp swimming placidly about a fishpond, and one of the carp was purest silver, and the other carp was purest gold, and it made the monk happy to watch them.

  He woke, certain that the dream was a good omen, and relieved that the days of dark dreams were done with, and he smiled and was happy as he climbed from his sleeping mat.

  The monk's good mood remained until he stumbled over the body of the fox, her eyes closed, stretched out across the threshold of the temple.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At first, the monk believed the fox was dead. Then, as he squatted beside her. he perceived that she was breathing, so shallowly and slowly that one could scarcely tell that she was breathing at all, but still, she was alive.

  The monk took the fox into the little temple, and set her down beside the bra zier, to warm herself. Then the monk said a silent prayer to the Buddha, for the life of the fox, «For she was a wild thing," thought the monk, «but she had a good heart, and I would not see her die.»

  He stroked her fur, as soft as thistledown, and felt the weak beat of her heart.

  «When I was a boy," said the monk to the unconscious fox, «before my father's disgrace, I would, from time to time, run away from my nurse and from my teachers, and I would go to the market, where they sold live animals: in bamboo cages I saw all manner of beasts — foxes and dogs and bears, small monkeys and pink–faced monkeys, hares and crocodiles, snakes and pigs and deer, herons and cranes and bearcubs. When I saw them it made me happy, for I loved the animals, but it also made me sad, for it hurt me to sec them imprisoned like that.

  «One day, after the merchants had packed their wares and gone for the day, I found a broken cage, and in it, a baby monkey, too scrawny even to have been sold for the pot, for it was dead — or so somebody must have thought. But I perceived that it lived, and so I concealed it in my breast and made my way to my father's house.

  «I kept the monkey in my room, and I fed it scraps I saved from my own meals. He grew, my little monkey, until he seemed almost as big as I was. He was my friend. He would sit in the persimmon tree outside our house waiting for me to return. My father tolerated the monkey, and all went well until the day a certain lord came to the house to see my father.

  «The monkey seemed to go mad. He refused to let the lord approach my father. Instead he swung down and barred his way, baring his teeth and show ing his chest, acting as if the lord were a rival from another tribe of monkeys.

  «The lord gestured to one of his retainers, who pulled out his bow and put an arrow through the monkey's chest, although I begged him not to. I carried the monkey out of the house, and he looked into my eyes as he died.

  «Later, when my father was disgraced, it was through the machinations of that selfsame lord. And sometimes I think that the monkey was not a monkey, but a spirit sent by Amida Buddha to protect us, and protect us it would have done if only we had listened and seen. This was long ago, little fox, before I was a monk, in a life that is dead to me, but still, we learn.

  «And perhaps, with all your fox tricks, perhaps you also wished to protect me.»

  And then the monk said a prayer to Amida Buddha; and another prayer to Kishibojin, who was a demon before
she encountered the Buddha, and who guards children and women; and to Dainichi–Nyorai; and, lastly, he said a brief prayer to Binzuru Harada, who was the first of the Buddha's disciples, whom the Buddha had forbidden to enter Nirvana. He said his prayers to all these entities, imploring their aid and their intercession for the little fox.

  And at the end of all his praying, the fox still lay, limp and still on the matting, like a dead thing.

  There was a village at the foot of the mountain, almost half a day's travel away. «Perhaps," thought the monk, «there will be a doctor or a wise woman in the village, who can help the fox.» And without a second thought he picked up the limp fox and began to carry her down the mountain track that would even tually take him to the village.

  It was chilly, and the monk shivered in his thin robes. Large flies, the last and oldest and most unpleasant flies of the year, buzzed about him, following him down the track, doing their best to annoy him.

  Half the way down the mountain the mountain stream became a small river, and there was a bridge over this river. As the monk approached the bridge he saw an old man coming up the track toward him. The old man had a long white beard, and long, long eyebrows, and he leaned on a tall, carved stick as he walked. There was an air about him of wisdom and of serenity, but there was also an air of mischief, or so it seemed to the monk.

  The old man waited on the bridge for the monk to reach him.

  «The maple trees arc very beautiful," said the old man. «So many colours, and so soon they will be gone. Sometimes I think that the autumn can be equally as beautiful as the spring.»

  The monk agreed that this might be so.

  «Now, what is that that you are carrying?» asked the old man. «It looks like a dead dog. Is that not an unclean thing for a monk to be carrying?»

  «It is a fox," said the monk, «and she is not dead.»

  «And do you go to kill her?» asked the old man, gruffly.