a place I knew. I think it was a palace in Germany where Haydn wrote his music -- and she spoke casually as she had a thousand times to me. But tell me about all this, what do the people believe, what turns the wheels inside of them, what are these marvelous inventions ... She wore a fashionable black hat with a great white plume on its broad brim and a white veil tied round the top of it and under her chin, and her face was merely beginning, merely young.
When I opened my eyes, I knew Marius was waiting for me. I came out into the chamber and saw him standing by the empty violin case, with his back to the open window over the sea.
"You have to go now, my young one," he said sadly. "I had hoped for more time, but that is impossible. The boat is waiting to take you away."
"Because of what I did..." I said miserably. So I was being cast out.
"He's destroyed the things in the chapel," Marius said, but his voice was asking for calm. He put his arm around my shoulder, and he took my valise in his other hand. We went towards the door. "I want you to go now because it is the only thing that will quiet him, and I want you to remember not his anger, but everything that I told you, and to be confident that we will meet again as we said."
"But are you afraid of him, Marius?"
"Oh, no, Lestat. Don't carry this worry away with you. He has done little things like this before, now and then. He does not know what he does, really. I am convinced of that. He only knows that someone stepped between him and Akasha. Time is all that is required for him to lapse back."
There it was, that phrase again, "lapse back."
"And she sits as if she never moved, doesn't she?" I asked.
"I want you away now so that you don't provoke him," Marius said, leading me out of the house and towards the cliffside stairs. He continued speaking:
"Whatever ability we creatures have to move objects mentally, to ignite them, to do any real harm by the power of the mind does not extend very far from the physical spot where we stand. So I want you gone from here tonight and on your way to America. All the sooner to return to me when he is no longer agitated and no longer remembers, and I will have forgotten nothing and will be waiting for you."
I saw the galley in the harbor below when we reached the edge of the cliff. The stairs looked impossible, but they weren't impossible. What was impossible was that I was leaving Marius and this island right now.
"You needn't come down with me," I said, taking the valise from him. I was trying not to sound bitter and crestfallen. After all, I had caused this. "I would rather not weep in front of others. Leave me here."
"I wish we had had a few more nights together," he said, "for us to consider in quiet what took place. But my love goes with you. And try to remember the things I've told you. When we meet again we'll have much to say to each other." He paused.
"What is it, Marius?"
"Tell me truthfully," he asked. "Are you sorry that I came for you in Cairo, sorry that I brought you here?"
"How could I be?" I asked. "I'm only sorry that I'm going. What if I can't find you again or you can't find me?"
"When the time is right, I'll find you," he said. "And always remember: you have the power to call to me, as you did before. When I hear that call, I can bridge distances to answer that I could never bridge on my own. If the time is right, I will answer. Of that you can be sure."
I nodded. There was too much to say and I didn't speak a word.
We embraced for a long moment, and then I turned and slowly started my descent, knowing he would understand why I didn't look back.
Part VII Ancient Magic, Ancient Mysteries Chapter 16
16
I did not know how much I wanted "The World" until my ship finally made its way up the murky Bayou St. Jean towards the city of New Orleans, and I saw the black ragged line of the swamp against the luminous sky.
The fact that none of our kind had ever penetrated