![]() "I closed my eyes, trying to gather my wits, form some plan of action that didn't include turning and running like a madman, and I heard a dry, crackling sound, and against my closed lids saw fire. I put my hands out in front of me and tried not to feel mortal fear of the blackness in which I was as blind as an ordinary man. Her linen was smeared with sand, her sandaled feet caked with it, and her eyes were vacant and staring. "In the barren chamber behind him, she sat on a stone shelf, with her head at an angle, her arms dangling, as if she were a lifeless body flung there. And when my hand found the face, the lips proved just a little softer than all the rest of it, and I drew back. But this was no statue, this thing, this thing was made of something more resilient than stone. Then my hands moved on the thing and felt what seemed the chest of a human statue, its shoulders, its arms. And I rested, catching my breath, trying to command myself. "My hands touched something hard before me. But I wasn't above thinking about it and letting him - if he was the one in the doorway - hear these thoughts. I would say, `So you've come out of loneliness and disillusionment and now you want to tell me more, do you? Why don't you go back and sit in silence to wound your wraithlike companions, the brotherhood of the cinders?' Of course I wouldn't say such a thing to him. And then I would have the upper hand with the Elder. To see this person I had but to turn my head. I spent the next few nights feasting on blood until my miserable thoughts were drowned in it, and then in the early hours I roamed the great library of Alexandria, reading as I had always done. "But I didn't return to the underground temple. I wondered if the Elder would come to me again, disappointed that I had not returned - and as the thought came clear to me, I realized that someone was standing in the doorway again. In filtered and golden light, I listened to the sounds of sleeping Alexandria, and slipped into thin and glittering waking dreams. "Five nights after I'd left the Elder, when all these thoughts had had time to develop in me, I lay resting in my bedroom, with the lamps shining through the sheer bed curtains as before. And I cursed myself for not bringing a candle, for being so swept off my feet by the sight of her that I had rushed after her as if I were in love. "The twisting stairs and corridors I followed were not illuminated. She was already leading me to where she was. I knew that if I went out of the city into the sands I could find her. I meant to get into the underground temple and find the Elder and tell him that he must take me to her, I had seen her, she had moved, she had spoken, she had come to me! I was delirious, but when I reached the door, I knew that I didn't have to go down. "I started to run towards the old section where I had found the door. I knew that this thing I had touched had a man's form. I could feel the sheer humiliation of cowardice. And he was the incarnation of menace in his stillness as he stood staring at me. #NETLER SPIDER SKIN#His skin was bronze all over, as hers had been, enhanced, as the Elder had said. He was ornamented as she had been, and he wore the glorified dress of the pharaoh and his hair too was plaited with gold. He was otherwise lifeless, hands limp at his sides. "Where is he?" she asked in a puzzled voice."When I opened my eyes, I saw a blazing torch on the wall beyond him, and his dark outline looming before me, and his eyes animate, and looking at me without question, the black pupils swimming in a dull gray light. The teacher looked at him, then at Max, then around the yard in front of the school cabin. The teacher, an impoverished Southern lady, came to the door and smiled at Sam. The next Monday, Sam brought Max over to the school. "What do I have to know that fer?" Max asked. Without it, our son can never be a great chief among the White Eyes." Max, uncomfortable in his clean buckskin shirt and leggings, dug his bare feet into the dirt and spoke shyly. Sand, how dare you talk to me like that? Do you think the parents of the other children would want them to attend school with your son?" Kaneha wasn't quite sure she understood what her husband was saying. "They were all at that meetin'," Sam said. You can sleep in the back of Olsen's Livery Stable durin' the week." "You're goin'," Sam said, roaring suddenly. This school is for white children only." She began to turn her back. "We don't take half-breeds in this school, either. "When I was a boy, there warn't no need for such things. He didn't know whether he was supposed to speak or not. Max looked up at his father as Kaneha came to the table from the stove. Now Max felt it was time for him to speak. "To have them learn you to read an' write," his father answered. ![]()
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