Роджер Желязны - Warriors of Blood and Dream

The Mimbrino shrieked. Light flashed from those mirrors, flame hundreds of years old, and this time the Mimbrino's mind received the full horror of its own death, could not escape into dream. Its mouth stretched wide, and it said: "But you're just a boy —"

Then its flesh peeled away, its bones exploding into charred powder. It whirled, collapsed, became a smoking heap.

David crawled to it, pushed the ashes together into a pile, and spun a cocoon of light around them. The cocoon took the shape of a pot, of a spirit bowl, its circumference etched with pectroglyphs.

The urn dwindled to nothing, and was gone.

David rolled onto his back. The darkness was almost total now. The cartoons were gone. He was himself again, on an evaporating video stage. He felt so very, very tired.

He turned onto his side and felt his eyelids force themselves closed. "I was always a man," he murmured.

"I just needed my mommy and daddy. That's all."

His eyes closed. He was no longer a warrior, a street-fighter, a scourge of evil. He was just an exhausted twelve-year-old boy, dying alone in the land of dreams.

GAME OVER

DEPOSIT ANOTHER QUARTER

YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS. NINE. EIGHT —

"David!" Brenda puffed into his mouth, waited, puffed, waited, puffed. Her mind, that focused business thing that she was so proud of, was completely gone. She was nothing but a mother now, as desperate as any woman who has ever watched her child slip away into darkness.

"David!" She screamed—

Into his open mouth—

Shivering his teeth and jawbone—

Vibrating his skull, and making that three and a half pounds of jelly called the human brain quiver in its casing—

David ... ! reverberated that infinite video stage, just as the last dot of light winked out.

Blackness. Then ...

GAME RESUMED. ONE OR TWO PLAYERS?

The still, dark child in Brenda's arms turned his head and coughed, gagged, and coughed again. His hands flailed, then found his mother's arms and relaxed. He said two words, then folded against her chest, smiling. She held him tightly, tears streaking her face.

"Too damned close." Elk exhaled harshly. He dug into a pocket, and pulled out a clove cigarette with trembling fingers. He flicked his cigarette lighter twice before he realized that the overhead sprinklers were still going. "Shit," he said, and tossed the sopping butt to the floor. "Oh, well ... what did David say just then, anyway?"

"Two," Brenda sobbed, holding her living child. "He said 'two players.' "

The powder blue Impala pulled off the dirt road, squealing to a stop in front of the old man's battered trailer. The sun was low in the sky, brushing the mountains. Lightning Elk sat in a folding lawn chair, watching it set, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the car had arrived. The passenger door swung open, and Elk managed to get to his feet a half second before David reached him. The boy leapt up, grabbed him around the neck, and hung on for dear life.

Brenda stood an arm's distance away, holding a shopping bag in her arms.

Elk set David down and smoothed his hair. He glanced questioningly at her. "What do you have there?"

"I did some research," she said. "We wanted to bring you medicine gifts." She pulled a yellow Pendleton blanket from the bag, and handed it to David. David gravely gave it to Elk, who inclined his head in thanks.

"Ho. You make my heart happy, Little Hawk," he said.

Brenda fished deeper into the bag, extracting a carton of Djarum cigarettes. Elk grinned. "Great. Almost out," he said. "Stores out here don't stock 'em for shit."

"Got the new Jurassic Park game, David," he said, almost nonchalantly.

David shrugged. He wandered over to the great tarp, and lifted a corner. The gigantic sand painting stretched before him, still larger than the trailer itself, still unfinished. But there was a new figure drawn into it, the figure of a boy looking up into the sky.

"What's he looking at?" David asked.

"I thought maybe you could tell me."

David grinned. "Can I?"

"The pots are over against the gym," Elk said.

David unlidded a pot, and drew out a handful of red sand. Very very carefully, he began to sprinkle it in a bird shape. Within moments, he was completely absorbed.

Elk sank into his lawn chair and lit up a cigarette. He motioned Brenda toward a chair leaning against the trailer. "Pull up a seat."

They sat there for a time, and then Brenda scratched a line in the dirt with her toe. "You saved his life," she said. He nodded, still gazing at the sunset.

"And more than that, didn't you?"

Elk said nothing.

"Trias is still on leave. They say she'll be back to work in a week or so."

He nodded. "She's basically a good woman. But I think she was searching for something she didn't really want to find."

The silence between them stretched as the sun sank closer to the mountains. Finally, she couldn't stand it any longer. "The ... Mimbrino. He's dead, isn't he?"

Elk inhaled deeply, and let the smoke trickle sweetly out of his nose. "Always was. Just didn't know it."

"Now he does?"

"Now he does." He reached into the battered Styro-foam cooler at his feet, and removed a can of Jolt cola. He shook the ice water off, and offered it to Brenda.

"Are there more of them?"

He peered down. "At least four."

"That's not what I meant."

"Don't ask so many questions," he said, not unpleasantly. "Get on with your life, Brenda. Love that boy of yours. He'll forget most of what happened, unless you keep reminding him."

"Is that a good idea?"

Elk smiled. "You don't want to live in my world," he said.

"Do you?"

He took another sip. "It's my world. You have yours. David will make his own."

"What if he wants to come back to you. Sometimes. Just for a visit?"

"Door's open," he said.

Brenda looked back between the trailer and the ribbed dome of the gym, where her son sprinkled a handful of sand onto Elk's vast canvas. Twenty feet across, with hundreds of symbols and images, the panorama of a lifetime. It would never be finished. Every day, it had to be redone. Each animal, each tree, each mountain renewed. And now her son was a part of that tapestry. Just above the spot where her son worked, loomed a shape. It might have been a cloud, or a jellyfish, or an octopus. Whatever it was, it made her chest feel cold.

"Yes," she said quietly. "The doors are open, aren't they?"

Elk gestured again with the soft drink can, and this time she took it. She sipped. It was good. And just as good to watch the last sliver of sun disappear, and the western mountains begin to phosphoresce as night fell softly across the desert.

People don't practice the martial arts for the same reasons they take up table tennis. In the majority of cases, there are fear and power issues to be dealt with, often strong enough to be emotionally crippling if unprocessed. The question remains: once these basic issues are resolved, why continue the practice? The answer: sometimes for fun, sometimes for fitness, sometimes to teach others.

Then there are those who continue because the martial arts, like Yoga, offer a bridge between Mind and Body unlike that commonly found in Western sports. Additionally, some believe that Eastern movement arts offer a "Threefold Path," linking Body, Mind, and that mysterious quality known as Spirit.

Is there a reality beyond the phenomenological universe ? I don't know. I do know that walking the Three-fold Path is one up of the most satisfying things in my life, a wonderful way to busy up my days. And that, for now, is quite enough for me.