Red Prophet Page 0,42

and swung onto the floor. He expected Alvin to notice him, to cry out; but the shape of the boy lay still in the bed; there was no sound.

The boy couldn't see him when his eye was open, any more than he could see the boy. This was the end of the dream, after all, and Lolla-Wossiky was dream beast for the boy. It was Lolla-Wossiky's duty to give visions to the boy, not to be seen as himself, a whisky-Red with one eye missing.

What vision will I show him?

Lolla-Wossiky reached inside his White man's trousers to where tie still wore his loincloth, and pulled his knife from its sheath. He held both his hands high, the one holding the knife. Then he closed his eye.

The boy still didn't see him; his eyes were closed. So Lolla-Wossiky gathered the white light he could feel around him, gathered it close to himself, so that he could feel himself shining brighter and brighter. The light came from his skin, so he tore open the breast of the White man's shirt he wore, then raised his hands again. Now, even through closed eyelids, the boy could see the brightness, and he opened his eyes.

Lolla-Wossiky felt the boy's terror at the sight of the apparition he had become: a bright and shining Red man, one-eyed, with a sharp knife in his hand. But it wasn't fear Lolla-Wossiky wanted. No one should fear his own dream beast. So he sent the light outward to the boy, to include him, and with the light he sent calm, calm, don't be scared.

The boy relaxed a little, but still wriggled up in his bed, so he was sitting up, leaning against the wall.

It was time to begin to wake the boy from his life of sleep. How did Lolla-Wossiky know what to do? No man, Red or White, had ever been another man's dream beast. Yet he knew without thinking what he ought to do. What the boy needed to see and feel. Whatever came to Lolla-Wossiky's mind that felt right to do, that was what he did.

Lolla-Wossiky took his shining knife and brought the blade against his other palm - and cut. Sharp, hard, deep, so blood leapt from the wound, rushed down his forearm to gather and pool in his sleeve. Quickly it began to drip on the floor.

The pain came suddenly, a moment later; Lolla-Wossiky knew at once how to take the pain and make it into a picture and put it into the boy's mind. The picture of his sisters' room as a small weak creature saw it. Rushing in, hungering, hungering, looking for the food, certain that the food was there; on the soft body was the promise, climb the body, find the food. But great hands slapped and brushed, and the small creature was thrown onto the floor. The floor shook with giant footfalls, a sudden shadow, the agony of death.

Again and again, each small life, hungering, trusting, and then betrayed, crushed, battered.

Many lived, but they cowered, they scurried, they fled. The sisters' room, the room of death, yes, they fled from there. But better to stay there and die than run into the other room, the room of lies. Not words, there were no words in the small creature's life, there were no thoughts that could be named as thoughts. But the fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.

Lolia-Wossiky ended the vision. The boy was pressing his hands against his eyes, sobbing desperately. Lolla-Wossiky had never seen anyone so tortured by remorse; the vision Lolla-Wossiky had given him was stronger than any dream a man could imagine for himself. I am a terrible dream beast, thought Lolla-Wossiky. He will wish I hadn't wakened him. In dread of his own strength, Lolla-Wossiky opened his eye.

At once the boy disappeared, and Lolla-Wossiky knew that the boy would think that Lolla-Wossiky had also disappeared. What now? he thought. Am I here to make this boy crazy? To give him a terrible thing, as bad as the black noise was to me?

He could see from the shaking of the bed, the movement of the bedclothes, that the boy was still crying passionately. Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye, and again sent the light to the boy. Calm, calm.

The boy's weeping became a