Now she
Serene, subtle, like the smile of Julien in the photographs. The large green eyes were filled with light. The hands rose and they reached out for her now, and she felt a delicious warmth as they came closer, almost touching the sides of her face.
Then the image shimmered, and suddenly disintegrated, and the blast of heat was so great she stepped backwards, her arm up to shield her eyes as she turned away.
The room was seemingly empty. The draperies had moved and they were still dancing soundlessly. And only very gradually did the room grow cold again.
She felt cold all over suddenly. She felt exhausted. And when she looked at her hand, she realized it was still shaking. She went over to the fireplace, and sank down on her knees.
Her mind was swimming. For a moment she was almost dizzy and unable to locate herself in relation to what had just happened. Then gradually her head cleared.
She laid some kindling into the small grate, and put a few sticks and a small log on top of it, then struck a long match and lighted the fire. In a second, the kindling was popping and snapping. She stared down into the flames.
“You’re here, aren’t you?” she whispered, staring into the fire as it grew stronger and brighter, tongues of flame licking at the dried bark of the log.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Where?”
“Near you, around you.”
“Where is your voice coming from? Anyone could hear you now. You’re actually speaking.”
“You will understand how this is done better than I.”
“Is that what you want of me?”
He gave a long sigh. She listened. No sound of breathing, merely the sound of a presence. Think of all the times you’ve known someone else was near you, and it’s not because you heard a heartbeat or a footfall or a breath. You heard something softer, more subtle. This is the sound.
“I love you,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because you are beautiful to me. Because you can see me. Because you are all the things in a human being which I myself desire. Because you are human and warm and soft. And I know you, and have known the others before you.”
She said nothing. He went on:
“Because you are Deborah’s child, and the child of Suzanne, and Charlotte, and all the others whose names you know. Even if you will not take the emerald which I gave to my Deborah, I love you. I love you without it. I have loved you since the first time I knew of your coming. I see far. I saw you coming from afar. I loved you in probability.”
The fire was blazing strongly now, the delicious aroma comforting her, as the big thick log was engulfed in bright orange flames. But she was in a form of delirium. Even her own breathing seemed slow to her and strange. And she wasn’t sure now that the voice was audible, or would be to others if they were here.
It was clear to her, however, and richly seductive.
Slowly she sat down on the warm floor beside the hearth and leaned against the marble, which was also warming, and she peered into the shadows beneath the arch in the very center of the room.
“Your voice is soothing to me, it’s beautiful.” She sighed.
“I want it to be beautiful for you. I want to give you pleasure. That you hated me made me sad.”
“When?”
“When I touched you.”
“Explain it all to me, everything.”
“But there are many possible explanations. You shape the explanation by the question you ask. I can talk to you of my own volition, but what I tell you will have been shaped by what I have been taught through the questions of others over the centuries. It is a construct. If you want a new construct, ask.”
“When did you begin?”
“I don’t know.
“Who first called you Lasher?”
“Suzanne.”
“Did you love her?”
“I love Suzanne.”
“She still exists.”
“She is gone.”
“I’m beginning to see,” she said. “There is no physical necessity in your world, and consequently no time. A mind without a body.”
“Precisely. Clever. Smart.”
“One of those words will do.”
“Yes,” he said agreeably, “but which one?”
“You’re playing with me.”
“No. I don’t play.”
“I want to get to the bottom of this, to understand you, your motives, what you want.”
“I know. I knew before you spoke,” he said in the same kind, seductive manner. “But you are clever enough to know that in the realm in which I exist there is no bottom.” He paused and then went on slowly as before. “If you prod me to speak to you in complete and sophisticated sentences, and to allow for your persistent misconceptions, mistakes, or crude distinctions, I can do it. But what I say may not be as near to truth as you might like.”
“But how will you do it?”
“Through what I’ve learned of human thinking from other humans, of course. What I am saying is, choose- begin at the beginning with me if you want pure truth. You will receive enigmatic and cryptic answers. And they may be useless. But they will be true. Or begin in the middle and you will receive educated and sophisticated answers. Either way, you will know of me what I learn of myself from you.”
“You’re a spirit?”
“What you call a spirit, I am.”
“What would you call yourself?”
“I do not.”
“I see. In your realm you have no need of a name.”
“No understanding even of a name. But in truth just no name.”
“But you have wants. You want to be human.”
“I do.” Something like a sigh followed, eloquent of sadness.
“Why?”
“Wouldn’t you want to be human if you were me, Rowan?”
“I don’t know, Lasher. I might want to be free.”
“I crave it in pain,” said the voice, speaking slowly and sorrowfully. “To feel heat and cold; to know pleasure. To laugh-ah, what would it be to laugh? To dance and sing, and to see clearly through human eyes. To feel things. To exist in necessity and in emotions and in time. To have the satisfaction of ambition, to have distinct dreams and ideas.”
“Ah, yes, I’m understanding it all right.”
“Don’t be too sure.”
“You don’t see clearly?”
“Not the same.”
“When you looked through the eyes of the dead man, did you see clearly?”
“Better, but not clear, and death was on me, hanging on me, around me, and moving fast. Finally I went blind
