She fell endlessly – through space, through time. It was as though a bottomless pit had opened under her. And all the while, a soothing, insistent voice kept repeating in her head:
There’s nothing to fear, my child. Nothing at all to fear.
Suddenly, she was no longer falling, neither had she landed. Instead, she lay suspended in the air. Her eyes were sealed as if she were asleep, but she was not. She could hear every word the magician spoke.
“And now, my friends, you can see that our volunteer has ascended from the platform and sleeps peacefully in the air. I will pass this hoop, like so, along the length of her body to prove there are no wires or other hidden devices holding her aloft. Nothing but magic holds her here.”
A sound of excited applause echoed through the room.
“And now our gracious sleeper will once again descend to earth. On the count of three, she will awaken – and remember nothing.”
She felt herself drift slowly down and come to rest on solid ground.
“One. Two. Three,” said the magician and lightly clapped his hands. She opened her eyes and found herself lying on a makeshift stage in a large darkened room. A magician stood beside her, smiling. His face was pale, his lips red as blood, his eyes deep and mesmerizing. She seemed to know him somehow. He extended his hand and helped her to her feet.
Seated on the floor before the stage, their faces ghostly in the glow of the gaslight, a group of children clapped excitedly. They were dressed in the fashion of a century ago. She looked down at herself and saw that she was dressed in the same way, a child among children.
Panic washed over her. But the magician laid his hand gently on her arm, and instantly it passed. “Take a bow, young lady,” he said.
She looked around the darkened room, dazed and disoriented, as if she had been wrenched from a deep sleep. Yes, she remembered now, she had been dreaming, and in the dream she had been carrying something. It had been very heavy – her arms still ached with it – and somehow she had stumbled and fallen.
But it had only been a dream. His hand resting on her arm was like her mother’s, comforting her when some night terror woke her from sleep.
“The young lady may take her seat again,” said the magician. “And for her kind assistance, the professor will present her with a copy of his little book.”
The book he handed her was achingly familiar. She stood looking down at it, knowing she had seen it at some other time, in some other place. She had the gnawing sense that some larger reality had slipped from her grasp.
They seemed to be in a room in a house, a large circular room that had been made over for a magic show. In the shadows, beyond the feeble reach of the gas lamps, she could see furniture pushed back against the wall. Her eyes lingered on a set of high-backed, red-velvet armchairs, ranged against the wall beside a large fireplace. She had the feeling she’d been in this room before.
“Well, then,” said the magician, “since it seems the young lady wishes to remain onstage, perhaps we can enlist her aid with the final attraction of the evening.” From the rear of the stage, he wheeled forward the large brazier of burning coals that had stood glowing in the shadows like a beating heart since the beginning of the show.
“Fire,” he said as he passed his hand over the brazier. Flames leapt from the live coals. “Truly, it is one of life’s great mysteries. So beautiful to behold; so dangerous to touch. The ancients believed the salamander could survive even in the midst of fire. And now, with the aid of magic, we shall do the same.”
He suddenly plunged his hands into the brazier as if it were a basin of cool water. A gasp went up from the crowd. He picked up a glowing coal and popped it in his mouth, like a piece of candy. Turning to the awestruck audience, he plucked an oyster from the air and placed it on the coal in his mouth. It sizzled there for a few seconds and the shell opened. He reached in and took it out, along with the coal.
“I will ask my young assistant to prove to you that this oyster is cooked,” he said as he handed it to her. The shell was hot. On his instructions, she scooped the meat from the oyster and ate it. It burned her throat a little as she swallowed.
The magician performed several more feats with the burning coals. “And now,” he said, “we will bestow this same power on our young assistant here – the power to master fire. Come along, young lady, don’t be shy.”
But she didn’t want to go to him. She could feel the heat of the fire against her face as she stood beside the flaming brazier.
“Come, come, my child. There’s nothing to fear.” His voice was soft and soothing, but hidden beneath it was another voice as fierce as fire.
Come to me, girl. I said, come.
He held his hand over the flaming coals as he extended it to her. It glowed red in the flames, yet remained miraculously unharmed. As she moved irresistibly toward him, she stumbled and looked down.
The floor was strewn with books. A shard of memory cut through the scene like a knife through a painted screen. She remembered an unbearable pain in her chest, remembered falling, books tumbling about her.
And then it was gone, and there was only the hushed room, the beckoning voice, the bottomless eyes. As she reached her hand out slowly to him, the sight of it sent a shock through her – for it was the thin, speckled hand of an old woman. For a moment, some shocking truth seemed about to dawn –
Then his flaming hand closed over hers and all thought fled. Like a tissue tossed in a fire, the room and everything in it hovered for an instant in space, then flared up and was gone. And there were only the two of them.
Flames enfolded every part of him. His clothes were woven flame, his hair a flaming torch, his flesh tongued with fire. He was Fire. The sweet hiss and crackle of his voice sounded in her head.
Come to me. We are one, you and I. There is no pain, nothing to fear.
He fixed her with his eyes; she could feel them searing into every part of her. He drew her slowly to him and enfolded her in his flaming arms. Such sweet pain pulsed through her that she thought she must die from it.
His breath was like the smell of roses on a summer night, but below lay the acrid smell of smoke and singeing hair, of smoldering cloth and wool.
Just a little sleep. A little sleep.
She felt herself spiraling helplessly down into the dark.