Tales and Imaginings by Tim Robinson Read Free Book Online Page B

die upon this spot ifI fail to answer this skull’s questions.’ The skull then loosed its hold on his ear and fell back among the leaves.
    ‘There are a few withered scraps of learning still remaining inside me‚’ it said. ‘Take them, study them – they may be of use to you – find out where I could have gathered such unheard-of stuff, come back and tell me what you discover.’
    So bent down, crooked his finger into an eyesocket, and pulled out a muddle of spiderweb. He squeezed it into a pellet before the wind could tear at it, and stuck it into the middle of his topknot. Then he kicked a few leaves to cover the skull, and marched on.
    He marched, with a stride he felt already becoming legendary, through a land in which legends lay as thick as autumn leaves, until a long time later he came to the Imperial City, or at least to the Examination Halls which ring it about and hide its splendid mysteries from those who have not yet shown themselves worthy. After a hungry night in the forest fringe he presented himself, one of a vast number, before a door which was flung open at sunrise to admit all comers to the day’s examination. After being stripped, searched, and scrubbed, So, like the others, was led to his cell and locked in. There awaited him a bowl of drinking-water, an oil-lamp , the writing implements, and the Question, sealed in a hollow bamboo rod. Without pausing even to pray, he pulled the wisp of silk from the rod, and read on it the words, ‘What day of the week isit in your dreams?’
    Long after noon So was still pacing his cell wondering why in all his many remembered dreams he had never looked at a calendar; he cursed himself for neglecting such a simple preparation for the days of greatness that had dawned in so many of those dreams. He beat his forehead against the wall in despair; a little object fell at hisfeet. The skull’s wisdom! He blew upon the close knot, and under his breath it unfolded into leaves and scarves and wings as delicate as the smell of dew, covering every surface in the cell with a clinging web of words. ‘… No silk supports the ink of the dream, no stone bears its chisel-marks, nor can one cast bronze from its mould; unlike life, and even unlike memory, the dream is nothing but what is attended to, for it is the creation of that attention. Even a painting of a dream cannot dream of a dream, as a simple question and its answer show: does one dream in colours? Only if one dreams of colours. In the contrary case the question does not arise. Similarly the dream day is not necessarily one in a sequence of days; only by dreaming of hope or memory can one be sure that that day is not alone in all the endless darkness of time. But here again either alternative can only be awakened by a question, and if the dream does not ask, the alternatives sleep together in peace
    So transcribed as fast as he could. The footsteps of the guard who would collect the answers could be heard in the distance; the trumpets of sunset sounded from the highest towers. He flung down his pen and lit a taper at the oil-lamp to seal his answer into the bamboo tube. In his haste – the cell door was being unlocked – he splashed a drop of molten wax onto the network of script lapped about him, which disappeared in a flick of flame as the door swung open.
    *
    Pillowed upon his unease at having destroyed his clue to the history of the restless bone, So lay peering at the stars from under a broad leaf in the thicket that had been his bedroom the night before. At midnight his eyes still showed, anxious as candleflames among the restless branches; then the bells of a procession were heard, torches could be seen flaring in the arched corridors of the forest, a widepath was being beaten across the bushes, a handsome litter arrived and its aged occupant was handed to the carpet hastily flung to receive his feet. It was the venerable Examiner, come to find So according to the directions the youth had penned where