Death Qualified Part 58

"The door didn't close," she whispered to herself.

"Not all the way. He was mistaken about that. It was a swinging door after all." She nodded and mechanically began to undress. Then, in her warmest robe, she stood at the window.

The world was utterly black and silent out there. The river was silent, revealing nothing. She dragged a chair to the window and sat down staring at the blackness, just as if she could see through it, and she tried to recapture every word, every glance, every touch from the first day that she had seen him in his running clothes.

In her room in the big house, Celsy was at her window, also. She reached out tentatively, curled her fingers in the air, as if about a physical object, and she laughed without making a sound. In his room in the little house, Travis was reaching out, laughing soundlessly.

The fog had become visible again, a luminous, motionless world of fog pressed against her window. An illusion,.

Barbara thought; not fog at all, but a cold steel wall. A b.u.t.terfly flapped its wings and the wall had parted for Mike, but it was still there, unyielding, invisible, and real.

She groped in her jeans for the yellow paper she had folded and jammed down into her pocket, thinking, "There was a young lady of law...." She found the sheet of paper and smoothed it out, and then she opened her window wide and breathed in deeply. As if her breath were a signal, a murmur stirred high in the fir trees. The wind was starting to blow. Now she could smell the air filtered through the millions of fir needles. Soporific, she thought. Finally she went to bed, put the yellow paper under her pillow, and she wept, and, weeping, fell asleep.

About the Author kate wilhelm received her first Nebula Award in 1968 for her story "The Planners" and her latest Nebula in 1988 for "Forever Yours, Anna." She has also been honored with a Hugo Award (for her novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang), a Prix Apollo Award, and a Jupiter Award. Her most recent works include a fantasy novel, Cambio Bay, a mystery ent.i.tled Sweet, Sweet Poison, and Children of the Wind, a collection of five novellas. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, she lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her husband, noted writer and critic Damon Knight.

The End.