It was required, somehow, that the teacher of such men should himself be a great man. So the great men delighted in honoring Julian. He was housed in a room in one of their palaces, and stuffed with creature comforts like a fattened capon. His only duty was to play the sage for his successors, to cackle wise inanities for them. To sing the praises of the golden present, and make the darkest secrets of a dark age more tenaciously obscure.
Futurity could never allow the past to betray it again.
I woke up feeling itchy, and started to scratch my face before I’d quite gotten my eyes open.
Oh, no. As soon as I was conscious, I balled my hand up and made a fist. It’s a trained reflex, one I’ve acquired through long practice. You can’t scratch an itch with a fist. You can rub hard, but your knuckles don’t set off the histamine complexes, making them worse than they already are. You won’t tear open tender skin and start off all those nasty secondary infections.
I sat up and balled the other fist. I was itching, all right. All over. But I didn’t have a rash. Wonder of wonders, when I took a look at myself, my skin was a nice even pink everywhere. There were faint welts where I’d begun to scratch, but nothing more.
What on Earth?
As I examined myself, the itch intensified. It traveled. Into my mouth. My ears. My … well, never mind where. Let’s just say that all of my mucosal tissues were staging a riot, and for no apparent reason.
Not knowing what else to do, I got up. Tea, I told myself. Chamomile. Or white. White tea is soothing, and there’s nothing in it that sets me off. I get mine from a guy in Sri Lanka, who grows the stuff without pesticides. He packs the tea in plain old-fashioned wax paper, inside a tin. No plastics, no dyes or preservatives. No excess packaging, covered with ink and shellac and God knows what else.
I padded through the house, careful to keep my hands off my hide. Just walking, however, set off a fresh round of itching, this time on the balls of my feet. Couldn’t quite keep myself from doing a circular Sufi dance across the coarse black fur that serves as a carpet, letting the friction of skin against wiry hair turn the prickling heat into definite inflammation.
