The Devil's Shadow | The Empty World Sequence

Three

Alexandria circa 22 AD, when the dreams came.

Whether the story was all true or not Daniel did not know. But he was sure Paris in some way represented Chris. When he imagined Paris walking through the streets of Rome or Alexandria, or making love to Star or Ariella, or holding the baby, Athen, it was always Chris he saw. And certain clues, like the large, gold ankh Chris now wore hanging at his chest, made Daniel think that he wanted Daniel to believe this.

"He started having these dreams," Chris said, and it sounded as if he had actually had these dreams, and they had disturbed him. Yes, a life with dreams. He hadn't said hope, but he had said dreams.

They had been abstract dreams; they always left Paris with the feeling that he and his wife were not alone in the room. In his dreams people flew. He saw a pale woman with long gold hair, as Ariella was, though it was not her, and the woman held some kind of glass vial, and in the other hand a sort of vial ending in a hollow needle: test-tube and syringe, up above a table where a small, dark, woman almost half-animal lay. The fair woman pushed the syringe up into the small woman's womb, and then she looked up and smiled.

In the dreams there is a jungle and a hidden cave that leads to a dark place under the world. And in the underworld people become pale and light of eye, sometimes blind, groping at walls and working with shovels and axes digging, always digging, trying to get out. They look like dead souls, these underdwellers.

Some of the smart ones find their way to the jungle and sleep there. A strange man comes, like the woman before him he is pale and fair-skinned. And he is so tall compared to the people. He leans against a tree smiling, looks at the people, laughs and tells them secrets. And the woman comes, the one with gold hair, in a red robe, she sticks a needle into the arms of these two people.

Pain and blood, always the most abstract part of the dreams, and if Paris woke during this part he would be gasping for air and very hot.

Someone else comes, another of the strange tall people. This one takes the people out of the jungle, away from the strange cave. And then they are in a city. But it doesn't look like any city Paris had ever seen. Sometimes he tried explaining the dreams to Ariella. He didn't know how he could ever imagine a city like that. One house on top of each other all rectangular, getting smaller and smaller as you went up. And some were very high, you couldn't tell if the building stopped or if the top was so far up in the sky that you couldn't see it any more.

The man and woman, the people of the dreams, have children, two sons. One son murders the other. He looks down at the blood on the ground then looks up into the sky and opens his arms wide. He smiles. He is making an offering of his brother.

A pair of black eyes.

And the murderer is exiled, travels east, marrying with the people kept there. And always east their tribe travels, until going eastward will bring the murderer home.

And to the people another son is born, sons to the son, on and on, and some move away to find the people that live in the other places, go and marry with the other people. And the lands where they live change them, as the cave changed the people. They're all different, white and yellow and red and black, and the ones who are in between. And always the tall ones watch.

And one of the tall people rapes a woman of the people, one of the in-between women. And the woman gives birth to a baby girl. And the tall people always come talk to these women. And they listen to the women. The old people of their town keep the child, because they know she is special. They see the tall ones come to her cell and they fear her, fear that the next child will be even more different. And so they choose one among themselves to take her into his home. And the tall one's daughter is alone in the home of her warder. One of the tall ones comes to her, but this one is that female one, the one with gold hair. And she has that hollow needle again. The girl is shaking her head, she says, "No." But the tall one does it anyway.