Waiting for the Moon

The carriage hurtled through the countryside, down one jet black dirt road after another. Wind slashed at the sides of the coach, rain thumped on the roof. Light wobbled through the dark interior from a small lantern bolted to the wall.

Ian pulled his cloak tighter to his throat. He was cold, colder than he could ever remember being, but there was no warmth to be found in his cape.

He needed a decanter of whiskey. Maybe with its help, he could crawl into some dark, cold place and drink until he was blind and deaf and dumb, until nothing that happened on this earth could affect him.

"You got exactly what you expected, I imagine." Johann broke the silence at last, and Ian sensed that he'd been biding his time. "We all do, after all."

It took a great effort for Ian to lift his head. He tilted his chin just enough to slant a shuttered look at the man in the seat opposite him. "Cryptic and philosophical. I see you're back to your old self, Johann."

"That makes two of us, then."

"Meaning?"

"The brief flirtation with humanity has ended."

"Keep talking, Johann. You'll have me in a coma in no time."

Anger flashed in Johann's eyes. "You're the blindest,

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most selfish, self-obsessed person I've ever had the displeasure of knowing. You make me sick."

"Oh, stop. You're breaking my heart."

Johann leaned forward. "You fool. You have been birthmarked by the gods, destined for greatness, and yet you walk away from your potential like a spoiled child."

Ian sighed heavily. He looked at Johann's serious face, and felt suddenly old-too old for a thirty-five-year-old man.

"Selena is not Elizabeth," Johann said into the lengthening silence.

The words surprised Ian, and they hurt. Jesus, just hearing her name, soft and rounded and redolent with the mysteries of the goddess, hurt. He used bitterness to keep the ache at bay. "Selena is not Selena, either."

"It's too late, you know."

Ian wanted to ignore Johann's enigmatic statement, but he couldn't feign disinterest, not this time, not about Selena. And God help him, Johann was one of the few people who could actually understand Ian, who saw through the bitterness to the pain. Their lives were so similar; two affluent, educated men trapped in a hellhole of abnormality, thrust into the bowels of madness by physical conditions they couldn't control and a world they couldn't fit in to.

He looked up, met Johann's gaze. Tell me something that will save me. The thought came to him out of nowhere, humiliating him in its intensity. He forced his voice into a casual drawl. "Too late for what?"

"Dr. Wellsby's advice was very scholarly, probably even well thought out and accurate, but that's the problem with you doctors. You think that healing is a science. It's not, never was. Never will be. Healing is a spiritual art. It requires the heart and soul to save the body."

"Ah, medical advice. What a good choice, Johann."

"Wellsby is an idiot. If there's a chance to save

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Selena, it lies not in your books or your medicines or your knives; it resides in your soul and heart. You must get emotionally involved-as you already are. Your willingness to save her may be all that she needs."

Ian snorted derisively. He'd been down that road before, and there was nothing good at the end of it. "What should I do then, Johann, spend the rest of my life wiping the drool from her chin?"

"If that's all there is, then that's what you do. And you pray for more. Every day, every moment, you pray."

Ian closed his eyes, wishing he could forget the prayers he'd offered, the thousands of childhood nights he'd spent kneeling beside his bed, praying that his mother would get better. "And those prayers will be answered," he said bitterly. "Just as yours were."

"I forgot to pray," Johann said softly.

Hearing those words, quiet and honest and suffused with pain, Ian felt himself weaken. The thin, disguising veneer of bitterness fell away, left him with a painful nothingness inside. "I've tried that route before. It's a damn universe of pain. It sucks you in and strangles you, and . . ." He sighed. "You, of all people, should un