Абрахам Меррит - Dwellers in the Mirage

Jim in the golden chains…Jim with the tentacle of that Dark Power creeping, creeping toward him…my lips were dry and stiff…

"Why didn't you tell me all that! I'd never have let you go on!"

"I know it. But you'd have come back, wouldn't you, old–timer?"

I did not answer; he laughed.

"How could I be sure until I saw all the signs?"

"But they didn't say you would be—dissolved," I clutched at the straw. "They only said there was the danger."

"That's all."

"And what would I be doing? Jim—I'd kill you with my own hand before I'd let what I saw happen in the Gobi happen to you."

"If you could," he said, and I saw he was sorry he had said it.

"If I could? What did they say about me—those damned ancestors?"

"Not a damned thing," he answered, cheerfully. "I never said they did. I simply reasoned that if we went on, and I was in danger, so would you be. That's all."

"Jim—it isn't all. What are you keeping back?"

He arose, and stood over me.

"All right. They said that even if the Spirit didn't get me, I'd never get out. Now you have the whole works."

"Well," I said, a burden rolling off me, "that's not so bad. And, as for getting out—that may be as may be. One thing's sure—if you stay, so do I."

He nodded, absently. I went on to something else that had been puzzling me.

"The Yunwi Tsundi, Jim, what were they? You never told me anything about them that I remember. What's the legend?"

"Oh—the Little People," he squatted beside me, chuckling, wide awake from his abstraction. "They were in Cherokee–land when the Cherokees got there. They were a pygmy race, like those in Africa and Australia to–day. Only they weren't blacks. These small folk fit their description. Of course, the tribes did some embroidering. They had them copper–coloured and only two feet high. These are golden–skinned and average three feet. At that, they may have faded some here and put on height. Otherwise they square with the accounts—long hair, perfect shape, drums and all."

He went on to tell of the Little People. They had lived in caves, mostly in the region now Tennessee and Kentucky. They were earth–folk, worshippers of life; and as such at times outrageously Rabelaisian. They were friendly toward the Cherokees, but kept rigorously to themselves and seldom were seen. They frequently aided those who had got lost in the mountains, especially children. If they helped anyone, and took him into their caves, they warned him he mustn't tell where the caves were, or he would die. And, ran the legends, if he told, he did die. If anyone ate their food he had to be very careful when he returned to his tribe, and resume his old diet slowly, or he would also die.

The Little People were touchy. If anyone followed them in the woods, they cast a spell on him so that for days he had no sense of location. They were expert wood and metal workers, and if a hunter found in the forest a knife or arrow–head or any kind of trinket, before he picked it up he had to say: "Little People, I want to take this." If he didn't ask, he never killed any more game and another misfortune came upon him. One which distressed his wife.

They were gay, the Little People, and they spent half their time in dancing and drumming. They had every kind of drum—drums that would make trees fall, drums that brought sleep, drums that drove to madness, drums that talked and thunder drums. The thunder drums sounded just like thunder, and when the Little People beat on them soon there was a real thunderstorm, because they sounded so much like the actuality that it woke up the thunderstorms, and one or more storms was sure to come poking around to gossip with what it supposed a wandering member of the family…

I remembered the roll of thunder that followed the chanting; I wondered whether that had been the Little People's defiance to Khalk'ru…

"I've a question or two for you, Leif."

"Go right ahead, Indian."

"Just how much do you remember of—Dwayanu?"

I didn't answer at once; it was the question I had been dreading ever since I had cried out to the Witch–woman on the white river's bank.

"If you're thinking it over, all right. If you're thinking of a way to stall, all wrong. I'm asking for a straight answer."

"Is it your idea that I'm that ancient Uighur, re–born? If it is, maybe you have a theory as to where I've been during the thousands of years between this time and now."

"Oh, so the same idea has been worrying you, has it? No, reincarnation isn't what I had in mind. Although at that, we know so damned little I wouldn't rule it out. But there may be a more reasonable explanation. That's why I ask—what do you remember of Dwayanu?"

I determined to make a clean breast of it.

"All right, Jim," I said. "That same question has been riding my mind right behind Khalk'ru for three years. And if I can't find the answer here, I'll go back to the Gobi for it—if I can get out. When I was in that room of the oasis waiting the old priest's call, I remembered perfectly well it had been Dwayanu's. I knew the bed, and I knew the armour and the weapons. I stood looking at one of the metal caps and I remembered that Dwayanu—or I—had got a terrific clout with a mace when wearing it. I took it down, and there was a dent in it precisely where I remembered it had been struck. I remembered the swords, and recalled that Dwayanu—or I—had the habit of using a heavier one in the left hand than in the right. Well, one of them was much heavier than the other. Also, in a fight I use my left hand better than I do my right. These memories, or whatever they were, came in flashes. For a moment I would be Dwayanu, plus myself, looking with amused interest on old familiar things—and the next moment I would be only myself and wondering, with no amusement, what it all meant."

"Yes, what else?"

"Well, I wasn't entirely frank about the ritual matter," I said, miserably. "I told you it was as though another person had taken charge of my mind and gone on with it. That was true, in a way—but God help me, I knew all the time that other person was—myself! It was like being two people and one at the same time. It's hard to make clear…you know how you can be saying one thing and thinking another. Suppose you could be saying one thing and thinking two things at once. It was like that. One part of me was in revolt, horror–stricken, terrified. The other part was none of those things; it knew it had power and was enjoying exercising that power—and it had control of my will. But both were—I. Unequivocally, unmistakably—I. Hell, man—if I'd really believed it was somebody, something, besides myself, do you suppose I'd feel the remorse I do? No, it's because I knew it was I—the same part of me that knew the helm and the swords, that I've gone hag–ridden ever since."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. Dreams."

He leaned over, and spoke sharply.

"What dreams?"

"Dreams of battles—dreams of feasts…a dream of war against yellow men, and of a battlefield beside a river and of arrows flying overhead in clouds…of hand–to–hand fights in which I wield a weapon like a huge hammer against big yellow–haired men I know are like myself… dreams of towered cities through which I pass and where white, blue–eyed women toss garlands down for my horse to trample…When I wake the dreams are vague, soon lost. But always I know that while I dreamed them, they were clear, sharp–cut—real as life…"

"Is that how you knew the Witch–woman was Witch–woman—through those dreams?"

"If so, I don't remember. I only knew that suddenly I recognized her for what she was—or that other self did."

He sat for a while in silence.

"Leif," he asked, "in those dreams do you ever take any part in the service of Khalk'ru? Have anything at all to do with his worship?"