Seven was frightened. By now, Cyprus had disappeared so completely into the sound that he despaired of ever finding her again. And he felt himself congealing within it; its long tones turned his consciousness into something else, so that his own thoughts had the oddest weight to them. He was dropping into a deeper mode of feeling than he’d ever known.

“Cyprus, where are you?” he called frantically. Yet even his fright had a slow, heavy sureness about it, and his thoughts sounded drawn-out in his mind, as if they began in some ancient past, finally to emerge in a distant future. The syllables were so slow that by the time Cyprus heard them … if she ever did … he wouldn’t need her help, or he’d be beyond all help.

In fact, by the time the first syllable, Cy (of Cyprus) rang through his awareness, he himself had finished the thought that was still being expressed. The sounds in slow motion, deep and ponderous, kept going out from him at an ever slower rate. Again, each vowel was so heavy that Seven felt he could grab onto it for support.

The next sound, wh (from where) began and this time Seven could feel its weird mass, so without knowing how he did so, he clung to it. (For dear life, he said later to Cyprus, who laughed.) The sound was falling, and he with it, “whwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhere.”

“Souls are eternal,” Seven thought, so the sound couldn’t carry him beyond the time of his being into … And as he thought, the first vowel (of soul) started out, stretching, still only beginning to sound when he’d finished the sentence. All the while, the last thought—the cry for Cyprus—was still not yet half formed into sound; and the last syllable, ere (of where) went echoing all around him, while the “souls” from the last thought just began to thunder.

Finally Seven couldn’t think at all, bombarded by all those belated vowels and syllables. He still clung to the whwh (of where) that stretched outward, somehow continually constructing itself without finishing the word. It was a bridge of sound to which he hung, dazed, because now he realized that the sounds really had mass. And that mass grew and thickened. Each vowel and syllable, still sounding, fell. Yet a trail of mass built up behind them, and did not disappear. Instead, the sounds formed structures in space, or of space.

And the structures were aware.

They had come out of the sound into which Cyprus had disappeared.

For the first time, Seven wondered: Had he disappeared into the sound too? Was he a sound now, and his thoughts variations of what he was? It was all impossible, he thought (or tried to think), when the first syllable of the sentence instantly began its slow, ponderous, undeviating journey. He would have cried, but he didn’t know how to—and who knew what sounds that would make?