Page 90 of Where Light Cannot Follow

"Please," I beg. "For my sake. To honor our time together. I wish for you to go."

He just stares at me, no longer even looking at the light.

Slowly, he nods. "You want me to go."

"It's all I wish for," I say.

It is a lie. But it’s the thing I want most in all the world.

"All right," he says, his voice thick. "But I don't wish for you to watch me go."

"What?"

This is a request I've never received before.

Dante steps closer. He doesn't try to touch me, doesn't approximate contact. But I feel his spirit wrap around mine—or perhaps around the absence of mine. As though he would make me whole if he could.

"I'd have you remember me as I am just now," he says quietly. "As I'll remember you. Not as someone fading into light while you're left behind."

My throat tightens. "Very well, then."

He raises his hand one last time. Palm up.

I cover it with mine.

"Goodbye, Virgil."

My voice is choked when I find the words. "Goodbye, Dante."

We stand there for what might be a minute or might be hours. The light pulses gently behind him. The wind tangles through his hair and ripples his clothing, while passing through me as though I were nothing more than a memory.

Finally, I pull my hand back and look at him one last time.

As a painter might study a subject he will never render again.

No—better. As a poet might.

A man who stands on the threshold of heaven, light glowing through dark waves that fly about his face like wings taking flight. Wind-stung tears cling to his cheeks like scattered stars. His cardigan flutters about him as he reaches out—toward the guide who stands in shadow but dares to extend a single hand into the radiance. And for one moment, just one, the guide touched it. Felt something. Knew what it was to hope.

I hold that image in my heart, where it will burn like a flame against the coming dark.

Then I turn and walk down the mountain.

32

DANTE

Virgil, with his golden curls and graceful form, disappears beyond the bend. I stand and stare at the place where he vanished for an endless stretch of time while wind bites my cheeks and light wraps around my shoulders like a gentle embrace. A quiet summoning.

I don't listen.

Not yet.

I sit on the cliff's edge, letting my legs hang over the drop, and look out at the world spread beneath me.

Fog curls around the mountain's slopes and the light gleams like a shaft of sun breaking through clouds, pouring over rocks and moss and delicate green things sprouting between stones. Everything soft. Everything at peace.

All that is within me longs to stand up and walk into that radiance. To feel the ease and union it promises. The end of striving. The end of pain.