It stood on the rock as if it were waiting for something, and its eyes were dark pits in which distant stars glinted and burned.
The fox clambered and sprang from rock to rock until she stood in front of the fox of dreams, and she prostrated herself in front of him, rolling over to show him her throat.
Stand, said the great fox. Stand and have no fear. You gave up much to dream this dream, child.
The fox got to her feet. In her dream she was not shaking, although she was more scared than any little fox has ever been.
«My dragon," she asked. «Was it yours, Lord?»
No, he told her. But it was lost, long long ago, by one whom I called friend, hack before the true dragons left this place to swim in the sky. My friend lost the statue, and it troubled him. Now the sea shall wash it back to him, and he will sleep more peacefully, at the bottom of the Great Deeps, with the rest of his kind, until the next age of the world.
«I am honoured and grateful to have been permitted to be of service to your friend," said the fox.
They stood there in silence for some timeless moments, in the dream–place, the tiny fox and the great black fox. The little fox looked about the rocky waste.
«What arc those animals?» asked the little fox.
They were the size of lions, and they snuffled about the rocks, their long noses rooting and snuffling in the barren ground.
They are Baku, said the great fox. They are the Dream Eaters.
The little fox had heard of the Baku. If a dreamer wakes from a dream of ill–omen or a portent of dark things, the dreamer may invoke the Baku, and hope that the Baku will eat the dream, and take it and what it foretells, away.
She stared at the Baku, as they moved across the rocky desert of dreams.
«And if one were to catch a Baku after it had consumed a dream," asked the fox. «What then?»
The great fox said nothing for some time. In the hollow of an eye one distant star glittered. Baku are hard to catch, and harder to hold. They are elusive and crafty beasts.
«I am a fox," she said, humbly, and without boasting. «I also am a crafty beast.»
The great fox nodded assent. Then he looked down at her, and it seemed to the fox that he could see everything she was, everything she dreamed, and hoped, and felt. He is only a human, said the great fox. While you are a fox. These things rarely end happily.
And the fox would have told him what she thought of this, and opened her heart to him, but with a flick of his tail the great fox leapt from the rock down to the desert floor below. And it seemed to the fox that he grew and he grew, until he was the size of the sky, and the huge fox was the night, and stars twinkled in the blackness of his coat, and the white tip of his tail was the half–moon, shining in the night sky.
«I can be crafty," said the little fox to the night. «And I can be brave. And I would die for him.»
And the fox imagined that a voice in her head was saying, almost tenderly. Then catch his dreams, child, as she awoke.
The sun was the golden of the late afternoon, and it burnished the world as the fox stepped into the brush and made for the little temple, stopping only to devour a large frog she found at the edge of the stream, and to crunch it down, bones and all, in a couple of mouthfuls. Then she drank the cold, clear water of the mountain stream, lapping at it thirstily.
When she came to the little temple, the monk was chopping firewood for his brazier.
Remaining a safe distance from the monk, for his axe–blade was sharp, she said, clearly, as people talk, «May you dream only propitious dreams in the days to come, dreams of good omen and great fortune.»
The monk smiled at the fox. «I am grateful for your wishes," he said. «Although it is not for me to know if my dreams shall be dreams of good fortune or otherwise.»
The fox stared at him for some time with her green fox eyes. «I shall not be far," she said at length. «Should you need me.»
And when the young monk looked up again from his firewood, she was gone.
CHAPTER THREE
Far to the south and the west, in his house in Kyoto, the Master of Yin–Yang, the onmyoji, burned a lamp at a small table, upon which he had placed a square of painted silk, and upon it a lacquer chest and a black wooden key. Arranged according to the five cardinal points of the compass were five small porcelain plates, upon three of which were powdered matter, upon one of which was a bead of liquid, and upon the last plate there was nothing at all.
The onmyoji was a rich man. He was a high official in the Bureau of Divination, and many sought his advice and his favours. The governors of many provinces were grateful to him, and believed that his influence and his fortune–telling had given them their fortunes or their high positions. He had the ear of the Chancellor, and of the Ministers of the Right and the Left. But he was not a happy man.
He had a wife, who lived in the northern wing of his house, who ran his household judiciously and efficiently and who treated him in every way as a wife should treat a husband. He had a concubine, who was barely seventeen, and who was very beautifuclass="underline" her skin was as pale as the palest plum–blossom, her lips were dark as plums. His wife and his concubine lived together, under the same roof, and they did not quarrel. But the onmyoji was not a happy man.
He lived in what was widely said to be the seventeenth–finest house in Kyoto. Spirits and demons of the air, Oni and Tcngu alike, were ordered by him, and would obey his orders. He could remember every detail of two of his previous lives. As a young man he had travelled to China to study, and he had returned with his hair prematurely grey but with an unequaled knowledge of portents and omens. He was respected by those who were his superiors, and feared by those who were his inferiors. But, with all this, the onmyoji was not happy.
And this was because the onmyoji was afraid.
Ever since he could remember, since he was a tiny child, he had been afraid, and every thing he learned, every scrap of power he obtained, he had gathered in the hope that it would drive away the fear. But the fear remained. It waited behind him, and in the heart of him; it was there when he slept and there to greet him when he woke in the morning; it was there when he made love, and when he drank, and when he bathed.
It was not a fear of death, for in his heart he suspected that death might be an escape from the fear. And there were days when he wondered if, by his arts, he were to kill every man, woman and child in the world, that the fear would be gone, but he suspected that the fear would still haunt him even if he were alone.
It was fear that drove him, and fear that pushed him into the darkness.
The Master of Yin–Yang sought knowledge from the defilers of graves. He met with misshapen creatures in the twilight, and he danced their dances, and he partook of their feasts.
On the outskirts of the city, where thieves and brigands and the unclean lived, the Master of Yin–Yang kept a dilapidated house, and in that house there were three women: one old, one young, and one who was neither young nor old. The women sold herbs and remedies to women who found themselves in unfortunate situations. It was whispered that unwary travellers who stopped in that house for the night were often never seen again. Be that as it may, no man knew of the onmyoji's involvement with the three women, nor of his visits to the house on those nights when the moon was dark.
In his head, and in his heart, the onmyoji was not an evil man. He was fright ened. And the fear stole the joy from any moments of pride or happiness, and leeched the pleasure from his life.
One night, several weeks before the events previously related, when the moon was at its darkest, he had asked the three women in the dilapidated house the questions that troubled him most.