… One snowflake drifting down a well, a well without waters, without walls, without bottom, without top. Now take away the snowflake and consider the drifting…

After a timeless time, Anubis’ voice comes once again: “Do you know the difference between life and death?”

“ ‘I’ am life,” says Wakim. “Whatever you give or take away, if ‘I’ remain it is life.”

“Sleep,” says Anubis, and there is nothing to hear him, there in the House of the Dead.

When Wakim awakens, he finds that he has been set upon a table near to the throne, and he can see once more, and he regards the dance of the dead and he hears the music to which they move.

“Were you dead?” asks Anubis.

“No,” says Wakim. “I was sleeping.”

“What is the difference?”

“ ‘I’ was still there, although I did not know it.”

Anubis laughs.

“Suppose I had never awakened you?”

“That, I suppose, would be death.”

“Death? If I did not choose to exercise my power to awaken you? Even though the power was ever present, and ‘you’ potential and available for that same ever?”

“If this thing were not done, if I remained forever only potential, then this would be death.”

“A moment ago you said that sleep and death were two different things. Is it that the period of time involved makes a difference?”

“No,” says Wakim, “it is a matter of existence. After sleep there comes wakefulness, and the life is still present. When I exist, I know it. When I do not, I know nothing.”

“Life, then, is nothing?”

“No.”

“Life, then, is existing? Like these dead?”

“No,” says Wakim. “It is knowing you exist, at least some of the time.”

“Of what is this a process?”

“ ‘I’ ” says Wakim.

“And what is ‘I’? Who are you?”

“I am Wakim.”

“I only named you a short while ago! What were you before that?”