CHAPTER VIII

The dreamer ran from the hut, the crone's laughter ringing in his ears. He ran for a long time, and then stopped, panting, to wonder at his fear. A harmless looking old woman, sitting by herself in a cottage in the woods. There was nothing horrible or hideous about her. Some of the things in her house seemed a bit... odd, but his friend had kept many strange things in her room as well. And while some people fear the old, because they are a reminder of their own mortality, it was not so with our dreamer, and in fact, he had often thought his friend was as beautiful in those moments when she appeared very old as in those moments when she appeared very young. In truth, there was no explaining it.

He turned away from his own thoughts to survey the land around him. He was still standing on the road without end, but now he could see that this was the end of it. The land around him was torn and rent in apocalyptic desolation, with huge jagged rocks rising up from the earth, or cast about and broken apart, great fissures and smoking craters were everywhere, but the road was undamaged, and no debris lay upon it. The sky was a seething mass of swirling chaos, it seemed to be slowly wearing away the earth. Savage winds ripped and roared in every direction, the noise of it was almost deafening, and yet somehow, far away, it almost seemed he could hear the noise of flutes. And then, there rose up on the horizon the demon that gnaws at the ends of time and space, an abominable black shape that towered before the swirling sky.

“Well!” Said the Daemon. “What have we here? A visitor? Why, I can’t remember the last time we had one of those! What has he come for? Could it be, perhaps, this?!”

And the Daemon set a spindle of silver thread right in front of the dreamer, so that if he just took one step forward, he would be able to grab it.

“Well, take it then, that’s what you came for! Oh, you can’t? Too terrified? Run away then! Oh, you can’t do that either, can you? Because you can’t give up hope! And between fear and hope, you’re pinned, like a butterfly on a piece of paper! Hmm… now that reminds me of a story I heard once….

Long ago, humans were happy and free. But the gods became jealous of them, and their happiness, saying, “Why should these wretched creatures be happy when we ourselves are not? We shall punish them, and in such a way as that the humans think it is their own fault, and will blame themselves, but worship, us, the source of their misery!” And so the gods made a box, and put in it every evil and misfortune they should find, and gave it to the humans, warning them never to open it, and telling them exactly what was in it, and warning them that if they opened it, it would bring them unending suffering. But the humans, being innocent, had no idea what suffering was, and so being curious, they opened the box, and fear, and death and pain, and all the rest spilled out before they closed it, only one thing was left in the box.

The next day, the oldest and wisest of the gods descended to the earth, and went to the humans and, said;

“Well, you can’t say we didn’t warn you about the box! But you shut it again? You should open it, for perhaps some good may be in there at the very bottom.”

And so they opened the box, and the last and most terrible of all the curses of the gods was unleashed: hope.

“Why look at you. If you could simply give up your hope, you could simply die as the animals do, but because of your hope, you will stay here and suffer for as long as I wish!”

And the Daemon laughed, and the ground shook with his laughter, and the sound of it, and the wind, seemed to rip his very soul from his body and scatter it upon the winds of time.

He lived life after life, and in each he fought, and strove, and each time, when victory was almost in his grasp, he was suddenly defeated, and heard again the bitter mocking laughter. Until, as he sat upon the back of a dire wolf, preparing to storm the great citadel of his enemies, and yet knowing somehow that again he would hear the mocking laughter of the demon, he heard instead the cawing of a raven, and was suddenly returned to his body.

“You!” Said the Daemon. “I know who you serve! Well fly back to your mistress and tell her, that though she may rule her land, that all lands come to an end, and all ends come to me!

But the dreamer, remembering the white queen and her mockery, could not bear that the raven should fly back and report how he had failed. He had to go on, somehow, and show her he cared enough to brave even this. And so he banished every thought and feeling but the memory of the white queen’s laughter hoping that this hatred would give him the strength to go on. But still his feet would not remove, and he remembered what the girl had said, that hate was not strong enough to overcome fear, and so he banished it as well, and beyond, hope, hate and fear, there was only will, and he steeped forward, grabbed the spindle of thread, and ran away.

The Daemon raised his mighty paw into the air, and it seemed the dreamer would never be able to escape, when the crones hut jumped into the road, and the crone grabbed him and pulled him inside.

The hut jumped into the air and ripped through the fabric of space and time, vanishing a moment before the demon's hand came crashing down. The demon roared and raged and tore at the ground, but soon forgot, and resumed his mindless gnawing.