Voyage of the Fox Rider (49 page)

Aylis lay with Aravan, her head on his breast, he stroking her hair, she listening to the beat of his heart. “I think we are ready,” she said after a while.

“When,
chieran?
”

“Tomorrow we begin.”

“So soon?”

“Yes.”

“And Jinnarin?”

“She is as ready as I was at the same stage of learning, love. She has mastered both light and deep meditation. Too, Ontah’s of are well ingrained, and though they are not true words of , they will serve her well. Now all she needs is to be schooled in the ways of controlling a dream, to shape it to her will, and for that we must walk within the dreams of another.”

Aravan lay quietly for a while, then said, “She learned quickly, neh?”

“Yes. Ontah marvelled over how swiftly I learned, but he would have been just as pleased with Jinnarin.”

“Is it difficult?”

Aylis pondered Aravan’s question. “I did not think so…nor for that matter did Jinnarin. But I had been schooled as a seeress, and so it came easily to me. Jinnarin, on the other hand, has had no such schooling, but she learned swiftly regardless.”

“Hmm,” mused Aravan thoughtfully, then added, “Mayhap what comes easily to Pysks or Magekind or others of similar ilk is difficult for Humans. Someday thou must try to teach me, then we perhaps shall see.”

Aylis raised up and peered into Aravan’s eyes. “Oh, love, how wonderful, for then we would walk our dreams together and shape them as we will.”

Aravan smiled. “I am already walking my dream with thee,
chieran
.”

Aylis leaned down and kissed him gently, then returned to listening to the beat of his heart.

After a long silence, Aravan whispered, “Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

His embrace tightened but he said nought.

Soon she raised up and kissed him again, and they made gentle love.

“It is not easy to sleep while someone else is watching,” rumbled Jatu.

Neither Jinnarin nor Aylis answered.

“I mean, here I lie like a stiff log while you two sit as would a dark, silent
Uhra
with her little
Jeju
familiar at her side…or in this case, the Jeju perches to my left while the Uhra sits to the right.”

Still Aylis and Jinnarin said nothing, each maintaining her state of light meditation.

The three were in Aylis’s old quarters, having commandeered it for dreamwalking purposes. Jatu lay on a pallet in the floor, the bunk being entirely too short for his giant frame. Aylis sat cross-legged with her back to a wall, her hands, palms up, resting lightly on her thighs, her eyes mere glittering slits. Jinnarin sat in a like manner but up on the bunk on the opposite side of Jatu. Rux lay beneath the bunk asleep. The room was dimly illuminated by a single shielded candle.

“Even though I can see you two, I feel as if I were prey to some unseen jungle predator.”

Both Jinnarin and Aylis remained silent.

Jatu sighed and shifted about, attempting to quell his uneasiness by means of physical comfort.

It did not help.

After a while of tossing and turning, Jatu leapt up and slammed out of the cabin. Though Rux lifted his head and looked, neither Jinnarin nor Aylis made a move. The fox went back to sleep.

Shortly thereafter, Jatu came back in and lay down once more, and moments later, somewhere nearby a sailor began to sing, his words distant and sometimes lost in the blustery wind, sails slapping in the blow, rope and tackle creaking, waves
shsh
ing against the sides, the
Eroean
rising and falling across the long ocean swells.

“,”
said Aylis softly, using one of Ontah’s of .

Although Jinnarin could not see Jatu’s sleeping face, she knew that his eyes must be whipping back and forth beneath his lids. She slipped into a state of deep meditation and used another of the ingrained of taught to her by Aylis, and Jinnarin began to dream. She sat on a branch high in a tree. Below, on the bank of a creek, a pair of otters tumbled and slid on their stomachs down a mud slide. As she laughed in pleasure, a brown-haired Lady Mage came striding
through the sky. “Sparrow,” said the Lady, holding out her hand. “Brightwing,” replied the Pysk, taking the hand in hers. And together they stepped through the tree-trunk passage to a distant dream, emerging in a withy hut.

An ill black Man dressed in a loincloth lay on a woven mat, a young, bare-breasted black Woman in attendance, plying wet cloths to the Man’s brow. Peering in ‘round the edge of the doorway was a tall black youth, his face twisted in torment. In the distance beyond the youth could be seen an approaching Man dressed all in rushes, his black face painted a ghastly white, and in his hand he bore a cup, a viper, a flower, a cup, a snake, a root, a cup.

“I don’t want to see this,” said Sparrow, turning away.

“We must watch and remember, Sparrow,” responded Brightwing.

Sparrow shivered and shook her head,
No
. “Brightwing, it is where Jatu killed the Jujuba. That is Jatu’s father and mother. The youth is Jatu. The black Man coming with the poisoned cup is the Jujuba. I do not want to see this. Let us go. Let us go now!”

Brightwing sighed and turned, and in the wall appeared a hole leading elsewhere. But even as they approached it, the withes of the wall began to shudder and shift, melting and running down.

“Quick!” shouted Brightwing. “Flee!”

They leapt out through the hole in the hut and into the ship’s cabin where three people were—a Pysk, a Lady Mage, and a thrashing black Man—along with a fox pacing nervously back and forth alongside the bunk on which Jinnarin sat.

“No!” shouted Jatu, bolting upright, sweat runnelling down his face and neck and chest.

Rux flinched down and back but then recovered, and he stood stock-still between his mistress and Jatu, his wary gaze focused on the face of the black Man.

Sparrow flew over and alighted by the Pysk—her corporeal self—and then she said a of …

…and opened her eyes.

“All right, Sparrow, now you form the bridge to Jatu’s dream.”

They stepped through the burrow tunnel toward the light, to emerge on the seat of a gig. Men rowed mightily, and in the fore Jatu held onto the haft of a great harpoon, his laughter ringing through the air.

Sparrow stepped among the sweating Men, making her way to the bow. “Jatu! Jatu!” she called, “What is it you hunt?”

Jatu swung his head about, his face lighted with joy. “Aha, little Jeju, we hunt that!” Jatu turned and pointed at a swift-running white cloud.

“A cloud, Jatu?”

“Aye, Jeju, a great cloud whale.”

Of a sudden Sparrow realized that the gig was high in the sky above the world, and behind sailed a great sky galleon up among the clouds, following the hurtling gig, Men and Dwarves aboard her cheering Jatu and his rowers onward.

Now Sparrow turned, peering forward, and the cloud they chased wafted a great tail up and down, propelling it ahead. “But why, Jatu? Why chase the clouds?”

Jatu doubled over with laughter, but he managed to gasp out, “‘For the fog blubber, little Jeju. For the precious fog blubber.” His great guffaws shattered the air, the rowers giggling and snickering even as they pulled hard on the oars.

“Sparrow,” said Brightwing, her face wreathed in smiles, “we must go. See the distant sky?”

Sparrow looked. As would a curtain blow in the wind, the sky at the horizon shifted and shimmered. The sky galleon began fading, and the clouds started vanishing one after another, like candles being snuffed out. “Oh my, this glorious dream is coming to an end,” she said.

“Bridge out,” said Brightwing.

Sparrow formed an opening into which she and Aylis stepped, and behind they heard Jatu laughing. “She blows! The cloud whale blows! She blows in the wind!” Again his laughter belled up.

As Brightwing and Sparrow murmured the of …

…Aylis and Jinnarin opened their eyes to the sound of soft laughter, Jatu chortling in his sleep.

“Fear not, Jinnarin, we will not dreamwalk the sending until you are ready.”

“When will that be?”

“I would say…one more night walking in Jatu’s dreams.”

Jinnarin smiled. “He has such wonderful dreams, doesn’t he? Quite unpredictable, neh?” Jinnarin’s smile vanished. “All but the one about the Jujuba, that is.”

Aylis nodded. Then a pondering look came over her face. “I wonder…”

Jinnarin glanced up at the seeress. “What?”

Aylis’s eyes were lost in reflection.

“What?” said Jinnarin again.

Aylis shook her head, as if rousing from the depths of her thoughts. She took a deep breath.

“You wonder what?” asked Jinnarin, hoping that this time she would be heard.

Aylis turned up her hands. “Oh, several things: I wonder if appalling events are forever repeated in one’s dreams. I wonder if those of great joy are oft relived in the shadowland as well. And I wonder if a grim event, such as Jatu’s, can be set aside so that it never troubles a dream or a dreamer again. If so, how? —Oh, if I had only asked Ontah…perhaps there is something we could do to ease Jatu’s dreams of this horrid event from his past.”

Jinnarin nodded. “Or anyone else’s, for that matter.”

Aylis smiled. “Perhaps we can find another teacher—one wise in the ways of dreamwalking and dream shaping.”

“On the other hand,” mused Jinnarin, “if we can’t, then perhaps we can discover on our own just how to cleanse one’s dreams of these awful events…eliminate them entirely.”

“Oh, Jinnarin, in that we must be most wary, for dreams in some fashion provide a way to purge fear and rage and other strong emotions, else they will feed upon themselves, to the harm of the person involved. To totally eliminate a dream, I think would do great damage. Instead a dreamhealer must find a way to bring harmony within a person’s mind and spirit and soul, and yet not dispose of the dream.”

“Aylis, are you saying that nightmares and other dreams of dread are good for the spirit, the mind, the soul?”

Aylis shook her head. “No, Jinnarin. What I am saying is that I simply do not know. Hence, we must not interfere such that we take the dream away.”

“But I thought that Ontah reshaped dreams in the minds of those he aided.”