How old is this woman? Older thanI, for sure. I died at eighteen years, and as a remnant of myself have soremained eighteen. But her body, I suppose, is past its first quarter century,twenty-five years and a little more.
Her hair, though thick withfilth, and, perhaps, old blood, is palest yellow. And this not from some bleachor dye, but her own true colour. Her eyes are grey, like mine, if a touchdarker. She was, and has stayed, strong. Just two fingers missing, the last twoupon her left hand. Presumably, if I can master – or become – or dwell insideher, I can manage without them. An old wound has healed in her right side. The scaris like one a warrior might bear. If he weren’t a ghost, but live flesh still.
As I approach her, she raises herhead and looks at me. Then she stands up and makes a sound. I’m not certain ifthis frightens me, but even if it does, I won’t be stopped or turned aside. Allmy life was that, when I lived. To be stopped, to be prevented.
I run at her. I leap. I seem tomeet a rush of scalding fire and dense black mud, as if I’m in the trencheswhere so many men have died, but after, it is as if I pass through a blood-redsunset into a dawn of darkest shade.
How heavy I am. I weigh leaden onmyself as an animal burdened beyond its capacity.
I sink down. The ground is kindto me. It holds me up. And over my eyes a drift of lemon – that is the colour –lemon – yellow silk, that is my hair, her hair, our hair – mine.
As once I did in life, I havefainted. But as I lie there unconscious, I sense I enter into her brain. Herown memories are gone, all but the fundamental mechanical lessons of how to seeand speak and breathe and move and live. Her – my – heart is beating, slow butsteady. Here is the place of many mansions.
I’d never realised, when alivebefore, to what a palace and playground we’re given access in our own bodies.Now, I am again, I, and no other, I am the mistress of a splendid bodilyhouse.
(Coral):We could not find the others. Elizabeth was kind, but eventually she went away.Everyone is outside, I think.
I have found a cupboard. I couldnot open the door, but I could pass through the door. Now I sit on the floor ofthe cupboard. I am crying. My tears are dry. Please, dear God, help me. Thereis no one else.
(TheWarrior): The valiant old man has sent me on to my own quest.
Day is swole beyond the trees andgolden, but I find none of the monster-creatures, so can mark none down. Areall their kind gone, as at the beginning they come and pass on? I may need towait, but few have patience to want attendance upon afray when it stands due.God in his Mercie and pity, send me one I may try and have. Let this be done.
(TheScholar): I had anticipated the awful sense of stasis and heaviness, andduly braced myself for it and, once into the body, found soon I could bear it,knowing too I should grow accustomed, as are all living things, to the weightand unghostlike limits of their own bones and meat and blood.
The arm, luckily, set back as itshould be, if in a flash of agony beyond my scope, (even the mortal smashing ofmy nose and skull seemed less than this healing pang, for they of coursestunned me, lessening my awareness). But after a minute or two I apprehendedwhat had happened. As I say, a wonderful piece of luck, due entirely to myforgetting, in that instant of achievement, that my new body’s arm wasn’t as itshould be. Now in time it will repair, for there is certainly plenty of feelingin it – it aches and stabs from shoulder to palm. A trial. No matter.
It means the nerves havesurvived. I have bound it up by now, able to rend a piece from the body’s – my –mess of shirt, now part of my inheritance! The feel of the horrible cloth, andof this bearded, unkempt wild thing’s face and general skin, are a sort ofParadise to me. While this new vehicle of mine is around half a century, orclose on, younger and more hale than my old model!
But then. The memory came. Thesoldier. And I wept.
I shall never forgive myself,though reason tells me it was not my fault. I didn’t know the bomb would come.But oh, to have forgotten – that is a worse crime, I believe. I willshoulder it, as I do the physical pain, as best I may.
To other events.
The Knight has left me, and Imake out none of the others. I am sorry to say this fills me with relief. Nowfixed as I am, human, as I am, I could see only steam and smoke wherethe Knight stood. Doubtless they will all be like this to me, now. If even Ican see them at all, for we note, I’d never seen a ghost, not even here, beforeI died.
My best course perhaps is simplyto stay put and wait. The rising sun seems to bring an unusual warmth – obviously,I haven’t felt the heat of the sun for nearly a decade. The cold will be anuisance. I mean to try to locate some clothing in the house. I have glimpsedwearable things here and there, hung in closets, but whether they will fit thisstalwart fellow I am now become – fuck knows.
But then, Fuck knows everything,apparently. Fuck must be another of the three hundred and seventy names of God.
(Elizabeth):It’s done. Nothing to it. Glide in, sink in my claws, subside in astonishment,sick in fact only with joy, and with revulsion only at the disgusting stink ofit – of me, the Brand New Elizabeth. My God, what have I done! I double over withlaughter. It hurts to laugh, as they
