“So why have you chosen Patashoqua?”
“It has . . . sentimental associations,” Pie replied. “You’ll see for yourself, very soon.” The mystif paused. “You do still want to go?”
“Of course.”
“This is as tight as I can get the knot without stopping our blood.”
“Then why are we delaying?”
Pie’s fingers touched Gentle’s face. “Close your eyes.”
Gentle did so. Pie’s fingers sought out Gentle’s free hand and raised it between them.
“You have to help me,” the mystif said.
“Tell me what to do.”
“Make a fist. Lightly. Leave enough room for a breath to pass through. Good. Good. All magic proceeds from breath. Remember that.”
He did, from somewhere.
“Now,” Pie went on. “Put your hand to your face, with your thumb against your chin. There are very few incantations in our workings. No pretty words. Just pneuma like this, and the will behind them.”
“I’ve got the will, if that’s what you’re asking,” Gentle said.
“Then one solid breath is all we need. Exhale until it hurts. I’ll do the rest.”
“Can I take another breath afterwards?”
“Not in this Dominion.”
With that reply the enormity of what they were undertaking struck Gentle. They were leaving Earth. Stepping off the edge of the only reality he’d ever known into another state entirely. He grinned in the darkness, the hand bound to Pie’s taking hold of his deliverer’s fingers.
“Shall we?” he said.
In the murk ahead of him Pie’s teeth gleamed in a matching smile.
“Why not?”
Gentle drew breath.
Somewhere in the house, he heard a door slamming and footsteps on the stairs leading up to the studio. But it was too late for interruptions. He exhaled through his hand, one solid breath which Pie ‘oh’ pah seemed to snatch from the air between them. Something ignited in the fist the mystif made, bright enough to burn between its clenched fingers. . ..
At the door, Jude saw Gentle’s painting almost made flesh: two figures, almost nose to nose, with their faces illuminated by some unnatural source, swelling like a slow explosion between them. She had time to recognize them both—to see the smiles on their faces as they met each other’s gaze—then, to her horror, they seemed to turn inside out. She glimpsed wet red surfaces, which folded upon themselves not once but three times in quick succession, each fold diminishing their bodies, until they were slivers of stuff, still folding, and folding, and finally gone.
She sank back against the doorjamb, shock making her nerves cavort. The dog she’d found waiting at the top of the stairs went fearlessly to the place where they’d stood. There was no further magic there, to snatch him after them. The place was dead. They’d gone, the bastards, wherever such avenues led.
The realization drew a yell of rage from her, sufficient to send the dog scurrying for cover. She dearly hoped Gentle heard her, wherever he was. Hadn’t she come here to share her revelations with him, so that they could investigate the great unknown together? And all the time he was preparing for his departure without her. Without her!
“How dare you?” she yelled at the empty space.
The dog whined in fear, and the sight of its terror mellowed her. She went down on her haunches.
“I’m sorry,” she said to it. “Come here. I’m not cross with you. It’s that little fucker Gentle.”
The dog was reluctant at first but came to her after a time, its tail wagging intermittently as’it grew more confident of her sanity. She rubbed its head, the contact soothing. All was not lost. What Gentle could do, she could do. He didn’t have the copyright on adventuring. She’d find a way to go where he’d gone, if she had to eat the blue eye grain by grain to do so.
Church bells began to ring as she sat chewing this over, announcing in their ragged peals the arrival of midnight. Their clamor was accompanied by car horns in the street outside and cheers from a party in an adjacent house.
“Whoopee,” she said quietly, on her face the distracted look that had obsessed so many of the opposite sex over the years. She’d forgotten most of them. The ones who’d fought over her, the ones who’d lost their wives in their pursuit of her, even those who’d sold their sanity to find her equal: all were forgotten. History had never much engaged her. It was the future that glittered in her mind’s eye, now more than ever.