Midnight 01 - Luisa's Desire

of it.
     
    He needed all his strength to pull them back to the path. "Luisa," he said, "remember why you are here."
     
    His words took swift effect. A flash cut across his vision like the blade of a Mongol butcher's knife. He saw her dream self. She held a baby to her breast—her son—warm and plump. Dread closed around him. Her lips brushed the infant's milky neck. Sweet neck. Soft neck. She tipped the wobbling head back in her palm. Her gaze locked to the tiny pulse. Her baby. Her sweet, warm, sleepy baby. Her hunger rose like a mournful wail, like a sin she could not name.
     
    This was her fear, the monster lurking in her shadows.
     
    "No," she whispered in his mind and in the room.
     
    She set the child on the floor where it gurgled at her wide-eyed, waving its dimpled arms. She had not touched it. She would not touch it, not even in a dream.
     
    "Luisa," he said, knowing this darkness had to be faced.
     
    She shook her head and backed away. No, she said, no sound to it. Then she turned on her heel and ran.
     
    He called after her, warning her she'd get lost. She was not familiar with the geography of dreams: how fantasy and fear could parade as truth. To his dismay, she did not heed him. She ran up a narrow and odorous city street, carts in her way, horses, men in tight-fitting hose. She shoved past them, shouting, "Make way! Make way!" They bowed down to her beauty with sweeps of feathered hats. Ignoring them, she flung open a wooden door.
     
    Her harem waited inside the richly appointed room, the same three youths he had seen before. They were old now, walking skeletons with skin, their hands reaching ghoulishly from lace and velvet sleeves. "Don't let us die," they beseeched. "Make us what you are."
     
    She covered her eyes and moaned. She did not know how to change them. She was powerless to help.
     
    The emptiness inside her yawned like a pit.
     
    And then she grabbed them, one by one, drinking them dry. When their bodies fell to the Turkish carpet they were young again, not so young as when they'd graced her bed but strong men still. She had made a terrible mistake. She had killed them in their prime. She had been too hungry, too rash, too loathe to see them age and die. She stumbled to her knees.
     
    This had to be a nightmare. It made no sense for her to have done this. She thought she heard Martin say Yes, these are only phantoms but there was blood on her hands. Sins enough to make an angel weep. Her hands were red. Her mouth.
     
    She gripped the gate that rose before her and pulled herself to her feet. The bars were strong. Immovable even to her. They glowed with opalescence as if they'd been carved of pearl. Martin felt her relax, her head dropping back in tired surrender.
     
    Yes, she thought, I am dead now and they must let me in.
     
    But the gate did not open. The wind blew through it and the sun shone on it but no one came to see.
     
    "Speak to me," she demanded, clenching the pearly bars. "Tell me if I am damned."
     
    The air stirred behind her. Luisa spun. A man stood on the path in a dusty robe. He was tall and bearded, gaunt but strong. His eyes looked out from soulful hollows, their expression too beautiful to bear. Martin sensed Luisa knew who he was.
     
    "Answer me," she said in a choking voice. "If I'm damned, I want to know."
     
    The man said nothing, only stared at her sadly. Despite his humble garb, a golden shimmer bathed his skin. He reminded Martin of a bodhisattva, a wise old soul come to earth again.
     
    "I want the ability to choose how I live," she said. "I want my free will freed."
     
    You chose, said the man. You chose when you let your master make you what you are.
     
    With that, the man disappeared, and the gate, leaving nothing but grass and sun as far as the eye could see.
     
    "I am damned then," she said.
     
    She waited in the silence, empty of everything but despair. Tiny, starlike daisies waved in the gentle breeze. They did not care. No one cared but her. She thrust back her shoulders and firmed her jaw. If she was damned, so be it. She still had herself to answer to. She would live what life she had as she saw fit. If it ended, she would pay the price without demur. Her God had rejected her. Perhaps He had a right to. But from now on, her heart and mind were the only judges she would heed.
     
    Something changed with her decision. Martin felt it. The silence was ringing, the air brightening as if the sun were rising yet again. Each blade of