Strongest Conjuration Read Online Free PDF

we’ll have a mountain to scale or a canyon to span between us and wherever the rest of me got lost in my Garden.”
    â€œMaybe the problem isn’t
When
,” Ramon suggested.
    I went on dragging time into sludgy piles.
    â€œMaybe the problem is
Who
,” Ramon said. “Perhaps the trauma of experiencing a self untranslated over culture and language—across
Whens
based on moon and mathematics—separated Ren from herself. Think how much you change in just a single lifetime. You’re not the same man you were even a year ago.”
    â€œNeither are you,” Phil said with a glance down Ramon’s body.
    I pulled again, and sludgy time inverted at my feet. I stared into the hole. Maybe its dark was where I belonged. It was where I came from. It was where I had held love in my arms, and I carried the shape of its face in my heartdark.
    â€œRen?”
    On the cave wall in front of me, the symbol was crude, but unmistakable: two eyes and a mouth.
    â€œRay, can you see Ren?”
    I touched my fingers to the ash smudges on the cave wall: two circles and a line—the first shape infant eyes pattern, when all our world is Iandentire comfort, or its terrible lack. Not until that world splits into Me and Not Me, I and Thou, do we learn that we, too, look into the world from behind two circles and a line.
    â€œRen!”
    The cave wall was a glorious welter of umber, rust, and charcoal—long, inverted triangles with heads and feet bleeding into the fluid backs of horses. A red patty-cake blotted out their haunches, half of it scraped white into the cleft circles of female hips and breasts. I wanted to press my palms against the handprints. I wanted to see if torchlight made the horses run.
    â€œFuck. I should have stopped her! No. Don’t give me that look, Ray. If I had told her last night I thought the experiment was dangerous, she wouldn’t have—Well, at least she might—I mean …” Phil’s voice was muffled by mud and time. “You can’t jump a chasm in two leaps. I should have told her.”
    I couldn’t see him.
    I couldn’t see us either, but we were there, the many of us in the cavestone. Not the one I loved. She was dead. Herdark hurt me.
    â€œWhat does it mean for her to shade in her own Garden, Ray?”
    Mydark hurt Phil. Fear woke up in me at last.
    I had no idea what anything meant:
mother
or
face
or
home
.
    I didn’t know if horses ran over the stone of our original Garden, or if I’d finally lost my grip on reality. Panic gathered low in my belly. I could barely drag my hands from the cavestone. It was where I came from, and I didn’t belong.
    I had tampered with
When
, and
Why
crushed me. “Stop!” I said and showed my teeth.
    â€œIs it so much to ask, Ray, to get a year, maybe two, of just me loving her and her loving me back? No drama, no upset?”
    â€œNo change, Phil? No growth?”
    Why
swallowed me in solid liquid ribbons.
    â€œYes. Exactly fucking that. Is that too much?”
    Why?
Because Celeste had stolen
When
from me and
Who
from Phil.
    â€œNot too much, I think. But too slow, perhaps. A day or a weekend? Sure. But not months. Certainly not years.”
    Why?
Because the women in my family lose their memories. Trying to save them, I’d lost my mind.
    It caved in.
    â€œShut up, Ray.”
    â€œIt’s Ramon.”
    11. You Can Never Go
    My thoughts were eels through oil, no more solid than the air, and no less opaque than mystery.
    I wasn’t suffocating. Minds don’t breathe and my brain was in Tucson. If I opened my eyes I would be there, sitting on the sofa, and not a bit muddy.
    I’d probably want a bath anyway, but Phil was showering. Ramon had made him. “I have pieces of myself pinned to half a dozen memories I will never look at again, Phil. So do you. Get cleaned up.”
    I loved him, and I wanted to kiss him with no guilt on his mouth.
    But my