Servant of the Bones

"Body be my own," I whispered. "Be solid and strong enough to / make angels burn with envy. Mold me into the man I would be in my happiest hour, if I held the looking glass before my own face."

He paused. He had heard the whisper. But in the dark he saw nothing but the casket. What were creaks and bumps and whispers to him? The car sped along. The city hissed and throbbed.

His eyes were locked to the bones.

"My Lord God," said Gregory, and leaning back on his heels so that he wouldn't tumble, he reached out for the skull.

I felt it. I felt his hands on my head. But it was only a stroking of the thick black hair that was already there, hair I had called to me.

"Lord God!" he said again. "Servant of the Bones? You have a new Master. It is Gregory Belkin and his entire flock. It is Gregory Belkin of the Temple of the Mind of God who calls you. Come to me, Spirit! Come to me!"

I said:

"Perhaps yes, perhaps no to all those words. I am already here." He looked up, saw me sitting composed and opposite to him and he let out a loud cry and tumbled over against the door of the car. He let go of the casket altogether.

Nothing changed in me except that I grew stronger and brighter. I reached over towards him and down carefully and put the fragile lid over the curling skeleton of the bones. I covered them up with my hands, and I drew back and up and folded my arms, and I sighed.

He sat slumped still on the floor of the car, the seat behind him, the door beside him, his knees up, staring at me, merely staring, and then as filled with wonder as any human I could ever remember, fearless and mad with glee.

"Servant of the Bones!" he said, flashing his teeth to me. "Yes, Gregory," I answered with the tongue in my mouth, my voice speaking his English. "I am here, as you see."

I studied him carefully. I had outdone his garments, my coat was soft and flawless silk, and my buttons were jasper, and my hair was long on my shoulders. Heavy! And I was composed and he sat in disarray.

Slowly, very slowly he rose, grasping the handle of the door to aid himself, as he sat back down on the velvet seat and looked first at the casket on the floor and then at me.

I turned sharply for one instant. I had to. I was afraid. But I had to. I had to see if I could see myself in the dark tinted glass.

Beyond, the night moved in a splendid dreamy flight, the city of towers clustering near us, bright orange electric lights blazing as fiercely as torches.

But there was Azriel, looking at himself with sharp black eyes, smooth shaven, his hair a regular mantle on his head, and his thick eyebrows dipping as they always did when he smiled.

Without haste, I let my eyes return to him. I let him see my smile. My heart beat and I could move my tongue easily on my lips. I sat back and felt the comfort of this cushioned seat, and I felt the engine of the car vibrating through me, vibrating through the soft, exquisite velvet beneath me.

I heard his breath rise and fall. I saw his chest heave. I looked into his eyes again.

He was rapt. His arms had not even tensed; his fingers lay open or his knees. He did not even bend his back as if to brace himself frorr a shock or a blow. His eyes were fully opened and he too was almost smiling.

"You're a brave man, Gregory," I said. "I have reduced other men to stuttering lunatics with such tricks as this."

"Oh, I bet you have," he answered.

"But don't call me the Servant of the Bones again. I don't like it. Call me Azriel. That's my name."

"Why did she say it?" he asked at once. "Why did she say it in the ambulance? She said 'Azriel,' just as you said it."

"Because she saw me," I said. "I watched her die. She saw me and she spoke to say my name twice, and then that was all she said and she was dead."

He tumbled gently back against the seat. He stared upwards now, past me, resisting the inevitable rocking of the car, and its sudden jerks as it slowed, perhaps blocked by the traffic. He stared and only slowly lowered his eyes to me in the most fearless and casual manner I have ever seen in a man.

Then, lifting his hand, he began to tremble. But it wasn't cowardice. It wasn't even shock. It was glee, the pure mad glee he'd felt when he looked at the skull.

He wanted to touch me. He rubbed his hands together, and he reached out and then he drew back.

"Go ahead," I said. "I don't care. Do it. I would like you to do it."

I reached forward and grabbed his right hand before he could stop me and I lifted it as he stared amazed. His mouth opened. I lifted his hand and pushed it against my thick hair, and laid it on my cheek, and then against my chest.

"You feel a heartbeat?" I asked. "There is none. Only a living pulse as if I were whole and entire a heart, made of a heart, when the very opposite is surely the truth. I feel your pulse, true enough, and it races. I feel your strength and you have much."

He tried to free his hand, but only politely, and I wouldn't let him do it; I held his hand now so that I could see the palm of it in the flashing light coming through the windows.

The car went very slowly.

I saw the lines in his palm, and then I opened my right hand which was free, and I saw the lines in my palm too. I had done well. No Master had ever done better. But I didn't know how to read these lines, only that they had come to me in glorious detail.

Then I made a decision to do something which I could not explain to myself. I kissed the palm of his hand. I kissed this tender flesh of his hand; I pressed my lips right against it and when I felt the shiver pass through him, I gloried in it, almost the way he was glorying in my presence.

I looked into his eyes and saw something of my own eyes in them, in their largeness, their darkness, even in the thick fringe of lashes of which I, once alive, had been so very proud.

I wanted to kiss his lips, to lock hold of them, and to kiss as enemies kiss before one tries to kill the other.

Indeed, if there had ever been a moment for the Servant of the Bones like this with any mortal, I didn't remember it. Not a wisp of such a memory remained; indeed, I felt nothing now except a fascination with him, and all that came to trouble it was her face, Esther's, and her lips and her dying words.

"And what makes you think that I am not Master!" he whispered. A shining smile spread on his lips, almost rapturous.

I released his hand and he slipped it away, and brought his own two hands together as if to protect them against me, but this was done with graceful composure.

"I'm the Master and you know it," he said it gently. But his voice was eager and loving. "Azriel! You're mine."