25

I could hear something. Something steady, and indistinct. There it was again, that sound of continuous rise and fall.

Breathing.

That much was certain. There was the sound of breath, and the sensation of it, too. It was the lift and swell of an easy surf, comforting, but resonant, too, promising something more than simple calm.

This was the sound of my own respiration. This was the sensation of my life continuing.

Continuance. This was what nourished, not triumph, not vengeance, or knowledge. I lifted a finger. I lifted my entire hand, and bunched it slowly into a fist. I would not open my eyes—not yet. But soon, very soon, I would make that effort.

I said Nona’s name, or thought it so strongly that my tongue shaped the syllables. One eye opened. It beheld a flutter of russet and auburn colors, golds and autumn browns playing across what looked like a blank screen above me where there should have been sky: the ceiling of my house. The screen was marred, or defined, by the stiff swirls of a trowel, a plasterer’s application some time in the past, perhaps long ago.

I was on my back. I was naked. When I tried to lift my head it was too heavy. But I knew enough. I was in my own house, alive, unhurt, and the sense of an impending crowd, of a spectacle in progress, was finished.

I rolled over. I climbed to my feet, moving cautiously, expecting with every movement to feel the pang of injury.

I was wobbly, but I was unhurt.

Alone.

Was that a trace of dried sperm on the carpet? I found a sponge in one of the bathrooms, one of the large, natural yellow sponges, and used it to wipe away what might have been semen.

I dressed in the clothing that was scattered on the floor. The dustcovers had returned to the furniture. I examined the plastic coverings carefully. There was a sift of dust in the folds of the plastic. These coverings had not been removed recently.

I touched the chair where my father had appeared.

I closed my eyes. “Father—you wouldn’t do that,” I said.

Would you?

I felt comforted by the sight of dawn seeping into the house. The fire in the hearth had vanished, leaving a white residue, like the haze breath leaves on a cold window.

The sight of morning made me hope that the entire night had been a train of illusions, a hallucination that had stretched from horizon to horizon. Maybe, I thought, none of it had happened.

Maybe DeVere wasn’t really dead.

And then I felt it, supple and stiff at the same time, a presence near my heart. I slipped it from my breast pocket, and looked at it as it rocked in my hand, responding to the unfelt currents of the air.

It was easy to forget how beautiful it was. Visual memory could not store such an array of colors.

This was not a feather anymore. It was a quill—a writing instrument. I examined the point, and saw how it had been sharpened, pared, readied for the ink. Had it always looked like this?

I could picture it vividly—signing my name. That’s what this was for.

But there was no ink in the bone-gray shaft. This plume had never been used for writing.

The fact of this feather in my hand meant that they still had, however feebly, a claim on me. The feather, insensate, rich with color, shifted in my hand as though it knew.

The thought was a sour flavor in my mouth, but I knew what I had to do.

I found a match, one of the thick, lavender-and-white-tipped matches that fit the silver Hoffman-designed box. I returned to the fireplace.

I struck the match on the brick of the hearth. I let the flame touch the softest down at the spike of the quill, perhaps hoping that this star of filament would not ignite.

The walls seemed to step back. The room became a huger place, and darker, despite the dawn. The feather twitched, writhed in the palm of my hand. And then as instinct forced me to whisk my hand out from under it, the feather was made of flame.

Each filament was gilded. The feather spun, dancing, lofted upward by its own heat and its growing weightlessness, following the spire of its own smoke up the vault of the chimney.

And then it was gone.