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chapter forty-two
Eli
Summer lies heavy on the land. The sky throbs with stupefying heat. All seems predetermined and properly ordered. Timothy sleeps. Oliver sleeps. Ned and I remain.
In these months we have grown quite strong and our skins are dark from the sun. We live in a kind of waking dream, floating placidly through our daily round of chores and rites. We are not quite full-fledged fraters yet, but our time of Trial is nearing its end. Two weeks after that day of gravedigging I mastered the ritual of the three women and since then I have had no difficulties in absorbing any lesson the fraters would teach me.
The days flow together. We stand outside time here. Was it April when we came first to the fraters? Of what year, and what year is this? A waking dream, a waking dream. I feel sometimes that Oliver and Timothy are figures in another dream, one that I had long ago. I have begun to forget the details of their faces. Blond hair, blue eyes, yes, but then what? How were their noses shaped, how prominent were their chins? Their faces fade. Timothy and Oliver are gone, and Ned and I remain. I still remember Timothy’s voice, a warm supple bass, well controlled, beautifully modulated, with faintly nasal aristocratic inflections. And Oliver’s, a strong clear tenor, the tones hard-edged and firm, the accent neutral, the accentless American of the prairies. To them my gratitude. They died for me.
This morning my faith wavered, only for an instant, but it was a frightening instant; an abyss of uncertainty opened beneath me after so many months of wholehearted assurance, and I saw devils with pitchforks and heard the shrill laughter of Satan. I was coming in from the fields, and I happened to look far across the flat scrubby land to the place where Timothy and Oliver lie, and unexpectedly a thin scratchy voice in my head asked me, Do you think you’ve gained anything here? How can you be sure? How certain are you that it’s possible to have the thing that you seek? I knew a moment of awful fear, in which I imagined I stared with red-rimmed eyes into an icy future, seeing myself wither and shrivel and turn to dust in an empty, blasted world. The moment of doubt then left me, as suddenly as it had come. Perhaps it was just a vagrant gust of unfocused discontent, blowing idly across the continent toward the Pacific, that had paused briefly to unsettle me. I was shaken by what I had undergone, and I ran to the house, meaning to find Ned and tell him about it, but by the time I neared his room the episode seemed too ridiculous to share with him. Do you think you’ve gained anything here? How could I have doubted at all? A strange backsliding, Eli.
His door was open. I looked in and saw him sitting slumped, his head in his hands. Somehow he sensed my presence; he looked up quickly, rearranging his face, replacing a transient look of despair or dejection with a carefully bland expression. But his eyes were bright with strain and I thought I saw the glitter of incipient tears.
“You felt it too, then?” I asked.
“Felt what?” Almost defiantly.
“Nothing. Nothing.” An airy shrug. How can you be sure? We were playing games with one another, pretending. But doubt was general that morning. An infection ru
Then I found myself sitting, hoarse-throated and trembling, before the familiar mosaic mask. There were no more metamorphoses. The time of visions was over. I gave the mask a wary glance but it remained as it was. Very well. I searched my soul and found no residue of doubt in it; that final conflagration had burned all those late-lingering impurities away. Very well. Rising, I left my room and walked quickly down the hall, into that part of the building where bare beams alone stand forth against the open sky. Looking up, I saw a huge hawk circling far above me, dark against the fierce blank blueness. Hawk, you will die, and I will live. Of this I have no doubt. I turned the corner and came to the room where our meetings with Frater Antony are held. The frater and Ned were already there, but evidently they had waited for me; for the frater’s pendant still hung around his neck. Ned smiled at me and Frater Antony nodded. I understand, they appeared to be saying. I understand. These storms will come. I knelt beside Ned. Frater Antony removed his pendant and placed the tiny jade skull on the floor before us. Life eternal we offer thee. “Let us turn the interior vision upon the symbol we see here,” said Frater Antony gently. Yes. Yes. Joyously, expectantly, undoubtingly, I gave myself anew to the Skull and its Keepers.