Ghosteria Volume 2: The Novel: Zircons May Be Mistaken, Tanith Lee [classic fiction txt] 📗

easy, as are pills andgin.) But I can normally sort of understand him, what he says. Not sure why.Because I fancy him, I suppose. It isn’t love, though I care about him, and Ifeel affection... Let’s not get too bogged down in all that. There’s no way Ican try to seduce him, not as we are. Unless, obviously, the Scholar is right.

But even if he is – I mean, to bephysical like that? No. It couldn’t work, or be any use.

Let me just explain, (to changethe subject), about the translating I did on the Knight’s story. It was veryshort, and that wasn’t just me abridging or cutting corners. He has never saida lot about that, his life, death. Nor a lot about anything at all. (I’ve nevergrasped why women, the modern ones mostly, just after my ‘Time’, complained somuch about men never talking. In my recollection, men frequently talked far toomuch. On and on. A quiet one, who only speaks when he has something to say, isa pleasant change. (I don’t include my father in this. He spoke the rightamount, not too much, never too little. Or if ever he did – well, I don’tremember it).

To return to thetranslation-interpretation of the Knight, I tried to get it the best I could,and into reasonably contemporary English – what the Knight says isn’t like that– while keeping (letting through) a bit of the flavour of its own phonetic andcultural essence. Which notion of mine really sounds up its own expletive deleted,doesn’t it? I think actually I haven’t done a very good job anyhow. My take on hiswords is both too obscure and too fundamental. But I did do my best. I don’tthink you’d have understood him at all if I hadn’t – guided, shall I say? – thepen. Obviously, though, to avoid further confusion, he didn’t use a pen to tellhis story, nor a typewriter, let alone a word processor or computer. (I believeI’d have loved computers, if I’d lived long enough to experience them – thoughmy damaged fingers might have been a nuisance. I didn’t live long enoughthough, did I?) As for this general narrative, none of us wrote/write, type ortap anything down. None of us recorded or record anything. We can’t touch,remember. Nor can we make an impression of sight or sound, normally, on theliving. So how then is it you can take any of this dialogue of ours in –however you think you’re receiving it?

The usual way. Some humans can’tsee ghosts, and some can. Some can hear them too. Or can pick upwhat they are trying to communicate. And not everyone needs a Ouija board orother device. Some can just do it. So, QED, my unknown friend, you musthave the ‘Gift’ as well, mustn’t you? Sorry to scare the shit out of you if youhadn’t realised. But there it is.

Puttingall this out I am, evidently, procrastinating.

If I’ve shaken you up at all, I’mpretty shaky myself.

He – my Knight – agreedwith the Scholar’s plan. The only thing the Knight added to me afterwards wasthat thing he’s mentioned before. He wants to take up arms against the horribleterrible sea of Zombies. Kill, destroy every one of them. As he is hecan’t, can’t even blow in their ears. But if the Scholar’s ‘plan’ could work – thenthe Knight will be enabled to invade and to slaughter as many as he wants.Which, of course, is a crucial anomaly in itself. But no word from himotherwise on finer points or anything. My silly momentary fantasy was ofholding my Knight in my arms. Kissing his lips. His is to go back to bloodywar. And win.

Can’t blame him.

What now, then?

Well, first off I had to calmCoral down. She didn’t understand what the Scholar proposed, or rather the meanswhereby it would be achieved (if it were possible). So Laurel, looking almostfrozen with nausea, carefully explained. Then Coral became hysterical, aperfect Victorian-novel, text-book, dramatic overload, shrieks and non-wettears – I’d never realised till then my tears must be non-wet too – and ‘vapours’.

Once Coral had subsided, we allstayed there in the sheer lightless black room, through which we can all see withthe most unflawed night-vision never allowed the living. Coral crouchedand sobbed quietly, murmuring the names of her dolls, and Laurel sat like animage of snow, and he, my Knight, stood to formal attention, waiting forthe signal that battle had truly begun. And I stood limply and thought of mydad, wondering what he would advise. And I felt the pain of his loss to me,fresh, the way it always returns, like a jackal tearing at a corpse, exceptthis ‘corpse’ of mine isn’t dead, can never be, it seems, fully dead. Like thetortures in the Greek hell or wherever it was. Rolling up the mountain a stonethat never gets all the way, or Prometheus with the bird ripping at his liveron and on, for-liver-ever.

Fuck this. Why can’t old men keepquiet?

 

3

Laurel

Perhapsbecause I am a fool, I could see what the librarian gentleman meant almost atonce, and, too, I could see the potential solution that lay in it. Elizabethwas angry, but the Knight was in favour. Poor little Coral - how dreadful itmust be to stay trapped at the age of fourteen years for – my stars, how longhas it been for her? It seems it must be some one hundred and forty years ormore. It has been unsuitable and sad enough to remain at eighteen, if only forrather more than a hundred. But now I felt a curious surge of – what was it?Hope.

It’s but too plain how manydisadvantages there would or might be, but perhaps there will also be some wayof evading these, or adjusting or tidying them, so that they become bearable,while our present state, really, isn’t bearable at all. Besides, if the wholeenterprise proved too vile, could we not escape it again? Of course I’m unsureof that. As of so much. I would have liked to question the scholarly man, butwas overcome, as so frequently, by my shyness, and the sense I have, even now,that almost