A clamp of pain stopped her, circling her waist where the girdle bound it, and to hide it from me, she made her face very blank. She looked like a girl when she did this, and again I smelt the sickness in her, the decay in her lungs, and the clots of blood.
Her mind became a riot of fear. She wanted to scream out to me that she was afraid. She wanted to beg me to hold on to her and remain with her until it was finished, but she couldn’t do this, and to my astonishment, I realized she thought I would refuse her. That I was too young and too thoughtless to ever understand.
This was agony.
I wasn’t even conscious of moving away from her, but I’d walked across the room. Stupid little details embedded themselves in my consciousness: nymphs playing on the painted ceiling, the high gilt door handles and the melted wax in brittle stalactites on the white candles that I wanted to break off and crumple in my hand. The place looked hideous, overdressed. Did she hate it? Did she want those barren stone rooms again?
I was thinking about her as if there were “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . . . ” I looked back at her, her stately figure holding to the windowsill. The sky had deepened behind her and a new light, the light of house lamps and passing carriages and nearby windows, gently touched the small inverted triangle of her thin face.
“Can’t you talk to me,” she said softly. “Can’t you tell me how it’s come about? You’ve brought such happiness to all of us.” Even talking hurt her. “But how does it go with you? With you!”
I think I was on the verge of deceiving her, of creating some strong emanation of contentment with all the powers I had. I’d tell mortal lies with immortal skill. I’d start talking and talking and testing my every word to make it perfect. But something happened in the silence.
I don’t think I stood still more than a moment, but something changed inside of me. An awesome shift took place. In one instant I saw a vast and terrifying possibility, and in that same instant, without question, I made up my mind.
It had no words to it or scheme or plan. And I would have denied it had anyone questioned me at that moment. I would have said, “No, never, farthest from my thoughts. What do you think I am, what sort of monster” . . . And yet the choice had been made.
I understood something absolute.
Her words had completely died away, she was afraid again and in pain again, and in spite of the pain, she rose from her chair.
I saw the comforter slip away from her, and I knew she was coming towards me and that I should stop her, but I didn’t do it. I saw her hands close to me, reaching for me, and the next thing I knew she had leapt backwards as if blown by a mighty wind.
She had scuffed backwards across the carpet, and fallen past the chair against the wall. But she grew very still quickly as though she willed it, and there wasn’t fear in her face, even though her heart was racing. Rather there was wonder and then a baffled calm.
If I had thoughts at that moment, I don’t know what they were. I came towards her just as steadily as she had come towards me. Gauging her every reaction, I drew closer until we were as near to each other as we had been when she leapt away. She was staring at my skin and my eyes, and quite suddenly she reached out again and touched my face.
“Not alive!” That was the horrifying perception that came from her silently. “Changed into something. But NOT ALIVE.”
Quietly I said no. That was not right. And I sent a cool torrent of images to her, a procession of glimpses of what my existence had become. Bits, pieces of the fabric of the nighttime Paris, the sense of a blade cutting through the world soundlessly.
With a little hiss she let out her breath. The pain balled its fist in her, opened its claw. She swallowed, sealing her lips against it, her eyes veritably burning into me. She knew now these were not sensations, these communications, but that they were thoughts.
“How then?” she demanded.
And without questioning what I meant to do I gave her the tale link by link,