Whit

'Oh, well enough,' Erin said with a sigh it was hard not to suspect was fully supposed to sound long-suffering. 'Your Grandfather had a good night and a light breakfast.' (Sister Erin will insist on talking about Grandfather as though he is a cross between royalty and a condemned prisoner; admittedly he does encourage us all to treat him somewhat regally, and at the age of seventy-five may not have all that long left with us; but still.)

'Oh, good,' I said, as ever at a loss to respond suitably to such portentousness.

'I think he's had his bath,' Erin said, reaching round me to open the door to Grandfather's suite.  She smiled thinly. 'Marjorie and Erica,' she said crisply as I took off my shoes and handed them to her.  She hauled the door back.

The door opened to steps which led up onto the surface of Grandfather's bed, which is composed of six king-size beds and two single beds squeezed hard up against each other and which entirely fills the bedroom itself save for a single raised table near the far wall.  The bed surface is covered with multitudinous quilts and duvets and several dozen pillows and cushions of varying shapes and sizes.  The curtains had not been drawn, and in the gloom the bed looked like a relief map of a particularly mountainous area.  The air was thick with the smell of incense candles, scattered everywhere along the single shelf which ran round the walls; a few were still lit.  Gurgling noises and voices came from a half-open door ahead of me.

My Grandfather's large round wooden bath lies in the spacious bathroom beyond his dressing room, which is in turn beyond the bedroom.  The bath-tub and its surrounding platform, constructed for him by Brother Indra, fills half the room; the rest contains an ordinary bath, a shower cabinet, washhand basin, toilet and bidet, all supplied from a tank in the mansion house loft which is itself fed from our river water-wheel (based on an ancient Syrian design, Indra says) via various filters - including a raised slope of reed-bed - a tangle of pipes, a methane-powered pump, roof-mounted solar panels, and, finally, a methane-boosted hot-water tank immediately above the bathroom.

'Beloved Isis!' chorused Sister Marjorie and Sister Erica.  Marjorie, who is three years my elder, and Erica, who is a year younger than me, wore peach-coloured shifts and were drying the bath with towels. 'Good morning, Sisters,' I said, nodding.

I pushed through the double doors into the lush and fragrant space which Grandfather calls the Cogitarium, a greenhouse which extends from the end of the mansion house's first floor and rests on the roof of the ballroom below, where we hold our meetings and services.  The Cogitarium was even warmer and more humid than the bathroom.

My Grandfather, His Holiness The Blessed Salvador-Uranos Odin Dyaus Brahma Moses-Mohammed Mirza Whit of Luskentyre, Beloved Founder of the Luskentyrian Sect of the Select of God, I, and the Creator's OverSeer on Earth (and patently unembarrassed when it came to bestowing extra and religiously significant names upon himself), sat in a modest cane chair situated within a splash of sunlight at the far end of the greenhouse, up a chessboard-tiled path between the in-crowding fronds of multitudinous ferns, philodendrons and bromeliads.  Grandfather was dressed, as usual in a plain white robe.  The long, whitely curled mane of his hair had been dried, and with his dense white beard formed a nimbus round his head which seemed to glow in the misty morning sunlight.  His eyes were closed.  The leaves of the plants brushed at my arms as I walked up the path, making a gentle rustling noise.  Grandfather's eyes opened.  He blinked, then smiled at me.

'And how is my favourite grand-daughter?' he asked.

'I am well, Grandfather,' I said. 'And you?'

'Old, Isis,' he said, smiling. 'But well enough.' His voice was deep and sonorous.  He is a handsome man, still, for all his years, with a powerful, Leonine face and skin that might grace a man half his age.  The only blemish on his face is the deep, V-shaped scar high on his forehead which is the original emblematic mark of our Order.  That deep, rich voice, which rings out above us all when we sing during a service, is identifiably Scots, though tinged with a hint of public-school English and the occasional American vowel sound.

'Blessings to you, Grandfather,' I said, and made our Sign, bringing my right hand up to my forehead and administering what might best be described as a slow tap.  Salvador nodded slowly and indicated a small wooden seat by the side of his cane chair.

'And blessings to you, Isis.  Thank you for coming to see your old Grandfather.' He put his right hand slowly up to the back of his head, and winced. 'It's this neck again.'

'Ah ha,' I said.  I put my hat down on the seat he'd waved at and went to stand behind him, putting my hands on his shoulders and starting to massage him.  He let his head drop a little as I kneaded his muscles, my hands working across his smooth, lightly ta

I stood there in the hazy sunlight, its glowing warmth twice-filtered by mist and glass, and ran my hands over my Grandfather's shoulders and neck, no longer massaging but simply touching.  I felt the strange, welling itch inside myself that is the symptom of my power, felt its tickle come rising through my bones and go tingling into and through my hands, and knew that I still had my Gift, that I was Healing.

I confess that a few times in such situations I have attempted to discover if touch is really necessary for my Gift to work; I have let my hands hover just over some afflicted animal or bodily part, to see if mere proximity is sufficient to create the effect.  The results have been - as my old physics teacher would have said - indubitably ambiguous.  With animals, I simply am not sure, and with people, well, they can tell you aren't touching them, and touching is what they seem to expect for the Gift to work.  I have always been coy about taking anybody into my confidence concerning the exact reason for my interest in this matter.

'Ah, that's better,' Grandfather said, after a while.

I took a deep breath, letting my hands rest on his shoulders. 'All right?'

'Very much so,' he said, patting my right hand. 'Thank you, child.  Come now; sit down.'

I lifted my hat and sat on the wooden seat at his side.

'Off to play the organ, are we?' he asked.

'Yes, Grandfather,' I said.

He looked thoughtful. 'Good,' he said, nodding slowly. 'You should do things you enjoy, Isis,' he told me, and reached out to pat my hand. 'You are being given the luxury of time to prepare for your role in the Order, once I'm gone-'

'Oh, Grandfather-' I protested, no more comfortable than usual with this line.

'Now, now,' he said reasonably, patting my hand again. 'It has to happen eventually, Isis, and I'm ready and I shall go happily when the time comes… but my point is that you should use that time, and use it not just to study and sit in the library and read…'

I sighed, smiling tolerantly.  I had heard this line of argument before.

'… but to live your life as young people need to, to seize the opportunity to live, Isis.  There will be time enough to take on cares and responsibilities in the future, believe me, and I just don't want you to wake up one morning after I'm gone with all the weight of the Community and the Order on your shoulders and realise that you never had any time for enjoyment and freedom from cares while you were young and now it's too late, do you see?'

'I see, Grandfather.'

'Ah,' he said, 'but do you understand?' His eyes narrowed. 'We all have selfish, even animal urges, Isis.  They have to be controlled, but they have to be given their due, as well.  We ignore them at our peril.  You may make a better and more selfless leader of the Order in the future if you behave a little more selfishly now.'