The Scholomance (83 page)

“Are we still
friends?” asked the old woman, making the young nurse jump a little, her skin
breaking out in gooseflesh.

“Always, Connie.”
And the voice was right there, almost, sneaking up through her fingers where
she carefully pinched the old woman’s wrist, whispering not in her ears but in
her brain. “Always. Just rest.”

Then it was over
and Constance Vitelli lay silent in her spinster’s bed. With a pounding heart
and shaking hands, the young nurse tucked the gnarled hand with its ancient,
worthless locket still clutched inside like a rosary underneath the blankets
and pulled them over the wizened head, then hurried from the room and never
told anyone about the voice she did not hear or why she’d deemed it necessary
to snatch up those old framed photographs and throw them out into the dumpster
so immediately. The old woman was dead, and when the time came to record such
things it was recorded only that she’d gone peacefully, in her sleep. The old
woman was dead, and on the other side of the world, Mara of the tribe of
Golgotha lay down in the bed of Kazuul, lord of the Scholomance, and welcomed
him at last. It was not the love that Men feel, but like the child they began
that night, it was still a true thing, and it endured.

THE END

September 2008 –
November 2009