The Witching Hour

  "Why do you do it?"

  "To be human. To be alive. But Aaron is too strong for me; Aaron organizes and commands the tissues of Aaron. Same with Michael. Same with almost all. Even the flowers."

  "Ah, yes, the flowers. You mutated the roses."

  "I did. For you, Rowan. To show you my love and my power."

  "And to show me your ambition?"

  "Yes ... "

  "I don't want you ever to go into Aaron. I don't want you ever to hurt him or Michael."

  "I will obey you, but I would like to kill Aaron."

  "Why?"

  "Because Aaron is finished, and Aaron has much knowledge and Aaron lies to you."

  "How so, finished?"

  "He has done what I saw that he would do and wanted for him to do. So I say finished. Now he may do what I can see and do not want him to do, which goes against my ambition. I would kill him, if it would not make you bitter and full of hate for me."

  "You can feel my anger, can't you?"

  "It hurts me deeply, Rowan."

  "I would he in a rage of pain and anger if you hurt Aaron. But let's talk further about Aaron. I want you to spell this out for me. What did you want Aaron to do that he's done?"

  "Give you his knowledge. His words written in a straight line of time."

  "You're speaking of the Mayfair chronology."

  "Yes. The history. You said spell it out so I didn't use the word 'chronology.' "

  She laughed softly. "You don't have to spell it out that much," she said. "Go on."

  "I wanted you to read this history from him. Petyr saw my Deborah burn, my beloved Deborah. Aaron saw my Deirdre weep in the garden, my beautiful Deirdre. Your responses and decisions are inestimably assisted by such history. But this task of Aaron has been completed."

  "Yes, I see."

  "Beware."

  "Of thinking I understand?"

  "Precisely. Keep asking. Words like 'responses' and 'inestimably' are vague. I would keep nothing from you, Rowan."

  She heard him sighing again, but it was long, and soft, and became slowly a different sound. It was like the wind sighs. She continued to rest against the fireplace, basking in the heat of the fire, her eyes wide as she stared into the shadows. It seemed she had been here forever speaking to him, this disembodied yet softly resonant voice. The sound of the sigh had almost touched her all over like the wind.

  She gave a little soft laugh of delight. She could see him in the room if she tried, see a rippling in the air, something swelling and filling the room.

  "Yes ... " he said. "I love your laughter. I cannot laugh."

  "I can help you learn to do it."

  "I know."

  "Am I the doorway?"

  "You are."

  "Am I the thirteenth witch?"

  "You are."

  "Then Michael was correct in his interpretation."

  "Michael is seldom ever wrong. Michael sees clearly."

  "Do you want to kill Michael?"

  "No. I love Michael. I would walk and talk with Michael."

  "Why, why Michael of all people?"

  "I do not know."

  "Oh, you must know."

  "To love is to love. Why do you love Michael? Is the answer the truth? To love is to love. Michael is bright and beautiful. Michael laughs. Michael has much of the invisible spirit in him, infusing his limbs and his eyes and voice. Do you see?"

  "I think I do. It's what we call vitality."

  "Exactly," he said.

  But had the word ever been said with such meaning?

  He went on.

  "I saw Michael from the beginning. Michael was a surprise. Michael sees me. Michael came to the fence. Also Michael has ambition and is strong. Michael loved me. Now Michael fears me. You came between me and Michael, and Michael fears that I will come between him and you."

  "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.
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  "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."

  "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 unhappiness 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. End 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 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, bac
k 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 a 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."