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She allowed her mind to empty itself, as tears blurred her vision She lifted her hands, just her hands, delicately And the ascent was begun Soundlessly, swiftly, as invisible to mortal eyes, perhaps, as the wind itself

High over the teree of light astonished her Everywhere the shining whiteness And below the crenellated landscape of stone peak and blinding glacier descending to a soft darkness of lower forests and vale Nestled here and there were clusters of sparkling lights, the randoazed on this forever Yet within seconds an undulating fleece of cloud had obscured all of it And she ith the stars alone

The stars-hard, glittering, eh she were one of their own But the stars clai, really, and no one She felt terror Then a deepening sorrow, not unlike joy, finally No rief

Scanning the splendid drift of the constellations, she slowed her scent and reached out with both hands to the west The sunrise lay nine hours behind her And so she coht on our way to the other side of the world

THE STORY OF DANIEL THE DEVIL'S MINION, OR THE BOY FROM INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

Who are these shades ait for and believe will coh it knows is throatless and cannot say My e are not the sa?

STAN RICE

from "Of Heaven" Body of Work (1983)

HE WAS A TALL, SLENDER YOUNG MAN, WITH ashen hair and violet eyes He wore a dirty gray sweatshirt and jean

s, and in the icy hipping along Michigan Avenue at five o'clock, he was cold

Daniel Molloy was his naer, a perennial student, not a man, that kind of youthful face He murmured aloud to himself as he walked " Ar-ht And so terrible"

He was hungry Thirty-six hours had passed since he'd eaten There was nothing in the refrigerator of his small dirty hotel roo because he had not paid the rent Hard to re at once

Then he re, the dream that came every time he closed his eyes, and he didn't want to eat at all

He saw the twins in the dream He saw the roasted body of the I woed away, her skin crisped Her heart lay glistening like a swollen fruit on the plate beside her :The brain on the other plate looked exactly like a cooked brain Armand knew about it, he had to know It was no ordinary I drea to do with Lestat, definitely And Armand would come soon

God, he eak, delirious Needed so, a drink at least In his pocket there was no money, only an old crumpled royalty check for the book Intervieith the Vampire, which he I had "written" under a pseudonyo Another world, that, when he had been a young reporter, roaet the flotsaht to tell hiht in San Francisco he had found a ht of ordinary life had suddenly gone out