Servant of the Bones

"To you? Because you're a spirit, a god, an angel sent to me. You witnessed her death because she was a lamb. Don't you see? You came when she died, as if a god to receive a sacrifice!"

"I hated her death," I said. "I slew the three men who killed her." This astonished him. "You did that?"

"Yes, Billy Joel, Hayden, and Doby Eval. I killed them. The papers know. The news talks of her blood on their weapons and their blood mingled with it now. I did that! Because I had failed to stop them from their evil plan. What sacrifice do you speak of? Why call her the lamb? Where was the altar and if you think I'm a god, you're a fool! I hate God and all gods. I hate them."

He was enthralled. He drew close to me, and then stepped back, and then walked around, too, excited to be still.

If he was guilty of killing his daughter, he gave no clue. He looked at me with pure delight in our exchange.

Something struck me suddenly. The skin of his face had been moved! A surgeon had tightened it over all his bones. I laughed at the ingenuity of it and the implications, that things in this age could be done so simply. And with a sudden sinking terror, I thought, What if I have been brought to this age for a reason that has to do with his horrors and the world's wonders, and this is the chance to stay whole and alive from now on?

I winced, and he started to question me again. I put my hands up for him to be quiet.

I backed away from my own thought. I turned and stared at the gleaming bones, and I bent down and laid my own fingers, my material fingers, upon my own bones.

At once I felt as if someone were touching me as I touched them. I felt someone's touch on my own legs. I felt my own hands on my own face as I touched the skull. I sank my thumbs into the empty sockets defiantly, where my eyes had been, my eyes . . . something boiling, something too ghastly to think of-I uttered a small sound that made me ashamed. .-

The room quivered, brightened, then contracted as though it were receding. No, stay here. Stay in this room. Stay here with him! But I was imagining things, as humans say. My body had not weakened at all. I was standing tall.

I opened my eyes slowly and closed them and looked down at the golden bones. Iron fastened them to the rotted cloth beneath them, iron fastened them to the old wood of the casket, but it was the same casket, permeated with all the oils that would make it last unto the end of time, like the bones. An image of Zurvan flashed through me, and with it came a flood of words ... to love, to learn, to know, to love . . .

Once again came the huge city walls of blue-glazed bricks, the golden lions and the cries of voices, and one of them pointing his finger and screaming at me in the old Hebrew-the prophet-and the chants rose and fell.

Something had happened! I had done something, something unspeakable to be made this ghost, this old ghost who had served Masters beyond recollection.

But if I dwelt on this, I might vanish. Or I might not.

I stood very still, but no more memories came. I withdrew my hands. I stood looking down at the bones. Gregory brought me out of it.

He moved closer and he put his hands on me. He wanted so much to do this. How his pulse raced. It felt wondrously erotic, these fleshly hands touching my newly formed arms. If I was still gaining in strength, I didn't feel it anymore.

I felt the world. Safe inside it for now.

His fingers clenched the sleeves of this coat. He was staring at it, the precision of it, the dazzle of the buttons, the fine stitches. And all of this I'd drawn to me in haste with the old commands that rolled off my tongue like nothing. I could have made myself a woman suddenly to frighten him. But I didn't want to do that. I was too happy to be Azriel, and Azriel was too afraid.

Yet again . . . what was the limit of this masterless power? I contrived a joke, an evil joke. I smiled, and then whispering all the words I knew, fashioning the most mellifluous incantations I could, I changed myself into Esther.

The image of Esther. I felt her small body, and peered through her big eyes and smiled, and even felt the tightness of her garments on that last day, the flash of the painted animal coat in my eye.

Thank God, I didn't have to see this myself! I felt sorry for him.

"Stop it!" he roared. He fell back onto the floor, scrambling away from me, and then leaning back on his elbows.

I returned to my own shape. I had done this and he had no control of it! I had control of it. I felt proud and wicked suddenly.

"Why did you call her the lamb? Why did the Rebbe say you killed her?"

"Azriel," he said. "Listen carefully to what I say." He climbed to his feet as effortlessly as a dancer. He walked towards me. "Whatever happens after, whatever happens, remember this. The world is ours. The world, Azriel."

I was startled.

"The world, Gregory?" I asked. I tried to sound hard and clever. "What do you mean, the world?"

"I mean all of it, I mean the world as Alexander meant the world when he went out to conquer it." He appealed to me, patiently. "What do you know, Spirit Friend? Do you know the names Bonaparte or Peter the Great or Alexander? Do you know the name Akhenaton? Constantine? What are the names you know?"

"All of those and more, Gregory," I answered. "Those were emperors, conquerors. Add to them Tamerlane and Scanderbeg, and after him Hitler, Hitler, who slew our people by the millions."

"Our people," he said with a smile. "Yes, we are of the same people, aren't we? I knew we were. I knew it."

"What do you mean, you knew it? The Rebbe told you. He read the scroll. What are these conquerors to you? Who rules in this electric paradise called New York? You are a churchman, so says the Rebbe. You are a merchant. You have billions in every currency recognized on earth. You think Scanderbeg in his castle in the Balkans ever had the wealth you have here? You think Peter the Great ever brought back to Russia with him the luxuries you possess? They didn't have your power! They couldn't. Their world wasn't an electrical web of voices and lights."

He laughed with delight, his eyes sparkling, and beautiful. "Ah, that's just it," he said. "And now in this world so filled with wonders, no one has their power! No one has the force of Alexander when he brought the philosophy of the Greeks to Asia. No one dares to kill as Peter the Great killed, chopping off the heads of his bad soldiers until the blood covered his arms."

"Your times are not the worst of times," I said. "You have leaders; you have talk; you have the rich being kind to the poor; you have men the world wide who fear evil and want goodness."

"We have madness," he said. "Look again. Madness!" "What does this mean to you? Is this the mission of your church to gain control of the whole world? Is that what drives you, as the old man asked? You want the power to chop off the heads of men? You want that?"