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"Then human cries distracted us! Human cries mingled with thecries of the invisible!
"Together, we drew in, condensed and still a multitude, invisiblysurrounding a small camp of smooth and beautiful human beings.
"In their midst one young man lay dying, twisting in his last painon the bed they'd made for him of grass and flowers. It was the bite ofsome deadly insect which had made his fever, all part of the cycle, asGod would have told us had we asked.
"But the wailing of the invisible ones hovered over this dying victim.
And the lamentations of the human beings rose more terriblethan I could endure.
"Again I wept.
" 'Be still, listen,' said Michael, the patient one.
"He directed us to look beyond the tiny camp, and the thrashingbody of the feverish man, and to see in thin air the spirit voicesgathering and crying!
"And with our eyes we saw these spirits for the first time! We sawthem clustering and dispersing, wandering, rolling in and fallingback, each retaining the vague shape in essence of a human being.
Feeble, fuddled, lost, unsure of themselves, they swam in the veryatmosphere, opening their arms now to the man who lay on the bierabout to die. And die that man did."Hush. Stillness.
Memnoch looked at me as if I must finish it.
"And a spirit rose from the dying man," I said. "The spark of lifeflared and did not go out, but became an invisible spirit with all therest. The spirit of the man rose in the shape of the man and joinedthose spirits who had come to take it away.""Yes!"He gave a deep sigh and then threw out his arms. He sucked in hisbreath as if he meant to roar. He looked heavenward through thegiant trees.
I stood paralyzed.
The forest sighed in its fullness around us. I could feel histrembling, I could feel the cry that hovered just inside him and mightburst forth in some terrible clarion. But it only died away as he bowedhis head.
The forest had changed again. The forest was our forest. Thesewere oaks and the dark trees of our times; and the wildflowers, andthe moss I knew, and the birds and tiny rodents who darted throughthe shadows.
I waited.
"The air was thick with these spirits," he said, "for once havingseen them, once having detected their faint outline and theirceaseless voices, we could never again not see them, and like a wreath theysurrounded the earth! The spirits of the dead, Lestat! The spirits ofthe human dead.""Souls, Memnoch?""Souls.""Souls had evolved from matter?""Yes. In His image. Souls, essences, invisible individualities,souls!"I waited again in silence.
He gathered himself together.
"Come with me," he said. He wiped his face with the back of hishand. As he reached for mine, I felt his wing, distinctly for the firsttime, brush the length of my body, and it sent a shiver through meakin to fear, but not fear at all.
"Souls had come out of these human beings," he said. "They werewhole and living, and hovered about the material bodies of thehumans from whose tribe they had come.
"They could not see us; they could not see Heaven. Whom couldthey see but those who had buried them, those who had loved themin life, and were their progeny, and those who sprinkled the redochre over their bodies before laying them carefully, to face the east,in graves lined with ornaments that had been their own!""And those humans who believed in them," I said, "those whoworshipped the ancestors, did they feel their presence? Did theysense it? Did they suspect the ancestors were still there in spiritform?""Yes," he answered me.
I was too absorbed to say anything else.
It seemed my consciousness was flooded with the smell of thewood and all its dark colors, the endlessly rich variations of brownand gold and deep red that surrounded us. I peered up at the sky, atthe shining light fractured and gray and sullen yet grand.
Yet all I could think and consider was the whirlwind, and the soulswho had surrounded us in the whirlwind as though the air from theearth to Heaven were filled with human souls. Souls drifting foreverand ever. Where does one go in such darkness? What does one seek?
What can one know?
Was Memnoch laughing? It sounded small and mournful, privateand full of pain. He was perhaps singing softly, as if the melody werea natural emanation of his thoughts. It came from his thinking asscent rises from flowers; song, the sound of angels.
"Memnoch," I said. I knew he was suffering but I couldn't stand itany longer. "Did God know it?" I asked. "Did God know that menand women had evolved spiritual essences? Did he know, Memnoch,about their souls?"He didn't answer.
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