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head bobbed to the surface.
A very pretty head.
Attached to lovely white shoulders.
The dark waters hid the rest.
Her eyes were sad and haunted. And just as green as her long hair that flowed
down the sides of her elfin face.
"Hello," I said. "Do you know the aguane?"
She smiled sadly and a white arm came up out of the water and grasped the rope
that dangled from the pirogue's bow.
A sudden squelching sound accompanied a row of geysers that stitched the water
nearby.
"Go away, Honey; you're gonna get hurt if you hang around here. Shoo. Scat."
She ducked back under the water and I couldn't hold my head up any longer. I
lay back down, my face resting in damp bilge that hadn't been there moments
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before. Either the boat was leaking or I was bleeding out even faster now.
Either way, it didn't make much difference.
I closed my eyes and sank into watery darkness.
Chapter Eighteen
The roaring beats against my ears, my skin, shivering and shaking my body,
filling my head until I fear it must burst!
If I concentrate on the flames, I can almost forget the crowd, can almost
believe the roaring comes from the great fire, alone . . .
That I am alone . . .
The faceless one comes, his head enclosed in a lopsided cone of dark leather.
I try to see the color of his eyes but the eyeholes reveal nothing but deeper
shadows. I look down and see the iron pincers in his massive hands, its curved
and sharpened ends glowing a dull, cherry red like the baleful eyes of
deep-dwelling demons from Hell.
I force my gaze away away from the executioner and the judges. Away from the
accusers and witnesses. Away from the coming horror . . .
A horror like that which I wielded when I took my turn beneath the castle as
de facto judge, witness, and executioner . . . tormenting Her unwilling guests
while She looked on, seemingly apart yet more the participant than we who
wielded the whips, the pincers, the irons, and the blades at Her will.
At Her pleasure.
The others will hold their tongues despite this final, excruciating injustice.
Erzsi has escaped their net, so far, but I think she will not live long. She
is doomed as we all are for having come under the Witch's spell.
Our dark Mistress maintains Her hold over us still, though Her bloody reign of
terror has all come unraveled and we have been bound with the chains with
which we once played. She formed our answers as the questions were asked and
the heated irons were applied like lovers' kisses, subtle, intimate, then
ardent . . .
Even the countess, shackled not with chains but with stone and mortar, high in
her dark tower but I cannot dwell upon this last, great injustice.
She will not let me, still.
The secret will die behind our blackened lips.
The secret will only be told by the blood, the blood that has no voice of its
own.
I turn back to the fire and stare into its shimmering depths. The fire is all.
The flames fill my field of vision as they fill the town square. The screaming
starts and the world begins to burn.
The fire is all.
* * *
Some say the world will end in fire.
Others, ice.
Perhaps there was a third alternative: water. Not too cold, not too warm. But
dark. And something
akin to desolate nothingness.
My return to consciousness was like a reversal of my descent into its watery
depths. I was a bubble trapped under layers of dark silt and mud. Slowly,
drowsily, I slipped the confines of my premature burial and began to rise,
ascending through the heavier strata of cold, dim waters and moving toward the
light and warmth that lay just beyond the surface, high above.
As I ascended, the murky, muffled sounds resolved into voices clarified until
I could finally distinguish words and phrases. Then sentences.
Although the water was warmer and clearer, now, I still had a ways to go. My
eyes would not yet obey my desire to open.
But I could listen now.
So I lay quietly and listened to my first sermon on the other side of the
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grave.
"You have heard it said that God is an angry
God, a vengeful
God! That He delights in punishing the wicked and destroying the evildoer
!"
It was a strong voice, a powerful voice. But it became soft and gentle a
heartbeat later.
"I know that you say in your hearts: 'I
am wicked! I
am an evildoer!' And you believe that you are damned because fearful men,
ignorant men, men with no love in their own hearts, have told you so!"
Near the surface now, I cracked my eyelids a bare sliver and squinted against
the harsh whiteness that seared my eyes.
"These same men, out of the darkness in their own minds, the fear in their own
hearts, would presume to enslave you to shackle you to their own fears, their
own darkness! In you, they see the reflection of their own evil, their own sin
and corruption, and they have made you into spiritual scapegoats the
sin-eaters for their twisted purposes!"
My eyelids twitched and I began to bear a bit more brightness, now.
Again the voice thundered, "I say to you, do not fear the judgment of men!
That is what has enslaved you! Enslaved your fathers! And your fathers'
fathers, going all the way back to the ancient times! It is not by men that
you will be ultimately judged, but by God! It is God's judgment that matters
and not the fearful imaginings of ignorant men. And some of you should
understand this all too well because some of you were once fearful and
ignorant men. And women."
I lay on my back. Above me flared a panorama of white. Flickering white.
"Now, now that you should know better, you are still held hostage to the fear
and ignorance of those who cannot see beyond the grave!"
I saw seams in the whiteness . . . stitches . . .
"Do you truly believe that you are beyond redemption? Consider the words of
Paul, an Apostle of
Jesus, called Messiah by the Christian sects: 'There is no one righteous, not
even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
All have turned away, they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good, not even one
. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit . . .' "
Shadows of limbs and moss-draped branches danced, faded, and reappeared across
the whiteness with the shifting patterns of light.
" 'The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and
bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their
ways, and the way of peace they do not know.' "
The voice paused dramatically, then continued: "Paul goes on to say that 'all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.' "
I turned my head and saw that my canopied ceiling descended to the floor in
swooping drapes and folds. I was inside a tent. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]