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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."

"No." Her voice was soft, uninflected, but I could tell there was no moving her. "I will not let him be lost like this. I can't."

"There's no choice," David whispered. "Please, Sara. Come with me now. Jonathan's waiting."

"Will Jonathan give me peace?" she asked. "Will he give me love?"

"Yes."

"Not like this." She reached out to ease a strand of pale hair back from the dying man's face. "Never like this, and David, I cannot bear to lose it."

"You can't keep it. Humans die. It's the law."

She looked away from him, and I had the strange, creepy impression she was looking somewhere else.

At me. But that wasn't possible, because I knew I wasn't here, really. Not in this time. Not in this place.

Sara's eyes were the color of amethysts, a beautiful, peaceful color. She stared at the corner where I floated, and then she smiled.

"The law of my heart is different," she said, and let go of the man's hand. She stood up, and the white gown fell away, sliding to the floor in a puddle of cloth; under it her skin glowed a soft, perfect ivory. No sculptor had ever captured a form like that, so perfect, so graceful.

"Don't," David said, and took a step toward her. I know he could have stopped her, but something- maybe just the heartbreaking longing in her eyes- made him hesitate.

She folded back the sheets and climbed into the narrow bed. The dying man seemed to see her, and those pale eyes widened; the word he shaped might have been No . . . and then she wrapped her arms around him. Her pale, white hair flowed over the two of them like a cloak, wrapping them together.

"No, Sara," David whispered. It sounded like a good-bye.

There was a flare of light on the bed, something so bright it was like the heart of a bonfire, and in it I heard screams. Terrible, wrenching screams. They were dying, both of them, dying horribly.

David didn't move. Maybe he couldn't. I wanted to, but it was still a dream, only a dream for me, and I just floated, waiting, as the fire burned and the screams faded, until the light faded, too.

Two bodies, lying senseless on the bed.

One of them opened its mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Dry, voiceless, horror-stricken. He had turquoise blue eyes now, and the hair that had been thin and fragile was reborn in a white-gold flame around his head.

Restored to life, health, as she must have known him.

Sara lay unmoving beside him, amethyst eyes still open. He reached out to touch her face . . .

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