around the planet. The ‘earthbound’ is the name for them. But Pandora, I have more than that in myself to explore.” You continued:
“Apparently each century yields a new kind of vampire, or let us say that our course of growth was not set in the beginning any more than the course of human beings. Some night perhaps I will tell you everything I see—these spirits who were never clear to me when I was mortal—I’ll tell you about something Armand confided to me, about the colors he saw when he took life, how the soul left body in waves of radiating color!”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing!”
“I too see this,” you said.
I could see it hurt you almost too much to speak of Armand.
“But whatever possessed Armand to believe in the Veil?” I asked, suddenly amazed at my own passion. “Why did he go into the sun? How could such a thing kill Lestat’s reason and will? Veronica. Did they know the very name means Vera Ikon, that there was never any such person, that she could not be found by one drawn back to ancient Jerusalem on the day Christ carried his cross; she was a concoction of Priests. Didn’t they know?”
I think I had taken the two notebooks in hand, for I looked down and I saw that I did indeed hold them. In fact, I clutched both of them to my breast and examined one of the pens.
“Reason,” I whispered. “Oh, precious reason! And consciousness within a void.” I shook my head, smiling kindly at you. “And vampires who speak now with spirits! Humans who can travel from body to body.”
I went on with a wholly unfamiliar energy.
“A lively fashionable modern cult of angels, devotion thriving everywhere. And people rising from operating tables to speak of life after death, a tunnel, an embracing love! Oh, you have been created perhaps in an auspicious time! I don’t know what to make of it.”
You were obviously quite impressed by these words, or rather the way that my perspective had been drawn from me. So was I.
“I’ve only started,” you said, “and will keep company alike with brilliant Children of the Millennia and street-corner fortune tellers who deal out the cards of the Tarot. I’m eager to gaze into crystal balls and darkened mirrors. I’ll search now among those whom others dismiss as mad, or among us—among those like you, who have looked on something that they do not believe they should share! That’s it, isn’t it? But I ask you to share it. I’m finished with the ordinary human soul. I am finished with science and psychology, with microscopes and perhaps even with the telescopes aimed at the stars.”
I was quite enthralled. How strongly you meant it. I could feel my face so warm with feeling for you as I looked at you. I think my mouth was slack with wonder.
“I am a miracle unto myself,” you said. “I am immortal, and I want to learn about us! You have a tale to tell, you are ancient, and deeply broken. I feel love for you and cherish that it is what it is and nothing more.”
“What a strange thing to say!”
“Love.” You shrugged your shoulders. You looked up and then back at me for emphasis. “And it rained and it rained for millions of years, and the volcanoes boiled and the oceans cooled, and then there was love?” You shrugged to make a mock of the absurdity.
I couldn’t help but laugh at your little gest. Too perfect, I thought. But I was suddenly so torn.
“This is very unexpected,” I said. “Because if I do have a story, a very small story—”
“Yes?”
“Well, my story—if I have one—is very much to the point. It’s linked to the very points you’ve made.”
Suddenly something came over me. I laughed again softly.
“I understand you!” I said. “Oh, not that you can see spirits, for that is a great subject unto itself.
“But I see now the source of your strength. You have lived an entire human life. Unlike Marius, unlike me, you weren’t taken in your prime. You were taken near the moment of your natural death, and you will not settle for the adventures and faults of the earthbound! You are determined to forge ahead with the courage of one who has died of old age and then finds himself risen from the grave. You’ve kicked aside the funeral wreaths. You are ready for Mount Olympus, aren’t you?”
“Or for Osiris in the depths