Here in the Dreamscape

Midnight and I am back in the garden. The silver hoofprints yet again leading onward to a river. The sound of music, of laughter, the smell of wildflowers garlanding the night air.

Two figures coupling by the riverbank. Many nights my dream self stands here watching the act unfold. But instead of the slow and steady movements of love, this time the man is driving himself into her, a hammer pounding a nail into stone, the woman doubled over in front of him like a four-legged animal, the man like an overseer, his hand pulling her long black hair as if riding a horse, yet when the woman cries out at the apex of the moment, her cry is one of pleasure and not of pain.

The two come apart. Together they lie in the grass. I walk right up to them. I want to know. It is only when the woman turns to face me that my heart stops. His arm lying across her naked breasts. The grasslands chirring around them. Even in the moonlight I cannot see his face in the tall grass, just his arm, a long dark scratch running up the skin. The woman grins at me, her teeth dark as if covered with blood. The four streams of the world shatter. I recognize them both, woman and lover, even in this moment of animalism, the woman with a dreamy quality in her eyes, like one who walks through puddles but remains dry, and the man and his forearm inked with words.

Then Saran is gone and the landscape is changed. My twin is walking toward me with a knife in his hand, the tattoo gleaming on his inner arm. I know that he intends to walk past me and out into the night. I cannot see into his mind, his inner eye a blazing field. All the same I know I must stop him. That to do what he is seeking to do can set his being on a dark path for eons.

Bazar is sleeping in the ger where we store food. My brother doesn’t want to go to the monastery. He doesn’t want to be the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness. Here in the dreamscape he is eight years old, yet he looks as he does now, a grown man, his hair in braids. He doesn’t want to be told that he exists on this earth before, that his life is not his own. I pick up my grandfather’s old gun from the corner and race out into the night to stop him.

In the moonlight Mun is standing out in the open grasslands. He does not walk toward the ger where our guest lies sleeping. I know this is only a dream as all those years ago he does indeed turn toward that ger and I do indeed stop him. Here in the dreamscape, I train the gun on him anyway. We are standing in an endless field of grass, the whole world rippling. I feel him lift the burning sheet in his mind only to reveal a second burning sheet. I steady the gun.

I open my eyes just in time to see Saran pick something up off the floor. A bird wafts overhead. Sunlight pours though the ravaged ceiling. Though I am awake, it is as if I am back in the dream. I cannot tell her quickly enough. My mouth won’t work. I watch her curiously handle the thing, which is rusty and cylindrical, wondering where to put it now that she holds it.

On the edge of my vision I see Little Bat rush forward, his shadow like a tree on the floor. Mun is sitting on his sleeping bag, eyes closed, his legs folded in the lotus position. His right hand moves hypnotically through the air as if ringing a bell. At first I don’t realize what I am seeing. My brother is meditating.

The thing in Saran’s hand is old, parts of it jammed in dangerous positions. Her turning it this way and that is enough to loosen the rust, to awaken the object to its true purpose. Then the inevitable happens. The sound somehow both sharp and dull, quick and echoing. In the enclosed space the noise crashes off the walls before floating up into the air. Saran begins to cry.

Mun is still sitting upright on his sleeping bag. Behind him a large hole is blasted in the wall, the hole right where his head would be if he is sleeping. The hole big enough for an animal to climb through. Debris hangs in the air. My twin opens his eyes, wipes loose grit off himself. He remains eerily composed. For the second time in his life a gun is fired at him, and he is once again left unscathed. Today he is not meant to leave this world.

Uncle is sitting in his corner also in the lotus position. He isn’t roused by the blast. Inside each of us there is another world we can access through one-pointed concentration. In that space we are untouchable. Everything is forever all right. Despite the blast, Uncle continues his meditation for another fifteen minutes before he opens his eyes, fully refreshed.