Anne Rice - Servant of the Bones

“He gave a great sigh. ‘I have to rest now, the journey was arduous for me. I’m human. Now, go and walk about the city. Walk in your fleshly body, walk as men do and see as men do. Do not walk through doors or walls, lest you frighten someone, and if the spirits come down to assault you, send them flying with your anger and your fist. If you need me, call out to me. But mostly, you walk now.’

“I was delighted at the prospect. I got up and went to the door. His voice called me back.

“ ‘You’re the strongest spirit I ever saw or knew,’ he said. ‘Look at you, in your splendid blue robes and gold, and with your hair shining as it falls to your shoulders. Look at you. Visible, invisible, an illusion, solid, it’s all possible for you. You could be the perfect instrument of evil.’

“ ‘I don’t want to be!’ I said.

“ ‘Remember that, remember that above all things. You were imperfectly made by bumbling idiots. And as the result you are stronger than any magician could have ever wanted, and you have what men have…’

“I started to weep. It was that same instantaneous and uncontrollable weeping that had come on me before. ‘A soul?’ I asked. ‘I have a soul?’

“ ‘I don’t know the answer to that question,’ he said. ‘I was speaking of something else. You have free will.’

“He lay back and closed his eyes. ‘Bring something back for me which hurts no one.’

“ ‘Flowers,’ I said, ‘a beautiful gathering of flowers, from this wall and that gate and this garden.’

“He laughed. ‘Yes, and with mortals, be gentle! Don’t hurt them. Even if they insult you, thinking you mortal, don’t hurt them. Be patient and kind.’

“ ‘I will, I vow it,’ I said.

“And I set out on my way.”

11

What Zurvan taught me in the next fifteen years was all an extension and elaboration of what was learned in the first three of our days. That I can remember them now clearly for the first time in all these centuries floods me with happiness. I want to tell you the details. Ah, God, that I remember being alive and then not alive that I can connect one memory to the other, this is…this is something more merciful than an answer to prayers.”

I told him I thought I could understand, but I said nothing more because I was eager for him to go on.

“After Zurvan released me to go wandering in the flesh, I didn’t return until called, which was midnight or after. I had by then a huge bouquet of extremely delicate flowers, no one the same, and these I put in a vase of water for him and set on his study table.

“He made me recount everything I had seen and done. I described every street in Miletus in which I’d wandered, how I’d been tempted to try to pass through solid objects but stayed with his prohibition, and how I had watched the ships in the harbor for the longest time, and listened to the languages being spoken along the shore. I told him I felt thirst at times, and drank from a fountain not sure of what would happen, and that the water filled my body, not through internal organs which I did not possess, but every fiber of it over all.

“He listened to all this and he said: ‘What is your estimation of all you saw, or each thing, however you wish to tell me?’

“ ‘Splendid,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Temples of incredible beauty. Marble, such marble. The people here are from all nations. I never saw so many Greeks before; I stood listening to a group of Athenians arguing about philosophy, which was very funny to me but I enjoyed watching it, and of course I wandered near the Persian court and was allowed entrance both to the temple and the palace, apparently because of my clothing and demeanor and I wandered in these newly constructed citadels of my old world, and then back out to the temples of the Greek gods, and rather liked their openness and the whiteness, and the whole stamina of the Greek people, which I think is more different from the Babylonians than I ever supposed.’

“ ‘But,’ he asked, ‘is there anything you are burning to tell me, anything that made you angry or sorrowful?’

“ ‘I don’t want to disappoint you but I can’t think of a thing. Everywhere I beheld splendor. Ah, the colors of the flowers, look at them. Every now and then I’d see the spirits, but all I had to do was close my eyes to them, so to speak, and again there was the bright, living world. I coveted things. I coveted jewelry, and I knew I could steal it in this form. In fact, I did discover one little trick. I could make the jewelry come to me, if I stood close enough and beckoned to it with my whole will. But I gave back what I stole. And I found money in my pockets. I found gold. I don’t know how it got there.’

“ ‘I put it there,’ he said. ‘Anything else? Did you notice or feel anything else?’

“ ‘The Greeks, you know,’ I said. ‘They are as practical as our people were…whoever the hell my people were…but they believe in ethics in a way that is not connected to divine worship; it is not merely a question of do not oppress the poor, uphold the weak, and all for the glory of the gods, but some further confirmation of much that is…is…’

“ ‘Abstract,’ he said. ‘Invisible and detached from the self-serving.’

“ ‘Yes, precisely. They speak of laws that pertain to behavior in a manner that is not religious, that’s it. They don’t possess more conscience, however. They can be cruel. Can’t all people?’

“ ‘That’s enough for now. You’ve told me what I want to know.’

“ ‘Which is what?’ I asked.

“ ‘You don’t envy living people.’

“ ‘Good heavens, why should I? I’ve wandered all day and I feel no fatigue, nothing, only a little thirst. No one can harm me. Why would I envy people who are still alive? I feel sorry for them if all that lies ahead is to be a stumbling spirit or a demon. I wish all of them could be born again as I have, but then I know that all I see is, how did you put it, only what is of the earth. Besides…’

“ ‘Yes…’

“ ‘I don’t remember ever being alive. I know you said that I was, or I myself said it, or it seems to be something we both know, and we spoke of that cursed tablet and bungling, but I don’t remember being alive. I don’t remember aching or being burnt or falling or bleeding. By the way, you are right. I have no need of internal organs. And when I cut myself I can bleed or not bleed as I choose.’

“ ‘You realize, of course,’ he said, ‘that many of the dead you see hate the living! They hate them.’

“ ‘Why?’

“ ‘Because their own existence is shadowy and weak and full of longing for things which they can’t have. They cannot be visible, they cannot move objects, they can but buzz like invisible bees through the world.’

“ ‘What would happen if I became invisible,’ I asked, ‘and I went up with the more joyous creatures, the ones who are so busy and seem to range so high?’

“ ‘Do it and come back safe to me, unless you find Paradise,’ he said.

“ ‘You think I might?’

“ ‘No, but I would never deny you Paradise or Heaven; would you deny such a thing to anyone?’

I immediately obeyed, throwing off for the first time the weight of the body and the clothes yet commanding them to be at hand.

“I went out into the courtyard, looked for the spirits and found them surrounding me, thickly, and now that my eyes were focused on them, the demonic among them became ferocious, and I had many a struggle on my hands. Over and over the meandering dead detained me with pathetic questions, questions pertaining to those they’d left behind in the living world.

“And I found these meandering dead were in the higher levels as well as the very low, only they had grown lighter and stronger apparently, or at least they were better off than the shuffling blinded anguished dead that roamed the very earth itself.