The Forbidden Circle (6 page)

He shifted his weight on the crackling straw, and blinked, for the girl was there again in the darkness. She was still wearing the torn, thin blue dress that gleamed with a pale, icelike glitter in the dimness of the dark barn. For a moment, even though he still half believed that she was a hallucination, he could not help saying aloud, “Aren’t you cold?”

It is not cold where I am
.

This, Carr told himself, was absolutely freaky. He said slowly, “Then you’re not here?”

How could I be where you are? If you think I am there—no, here—try to touch me
.

Hesitantly, Carr stretched out his hand. It seemed that he must touch her bare round arm, but there was nothing palpable to the touch. He said doggedly, “I don’t understand any of this. You’re here, and you’re not here. I can see you, and you’re a ghost. You say your name is Callista, but that’s a name from my own world. I still think I’m crazy, and I’m talking to myself, but I’d love to know how you can explain any of this.”

The ghost-girl made a sound that was like soft childlike laughter. “I do not understand it either,” she said quietly. “As I tried to tell you before, it was not you I attempted to reach but my kinswoman and my friends. But wherever I search, they are not there. It is as if their minds had been wiped off this world. For a long time I wandered around in dark places, until I found myself looking into your eyes. It seemed that I knew you, even though my eyes had never looked on you before. And then, something in you kept drawing me back. Somewhere, not in this world at all, we have touched one another. I am nothing to you, but I had brought you into danger, so I sought to save you. And I come back because”—for a moment it seemed that she was about to weep—“I am very much alone, and even a stranger is better than no companion. Do you want me to go away again?”

“No,” Carr said quickly, “stay with me, Callista. But I don’t understand this at all.”

She was silent for a minute, as if considering.
God
, Carr thought,
how real she seems
. He could see her breathing, the faint rise and fall of her chest beneath the thin, torn dress. One of her feet was smudged: no, bruised and reddened and bloodstained. Carr said, “Are you hurt?”

“Not really. You asked me how I could be there with you. I suppose you know that we live in more than one way, and that the world you are in now is the solid world, the world of
things
, the world of hard bodies and physical creations. But in the world where I am, we leave our bodies behind like outgrown clothing or cast snake-skins, and what we call
place
has no real being. I am used to that world, I have been trained to walk in it, but somehow I am being kept in a part of it where no other of my people’s minds may touch. As I wandered in that gray and featureless plain, your thoughts touched mine and I felt you clearly, like hand clasping hand in the darkness.”

“Are you in darkness?”

“Where my body is being kept, I am in darkness, yes. But in the gray world, I can see you, even as you can see me. That is how I saw your flying machine crash and knew it would fall into the ravine. And I saw you lost in the snowstorm and I knew you were near to this herdsman’s hut. I came here now to show you where food was kept if you had not found it.”

“I found it,” Carr said. “I don’t know what to say. I thought you were a dream and you’re acting as if you were real.”

It sounded again like soft laughter. “Oh, I assure you, I am just as real and solid as you are yourself. And I would give a great deal to be with you in that cold, dark herdsman’s hut, since it is only a few miles from my home, and as soon as the storm subsides I could be free and by my own fireside. But I—”

In the middle of a word, she was abruptly gone, winked out like a breath. For some strange reason this did more to convince Carr of her reality than anything she had said. If he’d been imagining her, if his subconscious mind had hallucinated her, as men cold and alone and in danger
did
hallucinate strangers from their deepest wishes, he’d have kept her there; he’d at least have let her finish what she was saying. The fact that she’d vanished in the middle of a phrase tended to indicate not only that she had really been there, in some intangible sense, but that some unknown third party had a superior power over her comings and goings.

She was frightened, and she was sad.
I am very much alone, and even a stranger is better than no companion
.

Cold and alone on a strange and unfamiliar world, Andrew Carr could understand that very well. It was just about the way he felt himself.

Not that she’d be all that bad as a companion, if she were really here
. . . .

Not a great deal of satisfaction out of a companion you can’t touch. And yet . . . even though he couldn’t lay a hand on her, there was something surprisingly compelling about the girl.

He’d known lots of women, at least in the Biblical sense. Known their bodies and a little about their personalities, and what they wanted out of life. But he’d never got close enough to any one of them that he felt bad when the time came for them to go off in opposite directions.

Let’s face it. From the minute I saw this girl in the crystal, she’s been so real to me that I was willing to turn my whole life around, just on the off chance that she was something more than a dream. And now I know she’s real. She’s saved my life once: no, twice. I wouldn’t have lasted long out in that blizzard. And she’s in trouble. They’re keeping her in the dark, she says, and she doesn’t even know for sure where she is
.

If I come out of this alive, I’m going to find her, if it takes me the rest of my life
. Lying wrapped in his fur coat and blanket, in a musty heap of straw, alone on a strange world, Carr suddenly realized that the change in his life, the change that had begun when he saw the girl in the crystal and had thrown over his job and his life to stay on her world, was complete. He had found his new direction, and it led toward the girl.
His
girl. His woman, now and for the rest of his life. Callista.

He was cynic enough to jeer a little at himself. Yeah. He didn’t know where she was, who she was, or what she was; she might be married with six children (well, hardly, at her age); she might be a ghastly bitch—who knew what women were like on this world? All he knew about her was . . .

All he knew about her was that in some way she’d touched him, come closer to him than anyone had ever come before. He knew that she was lonely and miserable and frightened, that she couldn’t get in touch with her own people, that for some reason she needed him. All he knew about her was all he needed to know about her: she needed him. For some reason he was all she had to cling to, and if she wanted his life she could have it. He’d hunt her up somehow, get her away from whoever was keeping her in the dark, hurting her, and frightening her. He’d get her free. (
Yeah
, sneered his cynical other self,
quite the hero, slaying dragons for your fair lady
, but he turned the jeer off harshly.) And after that, when she was free and happy—

After that, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it
, he said firmly, and curled down to sleep again.

The storm lasted, as nearly as he could tell (his chronometer had evidently been damaged in the crash and never ran again), for five days. On the third or fourth of those days he woke in dim light to see the girl’s shadowy form, stilled, sleeping, close beside him; still disoriented, rousing to sharp, intense physical awareness of her—round, lovely, clad only in the flimsy, torn thin garment which seemed to be all she was wearing—he reached out to draw her close into his arms; then, with the sharp shock of disappointment, he realized there was nothing to touch. As if the very intensity of his thoughts had reached her, awareness flashed over her sleeping face and the large gray eyes opened; she looked at him in surprise and faint dismay.

“I am sorry,” she murmured. “You—startled me.”

Carr shook his head, trying to orient himself. “I’m the one to be sorry,” he said. “I guess I must have thought I was dreaming and it didn’t matter. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended,” she said simply, looking straight into his eyes. “If I were here beside you like this, you would have every right to expect—I only meant, I am sorry to have unwittingly aroused a desire I cannot satisfy. I did not do it willingly. I must have been thinking of you in my sleep, stranger. I cannot go on simply thinking of you as
stranger
,” Callista said, a flicker of faint amusement passing over her face.

“My name’s Andrew Carr,” he said, and felt her soft repetition of the name.

“Andrew. I am sorry, Andrew. I must have been thinking of you in my sleep and so drawn to you without waking.” With no further sign of haste or fluster, she drew her clothes more carefully around her bare breasts and smoothed the diaphanous folds of her skirt down around her round thighs. She smiled and now there was a glimmer almost of mischief in her sad face. “Ah, this is sad! The first time, the very first, that I lie down with any man, and I am not able to enjoy it! But it’s naughty of me to tease you. Please don’t think I am so badly brought up as all that.”

Deeply touched, as much by her brave attempt to make a joke as anything else, Andrew said gently, “I couldn’t think anything of you that wasn’t good, Callista. I only wish”—and to his own surprise he felt his voice breaking—“I wish there was some real comfort I could give you.”

She reached out her hand—almost as if, Andrew thought in surprise, she too had forgotten for a moment that he was not physically present to her—and laid it over his wrist. He could see his own wrist through the delicate appearance of her fingers, but the illusion was somehow very comforting, anyhow. She said, “I suppose it is something, that you can give companionship and”—her voice wavered; she was crying—“and the sense of a human presence to someone who is alone in the dark.”

He watched her weep, torn apart by the sight of her tears. When she had collected herself a little, he asked, “Where are you? Can I help you somehow?”

She shook her head. “As I told you. They have kept me in the dark, since if I knew exactly where I was, I could be elsewhere. Since I do not know precisely, I can leave this place only in my spirit; my body must perforce stay where they have confined it, and they must know that.
Curse them!
”

“Who are
they
, Callista?”

“I don’t know that, exactly, either,” she said, “but I suspect they are not men, since they have offered me no physical harm except blows and kicks. It is the only thing for which a woman of the Domains may be grateful when she is in the hands of the other folk—at least with them she need not fear ravishment. For the first several days in their hands, I spent night and day in hourly terror of rape; when it did not come, I knew I was not in human hands. Any man in these mountains would know how to make me powerless to fight them . . . whereas the other folk have no recourse except to take away my jewels, lest one of them should be a starstone, and to keep me in darkness so I can do them no harm with the light of sun or stars.”

Andrew didn’t understand any of that. Not in human hands? Then who were her captors? He asked another question.

“If you are in the dark, how can you see me?”

“I see you in the overlight,” she said quietly, telling him nothing at all. “As you see me. Not the light of this world—look. You know, I suppose, that the things we call solid are only appearances, tiny particles of energy strung together and whirling wildly around, with much more of empty space than of solidness.”

“Yes, I know that.” It was an odd way to explain molecular and atomic energy, but it got her meaning across.

“Well, then. Strung to your solid body by these energy webs there are other bodies, and if you are taught, you can use them in the world of that level. How can I say this? Of the level of solidness where you are. Your solid body walks on this world, this solid planet under your solid feet, and you need the solid light of our sun. It is powered by your mind, which moves your solid brain, and the solid brain sends messages that move your arms and legs and so forth. Your mind also powers your lighter bodies, each one with its own electric nerve-net of energy. In the world of the overlight, where we are now, there is no such thing as darkness, because the light does not come from a solid sun. It comes from the energy-net body of the sun, which can shine—how can I say this?—right through the energy-net body of the planet. The solid body of the planet can shut out the light of the solid sun, but not the energy-net light. Is that clear?”

“I suppose so,” he said slowly, trying to cope with it. It sounded like the old story of astral duplicates of the body and astral planes, in her own language, which he supposed was reaching his mind directly from hers. “The important thing is that you can come here. There have been times when I’ve wanted to step out and leave my body behind.”

“Oh, you do,” she said literally. “Everyone does in sleep, when the energy-nets fall apart. But you have not been trained to do it at will. Someday, perhaps, I can teach you how it is done.” She laughed a little ruefully. “If we both live, that is. If we both live.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Outside the thick walls of the great house at Armida, the white blizzard raged, howling and whining around the heights as if animated by a personal fury against the stone walls which kept it at bay. Even inside, in the great hall, the windows were grayed with its blur and the wind reached them as a dulled roar. Restless and distraught, Ellemir paced the length of the hall. With a nervous glance at the raging storm outside, she said, “We cannot even search for her in this weather! And with every hour that passes, it may be that she is farther and farther away.” She turned on Damon like a fury, and demanded, “How can you sit there so calmly, toasting your toes, when Callista is somewhere in this storm?”