Angel Of The City (24 page)

“
What does lie outside the city?”

He smiles again and
I suddenly realize why his face had seemed so strange at first. His was a face without fear, untroubled by regret or uncertainty. It was the face of a man utterly at peace with himself. I have never seen such a face before. “What indeed, Mr. Ellison. What indeed.”

T
hunder crashes as rain falls heavy upon a green world, sweet and clean as the first day of creation. They’ve moved me here, to this shelter in the glade, that I might look to the east one last time before the end comes. They care for me more like a pet than a man these days, but I do not begrudge them that. That they continue to care for me at all is a wonder, though I do make the children laugh.

Thick cataracts of age play on a mind unable to remember yesterday
’s meal, yet in these last years I have seen her again, clear and unmistakable. She comes to me mostly at night, comforting me with words that only I can hear. The children laugh when I tell them; say they are just dreams, shadows of my life that was. But what do they know of dreams? To them, my tales of the city are only a dream, the nightmarish dream of an old man.

And s
o have I become, both the dream and the dreamer.

Now I see her again
, standing in the mists, beckoning. In all the long years since I set out from the city, I have never forgotten her.

It is time.
Peering into the rain, I take a final breath and whisper her name.