Heat Stroke

He yanked me on, past the point of no return, out into the cold black blanket of space.

And I didn’t die.

We floated in the sharp emptiness, part of a darkness so profound it was like death, and below the earth pulsed and whispered and murmured in its sleep. All that life, so bright. The stars were hard enough to cut.

Now you know what it’s like, Patrick said.

I had no words to describe it, but I tried to put some context around it. How far can I go?

As far as you care to. But be careful. Falling down is not quite as simple as jumping up, you’ll find.

It was still a test. What’s the catch?

Nothing much. Get yourself back where you started.

And he was gone. Just like that. Blip. I was alone, floating in a void so empty that not even satellites raced by. The moon was a cold, lonely dot of white just rounding the far side of the planet. The sun’s rays were so piercingly bright and intense that I felt them vibrate inside me even in my insubstantial state. In human form they’d fry me like an egg.

Get back? How the hell was I supposed to get back? I wasn’t even sure how to move. There was nothing to push against, no forces to work with, nothing but emptiness…

… and the light of the sun, hot and fierce. It flowed like molten gold in the aetheric.

Could I use the sun? Use fire itself to move me?

I reached out, spread myself thin as a whisper, and dropped down into the real world just enough to give myself weight. Still invisible, to the naked eye, but able to trap that energy.

It moved me. Just a little.

It also hurt like that damn Ifrit had gotten hold of me again.

I summoned up my courage and sank further down, one careful level at a time. The more sun I captured, the more I was able to propel myself; the more sun I captured, the more I burned.

I finally let go of the pain and opened myself to it, and the force of fire hit me like wind in a sail, and I flew. Agony turned white-hot, burned itself out, became something else. I became something else.

I hurtled through the thickening fog of the earth’s atmosphere, streaking like a falling star, trailing fire.

I fell back into human form, settled myself like a feather down on lime green spike heels, facing Patrick, and put my hands on my hips.

“Well?” I asked.

He looked down at the carpet.

It had melted into a circle about four feet across. Noxious chemical stew. He fixed it.

“Not bad,” he said, and handed me a cold scotch on the rocks. “Not bad at all, little one.” The ice instantly melted in the glass from the heat of my skin. The scotch boiled.

I took one step, felt my knees give way, and collapsed face down on the yellow sofa.

And slept.

And this is what I dreamed.

A cold stone room, softened here and there by rough-woven rugs, a few grace notes like a silver candlestick and a red wool blanket thrown over the bed. By the standards of its time, a comfortable enough home.

Under the red wool blanket, a man lay dying.

He was skeletally thin, faded, his blue eyes almost colorless now in the flicker of candlelight. I floated in the corner and watched him. I felt I should know him, but his face was just a skull with skin, like an Auschwitz survivor. He still had a few tufts of thin blond hair spilling out over the hard bundle of cloth that served as his pillow.

There was a woman sitting at his side. She was beautiful, so beautiful, but it wasn’t really her face that made her that way. She was actually almost plain—an unremarkable eve

The man on the bed made a tortured sound. His clawlike hand reached out to her, and she captured it in both of hers. Bent her head. I saw a crystal rain of tears falling, but when she looked up again she was at peace.

“Forgive me,” she said, and bent over to press her lips to his parchment-pale forehead.

Someone else was in the room now, walking right out of the walls. Someone I knew. David. But not the David I knew now… This one was wearing a medieval cotte and woolen hose, all in shades of rust and russet, and his hair was worn long.

He didn’t sense me. His attention stayed on the woman in the chair.

“Sara,” he said. She didn’t turn to look at him. “Sara, it’s time to go.”

“No.” Her voice was soft, uninflected, but I could tell there was no moving her. “I will not let him be lost like this. I can’t.”

“There’s no choice,” David whispered. “Please, Sara. Come with me now. Jonathan’s waiting.”

“Will Jonathan give me peace?” she asked. “Will he give me love?”

“Yes.”

“Not like this.” She reached out to ease a strand of pale hair back from the dying man’s face. “Never like this, and David, I ca

“You can’t keep it. Humans die. It’s the law.”

She looked away from him, and I had the strange, creepy impression she was looking somewhere else.

At me. But that wasn’t possible, because I knew I wasn’t here, really. Not in this time. Not in this place.

Sara’s eyes were the color of amethysts, a beautiful, peaceful color. She stared at the corner where I floated, and then she smiled.

“The law of my heart is different,” she said, and let go of the man’s hand. She stood up, and the white gown fell away, sliding to the floor in a puddle of cloth; under it her skin glowed a soft, perfect ivory. No sculptor had ever captured a form like that, so perfect, so graceful.

“Don’t,” David said, and took a step toward her. I know he could have stopped her, but something— maybe just the heartbreaking longing in her eyes— made him hesitate.

She folded back the sheets and climbed into the narrow bed. The dying man seemed to see her, and those pale eyes widened; the word he shaped might have been No… and then she wrapped her arms around him. Her pale, white hair flowed over the two of them like a cloak, wrapping them together.

“No, Sara,” David whispered. It sounded like a good-bye.

There was a flare of light on the bed, something so bright it was like the heart of a bonfire, and in it I heard screams. Terrible, wrenching screams. They were dying, both of them, dying horribly.

David didn’t move. Maybe he couldn’t. I wanted to, but it was still a dream, only a dream for me, and I just floated, waiting, as the fire burned and the screams faded, until the light faded, too.

Two bodies, lying senseless on the bed.

One of them opened its mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Dry, voiceless, horror-stricken. He had turquoise blue eyes now, and the hair that had been thin and fragile was reborn in a white-gold flame around his head.

Restored to life, health, as she must have known him.

Sara lay unmoving beside him, amethyst eyes still open. He reached out to touch her face…

… and that ivory skin cracked, turned to powder, and began to flake away.

A sloughing of skin, for what was underneath.

The soft black shadow of an Ifrit rose out of the pale ruin of the Dji

He filled his hands with dust and looked at David with tears streaming down his face. No words for it. No help for it.

David said, in a voice gone rough and strange with grief, “I pray you are worth this gift, Patrick.”

This time, Patrick found his voice.

He screamed.

I woke up the next day to the smell of bacon and orange juice, and fresh-ground coffee. There was still a bowl of sugar sitting on the coffee table next to me. I felt hungover from the dream… memory?… nightmare?… and looking around me, I kept seeing that spare stone room, that skull-thin face breathing its last, the unearthly beauty and grace turned to something ugly and twisted.