Нил Гейман - The Dream Hunters

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.

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.

Well, said the king, are you ready to leave this place?

«My lord," said the monk. «I am a monk. I own nothing but my begging bowl. But the dream that fox dreamed was my dream by rights. I ask for it to be returned to me.»