Well In Time Part 29

"But it's not finished."

"Then finish it."

"That's what I intend to do once we get to the South. I thought I was going to have to rewrite the whole thing. Now it's only a few pages. But I need to settle in somewhere before I can write them."

"Then read what you have and I'll come to the South to hear the end."

Javier smiled and nodded. "That would be good."

Calypso reached out a hand to Hill. "It's a deal. That's the least I could do. How can I ever thank you?"

"By starting tonight. Read a few pages for me. We left off where..."

"I know, I know. Where Blanche de Muret jumped down the well."

"Yes," Hill said eagerly.

"Not tonight, Walter. Javier and I are still jet-lagged. But tomorrow night, I promise I'll read everything I've got. Then you'll have to wait for a couple of months until I can finish it."

Hill's lower lip shot out in a pout.

"If we wait until tomorrow night, something terrible will happen. Maybe war will be declared with aliens from deep s.p.a.ce. Something will keep me from ever hearing the end of this d.a.m.ned story."

"No, Walter. Everything will be fine. Go to bed, now, and tomorrow I'll read you the rest. I'm amazed you haven't read it yourself."

"Oh, no!" He looked shocked. "I would never do that. This book is your intellectual property."

"Well, your patience and ethics will be rewarded. Tomorrow."

Calypso rose and held her hand out to Javier.

"Come along, my love, before this persuasive man has his way with me."

Hill stayed seated, staring sullenly into the fire.

"Tomorrow then," he said glumly.

"Goodnight, Walter." She bent and kissed him on top of the head.

Javier patted him on the shoulder as he pa.s.sed and murmured, "I never win either. Just imagine trying to live with her!"

"I do," Hill whispered, after they had disappeared down the hallway to the guest room. "I do. All the time."

Javier lay with Calypso's head on his shoulder. Freshly pressed sheets of old, embroidered linen rustled as she burrowed her body toward him until her entire length was nestled against his.

"It's so nice to be here," she sighed.

"Do you miss it?"

"What? Paris? This place?"

"All of it."

Calypso raised up on her elbow, her face hovering over his, so that her hair made a tent containing them both.

"Javier, my love, there is only one thing, ever, that I have truly missed-you. I don't even know how many days we were apart because of the attack, but to me they were an eternity. All the rest of this," she waved her hand at the guest room walls in a gesture meant to include Paris and the entire rest of the planet, "is superfluous. I can live without everything else. I don't even want anything else. All I want, or have ever wanted, is you."

"So you won't mind, when our vacation is over, going back to Rancho Cielo?"

"Will you be there?"

He laughed. "Yes."

"Then I'll be happy. Or maybe you'd like to move to Jupiter. I hear the ambient temperature there is about minus two hundred and thirty-four degrees. I'd go there, too, if you were there."

She settled back and nuzzled her cheek into the swale of his shoulder.

"Of course," she murmured, "you'd have to buy me a new wardrobe."

He laughed, bent to kiss her, and found her already asleep.

The next night, the three friends again sat by the fire after supper. Calypso opened the ma.n.u.script box and pulled the sheaf from it. "Ready?" she flicked a teasing glance at Hill.

"For about a decade," he said. "Read on." He reached to pour each of them a refill for their gla.s.ses.

"You remember, we ended when..."

"Yes, yes," Hill said impatiently, "I remember!"

"Okay then," Calypso said, "here we go." Then, adjusting her reading gla.s.ses and taking a sip of cognac, she began. She read until midnight, recounting Blanche's jump down the well, her rescue, the meeting with Caspar and then with Allia. She read until her voice was hoa.r.s.e, then begged off until the following night.

The next evening, they went out for an early supper at a little bistro close to Place des Vosges and then walked home in the dusk. Traffic roared in the distance on the Champs-elysees and small bright pink, oblong clouds floated in a sky of unearthly electric blue. Calypso strolled between the two men, an arm linked in each of theirs.

"I haven't been this happy in years," she sighed.

"Because you're in Paris?" Hill asked.

"No. Because we're all together again. Because we're all alive and well. It's a miracle, don't you think? Given what we've been through?"

Both men nodded. Her question threw them both into a wordless place of grat.i.tude.

"Expansion and contraction," Calypso went on, "that's what we've endured. First, we're on the edge of the abyss-endless void and light. Then suddenly, we're in the cave, with its constriction and darkness. Or in Javier's case, in a conflagration of blood and fire. We've all led big, expansive lives-and then, we've been reduced, compacted. Just to have survived it makes me happy."

"I guess it proves we're flexible," Hill said.

"And invincible," Javier added.

Calypso pulled them both in close to her as they strolled, their footsteps synchronized. In the center of Place des Vosges, a beautiful young model in an ankle-length mink coat was posing near the fountain while the photographer, all in black, ducked and wove, snapping his shutter. The girl preened and pouted and strutted, and the three pa.s.sersby smiled to themselves as they pa.s.sed.

Nothing of this world meant a hoot to them anymore, Hill reflected. He, Calypso, and Javier had pa.s.sed through a veil into an alternate reality in which the rewards of this world, no matter how provocatively displayed, paled in comparison.

In comparison to what? he asked himself, then smiled, knowing he was loved.

They were settled again by the fire.

"Tonight we'll finish all that I've written," Calypso said as prelude.

"I'm sad to hear it," Hill said, "but at least I'll finally know the end."

"You remember that we left off last night, with Blanche being prepared to meet Sa Tahuti?"

"Yes, after Allia told her the story of Isis and Osiris and of the underground community," Hill nodded. He turned to Javier.

"When Calypso and I first met here in Paris, I told her we had known one another in a life in ancient Egypt. I thought I was kidding at the time, but this story makes me wonder..."

Javier nodded. "Yes. Somehow, it all sounds familiar to me, too. Even the part about Sa Tahuti trading bodies. The shamans talk about things like that, too."

The men looked at Calypso expectantly. She adjusted her reading gla.s.ses on her nose.

"Ready?"

Without waiting for a response, she began.

The Story of Blanche de Muret Continues

Let the readers of my affidavit be sure, this long story told by Allia taxed my credulity, as it must certainly tax that of those who read it. I was in fear that I had fallen in with the most hardened devil wors.h.i.+ppers and witches, who traded souls as some people trade lemons for bread.

Yet, the community of the Ammonites-for that is what they call themselves-was as gentle, mannerly, and generous with Christian charity as any one might encounter. Also, I had the a.s.surance of Caspar, King of Nubia, with his Christian cross blazoned upon his forehead, that I was quite safe from demonic forces. Indeed, he soothed my fears by saying that the Egyptians' spiritual development was of such a level that even Christians might envy it.

Still, as the reader may well imagine, I was dubious especially of the one called Sa Tahuti, for such magic as she practiced was completely beyond my understanding. I am ashamed to say that my own ignorance became a sort of prejudice against this person, well in advance of actually meeting her. I prepared myself as best I could to confront one who seemed to me at best a bald-faced liar and charlatan, or possibly one demented and delusional, and at worst, demonical.

None of these objections did I raise with Allia, for she clearly was bent on seeing this introduction into being. The next day, she and several attendants-new women whose faces I had never before seen, just as Allia had predicted-bathed and clothed me and arranged my hair according to the simple and fastidious ways of their community. Dressed in a long white linen gown rather than a tunic, I was led by Allia by a way I had never before been, far into the recesses of the cave.

At last, we came to an anteroom where Allia, with one last flounce of my skirt as her eyes swept me head to toe, departed, leaving me alone. Again, I was in a room that had been plastered and painted with the lively, elongated figures of everyday Egyptians at work. These were harvesting grain beside the river, where hunters in boats were aiming their arrows at a flock of geese.

Charming as these scenes were, however, I could not subdue my nervousness. How was I to deport myself with this ancient woman I was about to meet? About what could we possibly converse? And what would I do, should I mistrust or even hate her on sight? Nothing in my upbringing as a highborn lady, careful as it was, had prepared me for such an encounter.

Therefore, it was a great relief to me when a girl about my own age came to fetch me into the inner chamber. Like the others, she was clad in a simple white linen gown, with the exception that her hair hung loose in a black cascade, clear to her waist. She greeted me with an engaging smile and motioned me to follow her, saying, "There is no need to be afraid, Blanche de Muret. Sa Tahuti has only love for you."

The apartment to which she delivered me was much like Allia's, appointed with fine ebony and gold furniture, while the walls were covered in hieroglyphics and figures of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. It was, withal, a cozy room, for many candles were burning, bouquets of fresh flowers, and plates of luscious fruits were set about, and the divans were covered in beautifully embroidered coverlets.

"Please sit," the girl said, indicating a divan covered in a field of st.i.tched flowers. "I understand from our good Caspar," she began immediately that I was seated, "that you have certain apprehensions about this meeting?"

I was torn between twin desires to be truthful about my misgivings and to give no offense. "I have nothing in my experience to prepare me for an encounter with a being such as Sa Tahuti," I managed to stammer.

The girl smiled sweetly and said, "I understand," and then sat gazing at me expectantly. I grew restless under her gaze and said, rather crossly I regret to report, "When shall my audience begin?"

The girl smiled again, this time with a real twinkle in her eye and said, "Why, it already has!"

I stared at her dully, not in the least comprehending. Was it possible the old crone was spying on us to see what manner of person I was? Finally, I shook my head and with knitted brows said, "I don't understand. I'm sorry."

She regarded me cheerfully and responded, "But here we are! We are talking. The audience has begun."

A bolt of shock ran through me. I stared at her, aghast.

"But surely..." I faltered. "No. It cannot be..."

I stared at her some more and she, as composed as she could possibly be, gazed back. At last I managed to gasp, "You are Sa Tahuti?"

A delightful, impish grin flashed across her face. She didn't say a word, but only nodded, her eyes never leaving mine.

"But...I thought..." I stammered. I could not finish but collapsed in confusion and mortification, my head hanging low.

In a flash, she had crossed the s.p.a.ce between us and with her hand beneath my chin, raised my head up, so that our eyes met and held. I had a strange sensation of a tremor, hot and intense, running from her hand to my head and this feeling soon expanded, coursing down my arms and legs and p.r.i.c.kling along my entire torso, front and back. At this close range, the eyes I stared into were infinite as the night sky and older than time itself, and so filled with wisdom and compa.s.sion that I dropped my own eyes in humility.

"Do not resist me, Blanche de Muret," she whispered. "You have come far and suffered many hards.h.i.+ps and terrible losses to be by my side again."

"Again?!" I shrieked. I felt oddly light-headed and terribly confused and unsure whether I would burst into tears or run screaming from this uncanny child-who-was-not-a-child. The very walls around me seemed to warp and waver, as insubstantial as heat waves.

Finally, the acc.u.mulated griefs of these many months of pilgrimage, captivity and death were a bursting dam. Tears and wailing consumed me and I collapsed into the arms of Sa Tahuti!

How long she held me, rocking and whispering comforts in a strange tongue, I do not know. It seemed my tears would go on forever and just when I thought I might regain my composure, a fresh bout would overtake me.

Images of my homeland in Languedoc, green with spring and white with blossoming fruit trees, were followed by intensely real imaginings of my beloved parents. I saw their faces, looked into their eyes, felt their love. And my darling brother G.o.dfrey cavorted across my sight, running happily in fields of new green wheat, dotted with red poppies. With each of these visions, a fresh stab of grief and pain reduced me once again to helpless sobs.

When at last I came to myself, I lay upon the divan with a flowered coverlet over me. Sa Tahuti sat beside me, hand upon my brow, softly singing a sweet, soothing, monotonous chant, over and over. I lay beneath her touch like a piece of boiled laundry-limp and unresisting.

"You have been long away, Blanche," she said quietly. Regarding me tenderly, she continued, "It is necessary to have this great cleansing upheaval, Blanche, so that these difficult events and beloved persons do not come to live in your bones as disease. Those things that are not brought to consciousness can turn to poison. I see that now your aura is cleared of much dark and brooding energy."