“But you won’t hurt him.”
No answer.
“You won’t hurt him.”
“Tell me not to hurt him and I will not hurt him.”
“But you said you didn’t want to! Why do you make it go like this in a circle?”
“This is no circle. I told you I didn’t want to kill Michael. Michael may be hurt. What am I to do? Lie? I do not lie. Aaron lies. I do not lie. I do not know how.”
“That I don’t believe. But maybe you believe it.”
“You hurt me.”
“Tell me how this will end.”
“What?”
“My life with you, how will it end?”
Silence.
“You won’t tell me.”
“You are the doorway.”
She sat very still. She could feel her mind working. The fire gave off its low crackling, and the flames danced against the bricks, and the motion seemed entirely too slow to be real. Again the air shimmered. She thought she saw the long crystal teardrops of the chandelier moving, turning, gathering tiny fragments of light.
“What does it mean to be the doorway?”
“You know what it means.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You can mutate matter, Dr. Mayfair.”
“I’m not sure that I can. I’m a surgeon. I work with precise instruments.”
“Ah, but your mind is ever more precise.”
She frowned; it was bringing back that strange dream, the dream of Leiden …
“In your time you have stanched bleeding,” he said, taking his time with his soft, slow words. “You have closed wounds. You have made matter obey you.”
The chandelier gave off a low tinkling music in the silence. It caught the glint of the dancing flames.
“You have slowed the racing hearts of your patients; you have opened the clogged vessels of their brains.”
“I wasn’t always aware … ”
“You have done it. You fear your power but you possess it. Go out into the garden in the night. You could make the flowers open. You can make them grow longer as I did.”
“Ah, but you did it with dead flowers only.”
“No. I have done it with the living. With the iris you saw, though this exhausted me and hurt me.”
“And then the iris died and fell from its stem.”
“Yes. I did not mean to kill it.”
“You took it to its limits, you know. That’s why it died.”
“Yes. I did not know its limits.”
She turned to the side; she felt she was in a trance, yet how perfectly clear was his voice, how precise his pronunciation.
“You did not merely force the molecules in one direction or another,” she said.
“No. I pierced the chemical structure of the cells, just as you can do it. You are the doorway. You see into the kernel of life itself.”
“No, you overestimate my knowledge. No one can do it.”
The atmosphere of the dream came back, everyone gathered at the windows of the University of Leiden. What was that mob in the street? They thought Jan van Abel was a heretic.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she said.
“I know. I see far. You have given me the metaphors and the terms. Through your books, I too have absorbed the concepts. I see to the finish. I know. Rowan can mutate matter. Rowan can take the thousands upon thousands of tiny cells and reorganize them.”
“And what is the finish? Will I do what you want?”
Again, he sighed.
Something rustling in the corners of the room. The draperies swayed violently. And the chandelier sang softly again, glass striking glass. Was there a layer of vapor rising to the ceiling, stretching out to the pale peach-colored walls? Or just the firelight dancing in the corner of her eye?
“The future is a fabric of interlacing possibilities,” he said. “Some of which gradually become probabilities, and a few of which become inevitabilities, but there are surprises sewn into the warp and the woof, which can tear it apart.”
“Thank God for that.” she said. “So you can’t see to the finish.”
“I do and do not. Many humans are entirely predictable. You are not predictable. You are too strong. You can be the doorway if you choose.”
“How?”
Silence.
“Did you drown Michael in the sea?”
“No.”
“Did anyone do it?”
“Michael fell off a rock into the sea because he was careless. His soul ached and his life was nothing. All this was written in his face, and in his gestures. It would not take a spirit to see it.”
“But you did see it.”
“I saw it long before it happened, but I did not make it happen. I smiled. Because I saw you and Michael come together. I saw it when Michael was small and saw me and looked at me through the garden fence. I saw the death and rescue of Michael by Rowan.”
“And what did Michael see when he drowned?”
“I don’t know. Michael was not alive.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was dead, Dr. Mayfair. You know what dead is. Cells cease to divide. The body is no longer under one organizing force or one intricate set of commands. It dies. Had I gone into his body, I could have lifted his limbs and heard through his ears, because his body was fresh, but it was dead. Michael had vacated the body.”
“You know this?”
“I see it now. I saw it before it happened. I saw it when it occurred.”
“Where were you when it occurred?”
“Beside Deirdre, to make Deirdre happy, to make her dream.”
“Ah, so you do see far.”
“Rowan, that is nothing. I mean I see far in time. Space is not a straight line for me, either.”
She laughed softly again. “Your voice is beautiful enough to embrace.”
“I am beautiful, Rowan. My voice is my soul. Surely I have a soul. The world would be too cruel if I did not.”
She felt so sad hearing this that she could have cried. She was staring at the chandelier again, at the hundreds of tiny reflected flames in the crystal. The room seemed to swim in warmth.
“Love me, Rowan,” he said simply. “I am the most powerful being imaginable in your realm and there is but one of me for you, my beloved.”
It was like a song without melody; it was like a voice made up of quiet and song, if such a thing can be imagined.
“When I am flesh I shall be more than human; I shall be something new under the sun. And far greater to you than Michael. I am infinite mystery. Michael has given you all that he can. There will be no great mystery any longer with your Michael.”
“No, that can’t be true,” she whispered. She realized that she’d closed her eyes; she was so drowsy. She forced herself to look at the chandelier again. “There is the infinite mystery of love.”
