Read Online Yarrow by Charles DeLint - Free Book Online

morning when she woke, Cat had begun The Moon in a Silver Cup. The words had come flowing effortlessly through her— not Kothlen's tale, exactly, but without his tale, the story she was writing would never have come. As it took shape on the paper, it became not so much Kothlen's telling, nor her own writing, but some magical combination of the two. And as the tale was a dance, so her fingers danced on the keyboard of her IBM, pausing only long enough to take out a page and insert a fresh one, five to six hours a day, seven days a week, until the manuscript stacked beside her typewriter was a half-inch thick, and then… then she stopped dreaming and the dance stumbled to a halt, the magic fled, and—
    Ripping the blank page out of the Selectric, Cat crumpled it into a small ball, flung it at the already filled wastepaper basket, and stomped out of the room. What she was going to do was go for a walk. She might never try to write another word. She might never go into that room again. She might never come back home again.
    Lysistratus hungered once more, the pleasures of the previous night already forgotten. But the thought of faring out into the streets by day, snatching what dreams he could, as much a scavenger as the winos he'd fed from last night, was distasteful. If only the dreams he stole could give him more than sustenance and longevity, if only they could render him immune to death— to a bullet, a knife, or a simple accident. Then he would not have to exercise such caution as he did. He could stride amongst mankind like the superior being he was.
    Instead he had to remain a scavenger— like the jackal that the African rootmen named him when they drummed their magicks and drove him from their veldts and jungles; like the ghost death that the Australian bushmen named him when they drove him away with their ritual shouts; like the lone wolf that the Inuit shaman named him when they used their chants and drum magic to drive him south from their frozen wastes; like the buzzard that the Hopi shaman named him when they raised their ghost winds and drove him north from their deserts.
    The strong dreamers cast him forth because he was no match for them— he didn't have their physical brawn, nor the mystic power to withstand their devil-castings. But the strong dreamers no longer ruled this land— not as they had when he'd first visited it in previous centuries. He had returned because the men of the cities ruled now. They were weak dreamers; that very weakness was what kept them from discovering what he was and casting him forth as their aboriginal cousins had. But it left him with a constant hunger.
    If only they could all be like Cat Midhir. Powerful dreamers, blind to his existence. He wondered if perhaps she could be bred….
    He turned his gaze to a small painting of the Kikladhes that hung on the wall of his living room. The islands were washed by the same Aegean waters that hid Poseidon's palace from the eyes of man. Andros. Myconos. Southern Thera. Though he'd not been born there, he still thought of them as home. Ancient strongholds of dream.
    Coarse-dreaming Turks had driven him out once. He had needed to wait four hundred years for the rebellion that allowed his return, only to be driven out again when the Nazis pounded their hard-heeled boots into their soil. Those arrogant Nordic dreamers had been gone forty years now, but he no longer thought of returning. That time might come, but not until he was stronger. Not until he was no longer a scavenger. Not until he need never be forced into exile again.
    Lysistratus smiled to himself as he slipped on a lightweight tan raincoat and went out into the drizzle, his moment of moody introspection forgotten. Only the small-minded would complain in his situation. Eternity was his, wasn't it? And all of mankind's dreams.
    On a day like this the library would be a good place to visit. The museum. A shopping mall. Anywhere that a weary soul might close his eyes for a dozing