“Many times the false dreams come at first, and then at last the true one comes. May it not be so with him?”
And the father said: “It may be so with him.”
So once again up the hill of dreams went the boy. And because of the words of his father and mother, he wept and smeared his face with dust; his muddy hands he lifted to the stars. And he raised an earnest voice: “O Wakunda! send me a man’s dream, for I wish to be a big man in my village, strong to fight and hunt. The woman’s face is good to see, but I cannot laugh for the memory of it. And there is an aching in my breast. O Wakunda! send me the dream of a man!”
And he slept. And in the middle of the night, when shapeless things come up out of the hills, and beasts and birds talk together with the tongues of men, his dream came back.
Even as before the moon-face floated in a lake of cold white fire—a lake that drowned the stars. And as he reached to push it from him, lo! like a white stem growing downward from a flower, a body grew beneath it! And there was a flashing of white lightning, and the Woman of the Moon stood before him.
Then was there a burning in the blood of the boy, as she stooped with arms held wide; and he was wrapped about as with a white fire, through which the face grew down with lips that burned his lips as they touched, and sent pale lightnings flashing through him.
And as the dream woman turned to run swiftly back up the star-trails he who dreamed reached out his arms and clutched at the garments of light that he might hold the thing that fled, for dearer than life it seemed to him now.
And he woke. His face was in the dust. His clutching hands were full of dust.
Wahoo! the bitter hill of dreams! Have you climbed it, O White Brother, even as I?