Jenny turned to face him, her eyes burning with tears. ‘I don’t care,’ she said passionately. ‘I don’t care if you’re real.’
‘Do you care if it’s so dangerous it could kill us both?’
‘Life is great.’
‘Well then, dearly beloved,’ Daniel intoned, slipping the Diamond from the possibles sack, ‘with this ring I do thee wed. May I now kiss the bride?’
Jenny, staring into the Diamond, muttered, ‘In a minute.’
They both stared into the Diamond. Daniel saw immediately the glow was more brilliant – not brighter, really, but sharper. He needed to vanish to see inside.
Jenny put her hand on his thigh. ‘Tell me,’ she said.
Daniel looked at her and said as plainly and directly as he could, ‘I love you.’
Jenny threw back her head and laughed at the moon.
Perplexed, Daniel said, ‘That’s not what you wanted to know?’
Jenny stopped laughing, but couldn’t help smiling as she shook her head. She lifted the Diamond from his hands and placed it gently at the head of the comforter, the Diamond’s light and the light of the moon shimmering on the pale blue silk as if it were a pond in a high mountain meadow.
Jenny turned back to Daniel, on his knees facing her. She put her arms around him and pulled him close, whispering, ‘I do. I do. In sickness and in health. In life and death. Madness and folly. Till we part and after we part and right here and right now. I do.’
‘I have to tell you some things.’
‘No you don’t,’ Jenny promised.
‘I can vanish,’ Daniel told her, hoping she’d understand that he did have to tell her, that he owed her the honor.
‘Don’t vanish,’ she murmured against his shoulder, her tongue tracing his collarbone. ‘If you vanish, I won’t be able to feel you inside me, I won’t be able to feel those things we can only feel together.’
Daniel said, ‘There’s something there I need to know, something I’m meant to understand.’
Jenny released her embrace and in the same motion eased backward on the comforter. Her eyes held a glint of playful challenge. ‘Daniel, I want you to seek whatever you think you need to find, see whatever you’re meant to behold. That’s what marriage is all about. But first, Daniel, before you ride off on your beautiful white charger, dragons to slay, maidens to save, grails galore, I want to be sure you understand the basics.’
She turned on her side and patted the comforter. When Daniel lay down beside her, she touched his cheek. Her voice thick, Jenny said, ‘Do you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ Daniel moaned, closing his eyes.
‘Look at me, Daniel,’ Jenny said forcefully. ‘Look in my eyes. Do you see me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said. ‘I don’t know who I see anymore.’
‘If you can’t see me, Daniel, you’ll never see yourself.’ Jenny slipped her arms around him. ‘Come on. We’ll look for each other.’
Daniel held her tightly. He smiled at her, and suddenly, finally, he relaxed. ‘Mrs Pearse, it will be the joy of my life to consummate our marriage, but I must ask you first for another vow: If something should happen to me, if I vanish and don’t make it back right away, I want you to take the Diamond – your wedding ring – and drop it in any large body of water you choose. Or anywhere it’s unlikely to be found. It’s stolen. They’ll kill you to get it back. Don’t show it to anybody.’
Jenny whispered fiercely, ‘Done. Now let’s imagine something real – each other.’
Slowly at first, bathed in the light of Diamond and moon, blurred in the drifting tatters of mist swirled by their cries, they imagined each other, the forks of a river joining for the plunge to the sea.
When they’d quit laughing and trembling and crying and kissing, Jenny said, ‘I rest my case.’ She curled against him, head on his chest.
Daniel squeezed her close, but he wasn’t there. Even with his eyes shut he sensed the Diamond’s light intensifying. He had to trust her understanding, trust himself. He looked over his shoulder at the Diamond, focused on its center, and vanished.
The Diamond didn’t.
But for a moment Daniel thought it had vanished with him. He could see the flame inside, but it wasn’t the spiral flame he’d always seen before. As if compressed by the Diamond’s growing density, the flame condensed toward the center, tightened to a single whirling point, the visible tip of a solar vortex, heat so intense it vaporized bone. But Daniel had no body to burn.
He hurled himself toward the spinning center. And as he was swept across the threshold, sucked through the vortex and into the solar furnace, spilled into the Diamond Forge, Daniel learned what he was meant to know.
He was a god. He was Hermes, Thoth, Mercury; the prophet Hermes Trismegistos. He had accepted birth to refresh his compassion for the human soul.
He felt joyously released. He’d made it back! The Diamond was his door out, love the key that opened the lock. Above as below. Stone junction. He blessed his mother for allowing him her womb, for letting him father himself. He heard her scream inside him, ‘Run, Daniel!’ but there was nowhere left to go, no possible escape. He blessed his teachers, his friends, his lovers – Jenny especially, Jenny his wife. He heard Volta chanting deep within him, ‘Life, life, life, life.’ He blessed Volta for his wise help, though he knew Volta wouldn’t understand. Roaring upward in the solar vortex, Daniel laughed. It was all life. No levels or dimensions. Not even the gods could escape. He crossed his arms on his chest, closed his eyes and let himself go, vanishing into the Diamond-Light forever.
Volta sat cross-legged on the floor, the goldfish’s bowl cradled in his hands, his imagination locked on Daniel. He felt Daniel enter the Diamond, the joy of his surrender. Volta cried out softly, ‘No, Daniel. Oh no, poor Daniel.’ Another beautiful, deluded spirit consumed by powers mistaken for his own. Gently, Volta set the bowl on the table. The goldfish began languidly finning around the bowl.
‘Ahhhhhhh,’ Volta sighed, ‘go.’ Daniel had made his choice, if it could be called a choice, if a raindrop chooses where to fall, a river to flow. Grant Daniel his choice and mourn his loss. Live by life and remember the dead. Volta stood up and walked briskly to the door. He needed the clean night air, the real moon and stars.
When Volta opened the door, Shamus pointed a pistol directly between Volta’s eyes. They both froze. Shamus held the pistol in his good hand. A small automatic. Cocked. Shamus’s scar-twisted hand was lifted to his ear, its tucked thumb forming a crude mouth.
His voice calm and even, Shamus said, ‘Walk slowly backward into the house, keeping your arms outstretched at shoulder level, fingers spread and palms facing me.’
Volta stepped carefully backward to the center of the room. Shamus followed, keeping his distance, pistol steady on Volta’s forehead. He kicked the door shut behind him.
Volta sagged when the scarred hand shrilled in Shamus’s ear, the voice utterly different from Shamus’s own, ‘Make him naked. Naked.’
‘Take off your robe,’ Shamus ordered Volta.
‘No,’ Volta said.
‘Kill him,’ the hand urged. ‘Now. Not another word.’
‘Do it,’ Volta agreed. ‘Then you’ll never know who betrayed you. I expected, given your work with Jacob Hind, you might decipher Alex Three. You were quicker than I anticipated.’