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On the few occasions I had observed this disturbing tendency of his--the last ti poisonous--I’d found hiined hi the knife in his hand He had finished dinner first, setting that aside for me Then he had calmly stabbed the knife between the bones of his wrist, first holding the injury over abowl to catch the blood He did like to be neat I had found the bowl on the floor, still a quarter full; the rest was splashed all over one wall of the kitchen I gathered he’d lost his strength rather faster than expected and had struck the bowl as he fell, flipping it into the air Then he’d bled out on the floor

I i this process, still conte up his own blood with equal apathy

I was al The "alic I’d ever heard of Rising frood of cheerful uage--or any language, for that matter I suspected he was s and in those ical only at those times Any other time, he was just an ordinarywas typical

I woke before dawn, as was ti to the sounds ofchorus of birds, the heavy erratic bap-plink of dew dripping from the Tree onto rooftops and street stones This ti overtook uest

He was in the den rather than the se pantry where he slept I felt him there the instant I stepped out ofthe house with his presence, becoravity It was easy--natural, really--to let myself drift to wherever he was

I found him at the denMy house had ood and made the house drafty (I couldn’t afford to rent better) The den was the only rooood, either, and not just because I was blind; like hborhood tucked between two of the World Tree’s stories-high , while the sun was high enough to overtop the roots but not yet hidden by the Tree’s canopy, and a few more moments at ht

Yet ular as clockwork, if he wasn’t busy or dead The first tiht it was his way of welco, like others who still honored Bright Itempas Now I knew him better, if one could ever be said to know an indestructible man who never spoke When I touched hiot a better sense of him than usual, and what I detected was not reverence or piety What I felt, in the stillness of his flesh and the uprightness of his posture and the aura of peace that he exuded at no other time, was power Pride Whatever was left of the man he’d once been

Because it was clearer tobroken, shattered, about him I did not knohat, or why, but I could tell: he had not always been like this

He did not react as I ca ainst the house’s early- a show of his h, a few low

The process was different every tiht first, and I saw hi (I had detected these little hints of phenoance in hiain, his hair and shoulders beginning to shimmer Next I saw his arms, aslegs, braced slightly apart; his posture was relaxed, yet proud Dignified I had noticed fro Like aused to poho had only lately fallen low

As the light filled his fra that--and raised a hand to shield my eyes I could still see him, a man-shaped blaze now framed by the jointed lattice of my shadowy hand bones But in the end, as always, I had to look away I never did this until I absolutely had to What was I going to do, go blind?