Household Gods

Spirit belonged in body. Spirit alone was air and nothingness. Was — dead.

But when she tried to slip back as she’d slipped out, it was like pressing one pole of a magnet into the same pole of another. Some force thrust her softly but irresistibly back, as if to tell her, This place is not safe for you.

Had Umma’s mother journeyed like this? Was that how she’d known a stranger looked out at her from her daughter’s eyes? If Atpomara had done that, she had managed to rejoin her body. And then, almost at once, she had died.

Nicole’s mind in its disembodied state was more distractable even than it had been through the haze of fever. It fled the thought of Atpomara, and Atpomara’s death, toward the much wider world. If Carnuntum was in such straits, all the way out by the Danube, what was it like in Rome itself?

Somewhat to her dismay, she didn’t shift to the imperial capital. She’d left the tavern behind, but escaped only as far as the amphitheater, to the seat from which she’d watched the mime show with Titus Calidius Severus. From there she looked south, across the fields to the darkness of a forest that, some part of her knew, went on for miles. That was as close as she’d come to Rome. It was as far in that direction as her spirit could go.

And where else could she go? Her mind stretched across alternatives, and seized on the wildest one, the one she’d have thought craziest of all if she’d heard this story from the comfort of West Hills. God — gods, how she wished Liber and Libera had never brought her to Carnuntum.

And there they were, floating before her in a vast expanse of nothingness. They looked just as they had on the memorial plaque beside her soft, clean, blessedly vermin-free California bed: rather plump, naked, and pleased with themselves. Their eyes were fixed on some rosy distance, far away from Nicole and her inescapably mortal self.

She didn’t even think before the words poured out of her. Let me go home. Let me go back. I don’t belong here. I belong there. This — and God, it hurt to say so, to admit she’d failed at anything — this was a mistake. I should never have come here. I want to go home!

When she’d shaped a wish into a prayer back in West Hills, not even knowing she’d done it, Liber and Libera had responded in an instant. Why not? They’d had nothing better to do — probably hadn’t for centuries. Who believed in them enough to pray to them? Nicole hadn’t, either, but she’d wanted out so badly, and been so absolutely desperate, that it hadn’t mattered who or what answered her prayer.

Now she was in their world, a world full of believers, and therefore of prayers. Nicole could dimly sense others winging their way to the god and goddess, as she sometimes heard the ghosts of other conversations on the phone when she waited for a long-distance connection to go through. She might as well have been calling Ticketmaster, trying to land seats for a hot show. Sometimes your call went through right away. But if everyone decided to jam the lines at once, you’d get a busy signal… again and again and again.

Just as she rang — dialed — prayed again, driving the force of her need at the unheeding gods, her spirit made its own, completely unwanted connection. As suddenly as it had left, it was in Umma’s body again, trapped in the reddish dark behind her eyelids. Someone had taken the covers off her. She was freezing cold. Hands groped under her tunic, tugging at her drawers.

Her eyes flew open. Gaius Calidius Severus loomed over her, the face so like his father’s, the pitting of adolescent acne on the cheeks, the beard that was still coming in in patches. She gasped, coughed, choked. Gaius violating her? Was he out of his mind? Was she? No way in the world she could fight him off. But — Gaius -

He raised his eyes from what he was doing with her drawers, and caught her stare. “Oh, good,” he murmured in profound relief. And then, louder: “Can you understand me, Mistress Umma?”

It took several tries — her head was as heavy as one of the gaudy statues in the baths — but at last she managed a nod. His expression lightened immeasurably. “My father made me promise to look after you,” he said. “Everyone else is too sick to help. You’ve — fouled yourself.” He blushed while he said that, like the boy he was, but he went on gamely: “I’m going to clean you off and get you a fresh pair of drawers. I’m doing the same thing for him. By the gods, that’s all I’m going to do. Do you understand? Is that all right?”

She sighed faintly, relaxing a tension she hadn’t known she had, and nodded, a little more easily this time. He pulled the soiled drawers off her, strode to the window, undid the shutters, and pitched the drawers out. They landed with a wet splat. He turned back into the room, leaving the shutters open to let in a pale gray light, and rummaged through the chest. He emerged with a rag, which he wet in the washbasin, and wiped Nicole clean. She got the strong impression he would have averted his eyes if he hadn’t needed to see what he was doing. The water on the rag felt icy cold on her burning skin.

He found another pair of drawers, and awkwardly, with much shifting and fumbling, got them onto her. She was as weak as a baby; she couldn’t even lift her hips to help him. When he was done, she was as glad as he must have been. “There you go,” he said. “Wine?” She nodded; words were still a long way beyond her.

He held the cup to her lips. She drank, a few swallows’ worth. Even that little exhausted her.

He didn’t try to force more wine into her, but let her lie back. He slipped his arm free of her, laid the blanket and the cloak over her, and stood for a while, as if he couldn’t think what to do next. Then it came to him. He turned without a word and all but fled.

She lay where he’d left her, clean, drowsy, and almost warm. He’d been real, then. Her spirit was secure in Umma’s body again, or as secure as it could be with the disease eating away at it. She tried to slip free once more, but the anchor was sunk, the chains secured. She sighed. No more out-of-body experiences — or more likely, no more being out of her head from fever. She’d tried to telephone Liber and Libera, hadn’t she? She could remember something. Lines busy. All our representatives are currently assisting customers. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line. A representative will take your call as soon as…

If she wasn’t out of her body any longer, she was still just a little bit out of her head. What had Gaius Calidius Severus said? Everyone here was too sick to take care of her? Julia? Lucius? Aurelia? All sick? All — dying? Flying? Traveling around Carnuntum, seeing the astral sights?

She slapped herself back into something resembling coherence. They were sick. They couldn’t take care of her. She had to take care of them. She had to get — up -

With every ounce of strength she had, she rolled halfway over. The effort overwhelmed her. Unconsciousness hit her like a blow to the head.

When she woke, it was dark. Night, she realized after a terribly long while. That same night, or the one after, or the one after that? She had no way of knowing. Her hand moved leadenly, but it moved. She touched her drawers. They were dry. Gaius might have come in again and changed her without her waking.

She felt terrible: thirsty, hungry, feverish. Steamrollered. It was the best she’d felt since she woke up and realized that there was no way she was getting up to face the world. “I think I’m going to live,” she whispered, mostly because she could. Her lips and mouth were desert-dry, her tongue a sand-coated bolt of flannel. Even so, she heard the wonder in the ruins of her voice.

Her eyes closed again, and she slept — really slept this time, as opposed to passing out. She woke sometime in the morning: light was leaking through the shutters. She sat up. The room spun around her, but she didn’t keel over. After a while, it steadied. Could she stand? The first time she tried, she sat down again in a hurry. But she tried again. Darkness came and went; spots swam in front of her eyes. She stayed on her feet. When the world stayed more or less steady, she ventured a step. Once she’d done that, she had to finish, or fall. She fetched up against the chest of drawers, and leaned against it, panting as if she’d finished a marathon.

She had to look in on the others. She couldn’t stay here. For one thing, there was water in the terra sigillata pitcher by the bed, but no wine to kill the germs in it, and no food. She had to eat. She had to make sure the others were — weren’t -

She couldn’t go any farther for a while, not till she gathered what rags of strength she had. While she did that, she could see how she was. She fumbled in the drawer for the makeup kit, and pawed it open. The mirror nearly slipped from her shaking fingers, but she caught it somehow and propped it on the chest.

Her eyes widened in horror. The eyes of the concentration-camp survivor in the bronze mirror widened, too.

She’d been fashionably slim for a West Hills matron. Now she was skeletal. Skin stretched drumhead-tight over cheekbones and jaw. The rash lingered on her neck and in the hollows of her cheeks. Some of it was peeling,