listened as words were spoken, floating through the air as motes
of dust on streamers from the sun.
“He’s very sick, lovely Damson,” he heard one voice say.
And the other replied, “He’s protecting himself, Mole.”
Damson and Mole. He knew who they were, although he
couldn’t quite place them. He knew as well that they were talk-
ing about him. He didn’t mind. What they were saying didn’t
make any difference.
Sometimes he saw their faces through the chinks and cracks.
The Mole was a creature with round, furry features and
large, questioning eyes who stood above him, looking thought-
ful. Sometimes he brought the strange beasts to sit close by. He
looked very much the same as the beasts. Par thought. He called
them by name. He spoke with them. But the beasts never an-
swered back.
The girl fed him sometimes. Damson. She spooned soup into
his mouth and made him drink, and he did so without argument.
There was something perplexing about her, something that fas-
cinated him, and he tried talking to her once or twice before
giving up. Whatever it was he wished to say refused to show
itself. The words ran away and hid. His thoughts faded. He
watched her face fade with them.
She kept coming back, though. She sat beside him and held
his hand. He could feel it from where he hid inside himself. She
spoke softly, touched his face with her fingers, let him feel her
presence even when she was doing nothing. It was her presence
more than anything that kept him from drifting away altogether.
He would have liked it better if she had let him go. He thought
that it would happen that way eventually, that he would drift far
enough that everything would disappear. But she prevented that,
and, while it frustrated and even angered him at times, it also
interested him. Why was she doing this? Was she anxious to
keep him with her, or did she simply want to be taken along?
He began to listen more intently when she spoke. Her words
seemed to grow clearer. /
“It wasn’t your fault,” was what she told him most often.
She told him that over and over. and for the longest time he
didn’t know why.
“That creature was no longer Coil.” She told him that, too.
“You had to destroy it.”
She said these things, and once in a while he thought he
almost understood. But fierce, dark shadows cloaked his
understanding, and he was quick to hide from them.
But one day she spoke the words and he understood imme-
diately. The drifting stopped, the walls broke apart, and every-
thing rushed in with the cold fury of a winter ice storm. He
began screaming, and he could not seem to stop. The memories
returned, sweeping aside everything he had so carefully con-
structed to keep them out, and his rage and anguish were bound-
less. He screamed, and the Mole shrank from him, the strange
beasts tumbled from his bedside, he could see the candles flick-
ering through the tears he cried, and the shadows danced with
glee.
It was the girl who saved him. She fought past the rage and
anguish, ignored the screams, and held him to her. She held
him as if the drifting might begin anew, as if he were in danger
of being swept away completely, and she refused to let go. When
his screams finally stopped, he found that he was holding her
back.
He slept then, a deep and dreamless sleep that submerged
him completely and let him rest. The madness was gone when
he awoke, the drifting ended, and the gray half-sleep washed
away. He knew himself again; he knew his surroundings and
the faces of Damson Rhee and the Mole as they passed beside
him. They bathed him and gave him fresh clothes, fed him and
let him sleep some more. They did not speak to him. Perhaps
they understood that he could not yet respond.
When he woke this time, the memories from which he had
hidden surfaced in the forefront of his mind like creatures seek-
ing air. They were no longer so loathsome to look upon, though