Heat Stroke(36)

We die, I said. In general, human beings could strap on a spacesuit and ride rockets to the stars. Wardens were too tightly bound to the planet. The farther we got from the nurturing heartbeat of our world, the weaker we became. It worked that way on the aetheric plane, too. This was the outer limit of our survival.

You are no longer a Warden, my little blossom.

He yanked me on, past the point of no return, out into the cold black blanket of space.

And I didn’t die.

We floated in the sharp emptiness, part of a darkness so profound it was like death, and below the earth pulsed and whispered and murmured in its sleep. All that life, so bright. The stars were hard enough to cut.

Now you know what it’s like, Patrick said.

I had no words to describe it, but I tried to put some context around it. How far can I go?

As far as you care to. But be careful. Falling down is not quite as simple as jumping up, you’ll find.

It was still a test. What’s the catch?

Nothing much. Get yourself back where you started.

And he was gone. Just like that. Blip. I was alone, floating in a void so empty that not even satellites raced by. The moon was a cold, lonely dot of white just rounding the far side of the planet. The sun’s rays were so piercingly bright and intense that I felt them vibrate inside me even in my insubstantial state. In human form they’d fry me like an egg.

Get back? How the hell was I supposed to get back? I wasn’t even sure how to move. There was nothing to push against, no forces to work with, nothing but emptiness…

… and the light of the sun, hot and fierce. It flowed like molten gold in the aetheric.

Could I use the sun? Use fire itself to move me?

I reached out, spread myself thin as a whisper, and dropped down into the real world just enough to give myself weight. Still invisible, to the naked eye, but able to trap that energy.

It moved me. Just a little.

It also hurt like that damn Ifrit had gotten hold of me again.

I summoned up my courage and sank further down, one careful level at a time. The more sun I captured, the more I was able to propel myself; the more sun I captured, the more I burned.

I finally let go of the pain and opened myself to it, and the force of fire hit me like wind in a sail, and I flew. Agony turned white-hot, burned itself out, became something else. I became something else.

I hurtled through the thickening fog of the earth’s atmosphere, streaking like a falling star, trailing fire.

I fell back into human form, settled myself like a feather down on lime green spike heels, facing Patrick, and put my hands on my hips.

“Well?” I asked.

He looked down at the carpet.

It had melted into a circle about four feet across. Noxious chemical stew. He fixed it.

“Not bad,” he said, and handed me a cold scotch on the rocks. “Not bad at all, little one.” The ice instantly melted in the glass from the heat of my skin. The scotch boiled.

I took one step, felt my knees give way, and collapsed face down on the yellow sofa.

And slept.



And this is what I dreamed.

A cold stone room, softened here and there by rough-woven rugs, a few grace notes like a silver candlestick and a red wool blanket thrown over the bed. By the standards of its time, a comfortable enough home.

Under the red wool blanket, a man lay dying.

He was skeletally thin, faded, his blue eyes almost colorless now in the flicker of candlelight. I floated in the corner and watched him. I felt I should know him, but his face was just a skull with skin, like an Auschwitz survivor. He still had a few tufts of thin blond hair spilling out over the hard bundle of cloth that served as his pillow.

There was a woman sitting at his side. She was beautiful, so beautiful, but it wasn’t really her face that made her that way. She was actually almost plain—an unremarkable evenness to her features— but the love that spilled out of her was so intense, the grace of her body so informing, that she couldn’t be anything else but lovely. She was wearing a long white robe, something that looked vaguely angelic and glowed like satin in the wavering light.

The man on the bed made a tortured sound. His clawlike hand reached out to her, and she captured it in both of hers. Bent her head. I saw a crystal rain of tears falling, but when she looked up again she was at peace.

“Forgive me,” she said, and bent over to press her lips to his parchment-pale forehead.

Someone else was in the room now, walking right out of the walls. Someone I knew. David. But not the David I knew now… This one was wearing a medieval cotte and woolen hose, all in shades of rust and russet, and his hair was worn long.

He didn’t sense me. His attention stayed on the woman in the chair.

“Sara,” he said. She didn’t turn to look at him. “Sara, it’s time to go.”