Having brushed himself off, Ehomba had bent to recover as many of the spilled mushrooms and oranges as he could. Like the envoy, many had been squashed beneath the weight of the broken branch. Whatever he scavenged would have to do. He was not going back into the forest in search of replacements. One nearly fatal fruit-gathering expedition a night was enough.
“As a matter of fact, Simna, I did not. Grateful as I am, it was as much of a surprise to me as to the rest of you.”
“Hoy, right, sure.” The swordsman wore a peevish expression. “That’s what you always say, bruther. You just happened to be standing under that branch, and it just happened to break and fall right on that homicidal stack of bones. No magic, no sorcery. Just coincidence, and nothing more.”
Having picked up those oranges and mushrooms that were unbruised, Ehomba glanced over at his companion. “I cannot explain it, Simna. But I know that there are times in a man’s life when it is best not to question things too closely.” Tilting his head back slightly, he sniffed of the night air. “Something is burning.”
“Our supper!” Whirling, Simna broke into a run, but not before looking back over his shoulder as he darted past his friend. “By Gnomost’s gneels, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear I’d seen that tree before. Funny thing, that.”
“Yes.” Ehomba too spared a last, lingering glance for the immense old oak as he followed his frantic companion back into camp at a more leisurely pace.
The incident was not discussed as they ate, but everyone watched the surrounding woods a little more closely, paid a bit more attention to the distant rustlings and rattlings of the nocturnal forest creatures. The fish was delicious, not badly burned as Simna had feared, but only thoroughly cooked. As Ehomba had surmised, the addition of broiled mushrooms to the meal and wild oranges for dessert was an excellent complement to the main course. Even Ahlitah tried a little of everything, much to the surprise of both his human companions.
“I’m always open to new experiences,” he told them as he spit out orange peel. “That’s one I won’t have to open myself to again. Paugh!” Nothing wrinkles in disgust, Ehomba mused, quite so exhaustively as the face of a displeased cat.
With Hunkapa Aub agreeing to take the first watch, the others retired, the two men to their blankets and the black litah to the mat of leaves and grass he had assembled with his paws. Ehomba drifted off with one hand feeling gingerly of his throat and the strip of cloth that now separated it from the beaded necklaces he wore.
As he slid into sleep, his thoughts drifted into dream—but it was most unlike any normal dream, or even a normal nightmare.
He was running, running hard, but on all fours. Bushes and grass sped past at an astonishing rate of speed. Though he could feel the ground beneath his feet and therefore knew he was not flying, with each prodigious stride he left it below him for an impossibly long time.
Startled by his sudden appearance, something with wide eyes looked up to encounter his gaze. Utterly paralyzed by the unexpected eye contact, it stood frozen for an instant and then flashed by as he raced past. A rabbit, too small and scrawny to bother with. Little more than a mouthful or three, certainly not enough to satiate the voluminous hunger that burned in his belly. He needed, and was after, bigger prey.
When he exploded from the high grass the herd panicked. Though it meant he would have to exert himself a little more to make a kill, he was exhilarated by the fear his appearance had incited. Eland and elk bolted in every direction, eyes rolling with fright, tongues lolling from open mouths. Impala and syndyoceros crashed into one another and bounded away wildly as they sought the safety of the herd that had not yet re-formed.
In the confusion Ehomba had an entire minute to single out a victim: more than enough time. Settling on an old bull elk, he accelerated to maximum speed. The elk never had a chance. Ehomba hit it head-on, his open jaws slamming into the hairy throat and locking like a vise. The elk tried to lower its head in order to bring its massive horns to bear on its attacker, but, already caught and held in a death grip, it had no real chance to defend itself.
Blood flowed into and through Ehomba’s jaws, exciting every nerve and sensation in his body. Unable to fight, the elk tried to run. His assailant’s weight made sustained flight impossible. The prey sank to its knees, then its belly, and finally went limp, suffocated by the tightening of its attacker’s jaws.
Ehomba held on for another several minutes until he was sure death had arrived. Then, crouching alongside the body, one paw placed possessively on the carcass, he began to eat. Blood and muscle, organs and bone, all vanished into massive, efficient jaws. Lingering over the kill, he ate intermittently for the rest of the afternoon and on into early evening. Only then did he rise and move away, belly dragging low, back into the high grass. There he found the stream, and drank for long minutes.
Locating a small clearing, he lay down heavily in the shade of a cluster of yellow-blooming hopak trees and began to groom himself. It was impossible to get all the blood off his muzzle no matter how many times he licked a paw and ran it across his face, but he made a start. The rest of the stain would come out later, following repeated washings. Glutted and content, he slumped down on his side and fell into a sleep any passing traveler might easily have mistaken for death. But despite his seeming somnolence, the sound of a snapping twig would be enough to rouse him instantly. In the depth of his deep sleep, one foot kicked out repeatedly.
Wrapped in his blanket beside the campfire, Ehomba’s left leg twitched restively.
Ahlitah was dizzy. Not from chasing his tail, which when absolutely convinced no one and nothing else was watching he would occasionally do to relieve unrelenting boredom, but from trying to maintain an alien and utterly unaccustomed posture. With each step he took, no matter how short and cautious, he was convinced, absolutely certain, that he was going to fall over. Yet despite his fear and misgivings, he did not.
By all that ran and crawled and swam and flew, what had happened to his other pair of legs?
And his eyes. And his ears, and his nose! Though he could see adequately, the acuity of vision he usually enjoyed had been replaced by a pale, fuzzy imitation of normal sight. Objects located more than a short distance away were unidentifiable. Anything at a reasonable distance blended invisibly into the landscape or the horizon. Furthermore, it was as if he were gazing through a steady downpour. Colors were washed out or absent entirely. It was horrible: He felt half blinded.
Nothing was audible except that which was in his immediate vicinity. The familiar panoply of distant sounds, the constant susurration of animate life, was entirely absent. It was as if the world had suddenly gone silent. There were noises and the echoes of movement close by, but nothing else. No complaining insects, no scuttling lizards or slithering snakes, no chirping birds. The wing-beats of dragonets no longer whispered in his ears, and the delectable murmur of prey animals cropping grass was sorely wanting.
As for the wonderful universe of scents that normally filled his nostrils, its absence constituted a kind of olfactory blindness that made his severely impacted vision that much worse. It was a struggle, a strain, a surreal effort to smell anything at all. What odors he was able to identify were so homogenized it hardly seemed worth the effort to inhale.
Simply keeping his ridiculous body from falling down demanded a preposterous share of his considerably reduced energy. And yet he was conscious of the fact that, though shorter, it was a much better body than many of those that were in motion around him. Feeling greatly enfeebled and not knowing what else to do, he instinctively sought shelter.
A nearby enclosure seemed to promise privacy if not enlightenment. Given his severely diminished capacity for perceiving the world around him, it was hardly surprising that he should be wrong about this, too. The edifice was not empty.
Ordinarily he would have attacked and killed the pair of two-legged young females that came running toward him. For reasons unknown and inexplicable, he did not. Instead, he allowe
d them to carry out a mock attack on his person; striking him about the chest and arms, gamboling around his middle, and prattling inanities into his ears. They made muted howling noises. The younger, a lithesome female not long past the cusp of puberty, was only slightly more respectful of his person than her elder. The air of commingled anticipation and affection they projected was oddly unnerving, as if it were forced rather than natural. Their strongest efforts to pull him farther into the enclosure notwithstanding, they struck him as wretchedly weak.
So did the third female figure that appeared from another part of the enclosure to throw both fore and hind legs around him. To his astonishment and disgust, instead of extending her tongue to lick his face by way of greeting, she thrust her tongue deeply into his mouth. So startled was he by this unexpected, unnatural act that he forgot to bite it. She, however, was not averse to nibbling on his ear. At least something about the otherwise inane interaction between himself and the unknown female made sense!
Most unexpectedly, given the extreme distaste and inner turmoil his extraordinary situation had brought about, he felt the heat rising in his loins. Disturbed and bewildered, he did not bother to resist as the female led him to another, darker portion of the enclosure. At least, he thought with relief, she had dismissed her irritating, overly exuberant predecessors.
When he realized what she had in mind, he knew only one way to react. Evidently, this did not displease her. Quite to the contrary. The mechanics of the act as well as its immediate consequences were surprisingly conventional, a touch of familiarity in alien surroundings for which he was grateful. After they both rested awhile, he was prepared to repeat the process. Again, the female had no objection.
By the fourth time, she was regarding him with unabashed awe. By the fifth, with hesitancy. When he ventured to initiate a sixth reiteration with as much enthusiasm as the first, she retreated precipitously from the darkened portion of the enclosure. Her reaction only confused him further. As was typical of his kind, he was prepared to continue for the rest of the day and far on into the night. Clearly she was not.
His head hurt. Agitated and bemused, he stumbled back to the enclosure’s entrance. A pair of very large two-legged males were waiting for him there. They bore weapons and grim expressions. Standing behind them, the female with whom he had recently consorted appeared in a state of extreme agitation, pointing and jabbering in his direction. The looks on the faces of the two armed males grew ominous.
If there was one thing he was in no mood to tolerate at that moment, it was the absurd verbalizations and oral circumlocutions of a brace of irritable bipeds. To let them know how he was feeling, he voiced a warning roar. The effect was salutary. The fur stood up on their heads, their eyes grew as big as emu eggs, and they turned and bolted in the opposite direction as fast as their hind legs would carry them, flinging their weapons aside while screaming at the top of their lungs. From other enclosures, startled faces peered out in search of the source of the sound. Feeling much better about things, he strode out of the bordello. Though he had neglected to pay, no one dared to confront him.
Lying well away from the campfire, Ahlitah smacked his lips as he rolled over onto his back.
Simna frowned as he entered the city. The golden towers, the marble archways, the teeming crowds of barkers and bazaaris, the fragrant smells of fine cooking—all were absent. In their place were simple houses of stone and wood and thatch. In lieu of richly garbed horses and moas, dogs and rodent-hunting cats roamed the streets. Where he normally would have expected to see paving stones of granite there was only packed earth.
A few women tracked his progress as he advanced. Some were ancient, others not yet old enough to understand. Those of young and middle age were tall, proud, and comely, with elegant necks and straight backs, full breasts and curving backsides. He grinned at them and a few smiled back, though there was a hesitancy in their expressions that bruised his ego.
Where was he? Was this not the entrance to Vharuphan the Radiant, renowned capital of the Dhashtari Emperors? Where were the great domes of polished green verdite and the fine gilded latticework famed near and far across half a continent? The nearest thing he saw to fine latticework was a sturdily constructed well. As for domes, there was one of brick for firing pottery, and it was not habitable.
As he wandered in a daze something struck him in the legs. Looking down, he saw a young girl clinging to him and beaming delightedly, her sweet innocent features blushing with love. As he struggled weakly to disengage himself from her pythonic embrace, a young man stepped down from the porch of a nearby house and approached. In one hand he carried a spear suitable in size and weight for someone no longer a child but not yet an adult. It was more than toy, less than weapon. Bowing low, he then put a hand on Simna’s arm and smiled, revealing a blaze of perfect white teeth.
Stunned and not knowing what else to do or where to go, Simna allowed himself to be led by hand and arm up the steps of the porch and into the house. In a back room an astoundingly handsome woman stood before a stone counter, using knives of differing size and heft to slice and butcher what remained of a human hindquarter. When Simna made gagging sounds, she turned. A conflagration of a smile spread across her face, making her appear more beautiful than ever and somewhat minimizing the effect of the bloodstains that spotted her apron and overblouse. The ensuing kiss she bestowed upon him almost, but not quite, allowed him to overlook the import of the three harrowing words she spoke to him.
“Welcome home—husband.”
Simna ibn Sind woke up screaming.
The sounds of his yelling and thrashing about startled his companions to wakefulness. This included Hunkapa Aub, who, having never been relieved of his watch, had fallen asleep where he sat. Around the dying embers of the campfire the forest was silent, and night still held sway over the world.
Ehomba rushed to his friend’s side. “Simna, what is wrong? Is there anything I can do?” Nearby, Hunkapa Aub was still trying to shake the sleep webs from his brain while the black litah looked on unblinkingly.
“Anything you can… ?” The swordsman looked up at his rangy companion. “Yes, by Guquaquo. If you ever hear me making noises like that in my sleep ever again, wake me instantly.” Putting both hands to his head, he stared blankly at the corpse of the campfire. “Hoy, what a nightmare! I—I was domesticated!”
His expression twisting, Ehomba stood up and stepped back. “Is that all?”
Simna fixed the herdsman with a look of utmost seriousness. “Bruther, every man has his own fears. I do not mock yours. Grant me the same courtesy.”
Ehomba nodded soberly. “You are right, my friend. I apologize.” His expression tightened slightly. “I am curious, for I also had a most peculiar dream. I had four legs and the keenest imaginable senses, and was hunting.”
“And I,” Ahlitah put in with a reverberating growl, “walked on two legs like humans, and visited a place where intercourse was expected to be paid for with human money.”
It was left, unsurprisingly, for Ehomba to sort out what must have taken place.
“I do not know what happened, or how, but it seems that some unknown mechanism has caused our dreams to slip from one individual to the next.” He nodded at the swordsman. “You got my dream, Simna.” His gaze shifted to the intent big cat. “I dreamed Ahlitah’s dream. And he must have suffered through yours.”
The swordsman nodded vigorously. “Hoy, that’s crazy, but crazy logic is logic still. I certainly…” His expression twisted. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, ‘suffered’?” He turned sharply to the watching litah. “Did my dream then cause you suffering?”
“Beyond doubt,” the big cat replied. “I dare say you would have enjoyed it.”
“Cursed unfair,” the stocky warrior grumbled. “Every man—and cat—should keep to their own dreaming. Who asked you to snatch mine?”
“Believe me,” Ahlitah replied, “if I had been allowed any choice in the matter, I would have opted instead for
the dream of the nearest rodent. At least in such a dream I would have had the proper number of legs.”
“Hoy, that’s no given because—”
Ehomba cut him off. “Hunkapa Aub; you were asleep when Simna’s nightmare woke us all. What did you dream?”
Enormous shaggy shoulders heaved, framing a look of utter ingenuousness. “Hunkapa not dream, Etjole. Sleep soundly.”
Simna uttered a rude noise. “The slumber of the dumber. In ignorance there is purity.”
“We must take care in the future.” A thoughtful Ehomba gazed into the last dying embers of the campfire. “It could be dangerous for one to dream too often the dreams of another, be it man or beast.”
They sat awhile together, discussing the remarkable occurrence. Eventually, fatigue overcame concern and they retired once more, this time to sleep the sleep of vacuity that refreshes the mind. In the morning they were rejuvenated—and much relieved. In the future they resolved to monitor their own sleep as well as that of one another more closely, the better to prevent a recurrence of the unfortunate slippage of the night before.
They resolved also to eat no more mushrooms gathered from this particular forest, no matter how nourishing or tasty they looked.
XII
Very soon they no longer had to worry about the unknown properties of forest mushrooms of any variety, because those delightful but often mysterious edible fungi soon vanished, along with the last remnants of the forest itself.
They did not lose the trees entirely, but instead of dense woods or even isolated thickets, individual boles grew in isolated hollows or followed the course of the occasional stream. Otherwise, the ground was covered with a tall yellow-green grass that came up to Simna’s hips. They had traveled through worse before, but it still would have made for slow going if not for Hunkapa Aub. With his thick coat of hair to protect him from cuts and scratches, he was virtually immune to stickers and sharp-edged grasses. Following him as he plowed a path westward, they made steady progress.