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And you reply with an unmovéd silence, for not of him alone your sight returns report, but unearthly forms: silvered limbs and silver dress and silver hair tossed by a spirit wind. And silver blood between her legs. She is the answer to the master’s deadly rage, mother of his child, and true love, gone these seventeen years. His Goldie is her memory, ruined both by forces that fell upon them deaf and dumb. For God gives no answers till the end.
“What? You whoreson, you mongrel! Avert your eyes!” he rises from the bale, unsteadily, and seizes a knotted rope upon the beams. The great beast, Rover, rouses at the beck of “mongrel” and begins to whine. Your keeper shrieks and runs to your side.
“Oh don’t papa!” she says. “What has he done? What have you done, precious? He doesn’t mean it, papa! Strike me, instead! Strike me!” And covering you in her patient love, she takes the knots upon her welted back. There is no sound but the strap, his grunts, and her sharp breath.
The phantom grieves to look upon it, but shadows are mere galley-slaves to their cruising bodies and her embraces are so much unbodied air. It is your eyes which arrests him at the last, putting fright where there was only fire, spirits, and tears. He slumps on the bale, choking, striking his vast chest to dislodge the burning air. His daughter runs again to fetch him water, vittles; flesh wealing from her back even so. And the phantom weeps silver tears.
Later, when the old punisher’s snores count the witching hour, the widow appears again. She sits where her husband sat, looking sadly at the mortal crowd she cannot enter. You untangle yourself from Wolf and Woman and go and sit beside her. So have you done for many days this last season, for she is fair to look upon, even as your own mother was, and your boyish fears could not stand against it long.
Tonight, there is a change. Of a sudden she sharply turns her head, and seems to mark you sitting there.
“What,” she whispers, “can you see me, dear?”
Yes, you nod.
“What,” she whispers again, “can you hear me too?”
“And speak so that you may hear,” you reply.
She recoils. “Are you shade? Are you phantom? Are you a haunt? Answer in one word!”
“No.”
“What are you?”
“A cheater.”
She draws close, peering into your eyes, stealing a glance at the round burn upon your throat, then again to your eyes, which are hell-deep from their witness. She recoils again. Oh, she is affrighted now!
“Wh-whom have you cheated, dear?”
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