(stanza by Loreena McKennitt-from The Old Ways off The Visit, 1992.)

Night washed over the world in a restless murmur-livening senses to the tranquil tapestry of jasmine and rose-scented breezes.  Shutters open, the fresh current billowed silk-shot linen curtains into a gentle flutter, allowing moonlight to filter through in dancing patterns of washed-out pearl and shadow, striking the sill and glancing across the plush woolen carpet, creeping toward the outlines of the four-post bed.  Along arbor paths below their bedroom, a tangled shelter of limbs created from the twining branches of poplar and cypress rustled in leafy fervor, intimate communion with the night-time hush.

On his stomach, stretched with one arm over his head, he caught glimpses of the blue-black sky peeking between restive curtains, littered with stars, diamonds tossed onto the void of midnight. 

A creek of ancient wood, the pillows shifting with the movement of redistributed weight made him turn, raise himself amid the cushions to gaze down at the form of his wife, stretched out next to him.

"It's been so long since you were home.  I've forgotten what it is to share a bed again," her sigh in his ear, the tickle of her muted, velvety mirth as she collapsed back into the pile of goose-down and wool.

She was the very picture of seductive playfulness; arm crooked behind her head, hair a riotous splay of midnight waves falling across olive-toned skin, a sheet loosely pulled to cover the tops of full breasts, their dusky nipples just perceptible beneath thin fabric, like dark jewels under a layer of web and snow.  A mockery of modesty, one long supple leg was uncovered, dangling off the bed's side, fabric of the light sheet gathered to where it bordered the swelling flourish of her hips, hiding her torso, and molding along the lush line of her belly. 

"Discreetly reassuring me of your fidelity?" His chuckle, warm and affectionate belied the impression of his words.  

She merely laughed fuller, the husky richness of her humor, her smile, slow, enticing him with her delicious body and dark irises full of mystery and promise.

Reaching toward him, her finger traced along his mouth, feather-soft, sending a shiver of delight down his spine.  In breathless reaction, he caught the digit tenderly between his lips, nibbling smooth skin stretched across slender bone with flicking tongue and moist kisses, tickling the inside of her palm.

Her breathing quickened under the teasing ministration of his caressing mouth, tossing obstructing bedclothes aside, her naked body displayed before him in the shafted moonlight.  With a stifled moan he moved over her, feeling the fertile curves of her flesh, warm as a sun-ripened peach, slide along his skin, giving him recess to explore the rich voluptuousness beneath him.

Hands entwined, he drew her arm up, exposing the paler, under-skin of her well-fleshed limbs, caressing with lips the sensitive areas of her elbow, trailing with delightful pecks, wet swirls of his questing tongue, the path just below her under-arm, to the indent of ribs.  Shuddering with pleasure under his touch, her sigh expressed the desire and longing they each were so long without, his extended absences governed by the demands of Empire and State.

Her skin pimpled as the cool zephyr of disembodied fingers coming through the window touched her flesh, simultaneously teasing the hairs at the back of his neck.

Or, perhaps, as he preferred to think, it was his palm, drawing a seductive path down the valley of her abdomen, her breath in his ear quickening, a warm shush against his neck, matching the gentle rise and fall of her belly where his hand trailed. 

This isn't real, Maximus-Artos...

Disquiet with that whispered murmur, brushed away in the rustle of leaves outside, deliberately loosing himself in the swell of her breasts, soft and pliant beneath his mouth, his massaging hands.  Teasing one nipple to awakening arousal, tongue swirling over the textured skin of her areola, an aaahhh of welling passion rose from her parted lips. Teeth gently working over the yielding, ripe buds, his finger slid between her thighs, seeking the damp crevasse of her womanhood.  She was wet with desire, hot in an arousal mirroring the insistent throb of his loins.

Deft hands gripped his hair in sudden ecstasy while he explored with leisurely grace, her most intimate center of femininity--damp silk, the texture of moist flower-petals to his touch.  Her fingers tangled tighter in his thick and bristling outgrowth, a soft limpid sigh welling from her throat.

Eyes closed, velvet musk absorbed his senses where he traced a teasing path of quick, light kisses between her breasts, journeying with his tongue and lips, upward, to the delicate groove shaped by her collarbone, continuing on to the baby-fine skin of her neck, and the final treasure of her ardent mouth.  Her breath, soft and urging, was the ephemeral touch of sea-breeze cast upon golden warmth, sent delicious tingles along his flesh, weaving a rhythmic spell into the silver moonlight.

Moonlight blocked, from one impassioned breath to the next, by the slithering gloom of a crouched, shadowed silhouette, shattering the veneer of enchantment with a ruckus of flapping wings, and a harsh squawk. 

Another screech and the discordant sound fractured the rapturous thrill of his wife's lips, her mint-scented breath where she sucked, nibbling along his neck.

"Damned buzzard!" he whispered vehemently, eyes flying open to scowl over at the vulture-like silhouette alight on the window-sill.  The grisly crow stretched its wings in a last grotesque settling, beady eyes glinting evilly through the darkness when it cocked its head to examine the entwined figures upon the bed. 

"It keeps cawing like that, and Marcus will be wakened," annoyance indicated by his groping through the darkness for an errant sandal, some object in arm's reach to chuck at the bird.

His wife's hands, soft and insistent, reached out to his face, turning him back so he gazed down, momentarily puzzled by the inexplicable melancholy in her eyes.

"This isn't real, Maximus...Artos," her voice laced with the night-leaden air.

"Blasted bird!" he muttered purposefully once more, surrendering his futile rummage for a make-shift missile, settling for a final, baleful glare at the huddled form on the ledge.  With those words, he determined to crush this sudden, disquieting impression of unreality, deliberately turning away from the creature's menacing shadow. 

The distraction offered by his wife's touch, drawing him down once more to feel her lips upon his, was enough incentive to shut his eyes to the sadness glimmering in the deep wells of her searching gaze.

"This is a dream, beloved," her words mangled by the press of his mouth, his lips working over hers.  

Lips no longer full and lush, sweet as ripened cherries, but dried into the ruin of desiccated earth, cracked and roughened. Two souls sharing the same vital air, the scent of mint and lavender, her caressing breath, was suddenly contaminated by a putrid stench of decay.

He gagged, eyes flying open in surprise, a subsequent rising horror, retching on the overwhelming tide of sickening-sweetness rapidly dissolving the magic enrapturing him.

"Holy gods!" he cried out, scuttling back off the bed in a flurry of flying sheets and pillows, trying to escape the nightmare before him.  She sat up, following in the wake of his retreat, reaching toward him, crawling across the mattress in a revolting parody of entreaty--a raw, bleeding corpse revealed by the forgotten bed-linens. 

"Maximus," she pleaded in an arid voice, the flesh of one extended arm peeling like rotted meat, dangling tendrils of gore dripping from blackened, charred bones, her fingers hooked into skeletal talons.

The distant stench of burning flesh, smoke smothering the flower-graced air rolled over like a wave, forcing him to his knees as he doubled over in paralyzing nausea.

Mother, have mercy, his terrified mind gibbered, unable to look upon the burned, emaciated effigy of his wife where she was kneeling at the edge of their bed like a suppliant in a temple of death. 

Mastering himself, he rose to his feet, determined to look unflinchingly upon her.

Only to feel his gorge nearly overwhelm him, the nightmarish apparition staring down at him, covered in fresh blood, fragments of putrefied skin, friable, hanging off in strips.

The lush abundance of her hair was scalded away, leaving her scalp patched and balding, larvae-white and sparse as a mangy cat.  Her cadaverous arms still reached out, begging for his answering embrace, the skin of her face leeched of all color, grayish-blue, sunken into death's rictus but for her eyes, gleaming endless misery at his rejection.

A wailing wind lashed the curtains into a frenzied dance, the light from beyond spilling through the room, her ruined form blurred by a mirage of orange-red fire fused with midnight, smoke and ash seeping across the ledge in a vaporous, suffocating tide.   

His brain registered a new surge of terror, stealing the breath from his lungs, momentarily dampening thoughts of his wife's animated corpse.

"Marcus!" he panicked, racing across the room to the door.

"This is a dream, Maximus!  This is not real!" Urgent were her words, and they froze him, hand tensed on the door-bar, ready to fling open the massive barrier of oak and bronze.

"Marcus is in a place where no earthly flame could do him harm!"  

And fit into place that knowledge he'd been missing until now, coming back to him all at once, overpowering for the memory he'd tried so hard to bury.

This isn't real, the thought echoed.  I need to wake up. 

The realization didn't extinguish the sense of wrongness.  

Skin crawling in revulsion, the muscles of his back and arms tensed.  He wasn't sure he could turn around to face the hideous thing on his bed--the thing he'd held with impassioned fervor, carnal intimacy with the dead.

Closing his eyes, he faced back slowly, each shuddering breath agonized, sounding like a dying man's, fighting the urge to vomit or weep.

The whipping gale driving into the room seared his skin, howling like lost souls wandering the plains of hell.

Peeking reluctantly, he kept his eyes averted toward the window so as not to look on her fully. 

And almost choked, then, in awed disbelief, falling back against the solid door.  

Stunned, mind reeling from the barrage of images, his heart hammered against the cage of his chest, resolutely taking in his wife's form restored, in that hellish, fiery light, to her seductive, earthy beauty.

Selene.

She rose from their bed, moving, nearly gliding across the paces separating them, to stand before him.

"You're no longer alive.  I know this," his voice raw with pain.

Yet her flesh was as warm and solid as in life, placing her palms about his cheeks, wiping at the tears, unbidden, crawling in angry grief, to soak his beard, drip into her cupped hands.

"You must wake-up, Maximus," she urged. 

Her eyes were grave, studying him, dark, shining with that enigmatic mystery of the Otherworld.  

"You can't stay here, or you'll die."

"Is that why-", he stumbled, voice catching, working through his too recent revulsion. "-why you made yourself into that?" glancing toward their bed. 

The image of her burned violated body was forever singed into memory, how she'd looked when he found her, gutted, swinging next to his son's crucified, broken little corpse.

Her eyes shone with her own unshed tears, wiping away the trailing drops continuing to scorch his cheeks, his silent sorrow. 

She looked toward the window briefly, seemingly alerted by a sound inaudible to his mortal ears. 

Strangely, the crow had disappeared, unnoticed, another transient element of this illusory world. 

"Please, Maximus-" her words full of sudden alarm, buried by her crushing, desperate kiss. "You-must-waken!" tearing her mouth from his in a gasping sob to grip his face between her hands, eyes burning, intense. 

"I loved you, my soul, but the river Lethe divides our worlds.  One day I may be your guide, but for now, I am your sentry.  You cannot cross this road-I will not let you cross this road--no matter how golden-ripe the fields of your home."

He tried to hold her, keep her in his arms a moment more. "I don't underst-", but she shook off his hands, unbarring the door behind him, pushing it open to a yawning, cavernous gloom beyond.

"You must wake.  Now!"

"Why-" he strangled out when she pushed him back through the doorway.

Arms flailing, he teetered on the edge, trying to reach out to her, but she stepped back, making no move to rescue him.

"NO!" he screamed, defiant, losing the battle to the gravitational rip-pool of darkness beneath, thrashing, falling finally into the great morass.

"NO! SELEEENE!"  The word tore from this throat, full of mortal fury, the very resistance of his soul as he tumbled into the engulfing shadow, head over heels, weightless. 

Weightless--and heavy as a plunging boulder-his last vision of her flooded his mind; her eyes, pools of grief, black and depthless, accepting the inevitable eternity dividing their worlds.

I loved you... 

His parting thought, or hers, there was no knowing.  

Only this primal fear, plummeting down, down into the vastness of oblivion-despair rising, a great maw engulfing any lingering trace of joy from his being.