On my back.

I was on my back in the grass and it was night with more stars than I'd ever seen before, hard white diamonds strewn across a black sky. On my back, with a fire nearby, not close enough to warm me, and I was so cold.

Wrong. Everything was wrong.

Something was tugging on me, pulling at me, yanking me. I raised my head with difficulty and looked down. The lion had hold of one of my organs and was trying to rip it free, worrying it, tugging at it, trying to snap the cord of viscera that held it attached to me.

I was hollowed out. I saw it in the flicker of firelight. Saw white ribs. Mine. Saw a concavity, a raw, bloody mess where my stomach had been.

The lions were all around me. The big, full-maned males were gnawing on my flesh, bits of me torn loose and dragged through the dirt. The lionesses gnawed at what was left. At my legs. They stripped the flesh of my thighs, like someone eating chicken. One of them tore a long, quivering, dark red muscle, ripped it clear off with one big yank of her head.

I was dead. Had to be. No pain. Where was the pain? I felt it, felt the teeth, felt the pull and tug, felt the shock of cold on bones that had never been exposed to air.

Hyenas cavorted just at the edge of the circle of light. Waiting their turn. That was the way, wasn't it? The lions ate what they wanted, then came the hyenas to use their massive jaws to crack open bones and shatter my skull and eat the gray pulp within. And finally the vultures.

A dream? Too real. Too real. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah! NO. No, no,nonononononono. No. No. No. They were eating me. I was still alive and they were eating me, eating me, ripping me apart, tearing out my insides.

Panic. Fight it. Why? Why? I was dead, I could panic if I wanted to.

Only I wasn't dead. I was seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling the foulness as a lion tore open my intestines and spilled the mess.

Not dead. Alive. Not possible. No, think Jalil. This couldn't be real. Couldn't be.

Why? Why couldn't it be real? This wasn't the real world, this was Everworld, what couldn't be real here in this place? What was outlawed here? A man watching his own body being ripped apart like a slab of baby back ribs? Yes, why not? It was real. It was real. Help me! Someone help me!

No. Fight it, Jalil. Fight it. Fight it. Fightfightfightfightfight. Not real. An illusion. Why, Jalil? What's your proof? What makes this unreal? Why is it a trick, please, please prove it, Jalil. Prove it's a lie.

You've seen similar things, Jalil, you remember: the men in Hel's grip. Dead but alive. Alive in eternal torment. If that was real why isn't this? Why is the lion's hot breath on your face, the sight of him, so huge, gazing down at you with liquid gold eyes, why is it not real, why is it not real that he's oh, no no no, eating your face, Jalil, sinking his teeth into your face, your cheeks, tearing, ripping, crushing, crushing till your brain . . .

Brain. Brain, that's why. That's why. Everworld may be Everworld, but I am me. I am Jalil. I am this brain in this head on this body, and my rules are the rules of the real world.

There's no thought without brain, no mind without brain. That's why it's a lie. Because my brain is seeping like warm oatmeal through the crack in my skull. And that can't be. That's me, that's Jalil, that oatmeal, that mush cramped inside an airless, lightless cave of bone, that's me.

"It's not a dream," I said, speaking with half a tongue and a jaw that was no longer completely attached to my head. "If it was a dream I'd be in the real world. I'm still in Everworld. I'm not asleep. I'm conscious. And this is an illusion."

The lion stopped eating my face. It spoke. "Not real? What is real, Jalil?"

"You're not real," I said firmly.

"And yet, you speak to me. In denying me you make me real. Real to you, which is all the reality there will ever be."

I felt around with my right hand. I seemed to still have a right hand. I pushed it into my pocket and touched my knife. I drew it slowly out and with trembling, numb fingers I snapped open the blade of Coo-Hatch steel.

"This blade will cut anything real," I said. "Will you bleed?"

I slashed. My knife went through air. The lion was gone.

My eyes snapped open. Bright sunlight. I slapped my hand on my belly and felt my own skinny self. All of me.

I sat up.

"Hey, hey, take it easy with that knife," April said. She was sitting beside me. She pressed me back down, hand against my chest. "Take five minutes, okay? You just scared the hell out of us."

"What happened?" I demanded, sweating, shaky.

"A lion attacked you. Knocked you down, we think your head hit that rock there."

"He didn't eat me?" I demanded, not caring very much if I sounded insane.

"No, thanks to Eshu," April said. "He used some kind of sling. He hit the lion with a rock."

I pushed April away, firmly but not rudely, and sat up. The old African with the Don King hair squatted nearby, seemingly indifferent. He was looking off toward the horizon.

"A rock?" I demanded. "You all have spears, and David has his sword." "Hey, sorry," David said peevishly, "but it's not all that easy to hit a moving lioness with a spear and not skewer your ingrate of a friend in the process."

No. He was right, of course. "Sorry," I said. "Thanks for not skewering me."

"It's Eshu you should thank," April insisted.

"A rock, huh?" I said. The lions that had killed and eaten me had only been real in my imagination. But that was enough to know one thing: a lion doesn't run from a rock.

I glanced at Senna. She was staring daggers at Eshu who remained the picture of nonchalance.

Then Eshu turned his face toward me, just for a second, unobserved by anyone but Senna and me. Eshu looked at me and grinned an amused and malicious grin.

I don't know why I didn't say anything to the others right then. Maybe because anything I said would have sounded paranoid. They'd have thought I suffered a concussion. They'd seen what they'd seen, and what I'd been through would be easily dismissed as a nightmare, the obvious result of concussion combined with terror.