Then from somewhere far away through the dream came the mournful toot, toot, of a blind man’s reed-pipe. At first it seemed beyond the bend of the road, and then it seemed amidst the azaleas, and then in the wood of cypress trees. It grew more insistent and piercing, and changed subtly into the sound he had once heard on the Nikko road when, sitting with M’Gourley, he had listened to the tune of the blind juggler with the pipe.
As he listened, shuddering, he saw something which he at once knew to be the reason of the music and the soul of the opium drama that was unfolding before him.
A tiny black dot was visible in the sky away over the distant hills. It expanded and grew, dilated as if in response to the enchanted music. And then he saw that it was a bird; a vast bird, larger than an eagle, a ferocious and awful bird, a tragic apparition called up from the lands of night. It poised above the valley, seeming to float and be upborne, not on air, but on the music welling from the wood.
He knew that if he could get to the half-seen child amidst the azaleas he could save it from its fate. But he could make no movement nor utter a sound, but stood paralyzed, watching the tiny white hand plucking the crimson flowers and the Horror above preparing to strike.
The music had now turned to a drone, a sound like the spinning sound of a vast top. The thing in the air circled and span. He knew it was preparing to fall like a thunderbolt.
Then he awoke.
He saw the garden, the cherry trees, the house. Opium land had vanished, but the music remained, ringing in his ears; or was it real?
He sprang to his feet and staggered along the path leading to the gate looking wildly round him and listening. As he came, the sound died off; died and turned to the sound of ordinary life, the hum from the city below, the sound of the wind in the lilac trees, the tune of ceaseless cicalas.
“My God! what a dream!” he muttered as he grasped the gate and stared down the lilac-shadowed path. Then he returned slowly to the seat beneath the cherry trees, and lit a cigarette.
Opium had played a trick upon him like this before. He had taken it first months ago for fever; since then he had taken it occasionally for the slightest ache. He reacted well to it sensually speaking, and found it at once soothing and stimulating. Once before it had pushed him into dreamland, but a dreamland without plot or plan, and unstained by a horror such as he had just witnessed.