He looked unreal, just as in my dreams of the past months, as if carved from volcanic glass. His amber eyes pinned me with fierce intelligence—and satisfaction? Tilting his gleaming head, he seemed to be asking a question. I still didn’t know the answer.
“This is a dream,” I said out loud. “This is just a new form of the same damn nightmare.”
I wasn’t naked, though, and not in that bathing chamber. I fervently wished to stay clothed and his jaw parted slightly, revealing a glimpse of white fang, as if he found me amusing.
And there I was, frozen, forever waiting for the attack.
My terror transformed into abrupt rage.
The fury beat against the inside of my forehead. I hated that damn Dog. Stalker Dog. Clearly I had gone over the edge into complete insanity, here in Disney Ireland with Stalker Dog and no birds. And now my wishes were coming true? Fine! Give me some singing birds with my fantasy brook and nightmare Dog!
The Dog’s jaw snapped shut, ears lifting. We stared at each other across the bright water, which seemed to laugh with storybook joy, oblivious to the creatures around it. The stream’s chuckles were abruptly drowned by a crescendo of singing birds. Birds filled the skies and trees, shrieking song. I clapped my hands over my ears and ducked my head as robins, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, even parrots swooped down, around, darkening the skies.
My stomach sank in horror. I’d done this. Claws caught my hair. A beak scratched one arm as a mynah and crow attacked each other.
The Dog still sat on the opposite bank—I saw him in the breaks of the flights of screaming birds, like a fog bank shifting and revealing small glimpses. A bubble seemed to surround him, the birds parting in their wild passage as water around a boulder.
He stilled and gathered, as if he drew shadows from the woods behind him. His eyes darkened to a fire-orange—the sparking flames of them bored through the birds between us. His hackles rose, haunches bunching as his body tensed. The coal-black lips pulled back again, but in a snarl, teeth somehow sharper-looking than before.
The attack, at last.
A low growl spiraled from his body, a sub-audible vibration, a keening wind that at first seemed to be part of the cacophonic bird calls, then rose to a sharper thunder that shook me. That shook everything.
The birdsong scaled to a single banshee wail, unbearable in intensity. The thunder and keening chorus became a ululating lamentation that I felt might break my heart.
Then was gone.
I cautiously opened the eyes I hadn’t remembered closing. Even the brook’s babbling had ceased. It, too, was gone.
The Dog stood an arm’s length in front of me. He loomed a good half-a-head above me, where I was still kneeling in the pool of my black skirt. We were the antipode of the virgin and the unicorn. My already straining heart thumped with the tension.
I thought about wishing him gone.
He leaped.
I screamed.
My hands flew up like the frightened birds as his teeth buried in my throat, launching me backward. I braced to die. Being torn apart by a wild animal had always seemed the worst possible death to me. I waited for the tearing pain, wondering how long I’d stay conscious and aware—something I always wondered when I read those horrific news stories—but found myself still pinned under steel jaws while I sobbed.
I fought. Frantic. Shredding myself against him. The Dog pinned me, a relentless strength, a furnace of heat and muscles under glossy fur. Tears ran hot over my cheeks and down my neck.
A panicked shriek bubbled up through the sobs, my chest billowing with it, but the Dog only sank down tighter, stopping my voice, my breath.
A sweet fragment of blue beckoned me, past his great obsidian head. Wishes. I could wish for rescue in this crazy place. I focused on the wish, but the Dog growled softly and closed his jaws slightly more. Stars sparked at the edges of my eyes.
“Please…” I tried to choke out, part sob, part whimper.
Blood-dark gathered at the edges of my vision, seeping in, blurring the circle of blue sky above, then drowning it in blackness.
Chapter Three
In Which I Am Nullified
I awoke to stone walls.
My throat screamed. When I tried to swallow, it seared like the worst strep infection on the face of the earth. Or wherever the hell I was, since I was clearly still Elsewhere. I wasn’t dead, at least, unless being dead sucked more than I’d imagined. My contact lenses were glued to my eyeballs, my body was one giant bruise, and the pain in my neck echoed dully through every joint.
Peripheral vision told me I was lying on some sort of bed, on top of a deep blue coverlet. The gray stones of the walls rose to a ceiling high enough to gather shadows. Misty light fell through a window behind my head and I could see a stripe of ashen sky through a window at my feet. The sill looked to be as deep as my forearm and so it cut off most of the view from this angle. There seemed to be no glass in it—nor in the one behind me, judging by the chill breeze coming from that way. It put me in mind of the ruined castles in Scotland. Only somewhat less desolate.
I shifted carefully, to see if moving would make me feel worse. It did. The pain in my throat consumed me. I reached up to touch it, wondering if I would feel a bloody gash, but the drag of chain on my wrist halted the movement. Turned out, both wrists and ankles were chained.
Charming.
I lifted my right hand, rolling my eyes as far as I could to see it better. A silver cuff circled my wrist, attached to what appeared to be several feet of chain running over the edge of the pallet. Attached to the bed or wall somewhere, probably with iron rings cemented into the stones. I kicked up one foot. Same arrangement on my ankle. They probably didn’t give me enough slack to sit up, though I wasn’t feeling excited about trying that yet. This was fast going from Disney Ireland to Wes Craven’s Ireland.
At least I wasn’t chained naked to this bed. As it was, I felt acutely aware of the pressure of the cuffs on my skin, the soft slink of the chains as I moved.
With a sigh, I closed my eyes, trying to focus my thoughts. Okay, this could be real or not real. Under “not real” fell all sorts of unpleasant alternatives like concussion, coma, psychosis. I could be locked in my own skull for whatever reason, my neurons struggling to make sense of random signals. Not a pretty prospect. And not one I could control.
The “real” alternative, while spectacularly bizarre, at least left me with some options. If I had moved into some kind of alternate reality or another planet, then most physical laws promised I could go back the other direction. Therefore the most logical thing to do was focus on getting back. Me and Dorothy.
Instead of ruby slippers, it seemed I had wishing as my tool. Time to suspend disbelief and try to master what resources I had.
Concentrating, I wished to be free of the chains. I pictured myself standing in the aspen grove at Devils Tower. Or the grassy hillside. I’d take my grassy hill over this. Or the brook. Not the Dog. Don’t think of the Dog. I wished harder.
“It won’t work, you know,” a bell-like voice said, tinseled with amusement at my expense.
My eyes flew open and my head snapped around in shock—or started to, before the waves of agony shot up through my throat and over my skull. Tears filled my eyes with blurry heat. A woman towered over me, not three feet away. Definitely not human. Like a European model, she stood slim in a way that spoke of a different bone structure. Curved cheekbones set off rose-petal lips and gilt almond eyes. Porno-blond hair fringed pixielike around her face. Tinker Bell, right on schedule.
“It won’t work,” she repeated, “because you have been nullified. No more romping about the countryside creating roads, moving perfectly good streams and importing exotic creatures.”
I opened my mouth but only a croak leaked through.
She smirk
ed, the expression shattering the loveliness of her face. “You can’t talk either, though that’s not the silver at work. Personally, I think he should have ripped your throat out like the obscenity you are, instead of just rendering you unconscious. But my judgments are not considered.” She made that sound like a crime against the order of the universe.
Nasty Tinker Bell thumped down a tray I hadn’t noticed on the ledge of the window, splashing liquid in a bowl. She yanked the chain attached to my right wrist and, before I could resist, dragged my hand above my head, looping the link over a hook. With my arm out of the way and holding the bowl in one hand, she sat on the bed, her unbelievably slim hip nudging mine, scooped up some of the liquid and held it to my lips.
Remembering my resolve not to eat or drink in this place, especially now that I was a prisoner, I clamped my lips together. I could at least avoid being drugged. Nasty Tinker Bell’s pretty golden eyes sparked. Turning the spoon, she let the liquid dribble over my mouth so that it ran down my cheeks, past my ears and pooled at the back of my neck to join the crusted mess of hair and various dried liquids there.
Careful not to touch the liquid on my lips, I looked directly at her porno prettiness. Fuck you, I thought.
I knew Tinker Bell couldn’t hear me but I felt better.
“Fine,” she snapped, her voice a little bell being rung too hard. Nasty Tinker Bell clearly understood at least the insult in my eyes. She lifted the bowl, with the clear intention of dumping it on my head.
“Enough,” a male voice said.
As if I’d ceased to exist, Tinker Bell blinked her eyes and regained her lovely self, face smoothing, shining once again in sunny elegance. Reboot and resume program. She gracefully stood and glided to the tray, set the bowl precisely in the center, lifted the tray and left the room without hesitation.
Booted footsteps crossed the room toward me. Act II, scene ii. Exit Nasty Tinker Bell, Enter God-Only-Knows-What-Now. My face was sticky with whatever the brothy stuff had been, my hair wet and fouled. I stank. I hurt. I was chained to a bed in a place so completely unknown I couldn’t begin to understand it. I tried to squeeze my legs closer together, but the chains seemed at the limit of their reach. The energy of my brief triumph evaporated, allowing tears to well up again.
Oh, please, please, please, do not cry. The threatening sting worsened. I closed my eyes and one tear leaked out. He stopped next to me, surveying me.
“You’re certainly a mess.” His wry voice was rich and smooth.
My eyes snapped open to glare at him through the blur. Fifty different smart remarks flew across my tongue, most along the lines that any failures of appearance on my part could be laid on the doorstep of someone besides myself. But even the buzz of the first word on my vocal chords brought searing agony. Relieved to have a legitimate reason for the tears, I almost welcomed the searing sensation.
“No, don’t try to talk—no one needs to hear what you have to say, anyway. Not that we can help it, since you think so loudly. And you have a decision to make. We have a quandary.” He began pacing, boots echoing against stone. “No one can heal you while you’re bound in silver and we can’t release you from the silver until you have yourself under control. Which will take a considerably long time—perhaps years of training—if you’re even able to accomplish it at all.”
I thought of the birds crashing in increasing cacophony with a small shudder.
“Exactly,” he confirmed. “And yes,” he said from the window behind my head where he seemed to be gazing out, “I can hear most of your thoughts—another reason to save trying to speak aloud.”
My stomach congealed in panic. Had he heard my secret thoughts? Don’t think of them, bury them deep, deep. Think of other things…like what? Think of home, think of Isabel. Isabel, my cat—Clive hated her. What would happen to her now? How could I not have thought of her until this moment? Abandoned, wondering why I never came home for her… And my mother—she’d be frantic. How long had I been gone? They could be all dead and buried, lost to me forever. The anguish racked me.
“Shh.” The man sat on the side of my bed now, heavier than Nasty Tinker Bell. He brushed the hair back from my forehead, then placed his long fingers over my brow and, with his thumbs, rhythmically smoothed along my cheekbones, wiping away the tears that now flowed freely.
I stifled a sob. I had cried more in the past day than I had in years. The sweeping along my cheekbones soothed me, melting warmth through my skull. The rhythm became part of my breathing. Deep breaths. Smooth, easy. The awful tightness in my chest gave a little sigh and released.
“Let’s try again, shall we?” The man pulled his hands away. I could hear him brush them against his thighs. Soup, tears and blood. Yuck.
My eyes cleared enough for me to see him. Ebony-blue climbed over half his face. The winding pattern of angular spirals and toothy spikes swirled out of his black hair on the left side of his face, placing sharp fingers along his cheekbone, jaw and brow. For a moment, the tattoo-like pattern dominated everything about him. Ferocious and alien.
Once I adjusted, I could see past the lines. His face echoed Tinker Bell’s golden coloring. He could be her fraternal twin, with those same arched cheekbones. But where she was golden dawn, he was darkest night. Midnight-blue eyes, that deep blue just before all light was gone from the sky, when the stars have emerged, but you could see the black shadows of trees against the night. He shared Tinker Bell’s rose-petal mouth, but with a curious edge to it. I suppose a man’s mouth shouldn’t remind one of a flower, and there was nothing feminine about this man. Where she wore the pink sugar roses of debutantes and bridal showers, his lips made me think of the blooms of late summer, the sharp-ruffled dianthus, edges darkening to blood in the heat. His bone structure was broader than hers but still seemed somehow differently proportioned, his arms hanging a bit too long from shoulders not quite balanced to his height. Inky hair pulled back from his face fell in a tail down his back. One strand had escaped to fall over his shoulder and I could see a blue shimmer in its silk sheen.
He arched his left eyebrow, blueness in the elegant arch, repeating the deep shades of the fanged lines around it.
“Shall we?” he repeated.
I stared at him. What was the question?
“Shall we discuss your situation? Attempt to use some mental discipline and think yes or no, out loud in your head.”
Mental discipline, my ass. Maybe.
Then he laughed, an open delighted sound that brought stars into the midnight of his eyes. “‘Maybe’ will work.”
I felt momentarily dazzled. Or simply lightheaded from the throbbing in my neck. Probably serious blood loss, too.
He stood and resumed pacing, hands folded behind his back. “I can’t hear every thought you’ve ever had. Think of it like a lake. The first foot or two is clear. If I row my little boat on the lake and look down, I can see fish that come to the surface—especially if they come up for food or even leap out of the water. Deeper than that, I have no idea what fish are in there unless I dive in, which I’m not going to do because who wants to get soaked in someone else’s lake water?”
He was lecturing.
“Yes, I often teach,” he replied. “There’s a good example—your observation that I was falling into a familiar lecture pattern swam up to the surface like a bright goldfish, right up to the bait I dangled in the water—which would be my words to you. The easiest thought to hear is a direct response to your own thoughts, vocalized or not. Especially fully and definitely formed as if you were about to vocalize it. Understand?”
Yes.
“No need to shout.” He paused to stand over me again, that eyebrow once again raised in patient disdain. “No need to put any push behind it, just bring the little fishy to the surface for me to see.”
Like I was a child.
“You are a child,” he
snapped—now I could see a flash of Tinker Bell. “Get that through your head right now. You’re a toddler with a nuclear warhead, and there are those who will not hesitate to kill you for it. Who even now clamor for your death.”
I gaped at him, not that my life being in danger was any surprise, but “nuclear warhead”? Were we in the actual world after all?
“Clear your thoughts, don’t panic,” he instructed, back in superior teacher mode. “Sort out what you want to ask me from the emotional response—you just about swamped my little rowboat with frantic toothy fish.”
Torn between laughing and grinding my teeth, both of which would probably hurt, I pictured a nuclear warhead on my grassy hill and put a question mark next to it. My instructor rolled his eyes, but I caught a glimpse of the stars that brightened the blue of his eyes when he was amused.
“Nice picture, but words, please. We’re not babies. Tut, tut—keep the anger out. Emotion only clouds the water.”
How did he understand my words anyway—was he speaking English?
“Aha!” He beamed at me, resuming his measured pace around the room. “Now there’s our logical girl! No, we do not speak the same language. If you concentrate on only the sound of my voice and not the sense, you’ll hear that you don’t understand the words I’m saying. But because vocalized words are like ducks on the surface of the lake, you are hearing the sense of my words, not the actual words themselves. You should be able to understand anyone here, except those who are insane or with very unclear thoughts. Also, someone who does not mean what they say will confuse you.”
Interesting. So maybe he didn’t say “nuclear warhead,” but something that I translated as my equivalent of whatever that would be here.
“Exactly. Congratulations, we can enter you into kindergarten now.”
I started lining up questions to ask, starting with Where am I and how did I get here? but he held up one long-fingered hand. Again, out of proportion, fingers just slightly too long for the hand, the whole hand just a little too long for the arm.
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