Free Galilee by Clive Barker Page A

man or woman I couldn’t yet decide) but the rain of ash and detritus was like a veil before me: I could see almost nothing through it.
    My arms could not support me for more than a few moments. But as I sank back down to the ground, frustrated, the fire overhead—having perhaps exhausted its fuel—went out. The ash ceased falling. And there, standing no more than twenty yards from where I lay, the blaze surrounding her like a vast, fiery flower, was Cesaria. There was nothing about her attitude or her expression that suggested the fire threatened her. Far from it. She seemed rather to be luxuriating in its touch; her hands moving over her body as the conflagration bathed it, as though to be certain its balm penetrated every pore. Her hair, which was even blacker than her skin, flickered and twitched; her breasts seeped milk, her eyes ran silvery tears, her sex, which now and then she fingered, issued streams of blood.
    I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. She was too exquisite, too ripe. It seemed to me that all I had seen before me in the last little while—the laval ground, the tree and its fruit, the pale herd, the hunted antelope and the tiger that took it; even the strange, winged creature that had briefly appeared in my vision—all of these were in and of the woman before me. She was their maker and their slaughterer; the sea into which they flowed and the rock from which they’d sprung.
    I’d seen enough, I decided. I’d drunk down all I could bear to drink, and still keep my sanity. It was time I turned my back on these visions, and retreated to the safety of the mundane. I needed time to assimilate what I’d seen—and the thoughts that the sights had engendered.
    But retreat was no easy business. Ungluing my eyes from the sight of my father’s wife was hard enough; but when I did so, and looked back toward the door, I could not find it. The illusion surrounded me on every side; there was no hint of the real remaining. For the first time since the visions had begun I remembered Luman’s talk of madness, and I was seized with panic. Had I carelessly let my hold on sanity slip, without even noticing that I’d done so? Was I now adrift in this illusion with no solid ground left for my senses?
    I remembered with a shudder the crib in which Luman had been bound; and the look of unappeasable rage in his eyes. Was that all that lay before me now? A life without certainty, without solidity; this forest a prison I’d breathed into being, and that other world, where I’d been real and in my wounded fashion content, now a dream of freedom to which I could not return?
    I closed my eyes to shut out the illusion. Like a child in terror, I prayed.
    â€œOh Lord God in Heaven, look down on your servant at this moment; I beg of you . . . I need you with me.
    â€œHelp me. Please. Take these things out of my head. I don’t want them, Lord. I don’t want them.”
    Even as I whispered my prayer I felt a rush of energies against me. The blaze between the trees, which had come to a halt a little distance from me, was on the move again. I hastened my prayer, certain that if the fire was coming for me, then so was Cesaria.
    â€œSave me, Lord—”
    She was coming to silence me. That was my sudden conviction. She was a part of my insanity and she was coming to hush the words I’d uttered to defend myself against it.
    â€œLord, please hear me—”
    The energies intensified, as though they intended to snatch the words away from my lips.
    â€œQuickly, Lord, quickly! Show me the way out of here! Please! God in Heaven, help me!”
    â€œHush . . .” I heard Cesaria say. She was right behind me. It seemed to me I could feel the small hairs at the nape of my neck fizzle and fry. I opened my eyes and looked over my shoulder. There she was, still cocooned in fire, her dark flesh shining. My mouth was suddenly parched; I could