"Patrick O'Leary - The Dream of Vibo" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'leary Patrick)

The Dream of Vibo
Patrick O’Leary


In a sad year that no one thought would ever end, Vibo, Third Ruler of The Great Empire, fell into a
deep sleep from which he could not be woken. His attendants lit candles for every hour he slept, and at
the end of his dream journey, he yawned, his eyelids fluttered, and he sat up in the great golden bed of his
chamber to find the room swimming in light.

Vibo had a strong long triangular face, like an arrowhead pointing to the ground. And his attendants
watched as he shook it, violently back and forth, as if to clear his mind of a nightmare or a wicked
thought. It frightened them to watch in the candlelight for it looked to them as if Vibo, their great ruler,
was becoming many men, many versions of himself. Multiple faces appeared in his shivering visage, and
his wide beautiful eye sockets trembled like the wings of the legendary butterfly.

Finally, the shaking stopped and their ruler was returned to them.

“I have had a dream,” said Vibo the Third in a great booming voice. “It is a big dream. I must tell it to my
son.”

His son stepped out of the dancing lights, a pale boy, just growing into the crown of his brow, who
handed his white candle to his attendant and sat beside his father on the golden bed.

“Leave us alone,” said Vibo.

And when the attendants and lessers and majors and all his wives had left the chamber, and they could
hear their footsteps like giant beetles scuttling down the hall, Great Vibo took the boy into his arms and
said, “I have learned a great secret, my son.”

His son was a wise lad, who only spoke after he had considered several angles of thought-a skill his
father had taught him. Yet being young, he was not afraid to question.

“In a dream?”

“Yes,” Vibo said. “Except it didn’t feel like a dream. Strange. It felt like a memory. Someone else’s
memory. And it happened long ago. There were cars.”

“Cars?” his son said. Recalling his lesson on those ancient vehicles of transport. The lessons of the
poisons people used to breathe. Poisons that sickened the world, and caused generations of mutation
and strife. Their dark history.

“Yes, cars. And birds.”

“Birds?” His son asked in wonder. As distant to his mind as dinosaurs: flying creatures who once roamed
the skies. When skies were blue. Birds. The stuff of legend.

“And everything was dying,” Vibo cried. “And nobody knew it.”

His son rubbed his shoulder as the Great Ruler wept.