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Authors: Harlan Ellison
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mounted my unicorn, leaned close along his neck, clinging to his mane with both hands, knees tight to his silken sides, now rippling with light and color, and I gave a little hiss of approval, a little sound of go.
My unicorn sailed over the fence, into the world-famous Saint Louis Cemetery.
I dismounted and thanked him. We began threading our way between the tombstones, the sepulchers, the crypts.
The blue glow grew more distinct. And now I could hear the chimera winds rising, whirling, coming in off alien seas. The pulsing of the light, the wail of the winds, the night dying. My unicorn stayed close. Even we of the spirit world know when to be afraid.
After all, I was only operating off a chance; I was under no god’s protection. Naked, even in death.
There is no fog in New Orleans.
Mist began to form around us.
Except sometimes in the winter, there is no fog in New Orleans.
I remembered the daybreak of the night I’d died. There had been mist. I had been a suicide.
My third wife had left me. She had gone away during the night, while I’d been at a business meeting with a client; I had been engaged to design a church in Baton Rouge. An that day I’d steamed the old wallpaper off the apartment we’d rented. It was to have been our first home together, paid for by the commission. I’d done the steaming myself, with a tan ladder and a steam condenser and two flat pans with steam holes. Up near the ceiling the heat had been so awful I’d almost fainted. She’d brought me lemonade, freshly squeezed. Then I’d showered and changed and gone to my meeting. When I’d returned, she was gone. No note.
Lizette and I were two sides of the same coin, cast off after death for the opposite extremes of the same crime. She had never loved. I had loved too much. Overindulgence in something as delicate as love is to be found monstrously offensive in the eyes of the God of Love. And some of us—who have never understood the salvation in the Golden Mean—some of us are cast adrift with but one chance. It can happen.
Mist formed around us, and my unicorn crept close to me, somehow smaller, almost timid. We were moving into realms he did not understand, where his limited magics were useless. These were realms of potency so utterly beyond even the limbo creatures—such as my unicorn—so completely alien to even the intermediary zone wanderers—Lizette and myself—that we were as helpless and without understanding as those who live. We had only one advantage over living, breathing, as yet undead humans: we knew for certain that the realms on the other side existed.
Above, beyond, deeper: where the gods live. Where the one who had given me my chance, had given Lizette her chance, where He lived. Undoubtedly watching.
The mist swirled up around us, as chill and final as the dust of pharaohs’ tombs.
We moved through it, toward the pulsing heart of blue light. And as we came into the penultimate circle, we stopped. We were in the outer ring of potency, and we saw the claiming things that had come for Lizette. She layout on an altar of crystal, naked and trembling. They stood around her, enormously tall and transparent. Man shapes without faces. Within their transparent forms a strange, silvery fog swirled, like smoke from holy censers. Where eyes should have been on a man or a ghost, there were only dull flickering firefly glowings, inside, hanging in the smoke, moving, changing shape and position. No eyes at all. And tall, very tall, towering over Lizette and the altar.
For me, overcommitted to love, when dawn came without salvation, there was only an eternity of wandering, with my unicorn as sole companion. Ghost forevermore. Incense chimera viewed as dust-devil on the horizon, chilling as I passed in city streets, forever gone, invisible, lost, empty, helpless, wandering.
But for her, empty vessel, the fate was something else entirely, The God of Love had allowed her the time of wandering, trapped by day in stones,
My unicorn sailed over the fence, into the world-famous Saint Louis Cemetery.
I dismounted and thanked him. We began threading our way between the tombstones, the sepulchers, the crypts.
The blue glow grew more distinct. And now I could hear the chimera winds rising, whirling, coming in off alien seas. The pulsing of the light, the wail of the winds, the night dying. My unicorn stayed close. Even we of the spirit world know when to be afraid.
After all, I was only operating off a chance; I was under no god’s protection. Naked, even in death.
There is no fog in New Orleans.
Mist began to form around us.
Except sometimes in the winter, there is no fog in New Orleans.
I remembered the daybreak of the night I’d died. There had been mist. I had been a suicide.
My third wife had left me. She had gone away during the night, while I’d been at a business meeting with a client; I had been engaged to design a church in Baton Rouge. An that day I’d steamed the old wallpaper off the apartment we’d rented. It was to have been our first home together, paid for by the commission. I’d done the steaming myself, with a tan ladder and a steam condenser and two flat pans with steam holes. Up near the ceiling the heat had been so awful I’d almost fainted. She’d brought me lemonade, freshly squeezed. Then I’d showered and changed and gone to my meeting. When I’d returned, she was gone. No note.
Lizette and I were two sides of the same coin, cast off after death for the opposite extremes of the same crime. She had never loved. I had loved too much. Overindulgence in something as delicate as love is to be found monstrously offensive in the eyes of the God of Love. And some of us—who have never understood the salvation in the Golden Mean—some of us are cast adrift with but one chance. It can happen.
Mist formed around us, and my unicorn crept close to me, somehow smaller, almost timid. We were moving into realms he did not understand, where his limited magics were useless. These were realms of potency so utterly beyond even the limbo creatures—such as my unicorn—so completely alien to even the intermediary zone wanderers—Lizette and myself—that we were as helpless and without understanding as those who live. We had only one advantage over living, breathing, as yet undead humans: we knew for certain that the realms on the other side existed.
Above, beyond, deeper: where the gods live. Where the one who had given me my chance, had given Lizette her chance, where He lived. Undoubtedly watching.
The mist swirled up around us, as chill and final as the dust of pharaohs’ tombs.
We moved through it, toward the pulsing heart of blue light. And as we came into the penultimate circle, we stopped. We were in the outer ring of potency, and we saw the claiming things that had come for Lizette. She layout on an altar of crystal, naked and trembling. They stood around her, enormously tall and transparent. Man shapes without faces. Within their transparent forms a strange, silvery fog swirled, like smoke from holy censers. Where eyes should have been on a man or a ghost, there were only dull flickering firefly glowings, inside, hanging in the smoke, moving, changing shape and position. No eyes at all. And tall, very tall, towering over Lizette and the altar.
For me, overcommitted to love, when dawn came without salvation, there was only an eternity of wandering, with my unicorn as sole companion. Ghost forevermore. Incense chimera viewed as dust-devil on the horizon, chilling as I passed in city streets, forever gone, invisible, lost, empty, helpless, wandering.
But for her, empty vessel, the fate was something else entirely, The God of Love had allowed her the time of wandering, trapped by day in stones,
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