Weaveworld

III

NO LULLABIES

1

al had been sleeping alone when he had the first of the nightmares.

It began on Venus Mountain; he was wandering there, his legs ready to give out beneath him. But with that horrid foreknowledge of disaster that dreams grant he knew it would not be wise to close his eyes and sleep. Instead he stood on the warm ground while forms that were lit as if by a sun that had already set behind the mountain moved around him. A man was dancing nearby, his skirts like living tissue; a girl flew over, trailing the scent of her sex; there were lovers in the long grass, coupling. One of them cried out, whether in pleasure or alarm he wasn’t certain, and the next moment he was running over the mountainside, and there was something coming after him, something vast and remorseless.

He shouted as he ran, to alert the lovers and the bird-girl and the dancer to the horror that had come for them all, but his voice was pitifully thin – the voice of a mouse – and the next moment the grass around him began to smoulder. Before his eyes the coupling bodies now burst into flames; an instant later the girl fell out of the sky, her body consumed by the same venomous fire. Again, he shouted, in terror this time, trying to leap over the flames as they advanced across the ground in his direction. But he wasn’t agile enough. His heels caught fire, and he felt the heat creep up the back of his legs as he ran.

Howling now, he found an extra burst of speed, and suddenly Venus Mountain was gone, and he was running barefoot down streets he’d known since childhood. It was night, but the lamps along the street had been smashed, and the paving stones torn up beneath his feet made the going treacherous.

Still the pursuer came after him, sniffing his carbonized heels.

Knowing it would outpace him given time, he looked for some place of sanctuary as he ran, but the doors of the houses – even those of childhood friends – were nailed shut, the windows boarded up.

There was no help to be had here. All he could do was keep running, in the vain hope that the monster would be distracted by more tempting quarry.

An alleyway caught his eye; he ducked down it. Made a turn, made another turn. Ahead, a brick wall, and in it, a door, through which he hurled himself. Only then did he realize where this inevitable route had taken him.

He knew the yard at once, though the wall had grown twice as high since he’d last been here, and the gate through which he’d stepped a moment ago had sealed itself up. It was the yard behind Mimi Laschenski’s house. Once, in another life, he’d stood on that wall, and toppled, and fallen, finally, into paradise.

But there was no carpet in the yard now, nor any presence, bird or man, to offer their consolation. Just him, and the four shadowy corners of the yard, and the sound of his pursuer approaching the hiding place.

He took refuge in one of the corners and crouched down. Though the heels beneath his buttocks had been extinguished, his panic had not; he felt sick with fear.

The monster approached. He smelt the heat off its hide. It wasn’t the heat of life – not sweat or breath – but a dry, dead fire; ancient, merciless; an oven in which all the good of the world might be cremated. And it was close. Just beyond the wall.

He held his breath. There was a crippling ache in his bladder. He put his hands between his legs, cupping his prick and balls, shaking with terror. Make it go away, he silently pleaded to the darkness: make it leave me alone and I’ll be good as gold forever: I swear I will.

Though he could scarcely believe his luck, his appeal was heard, for the presence on the other side of the wall gave up its pursuit and retreated. His spirits lifted a little, but he kept his cramped position until his dream-sense told him that the enemy had withdrawn entirely. Only then did he dare stand up again, his joints cracking.

The pressure in his bladder would no longer be denied. Turning to the wall, he unzipped himself. The brick was hot from the presence of the creature, and his piss hissed against it.

In mid-flow, the sun came out, suddenly, flooding the yard. No, it wasn’t the sun. It was his pursuer, rising over the wall, its head hotter than a hundred noons, its oven-maw open wide.

He could not help but look into its face, though it would surely blind him. He saw enough eyes for a nation, pressed side by side, set on great wheels, their nerves drawn out like bright threads and knotted in the belly of the creature. There was more, much more, but he only glimpsed it before the heat set him alight from head to toe-nail.

He shrieked.

And with the cry, the yard disappeared, and he was travelling again on Venus Mountain, only this time the landscape beneath him was not earth and rock, but flesh and bone. It was his own body he was flying over, his substance become a world, and it was burning up, burning to extinction. His shriek was the land’s shriek, and it rose and rose as he and it were utterly consumed.

Too much!

He woke suddenly to find himself curled up in the middle of the bed, a knot of dreamt agony. He was sweating so much surely the fire would have been extinguished.

But no. It burned on in his mind’s eye for minutes afterwards, still bright.