[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.To the north, a dense forest showed a small lake and dozens of thread-like rivers passing through the surrounding wilderness.Something deep in the woods glowed brightly, something that looked like a miniature, earthbound moon, and around it tiny circling dots like quivering stars.I was falling now and what had been moonlight changed into something brighter and warmer, like the reflected glint of afternoon light seeping in through windows and bouncing off walls.I wasn't outside anymore but hovering near the ceiling joists of a small, primitive kitchen.The walls were painted white and though the room wasn't big, it was bright and cheerful.In its exact center crouched a heavy wood chopping block that supported a half-dozen knives and cleavers and what looked to me like a small axe.Dried out bundles of herbs and flowers draped from the walls and, dangling upside down from the rafters, hung four dead rabbits and the corpse of a bird, its colorful plumage resembling a brightly painted toy.A young woman stood beneath my shapeless form.She wore a plain dress of grey and brown, a stiff white bonnet, and an apron stained with blood and a day's worth of vegetable and fruit wipings.She was crushing green herbs in a wooden bowl with a fat, iron pestle, creating a fine green mush that filled the room with a fresh summer fragrance, like basil or cilantro.The woman's hair was as blond as hay, her creamy complexion flushed with pink.Her wide blue eyes filled her face like the sky.She was only a teenager, really, no more than twenty years at most, but I felt intuitively that she was considered mature, even old, in the time period she lived in; I realized that my out-of-body experience had taken me someplace out of time and that the woman below me had lived long ago.I knew her, even if I couldn't put a name to her face or a place to our first meeting.Is that me? I asked myself.Am I that girl? I had no immediate answer, but every part of my being was drawn to her, consumed by her irresistible presence.By today's standards most people would have found her pudgy and unattractive, but to me she was stunningly beautiful.I reeled with the overpowering urge to crawl into her skin, to become her.A second person walked into the room, an old man dressed completely in black.At first I thought he was wearing a dress, but after narrowing my concentration I realized it was more like a long tunic than a dress.Black hose, matching pointy shoes, and a black, bill-less cap, like what a surgeon might wear, finished off the outfit.He must be the woman's father or grandfather, I thought, but then he pulled her close and started caressing and kissing her.The girl responded eagerly, helping him lift her onto the table.A seductive wave of sensual energy swept through me at the sight of the old man's lust.My arousal was immediate, my desire overpowering.A dizzying sense of disorientation passed through me before my vision cleared.Now I wasn't looking down from the ceiling but standing over the woman, pulling her closer, kissing her passionately.I wasn't an invisible bystander anymore.Now I was experiencing everything from the man's perspective, throbbing with his desire, craving this lovely woman in every way imaginable.Love! So much love!I felt tenderness, devotion, and intimacy the way I'd never felt it before.My connection with this woman was all-consuming.With every kiss, I felt as if I really was becoming her.This is what I want! I thought, this is what I've been looking for! All this time I've never known what love could be!****It wasn't like a dream, I wrote in my journal early the next morning.It seems as real now as is it did then.More real maybe.I tapped my pen thoughtfully to my lip.How could I explain this sense of longing? Not longing for the woman, necessarily, but for the love that I'd felt, that sense of complete connection to another human being.What's happening to me?All morning it haunted me.Before we even ventured into the luncheon hall for breakfast, Becky, Sara, Nicole, and I had resumed our search for a way to reach our upstairs neighbors.Yet the anger I'd felt the night before had disintegrated into a fog of lingering desire, of a love found and lost in almost the same moment."A fine parcel of psychics we are," Sara said as we retraced our steps from the night before."All this otherworldly help and we can't find our bums in our own back pockets.""I'm doin' the best I can," Nicole snapped."Let's just tell Mrs.Apple and let her take care of it," Becky said."I'm hungry.Let's get breakfast."I was trailing behind the others, letting them turn the corner into the next hallway without me.Moving from door to door, I twisted knobs and peeked in rooms [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]