Роджер Желязны - Warriors of Blood and Dream

David wiped his face. "The moment to do what?"

"Awaken him. Fully. Remember: he is dead, asleep, dreaming that he is alive. Give him fear, and make him look at himself. He must know that he is dead. And return to the spirit world."

Trias stood with Brenda in the yard between the trailer and the gym. For twenty minutes Elk moved around the yard with the boy, holding a cushioned pad while David kicked and punched against it, face screwed in desperate concentration. Trias's expression grew more and more perturbed.

When the display was over, Brenda applauded politely. Trias cocked her head in puzzlement.

"David," she said, "would you come here, please?"

David walked unsteadily to her, and stood passively. Trias took his arm and studied it. "These bruises," she said. "When did this happen?"

She didn't wait for an answer. She examined his leg. From climbing, from striking the pads, from grappling and striking, David was a mass of bruises and contusions.

Trias's lips were a thin line. "Elk ... I don't understand. What have you done to this child?"

"Taught him," he said bluntly.

Brenda drew David to her, looked carefully at the bruising. It was swollen, and tender. David yanked away when she tried to inspect it. "You did this?" she asked.

Elk nodded.

"How could you?" The pain, and betrayal and fear loaded into those three words was crippling.

"I don't understand," Trias said. "I assumed you were helping him to deal with his dreams, and teaching him some martial arts skills."

"That's what I've been doing."

"You never bruised any of my other patients. If you had, I assure you I would not have brought David."

"It was never necessary before," he said simply.

The fury in her voice was barely controlled. "Mr. Worley," she said, "what I see comes very close to child abuse. If you don't explain yourself more clearly, I'm going to insist that David return with us."

David froze. "Mom!" he screamed. "You've got to leave me with Elk. He's coming back. He's coming through me."

"What is?"

"Mimbrino," he said. "The dream demon. The Sand Man."

"Worley," Trias said bitterly, "I can't believe this. You were supposed to help him deal with his fears, not terrify him even more."

David clung to his mother. She seemed undecided, confused. "Mom," he said frantically, "it doesn't want to kill me. It wants to come through me. It wants you—"

" What ?"

The words tumbled out in a rush. "It said that it wants to come into the world through me. It wants to have sex with you, through me, and to bring back its tribe—"

Trias was utterly speechless. Brenda snatched David's arm, pulled him next to her, and turned a withering blast of rage onto Elk. "What kind of filth have you been telling David?"

"My God," Trias stammered. "Just what the hell has been going on out here? This child is bruised, and hallucinating, and fantasizing about relations with his mother?"

Elk looked at both of them, in silence.

"Mom, Elk didn't tell me that—the Mimbrino did. In my dream."

"This is over ," Brenda said.

Trias's face was a mask of fury. "I'm taking this child back to the hospital for examination. I now understand how you lost your funding. I'm shocked, disappointed, and ashamed of myself for suggesting you, Elk. If this child has been harmed ... well, he's already been harmed, hasn't he? I have nothing more to say to you."

David struggled and bellowed as his mother hauled him back to the car. He glanced back at Lightning Elk, and squealed: "No!"

Elk stood very quietly, watching. David tore free from his mother's arms and ran to his teacher, and hugged him tightly.

Brenda and Trias were momentarily frozen. Elk returned the hug for ten seconds, and then carefully peeled David away, and held him at arm's length.

"Good bye, Little Hawk," Elk said.

David stared at him, something like resignation clouding his eyes, until at last he lowered them to the ground. "It's going to get me, isn't it?"

Elk shook his head.

"No," he said, raising David's chin until their eyes met. "No. It's not." Then he gently handed David back to his mother.

Elk watched them drive away. He lit a Djarum and sat on the porch of his trailer, staring out at the desert.

When he was finished with the first cigarette, he lit a second one. Then he spoke quietly. "I've done what I could, Grandfather."

The lie was there in the words. There was nothing that he could do to hide it. "She's his mother. She has the right to take him home."

She gave him birth. You gave him his medicine name.

He sighed. Whether you lived in the Tonal or the Nagual, sometimes there were no easy choices at all.

It was 2:48 in the morning.

"Mother," David said. His voice grew softer even as she listened, "Don't let me go to sleep. Please." He was back in the cubicle at Westside Memorial, wired to the machines, protected only by sheets and blankets. There were no circles of sand on the floor. Small things, perhaps—but without them, he felt full-blown panic.

"David," Trias said wearily. "We've gone as far with this as we can. You have to sleep. Your mother has to sleep."

He ignored Trias, and grabbed his mother's arm. "Elk swore he wouldn't leave me. He swore ."

"It wasn't up to him, David," Brenda said. "We made a bad choice. We shouldn't have taken you there."

"He'll get me."

"You're safe from Elk now—"

"The Mimbrino! The Mimbrino will get me—"

Trias looked at Brenda with despair. "I'm sorry."

"David," Brenda said. She was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open. "You'll get through all of this. And you'll get back to your life. Remember the way life used to be before all of this? Rock climbing, and Nintendo, and Screaming Yellow Zonkers? Remember?"

His small white teeth were set firmly in the meat of his underlip.

"It can be all of that again."

"When he comes, Mom," he said, flatly. "You can't help me. Neither of you can. I'm going to remember everything that Elk taught me."

"Please, David." She felt contempt for the derision in her own voice. "If this doesn't work, we're going to have to take you somewhere. To a hospital. Somewhere they can watch you all the time."

"Then you could get back to your job, right?"

"That's not fair, David."

"But it's true, isn't it? The only reason you're here is because ..." His lids were so, so heavy. Too heavy. God, so heavy. Closing now.

"Because you need me," she said.

"I always needed you ..."

And then his small hand had lost its grip on her, and David fell away and away and away, into sleep.

A man-shaped shadow moved through the bushes planted alongside Westside Memorial's north wall. It melted into me bushes a moment before a roving guard rounded the corner on his hourly patrol.

The guard was overweight and underpaid, an ex-cop named Cash. Cash was thinking about a bustling strip joint he had attended the previous evening. There, he had watched a blond with a round face and tight little titties bump and hump as Linda Ronstadt asked the musical question "When Will I Be Loved?"

Cash had had too many beers. In direct consequence thereof, he stood and yelled: "How 'bout right now , bitch?" fumbling for his fly to the general hilarity of the customers and the irritation of the club's three jumbo bouncers. As Linda wailed in the background, they had him by the armpits and Cash was on his butt on the sidewalk.

People just didn't understand.

He was about to fantasize about the dancer's berry-sized nipples for the hundredth time, when something caught his eye. Paper. Green paper. A ten-dollar bill , lying in a slash of light shining from a second floor window.