be the end of him, yes, for he had never felt like this before and didn't much want to feel it again.
But first he must tell someone about his dream. He must tell... Nana, of course!
His dream. His dream of -
- A corpse, smouldering, with its lire-blackened arms flung wide, steaming head thrown back as in the final agony of death, tumbling end over end into a black void shot through with thin neon bars or ribbons of blue, green, and red light; indeed descending or retreating into this tunnel of streamers. A tortured thing, yes, but dead now from all of its torments and no longer suffering, unknown and unknowable as the weird things of dreams often are. And yet... there had been something morbidly familiar about it, so that Jasef had wished he could look closer at that endlessly rotating, silently screaming, scorched and blistered face.
And when his dream had drifted him closer - then Jasef had seen, and finally he had known. Had known who, and believed he also knew what.
After that: The corpse's gyrating flight into eternity - through this alien continuum of green, blue and crimson bars -had speeded up, leaving Jasef behind. But then, in the moment after the thing had sped away and disappeared -
- An explosion of golden light in the distant haze, where the corpse had been! And a rush of golden splinters like living darts, speeding towards Jasef and past him, each blinking out as it escaped out of this unknowable place into other, more real times and places.'
That was when the scene had changed: To Nona's four-year-old twins, wrapped together in a blanket under a tree, with a roof of oiled skins just like Josef's to keep the rain off. And suddenly - appearing out of nowhere - one of the golden darts, which hovered undecided, first over one twin and then the other. At which the pair stirred in their sleep, which had seemed to decide the matter. Hissing his horror, Jasef had seen the dart lance down, to enter into the head of one of them! Except there was no scar, no blood, nothing but a smile spreading on the face of the sleeping innocent!
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
And: 'Innocent?' Jasef had wondered, like a memory from some earlier dream, some previous time. 'Still innocent?'
Which was when he had awakened, or tried to, only to discover himself bound by these pains like tight thongs across his chest and limbs. But he knew now that indeed he was awake, and also that he must pass on his dream, his vision, while yet he might.
He tried to call out for Nana, and couldn't, for the pain wouldn't let him. His cry came out the merest gasp. Well then, and so he must simply lie here and listen to the first birds calling, and wait until Nana came to him.
But he hoped she wouldn't keep him waiting too long ...
Only a moment earlier, Nana Kiklu had woken up. But she was some little distance away and so failed to hear Jasef's gasping. There had been a noise - the dull, distant booming of thunder, perhaps? - and a little later one of the twins had come tottering, rubbing at his eyes, on the point of tears. Obviously he'd been nightmaring, or else would not have left his bed for his mother's. Small as they were, Nana's twins preferred sleeping alone.
Pulling him down under her blanket, giving him her warmth, Nana had comforted him: 'Oh, dear! There, there,' and stroked his hair. Then, still half-asleep, she'd automatically fumbled for the small leather strap he wore on his left wrist. It was Nana's way of identifying her babies in the dead of night: Nestor's was a plain band, a simple strip of leather joined with a few strong stitches, while Nathan's band had a half-twist. Now, recognizing the child as he snuggled closer, feeling the pounding of his little heart, she asked:
'What was it, eh?' She hugged him closer still. 'A dream? A bad dream?'
The forest was waking up; the birds were filling the air with their dawn chorus; light came down in hazy beams through the trees. Sunup, and all was well. And yet ... something felt wrong. It was in Nana's bones: a gnawing ache, a nagging concern. But for what?
'Mama?' The child in her arms was almost back to sleep.
'Yes?'
'My ... my daddy ...' he said. And that was something he'd never said before.