interminable few minutes, with Rosa translating, Dr. Fallachi helped Josh keep the professor alive and stop the blood loss. It would take approximately twenty minutes for someone to bleed out and die from a wound like the one the professor sustained, the doctor said. Josh judged ten to twelve minutes had already passed. It was going to be close.
From the corner, Sabina, because now that was how he thought of her, looked over at them with her sightless eyes, and under her ghostly gaze he felt the full force of his failure. If this man died, it was his fault. If he hadnât been in the tunnel, he would have been able to help Rudolfo. Instead, heâd been deep in the earth, bathed in sweat, almost paralyzed with anxiety, crawling toward some long-forgotten remembrance or some insane manâs delirium.
âIâm sorry,â he whispered. But only the bones heard him. Sabinaâs bones.
Chapter 9
O ne minute, Josh was cradling the professor, waiting for the ambulance. The next, the scent of jasmine and sandalwood blew past him, and he braced himself for the first stirrings of exhalation that preceded an episode. At the same time that Josh desperately wanted to stop the lurch, he also ached for it. An addict, this was his drug. It was that exhilarating. It was that horrific.
Josh had always thought that occasional sense of recognition people experience when they meet someone for the first time and feel an instant connection was nothing to pay attention to. You laugh and say, Iâd swear I already know you. Or when you go on vacation to a town youâve never been to but feel like you have been there before. Itâs disturbing, but you shake it off. Or itâs amusing, and you mention it to a friend or spouse.
Itâs just déjà vu, you say, not thinking twice.
Maybe when it used to happen.
But not now.
Malachai and Dr. Talmage had educated him beyond that. That fleeting sense was a gift, a moment of unforgetting, signifying that there was a connection betweenyou and the person youâd just met or the place youâd just visited. Nothing is an accident, nothing is a coincidence, according to theories of rebirth that go back through history, through the centuries, circling through cultures, changing and developing, but only attracting so much controversy in the West after the fourth century A.D. In the East, being skeptical about reincarnation would have been as unusual as questioning the wetness of water.
While he waited for what seemed much too long, trying to will the professor to live, Josh was certain heâd tasted death in that place before. He didnât know what had happened here in the past, only that he now felt he was on some unimaginable journey of repetition that was out of his power to stop.
Sitting on the ground, feeling the professorâs pulse slow, he trained his eyes out the opening, up toward the sky. This way, as soon as the paramedics arrived, heâd see them.
The air undulated around him, and shivers of anticipation shot up and down his arms and legs. Even while he sat perfectly still in one dimension, he was being sucked down into a vortex where the atmosphere was heavier and thicker, where he floated like a ghost rather than walking like a man, and where he felt pleasure more purely and pain more acutely.
It began like every episode. The scene developed slowly, the way photographs appear, as if by magic, on pristine sheets of paper, swimming up out of a swirl of liquid. He was the stranger outside looking in as the scene opened before him. He saw the players and the stage. And then, in a matter of seconds, he became the person he was observing. Saw now through anotherâs eyes, spoke in the otherâs voice. Was not himself. Had lost himself. Did not know there was another self.
Chapter 10
Julius and Sabina
Romeâ386 A.D.
T he screams alerted him as the wind blew the smell of the acrid smoke into his bedchamber. They all lived in fear of
From the corner, Sabina, because now that was how he thought of her, looked over at them with her sightless eyes, and under her ghostly gaze he felt the full force of his failure. If this man died, it was his fault. If he hadnât been in the tunnel, he would have been able to help Rudolfo. Instead, heâd been deep in the earth, bathed in sweat, almost paralyzed with anxiety, crawling toward some long-forgotten remembrance or some insane manâs delirium.
âIâm sorry,â he whispered. But only the bones heard him. Sabinaâs bones.
Chapter 9
O ne minute, Josh was cradling the professor, waiting for the ambulance. The next, the scent of jasmine and sandalwood blew past him, and he braced himself for the first stirrings of exhalation that preceded an episode. At the same time that Josh desperately wanted to stop the lurch, he also ached for it. An addict, this was his drug. It was that exhilarating. It was that horrific.
Josh had always thought that occasional sense of recognition people experience when they meet someone for the first time and feel an instant connection was nothing to pay attention to. You laugh and say, Iâd swear I already know you. Or when you go on vacation to a town youâve never been to but feel like you have been there before. Itâs disturbing, but you shake it off. Or itâs amusing, and you mention it to a friend or spouse.
Itâs just déjà vu, you say, not thinking twice.
Maybe when it used to happen.
But not now.
Malachai and Dr. Talmage had educated him beyond that. That fleeting sense was a gift, a moment of unforgetting, signifying that there was a connection betweenyou and the person youâd just met or the place youâd just visited. Nothing is an accident, nothing is a coincidence, according to theories of rebirth that go back through history, through the centuries, circling through cultures, changing and developing, but only attracting so much controversy in the West after the fourth century A.D. In the East, being skeptical about reincarnation would have been as unusual as questioning the wetness of water.
While he waited for what seemed much too long, trying to will the professor to live, Josh was certain heâd tasted death in that place before. He didnât know what had happened here in the past, only that he now felt he was on some unimaginable journey of repetition that was out of his power to stop.
Sitting on the ground, feeling the professorâs pulse slow, he trained his eyes out the opening, up toward the sky. This way, as soon as the paramedics arrived, heâd see them.
The air undulated around him, and shivers of anticipation shot up and down his arms and legs. Even while he sat perfectly still in one dimension, he was being sucked down into a vortex where the atmosphere was heavier and thicker, where he floated like a ghost rather than walking like a man, and where he felt pleasure more purely and pain more acutely.
It began like every episode. The scene developed slowly, the way photographs appear, as if by magic, on pristine sheets of paper, swimming up out of a swirl of liquid. He was the stranger outside looking in as the scene opened before him. He saw the players and the stage. And then, in a matter of seconds, he became the person he was observing. Saw now through anotherâs eyes, spoke in the otherâs voice. Was not himself. Had lost himself. Did not know there was another self.
Chapter 10
Julius and Sabina
Romeâ386 A.D.
T he screams alerted him as the wind blew the smell of the acrid smoke into his bedchamber. They all lived in fear of
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