a little, and I saw that the charm of his eyes was not merely their depth, but their length. I was a person of rounded features; the lines of his face came to beautiful trajectories and points.
"When did you first come? How could Esther have seen you?" "If I was sent to save her I failed. But why did you call her the lamb? Why did you use those words? Who are these enemies you speak of?"
"You'll learn soon enough. We're all surrounded by enemies. All we have to do to rouse them is show a little power, resist the interjecting plans which they have laid with all the solemnity of a god, plans which are only the routine, the ritual, the tradition, the law, the normal, the regular, the sane . . . You know what I mean, you understand me."
I did understand him.
"Well, I have gone against them and they would come against me, only I'm too powerful for them, and I have dreams that dwarf their petty evil!"
"My, but you speak with a silken tongue," I said, "and you give so much in your words. Why to me?"
"To you? Because you're a spirit, a god, an angel sent to me. You witnessed her death because she was a lamb. Don't you see? You came when she died, as if a god to receive a sacrifice!"
"I hated her death," I said. "I slew the three men who killed her." This astonished him. "You did that?"
"Yes, Billy Joel, Hayden, and Doby Eval. I killed them. The papers know. The news talks of her blood on their weapons and their blood mingled with it now. I did that! Because I had failed to stop them from their evil plan. What sacrifice do you speak of? Why call her the lamb? Where was the altar and if you think I'm a god, you're a fool! I hate God and all gods. I hate them."
He was enthralled. He drew close to me, and then stepped back, and then walked around, too, excited to be still.
If he was guilty of killing his daughter, he gave no clue. He looked at me with pure delight in our exchange.
Something struck me suddenly. The skin of his face had been moved! A surgeon had tightened it over all his bones. I laughed at the ingenuity of it and the implications, that things in this age could be done so simply. And with a sudden sinking terror, I thought, What if I have been brought to this age for a reason that has to do with his horrors and the world's wonders, and this is the chance to stay whole and alive from now on?
I winced, and he started to question me again. I put my hands up for him to be quiet.
I backed away from my own thought. I turned and stared at the gleaming bones, and I bent down and laid my own fingers, my material fingers, upon my own bones.
At once I felt as if someone were touching me as I touched them. I felt someone's touch on my own legs. I felt my own hands on my own face as I touched the skull. I sank my thumbs into the empty sockets defiantly, where my eyes had been, my eyes . . . something boiling, something too ghastly to think of-I uttered a small sound that made me ashamed. .-
The room quivered, brightened, then contracted as though it were receding. No, stay here. Stay in this room. Stay here with him! But I was imagining things, as humans say. My body had not weakened at all. I was standing tall.
I opened my eyes slowly and closed them and looked down at the golden bones. Iron fastened them to the rotted cloth beneath them, iron fastened them to the old wood of the casket, but it was the same casket, permeated with all the oils that would make it last unto the end of time, like the bones. An image of Zurvan flashed through me, and with it came a flood of words ... to love, to learn, to know, to love . . .
Once again came the huge city walls of blue-glazed bricks, the golden lions and the cries of voices, and one of them pointing his finger and screaming at me in the old Hebrew-the prophet-and the chants rose and fell.
Something had happened! I had done something, something unspeakable to be made this ghost, this old ghost who had served Masters beyond