Нил Гейман - The Dream Hunters

But, said the king, if I return your dream to you, you must die in her place.

«I understand that," said the monk. «But it is my dream. And I will not have this fox die in my place.»

The King of Dreams nodded. His face did not change, but it seemed to the monk that he was saddened by this, but that he was also pleased, and the young monk knew that his request had been the correct one.

The king gestured, and the mirror lay empty on the floor, while the fox spirit stood beside the monk in the dark.

You have done the right thing, at some cost to yourself, said the king to the monk. So I shall, in my turn, do something for you. You may have a little time to say farewell to the fox.

The fox spirit threw herself to the floor at the king's feet. «But you swore to help me!» she said, angrily.

And I helped you.

«It is not fair," said the fox.

No, agreed the king. It is not.

And, calmly and imperceptibly, he left the two of them alone in that place.

That is all the talc tells us of this moment: that he left them alone to bid each other farewell. Perhaps they said formal farewells, awkwardly, the space between them — between a man who had forsaken the world and a fox spirit — a gulf that could not be crossed. It is certainly possible.

But one remembers all they had done, one for the other, and one might conjecture that, at this time, they made love. Or that they dreamed that they did.

Perhaps.

When they were done with all their farewells, the King of Dreams rejoined them.

Now all will be as it should be, he said, and the monk found himself staring out from the mirror at the fox.

«I would have given my life for you," she whispered, sadly.

«Live," said the monk.

«You shall be revenged," said the fox. «The onmyoji who did this to you will learn what it means to take something from a fox.»

The monk looked at the fox–girl from the mirror. «Seek not revenge, but the Buddha," he said to her. Then he turned, and walked into the heart of the mirror, and he was gone.

The fox sat in the wilderness of rocks beside the huge black fox of dreams.

«All that I did," she said, «everything I tried to do. All for nothing.»

Nothing is done entirely for nothing, said the fox of dreams. Nothing is wasted. You are older, and you have made decisions, and you are not the fox you were yesterday. Take what you have learned, and move on.

«Where is he now?» she asked.

His body is on his sleeping mat in the temple. His spirit will go where it is meant to go.

«So he will die," she said.

Yes, he said.

«He told me not to seek revenge, but to seek the Buddha," said the fox spirit, sadly.

Wise counsel, said the fox of dreams. Vengeance can be a road that has no ending. You would be wise to avoid it. And…?

«I shall seek the Buddha," said the fox, with a toss of her head. «But first I shall seek revenge.»

As you will, said the fox of dreams, and the fox could not tell if he was happy or sad, satisfied or dissatisfied.

And with a switch of his tail he bounded away across the landscape of dreams, and left the little fox more alone than she had ever been.

She woke in the little temple on the side of the mountain, beside the body of the monk. His eyes were closed, and his breath was shallow, and his skin was the colour of sea–foam.

It hurt, having already said goodbye to him, to have him still there. But she stayed with him, and attended to his body.

He died, peacefully, on the following day.

There was a funeral for him, in the little temple, and he was buried on the mountainside, beside the other monks who had tended the little temple in the centuries that had gone before.

The full of the moon came and went, and the waning moon rode high in the sky, and the Master of Yin–Yang was still alive. And more than that, he could feel his fear dying within him.

He took the lacquer box, the black key, and the little porcelain plates, and he wrapped them up in the square of silk (which showed only his face now, for of the other painted figure there was nothing more than the shadow of a stain) and, at the dead of night, he buried them beneath the roots of a tree that had long ago been struck by lightning and was twisted into a most disturbing shape.

He was relieved that he was alive. He was happier than he had ever been. Those were good days for the onmyoji.

The moon was again full in the sky when he was visited by a maiden of high birth, who wished to consult him about propitious days. A mist hung heavy in the air that day, and it twined its tendrils through the onmyoji's house.

She paid for his wisdom with gold coins so old they were almost featureless, and with rice of the finest quality. Then she left his house, in a magnificent ox–drawn carriage.

The Master of Yin–Yang told a servant to follow her on horseback, and to discover who the maiden was, and where she lived.

Several hours later, the servant returned. He said that the maiden lived in an old but impressive house, several ri north of Kyoto, and described the area to the onmyoji.

Days passed. The onmyoji could not get the maiden's face out of his mind, nor the way she walked, respectful and seductive at the same time. He imagined possessing her, touching her, owning her.

When he closed his eyes at night the maiden was there: her hair, so long, and so very black; her eyes, the shade of green leaves uncurling in the spring sun light. her feet, which moved like tiny mice; the delicacy of her hand upon her fan; her voice, like a song heard in a dream.

When he went to make love to his concubine, he found she did not interest him, and he returned to his room, where he wrote a poem comparing his feel ings about the maiden to the autumn wind, stirring the surface of a pool that had, until now, been placid, and he gave it to the servant to take to the maiden.

The servant brought back her reply, a poem in which she spoke of the reflec tion of the moon in the pool stirred by the wind. I lis heart swelled within him when he read it, astonished by the grace and ease of her brushwork.

He asked his oracles about her. The old woman laughed at him. cackling so hard he thought that she would die, and said nothing. The young woman with the cold hands said, «The man she loved is dead.»

«Good," said the onmyoji. «When is the most propitious day to visit her?»

But at that the three women all giggled and laughed as if they were mocking him, and angrily he left their house.

On the following evening he arrived at the maiden's house. He begged her pardon for his arrival, claiming that he was forced, by knowledge gained from his divinations, to leave his house travelling to the north, which was an auspi cious direction, and that he needed to stay overnight in the north before leaving in the morning for the city.

She invited him to dine with her.

The house was magnificent. He and the maiden dined alone, and through the evening her servants brought them the finest foods he had ever eaten.

«I have never tasted anything this fine!» he said, nibbling some exotic meat in a cold sauce.

«And to think," she said, «if I had not been here, you might have been forced to sit in the tumbledown ruins of an old and empty house, and to dine upon mice and spiders.»

At the end of the meal, he made it clear that he would like to enjoy her physi cal favours. She poured them both sake, and told him that it was quite out of the question.

«For why would I wish to be second in your affections?» she asked. «You have a wife. You have a concubine. What would I be?»

«I will be yours, and yours alone," he told her.

«You say that," she said, «but after you have made love to me then your wife and your concubine will seem more attractive, and I will be left alone here. I do not think you should stay the night here. Your carriage will take you to another house for the night. If ever you are free to love me, and me alone, then come back.»