𒀭𒐕 - The Dream Before the Dream
My story begins in a small village, in the midst of a forest among the mountains. We were not many — our number did not reach 60 people. I knew everyone by name and considered them my family.
One night, I awoke drenched in sweat, after a terrifying dream in which strangers, their faces covered with red, white, and black markings, ran between our houses, brandishing their primitive weapons in our direction. I saw a kinsman fall when the stone at the tip of one of the invaders’ branches struck him full in the head, never to rise again.
I remember running through the chaos toward my home, searching for my siblings. My parents had left earlier to retrieve the fish from the traps set in the river, and, by the shadows the trees cast, they would not return for several more hours.
As I ran, I tried to understand what was happening. My mind was processing, for the first time, the terrifying experience of violence. In our village, we were one great family; we had never had contact with people of other origins — as far as we knew, we might have been the only human beings on the planet. But we were not.
We had no weapons; we were a peaceful people. We used small traps to catch prey, and we knew how to find food in the forest to supplement our diet. There had never been any need to fashion tools for taking the life of an animal larger than a hen.
As I ran, I thought of ways to protect my siblings. I carried a small obsidian knife used for cleaning fish, and I followed the direction from which I believed I had heard my sister’s screams.
I crossed to the other side of the village and found my sister fallen at the foot of a tree. She had a gash on her forehead, and blood covered half her face as she wept, calling for help. Two of the strangers were walking toward her — one carried a length of wood with stones bound on each side; the other held a long pole with a tip sharpened and hardened by fire.
I found a stone at my feet and, with all the strength I could muster, hurled it at the head of the man carrying the spear. He fell with a dull thud to the ground. The man accompanying him turned around, trying to understand what had happened. Seeing that I was armed with nothing but a small knife, he made to charge at me, raising his weapon above his head to bring the full weight of those stones down upon me.
Before he could take his first step, however, my sister managed to rise, threw herself against his legs, and bit into his calf with all her strength. Blood began to run down the man’s foot, and he immediately changed his target — rather than striking in my direction, he aimed at my sister’s head.
My survival instinct tried to speak louder, giving me no time to accept what had just happened — it urged me to flee, to carry my body as far from that place as possible, as quickly as possible. But it was too late. As I turned to run, I found one of the intruders already swinging with full force, weapon in hand, toward my head. Everything went dark. When I came back, I remember seeing the bone — white, sharp, jagged — at the place where it had broken, where only seconds before my arm and hand had been whole. An intense pain. I began to grow dizzy; the world spun; a loud ringing filled my ears — and then I awoke.
My heart was racing; I could still feel it pounding in my chest, so hard it nearly hurt. But my hand was in its place, and my head did not ache. The sweat had plastered my hair to my face and soaked the bed, making me feel the night’s cold all the more. It took a long while to calm myself and return to sleep — the day was already nearly breaking.
In my family, little was said about dreams. Not everyone could remember theirs once the day had dawned. Most often, dreams were about finding a mushroom larger than any previously found, or about traps so full of fish they seemed about to burst.
They rarely made sense; however, from time to time one dreamed of new things. It was told that it was in this way that one of our ancestors devised the first fish trap — the very same we used in those times. It was said that those who remembered their dreams were children of the Moon and of the Sky.
Even with some children of the Moon and the Sky among us, I had never heard of dreams like the one I had. Violence was not a normal thing in our village. In truth, violence did not exist. From the moment I was born there until the day of that dream, I had neither witnessed nor heard any account that could have planted those terrifying images in my subconscious.
That dream left a terrible feeling in its wake. Even after waking a second time, with the Sun already in the sky, that anguish persisted in my chest. It passed only when I found my sister laughing, running toward home with her bag full of fish for breakfast — then the entire memory of the dream vanished completely, the pain in my chest subsided, and all worry left me.
Four weeks later I had exactly the same dream. This time, upon waking in the dead of night, frightened and distressed, I saw a light coming through the door of my room from my sister’s room, where grandmother and the other village elders had gathered. Grandmother had been summoned after half the village was awakened by screams coming from our house. She recounted to our grandmother the dream she had had — the cause of all that commotion — withholding nothing, and at the end of that account, the village leaders were also called. The time had come for a story, an ancient dream, to be remembered.
One of our ancestors had had a dream like this, long ago. Our family had exiled itself to that mountainous region on account of it. In the dream, she was pursued by a beast. She ran until she found herself before a river with a powerful current — she was completely without escape; she could not cross a river like that, yet if she did not try, the beast would devour her. It was then that she spotted a fallen tree trunk lying across the river, and with a measure of balance and luck, she might reach the other bank. In the attempt to cross, the trunk gave way, and she fell into the rushing river. That was where the dream ended.
Upon recounting her dream to her family, it was decided that they would abandon that region, putting distance between themselves and the great river and the areas inhabited by predators. And so, from that time on, our ancestors settled in the place where we lived, believing they had moved far enough away to prevent that dream from ever coming to pass.
Not many stories remained of the lives those ancestors had lived, or of where they had come from — nearly everything had been forgotten. Nevertheless, the story of that woman’s dream continued to be told; not openly, but always there was at least one person in the village who knew it, and whenever the time came, it was passed on.
It had been foretold that, in the future, another child would have such a dream, and when that happened, the warning must not be ignored. For, just as we had managed to avert tragedy in the past, we might avert it in the future.
She also taught us that the imagination holds an immense power to influence our dreams, and that the experience of reality is fundamental to its construction. With this in mind, the better our reality, the better our imagination would be and, consequently, our dreams. Our culture and community had been designed to prevent children from having bad dreams, so that it would be possible to respond to the premonitory dream that would come at some point. She had told them there would be no time to waste when the moment arrived: the swifter their response, the greater the chances of escaping the imminent danger.
Dawn would break soon; grandmother and the elders decided that as soon as it was possible to see the path, one group would retrieve the traps while the others would be responsible for gathering our most essential belongings. The news and the plan were shared with the rest of the village: we would set out toward the east, the goal being to cross the mountains. Beyond them lay a great river and a marshy region with an elevated point offering an excellent view of the surrounding land, allowing the behavior of animals to be observed in safety. The soil was fertile, easy to work, and perhaps some seedlings might take root.
It was a good plan. It might have worked, had the village been informed when the premonitory dream first appeared.
My parents went to retrieve the traps; my sister headed to the kitchen to pack what we would need to carry on the journey. I ran to the temple to gather the few things that were irreplaceable. But before I could enter, I heard the screams coming from the south. I was confronted with the worst: my nightmare was becoming reality before my eyes. Those strange men had found us.
Everything happened as in my dream, except for one detail: when I found my sister with her deep gash on the forehead, she was not weeping and calling for help — she seemed to be searching for something, someone. Our eyes met, and her expression was one of fear, of farewell — and of resentment. Perhaps it was my guilt manifesting, or perhaps she had perceived my hesitation for a moment, upon noticing the difference between my dream and reality. Either way, we had no time for anything more.