Eventually I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness, aware of an edge of light round the sides of the loft door and the vague buzz of voices and smell of food drifting up from downstairs.  I lowered my head and might have wept, until I rebuked myself for such self-pity, and told myself that - if fault there was - it was my own, and I had nobody else to blame.  I sniffed, rose stiffly and dressed, tidied things up and lowered the wooden ladder through the opened loft door.

'What liniment?' I asked Declan.

'I dunno,' he said, lighting a small roll-up cigarette. 'Some stuff.  She just called it "Di lineament" and dabbed the damn stuff on us at every opportunity; worst was when you had the toothache; stung like hell; worse than the toothache.'

'I thought it smelled like coriander,' said Roadkill, who was rolling one of their drug cigarettes.  We were all - save for Scarpa - in the living room, listening to some modern CD music on the hi-fi.  I had eaten after the others, having missed the main meal while I was attempting to Receive.  I had, perhaps misguidedly, attempted to explain to the others what I had been trying to do in the loft; probably I ought not to have mentioned the zhlonjiz at all.  Roadkill at least seemed sympathetic.  Brother Zeb, also now rolling what they called a 'number', seemed to be ignoring me.

'Dec,' Boz said, stretching his hand across me to offer Declan the drug cigarette which was currently in circulation.

Dec seemed to hesitate, and Boz offered the long white tube to me. 'Hey, Isis, child; you want to try the holy ganja instead?'

I looked at it. 'I'd probably just cough,' I told him, though I was thinking about it.  Our creed holds no thing wrong just because the Blands say it is, and from what I had heard both at school and from various people at the Commune, cannabis was a benign, if befuddlingly distracting drug.  Indeed, I felt much more discomfited by the presence of all the electrical activity around me than I did by the haze of smoke that hung in the room.

'Ah, go on with ye,' Declan said.

'Very well,' I said, and exhaled to the bottom of my lungs.  I reached out for the drug cigarette, but Boz moved it away out of reach.

'Hey, don't take too much there, Isis; you'll give youself a coughing fit, sure enough.  You just breathe in gentle-like.'

I breathed in, looking up at Boz, who was sitting on another giant cushion. (I, of course, was on the wooden floorboards).  I took the long cigarette and sucked on it, not too hard.

'….  Easy now, Isis,' Boz said, as I gulped and tried not to cough, and handed the thing quickly on to Declan.  I exhaled and took another few deep breaths, cooling my fiery throat (at least the cannabis had that in common with the zhlonjiz). 'You all right now, Isis?' Boz asked, looking at me.  I nodded.  I rather liked the way Boz said 'I-sis'; slowly and deeply with the emphasis on the 'sis'.

'Fine,' I said, with only the smallest of coughs.

My head started to spin; alcohol never acted as rapidly.  I passed on the next 'spliff and went for another cup of water, but took some of the next drug cigarette, and the next.

There was much talk and laughter, and at one point I found myself trying to explain to Roadkill that in a sense everything was action at a distance and that this was the most important thing in the world, even though as I told her this I knew I was talking complete nonsense.  I told her this too and she just laughed.  Some people I didn't know came in and Boz went through to the kitchen with them.  When I went there for more water later on I saw him sitting at the table using a knife and a pair of scales to measure out small pieces of black stuff which he then wrapped and gave to the strangers.  Boz smiled at me.  I felt a little faint at the time so I just smiled back and went through to the living room again.  I surmised, in a sort of hazy, dissociated way, that Boz must be cutting up weights to be distributed to small businesses in the area so that their scales were all properly calibrated.

To my shame it was at least a good quarter-hour before I saw Declan rolling another joint with the same black stuff - made crumbly by having been heated with a cigarette lighter - and realised what Boz was actually doing; this led me into a fit of the giggles so intense that at one point I almost lost control of my bladder.  Once I had calmed down I explained the cause of my confusion to the others, whereupon several of them started laughing too, causing me to relapse into hysteria.

A little later I dried my eyes, excused myself and bade them all goodnight.  I negotiated my way carefully and deliberately to my lofty boudoir, taking great care always to have three points of contact as I climbed the ladder, and - leaving the loft trap-door open to light my way - taking equal care to tread only on the doors providing the loft's flooring, and even more extra special care when, having partially disrobed, I swung myself into my hammock.

My head was spinning, the loft-space was spinning, and I had the distinct impression that they were in contra-rotation to each other.  I closed my eyes but this only made the sensation worse.  I thought it not impossible that with my senses so unusually disrupted I might be able to open my soul to God and so receive Their word, but not until I could both stop the room spinning and prevent occasional after-shocks of giggles afflicting my body.

I took several deep breaths and tried to compose myself by thinking of our family history, a subject which requires considerable concentration and an alert, retentive and - some might argue - an open mind.

Salvador Whit and Aasni Whit née Asis begat two daughters, Brigit and Rhea, and a son, Christopher, who was Salvador's first boy-child and born on the 29th of February 1952, and so was known as the Elect of God, and given a long, impressive name which ended in the Roman numerals II because he was a second-generation Leapyearian.  Salvador Whit and Zhobelia Whit née Asis begat two daughters, Calli and Astar, and a son, Mohammed.

Christopher Whit and Alice Whit née Cristofiori begat a son, Allan, and a daughter, Isis, who was born on the 29th of February 1976, and whose name was suffixed with the numerals III because she was a third-generation Leapyearian.  Brigit and anon begat a daughter, Morag, but Brigit later became apostate and moved to Idaho in the United States of America and reputedly is to this day without further issue.  Rhea became apostate early on, allegedly married an insurance salesman and moved to Basingstoke in England and we know of no children from her loins.  Mohammed lives in Yorkshire in England and is childless.  Calli and James Tillemont begat a daughter, Cassiopeia, a son, Paul, and another daughter, Hagar.  Astar and Malcolm Redpath begat two sons, Hymen and Indra, and Malcolm Redpath and Matilda Blohm begat a son, Zebediah, and Astar and Johann Meitner begat a son, Pan.

Erin Peniakov and Salvador Whit begat a son, Topee, and possibly a daughter, Iris.  Jessica Burrman and Salvador Whit probably begat a daughter, Helen.  Fiona Galland and Salvador Whit probably begat a daughter, Heather.  Gay Sumner and Salvador Whit may have begat a daughter, Clio.

After that it gets complicated.

The room was still spinning.

I imagined I was in a porcelain-hulled boat, drifting silently upstream to the Pendicles of Collymoon with my cousin Morag at my side; she was slowly bowing the throaty, many-voiced baryton and somehow that was our means of propulsion; I was floating in a silvery spaceship, its rocket tubes like organ pipes; I was lying under the Deivoxiphone listening to the Voice of God but we had a crossed line and all I could hear was opera; I lay on the floor in Sophi's room in the little turreted house across the half-ruined bridge, talking about playing the organ in the cathedral while she lay on the bed, leafing through magazines, but my words were coming out of my mouth as literal bubbles with little fat naked men and women in them, performing strange and unlikely sexual acts in each one; I sat at the Flentrop organ, but the keys just snarled at me and became a piano with the top down and locked and all I could hear was the sound of a dwarf running up and down inside, stamping out some stupid, monotonous tune, and swearing loudly but muffledly; I lay in the moonlit clouds of my Grandfather's beard, listening to the clustered stars sing overhead; the northern lights curved and twisted in great shawls of ghostly luminescence, like the flapping sails of some vast craft fit to sail between the galaxies.