The Forbidden Circle by Marion Zimmer Bradley Read Free Book Online Page A

all.”
    She was silent for a minute, as if considering. God , Carr thought, how real she seems . He could see her breathing, the faint rise and fall of her chest beneath the thin, torn dress. One of her feet was smudged: no, bruised and reddened and bloodstained. Carr said, “Are you hurt?”
    “Not really. You asked me how I could be there with you. I suppose you know that we live in more than one way, and that the world you are in now is the solid world, the world of things , the world of hard bodies and physical creations. But in the world where I am, we leave our bodies behind like outgrown clothing or cast snake-skins, and what we call place has no real being. I am used to that world, I have been trained to walk in it, but somehow I am being kept in a part of it where no other of my people’s minds may touch. As I wandered in that gray and featureless plain, your thoughts touched mine and I felt you clearly, like hand clasping hand in the darkness.”
    “Are you in darkness?”
    “Where my body is being kept, I am in darkness, yes. But in the gray world, I can see you, even as you can see me. That is how I saw your flying machine crash and knew it would fall into the ravine. And I saw you lost in the snowstorm and I knew you were near to this herdsman’s hut. I came here now to show you where food was kept if you had not found it.”
    “I found it,” Carr said. “I don’t know what to say. I thought you were a dream and you’re acting as if you were real.”
    It sounded again like soft laughter. “Oh, I assure you, I am just as real and solid as you are yourself. And I would give a great deal to be with you in that cold, dark herdsman’s hut, since it is only a few miles from my home, and as soon as the storm subsides I could be free and by my own fireside. But I—”
    In the middle of a word, she was abruptly gone, winked out like a breath. For some strange reason this did more to convince Carr of her reality than anything she had said. If he’d been imagining her, if his subconscious mind had hallucinated her, as men cold and alone and in danger did hallucinate strangers from their deepest wishes, he’d have kept her there; he’d at least have let her finish what she was saying. The fact that she’d vanished in the middle of a phrase tended to indicate not only that she had really been there, in some intangible sense, but that some unknown third party had a superior power over her comings and goings.
    She was frightened, and she was sad. I am very much alone, and even a stranger is better than no companion .
    Cold and alone on a strange and unfamiliar world, Andrew Carr could understand that very well. It was just about the way he felt himself.
    Not that she’d be all that bad as a companion, if she were really here . . . .
    Not a great deal of satisfaction out of a companion you can’t touch. And yet . . . even though he couldn’t lay a hand on her, there was something surprisingly compelling about the girl.
    He’d known lots of women, at least in the Biblical sense. Known their bodies and a little about their personalities, and what they wanted out of life. But he’d never got close enough to any one of them that he felt bad when the time came for them to go off in opposite directions.
    Let’s face it. From the minute I saw this girl in the crystal, she’s been so real to me that I was willing to turn my whole life around, just on the off chance that she was something more than a dream. And now I know she’s real. She’s saved my life once: no, twice. I wouldn’t have lasted long out in that blizzard. And she’s in trouble. They’re keeping her in the dark, she says, and she doesn’t even know for sure where she is .
    If I come out of this alive, I’m going to find her, if it takes me the rest of my life . Lying wrapped in his fur coat and blanket, in a musty heap of straw, alone on a strange world, Carr suddenly realized that the change in his life, the change that had begun when he