I kept it brief and to the point. Nothing to report yet. Children are not their own in most cases. No evidence yet of weapons or abductions.
It occurred to me, as I used that minor amount of power to deliver the report, that I had not felt the need to draw power from Luis for several long days, because I hadn’t expended much, except the slight outflow to maintain my current appearance. When I closed my eyes and focused on him, I felt the ghost of his presence, so far away. After hesitating for what seemed an eternity, I tugged just slightly on that anchor between us, and after a moment, felt a slight popping of my eardrums before I heard Luis’s voice echo in my head, Where are you? Everything okay?The reproduction of his voice was flawless, so good I could hear the concern in it.
Fine, I whispered back. It felt intimate, this contact, but left me wanting more. Aching for it, in fact. And you? Ibby?
We’re all right.
Any sign of trouble there?
Not so far. It’s quiet. If there is a traitor here, I can’t spot him. Cass, what the hell did you get yourself into?
This has to be done, I said. To safeguard Ibby. And you. And all of them. She’s here. She’s going to be vulnerable. I can do this, Luis. It’s our best chance.
Luis hesitated, then said, Probably useless to tell you to be careful, right?
I feel safe here, I said, before I could stop it. This time Luis’s hesitation was much longer.
Hang on,chica. You need to check yourself. You shouldn’t feel safe. You should be scared out of your mind, because you’renot safe. Don’t forget it, okay? This ain’t like you. You ’re not the joiner type.
I joined the Wardens, I said. I joined you.
Wardens ain’t there, Cass. I’m not there.
Will was, but I didn’t want to bring Will up at all, not even obliquely. I’ll be careful, I said. No one here seems dangerous.
It’s always that way, Luis said grimly, before somebody shoots you in the back. I know we didn’t part ways too well, Cass, but—but I love you. I care, all right? I care what happens to you. Please. Don’t let your guard down.
I won’t, I promised, but even as I said it, I knew I was lying to him. I already had let my guard down, and I didn’t know how to raise it again. I didn’t wantto raise it again.
I felt too safe here. Too much a part of things.
I fell asleep soon after, to the soft breathing and snoring of the women around me.
And Luis was right ... I should have taken more care.
I had slept deeply, and dreamlessly, for several nights, but that had turned out to be only a prelude to the nightmare—the silence before the start of the play.
I came out of the restful darkness to realize that I was standing on a rocky shelf on a mountain, with the frozen-cold wind rippling fragile cloth draperies around me, in the shades of storm clouds. My skin was ice-white, and my long hair whipped like a silk banner in the fierce gusts.
Across from me, on another mountain, stood a beautiful, exotic creature—human, yet somehow no longer holding to that shape, or to any shape. It flowed and flickered, drifted and snapped back to form. In the brief glimpses of a human figure, I saw a tall, slender woman with shining black hair, dressed in night-blue layers of padded silk. Her skin was flawlessly golden, and in her right hand she held a golden spear, with a black silk flag fastened to it. Black on black, a dimly seen darkness in a circular pattern almost hidden in the middle of the fabric.
It seemed that darkness was alive within the hissing, snapping fabric, and with every wave of the flag, it grew larger, and larger, until it broke free of the spear and flattened itself on the wind like a giant black bat, gliding in defiance of the prevailing currents.
“Sister,” she said to me, beneath the darkness cast by that growing, oddly sinister silken cover. The circular inky spot in the middle seemed to be turning now, a slow and relentless rotation. “I’ve been waiting for you to come to me. Where are you?”
“Can’t you find me?” I asked her. Pearl lost her human form, distorting into static, into a snarling beast, into a twisted, spiked tree, before regaining her beauty. “How do you know I haven’t come to you already?”
She smiled. The banner flapping above her grew and grew, and the wind grew with it, ripping at my frail clothing, pulling my hair with the hands of cruel, invisible children. “O sister, I know you too well. Your arrogance can’t be disguised. You shine like a fire in the night. But fire can be smothered.”
The banner suddenly snapped on the wind and arrowed toward me, wrapping me in folds of choking blackness, waves of nothing. I felt it pulling at me, like the sucking mouth of a leech, and power poured out of me like blood from a new wound. The banner had felt colder than the wind that had brought it. I could no longer see Pearl, but I could feel her, hear her, and the smothering power of her presence was ripping at the roots that held me to the world ...
But power rose up through those roots, rich and sweet and hot, burning red holes in the darkness, shredding it into rags. It was an overwhelming force, something I neither called nor commanded, but it saved my life.
The silky darkness that remained fell away from me and sought escape in the open cold air. I fell on the rocks, my face in my hands, my hair wild as a madwoman’s. The wind had torn away my clothes. My skin was bleached and abraded, and rich red blood flooded from the cuts to puddle on the stone beneath my bruised knees.
Pearl raised her spear, and the banner flooded in a silk river across the open space between us to wrap itself around the golden shaft, shrink, and become a mere flag again. Pearl stabilized in human form, as perfect and beautiful as when I had known her in our youth, so long ago.
“You haven’t lost your touch, sister,” she said. “But you will. The Mother isn’t as we knew her in the ancient days, awake and alive. And like her, we are not the same. Corruption can’t be unseen or unfelt; it can’t be healed, only endured.”
“Pearl,” I said, and raised my head to meet her eyes. “I’ll destroy you. I don’t wish to, but I will. Stop this before we have to raise our true forms.”
“Dream on, my sister,” Pearl said. “What I do must be done, to make way for what is to come. Only out of destruction can creation be born. Life in this place was an experiment, an accident of chemicals and light. It’s time to cease the struggle, and let darkness have its time. Who knows what new forms can come from that? Because it’s beautiful, my emptiness, the emptiness where you sent me so long ago. And it hungers, as life hungers. And it will feed, very soon.”
Under my knees, the shelf of rock suddenly broke loose, and my body tumbled out into the endless gulf, falling, spinning, falling ...
... until I crashed into my flesh, breathing hard, sweating and shaking.
All was darkness.
I no longer felt it was peace.
I waited for the death blow; surely, I thought, Pearl must have detected my presence so close to her seat of power. The next morning I spent tense and alert, waiting for any hint of an attack. My distracted behavior displeased the horses I was grooming, and I soon was the recipient of shoves and whinnies to remind me of my duties. The horses, at least, seemed to have no worries at all. I was midway through the last grooming when a group of eight children, wearing those four colors I had noted before, came for a barn visit, supervised by a woman in a red bandanna. I instantly sensed the tingle of power in her presence; Weather, I thought. The air seemed to taste of ozone around me. Of a surety, she was not Earth; the horses crowded closer around me, as if for protection. She gave me a close look, dismissed me as unimportant, and began tell the children about horses—a speech they blithely ignored, to pet the huge beasts and offer them apples.