any words then other than what had been on the tablet. But I had the body made and well made within seconds, and he sat back laughing with delight, his knee up, looking at me. I suppose I looked as I do now.
"I remember being too astonished by this lovely Greek house with its courtyard and doors open everywhere, and paintings on the wall of slender, big-eyed Greek persons in sinewy flowing garments that made me think of Egypt, but were definitely Ionic, unto themselves.
"He put his foot down on the floor, turned his folded arms, and then stood up. He was dressed in the looser, more naked Greek manner of clothing without fitted sleeves as we always wore, and he wore sandals. He studied me fearlessly as my father might have studied a piece of the silversmith's craft. " 'Where are you fingernails, spirit?' he asked. 'Where is the hair on your face? Where are your eyelashes! Be quick! Hereafter you need only say "Bring to me all those details which I require at this oiouien1" and nothing more. Fix an image and you've finished your work. That's it. That's it.' "He clapped his hands. " 'Now you are plenty complete enough for what you have to do.
Sit there. I want to see you move about, walk, talk, lift your arms. Go on, sit down.'
"I did. It was a Greek chair, graceful with high arms and no back.
Everywhere around me the light seemed glorious and different; outside, the clouds were piled higher. The air was clearer.
" 'That's because you are on the shores of the sea,' he said. 'Do you feel the water in the air, spirit? That will always aid you. That is why the addle-headed ghosts of the dead and the demons like damp places, they need the water, the sound of it, the smell of it, the coolness creeping into them, in whatever form they possess.'
"He made a long stroll about the room. Arrogantly I just sat there, showing him no respect. He didn't seem to care.
"A Babylonian or Persian full suit would have been more flattering to him with his thin old legs and feet. But it was too warm.
"I drifted from looking at him. I was marveling at the mosaic floor. Our own floors at home had often been as colorful and as well crafted, but this floor was not full of stiff rosettes or processional figures, but with frolicking dancers and great clusters of grapes for ornament, and there was every kind of inlaid marble around its borders. The designs were fluid and jubilant; I thought of all the Greek vases I had handled in the marketplace, and how I had loved their graceful work. The murals on the walls were equally lovely and lively, and there were the repeated bands of color which utterly delighted my eye.
"He stopped in the middle of the room. 'So we admire the beautiful, do we?' I didn't answer him. Then he said: 'Speak, I want to hear your voice.'
" 'And what shall I say?' I answered without rising. 'What I want to say? Or what you tell me to say? What my true thoughts are, or some servile nonsense-that I am your spirit-slave!'
"I broke off suddenly. I lost all confidence in myself. I realized didn't know quite why I was saying these things. I struggled to remember. I had been sent to this man. This man was a great magician. This man was supposed to be a Master of his craft. I was a Servant. Who had made me that?
" 'Don't make yourself dissolve with all this petty worry,' he said 'You speak well and clearly, that's what I wanted to know, and you think, and you are most powerful. You are perhaps the greatest aneel of might I've ever seen, and nothing I've ever conjured has had your strength.'
" 'Who sent me? It was a King,' I said, 'But my mind is muddled suddenly, and it's agony not to know.'
" 'It's the trap of spirits, it's what keeps them weak, it's the hobbling of them provided by God, you might say, so that they don't ever gain strength enough to hurt men and women too much. But you know who sent you. Think! Make yourself come up with the answer. You are going to start remembering things now, you are going to start paying attention. And first, let go of the raging scream in you. I had nothing to do with those who hurt you