'Now see yourself as you have become,' said the infernal child. The back of the young Taita bowed, and his limbs became thin and stick like. The fine muscle turned stringy, and his belly pouted. His hair faded to grey and became long, straight and sparse, the white teeth yellow and crooked. Deep lines appeared in his cheeks, and the skin beneath his chin sagged into folds. The eyes lost their sparkle. Although the image was a caricature, reality was only slightly exaggerated.
Then, suddenly, the loincloth was stripped away, as if by a gust of wind, and the groin exposed. A thin fringe of frizzy grey pubic hair surrounded the glaring pink, puckered cicatrice left by the cut of the castrating knife and the red-hot cauterizing rod. Taita moaned softly.
'Do you recognize yourself as you are now?' asked the imp. Strangely, his tone was filled with infinite compassion.
The pity wounded Taita more than the mockery. 'Why do you show me these things?' he asked.
'I come to warn you. If your life was lonely and barren before, it will soon become a thousand times worse. Once again you will know love and longing, but those passions can never be requited. You will burn in the hell of an impossible love.' Taita had no words to deny him, for already the agony the imp threatened had taken its grip. This, he knew, was just a foretaste of what must follow and he groaned.
'The time will come when you pray for death to release you from the agony,' the imp went on remorselessly, 'but think on this, Taita the Long Liver. How long is your suffering to last before death gives you surcease?'
In the pool the image of the ancient figure faded, and that of the beautiful, vigorous youth replaced it. He smiled up at Taita from the dark water, teeth shining, eyes sparkling.
'What has been taken away, I can give back to you,' said the child,
and his voice was the purring of a kitten. The silken cloth dropped from around the youth's waist to reveal perfectly formed genitalia, majestic and weighty.I 'I can give you back your manhood. I can make you as whole again as the image I set before you.' Taita could not tear his gaze away from it.
As he stared at it, the phallus of the phantom youth swelled and lengthened. Taita was filled with longings he had never entertained in all his life. They were so grossly prurient that he knew they could not have sprung from his own mind but had been placed there by the diabolical imp. He tried to tread them down, but they oozed back like the slime of a cesspool.
The beautiful child lifted one small hand and pointed at Taita's groin.
'Anything is possible, Taita, if only you believe in me.'
Suddenly Taita felt a powerful sensation in his crotch. He had no idea what was happening to him - until he realized that the sensations experienced by the phantom youth were being mirrored in his own body.
He felt the weight of that magnificent phallus tugging at his guts. When he watched it stiffen and arc like a drawn war bow, he felt the tension stretch his own nerves to breaking point. When he saw the youth's glans engorge with blood, turning a dark, angry red, it resonated in every fibre of his own body. A copious ejaculation gushed from the gaping cleft and he felt the exquisite agony of each scalding jet. His back arched involuntarily and his lips drew back in rictus as he clenched his teeth.
A hoarse cry burst from his throat. His whole body jerked and trembled like that of a man seized by the palsy, then he sagged back on the grass, panting as though he had run a league, his strength spent.
'Had you forgotten? Had you suppressed the memory of the ultimate pinnacle of physical delight? What you have just experienced is only a grain of sand compared to the mountain that I can give to you,' said the child, and ran to the edge of the stone step. He poised there and looked across at Taita for the last time. 'Think on it, Taita. It is yours if you dare stretch out your hand to me.' He dived cleanly into the pool.
Taita saw his pale body flash as he shot down into the depths and disappeared. He could not summon the strength to rise to his feet again until the sun had made half its transit of the sky.
It was late in the afternoon when he reached the sanatorium. He found Meren sitting in his darkened cell with his nurse. His pleasure when he heard Taita's voice was pathetic to witness, and Taita felt guilty to have left him so long alone in the cell with the darkness and doubts that must be consuming him.
'The woman came again while you were away,' Meren cried. 'She says that tomorrow she will remove the bandages completely. I can hardly contain myself that long.'
Taita was still so overwrought by memories of the afternoon's events that he knew he would not be able to sleep that night. After they had eaten the evening meal he asked the male nurse if he could find a lute he might borrow.
'Dr Gibba is a lute player,' the fellow replied. 'Shall I refer your request to him?'
He went off and returned some little time later with the instrument.
There had been a time when Taita's voice had been the joy of all who heard him sing, and it was still tuneful and true. He sang until Meren's chin dropped on to his chest and he began to snore. Even then Taita went on strumming softly, until he found his fingers picking out the haunting melody that the imp had played on his flute. He stopped playing and put away the lute.
He lay down on the mattress on the opposite side of the cell from Meren and composed himself, but sleep eluded him. In the darkness his mind ran on, then took flight like a wild horse he could not control. The images and sensations that the imp had grafted into his mind crowded back so vividly that he had to escape them. He took his cloak, slipped from the cell and went out on to the lawns, which were bathed in brilliant moonlight, to walk along the edge of the lake. He felt the ice on his cheeks, but this time it was his own tears and not some alien presence that had chilled him.
'Taita who is neither man nor woman.' He repeated the imp's gibe and wiped his eyes on the fold of his woollen cloak. 'Am I to be imprisoned in this ancient maimed body for all eternity?' he wondered.
'Eos's temptations are as great a torment as any physical torture. Horus, Isis and Osiris, give me the strength to resist them.'
— —
We do not need your nurses today,' Hannah said, as she knelt beside Meren and trimmed the wick of the one small oil lamp that was the cell's only illumination. 'We will not inflict more pain on you. Instead we hope to compensate you for that which you have already suffered.' She set aside the lamp. It threw a soft light on to Meren's bandaged head. 'Are you ready, Dr Gibba?' While Gibba supported Meren's head she unpicked the knot in the bandage and peeled it away. Then she handed the lamp to Taita. 'Please direct the light on
