The Dream Hunters Read online

  «I go to seek a cure for her," said the monk. The old man looked very stern, and he raised the stick he carried and with it he hit the monk — once across the side of the head and once across the shoulders.

  «That! is for deserting your temple," said the old man, with the first blow of the stick. «And that! is for meddling in the affairs of fox spirits.»

  The monk bowed his head. «You may be right to hit me," he said, «for it is as you say. I am not in my temple, and I am carrying a fox. But still. I believe I am doing the right thing, in trying to seek a cure for her.»

  «The right thing? The right thing?» And once again the old man hit the monk with the stick, this time prodding him in the chest with it. «Why, you ninny, you thoughtless creature. The right thing would be to return to your temple with the fox, and to sleep, with a token of the King of All Night's Dreaming beneath your head, for it is in dreams that your little fox–girl is trapped.»

  «If I can ask this, without receiving a commensurate blow to my person," said the monk, hesitantly, «where would I find a token of the King of All Night's Dreaming?»

  The old man stared at the young monk, and then he looked at his carved stick, and then he sighed, long and loudly, like a very old man trying to cool hot soup. He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a strip of paper with something written upon it, and this paper he pressed into the monk's hand.

  «There," grumbled the old man, «but you arc still a fool, for the fox will die, or you will, and there is not a thing you can do on this earth or off of it that would change this, whether or not your motives are pure.»

  The monk was going to protest, to ask why the old man had given him the token if it could do no good, when he realised that he was alone on the bridge, and indeed, alone upon the mountainside.

  «Then that old man must have been Binzuru Harada," thought the monk, for Binzuru Harada is often depicted as an old man with a white beard and long eyebrows; and he will do good on this Earth until one day the Buddha permits him to move on.

  Still, the monk wondered why Binzuru Harada would have helped someone as insignificant as himself; and he took little comfort in recalling that it was for breaking his vow of chastity that Binzuru Harada was denied Nirvana.

  The fox had weighed almost nothing on the journey down the mountainside, but as the monk turned to walk back up the mountain he found the body seemed to get heavier and heavier. A soft mist had descended upon the mountainside, blurring the edges of things. The monk placed one foot in front of the other, and he walked back up the mountain.

  He wondered if he were doing the right thing, helping the fox. He did not know, but he knew that he could not abandon her. He had to try.

  It was late in the afternoon by the time the monk reached the temple he had left early that morning. Autumn mists hung like cobwebs, or strands of raw silk, across the mountainside, and the encroaching twilight made the world feel doubly dreamlike.

  Even the temple, in which the monk had spent the last eight years, seemed ghostlike as he entered it, as if it were somehow now an imaginary place. The brazier was almost cold: the monk added charcoal to it, and he cooked his rice over it, roasting some thinly–sliced gourd to accompany it.

  Then he made his evening devotions, although he made them with slightly less enthusiasm than usual. It is one thing to pray; it is another to pray to entities who might not only be listening, but who will search you out on the road and beat you across the head with sticks if you say something that offends them.

  In the flickering light of the brazier, the monk experienced a strange illusion — it occurred to him that a scrap of his shadow was missing, gone as if it had been torn away.

  The fox slept like a dead thing.

  The fox was so small. He ran his hand across the softness of her fur. Then he inspected the strip of parchment that Binzuru Harada had given him. He could not read what was written there: the characters seemed to twist and shimmer as he looked at them, like characters in a dream.

  The monk put the fox in his robe, so the heat of his body would keep her warm, and perhaps keep her alive. He lay down on his sleeping mat, and placed the slip of paper beneath his pillow, and, worn out from his walk first down the mountain and then up the mountain, he slept.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  To begin, darkness.

  In the darkness a light flickered into being. Then another, and another. The lights were moving.

  They were fireflies. First a handful, then a swarm, and then hundreds and thousands of fireflies glittered with their cold fire in the darkness.

  It reminded the monk of a river of stars, or a bridge of stars, or a ribbon, twining away into the darkness, insubstantial and glimmering, and it was along this ribbon that the monk began to walk.

  In his hand he was holding a scrap of paper, which glowed even more brightly than the fireflies.

  As he walked, the fireflies, which had been flickering on and off, began to fall away, to drop and to tumble like camellia blossoms.

  The monk tumbled with them. He realised as he fell that he was not falling through fireflies, but through the Milky Way, the river of the gods that passes through the night sky.

  He landed gently on a barren plain of rock, malachite–green. He scrambled to his feet.

  He began to walk across the glassy green plain. In his dream he was wearing huge wooden sandals, of the kind that are worn in the rainy season, to keep a person high up and out of the mud. As he walked the wooden sandals were worn down and worn away, and soon he was walking in his bare feet across the plain, which was sharp as a hundred knives, and the blood ran from the soles of his feet, leaving red footprints behind him.

  He walked through a plain of monstrous bones, jagged and shattered and inhuman.

  He walked through a swamp, which was hot and wet, and the air was filled with biting gnats and midges smaller than the eye could easily see, which settled on his skin and at the corners of his eyes and stung him, raising welts where they bit his skin. Soon the air was black with the creatures.

  His strip of paper shone brightly, and he held it high in front of him, and he kept walking.

  And then he was through the swamp. He spat the last of the midges black from the back of his throat, and wiped them from his eyes.

  He walked through a garden that talked to him, although it advised him to go back, told him that the King of Dreams should not be idly sought out, and that he should remain in the garden, and walk its paths, and sit beside its sweet waters; but how it was the garden spoke to him the monk could never have explained.

  He left the garden, with regret, and he walked on.

  He saw that he was standing in front of two houses, next to each other, and there were two men sitting in the veranda of one of the houses, fishing with lines in the pond below.

  «I seek the King of All Night's Dreaming," called the monk. «Am I going the right way?»

  «How can you not go to him?» asked the first of the men. «When all the ways are his?»

  The second man, who was fat and seemed sad, said nothing.

  The monk unfolded his token to show it to them. And it was then, if he had had any doubt before, that he knew for certain that he was dreaming. For he could read the characters on the paper he carried. They were simple characters, so simple he thought it a wonder he had not been able to read them before, and they described one who shaped, who moulded and formed things from chaos and from nothing, who transmuted things from formlessness and shapelessness into that–which–was–not–real, but without which the real would have no meaning.

  The second man sneezed, to attract the monk's attention, and then he pointed, almost as if accidently, to a specific hill.

  The monk bowed his thanks, and walked toward the hill.

  Looking back, as he reached the hill, he saw the fat man was now floating, face–down, in the fish pond, and his murderer was looking down at him from the balcony of his house.

  When he was halfway up the hill he looked back one more
time and saw that the house had gone, and the men and the pool, and where it had been there was nothing more than a graveyard.

  Ahead of him was a huge house, built to be perfectly one with its surround ings: it was at once a shrine and a castle and a home. It was a place of water falls and gardens, of painted screens and elegant, curving roofs. He could not tell if it was one house or a hundred houses. He saw courtyards and orchards and trees: spring blossoms and autumn leaves and summer fruit all grew beside each other on the trees of the strange gardens.

  Bright birds sang from those trees; they were of blues and reds so vivid that they seemed like flying flowers, and the songs they sang were passing strange.

  The monk had never seen a place like it.

  There was a carved gate, made of golden wood, with strange beasts carved upon it, and the monk went to the gate, and beat a small gong that hung there.

  The gong was soundless, but he was certain that those who needed to know that he was there knew it.

  The gate shifted and changed, and a many–coloured creature stood in front of him: a monstrous bird, with a head like a lion's, sharp teeth, a snake's tail, and huge wings. It was an enormous itsumade, a creature from legends.

  «State your business," said the itsumade. «Who are you, and why do you wish to disturb my master?»

  «This place is so beautiful," said the monk, «and its beauty is only increased by knowing that when I wake all other places will be lacking, for they will not be this palace. Do I truly stand in the gardens of the palace of the King of Dreams?»

  His words were gentle, but they carried a rebuke to the gatekeeper, for even a monster from legend should remember certain civilities.

  «This is indeed the Palace of Dreams," growled the itsumade. «Tell me what you wish, or I shall eat you.»

  The monk extended his hand, to show the itsumade the slip of paper he had been given. It blazed with its own light. The itsumade lowered its head and grunted. «I did not know," it said. «I thought you were but a dreamer.»

  The monk became aware at this time that someone was watching him from high in a black pine tree. The watcher was a raven, huge, black and dark, and when it saw that it was observed it flew down to the monk with huge, flapping motions, landing on the path a little way in front of him.

  «Follow me," said the raven, in a voice like two stones grinding together.

  «Will you take me to the King of Dreams?» asked the monk.

  «You would not seek to question a poem, or a falling leaf, or the mist on the niountaintop," said the raven. «Why, then, do you question me?»

  The house was like a maze, and the monk followed the raven through twilit galleries and pavilions, strange and austere; through passages formed of screens, beside calm ponds and perfect rocks and stones they walked, the monk always following the bird.

  «From your reply," said the monk, «I presume that you are a poet.»

  «I serve the King of All Night's Dreaming," said the bird, «and I do his bidding.» It flapped its wings and fluttered up, to land on a screen, so it was level with the monk's head. «But you are correct. Once, I was a poet, and, like all poets, I spent too long in the Kingdom of Dreams.»

  The raven ushered the monk into a room decorated with painted screens. There was a raised dais at one end of the room, and upon the dais sat a wooden chair inlaid with mother–of–pearl. It was a perfect chair, of simplicity and strangeness, and the monk knew that this must be the throne of the King of Dreams.

  «Wait here," said the raven; then it strutted from the room like a proud old courtier.

  The monk stood nervously in the throne room, and he waited for the arrival of the King of Dreams.

  In the monk's imagination, the King of Dreams became an old man, with a long beard and fingernails, and then he looked like the Buddha Amida, and then he became a demon, half man and half dragon.

  His eye was caught by the painted screens that bounded the room. As long as he looked at them they remained frozen and still, but when he took his eyes away and looked back he would see things he had not seen before. Creatures would have moved, when he looked away. Tales would end, and new tales begin.

  One moment he was alone in the throne room, eyeing the painted screens, and then he was no longer alone, and the King of Dreams sat in the chair upon the dais.

  The monk bowed low.

  The King of Dreams had skin as pale as the winter moon and hair as black as a raven's wing, and his eyes were pools of night inside which distant stars glittered and burned. His robe was the colour of night, and flames and faces appeared in the base of it and were gone. I le began to speak, in a voice that was gentle, yet as strong as silk. You are welcome in this place, he said, in words that the monk heard inside his head. But you should not be here.

  «I have come," said the monk, «to plead for the life of a fox, who is, in my world, lost in dreams. Without your aid, she will perish.»

  And perhaps that is what she wants, said the King of All Night's Dreaming. To be lost in dreams. Certainly she has a reason for what she has done, and it is a reason you know little of. Besides, she is a fox. What is her fate to you?

  The monk hesitated. «The Buddha taught us to have love and reverence for all living things. This fox has done me no harm.»

  The King of Dreams looked the monk up and down. And that is all? he said, unimpressed. That is why you desert your temple, and come to me? Because you love and revere all living things?

  «I have a duty to all things," said the monk. «For, as a monk, I have put behind me ail the bonds of desire, all worldly ties.»

  The King of Dreams said nothing. He seemed to be waiting.

  The monk lowered his head, «But I remember the touch of her skin, when she pretended to be a woman, and it is a memory I shall take to my grave, and beyond the grave. And the ties of affection arc very hard to break.»

  I see, said the King of Dreams. He stood, then, and stepped off the dais. He was a very tall man, if he was a man. Follow me, he said.

  They walked through a waterfall which ran down one wall of the Palace. It brushed and breathed on them without making them wet.

  On the other side of the waterfall was a small summer house, and it was to this place that the King of Dreams led the monk.

  Your fox also came to me, and asked for a gift, said the King of Dreams, although she was more honest about her love than you. And I gave her my gift. She dreamed your dreams. She dreamed your first two dreams with you, then she dreamed the last dream for you, and she opened the box with the key.

  «Where is she?» asked the monk. «How can I bring her back?»

  Why would you bring her back? asked the King of Dreams. It is not what she wants, and it will not bring you happiness.

  The monk said nothing.

  The King pointed to the table in the summer house. On it there was a small lacquer box, which the monk recognised from his dreams. There was a key in the lock.

  She is in there. Follow her, if that is what you wish.

  The monk reached down, and, slowly, he opened the box. It opened, and opened, until it filled the entire world, and, with no hesitation, the monk went inside.

  CHAPTER SIX

  At first it seemed to the monk that the inside of the lacquer box was a familiar place that he had somehow forgotten — perhaps his room as a boy, or a secret room in the temple that had remained hidden until this moment.

  There was nothing in the room but a mirror in one corner. From the mirror came a gentle glow, as of sunlight in the final moments of the day.

  The monk picked up the mirror.

  On the back of the mirror was a painting. It showed two men: one was a fierce, proud man with hunted eyes and a grey beard. The other figure was clearly intended to be the monk himself, although it was covered with stains and mould.

  He turned the mirror over, and looked into its face.

  He saw a green–eyed girl who seemed almost as if she was painted out of light. When she observed him looking at her,
her face fell.

  «Why did you come here?» she whispered, sadly. «I gave my life for you.»

  «You were asleep at the threshold of the door," he told her. «I could not wake you.»

  She tossed her head. «I hunted the Baku," she told him. «I went to the place where the Baku go, and went with them as they ate dreams, and I entered your dreams as you dreamed them. I was there with you when your father gave you the chest, and as you woke I kept the chest, and when your grandfather gave you the key, I took it from you as you woke.

  «Through all the next day I followed you, and when night came I lay down at your door, in the place that the dream would have to come on its way to you, and I slept. I saw the dream slipping through the darkness, and I sprang upon it, and made it my own. And in my dream I opened the chest with a key, and it opened, huge as the sky, and I had no choice but to enter.

  «And then I was very afraid, for I was lost in this box, and I could not find my way out again. I had lost the path that would take me back to my body. I was sad and scared, but also I was proud, for I knew that I had saved your life.»

  «Why would you do this for me?» asked the monk, although he knew already that he understood why she had done it.

  The fox spirit girl smiled. «Why did you search me out?» she asked. «Why did you come here?»

  «Because I care for you," he said.

  She lowered her eyes. «Then — now you have come here, and now you have

  learned the truth — you must know that it is time for you to leave. I have saved your life. The onmyoji who is your enemy will die in your place, and you can return to your temple, grow your pumpkins and your silly dry yams, and, when it is appropriate, say a prayer for me.»

  «I have come to free you," said the monk. «It is my task.»

  «And how would you free me?» asked the girl, sadly. «Can you break the metal of the mirror?»

  «No.» said the monk. «I can not.» And he pronounced the name that had been written on the slip of paper that Binzuru Harada had given him on the bridge. Standing beside him was the King of Dreams.