Light touched his eyes, but whatever lay in front of him was murky. There was a vague texture to the gloom, however, and he tried to focus upon it. It wasn’t until his brow, cheeks, and chin reported their irritation to his brain that he realized why his eyes couldn’t make sense of the scene. He was lying on his back, and there was a cloth over his face. He told his arm to rise and pluck it away, but the limb just lay stupid at his side. He concentrated, demanding it obey, his irritation growing as the timber of the supplications changed and a distressing urgency came into them. He felt the bed he was lying on jostled, and tried to call out in alarm, but there was something in his throat that prevented him from making a sound. Irritation became unease. What was wrong with him? Be calm, he told himself. It’ll come clear; just be calm. But damn it, the bed was being lifted up! Where was he being taken? To hell with calm. He couldn’t just lie still while he was paraded around. He wasn’t dead, for God’s sake!
Or was he? The thought shredded every hope of equilibrium. He was being lifted up, and carried, lying inert on a hard board with his face beneath a shroud. What was that, if it wasn’t dead? They were saying prayers for his soul, hoping to waft it heavenward, meanwhile carrying his remains to what dispatch? A hole in the ground? A pyre? He had to stop them: raise a hand, a moan, anything to signal that this leave-taking was premature. As he was concentrating on making a sign, however primitive, a voice cut through the prayers. Both prayers and bier bearers stumbled to a halt and the same voice—it was Pie!—came again.
“Not yet!” it said.
Somebody off to Gentle’s right murmured something in a language Gentle didn’t recognize: words of consolation, perhaps. The mystif responded in the same tongue, its voice fractured with grief.
A third speaker now entered the exchange, his purpose undoubtedly the same as his compatriot’s: coaxing Pie to leave the body alone. What were they saying? That the corpse was just a husk; an empty shadow of a man whose spirit was gone into a better place? Gentle willed Pie not to listen. The spirit was here! Here!
Then—joy of joys!—the shroud was pulled back from his face, and Pie appeared in his field of vision, staring down at him. The mystif looked half dead itself, its eyes raw, its beauty bruised with sorrow.
I’m saved, Gentle thought. Pie sees that my eyes are open, and there’s more than putrefaction going on in my skull. But no such comprehension came into Pie’s face. The sight simply brought a new burst of tears. A man came to Pie’s side, his head a cluster of crystalline growths, and laid his hands on the mystif s shoulders, whispering something in its ear and gently tugging it away. Pie’s fingers went to Gentle’s face and lay for a few seconds close to his lips. But his breath—which he’d used to shatter the wall between Dominions—was so piffling now it went unfelt, and the fingers were withdrawn by the hand of Pie’s consoler, who then reached down and drew the shroud back over Gentle’s face.
The prayer sayers picked up their dirge, and the bearers their burden. Blinded again, Gentle felt the spark of hope extinguished, replaced with panic and anger. Pie had always claimed such sensitivity. How was it possible that now, when empathy was essential, the mystif could be immune to the jeopardy of the man it claimed as a friend? More than that: a soul mate; someone it had reconfigured its flesh for.
Gentle’s panic slowed for an instant. Was there some half hope buried amid these rebukes? He scoured them for a clue. Soul mate? Reconfigured flesh? Yes, of course: as long as he had thought he had desire, and desire could touch the mystif; change the mystif. If he could put death from his mind and turn his thoughts to sex he might still touch Pie’s protean core: bring about some metamorphosis, however small, that would signal his sentience.