Fourth Day

 

 

Magenta veils of light sheathe the peaks as sunset creeps across the face of the land. The shallow wash where I sit has turned still and quiet. The only sound comes from a piping piñon jay in the pines far below me.

I had a vision today.

It came upon me while my eyes were wide open. At first, I saw the images as if at a great distance. I squinted, trying to make them out. Faint voices punctured the quiet. Suddenly, the images sped toward me, growing larger, opening like a maw, until that alien world consumed the desert.

I found myself wading through a lake of blood. The Wolf Thlatsina waded beside me, his tall moccasins sending out bobbing silver rings. He had a wolf’s head with pricked ears and a long black muzzle. His human body had been painted with white clay.

In front of us, a strange creature appeared, dark and feathered, chasing sparkles of morning sunlight reflecting from the red lake. She ate each one she caught, gobbled it down, and cried out in a voice that sounded very much like a woman’s scream. Abruptly, she stopped chasing the sunlight and turned on us. Mouth gaping, she shrieked, spread her feathered wings, and flew at the thlatsina.

“Help me!” the thlatsina cried.

I shouted for her to go away, then dove for her legs, bringing her down. She struggled. I had to fight to keep her down until she drowned. But as her blood flowed out into the lake, a new creature took shape. Beautiful and golden, a human boy rose and floated on top of the blood.

The sea grew violent. Waves rolled in, crashing over us, hot and steamy, like molten rock. The lake grew deeper and deeper until it devoured the land and the people and nibbled at the belly of the sky.

The thlatsina drowned.

I saw order disintegrate into chaos. Nothing remained. Nothing, except blood for as far as I could see.

When the vision faded, I gazed wide-eyed across the sunny vista. Finches twittered as they winged through the cloud-strewn heavens.

I had a curious sensation that I had not been seeing through my own eyes—but someone else’s. A man. Powerful. Filled with despair.

But I do not know what the vision means.

Since I turned six summers, I have plagued every Trader with questions, and I have discovered that Dreamers everywhere speak of an End of time.

Did I see it?

Was that my own death?

… Or my own birth?

In the Dream, they seemed the same.

I blink wearily at the expanse of land and sky. Twilight has turned the forested peaks purple, and shadows stretch long and dark across the rumpled folds of mountains. Layer upon layer. Ever more distant.

Evening is coming fast.

Against the blackness, one image lingers: a golden boy, tiny fists waving, melting to a shriek.

I am suddenly afraid of the dark.

Terribly afraid.