The Visitor Read Free

not? True Mother had said those who couldn’t see chose not to. Perhaps the demons just chose not to.
    The ouphs coalesced into a fog which approached, gliding along the bottle wall toward the dark door from which the demons had emerged, roiling there momentarily before flowing swiftly upward, like smoke up a chimney, giving Dismé no time to escape before they were all around her. She could not apprehend them in any physical sense, and yet her mind was full of feelings, voices, smells:
    Sorrow. “ …searching searching searching… ” The odor of ashes, as though dreamed.
    Loss. “… where where where …” Cold rain on skin. Dust.
    Pain. “… beg, beg, beg …” An ache in the bones, a scent of mold, leaf smoke, wet earth.
    Regret. “… no no no no never …” Rose petals, drying on…something. Dismé almost caught the scent…
    Imprisonment. Captivity. Enslavement. “… let go …”
    Oh, so sad, so sad, with only this nebulous linking of words and impressions, so fragile, so frail that the moment she clutched at them they were gone. Dreams did that, when she tried to hold on to them, evaporating like mist in the wind. So, too, the ouphs were driven out into the gulf of airwhere they whirled, slowly at first, then more quickly, keening an immeasurable sorrow that was sucked into the vortex and away.
    The demons had neither seen nor heard. They were building a new section of the wall with various snippers and twisters, hoses, connectors and gadgets. They had buckets of half-solid stuff that they troweled between the bottles to hold them fast, and they worked with deliberate speed and no wasted motions. Soon, the job was done, the bottles were embedded and labeled, the tools and empty yokes were gathered, and the demons strode off toward the crow-wing shadow of the trees as the ouph-fog slowly faded into nothingness behind them,
    When the last of the fog went, a chill finger touched the back of Dismé’s head, a wave of coldness crept down her neck onto her back, as though someone had reached beneath her clothing to stroke her with ice. She shivered and recoiled. The chill had been there for a while, but her concentration on the ouphs had kept her from attending to it. Now it was imminent and intent, watching her. She spun about, searching, seeing nothing, but knowing still that something was watching. She ducked under the cover of tilted slabs and stayed there, trembling, pressing her hands to her head where the thing was still present, as though looking from the inside out!
    In the darkness behind her eyelids a green shadow bloomed, a voice whispered. “Gone the demons and ouphs, but not gone that other thing. You must stop thinking…”
    The suggestion was familiar. She stopped thinking. The green shade expanded to contain her as she retreated to a central fastness she was seldom able to find. Bird song wove a crystal cage. The sun pulled itself another rung into the sky. When its rays struck her full upon her head, she looked up without thinking anything and saw before her a looped line of light.
    â€œWhat is that?” she asked in a whisper.
    â€œThe Guardian’s sign,” the voice murmured. “Go home now.”
    The darkness inside her gave way to a rush of scintillant sparks, edged light, pricking fire, sticking burs of brilliance creating an instant’s perfect illumination. No voice. No demons. No ouphs. No ping, no thing, only the prickling star-burn, an itch of the intellect and the memory of a familiar but unplaceable voice.
    So many sharp-bright questions! So many mystery-marvels that cried out for explanation! Thousands of things she wanted to know, and among them all, not one, not a single one that she, who yesterday had celebrated her eighth birthday, was still naive enough to ask.
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    Among the trees, the demons met others of their fellows. From the wagon, straw mats were thrown