And then, many years after his departure, he'd suddenly returned, begging her forgiveness, and asking to be allowed back into her arms and bed. Against all expectation, she had refused him. He had changed, she said. The man she had loved and lost, the man she still moumed, and always would, was gone.
"Had you been with me," she'd said, "we might have changed together; and found new reasons for love. But there's nothing left of you for me to want, except the memory."
The story seemed to Phoebe ineffably sad, as did the notion of trading in dreams, though she had no little difficulty imagining what that actually meant.
"Can dreams be bought and sold?" she asked Musnakaff "Everything can be bought and sold," he replied, look ing at her quickly. "But you know that, coming from the Cosm."
"But dreams-?"
He raised his hand to ward off further questions and led her to the gates of the house-which he unlocked with a key hanging at his belt-then ushered her up to the front steps. Here he paused to offer one last piece of advice before they entered.
"She'll want to quiz you about the Cosm. Tell her it's a vale of tears, and she'll be happy."
"That's no lie," Phoebe said.
"Good," he replied, and started up the stairs. "Oh, one more thing," he said as he went. "You may want to tell her I saved you from certain death. Please feel free to lie a little about that, just to make it seem more@'
"Heroic?"
"Dramatic." "Oh yes. Dramatic," Phoebe said with a little smile.
"Don't worry."
"Only I'm all she's got left now that the sailors don't come. And I want her to feel protected. You understand?"
"I understand," Phoebe said. "You love her as much as King Texas."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to."
"It's not even... I mean... she doesn't All his confidence had suddenly drained from him, He was trembling.
"You're saying she doesn't know?"
"I'm saying... " he studied the steps, "I'm saying she wouldn't care even if she did." Then, not meeting Phoebe's eyes, he turned from her and hurried up the icy steps to the front door. It was open in an instant, and he went inside, where the lamps were turned to tiny glittering flames, and he could wrap his sorrow in the shadows.
Phoebe followed him up and in. He directed her down a narrow, high-ceilinged passage to the back of the house. "You'll find plenty of food in the kitchen. Help yourself." Then he headed up the lushly carpeted stairs, his ascent announce y a tinkling of tiny bells.
The kitchen, Phoebe discovered, had probably been modern in nineteen-twenty, but it was a reassuring place to sit and rest her heavy body. There was an open fire, which she fed with a few logs, there was an immense black iron stove, pots large enough to cook for fifty, and the raw materials for such an enterprise arrayed everywhere: shelves of canned goods, bowls and baskets of fruit and vegetables, bread and cheese, and coffee. Phoebe stood in front of the fire for a couple of minutes, to get some warmth back into her chilled limbs, then set to constructing herself a substantial sandwich. The beef was rare and soft as butter, the bread still warm from the oven, the cheese ripe and piquant. By the time she'd finished putting the sandwich together, her mouth was awash. She took a hearty bite-it was better than goodthen poured herself a cup of fruit juice and settled down in front of the fire.
Her thoughts drifted as she ate and drank, back along the shore, through the crack and down the mountain to Everville. It seemed like days since she and Tesia had waited in the traffic on Main Street, and talked about whether people were real or not. The conversation struck her as even more nonsensical now than it had at the time. Here she was in a place where dreams were traded, eating rare beef in front of a wan-n fire; things were as real here as they'd been in the world she'd left, and that was a great comfort to her. It meant she understood the rules. She wouldn't fly here, but nor would she be chased by the Devil. This was just another country. Of course it had its share of strange customs and wild life, but so did Africa or China. She just had to get used to its peculiarities, and she'd be able to make her way here without difficulty.
"The Mistress wants to see you," Musnakaff announced from the doorway.
"Good," she said, and started to rise. She instantly felt lighthearted.
"Boy, oh boy," she said, picking up her cup and peering into it. "That juice has got a kick to it."
Musnakaff allowed himself a smile. "It's moumingberry," he said. "Are you not familiar with it?" She shook her head, which was a mistake. Her senses swam.
"Oh Lord," she said, and started to sit down again. 'Maybe I should just wait a few minutes."
"No. She wants to see you now. Trust me, she's not going to give a shit if you're a little tipsy. She's scarcely ever sober herself." He came over to Phoebe, and persuaded her back to her feet. "Now remember what I told you-"
"King Texas... " Phoebe mumbled, still trying to order her thoughts.
"No!" he yelped. "Don't you dare mention him."
"What then?" she said.
"The vale of tears," he reminded her.
"Oh yes. I remember. The Cosm's a vale of tears." She repeated it to herself, just for safety's sake.
"Have you got it?"
"I've got it," she said.
Musnakaff sighed. "Well then," he said, "I can think of no excuse to put this off any further," and duly escorted her out of the kitchen, along the passageway and up the stairs to meet with the Mistress of the strange house.
Thou h the trees that bounded the shore of Ephemeris grew
9 so close together their exposed roots knotted like the fingers of praying hands, and the canopy overhead was so dense the sky was blotted out altogether, there was not a leaf, twig, or patch of moss that didn't exude light, which eased Joe's progress considerably. Once in the midst of the forest, he had to rely upon his sense of direction to bring him out the other side, which indeed it did. After perhaps half an hour the trees began to thin, and he stumbled into the open air.
There, a scene lay before him of such scale he could have stood and studied it for a week and not taken in every detail. Stretching in front from his feet for perhaps twenty miles was a landscape of bright fields and water-meadows, the former blazing green and yellow and scarlet, the latter sheets of silver and gold. Rising overhead, like a vast wave that had climbed to titanic height and now threatened to break over the perfection below, was a wall of darkness, which surely concealed the lad. It was not black, but a thousand shades of gray, tinged here and there with red and purple. It was impossible to judge the matter of which it was made. It had the texture of smoke in some places, in others it glistened like skinned muscle; in others still it divided in convulsions, and divided again, as though it were reproducing itself. Of the legion, or nation, that lurked behind it, there was no sign. The wave teetered, and teetered, and did not fall.
But there was another sight that was in its way more extraordinary still, and that was the city that stood in the shadow if this toppling sky: b'Kether Sabbat. The glory of the Ephemeris, Noah had called it and, had Joe'sjoumey taken him not one step closer to the city's limits, he would have believed the boast.
It was shaped, this city, like an inverted pyramid, balanced on its tip. There was no sign of any structure supporting it in this position.
Though there were myriad means of ascent from the ground to its underbelly, which was encrusted with what he assumed to be dwellings
(though their occupants would have to have the attributes of bats to live there), the sum of these lactders and stairways was nowhere near sufficient to bear the city's weight. He had no way to judge its true scale, but he w@is certain Manhattan would have fitted upon the upper surface with room to spare, which meant that the dozen or so towers that rose there, each resembling a vast swathe of fabric, plucked up by one comcr and falling in countless folds, were many hundreds of stories high.