I will put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart...
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Watson, put down your notebook. I hardly think you'll need it now."

This admonishment, slightly edged with good-natured humour, could only have been delivered in one familiar voice--that of my friend, Sherlock Holmes. When I looked up from my notebook, startled out of my idle scribbling, the detective was kneeling on the carpet, watching me with stormy grey eyes.

"Now, would you deign to come and help me clean up this mess?" she asked, indicating the shattered glass of brandy that lay upon the carpet.

"Let me finish writing this sentence, Holmes."

"You sound like a petulant child. Worse than the memories of my own youth, actually."

I completed the word I had been writing and replaced the cap on my pen. "That seems hard to believe."

"Perhaps, but it's accurate. I was quite the unholy terror until I settled in at university."

I laughed despite myself, for there had always been a mischevious streak in Holmes, which had exasperated and annoyed many--myself included.

"Aha. You smile, sir, but I assure you that I really was!" She shifted into a sitting position, and drew her knees up to her chin, her grey eyes flickering impishly. "Even after I did settle, there was that little matter with Victor Trevor's evil terrier... but, let that pass. We have some work to do."

I set aside my pen and notebook and slowly began to shift from the sofa to the floor, a task made somewhat difficult by the cramps that had taken hold in my muscles after having slept sitting upright.

Naturally, this did not escape Holmes's notice, and a frown of concern creased her aquiline features. "All right there, Watson?"

"Just feeling my age, thanks."

"I'm so sorry to hear that. Would you like something for it?"

"Don't tell me you're turning into Florence Nightingale, Holmes."

She chuckled. "God forbid. No, Watson, I'm simply concerned--you look a little stiff is all. Perhaps you'd rather go out and stretch before we start?"

"I'm all right, Holmes. Truly."

"Well." She shrugged her thin shoulders, and then leaned back, reaching into one of her dressing-gown pockets. "Then you'll have to excuse me while I reach the same condition."

For a moment, I was puzzled by her response; then I saw her slender fingers extracting a slender morocco case from the pocket, and my heart sank.

"Surely not now, Holmes."

"Even now, Watson." Without looking up at me she extracted the vial and syringe from the box. "Please don't start this argument."

"That stuff is poison."

"Mmm-hmmm."

"Holmes, you're not taking this seriously! Ever since I met you, I have thought it the saddest thing imaginable to see a ma--a woman of your intellect destroying her talent--"

"Oh, come off it, Watson!" Her grey eyes flashed up to meet mine, furious. "You've never known what it's like to be always aware of connections, of ideas. To thirst for the mediocrity that is happy and innocent, knowing nothing of passion or agony. I've watched you find contentment in an ordinary life; I've seen you fall in love. There have been times, Watson, when I wished I could simply shear away this damnable intelligence. That I could be unaware of this great shadow above my head, the whisper that points out truth."

I sat in awed silence.

"But, Holmes," I managed at last, "what you said to me in Switzerland, about justice..."

"...I meant every word of, I assure you. But sometimes, Watson, one wants the weight off one's shoulders. I am not Atlas; I cannot do everything. And I cannot ignore my own difference." A fleeting smile crossed her lips as she rolled up her shirt-cuff. "At times I regard my profession, and my masquerade, as art forms. Some artists can separate their souls from humanity; others want to plunge in and feel as well as observe. I belong to the second category."

"Then the cocaine...?" I asked, softly.

She nodded. "It is the simplest of joys. I become oblivious and, by that token, truly contented."

I leaned back, limply, shocked beyond expression. As a writer I had always been aware that my desire to write set me apart from the rest of the population, but I had never known that such desires could run so strongly in any person's soul. I had always been contented to be a little below the level of genius, as long as I could observe it in others; I had never suspected that the situation might be reversed.

A soft sigh brought me out of my thoughts; Holmes had finished with the injection and had pressed a handkerchief to the spot to stop the little bleeding.

For a brief moment the curve of her arm seemed to play some note upon my spirit, and I felt a chill crawl up my back. But the thought was banished quickly enough, and I set myself to picking up the glass shards upon the carpet.

The cocaine seemed to have put her in better spirits, and she began to speak, languidly, about one of the new pieces she was attempting to learn for the violin.

"While I was travelling I happened to stop by Moscow," she said, "and picked up some of the most extraordinary sheet music. My Russian was decidedly not faultless, but, thank God, the language of music is internationally understood."

"I suppose you joined an orchestra?"

"Very good, Watson! You certainly are learning the trick. Perhaps you'd like to tell me what I played?"

"First violin?"

"Second. But only while their usual violinist was ill. Ah, Watson, those Russian composers... what beauty, what misery in their music! I think, perhaps, even you might weep, if you could hear Tchaikowsky." She smiled and closed her eyes, a dreamy expression coming across her aquiline features. "God, what I wouldn't give to have written one of the songs from 'Sleeping Beauty'."

"I never thought of you as the fairy-tale sort."

"Well, I am no Prince Charming."

"More like Princess Civil," I retorted. "If that."

And then an alarming thing happened.

Without warning, Holmes broke into laughter--laughter unlike her little, customary chuckles; this was a great, expansive peal of sound, devoid of her usual smoky irony. Ringing. Bell-like. True.

I felt a shiver run up my back, and my hand slipped.

I hardly felt the cut--just a slight brushing sensation, as of a feather's light touch, and then suddenly I realised that there was a warm and stinging wetness on my hand. I smelled something faintly metallic, and when I turned my palm up, I barely managed to suppress a gasp.

"Watson? Are you--" Holmes frowned for a moment, and then her silvery eyes strayed to the bright scarlet which was now covering my hand.

The colour suddenly drained from her aquiline features, and within an instant both her long white hands were wrapped around my injured one. "Good God, I told you to be careful!"

"Holmes, it's all right--"

"You don't need another wound. Here, let me get you something for it."

"For Heaven's sakes, Holmes, I am a doctor."

"Yes, and I'm unforgivably selfish. I'll be right back."

She rose and, further admonishing me not to move, moved with a quick stride towards the bathroom. I sat, as if rooted to the spot, trying without much success to keep back the shivers that still trickled up and down my spine. How could I possibly allow such thoughts to enter my head? It was ridiculous, totally insane--and yet undeniably strong.

I made one more attempt to clear my mind before Holmes re-entered the room, this time carrying a dampened handkerchief. Swiftly she knelt before me, and again took my wounded hand in both her own.

"Now hold still... I needn't tell you this will hurt, so..."

And she began to clean out the wound.

Now, with the razor-edge of pain hovering at the edge of my senses, I found myself acutely aware of the slight movements in her thin and spindly hands--how the muscles, tense and taut, were continually shifting; how the faint beating of her pulse, as quick and businesslike as her springing stride, was in almost perfect rhythm with my own. Looking up, I found my eyes involuntarily sweeping the pale curve of her neck; in this light, though she looked no less masculine, I perceived a marble-like smoothness to her skin, an almost polished texture I found myself longing to touch and test for warmth.

With a jolt I realised exactly what I had been thinking; I am certain I flushed in embarrassment and surprise. Yet, unaware though she might be--and as startling as the thought had been to me--I found I could not force my mind away from it. The delicacy that rested in those strong fingers as they wiped away the blood, the tension that pulled at her aquiline features as she concentrated on the wound--some strange warm force seemed to be weaving all my attention and desire into a cord, which wrapped itself about her slender waist and long arms and threatened to loop around my own throat and strangle me at any moment.

"There," she said, suddenly, and I realised she had made a bandage with her handkerchief. "That ought to do it. But I'm afraid you'll probably have a scar."

I murmured something to the effect that I didn't mind, but in truth, I hardly cared about my hand. While her thin smile floated in my field of vision, I knew I would take away more from this encounter than a simple scar--no matter whether or not I could bear it.

For now I understood what she meant about wishing for an oblivious mind, and I knew that for a long time to come I would wish that this one connection had never presented itself. And no amount of cocaine or music would make me forget the exquisite, terrible moments I had just experienced.