Burying the Shadow Read Online Free Page B

approach!
Reveal yourselves in this one instant to the child Rayojini,
daughter of Ushas! Make yourselves known, oh unseen ones. This I,
your servant, Vasni, request; I, who gave you my manhood for
eternity. Hear me and approach!’
    Instantly,
there was silence. I could hear the women breathing, but the
drumbeat and the chanting had ceased. Vasni’s presence filled the
room, even behind my clenched eyelids. I could feel his life force
beating like a slow, smoky wing across my soul.
    It was then
that I opened my eyes. Perhaps they were still full of smoke, or
the effects of it, but it seemed as if the whole chamber was in
utter darkness, but for the shape of Vasni and the dull glow of the
embers. I could not see the walls, the light-boles, or even any of
the other people whom I knew were sitting there with me. All was
Vasni; Vasni like a living tree, his roots of spirit dipping down
into the petrified heart of our city, down into the mountain, down,
down, into the fertile ooze far below. I could almost see the
living essence of the world rising up through his spine,
fountaining out of his head, falling to the ground, sinking back
into the deep shadows of the earth. And then it seemed as if Vasni
too was fading from my sight, as if I was being drawn away, far
away, until Vasni and his embers were like little dim pictures in
the distance. Gradually, a formless darkness came between me and
this image. It was winged, or cloaked, this darkness, and billowing
like an enormous black wind-sail. I was filled with a dreadful
terror, (had the Fear itself come for me?) but I could not escape.
Closing my eyes made no difference, for I could still see, and
could not move my head at all. My tongue seemed to have swollen to
fill my mouth; I could not call for my mother. The roiling shape
loomed over me and I screamed in my head. Was this the
guardian-pursuer Vasni had summoned? It was a dreadful thing - so
alien to the light and space of Taparak. I could not believe the
soulscapers had access to, or affinity with, such creatures. It
appeared to lean over me and, for a second, the darkness parted,
like a veil being drawn aside. Within, I saw the most astounding
thing: two beings, two auras of pale light, giving off a perfume as
beautiful as spirit-scent. They looked like male and female, but
even as a child, I knew the unseen ones could have no real gender,
as we understood it. The female shape smiled at me and reached
towards me with a glowing, white hand. Her nails were like bright
red almonds. I tried to reach out in return, but even though they
seemed so close, it was as if I tried to reach across infinity, a
universe. We never touched. She looked at the male, and they nodded
at one another. Then they took a step forward as if crossing from
one tree platform to another. It was no difficulty for them. Both
of them leaned down, and I felt as if my flesh was alight with
their radiance. The female kissed my brow, followed by the male. My
flesh began to burn there; a delicious, cold burning. I wanted to
make a sound, any sound, but I could not. And then they were gone.
In an instant. The chamber rushed back in to fill their space,
ringing with the sound of women chanting and the low, steady call
of Vasni the scryer.
    I had met my
guardian-pursuers, and that day I loved them as angels. Later, I
learned otherwise.

Section Three
    Gimel
    ‘ In the day we eat
of this fair fruit, our doom is, we shall die. How dies the
Serpent? For us alone was death invented?
    Paradise Lost,
Book IX
    Thirteen dead.
Thirteen: the number of all things fatal and dark.
    We had been
away too long, caught up in the wine of the world, drinking
ourselves into heady euphoria. Thirteen had died in our absence.
Yet despite these tragedies, the world had continued to turn
unheeding, dragging its aging tide across the land. Our house, in
the eastern atelier court was filmed with dust, so the first thing
Beth did, upon our return, was to scold the servants. Four years we
had