‘Of course I will. Forget about the fact that I can’t sit up and I’ve never thrown anythin’ in my life more lethal than a frisbee. Lady — whoever you are — all of this sounds totally insane. It’s obvious that I’ve been hurt real bad. Maybe it happened for real or maybe I was havin’ some kind of trip. Maybe I was havin’ a nightmare. Maybe I’m still havin’ a nightmare, right now, and I’m beginnin’ to think that maybe I am. But, come on, what’s this arrow-shootin’ shit?’
Springer stayed where she was, leaning over him, so that he could feel her steady breathing on his cheek. In spite of himself, his testiness began to subside. There was something so attractive about her that he wished he had the strength to raise up his head just two or three inches more, and kiss her. Yet the attraction wasn’t so much sexual as spiritual. He suddenly felt that here was a woman who really understood him, all of his ambitions, all of his frustrations, all of his impatience, right down to the very core of his soul. She gave him a feeling of deep relief, as if he had been waiting for this moment of revelation all of his life. As if she had said to him, this is you, Lincoln. This is who you really are. No need for posturing. No need for swagger. This is you.
Springer reached across and picked up a hand mirror from the nightstand. She held it up so that Lincoln could see his own face in it.
‘You can’t stand up yet, so I can’t show you the way you’re going to look when you’re a Night Warrior. Not your whole armor, anyhow, head-to-toe, and all of your weapons. But this will be the face that you wear, when you enter other people’s dreams. This is the face that the enemies of Ashapola will see, and learn to fear.’
Lincoln looked up into the mirror, but all he could see was his usual face, with a crimson bruise over his left eyebrow, and a split in his upper lip.
‘So?’ he asked Springer. ‘What am I supposed to be lookin’ at?’
‘Zebenjo’Yyx, grandson of the great Zebenjo, the Arrow-Storm.’
‘Oh, of course. I can distinctly see the resemblance.’
‘Wait,’ Springer chided him. ‘Have patience.’
‘I need to see a doctor, lady. I need to see a doctor right now.’
‘You’re not hurting, are you?’
‘No. I’m not hurtin’ at all. I almost wish that I was. At least that would mean I could feel somethin’.’
He looked up into the hand mirror again, and when he did so, he said, ‘Shit!’ The face looking back at him was no longer his, but a tan leather mask, intricately decorated with scar patterns and diagonal lines of white paint. It was topped with braided knots of dry red hair, and its mouth was fixed in a ferocious scowl, with what looked like a mixed-up collection of human and animal teeth crammed into it.
He could see his eyes staring out of the mask, and he knew they were his, because they blinked whenever he blinked. But the mask itself was terrifying, like a ju-ju mask. His grandfather Joseph used to have one hanging on his front door, with bulging eyes and a red protruding tongue. He had told Lincoln that he had nailed it up there to scare away any bad spirits, but it had scared Lincoln, too, when he was little, and he had always run past it with his hands covering his eyes.
‘This is a trick, right?’ Lincoln asked Springer. ‘Some kind of optical illusion?’
‘No trick,’ Springer assured him. ‘This is the battle mask that Zebenjo’Yyx wears, whenever he goes to war. And you should see his amazing armor, and the weapons he carries. In fact you will.’
She reached down and picked up a small alligator-skin purse. She opened it up and took out a folded sheet of paper. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘This is the invocation that Night Warriors always have to say before they go to sleep at night. Once you have spoken these words, the spirit of Ashapola will visit you in your dreams and invest you with all of the equipment and protection that you require.’
‘Lady—’ said Lincoln. ‘Do you really expect me to believe any of this?’
‘Do you believe what happened to you at the Griffin House Hotel?’
‘I believe I saw it, for sure. But I don’t necessarily believe that it really happened for real. You can go to the desert, can’t you, and see lakes, but there’s no lakes there at all, only sand. You wouldn’t get your feet wet.’
‘So how did you fall out of a ground-level window and break your spine?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe I just fell awkward. I don’t even want to think about it.’
‘But you have to think about it, Lincoln, because we need you, desperately, and we need you now.’
Lincoln turned his head away and stared at the yellow seabirds on the curtains. ‘I’m goin’ crazy,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost it. I’ve gone nuts. Admit it — tell me that this is a nuthouse.’
‘You’re not crazy, Lincoln, and tonight you’ll find that out for yourself. But you have to promise me that you’ll repeat the invocation. Look — I’m tucking it under the pillow, right here.’
‘What does it say?’
Springer unfolded it. ‘“Now, when the face of the world is hidden in darkness, let us be conveyed to the place of our meeting, armed and armored; and let us be nourished by the power that is dedicated to the cleaving of darkness, the settling of all black matters, and the dissipation of all evil. So be it.”’
‘Read it again,’ Lincoln asked her.
Springer read the words again. After she had finished, Lincoln said, ‘These Night Warriors — what exactly are they?’
‘They were created by Ashapola to protect us in our dreams. Their original Sanskrit name means “Army of Dreams”, although the Greeks and the Romans called them “The Legions of Sleep”.’
‘Go on.’
‘Ashapola created the first human so that she could dream how the world of humans was eventually going to turn out, and he could copy her dreams and make them come alive. Some of her dreams were beautiful beyond any description, but others were violent and chaotic. So the second human that Ashapola created was capable of becoming a Night Warrior, to make sure that the first human came to no harm when she was asleep. And that was how the Night Warriors’ bloodline began.’
‘Come on… you’re tellin’ me that Adam wasn’t Adam at all, but some woman?’
‘Eve, that’s right. Why do you think she was called “Eve”? In Hebrew, her name means “life” or “breathing”. But she was created to imagine the world in her sleep, every night when evening fell.’
‘A woman. I can’t believe it. No wonder the world is in such a goddamned mess.’
At that moment, the curtain around the bed was sharply drawn back, and a doctor and a nurse appeared. The doctor was Indian, with a long face and huge black-rimmed spectacles and a tiny black moustache, while the nurse was plump and red-haired and kept smiling and raising her eyebrows as if she had just been told a hilarious off-color joke and was bursting to share it with them.
‘I am very sorry to be interrupting your visit,’ the doctor told Springer. ‘Please — if you can come back in maybe ten minutes?’
‘I have to go now anyhow,’ said Springer. She leaned over again and kissed Lincoln on the cheek. ‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘You won’t forget, will you? We really need you. The others will be waiting for you. So will I.’
‘Others?’
‘At least six more, maybe seven.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think I can handle any more nightmares.’
Springer kissed him again. ‘Please,’ she breathed. ‘Just be there. Please.’
When she had left the room, the doctor came up to Lincoln’s bedside and leafed through his notes.