B is for The Eater of Dreams; the baku – A to Z Challenge

The second entry in my April A to Z Challenge I found while wandering the dreams of children scattered across China and Japan. They cried out in the night. Tossed violently in their beds. Caught in the talons of the monstrous beasts that tread the pale blue threads attaching their souls to their dreaming mortal forms below. When these children awoke, sweat soaked and shaking, they chanted under their breaths: Baku-san, come eat my dream. Baku-san, come eat my dream. Baku-san, come eat my dream.

The baku is a supernatural being with the body of a horse, the face of a lion, the trunk of an elephant, and the feet of a tiger. A terrifying chimeric visage, a construction that could only itself be made in nightmare. But the baku hungers only for dreams. Particularly those tinged with the luscious taste of fear. Beware invoking it for this purpose though. If the nightmare is not enough to satiate its hunger it will go after all your hopes and dreams as well, leaving you a listless shell of a person with nothing to live for.

While dreams often make an appearance in fantasy, they are rarely the star of the show. N.K. Jemisin’s Dreamblood books are the only ones that come to mind. But the vision of enormous horse/lion chimeras treading the night skies, syphoning off first our fears then finally our most precious dreams, is a story waiting to be told. For what are we, without our hopes and our fears?

k.