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For Lorax
Sleep has been named by poets that most mighty and yet most gentle presence, a friend of both gods and men and one whose dominion extends over all who need rest, one whose gift to all is the comfort of repose. Beautiful words are these, and often they are true. But the friendship of Sleep is not a thing assured as any whose slumber has been haunted and restless can most readily attest. Such times as these Sleep indeed is mighty, but hardly is she gentle. And so it is this night as the shaman’s eyes grow heavy at her touch that Sleep arrives by quiet steps bearing gifts that have nothing of comfort about them .......
“Behold! I come in a vision of the night,” there is a painful and intense clarity about these words which erupt with sudden force from the stillness of an incipient dream. So great is the impact of the words upon the sleeping shaman that his eyes open fully. He sleeps and yet his open eyes fill with sight, the sight of shapes and faces distinct and yet not identifiable. “I come to you not as I come to these others,” the words lose nothing of their sharp and painful clarity as the speaking continues, “for you must find them, and you are to guide them to the place where I will speak with them.” Their features are not clear, but their bearing is the bearing of the dream-haunted, a bearing not at all unlike his own these last long weeks of restless slumber.
The shaman’s eyes fall closed once more and sight is replaced by darkness. Within the darkness there are only words, words that cannot be seen but are heard and felt as their ringing clarity fills the darkness with sound. “Go!” No directions are given, only a command. No clarity is provided save the stark and clear order to move expressed in a single absolute syllable.
It is daybreak when the shaman opens his eyes. How long the ringing of that single word sounded through the darkness of his dreaming he cannot say. He can say only that his eyes opened in the direction travelers move who seek out the great port city and that even as his eyes filled with sight he still heard within him the ringing of that single word, “Go!”
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