Burying the Shadow (48 page)

‘My manners
are not all they were,’ Sammael admitted.

For a while,
we conversed, carefully, around sensitive subjects. As I had
predicted, refreshment invigorated Sammael; the colour of his skin
improved greatly, and he appeared to become more confident. He
asked questions about our art, and confessed that, of all the
things he had denied himself, he had missed visiting the theatre
most. We did not talk about what he was doing in my house, or why
had had decided to come. I suspected his decision to leave the
tower had been made as impulsively, if not more so, as mine had
been to visit him; perhaps he was wondering now whether he had done
the right thing. I tried to imagine how I would feel, in his
position. There was so much I didn’t know about him; our history,
the past, had been diluted intentionally. The facts were locked up
somewhere; it was felt we no longer needed them, that their
starkness might harm the delicate balance of our relationship with
this world.

‘Tell me again
about this soulscaper,’ Sammael said, at last. I had been waiting
for him to broach the subject himself.

‘She is in the
care of a dependant of ours.’ I replied. ‘He is bringing her to
Sacramante. I must admit I have not observed her recently, but she
is in good hands.’

‘You must
decide quickly what you are going to do with her, then,’ Sammael
said.

I told him, in
detail, my plan to send Rayojini into the soulscape of the eloim,
and root out any abnormalities.

‘Before you
embark upon this,’ Sammael said, ‘both you and Rayojini must be
clear about that which is essential, and that which is abnormal. It
could be a dangerous endeavour; very dangerous. A miscalculation,
and you could cause more damage than healing.’

‘I am aware of
that.’

‘But there is
much you are unaware of. Gimel, I don’t mean to criticise your bold
strategies, but...’ He paused. ‘I do wonder whether this sickness
of eloimkind is not the result of very old dilemmas; a bleak
harvest, which I regretfully anticipated a long time ago.’ He
sighed. ‘However, letting the soulscaper look around shouldn’t
hurt. You must let me supervise.’

It was more
than I could have wished for. Still, I couldn’t help wondering how
Metatron was going to react to this new component in our design.
‘It would be ideal if you could at least brief Rayojini in some
way,’ I said.

‘How much are
you going to tell her?’ he asked.

I had not
really considered that. ‘She will have to be told enough for her to
be able to accomplish her task, of course.’

‘What if she
doesn’t want to help you?’

‘She will! I
have been with her in spirit for years!’

Sammael shook
his head. ‘Gimel, I find myself querying how much you know of the
human mind.’

‘I am very
fond of Rayojini.’

‘And you are
trusting your fondness will be enough to sway her decisions?’ He
smiled. ‘Perhaps it will.’ He turned his attention to Sandalphon.
‘I think you should go to your Parzupheim soon,’ he said. ‘Tell
them I will speak with them shortly.’

It was a cue,
which Sandalphon was tactful enough to recognise. He stood up.
‘Should I return later?’

Sammael
nodded. ‘I suppose you had better relay any messages they might
want to give me.’ He grinned at me. ‘This will throw them into a
fluster. If I felt stronger, I’d go to the Castile myself. It is a
shame I cannot watch their expressions as this news is
delivered!’

Sandalphon
smiled tentatively. ‘I shall memorise every face and, when I
return, tell you in detail of their condition.’

‘I find it
hard to see you as you really are,’ I said, once Sandalphon had
gone.

‘That is
because you cannot see me as I really am,’ Sammael replied.

‘No, you
misunderstand me. I meant that I know who you are and yet, sitting
here in my little salon, you are just another eloim.’

‘I am
devastated. Have the years been that unkind to me?’

‘Not at all...
Why did you come here with me?’

He looked
around the room. ‘It was time. No, that sounds terribly prophetic
and gloomy! I don’t know why I came. Suddenly, I just wanted to.’
He stood up and went to look at my shelves of books.

‘Oh, your
father still writes!’ he said, picking up one of Metatron’s works
and skimming through the pages. ‘Weighty stuff! And I expect it is
rather pompous.’

‘No, my father
has a light hand.’ I joined him by the books. He pushed the volume
he’d been looking at into my hands, and picked another.

‘Was my father
with you... in the beginning?’ I asked. It seemed a ridiculous
question. I wondered how much Sammael knew about us. Would he be
amused by the fact I was ignorant of my father’s origin, or even
how old he was?

‘Metatron,
this
Metatron, is a babe compared to me,’ he replied. ‘He
was not with me “in the beginning”, no. I should imagine that most
of my old companions are gone now.’

‘What do you
mean,
gone
?’ Something in his voice alarmed me.

He glanced at
me speculatively. ‘Where do you think?’

‘I don’t know.
Elderly eloim retire to their rooms in the strongholds. As they
age, they become more ascetic.... Eventually, of course, they
must...’ I found I couldn’t say the words. Death was not a concept
I ever considered in detail. If it was an eventuality for me, it
was so far distant as to be irrelevant. Sammael was looking at me
in a way I could not fully interpret, but it was very guarded.

‘Gimel...’ He began,
and then shook his head. ‘No, I cannot believe that!’

‘Believe
what?’

He placed his
book back on the shelf and straightened the spines of all the other
volumes. ‘You are not immortal, you know. Have you never thought
about that? Have you never wondered what happens to the most
ancient of eloim?’

‘No... yes...
Well, they must just fade.... As I said, they have special quarters
in their family strongholds. The Parzupheim are very old.’

‘Children!’
Sammael declared. ‘Poor Gimel, poor, poor Gimel. Don’t you realise,
lovely lady, that your flesh is mortal? And yet, the spirit, which
drives that flesh, is not. You cannot die, but neither can you live
forever. Which leaves only one alternative; you transform.... but
into what?’ He sighed and ran one long finger along the spines of
the books. ‘We are trapped on this world, Gimel. From this
perspective, this moment of Now, we are trapped here forever. We
cannot die, and yet, we do.’

I did not
fully understand him, neither did I really want to. The
introduction of this subject had frightened me. ‘You have not
died!’ I said. ‘And you have been here since the beginning.’

‘I am not like
the rest of you,’ he replied.

‘Then
what...’

He touched my
face gently. ‘Not now,’ he said. I felt he understood completely
how much the subject of death perturbed me. ‘These moments, here in
this house, your lovely house, should not be sullied by thoughts of
death; they are a time for life.’ I closed my eyes to concentrate
upon the spidery path his fingers traced across my skin. ‘I am
reborn,’ he said. ‘Let me experience things anew.’

With that, he
enfolded me in his arms.

He had told me
that he had never touched his human companions in love. He had been
alone, in that respect, for centuries. If I expected fire from him,
I was disappointed. He made love to me in the manner of someone who
had not practised an old skill for so long they needed proof that
they were still adept. It was almost a scholarly act of love. And
yet, I had a feeling that this, like the sup, was not something
Sammael took great pleasure in. He liked to be held, he liked to be
stroked, but the release was incidental. As I kissed him, I was
thinking of the great age of those lips, and who they might have
kissed in the past. These lips had spoken words into the primal
chaos of the world; they had sculpted sound into matter, darkness
into light. I tried to imagine him as a young spirit, but could
not.

He stood away
from me and stripped off his clothes. He put my hand over the scar
above his heart. ‘See, it is healed.’

I touched it
with my mouth, and my lips tingled with cold fire. In this place
had Mikha’il pressed his teeth, in this place... I was living the
past, touching legends through time. I could see his heart beating;
that tireless, ageless heart. I considered inviting him to my most
private room, but Sammael gave no cue for words. He lay down upon
my fleecy rugs, just staring up at me, his hair a scarlet flag
across the floor. I undressed for him slowly, a true performance,
and unbound my hair above him so that it cascaded down onto his
flesh; he pressed it against his face, inhaling deeply. He wanted
to hold me fiercely, our skins aligned, but it was me who initiated
the actual coupling. He submitted passively, with a willing
hardness, but it was I who had the passion, the need, the
urgency.

Afterwards,
lying quietly on the rugs, Sammael laid his head on my breast and I
wrapped my arms around him. In some way, I felt I’d failed him.

‘It must be
strange,’ I said carefully, ‘to hold another, to love another,
after so long an abstinence...’

He sighed. ‘Like
supping, it was not something I had a great appetite for,’ he said.
‘For me, the coupling of flesh is not enough. It is but a
parody.’

I felt as if
he’d slapped me. I’d tried to please him, to give him pleasure and
closeness, to give him love. ‘You are hard to satisfy,’ I said,
unable to keep a certain tartness from my voice.

He laid his
hand over one of my breasts. ‘No, don’t be angry. I am not
criticising you. It is just that, as I said before, I am not quite
like you. It is not your fault.’

‘Perhaps I
should have left the house!’ I continued, still hurt. ‘Perhaps you
should have had Sandalphon in my place!’

He laughed. ‘I
love to hear such human words coming from your lips, dear Gimel!
No, that is not what I meant, and you know it.’

‘What did you
mean then?’

‘This.’

Where he lay,
along my body, the flesh became hot. Then, a numbness. All the
organs in my belly contracted and rippled. I jerked. ‘Stop!’ I
cried. Sammael’s hand, still cupping my breast, squeezed me
gently.

‘Do you know
what I am doing?’ he asked me.

I nodded. ‘I
think so, yes. It feels... please, stop.’

‘Oh Gimel,’ he
said. ‘Don’t be so faint-hearted. Let me make love to you now, in
the only way I truly understand. Experience the ghost of your
heritage.’

I could feel
him sinking into me, and yet knew he was holding himself back. He
would not let go until I gave my assent. Where our flesh had
already melded, he set up a gentle rhythm; particles grazed
particles, and where they met, light exploded outwards into time.
My skin, where he touched me along the flank, tingled in the same
way as loins tingle in the heat of sexual arousal.

‘May we?’
Sammael asked. ‘I will protect you.’

A memory of Avirzah’e
flashed through my mind. I remembered the timeless moments in the
Castile when he, Beth and I had momentarily, and superficially,
fused. Since then, had Beth and Avirzah’e taken that fusion to its
limit? How could I know? I should have been with them, yes, part of
them. I was meant to be part of them, but now I was here, in my
salon, with the Lord of Light. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We may.’

There was no
caution for my virgin flesh. He overwhelmed me instantly; a hunger
too long contained. My own body, as if remembering some primal
instinct, realigned itself at his direction. We were one creature;
a sphere of light, a universe of popping sparks, colliding. Each
collision engendered its own minute orgasm. The force of his love,
the great eternal reality of love, swamped me to oblivion. We rose
up, a spinning cluster of stars. We spiralled; a mist of mingling
light. No flesh, no substance to speak of, but indescribable
sensations that belonged, or existed, beyond the familiar world of
space and time. For an instant, conjoined, we travelled home, truly
home. I imagined there were a thousand, thousand spirits spinning
around us, melding, passing through each other, exchanging
essence.

In those
infinite moments, at one with the Prince of Light, I understood him
completely. For someone who had experienced this, the conjunction
of flesh alone could never be enough.

To be fair to
Sammael, what he showed to me was not entirely for selfish motives.
He explained that, for me to fully understand my position and the
importance of decisions I might have to make, it was essential to
be aware of exactly what I was.

‘Now you have
experienced the conjunction, you are more suited to your
responsibilities,’ he said. ‘Now, you have a fuller knowledge on
which to base your decision concerning which direction eloim should
take.’

We had dressed
ourselves and now sat drinking the remainder of the mulled wine,
which had gone cold. I laughed. ‘Sammael, that isn’t my decision
alone. It is one that all eloim should participate in. I am only
the daughter of Metatron.’

He reached
out, grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me from my chair, drawing me
down beside him on the couch. ‘And the Metatronims have the energy
and motivation to act in this time of crisis, as do certain members
of the Tartaruchi! Most eloim seem content to debate the problem
until they have all killed themselves! No, Gimel, you are wrong.
The decision
is
yours. You have to take responsibility.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Whyever not?
I once had to. Someone always has to. You were brave enough to come
to my tower and unleash the presence of the past. You cannot go
back.’

I had not
considered things in that light. It seemed Sammael had not only
juggled the atoms of my being, but also my perception of the world.
I knew I felt very different from how I’d felt before we had
conjoined, but I could not say in precisely what way. Perhaps I had
forgotten something; this new me was unable to process certain
information. However, his words made sense to me. Despite
tradition, which eloimkind claimed sustained them as much as human
blood, I wanted to act independently and boldly. Were these all my
own thoughts? I wondered how I would have felt if I had conjoined
with Avirzah’e. We might have done something terribly rash. Sammael
kissed me tenderly on the brow. ‘Tell me, now you have this power,
now I have made you a Queen of Eloim, what will you do?’