Tesla didn't want to hear. Didn't want to move. Didn't want anything but to float here as long as this limbo would have her.
But the cruelty came down from above, loud and clear, and try as she might she couldn't keep the anger from burgeoning in her. Her agitation informed the ground around her, and its motion drove her back towards her floating body. The closer she came to it the more frenzied the energies surrounding her became. they were eager for this reunion, she realized; they wanted her returned into her flesh.
And why? She had the answer the moment she slid back into the space behind her eyes. It wanted to make her heart leap. It wanted to make her lungs draw breath. And most of all, it wanted to come into her living body, and let that body be the crux of all that flowed here. A place where the mind could make sense of the flesh's confusions. A place where beasts and divinities could be dissolved, and get about the work of oneness.
In short, it wanted to give her the Art.
And there was no refusing it. She knew the moment it passed into her that the gift was also a possession. That she would be changed in ways that were presently unimaginable to her, changes that made the difference between life and death look like a nuance.
There was perhaps a moment between the first heartbeat and the second, when she might have rejected the gift, and fled her body. Let it die again, and wither. But before she quite realized the choice was hers, she'd chosen.
And the Art had her.
"What is this?" Kissoon said, watching as the ground on which his mother's body lay was pierced and a thousand pinprick shafts of light broke from it.
Harry had no answers. All he could do was watch while the spectacle escalated, the old woman's corpse withering where it lay, as if the light-which gave off no discernible heat-was cremating it. If so, it was as adept a creator as destroyer, for even as Maeve O'Connell's corpse went to ash, another form, another woman, was resurrected in the midst of her pyre.
"Tesla?"
She looked like a tapestry sewn from fire, but it was her. God in Heaven, it was her!
Harry heard the drone of the lad in his skull turn to the lowing of a fretful animal. Vissoon was retreating towards the front door, clearly as spooked as his faceless ally, but before he could reach the threshold Tesla called to him by name. Her voice was no more mellifluous for her transfiguration.
"This is unforgivable," she said, the fire threads embers. now; her body almost her own. "Here, of all places, where both of us were born.11
"Both of us?" said Kissoon. "I am born here and now," she said. "And you are a witness to that, which is no little honor."
The troubled din of the lad was continuing to escalate through this exchange, and now, staring past Kissoon into the darkness beyond the faltering walls, Harry saw its abstractions unknitting, its wheel fragmenting.
"Are you doing that?" Harry said to'Tesia.
"Maybe," she said, looking down at her body, which was more solid by the moment. She seemed particularly interested in her hands. It took Harry only an instant to work out why. She was remembering the Jaff, whose hands had blazed with the Art. Blazed, then broken.
"Buddenbaum was right," Harry said.
"About what?"
"You and the all."
"I didn't plan it this way," she said, her tone a mingling of puzzlement and distress. "If he hadn't shed blow-"
She looked up from her hands, back at Kissoon, who lead retreated to the place where the door had once stood. its conjured memory was barely visible now. As for the lad, its lornis turned in the air behind him, drawing the darkness into their loops as they circled, sealing themselves in shadow. Soon, they were just places where the stars failed to shine. Then not even that.
"This is the beginning of the end," Kissoon said,
"I know," Tesia replied, with a ghost of a smile on her I'-,ice,
"You should be afraid," Kissoon told her.
"Why? Because you're a man capable of killing his own mother?" She shook her head. "The world's been full of scum like you from the beginning," she said quietly. "And if the end means there's no more to come, then that's not going to be much of a loss, is it?"
He stared at her for a few seconds, as if searching for some riposte. Finding none, he simply said, "We'll see... " and turning into the same darkness that had taken the Iad, he was gone. There was another silence then, longer than the one before, while the walls of the whorehouse grew ever more insubstantial. Harry went down on his haunches, his eyes pricking with tears of relief, while the last dreg of the lad's drone faded and disappeared from the bones of his head. Tesia, meanwhile, wandered a few yards from the place where she'd appeared-which now looked like any other spot in the street-and stared towards the fires. There were sirens whooping in the distance. The saviors were on their way with hoses, lights, and words of reason.
"How does it feel?" Harry asked her. "I'm... trying to pretend nothing's happened to me," Tesla replied, her voice a gravelly whisper.
"If I take it slowly... very slowly... maybe I won't get crazy."
"So it's not like they say-?"
"I can't see the past, if that's what you mean."
"What about the future?"
"Not from where I'm standing." She drew a deep breath. "We haven't told that story yet. That's why." There was a peal of laughter from the direction of the garden. "Your friend sounds happy," she said.
"That's Raul."
"Raul?" A tentative smile appeared on Tesla's face. "That's Raul? Oh my Lord, I thought I'd lost him...." She faltered, as her gaze found Raul, standing among the last of the blossoming trees. "Look at that," she said.
"What?" said Harry.
"Oh, of course," she said, "I'm seeing with death's eyes." She pondered for a moment. "I wonder... ?" she said finally, raising her hand in front of her, index and middle fingers extended. "Do you want to try something?"
Harry got to his feet. "Sure."
"Come here."
He came to her, a little trepidatiously. "I don't know if this is going to work or not," she warned. "But who knows, maybe we'll get lucky."
She laid her fingers lightly against his jugular. "Do you feel anything?" she said.
"You're cold."
"That's all, huh? Okay, let's try... here." This time, she touched his forehead. "Still cold?" she said. He didn't reply. Just winced a little. "You want me to stop?"
"No," he said. "No, it's... just... strange-"
"Take another look at Raul," she said.
He turned his eyes in the direction of the trees and a gasp of delight escaped him.
"You can see them?" "Yes," he smiled. "I can see them."
Raul was not in the fading garden alone. Maeve was standing close by him, no longer wrapped in drear and mist but clothed in a long, pale dress. The years had fallen from her. She was in her prime; a handsome woman of forty or so, standing arm in arm with a man who surely had lion in his lineage. He too was dressed for a summer evening, and gazed upon his wife as though this was the first hour of their courtship, and he hopelessly in love.
There was a fourth member of this unlikely group. Another phantom-Erwin Toothaker, Harry supposeddressed in a shapeless jacket and baggy pants, watching from a little distance as the lovers exchanged their tender glances. "Shall we join them?" Tesia said. "We've got a few minutes before people start to come sightseeing."