When, after two days, there was no sign of improvement in his state, they called in expert help, but though the doctors exhausted their tests on him they could find nothing physiologically wrong. This was not a coma, they ventured, so much as a trance; and they knew no precedent for it, except perhaps sleepwalking. One of their number even went so far as to suggest the condition might be self-induced, a possibility Suzanna did not entirely dismiss.
There were no reasons they could find, they finally announced, as to why the patient wasn't up and awake and living a healthy life. There are plenty of reasons, Suzanna thought, but none that she could begin to explain. Perhaps he had simply seen too much; and the surfeit had left him indifferent to being.
3
And the dust rolled on.
Sometimes he thought he heard voices in the wind; very distant voices. But they disappeared as quickly as they came, and left him alone again. That was for the best, he knew, because if there was a place beyond this wasteland and the voices were trying to coax him back, it would bring him pain, and he was better off without it. Besides, sooner or later the inhabitants of that otherwhere would come to him. They'd wither and die and join the dust in the wilderness. That was how things happened; always had and always would.
Everything went to dust.
4
Each day Suzanna would spend several hours talking to him, telling him how the day had gone, and whom she'd met mentioning the names of people he knew and places he'd been in the hope of stirring him from his inertia. But there was no response; not a glimmer.
Sometimes she'd get into a quiet rage at his apparent indifference to her, and tell him to his vacant face that he was being selfish. She loved him, didn't he know that? She loved him and she wanted him to know her again, and be with her. Other times she'd come close to despair, and however hard she tried she couldn't stem the tears of frustration and unhappiness. She'd leave his bedside then, until she'd composed herself again, because she was fearful that somewhere in his sealed head he'd hear her grief and flee even further into himself.
She even tried to reach him with the menstruum, but he was a fortress, and her subtle body could only gaze into him, not enter. What it saw gave her no cause for optimism. It was as if he was uninhabited.
5
Outside the window of Gluck's home it was the same story: there were few signs of life. This was the hardest winter since the beginning of the century. Snow fell on snow; ice glazed ice.
As January crept to its dismal end people began not to ask after Cal as frequently. They had problems of their own in such a grim season, and it was relatively easy for them to put him out of their minds because he wasn't in pain; or at least in no pain he could express. Even Gluck tactfully suggested that she was giving too much of her time over to nursing him. She had her own healing to do; a life to be put in some sort of order; plans to be laid for the future. She'd done all that could be expected from a devoted friend, and more, he argued, and she should start to share the burden with others.
‘I can't,' she told him.
‘Why not?' he asked.
‘I love him,' she said, and ‘I want to be with him.'
That was only half the answer of course. The other half was the book.
There it lay in his room, where she'd put it the day they'd returned from Rayment's Hill. Though it had been Mimi's gift to Suzanna, the magic that it now contained meant she could no longer open it alone. Just as she'd needed Cal at the Temple, in order to use the Loom's power, and charge the book with their memories, so she needed him again if they were to reverse the process. The magic hung in the space between them. She could not reclaim on her own what they'd imagined together.
Until he woke the Stories of the Secret Places would remain untold. And if he didn't wake they'd remain that way forever.
6
In the middle of February, with the false hint of a thaw in the air, Gluck took himself off to Liverpool, and, by dint of some discreet enquiries in Chariot Street, located Geraldine Kella-way. She returned with him to Harborne to visit Cal. His condition shocked her, needless to say, but she had that brand of pragmatism that would find her the first brewing tea after Armageddon, and within an hour she'd taken it in her stride.
She returned to Liverpool after two days, back to the life she'd established in Cal's absence, promising to visit again soon.
If Gluck had hoped her appearance would do something to break the deadlock of Cal's stupor, he was disappointed. The sleepwalker went on in the same fashion, through February and early March, while outside the promised thaw was delayed and delayed.
During the day they'd move him from his bed to the window, and there he'd sit, overlooking the expanse of frost-gripped ground behind Gluck's house. Though he was fed well, chewing and swallowing with the mechanical efficiency of an animal; though he was shaved and bathed daily; though his legs were exercised to keep the muscles from wasting, it was
apparent to those few who still came visiting, and especially to Suzanna and Gluck, that he was preparing die.
And the dust rolled on.
VI
RAPTURE
1
If Finnegan hadn't called she would never have gone down to London. But he had, and she did, as much at Gluck's insistence than from any great enthusiasm for the trip.
As soon as she got out of the house, however, and started travelling, she began to feel the weight of recent weeks lift a little. Hadn't she once said to Apolline that there was comfort in their at least being alive? It was true. They would have to make the best they could of that, and not sigh for things circumstance had denied them.
She found Finnegan less than his usual spritely self. His career at the bank had floundered of late, and he needed a shoulder to curse upon. She supplied it happily, more than content to hear his catalogue of woes if they distracted her from her own. He reminded her, when he'd finished complaining and gnashing his teeth, of something she'd once said about never marrying a banker. As it seemed he'd soon be out of a job would she think again?, he wondered. It was clear from his tone he didn't expect yes for an answer, and he didn't get it, but she told him she hoped they'd always be friends.
‘You're a strange woman,' he said as they parted, apropos of nothing in particular. She took the remark as flattery.
2
It was late afternoon by the time she got back to Harborne. Another night of frost was on its way, pearling the pavements and roofs.
When she went upstairs she found the sleepwalker had not been put in his chair but was sitting against heaped pillows on the bed, his eyes as glazed as ever. He looked sick; the mark Uriel's revelation had left on his face was livid against his pallid skin. She'd left too early to shave him that morning, and it distressed her to see how close to utter dereliction such minor neglect had left him looking. Talking quietly to him about where she'd been, she led him from the bed over to the chair beside the window, where the light was a little better. Then she collected the electric razor from the bathroom and shaved his stubble.
At the beginning it had been an eerie business, ministering to him like this, and it had upset her. But time had toughened her, and she'd come to view the various chores of keeping him presentable as a means to express her affection for him.
Now, however, as dusk devoured the light outside, she felt those early anxieties rising in her again. Perhaps it was the day she'd spent out of the house, and out of Cal's company, that made her tender to this experience afresh. Perhaps it was also the sense she had that events were drawing to a close; that there would not be many more days when she would have to shave him and bathe him. That it was almost over.