Strangers

flesh and stilled blood.
        Brendan placed his trembling hands upon Stefan Wycazik's ravaged throat. From within himself he felt the threads of power spinning out again, a thousand-million filaments in a multitude of colors and tensile strengths, all invisible yet sufficient to provide the wet and warp of a strong and flexible fabric, the very fabric of life. 'Iben, reaching psychically within the cooling body of this man he so deeply loved and respected, Brendan tried with all his mysterious skill to weave those threads upon the loom, to repair the torn cloth of life.
        However, he soon became aware that the miraculous healing process required an empathy between the healer and the healed. He realized that he had previously misunderstood the process, that he was not both the spinning wheel, providing the threads of power, and the loom which wove them into the cloth of life. Instead, the patient had to provide the loom to use the threads of life-giving power that Brendan provided. In some strange way, the healing was a bilateral process. And no loom of life remained in Stefan Wycazik; he had died within seconds, had been dead before Brendan reached the Jeep. Therefore, the multiple threads of healing power only tangled and knotted uselessly, unable to sew the damaged flesh together. Brendan could heal the wounded and cure the sick, but he could not do what had been done for Lazarus.
        A great, thick sob of grief shuddered from him, and another. But he refused to surrender to despair. He shook his head violently in stubborn denial of his loss, choked back another sob, and redoubled his efforts, determined to raise the dead even though he knew he could not.
        He was dimly aware that he was talking, but it was a minute or two before he realized that he was praying as he had prayed so many times in the past, though not recently: "Mary, Mother of God, pray for us; Mother most pure, pray for us; Mother most chaste, pray for us…
        He was praying not by reflex, not unconsciously, but ardently, with the deep, sweet conviction that the Mother of God heard his desperate cries and that, by the combination of his new power and the Virgin's intercession, Father Wycazik would be raised up again. If he had ever lost his faith, he regained it in that dark moment. With all his heart and mind, he believed. If Father Wycazik had been taken wrongly, before his appointed time, and if the Virgin handed these pleas, wet with her own tears, to Him who can never refuse His Mother anything she asks in the name of love, then the ruined flesh would be made whole and the rector would be restored to this world to complete his mission.
        Keeping his hands upon the wet and awful wound, kneeling, wearing no priestly raiments other than those the pure falling snow painted on his humbled shoulders, Brendan chanted the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. He beseeched Mary - Queen of Angels, Queen of Apostles, Queen of Martyrs. But still his cherished rector lay motionless on the bosom of the earth. He pleaded for the Virgin's mercy, she who was the Mystical Rose, the Morning Star, the Tower of Ivory, Health of the Sick, Comforter of the Afflicted. But the dead eyes, once so full of warmth and intelligence and affection, stared unblinking as flakes of snow spiraled into them. "Mirror of Justice, pray for us; Cause of our joy, pray for us…"
        At last, Brendan admitted that it was the will of God that Father Wycazik move on from this place.
        He softly concluded the litany in a voice that grew shakier by the word. He removed his hands from the monstrous wound. Instead, he took one of Stefan Wycazik's limp dead hands in both his own and held fast to it like a lost child. His heart was a deep vessel of grief.
        Colonel Leland Falkirk loomed over him. "So you've got limits to your power, do you? Good. That's good to know. All right, then, come on. Get back there with the others."
        Brendan looked up into the sharp face and polished-flint eyes, and he felt none of the fear that the colonel previously aroused in him. He said quietly, "He died without an opportunity to make a last confession. I am a priest, and I will stay here and do what a priest must do, and when I'm finished I will rejoin the others. The only way you'll move me now is if you kill me and drag me away. If you can't wait, then you'll have to shoot me in the back." He turned away from the colonel. Face wet with tears 'and melting