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of grayish-white material around which the human form was meant to wrap.

'Believe,' he whispered. He fingers crawled over Don-nell's wrist, delicate as insects' legs. 'I believe.'

Donnell drew back his hand, both revolted and pitying. A chair scraped behind him: Jocundra settling herself to take notes.

The area of the magnetic field around Robichaux's chest was a chaos of white flashes; the remainder of the field had arranged itself into four thick, bright arcs bowing from his head to his feet. Donnell had never seen anything like it. To experiment he placed his hands over the chest. The attraction was so powerful it locked onto his hands, and the skin of his fingers - as well as the skin of Robichaux's chest - dimpled and bulged, pulled in every direction. He had to wrench his hands loose. They disengaged with a loud static pop, and a tremor passed through the sick man's body.

Donnell described the event to Jocundra, and she suggested he try it again, this time for a longer period. After several minutes he detected a change in the field. The pulls were turning into pushes; it was as if he had thrust his hands into a school of tiny electric fish and they were swimming between his fingers, nudging them. After several minutes more, he found that he could wiggle the top joints of his fingers, and he felt elements of the field cohere and flow in the direction of his wiggle. A half hour went by. The four bright arcs encaging Robichaux began to unravel, sending wispy white streamers inward, and the pyrotechnic display above his chest diminished to a barely perceptible vapor.

Sweat poured off Robichaux, his neck arched and his hands clawed the sheet. Whimpers escaped between his clenched teeth. A spray of broken capillaries appeared on his chest, a webbing of fine purplish lines melting up into view. He rocked his head back and forth, and the whimpers swelled to outright cries. At this, Donnell withdrew his hands and noticed the wind had kicked up outside; the room had grown chilly. Jocundra was shivering, and Mrs Robichaux knelt by the door. 'Holy Jesus please, Holy Jesus please,' she babbled.

'What happened?' Jocundra's eyes were fixed upon the sick man, who lay gasping.

Donnell turned back to Robichaux; the field was reverting to its previous state. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Let me try again.'

The cure took three days and two nights. Donnell had to work the field an hour at a time to prevent its reversion; then he would break for an hour, trembling and spent. Her husband's torment frightened Mrs Robichaux, and she fled to the second cabin and would not return. Occasionally the eldest boy - a hollow-cheeked eleven-year-old - poked his head in the window to check on his father, running off the instant Donnell paid him the slightest attention. Mr Brisbeau brought them food and water, and waited in the pickup, drinking. Donnell could hear him singing along with the radio far into the night.

The first night was eerie.

They left the oil lamp unlit so Donnell could better see the field, and the darkness isolated them in a ritual circumstance: the healer performing his magical passes; the sick man netted in white fire, feverish and groaning; Jocundra cowled with a blanket against the cold, the sacred witness, the scribe. Crickets sustained a frenzied sawing, the dog whined. Debris rustled along the outside walls, driven by the wind; it kicked up whenever Donnell was working, swirling slowly about the shack as if a large animal were patrolling in tight circles, its coarse hide rubbing the boards. Moonlight transformed the plastic curtain into a smeared, glowing barrier behind which the shadows of the pines held steady; the wind was localized about the cabin, growing stronger with each treatment. Though he was too weak to voice his complaints, Robichaux glared at them, and to avoid his poisonous looks they took breaks on the steps of the shack. The dog slunk away every time they came out, and as if it were Robichaux's proxy, stared at them from the weeds, chips of moonlight reflected in its eyes.

During their last break before dawn, Jocundra sheltered under Donnell's arm and said happily, 'It's going to work.'

'You mean the cure?'

'Not just that,' she said. 'Everything. I've got a feeling.' And then, worriedly, she asked, 'Don't you think so?'

'Yeah,' he said, wanting to keep her spirits high. But as he said it, he had a burst of conviction, and wondered if like