“Perhaps not,” Svoboda replied. Sobaka. You dog. You total son of a bitch.” She took Wanderer by the hand.
22
AND CHRIST appeared before Aliyat where she knelt. His aadiance was not what she had imagined, brilliant as desert noonday; it filled the darkened hollowness of the church With a blue dusk and the last sunset gold. Almost, she Brought she heard bells from a caravan returning home. Warmth glowed into the stones beneath and around her. JNor was his visage gaunt and stern. In the West (she had Heard?) they showed him like this, a man who had tramped loads, shared wine and honeycomb, taken small children jjoto his lap. He smiled when he bent over her and with his shirt sleeve dried the tears off her face.
Straightening again, he said—oh, tenderly, “Because you have kept your vigil, though the smoke of Hell blew about you, I have heard the prayer you dared not utter. For a time and a time, that which was lost shall be restored to you, and the latter end blessed more than the beginning.” He lifted both scarred hands on high. “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
He was gone. Young Barikai sprang down from the beraa and raised her into his arms. “Beloved!” he jubilated before she stopped his mouth with hers.
Together they went out. Tadmor slumbered beneath a full moon, which frosted spires and dappled paving stones. A horse waited. Mane and tail were streams of moon-silver. Barikai swung into the saddle. He reached down. She answered his clasp by soaring up to settle against him.
Briefly, hoofs rang, then the horse leaped aloft and galloped the ways of air. Wind lulled. Stars gleamed soft, everywhere around, in violet heaven. Aliyat’s loosened hair blew backward to make a tent for her and Barikai. She was drunk with the odor of him, the strength that held her, the seeking lips. “Where are we bound?” she asked.
“Home.” His laugh pealed. “But not at once!”
They hastened onward, around the curve of the world into morning. His castle gleamed on its mountaintop. The horse came to rest in a courtyard of mosaics and flowers where a fountain danced. Aliyat gave them scant heed. Later she noticed that she had been unaware whether the servants who met their lord and lady had bodies.
They did provide feast, music, spectacle, when such was wanted. Otherwise Aliyat and Barikai kept to themselves, tireless until they fell embraced into a half-sleep from which they roused joyous.
That happiness grew calmer, love lingered more and more, so that at last it was a new bliss when he said, “Now let us go home.”
Their horse brought them there at dawn. The household was just coming awake and nobody saw the arrival. Indeed, it was as if nothing had happened and they had never been away. Manu received her hug with some surprise, then much boyish dignity. Little Hairan took it for granted.
She savored ordinariness for the rest of the day and evening, minute by minute, each presence and place, task and talk, question and decision, everything that she owned and that owned her. When the final lamp guided her and Barikai to bed, she was ready for his words: “I think best you sleep, truly sleep, this night and beyond.”
“Hold me until I do,” she asked of him. He did, with kisses. “Come not back too soon,” he said once, against her cheek. “That would be unwise.”
“I know—“ She drifted from him. j Opening her eyes after a time outside of time, she found she was crying. Maybe this had been a bad idea. Maybe she should not go back ever. Come on, old girl, she thought. Stop this. You promised Corinne you’d help her with that tapestry she wants to make. Uncoupling, she left the booth where she had lain but stood for a space more in the dream chamber, busy. Good habit, carrying a makeup kit in a purse. Sessions here did sometimes touch pretty near the bone. Well, she learned long ago how to cover the traces.
Svoboda was passing by in the corridor. “Hello,” said Aliyat. She was about to move on when the other woman plucked her sleeve.