Wednesday is not wearing a suit and tie, but the pin in the shape of a silver tree he wears over the pocket of his shirt glitters and glints when the mirror-ball light catches it. They make a fine-looking couple, considering the difference in their ages. There is a lupine grace to Wednesday’s movements.
A slow dance. He pulls her close to him, and his pawlike hand curves around the seat of her skirt possessively, moving her closer to him. His other hand takes her chin, pushes it upward into his face, and the two of them kiss,’4here on the floor, as the glitter-ball lights circle them intoTfie center of the universe.
Soon after, they leave. She sways against him, and he leads her from the dance hall.
Shadow buried his head in his hands, and did not follow them, unable or unwilling to witness his own conception.
The mirror lights were gone, and now the only illumination came from the tiny moon that burned high above his head.
He walked on. At a bend in the path he stopped for a moment to catch his breath.
He felt a hand run gently up his back, and gentle fingers ruffle the hair on the back of his head.
“Hello,” whispered a smoky feline voice, over his shoulder.
“Hello,” he said, turning to face her.
She had brown hair and brown skin and her eyes were the deep golden-amber of good honey. Her pupils were vertical slits. “Do I know you?” he asked, puzzled.
“Intimately,” she said, and she smiled. “I used to sleep on your bed. And my people have been keeping their eyes on you, for me.” She turned to the path ahead of him, pointed to the three ways he could go. “Okay,” she said. “One way will make you wise. One way will make you whole. And one way will kill you.”
“I’m already dead, I think,” said Shadow. “I died on the tree.”
She made a moue. “There’s dead,” she said, “and there’s dead, and there’s dead. It’s a relative thing.” Then she smiled again. “I could make a joke about that, you know. Something about dead relatives.”
“No,” said Shadow. “It’s okay.”
“So,” she said. “Which way do you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
She tipped her head on one side, a perfectly feline gesture. Suddenly, Shadow remembered the claw marks on his shoulder. He felt himself beginning to blush. “If you trust me,” said Bast, “I can choose for you.”
“I trust you,” he said, without hesitation.
“Do you want to know what it’s going to cost you?”
“I’ve already lost my name,” he told her.
“Names come and names go. Was it worth it?”
“Yes. Maybe. It wasn’t easy. As revelations go, it was kind of personal.”
“All revelations are personal,” she said. “That’s why all revelations are suspect.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No,” she said, “you don’t. I’ll take your heart. We’ll need it later,” and she reached her hand deep inside his chest, and she pulled it out with something ruby and pulsing held between her sharp fingernails. It was the color of pigeon’s blood, and it was made of pure light. Rhythmically it expanded and contracted.
She closed her hand, and it was gone.
“Take the middle way,” she said.
Shadow nodded, and walked on.
The path was becoming slippery now. There was ice on the rock. The moon above him glittered through the ice crystals in the air: there was a ring about the moon, a moon-bow, diffusing the light. It was beautiful, but it made walking harder. The path was unreliable.
He reached the place where the path divided.
He looked at the first path with a feeling of recognition. It opened into a vast chamber, or a set of chambers, like a dark museum. He knew it already. He could hear the long echoes of tiny noises. He could hear the noise that the dust makes as it settles.
It was the place that he had dreamed of, that first night that Laura had come to him, in the motel so long ago; the endless memorial hall to the gods that were forgotten, and the ones whose very existence had been lost.
He took a step backward.
He walked to the path on the far side, and looted ahead. There was a Disneyland quality to the corridor: black Plex-iglas walls with lights set in them. The colored lights blinked and flashed in the illusion of order, for no particular reason, like the console lights on a television itarship.
He could hear something there as well: a deep vibrating bass drone, which Shadow could feel in the pit of his stomach.
He stopped and looked around. Neither way seemed right. Not any longer. He was done with paths. The middle way, the way the cat-woman had told him to walk, that was his way. He moved toward it.
The moon above him was beginning to fade: the edge of it was pinking and going into eclipse. The path was framed by a huge doorway. Shadow walked through the arch, in darkness. The air was warm, and it smelled of wet dust, like a city street after the summer’s first rain.
He was not afraid.