A Certain Slant of Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

own chest.
       "What color?" I wanted to know.
       He smiled. "It's difficult to explain. You're not like a painting. You're like water. Sometimes you're full of color, sometimes you're gray, sometimes almost clear."
       "And when I'm full of color," I said. "What then?"
       "Then your eyes are brown," he said. "Your hair is golden and your dress is blue."
       One slow, hard pulse of cold clay beat through my heart. I leaned closer to James, banishing the fear.
       "What did you wear before you were inside Mr. Blake?" I wanted to know.
       He laughed. "I don't know. I couldn't see my reflection."
       I laughed too; the feeling, so unfamiliar, made me giddy. Were we actually joking about our deaths?
       "Is the dress blue now?" I asked. "Or am I clear as water?"
       "Now?" He stared a moment more, still holding the phone to one ear. "You're silvery, like the Lady of the Lake."
       I had so many more questions for him, but I couldn't stay.
       "Tell me about haunting the school," he said.
       "I need to leave now."
       "Wait." He reached out to take my hand but couldn't. I was startled by the flash of warmth. He took a moment before speaking.
       "Miss Helen, you have a way about you. When I watched you with Mr. Brown, the way you read over his shoulder, how you lis tened to him recite poetry. I don't have the words," he told me.
       "It was as if you were the only one in the world who could under stand me. And now you're looking at me and speaking to me." He spoke very confidentially into the phone. "It's like a miracle."
       Perhaps it was because Mr. Brown was preparing to drive off, perhaps it was because James seemed to be speaking from my own heart, or perhaps it was simply that I had gone for 130 years without being heard or seen, but all at once I felt faint. I dropped my gaze.
       "Did I say something wrong?"
       "No." But I was fluttering madly like a winged thing about to fly apart. Then a pang of ice told me Mr. Brown was moving too far away.
       "Please be there tomorrow," said James.
       When you are Light, you may move through solid objects with no more effort than it would take to add sums in your head. But at that moment, if James hadn't opened the glass door, I'm not sure that I would've had the strength to pass through it.
     
     
     
     
    Three
     
     
    I SAT ON Mr. Brown's ROOF through the tortured slowness of the night, thinking of questions to ask James. I watched the stars arc across the sky, slow as grass growing, and was at Mr. Brown's bed side when the dawn broke. I wasn't put out by Mrs. Brown any longer, not since I had someone of my own. Just as Mr. Brown started to rise, however, she slid her hand up his bare back. As he fell under the covers again, I gave a cry of frustration, the sound less fury of which disturbed only a sparrow on the windowsill. I blustered outside to wait in the back seat of the car.
       I thought better of it when Mr. Brown appeared at last, rush ing to button his shirt and run a hand through his hair. He had spent almost his whole writing hour in bed, but I couldn't be unhappy with him. As he turned back toward me to pull the car out of the driveway, he looked just a little like James—an angle of his jaw or the curve of his lashes. My heart unwound. He was, af ter all, my Mr. Brown, and he loved his wife, and at last, I had someone to talk to after so many years of wanting to talk with him and not being allowed. I remembered then how I used to whisper to my previous host, my Poet, while he was dreaming.
       That morning as Mr. Brown opened the box and took out the pages of his unfinished novel, I rested my hand on the back of his chair and leaned in toward the shell of his ear.
       "I know you can't hear me," I said to him. "I wish that you could." I moved my fingers to his shoulder. I rarely attempted to be in the same space as the Quick. It was always an odd feeling, like falling. This time it felt like sliding down a