I must have shouted the words as I ran for I heard the words ringing in my ears. Then fell on me as I ran Delirium, or was it the past.
I was in the forest now, the vague light was filled with shapes. A form sprang at me, it was Von Lichtenberg. I struck at it and passed on.
The iron man of the bell tower struck at me with his hammer, I seized him and he turned to mist.
And now a form was running beside me trying to hold me back, it was Gretel, she tripped me up with her foot. I fell, she vanished and her foot turned to the root of a tree. And the tree turned to Vogel.
He passed me as I ran outstripping him, and from the darkness before me now broke a form, it was little Carl.
We were in the forest of Lichtenberg, the lake before us. I cried to him to stop. For only answer came the splash of the water, the cry of a child—the gasping of a person drowning in the dark.
Death lay in the water. I plunged to meet him and seized a struggling form.
But the form was not the form of Death, but the form of a woman living and sweet.
A moment later and I would have missed by all eternity the love that had been waiting for me since the beginning of Time.