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I had to escape it. Up. Up onto the fifth floor, where there would be no terrible book to make my sinews tear themselves like so much paper.
Chrysanthemums Are Tinged Yellow
I dream that I begin to seduce the city. I touch its walls lightly, with a fingertip. I brush my lips over the ramparts. I am better now, I know how to make the fire last. I know how to take my pleasure from a city.
Before the Gate a dream-battle is raging. Armor has fallen in the dirt made mud by the glut of black blood, bodies are piled up to be burned. Two men are slashing at each other, their faces turned into masks of beasts, theatre-clay with fleshy ribbons. The rest of the army looks on, waiting on the outcome. The only sounds are the cheap, hollow ring of swords, the dull thud of blows landing on leather-wrapped shields, and the hush of my body moving over the bricks of the city.
My nipples dip into the fountains and they are dried, my hair falls over a siege tower and it crashes to the frothing earth. I laugh and laugh. What they battle over is already mine. I have claimed it.
And on the great carved gate is written:
This is the Book of Dreams.
The Wolf Sacrifices the Beasts
The fifth floor was perfect. I simply climbed up a ladder which had not a single rung broken, and stood in the center of a room with no cracks in the floor, no pockmarks on the walls—even the paintings were untouched. They showed strange and terrible things—a beast sitting atop a low wall, half lion and half eagle, with the face of a woman. A woman tied to the earth with a green-walled palace built in her mouth. A woman standing in a river much vaster than my little creek, with the severed organs of some nameless man draped over her body. A woman whose skin flamed red, sighing onto a city which caught flame from her breath.
And in the corner stood a small Fox, beautifully auburn and cream-furred, with pert ears and a gentle snout, sitting on her haunches with an expression on her face which in the world of foxes must have passed for a smile.
“Why did you not open the book?” she asked softly, in a cultured, harmonious voice which rustled through the room like a veil blown from the shoulders of some pretty child.
“I did not want to disturb it,” I gulped, suddenly ashamed at my cowardice.
“If I brought it here now, would you change your mind?”
I considered it, thought back on the dark oils of its cover. “No. I would rather you tell me lessons. I would rather Gate spoke to me under the stars.”
“But there are no lessons in it. Only a story.”
“My story?” I whispered.
“In a way. It is the story of your dream-women. In it are written their names.”
The Fox scratched at her cupped red ear. “They have no names. Only the hermit-Ayako has a name,” I protested.
“It is only that you do not know their names. But if you do not open the book, you will not finish the dreams, you will not reach the sea. Do you not recall what the Sphinx said? All women are one woman. If you do not seek out the shells they leave behind, you will not shed your own.” The Fox trotted over and stood before me.
“Who are you? Why are you here at the top of my tower?” I rasped, my voice dry as rice in the sun.
“I have many names, as you do. This is my pagoda, I have always been here. I am the Stone, too. Once it bore my face. I am Mercy, I am Compassion. I am the flowing water that carries you. You cannot step into me twice, and yet, each of your footsteps drags four behind them. I am nothing more than a door through which you will pass. I am here to show you the End.”
Foliage Turns Yellow And Falls
Outside the dream-pagoda, leaves drifted down with thoughtless grace, green, gold, brown. The air had sharpened, swallows sang down the sun.
“Is this the dream of the Fox? Or the dream of the Fifth Floor?” I asked.
“In all probability. I have no rev
elations for you, only the peace that comes with understanding. You did not strive to reach the top of the pagoda—you fled to the pinnacle without thought of ascension. Because you did not seek it, it is yours. You dive into the water and become a clam, a pheasant, a book. This is about metamorphosis—this is about solitude. Look how you have built your temple! Look how high and bright the spires!” The Fox laughed, a deep sound in her throat like skin being stretched over a drum. “You must listen to the dream of the Sphinx. She tells the truth—she cannot do otherwise. Her body carries the physiognomy of true things—only a true answer will ease her hunger. Thus, she is emptiness. Not the expanse of pure emptiness in which wisdom grows, but the gnawing absence of knowledge, that which burns.”
“But are all these women me?” I begged, confused.
“All women are one woman. You are the I-that-is. They are the I-that-is-possible. Open the book, and follow the voice-threads where they lead. Out of the black silk harvest they came, and they are yours. You have a responsibility to them. The multiplied “I” can not be reduced back into itself until all its light-paths have been followed. The Sphinx would say this has already happened. If it has, it should not be difficult for you.”
And the book lay between us, bulging and dark, promising. The Fox retained her beatific face; I opened the cover with a careful hand and read these things:
Insects Tuck Themselves Away
