writing_shadows

This was meant to be a piece about Julian and Alexander, but I wound up cutting almost all mentions of Alexander out of it, because they didn't fit the conversation. I *meant* to dwell on uncertainties, on the fact that I'm pretty sure that Julian hasn't actually said "I love you" in any language, which is a curious omission. I *meant* to dwell more on appetites, and what damage they can do to the soul. I *meant* it to be a lot more tortured and inward looking.

What I got was a conversation that takes severe liberties with one of

kathminchin's NPCs, whom I am suborning, and who is seven. Do not be fooled--in game Tammy has thrown two grown men twenty feet through a car door, and tracked down and punished a petty thief. But, at heart, she is seven.

(Alexander is still in there. He's the real ghost.)

Anyway, in the manner of a partial exorcism, I give you

Fasting got her appetites under control. Julian’s mind disciplined her body, and she waited for the time in the fast when her body, serene, began to return the compliment. It wouldn’t be long now. Already she worked long hours into the night after late Mass, drafting her research proposals for Egypt, writing the lectures she hoped to give in Cairo. Catherine had agreed to accompany her, and between them they should have enough clout (and eccentricity) to arrange a tour even at this relatively short notice. Then she would go on to the cells of the desert fathers and pray for clarity. There was not all that much difference, when all was said and done, between a desert of sand and a desert of humanity. She planned to write a book on the subject. Maybe she would bring in some other cultures, cultures which based holiness around the vision quest. She spent many happy hours returning to the life of the mind, revisiting old friends in her library.

He was never truly absent, of course. But she didn’t seek abnegation, just forgiveness.

* * *

She woke with a jolt, heart pounding. Again. Intellectually, she had no doubt she was internalising, subliminating what she eschewed during the day. She couldn't, however, bring her emotions in synch. She glanced at her guardian, but its ever-changing face was impassive. She wondered for how long it had been feeding her bits of memory in response to unconscious requests as well as conscious ones, or if she was over-rationalising. But she could swear she could hear the refrain of “Greensleeves” dying into the darkness, overlaid with the lapping of the loch in Scotland and the dancing cadence of ancient Greek, the language Alexander shared with her.

“You’re awake,” said a small voice. A pale little figure appeared next to the bed, looking concerned. “Did you have the dream again?”

“Yes, Tammy. I’m sorry. Did I disturb you?” Julian didn’t ask if she woke her, for Tammy never slept.

“No. I played with my blocks for a while, but then I started watching you. I thought maybe if I watched really carefully I could see what was happening. If…if a daimon,” she pronounced the strange word carefully, “was haunting you. Do you want some tea? I think I can work the kettle now.”

“Can you? That’s very clever of you, Tammy. You must be feeling a lot better.”

Tammy nodded, and stared at Julian. Julian smiled back. “This is the fourth time,” said Tammy. “I counted. That you’ve dreamed. Why?”

“I don’t know, Tammy my love,” said Julian. “Maybe God is trying to tell me something. Maybe something that has happened, or that will happen, is more important than I think it is.”

“Why doesn’t He just tell you, then?” Tammy was seven, and would always be seven, and things that others found strange, like angels and visions, she just thought were part of Julian.

Julian thought. “Sometimes, He likes to remind us that we have to listen out for Him, in different ways and different places. In different people, even.”

“Oh. Which ones?”

“When I figure that out, maybe He’ll let me sleep,” smiled Julian.

“Julian, are you scared?” asked Tammy.

“Of God, Tammy? No.”

“Not God. Just…you know,” and Tammy wiggled a bit. “Scared.”

Yes, she wanted to say, yes, I am. Of the world. Of going back to it. Of the many ways to get lost in it. Of the enormity of it all, stretching beyond her comprehension. Of its hunger. But she couldn’t tell that to Tammy. To Tammy she was the woman who stared up gun barrels and smiled, who healed people when they were hurt, who didn’t judge, who talked with ghosts and angels and loved Tammy. Tammy had died, horrifically, and had drifted till she had found Bethany. Bethany could touch her and talk to her, and had brought her back from the brink of corruption. But Bethany knew death best, not life, and in the two months Tammy had agreed to stay with Julian to help her with her studies, Julian had tried to show her that people still loved her. It was little enough she could do.

But she wouldn’t lie, either. So she nodded, and took Tammy’s hand, and said, “A little. Sometimes.”

“Now?”

“No, not now. Not while I’m talking to you.”

Tammy thought about that for a while, and then said, “You have to sleep. Or you’ll get sick.”

Julian nodded seriously. “You’re probably right.”

Tammy climbed up onto the bed and put her teddy bear under the covers. “I’ll lie here with you. Will that help?”

Julian blinked a couple of times, rapidly. “Yes, Tammy. I’m sure that will help very much.”

They nestled together on the narrow bed, Julian’s arms around Tammy’s mostly immaterial form, and Tammy leaned her head against Julian’s and whispered, “I’m scared, too. A little. Sometimes.”

Julian thought of how the last ghost she had finally manage to exorcise had literally ripped Tammy apart, nearly killed Bethany’s mother, and made Bethany run away, too scared to approach her own home for weeks. She wondered which of them was really the braver one. And she marvelled again at how startling love was, and how foolish to turn away its impossible gift.

She slept.