Part 27 (2/2)
”Such what?” Esk asked, daunted by the six-syllable word she had used.
”It was realistic,” she clarified. ”It made me believe I was there even though I knew better.”
”It made me believe you were there, at first,” Esk said.
”And I thank you for your support,” she said. ”I am coming to appreciate the value of friends.h.i.+p.”
”Friendv,” Volney said, nodding in his emulation of human idiom. ”Could we join you there, and oppove the ventaurv?”
”Say, yes!” Esk exclaimed. ”Four are better than one! And Marrow could give them a real start!”
”I appreciate the offer,” Chex said. ”But I wouldn't want to put you into that sort of danger. Perhaps you could not actually be killed, but believe me, you could be hurt; I felt that pain! In any event, I believe this is my personal challenge to surmount; if I should do it with help, it wouldn't count.”
They saw the justice in her position. ”But if you can't fight them, or reason with them, or escape them, what can you do?” Esk asked.
”Reject them,” Marrow said.
Chex's eyes widened. ”I think you're right! I was treating them seriously both times, and so they had power. I gave them that power!”
”Yet you knew they were figments of a dream,” Esk said. ”They still attacked you. I'm not sure that just telling them you reject them will do any good.”
”No, it won't,” she agreed. ”I have to prove it. And, since this is a dream, I think I know how.” She faced the gate. ”Wish me luck.”
”Mountains of it!” Esk said.
”Cavev of it,” Volney agreed.
”Rib cages of it,” Marrow said.
She nerved herself visibly, then strode into the gate. She disappeared against the zombie centaur, and the vision formed.
This time she ran to the field, then braked and whirled. The horde of centaurs charged up, brandis.h.i.+ng their weapons.
”You have no authority here!” she cried. ”This is my dream! I reject you and all you stand for-narrowness, intolerance, violence! That is not my way, and should not be yours.”
They charged on her, weapons flas.h.i.+ng. Oh, no! Esk thought. It wasn't working.
Then Chex spread her wings and leaped into the air. The wings stroked powerfully, the downblast stirring up a cloud of dust and blowing back the manes of the centaurs. She rose above them, slowly, grandly.
She was flying!
The centaurs gaped. This was entirely unexpected!
”I reject your land-bound ways!” Chex cried. ”You have no wings, so you condemn those who do! That is your fundamental failing-sour grapes!”
Now the centaurs began to recover. They lifted their weapons-and Chex accelerated her wing beats and launched up into the sky, quickly pa.s.sing out of range. ”I don't need your approval; I don't fear your condemnation!” she called. ”I have my own life to live! I leave you behind!”
Then she woke. She was back on the floor, panting, flushed with victory, and the dream was gone.
”But in real life, I still can't fly,” she said sadly. ”I recognized that the terms of the dream were different, and that if I had awful liabilities, I also had wonderful abilities. They go together; the extremes are feasible, in the dream. So I drew on the positive, and vanquished the negative. And do you know, it's true! I don't need the centaurs anymore! I'm free of my liability of false desire; I no longer want to be like them or accepted by them. I want to explore my own horizons, which are so much greater than theirs! Their reality is valid, for them; I could not flee them as long as I desired their acceptance, nor oppose them as long as I knew that their dream presentation was merely an exaggeration of their actual way. I could not defeat them on their own turf. But when I invoked my turf, they were helpless!”
She paused, realizing that the others were staring at her. ”What's the matter? Do you disagree?”
Esk found his voice. ”You're through,” he said.
”I-” She looked around. ”Why, I'm on the other side of the barrier!”
”Your victory,” Marrow agreed.
”I came to terms with my worst fear or shame,” she agreed. ”It no longer haunts me. The dream was only the representation of it. The barrier was only another representation. Neither exists for me anymore.” And she walked through the gate without hindrance, turned, and walked through it again. The metal bars had no substance.
Esk stepped up to touch the bars-and his doppelganger matched him, reaching out to meet his hand from the other side. Esk jerked his hand back; that barrier remained real for him!
”The vombie ventaur iv gone,” Volney said. ”But the otherv remain.”
”We must conquer our own bad dreams,” Esk said.
”I vhall tackle mine,” the vole said, and marched into the gate.
The zombie vole met him snout-on. The two merged, and the dream formed. It was of a tunnel whose walls glowed prettily with colored fungus. He entered it by boring through the wall, the magic metal talons on his front feet gouging through the rock as if it were mud.
Another vole was there-no, Esk realized that there were subtle distinctions of form and coloration. It was a female, and not of precisely Volney's species. Her eyes and fur changed color as his did, but she differed too.
”The wiggle princess,” Chex murmured. She had crossed the barrier again and now stood beside him.
Oh. Esk thought of the demoness Metria, and began to understand the nature of the vole's deepest shame Volney came to stand before the wiggle She approached, and they sniffed noses. There was a pleasant smell, as of blooming flowers. It reminded him somehow of Bra Bra.s.sie, and that was funny, because she was made of metal and smelled of polished bra.s.s.
Volney jerked away, and the dream ended. He was back in the pa.s.sage, on the near side of the gate. ”I wav afraid it would be that,” he said.
”You desire the wiggle princess,” Chex said.
”But the trap-”
”Yes, you explained,” the centaur said ”But you avoided her, so you should have no shame in that connection. You did what you had to do, and we are on this quest for the containment spell because of it.”
”Yet I came so clove to failing,” Volney said. ”Because of my un-worthynevv ”
”Your what?” Esk asked. ”You always struck me as a fine figure of a vole.”
”I am not,” Volney said. ”The rejection by her kind that Chekv feared -iv alvo mine.”
”This requires explanation,” Chex said. ”Aren't you on a mission for your folk?”
”I am-but it iv not becauve I am the bevt for it, but becauve I am ekvpendable.”
”Expendable?” Chex asked. ”How could that be?”
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