I glanced up the stairs, and there, close to the top of the flight, I glimpsed a motion in the shadows.

I thought perhaps it was Zabrina, who'd been conspicuous by her absence throughout the evening (though she must certainly have heard the noise of the wedding party). I called out to her, but even as I did so I realized my error. The shape on the stairs was small, and even accounting for the fact that it was wrapped in shadow, somehow vague.

"Zelim?" I ventured.

The form rose up from its crouching position, and came a little way down the stairs, its gait hesitant. My second guess had been correct. It was indeed Zelim, or what was left of him. His presence stood to his earlier self as that self had stood to the fisherman from Atva. He was the phantom of a phantom, his substance negligible. Like smoke, I want to say; like a soul of smoke, who only held his form because there was no wind to disperse him. I held my breath. He looked so tenuous that he'd be banished by the mildest exhalation.

But he had sufficient strength to speak: a dwindling voice, to be sure, disappearing with every syllable, yet strangely eloquent. I heard the happiness in him from the first, and knew before he told me that his wish had been granted.

"She let me go…" he said.

I dared that breath now. "I'm happy for you," I said.

"Thank… you…" His eyes, in the last phase of his existence, had become huge, like the eyes of a child.

"When did this happen?" I asked him.

"Just a… few… minutes ago…" the infant said. His voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear what he was telling me. "As soon… as soon… as she knew…"

I didn't catch the last of what he said, but I was afraid to waste a moment asking, for fear of losing him completely in that moment. So I kept my silence, and listened. He was almost gone. Not just his voice, but his physical presence, fading by the heartbeat. I felt no sorrow for him-how could I, when he'd so plainly stated his desire to be gone out of this world?-but it was still a strangely melancholy sight, to see a living soul erased before your eyes.

"I remember…" he murmured "… how he came for me…"

What was this? I didn't understand what I was being told.

"… in Samarkand…" Zelim went on, the syllables of the city like gossamer. Oh now I understood. I'd written about the event he was remembering, I'd pictured it here on these pages. Zelim, the aged philosopher, sitting among his students, telling a story about how God's hands worked; then looking up and seeing a stranger at the back of the room, and dying. His death had been a kind of summons; out of his self-willed existence into the service of Cesaria Yaos. Now that service was ended, and he was remembering-fondly, I thought, to judge by the tender gaze in his eyes-how he'd been called; and by whom. By Galilee, of course.

Did Zelim realize that I was still a little puzzled by what he was telling me, or did he at the last want to simply state how things had come full circle? Whichever it was, he said:

"He's here."

And with those two words gave up his life after death, and went away, smoke and soul.

He's here.

That was quite a pair of words. If they were true, then I was amazed.

Galilee, here? Lord in heaven, Galilee herel I didn't know whether to start yelling at the top of my voice, or to go hide my head. I looked up to the top of the stairs, half-expecting to see Cesaria there, demanding I go fetch him, bring him to her. But the landing was deserted, the house as still as it had been in the moment before Zelim had spoken his last. Did she not know he was here? Impossible. Of course she knew. This house was hers, from dome to foundations; the moment he'd stepped into it she'd been listening to his breath and to his heartbeat; to the din of his digestion.

She knew that he'd have to come to her sooner or later, and she was simply waiting for him to do so. She could afford to be patient, after all these long, lonely years.

I didn't linger in the hallway, now that Zelim was gone. I headed for my study, and was a few yards from my study door when I caught the alluring whiff of a burning havana. I pushed open the door, and there, sitting in the chair behind my desk, was the great voyager himself, leafing through my book, while he puffed on one of my cigars.

He looked up when I entered, and gave me an apologetic smile.

"Sorry," he said. "I couldn't help myself."

"The cigar or the book?" I replied.

"Oh the book," he said. "It's quite a story. Is any of it true?"

I didn't ask him how much he'd read; or what he thought of my stylish eccentricities. Nor did I reply to his perverse question, about the veracity of what I'd written. Nobody knew the truth of it better than he.

We embraced, he offered me one of my own cigars, which I declined, and then he asked me why there were so many women in the house.

"We went from room to room," he explained, "looking for somewhere to lay our heads, and-"

"Who's we?"

He smiled. "Oh, come on, brother…"

"Rachel?" I replied. He nodded. "She's here?"

"Of course she's here. You think I'd ever let that woman out of my sight again after what we've been through?"

"Where is she?"

His eyes went to the door of my bedroom. "She's sleeping," he explained.

"In my bed?"

"You don't mind?"

I couldn't keep the grin off my face. "No, of course I don't mind."

"Well I'm glad I've pleased somebody in this damn house," Galilee said.

"Can I… take a peek at her?"

"What the hell for?"

"Because I've been writing about her for the last nine months. I want to see-" What did I want to see? Her face? Her hair? The curve of her back? I suddenly felt a kind of desire for her, I suppose. Something I'd probably been feeling all along, I just hadn't realized it. "I just want to see her," I said.

I didn't wait for him to give me permission. I got up and went to the bedroom door. A wash of moonlight lit the bed, and there, sprawled on the antiquated quilt, was the woman of my waking dreams. I couldn't quite believe it.-There she was: Rachel Pallenberg-Geary-Barbarossa, her liquid hair spread on the same pillow where I'd laid my own buzzing head so many nights, and thought about how to shape the story of her life. Rachel in Boston, Rachel in New York, Rachel convalescing in Caleb's Creek, and walking the beach at Anahola. Rachel in despair, Rachel in extremis, Rachel in love-

"Rachel in Love," I murmured.

"What's that?"

I glanced back at Galilee. "I should have called the book Rachel in Love."

"Is that what it's really about?" he said.

"I don't know what the hell it's about," I replied, quite truthfully. "I thought I knew, about halfway through, but…" I returned my gaze to the sleeping woman "… maybe I can't, know until it's finished."

"You're not done?"

"Not now you're here," I replied.

"I hope you're not expecting some big drama," Galilee said, "because that's not what I had in mind."

"It'll be what it'll be," I said. "I'm strictly an observer."

"Oh no you're not," he said, getting up from behind the desk. "I need your help." I looked at him blankly. "With her." He cast his eyes up toward the ceiling.

"She's your mother not mine."

"But you know her better than I do. You've been here with her all these years, while I've been away."

"And you think I've been sitting with her drinking mint juleps? Talking about the magnolias? I've barely seen her. She's stayed up there brooding."

"A hundred and forty years of brooding?"

"She's had a lot to brood about. You. Nicodemus. Jefferson."

"Jefferson? She doesn't still think about that loser."

"Oh yes she does. She told me, at great length-"

"See? You do talk to her. Don't try and squirm out of it. You talk to her."