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I ake and I was very thirsty

I wanted a great deal of very cold white wine, the way it is when you bring it up out of the cellar in autu fresh and sweet to eat, like a ripe apple

It did occur to h I couldn’t have said why

I opened ht have been ht, but too

And through a wide, heavily barred stoneI saw hills and woods, blanketed with snow, and the vast tiny collection of rooftops and towers that made up the city far away I hadn’t seen it like this since the day I cae I closed my eyes and the vision of it remained as if I’d never opened my eyes at all

But it was no vision It was there And the room arm in spite of theThere had been a fire in the rooone out

I tried to reason But I couldn’t stop thinking about cold white wine, and apples in the basket I could see the apples I felt myself drop down out of the branches of the tree, and I srass

The sunlight was blinding on the green fields It shone on Nicolas’s brown hair, and on the deep lacquer of the violin The ainst the sky I saw the battlements of my father’s house

Battleain

And I kneas lying in a high tower room several miles from Paris

And just in front of me, on a crude little wooden table, was a bottle of cold white wine, precisely as I had drea ti it, and I could not believe it possible to reach for it and drink

Never had I known the thirst I was suffering now My whole body thirsted And I was so weak And I was getting a little cold

The rooleamed in the

And when at last I did reach for the bottle and pull the cork from it and smell the tart, delicious aro ould happen to me, or where I was, or why the bottle had been set here

My head swung forward The bottle was al in the black sky, leaving a little sea of lights behind it

I put my hands towas noto ht be in soood for a jail Who would give a prisoner wine like that, unless of course the prisoner was to be executed

And another aro and so delicious that it made me moan I looked about, or I should say, I tried to look about because I was almost too weak to move But the source of this aroe bowl of beef broth The broth was thick with bits offrorabbed it in both hands ireedily as I’d chunk the wine

It was so satisfying it was as if I’d never known any food like it, that rich boiled-down essence of the meat, and when the boas empty I fell back, full, al moved in the darkness near lass

"More wine," said a voice to an re the walls, the s white face

For one ht, No, quite ihtmare But this just wasn’t so It had happened, and I re, and I felt ain

I stopped it I wouldn’t let it happen And fear crept over me so that I didn’t dare to ain

Turning htly I saw a new bottle, corked, but ready for low

I felt the thirst again, and this tihtened by the salt of the broth I wiped ain I drank

I fell back against the stone wall, and I struggled to look clearly through the darkness, half afraid of what I kneould see

Of course I was very drunk now

I saw the , the city I saw the little table And as my eyes moved slowly over the dusky corners of the rooer wore his black hooded cape, and he didn’t sit or stand as a ht

Rather he leaned to rest, it seemed, upon the thick stone frame of the , one knee bent a little towards it, the other long spindly leg sprawled out to the other side His ar at his sides

And the whole i limp and lifeless, and yet his face was as ani to stretch the white flesh in deep folds, the nose long and thin, and theteeth, just touching the colorless lip, and the hair, a gleah fro down over his shoulders and his arhed

I was beyond terror I could not even screalass bottle was rolling on the floor And as I tried to atherdrunken and sluggish, his thin, gangly limbs found animation ail at once

He advanced on ave a low roar of angry terror and scra over the s froht ers that were as powerful and as cold as they had been the night before

"LetMy reason told o away, please Let aunt face loomed over me, his lips drawn up sharply into his white cheeks, and he laughed a low riotous laugh that see with hiies, and then I cried, "God help me!" He clapped one of those monstrous hands over my mouth

"No more of that in my presence, Wolfkiller, or I’ll feed you to the wolves of hell," he said with a little sneer "Hmmmm? Answer rip

His voice had had aeffect He sounded capable of reason when he spoke He sounded almost sophisticated

He lifted his hands and stroked ht in the hair," he whispered, "and the blue sky fixed forever in your eyes" He seemed almost meditative as he looked at me His breath had no smell whatsoever, nor did his body, it see froh he was not holding ar sleeves and sed pantaloons

In sum he was dressed as men had been centuries before I had seen such clothes in tapestries inin my mother’s rooms

"You’re perfect,s They were the only teeth he possessed

I shuddered I feltto the floor

But he picked ently on the bed

In in Mary help me, help me, help me, as I peered up into his face

What was it I was seeing? What had I seen the night before? Thecut deeply with the marks of time and yet frozen, it see He was acorpse froifted with intellect!

And his limbs, why did they so horrify me? He looked like a human, but he didn’t move like a human It didn’t seem to matter to him whether he walked or crawled, bent over or knelt It filledYet he fascinated me I had to ader to allow such a strange state of h now, his knees wide apart, his fingers resting on reat arc over me

"Yeeeees, lovely one, I’m hard to look at!" he said His voice was still a whisper and he spoke in long gasps "I was old when I wasone, e"

The long white hand played withthehed

"Don’t weep, Wolfkiller," he said "You’re chosen, and your tawdry little triuht cohter

There was no doubt in my mind, at least at this moment, that he was from the devil, that God and the devil existed, that beyond the isolation I’d known only hours ago lay this vast reals and I had been sed into it somehow

It occurred topunished for my life, and yet that seemed absurd Millions believed as I believed the world over Why the hell was this happening to rim possibility started irresistibly to take shape, that the world was no ful than before, and this was but another horror

"In God’s naet away!" I shouted I had to believe in God now I had to That was absolutely the only hope I went to n of the Cross

For one e And then he ren of the Cross He listened to ain