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"This is you, Garwain!" she cried out. "This is you, brought from your grave, the body from which you departed, wandering astray, confounded and confused! This is your mortal body, your infant self, and from this self you have roamed lost and feeding upon Quinn! See this tiny form, this is your form, Goblin!"

"Liar!" came his voice, and he rose up on this side of the altar, right before us, my doppelg?nger down to the buttons, raging at her and trying to snatch the tiny black shriveled infant out of her arms, but she wouldn't let it go and she roared at him:

"You are smoke and mirrors, you are air and will and theft and terror. Go where God will send you! Lord, I beg you, take this servant, take him as you will!"

His image wavered. He was trying to fuse with her. She was resisting him with all her power. I could see him faltering and fading. He grew pale and large and billowing in the firelight. What did the fire feel like to him?

Once again, he rose high above us, spread out above us like a canopy.

I raised my voice: "Dear God, who made Julien, Gravier, Patsy, take him, take this orphan! Grace, Alice, Rose, come for this doomed wanderer. Add your prayers to ours. "

"Yes," cried Merrick, clutching the infant corpse tight to her breast, "Julien, Gravier, Thomas -- I beg you, come from your eternal rest and take this child into the Light, take him!"

"I repudiate you, Goblin, now and forever!" I called out. "I do so before God! Before Pops, before all my ancestors, before the angels and the saints! O Lord hear my prayer!"

"O Lord, hear our cry!" pleaded Merrick.

She lifted the baby up, and I saw with my own eyes a living child! I saw its limbs move, I heard its mewling! I heard its crying!

"Yes, Goblin!" she cried out. "Your infant self, yes! Come into this form. Come into your rightful flesh! I adjure you, come as I command you. "

High above the fire the giant image of Goblin shivered, horrific and weak and confused, and then plunged, plunged into the crying infant. I saw it. I felt it. I said in my heart: Amen, brother, amen.

There came a terrible wailing and once again the branches of the oak trees thrashed in the wind.

And then there was utter stillness except for the fire. There was a stillness so total that it seemed the Earth had stopped turning.

Only the fire roared.

I realized I was on the grou

nd. An invisible force had knocked me down.

I was seeing a brilliant light but it wasn't hurting my eyes. It was nothing short of magnificent and it was falling down on the fire, and yet something terrible was happening in the fire.

Merrick had gone into the fire. Merrick had climbed up on the altar and had gone into the fire with the baby and they were both burning. They were burning -- unspeakable, irrevocable -- but in the pure celestial Light I saw figures moving, thin figures -- the gaunt unmistakable figure of Pops in the Light, and with him an infant, a tiny infant toddling along, and there also was Merrick, Merrick and a small old woman, and I saw Merrick turn and raise her hand as if to say farewell.

I lay transfixed by the Light, by its immensity and the undeniable sense of love that seemed part of its nature.

I think that I cried.

Then slowly the great wealth of blessed Light faded. Its warmth and its glory went away. The heat of the night closed around me. The Earth was the lonely Earth again.

Rediscovering my limbs and how to use them I rose to my feet and realized Lestat had pulled Merrick's body from the fire and was sobbing and trying to put out the flames that were consuming her, beating at her burning figure with his coat.

"She's gone, I saw her go," I said.

But he was frantic. He wouldn't listen to me. The flames were finally smothered, but half her face was burnt away and most of her torso and her right arm. It was a dreadful sight. He slit his wrist, he let the thick, viscid blood pour down on her body, but nothing happened. I knew what he wanted to happen. I knew the lore.

"She's gone," I said again. "I saw her go. I saw her in the Light. She waved farewell. "

Lestat stood up. He wiped at his blood tears and at the soot on his face. He couldn't stop crying. I loved him.

We lifted her remains and put them on the altar together. We built up the fire and it wasn't long before the body was ashes, and we scattered them. And the fire and Merrick's body were no more.

The humid night was quiet and calm and the cemetery lay in darkness.

Lestat cried.