Dreams That Burn In The Night (8 page)

"Why me?" said Blue
Snow. "Why was I chosen for the demon?"

"Because you
chose," said the old one. "I watched you. I watched the children of the village play cruel games
upon each other as children sometimes do. But you were different. You are the kind that goes
deeper than the small cruelties of the small ones. You are a killer whose inside is rotten with
hate like a dead tree. And because your kind never tires of hating and hurting, you are
here."

"I want to leave. I
am frightened. I don't want to stay with demons!"

"Aomi eats
kindness. It cannot harm you. There is not a kind bone in your body. The beast demon will give
you all you need. Eat of Aomi's flesh for hunger, drink of its blood for thirst. All that you
love is here. For Aomi can be tormented a thousand ways and never die. Go. Aomi awaits the chase,
the feel of death snapping its jaws. Use your hate. Go. Aomi grows restless." The old one put his
hand on Blue Snow's shoulder and gently pushed him forward, toward Aomi waiting in the rocks.
"Give Aomi the pain it loves and hates. Hate is the love that is not a weak pain. Aomi waits for
you. Only the strong fight demons."

And the old one
pointed to the flowing strength of Aomi gath­ering upon the ground. "Hurry. He waits."

"How long will I
stay? How long will I do this, old one?" asked Blue Snow, his eyes on Aomi, feeling the fever
rising in him again, tearing him away from the questions that tumbled in his brain.

"Until you become
gray-haired like me and dried out with the fever and the hating. Who can say how long that will
be?"

"How will I know
when it is time to stop?" said Blue Snow, his body alive and trembling with the fever and the
wildness.

"You will know
neither a hunger nor a thirst that Aomi will not fill. That is all you need to know. You will
live a long time, but when the hating stops you will stop. You will know when the' hating stops,
just as I knew when my time to stop had come. For you see, I was once the Aomi's
keeper."

"Because you
hated?" asked Blue Snow, and then he was gone, forgetting the question, no longer seeing the old
one or living in the world he had once belonged to. Blue Snow saw only the quick coming and
flowing of the demon Aomi. And he killed and killed, and the old one was forgotten.

"No," said the old
one, talking to himself as he watched with sad, knowing eyes. "No," said the old one, the
rustling leaf that blows gently and crumbles. "Because I could not love."

There is a
mountain. The white people who came later had a name for it but the real people who came first
knew the moun­tain's true and everlasting name. They called it Old Woman Mountain. The mountain
was a woman and the Great Spirit was weary of
her. All through the ages of the great hot, through the ages of the great leather skins,
in the ages of those who had walked like men, the eyes of the Great Spirit had looked upon Old
Woman Moun­tain.

Hidden rivers ran
through Old Woman Mountain's stone heart and she stood against the sky, proud, facing each sunset
with the same fierce beautiful smile on her face.

The Great Spirit
could remember when she had been young and he had loved her, had loved her even as he had shaped
her. Yes, the Great Spirit had loved her as his mighty hands painted her face and put her between
the great sea and the ocean of sand and wind.

She was Young Woman
Mountain then. Her face had been fairer then, the centuries of living had not yet scratched her
proud face. The mountain rose above the land like the Great Mystery. And those fashioned upon the
plains below her were created that they might love her.

But even then,
Young Woman Mountain had troubled the Great Spirit. It was as if her heart was too fierce and too
proud. Her beauty was too great, and as with all things past under­standing, she became a
creature of the nightland, a thing of se­crets and terrible passions.

And so through the
ages, as the creatures of the plains gathered at her feet, she burned through the night of her
life with a strange and terrible beauty.

Cities, humble and
great, rose on the plains beneath her. First came the cave dwellers that dwelt in her womb,
scouring her cav­ern walls with the birth flame of their cook fires. Then rude huts that dared
the wind and sun, until they gave way to dust or something greater, an ivory city soon to become
an echo on the wind of the great things yet to come.

And the splendors
therein did rival the painted face of Young Woman Mountain. Great buildings rose like peacocks,
housing the mighty and the profane. And always there are those who loved her, who built webs of
jeweled veils through which they might always peer at her face.

One city rose as if
it would live forever, only to die as another grew out of its ashes. Her stone heart nursed them,
challenged them to greater heights and deeds as if they courted her favor with each dazzling new
civilization. The hands of Kings caressed
her face and, for a time, believed that they captured a part of her terrible beauty. But
it was not to be so.

She was fashioned
out of a great mystery and none could tame her, none could truly possess her. Perhaps not even he
who had made her so mysterious as she became in the night of her life.

The Kings had their
season and then they were no more. New ones came, and like those who had gone before, they too
tried to possess her.

It was not to be
and in time the Kings grew tired of seeing that uncaring face which would not surrender to them
and their caresses turned to blows. Their hands fell heavily upon her painted face and they tore
great wounds in her body. They tun­neled deep into her belly, seeking the uncaring mysteries of
her heart.

They cut pieces of
her and took them far away and fashioned strange buildings and devices of her skin and
sinews.

Ragged gashes and
scars appeared on her sides, but through it all, she smiled her secret and terrible smile,
staring into the sun­rise at things her desecrators could not see.

In time her
strangeness became too much even for the Great Spirit. What was once loved, now became an enemy
to him who had made her. In her uncaring stone face, the Great Spirit saw that he had failed in
the making of her and in his dreams he be­gan seeking ways to destroy her.

The little
purple-headed boy of summer squatted in a semi-mili­tary position beside the path and watched the
ants falling down the sides of anthills. He had come before daybreak to sit by the path in the
hopes that he might speak with the master. His little purple head was filled with visions of
material gain.

If he brought his
master the tongue of a human being, would not his master be pleased? Would not his master give
him a won­drous gift if he could bring the master a naked lizard shaped like an aircraft carrier?
Rappi's head was full of such thoughts. Most of all he desired to please the master, which was
not an easy task.

First one had to
meet him. In order to do that, it was necessary to hide in the bushes beside the path, keeping a
sharp lookout for the master, all the while hoping to catch him in a good mood. When the master
is ugly from the toes up, you will be underfoot, was one of the sayings in the village. The day
the nine-legged horse steps on the master's foot is not a good day to kick the master's dog. That
was another saying in the village. When one dealt with the master, one had to watch
out.

The ants were
busily engaged in dragging stuff up the anthills so other ants could push it back down again.
There was a saying in the village, as busy as an ant and twice as nuts. The village was full of
good sayings. Rappi was trying to turn an ant over with a dead cone pole snake he had found in a
bush by sitting on it.

There was a wild,
crashing noise off in the distance. It sounded like two semi-elephants mating through a knothole
in a wooden fence. It sounded like a flamenco dance troupe being raped by a Salvation Army band.
It was loud and seemed to be heading in Rappi's direction.

Rappi jumped with
fright and dove even farther back into the bushes. Perhaps it is the whistling moose that
swallows little boys, thought Rappi. Perhaps it is the big old wild man of the moun­tains, the
toothless one who gummed little children to death whenever he caught them. Perhaps.

Rappi crouched flat
against the ground in terror, his primitive mind filled with childish fears and superstitions. A
gray-and-white thing with a sunburn and a peeling nose smashed through the bushes and onto the
trail right in front of Rappi. Rappi allowed himself to relax a little. It was only the
master.

And the master was
being very much ugly from his feet on up. He was yelling like he had needles through his
shirttails and he looked like he had been dragged across the jungle by a slow snake. His shirt
was three colors, two of them dirty, and his pants were dirty here and there, being clean mostly
in the places where they had holes. The holes were very clean.

It was not a good
day for the jungle. He was tearing it up left
and right and scorching the air with his language. Rappi decided he would stay in the
bush and not bother the master today. Rappi could not think of any saying in the village that
covered hiding in the bushes when the master was like he was, but he thought to himself that
there sure ought to be one.

Ideas went through
the master like a hiss in his brain. There was a ringing in his ears and a constant pounding at
his temples. He smashed through some reeds near the riverbank and his shirt caught on a thornbush
and came off in two big hunks, an armhole for each hunk.

He swore and swung
at the bush with his fist. The blood that started flowing out of his hand sobered him a little.
It hurt like hell and that brought him a little closer to rationality than he had been all
day.

It reminded him why
he was mad. It was that damn Rappi who had used the last of his shirts to clean out the lizard
cages. Or was it Bappi? All those damn aliens looked alike. They even had the same sort of name.
Whoever it was, if he ever caught him, he'd flay him to the bone.

Of course, that
wasn't the real reason he was upset. No, it went deeper than that. It was rain and the legs of a
stripper named Candy Boxes.

It hadn't rained in
seven months. He would have sold his mother for a cup of water. How long had he been drinking the
muck the natives of Mintfrappe siphoned out of trees? Had it re­ally been seven months? Seven
months of virpa sap, which tasted like something the dog brought home instead of depositing with
upraised leg on the fire hydrant.

And one of those
crotty aliens, how the hell did he know which one, had tried to take the tacks out of the picture
of her he had nailed over his bed. Enrico Fermi! Those idiots would eat any­thing with metal in
it! One night he woke up and two of them were under the bed, chewing on his bedsprings. It was
one hell of a life.

And Candy Boxes,
did she care about him? If he wrote her a letter, saying,
"dear candy, the
dog ate the top half of your picture but I still have your legs on my Wall,”
would she
care? No, she wouldn't care. She'd just laugh and jump on top of an astronaut. It was depressing.
He knew she was laughing at him and running around jumping
on astronauts. That was what sent him in desperation into the Planetary
Foreign Legion and to this godforsaken planet. She had an uncontrollable urge for astronauts,
planetary explorers, and spacemen of all types. He could never quite reconcile himself to it
somehow. He was always tripping over a spacer's tote bag in the bathroom. There was always
somebody shaving in the mirror be­fore he got up in the morning. And they all had tattoos on
their arms that said in old English script:
mother.

He would have had
himself tattooed too if he thought it would have made any difference to her. It wouldn't have.
Candy Boxes liked only what was fashionable and what was fashionable was the brave men who
explored space, roaming the galaxy to come back to earth after months of celibacy, hornier than
hot rabbits with socks on. The in thing to do was relieve these brave men, to comfort them after
their prolonged abstinence. After all, said
Women's Bare Daily,
what greater reward could
the women of earth offer these returning heroes? Candy Boxes agreed with that sentiment entirely.
She agreed with it everywhere and with every­one. She agreed to it in a variety of positions.
That was why San-derman retired from chiropodist work and signed up for space duty.

Did Candy Boxes
know her legs were on the wall? Sanderman the master used to beat the little alien girl called
Dunchfito be­cause she didn't have Candy Boxes' legs. Dunchfito had her name tattooed on each of
her legs, hoping it would help him figure out that he was certainly right about little
Dunchfito's legs not being Candy Boxes' legs. It did not seem to help in any way or clear up the
confusion. Dunchfito always got her revenge, though.

She always waited
till he fell asleep, then cracked him over the head with a rubber-headed mallet. He always woke
up the next morning with a blinding headache and a fuzzy spot on his head that was beginning to
soften after several months of nightly poundings. He never woke up when she hit him but he did
have reoccurring dreams. Sometimes he dreamed he was a tennis ball, sometimes he dreamed the
entire chorus line of a musical variety show was kicking his head in.