The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,529

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