Rice, Anne - The Witching Hour

by Greyspid

  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, thought 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. 1 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.’

  ‘Love must be fed, Rowan.’

  ‘You are saying I have to choose between you and Michael?’

  Silence.

  ‘Did you make the others choose?’ She thought of Mary Beth in particular, and Mary Beth’s men.

  ‘I see far as I told you. When Michael stood at the gate years ago in your time, I saw that you would make a choice.’

  ‘Don’t tell me any more of what you saw.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Talk of the future always brings unhap-piness to humans. Their momentum is based upon the fact that they cannot see far. Let us talk about the past. Humans like to understand the past.’

  ‘Do you have another tone of voice other than this beautiful soft tone? Could you have spoken those last few words sarcastically? Is that how they were meant to sound?’

  ‘I can sound any way that I like, Rowan. You hear what I feel. I do feel in my thoughts, in what I am, pain and love. Emotions.’

  ‘You’re speeding up your words a little.’

  ‘I am in pain.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To end your misunderstandings.’

  ‘You want me to make you human?’

  ‘I want to have flesh.’

  ‘And I can give you flesh?’

  ‘You have the power. And once such a thing is achieved, other such things may be achieved. You are the thirteenth, you are the door.’

  ‘What do you mean, "other such things"?’

  ‘Rowan, we are talking of fusion; of chemical change; the structural reinvention of cells, of matter and energy in a new relationship.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Then you know, as with fission, if it is achieved once, it can be achieved again.’

  ‘Why couldn’t anyone else do it before me? Julien
was powerful.’

  ‘Knowledge, Rowan. Julien was born too soon. Allow me once more to use the word fusion and in a slightly different fashion. We have spoken so far of fusion within cells. Let me now talk of a fusion between your knowledge of life, Rowan, and your innate power. That is the key, that is what enables you to be the doorway.

  ‘The knowledge of your era was unimaginable even to Julien, who saw in his time inventions that seemed purely magical. Could Julien have foreseen a heart opened on an operating table? A child conceived in a test tube? No. And there will come after you those whose knowledge is great enough even to define what I am.’

  ‘Can you define yourself to me?’

  ‘No, but I am certainly definable, and when I am defined by mortals, then I shall be able to define myself. I learn all things from you which have to do with such understanding.’

  ‘Ah, but you know something of yourself which you can tell me now in precise language.’

  ’- that I am immense; that I must concentrate to feel my strength; that I can exert force; that I can feel pain in the thinking part of me.’

  ‘Ah, yes, and what is that thinking part? And whence comes the force you exert? Those are the pertinent questions.’

  ‘I do not know. When Suzanne called to me I came together. I drew myself up small as if to pass through a tunnel. I felt my shape, and spread out like the five-pointed star of the pentagram which she drew, and each one of these points I elongated. I made the trees shiver and the leaves fall, and Suzanne called me her Lasher.’

  ‘And you liked what you did.’

  ‘Yes, that Suzanne saw it. And that Suzanne liked it. Or else I would never have done it again and not even remembered it.’

  ‘What is there in you that is physical, apart from energy?’

  ‘I do not know!’ The voice was soft yet full of despair. ‘Tell me, Rowan. Know me. And my loneliness.’

  The fire was dying in the grate, but the warmth had spread all through the room, and it surrounded her and held her like a blanket. She felt drowsy but sharply alert.

  ‘Let’s return to Julien. Julien had as much power as I have.’

  ‘Almost, my beloved. But not quite. And there was in Julien a playful and blasphemous soul that danced back and forth in the world, and liked to destroy as much as to build. You are more logical, Rowan.’

  ‘That is a virtue?’

  ‘You have an indomitable will, Rowan.’

  ‘I see. Not broken with humor as Julien’s will could be broken.’

  ‘Pree-cisely, Rowan!’

  She laughed again under her breath. Then she fell quiet, staring at the shimmering air.

  ‘Is there a God, Lasher?’

  ‘I do not know, Rowan. In time I have formed an opinion and it is yes, but it fills me with rage.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I am in pain and if there is a God, he made this pain.’

  ‘Yes, that I understand perfectly, Lasher. But he made love, too, if he exists.’

  ‘Yes. Love. Love is the source of my pain,’ he said. ‘It is the source of all my moving into time and ambition and plans. All my desires spring from love. You might say that what I was -when I was only what I am - that I was poisoned by love, that in the call of Suzanne I was awakened to love, and to the nightmare of want. But I saw. And I loved. And I came.’

  ‘You make me sad,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Love mutated me, Rowan. It created my first dissatisfaction.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now I seek to mutate into flesh, and that shall be the consummation of my love. I have waited so long for you. I have seen such suffering before you, and if I had tears to shed, they would have been shed. God knows, for Langtry I made an illusion of myself weeping. It was a true image of my pain. I wept not merely for Stella, but for all of them — my witches. When Julien died, I was in agony. So great was my pain then, that I might have moved away, back to the realm of the moon and the stars and the silence. But it was too late for me. I could not bear my loneliness. When Mary Beth called, I came back to her. Quickening. I looked into the future. And I saw the thirteenth again. I saw the ever increasing strength of my witches.’

  She had closed her eyes again. The fire was gone out. The room was full of the spirit of Lasher. She could feel him against her skin though he did not move, and the fabric of him lay as lightly as the air itself.

  ‘When I am truly flesh,’ he said, ‘the tears and the laughter will come from me by reflex, as they come in you, or in Michael. I shall be a complete organism.’

  ‘But not human.’

  ‘Better than human.’

  ‘But not human.’

  ‘Stronger, more enduring, for I shall be the organizing intelligence, and I have great power, greater than the power inside any existing human. I shall be a new thing, as I told you. I shall be the species which as of now does not exist.’

  ‘Did you kill Arthur Langtry?’

  ‘Not necessary. He was dying. What he saw hastened his death.’

  ‘But why did you show yourself to him?’

  ‘Because he was strong and he could see me, and I wanted to draw him in so that he might save Stella, for I knew Stella was in danger. Carlotta was the enemy of Stella. Carlotta was as strong as you are, Rowan.’

  ‘Why didn’t Arthur help Stella?’

  ‘You know the history. It was too late. I am as a child at such moments in time. I was defeated by simultaneity because I was acting in time.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘While I appeared to Langtry, the shots were fired into the brain of Stella, and brought about instant death. I see far, but I cannot see all the surprises.’

  ‘You didn’t know.’

  ‘And Carlotta tricked me. Carlotta misled me. I am not infallible. In fact, I am confused with amazing ease.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Why should I tell you? So you may all the better control me? You know how. You are as powerful a witch as Carlotta. It was through emotions. Carlotta conceived of the killing as an act of love. She schooled Lionel in what he was to think as he took the gun and fired at Stella. I was not alerted by hatred, or malice. I paid no attention to the love thoughts of Lionel. Then Stella lay dying, calling to me silently, with her eyes open, wounded beyond hope of repair. And Lionel fired the second shot which drove the spirit of Stella up and out of the body forever.’

  ‘But you killed Lionel. You drove him to his death.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And Cortland? You killed Cortland.’

  ‘No. I fought with Cortland. I struggled with him, and he sought to use his strength against me, and he failed, and fell in his struggle. I did not kill your father.’

  ‘Why did you fight?’

  ‘I warned him. He believed he could command me. He was not my witch. Deirdre was my witch. You are my witch. Not Cortland.’

  ‘But Deirdre didn’t want to give me up. And Cortland was defending her wishes.’

  ‘For his own aims.’

  ‘Which were what?’

  ‘This is old now, unimportant. You went to freedom, so that you could be strong when you returned. You were freed from Carlotta.’

  ‘But you saw to it, and this was against the wishes of both Deirdre and Cortland.’

  ‘For your sake, Rowan. I love you.’

  ‘Ah, but you see, there’s a pattern here, isn’t there? And you don’t want me to understand it. Once the child is born, you are for the child and not the mother. That’s what happened with Deborah and Charlotte, isn’t it?’

  ‘You misjudge me. When I act in time, sometimes I do what is wrong.’

  ‘You went against the wishes of Deirdre. You saw to it I was taken away. You advanced the plan of the thirteen witches, and that was for your own aims. You have always worked for your own aims, haven’t you?’

  ‘You are the thirteenth and the strongest. You have been my aim, and I will serve you. Your aims and my aims are identical.’

&n
bsp; T think not.’

  She could feel his pain now, feel the turbulence in the air, feel the emotion as if it were the low strum of a harp string, playing upon her unconscious ear. Song of pain. The draperies swayed again in a warm draft and both of the chandeliers of the double parlors danced in the shadows, full of splinters of white light, now that the fire had died and taken with it the colors.

  ‘Were you ever a living human being?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you remember the first time you ever saw human beings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘That it was not possible for spirit to come from matter, that it was a joke. What you would call preposterous or a blunder.’

  ‘It came from matter.’

  ‘It did indeed. It came out of the matter when the organization reached the appropriate point for it to emerge, and we were surprised by this mutation.’

  ‘You and the others who were already there.’

  ‘In timelessness already there.’

  ‘Did it draw your attention?’

  ‘Yes. Because it was a mutation and entirely new. And also because we were called to observe.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The newly emerging intelligences of man, locked in matter, nevertheless perceived us, and thereby caused us to perceive ourselves. Again, this is a sophisticated sentence and therefore partially inaccurate. For millennia, these human spiritual intelligences developed; they grew stronger and stronger; they developed telepathic powers, they sensed our existence; they named us and talked to us and seduced us; if we took notice we were changed; we thought of ourselves.’

  ‘So you learned self-consciousness from us.’

  ‘All things from you. Self-consciousness, desire, ambition. You are dangerous teachers. And we are discontent.’

  ‘Then there are others of you with ambition.’

  ‘Julien said, "Matter created man and man created the gods." That is partially correct.’

  ‘Did you ever speak to a human being before Suzanne?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I saw and heard Suzanne. I loved Suzanne.’

  ‘I want to go back to Aaron. Why do you say Aaron tells lies?’

  ‘Aaron does not reveal the whole purpose of the Talamasca.’

  ‘Are you certain of this?’