The Dream Master

"Where?" she said. "Why, "Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,' of course."

A quail whistled then and crossed their path, the line of its young following as though pulled along on a string.

"Always," she said, "have I wondered what it was all about."

The passed along the darkening path, betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot.

"... So many things," she said, "like a Sears and Roe­buck catalog of the senses. Feed me another line."

'"Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve,' " said Render, raising his hand,

She ducked her head, before its swoop, and the dark form vanished within the wood.

" 'Where the great gold-bug drops through the dark,' " she replied.

... And it glittered like a 24-karat meteorite and fell to the path at his feet. It lay there for a moment like a sun-colored scarab, then crawled off through the grasses at the side of the trail.

"You remember now," he said.

"I remember now," she told him.

The Seventh-month eve was cool, and pale stars began in the heavens. He pointed out constellations as they walked. A half-moon tipped above the rim of the world, and another bat crossed it. An owl hooted in the distance. Cricket-talk emerged from the undergrowth. A persistent end-of-day glow still filled the world.

"We have come far," she said.

"How far?" he asked.

"To 'where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,'" she stated.

"Aye," he said, and he put forth his hand and leaned against the giant tree they had come upon. Rushing forth from among its roots was the spring which fed the stream they had followed earlier. It sounded, like a chain of small bells echoing off into the distance, as it sprang into the air and fell again upon itself and flowed away from them. It wound among the trees, digging into the ground, curling and cutting its way to the sea.

She waded out into the water. It arced over, it foamed about her. It rained down upon her and ran along her back and neck and breasts and arms and legs, returning.

"Come on in, the magic brook is fine," she said.

But Render shook his head and waited.

She emerged, shook herself, was dry.

"Ice and rainbows," she remarked.

"Yes," said Render, "and I forget much of what comes next."

"So do I, but I remember that a little later on 'the mock­ing-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps.'

And Render winced as he listened to the mocking-bird.

"That was not my mocking-bird," he stated.

She laughed.

"What difference? His turn was coming up soon, anyhow."

He shook his head and turned away. She was back at his side again.

"I'm sorry. I'll be more careful."

"Very good."

He walked on across the country.

"I forget the next part."

"So do I."

They left the stream far behind them.

They walked through the bending grass, across flat, borderless plains; and all but the peak of the sun's crown vanished over the horizon.

Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie...

"Did you say something?" she asked.

"No. But I remember again. This is the place 'where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near.'"

A dark mass off to their left gradually took on a more dis­tinct form, and as they watched they could make out the shapes of the great bison of the American plains. Apart from rodeos, cattle shows, and the backs of old nickels, the beasts stood now, individual and dark and smelling of the earth, slow, and huge, and hairy, all together they stood, horned heads lowered, great backs swaying, the sign of Tau­rus, the inexorable fecundity of spring, fading with the twi­light into the passed and the past—where the humming-bird shimmers, perhaps.

They crossed the great plain, and the moon was now above them. They came at last to the opposite end of the land, where there were high lakes and another brook, ponds, and another sea. They passed emptied farms and gardens and made their way along the path of the waters.

'Where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding,' " she said, seeing her first swan in the moonlight drift over the lake.

" 'Where the laughing gull scoots by the shore,' " he answered, " 'where she laughs her near-human laugh."

And across the night there was laughter, but it was like that of neither laughing-gull nor human, for Render had never heard a laughing gull. The chuckling sounds he had shaped from raw emotion chilled the evening around him.

He made the evening come warm again. He lightened the

darkness, tinted it with silver. The laughter dwindled and died. A gull-shape departed in the direction of the ocean, dark and silver, dark and silver, turning.

"That," he a

"It is rich, it is very rich," said Render. "Too rich, per­haps."

They passed through groves of lemons and oranges, under fir trees, and the places where the heron fed, and the katy­did sang on the walnut tree above the well, and the par­tridges slept in a ring on the ground, heads out.

"Next time, will you name me all the animals?" she asked. "Yes."

She turned up a little path to a farmhouse, opened the front door, and entered. Render followed her, smiling. Blackness.

Solid, total—black as only the black of absolute empti­ness can be.

There was nothing at all inside the farmhouse. "What is the matter?" she asked him, from somewhere. "Unauthorized excursion into the scenery," said Render. "I was about to ring down the curtain and you decided the show should continue. Therefore, I kept myself from providing you with any additional props this time."

"I can't always control it," she said. "I'm sorry. Let us go back now. I've mastered the impulse."

"No, let's go ahead," said Render. "Lights!"

They stood on a high hilltop, and the bats that flitted

past the partial moon were metallic. The evening was chill

and a harsh croaking sound arose from a junkpile. The trees

were metal posts with the limbs riveted into place. The grass

was green plastic underfoot. A gigantic, empty highway swept past the foot of the hill.

"Where—are we?" she asked.

"You've had your Song of Myself," he said, "with all the extra narcissism you could stuff in. Nothing wrong with that in this place—up to a point. But you've pushed it a little too far. Now I feel a certain balancing has become neces­sary. I can't afford to play games each session."

"What are you going to do?"

"The Song of 'Not Me? " he stated, clapping his hands. "Let us walk."

... Where the Dust Bowl cries for water, said a voice, somewhere—and they walked, coughing,

... Where the waste-polluted river knows no living thing, said the voice, and the scum is the color of rust.

They walked beside the stinking river, and she held her nose but it did not stop the smelling.

... Where the forest is laid to waste and the landscape is Limbo.

They walked among the stumps, stepping on shredded branches; and the dry leaves crackled underfoot. Overhead, the face of the leering moon was scarred, and it hung by a thin strand from the black ceiling.

They walked like giants among wooden plateaus. The earth was cracked beneath the leaves.