Before Adam Read Free Page A

hours, watching the play of sunlight on the foliage and the stirring of the leaves by the wind. Often the nest itself moved back and forth when the wind was strong.
    But always, while so lying in the nest, I was mastered by a feeling as of tremendous space beneath me. I never saw it, I never peered over the edge of the nest to see; but I
knew
and feared that space that lurked just beneath me and that ever threatened me like a maw of some all-devouring monster.
    This dream, in which I was quiescent and which was more like a condition than an experience of action, I dreamt very often in my early childhood. But suddenly there would rush into the very midst of it strange forms and ferocious happenings, the thunder and crashing of storm, or unfamiliar landscapes such as in my wake-a-day life I had never seen. The result was confusion and nightmare. I could comprehend nothing of it. There was no logic of sequence.
    You see, I did not dream consecutively. One moment I was a wee babe of the younger world lying in my tree nest; the next moment I was a grown man of the younger world locked in combat with the hideous Red Eye; and the next moment I was creeping carefully down to the waterhole in the heat of the day. Events, years apart in their occurrence in the younger world, occurred with me within the space of several minutes, or seconds. It was all a jumble, but this jumble I shall not inflict upon you.
    It was not until I was a young man and had dreamt many thousand times that everything straightened out and became clear and plain. Then it was that I got the clue of time, and was able to piece together events and actions in their proper order. Thus was I able to reconstruct the vanished younger world as it was at the time I lived in it – or at the time my other self lived in it. The distinction does not matter; for I, too, the modern man, have gone back and lived that early life in the company of my other self. For your convenience, since this is to be no sociological screed, I shall frame together the different events into a comprehensive story. For there is a certain thread of continuity and happening that runs through all the dreams. There is my friendship with Lop Ear, for instance. Also, there is the enmity of Red Eye, and the love of the Swift One. Taking it all in all, a fairly coherent and interesting story I am sure you will agree.
    I do not remember much of my mother. Possibly the earliest recollection I have of her – and certainly the sharpest – is the following:
    It seemed I was lying on the ground. I was somewhat older than during the nest days, but still helpless. I rolled about in the dry leaves, playing with them and making crooning, rasping noises in my throat. The sun shone warmly and I was happy and comfortable. I was in a little open space. Around me, on all sides, were bushes and fern-like growths, and overhead and all about were the trunks and branches of forest trees.
    Suddenly I heard a sound. I sat upright and listened. I made no movement. The little noises died down in my throat, and I sat as one petrified. The sound drew closer. It was like the grunt of a pig. Then I began to hear the sounds caused by the moving of a body through the brush. Next I saw the fernsagitated by the passage of the body. Then the ferns parted, and I saw gleaming eyes, a long snout, and white tusks.
    It was a wild boar. He peered at me curiously. He grunted once or twice and shifted his weight from one foreleg to the other, at the same time moving his head from side to side and swaying the ferns. Still I sat as one petrified, my eyes unblinking as I stared at him, fear eating at my heart.
    It seemed that this movelessness and silence on my part was what was expected of me. I was not to cry out in the face of fear. It was a dictate of instinct. And so I sat there and waited for I knew not what. The boar thrust the ferns aside and stepped into the open. The curiosity went out of his eyes, and they gleamed cruelly. He tossed his