Exhaustion

Looking up at the sky I try to deduce the time. I squint up into the sun until my eyes feel dry and I imagine I can feel my optic nerves cooking inside my skull, but I'm no wiser when I finally look away than I was a moment ago. I blink furiously, trying to wash away the ghostly blue dots that fill my vision now. Too many ghosts now, I can't imagine why I'd want to summon up more.

It's afternoon anyway. I can't remember how long it's been since I slept last but it's getting difficult to concentrate and I'm starting to feel cold. Not cold, really, but I'm getting the shivers, which is crazy since I can feel waves of heat rising out of the waist-deep grass all around me. It must be at least fourty degrees Celsius out here, probably closer to fourty-five, but my mind has somehow turned this into penetrating cold. I want to laugh but I'm afraid of where that might lead, after all, that couldn't be more than three or four steps away from total insanity, could it? Hard to say, but I don't want to take the chance.

I feel rain in the air, though -- or I imagine I do -- and all I can think is that when the night comes I hope I'm not out in it. I'm not even sure why, I guess so I don't freeze to death, but even that doesn't seem like such a terrible thing. I spend a moment thinking about this and turn to look behind me. The tree-line, several kilometers away now, stands silent and unbroken and implacable.

RUN!

I don't know where the command comes from, I'm almost certain I didn't hear it so it must be in my head, but it cuts through the layers of cotton wrapping my mind and goes directly to my legs. I run.

How much time passes then? I don't know. The rhussh-rhussh of the grass trying to trip me fills my world with a sonic wallpaper while wet, sobbing gasps underscore the futility of my attempted escape. My vision narrows, spectral forms close in on all sides. I close my eyes hard, summon up my strength for one final push. If I can just make it across the field and into the opposite forest I'm sure I can find a place to rest and regain my strength.

Then I'm floating; hovering in the air; weightless and utterly free. Then sharp stones are cutting into my cheek, electricity rips through my right eye and I convulse wildly, squealing and crying in pain and frustration and then I skid to a halt. The spectres have left but now I'm staring up at the clear blue sky through a pool of water.

Slowly my exhausted mind grasps what has happened. My perspective seems wrong because my left eye is filling up with tears and I'm lying on my back. My right eye, by contrast, has stopped sending any information my brain can interpret as visual data, only wave after wave of static that feels like -- but isn't quite -- like the feeling you get when you press too hard against your closed eyelid. I have a feeling I won't be making much use of that eye for a while.

The spectres return again, apparently having decided they had nothing better to do with their time, and this time they don't content themselves with lurking around the edges of my vision. They loom over me and the last thing I remember before the block out the sky entirely is the smell of rich earth and wild rye grass filling my nostrils.

* * *

My face is caked with something I hope is dirt when consciousness returns. My right eye is nothing but a dull ache now but my cheek has seen fit to take up the banner. It feels raw and cold and I almost reach up to touch it before deciding that I don't really want to know just yet. I try to sit up but a hard, sharp lump just below my sternum makes me think that lying on the ground a bit longer isn't such a bad idea. My left eye has cleared now, at least, and I can see the blue sky has turned pink. So much for resting in the forest, but I've been here for ... how long? Hours at least, and nothing has found me yet. Maybe I should just stay here for the night.

* * *

I'm freezing. I wake up in agony as my teeth chatter, my right eye growls angrily and I feel insects crawling over my bloody cheek. The sky is filled with cold, distant lights arranged in patterns I could never see but I've always been assured are there. I look for something, anything that will tell me what time it is, but like my attempt earlier today -- I now think of it as this morning despite having been sure before that it was afternoon -- I fail miserably.

I sniffle and I realize that the tip of my nose feels like it's been dipped in ice-water. Frigid snot collects in the back of my throat and I cough as I try to clear it. Pain lances my chest through my breast-bone and I let out a gurgling cry of frustration.

Then I hear them. Voices, calling to each other in the strange, clipped tones I don't understand but know to be a language. I thought it was Spanish at first, but I've listened carefully to them for the last few months and I'm almost certain it is something different now.

I lie still, holding my breath, hoping they won't be able to find me in the darkness with only my single cough to direct them. I'm about to allow myself to believe I may yet escape when I hear the barking of dogs coming from somewhere much too close for my comfort. I don't remember which way I came from but I hope I didn't get turned around when I fell. Summoning strength I didn't know I had I roll over, ignoring the starburst of agony this brings to my chest, and scramble to my feet. Shouts of anger and triumph erupt from the field around me, but I barely notice them or the dancing lanterns as I somehow find the strength to break into a sprint.

The first dog is on me before I get anywhere near the trees. Powerful jaws tear into the meat of my left calf and instantly I collapse into a heap as the last of my strength leaves me. The second dog goes for my face but I get my right arm up just in time to protect myself. Breath reeking of rotting meat fills my face as my arm is jerked violently away. Perhaps the third dog would have gone for my throat had the handler not jerked it back at the last instant. The other two were also pulled away and I curled up into a ball, sobbing and begging for my life. An impossibly large shadow loomed over me and breath that smelled sickeningly of corn and blood assaulted me.

Nee caelia gyanna, otmya.

Casting Shadows

The gunmetal sky rarely let the small town of Hope Springs feel like it ever aspired to more than twilight, but compared to the gloom of The Reagent's interior, it was nearly blinding as Mayor emerged. He squinted his eyes and did his best to ignore the dull spikes of pain the adjustment sent through his temples. She was inside and somehow just seeing her in there had left him feeling like he was dealing with one of the worst hangovers of his life. What had she been doing there? Sarah had said she was looking for him, but that could mean anything. He hadn't seen Her in months -- had allowed himself, in fact, to begin to believe the whole affair had been the onset of some age-related dementia. The idea wasn't all that difficult to believe, after all, when he stopped to consider how few people had ever actually seen the shadowy woman with no name. Was it really that much of a stretch to believe that he had imagined all of it? Including the few brief exchanges he'd had with others about her?

Then again, if he had, maybe he was imagining this much too. Maybe he was actually sitting in his office on Redemption Row, the door closed and the blinds drawn, having another bad dream. Or perhaps some sort of seizure. That would be something of a relief, really.

"I'll bet you thought I'd forgotten about you," her dulcet voice set all the hair on the back of his neck standing at attention. It was at once the most accomplished of performers singing a beautiful aria and the sound of a spider walking across a sheet of paper.

Struggling to keep his voice calm, Mayor could do nothing more than mutter a single-syllable response, "No."

Her soft laughter was somehow worse and more pleasing than her non-greeting. "Now is that any way to welcome me back after so long?" He hadn't yet turned to look at her, didn't really trust himself to, but he knew what he would see if he did. Her long black hair would be covering half of her face, her full lips pulled back in a smile that could almost be mistaken for friendly, and her one visible eye would be an almost luminescent green, glittering with the ominous joy of a child with a magnifying glass and an ant hill.

"I can't help you anymore," he croaked. A speech of epic proportions, all things considered. His greatest fear just then was that she might simply let that statement hang in the air, expecting him to expand on it or provide some justification. Instead she giggled almost girlishly and brushed a fingertip along the back of Mayor's neck.

"Oh, that's okay," she purred. "We -- I won't be asking you for any. More. Favours," she let her finger trail along his neck as she slowly circled him. She was wearing a padded leather jacket and pants, matching boots that were all buckles and snaps and came up to her knees, and a wide belt with a large buckle made out of some gleaming blue metal. Her hair was indeed falling over her face, this time her right side was concealed, and that threatening, ebullient light shone from the green depths of her left eye.

"Why--" he might have managed more than this, at least, so great was his surprise at this turn of events, but he was silenced by the feather touch of her finger on his lips.

"You can feel it, can't you?" She paused, looked up at the leaden clouds, then back at him. "You can feel it in the air, can't you? The turning? The falling? The passing of the old into the new? It's already begun," this last was a breathy whisper that might have set a younger man's heart racing but only served to pour an extra measure of dread into his soul.

"What are you--" he tried again but again she silenced him with her finger pressed ever so lightly on his lips.

"You can," she said, this time a statement rather than a question, and she was right. That sense of weight, the coming storm, the foreboding he had been unable to name; it hadn't been just today he'd felt it, though it was more acute than ever since he had seen the signs in the sky of an actual storm heading this way, it had been weeks now, perhaps months.

It had been a familiar feeling, though until she had drawn it out into the open, he hadn't recognized it for what it was. When he had been a boy, living in Arier Inlet, he had been standing on the beach watching a naval battle far out in the water. It had been the final days of the Cacyanscen War and by then the fighting had often been small skirmishes in unexpected, and largely strategically insignificant, places.

A Cacyanscen dreadnaught had been caught by three Seurbine destroyers somewhere far out on the water. Far enough away that he could see the flashes of gunfire and count to ten before the dull booms of the explosions crashed over his chest. The fight seemed to last a long time but eventually he saw a flare on the dreadnaught that expanded into a proper conflagration. One of the three destroyers broke off but the other two continued the fight. The dreadnaught, for it's part, was wounded, clearly dying, but still perfectly capable of sending it's killers to the ocean floor first.

It wasn't until the first destroyer started to sink that the young boy who would one day be mayor of Hope Springs, started to think he might be too close to this fight after all. The waves seemed to be getting more and more pronounced and the explosions were taking on a sharper, more threatening edge. The fire on the dreadnaught was completely out of control now and he could see the shapes of men backlit by it scrambling around the decks. Then, almost in slow motion, the entire ship was engulfed in flames.

The roar was deafening, the next day his ears were still ringing, and the force of the sound knocked him to the sandy beach just as a particularly large wave crashed over him and started to drag him out into the surf. He panicked, clawing wildly at the sand beneath him and screaming. A warmth around his legs told him that his bladder had released, but at this moment he didn't care, as long as he didn't pay the ultimate price for his inattention while watching the giants do battle.

He had that feeling now, too. The one he'd had while watching the tiny figures moving along the decks of the doomed dreadnaught, standing safely, or so he thought, on the beach. That sense of things having gone terribly wrong, a path set upon with no turns, and a powerlessness to do anything save watch the inevitable conclusion.

"You can," she repeated softly, clearly pleased with herself. "I can see it in your eyes."

His throat felt like it was covered with the dust that covered the road. As he tried to speak his voice first refused to work, then came out in a hoarse whisper, "What are you doing here?"

"I've come here to save you from what's to come." Unexpected honesty in both her voice and in her one visible eye. He had never seen her look so completely open in all the time he had known her.

"Why?"

Her smile shifted again, still pleased, still open, but now showing just a hint of her top teeth. "A thank you. For everything you've done for us. All you have to do is ask."

The Fresh Meat

David strolled down the narrow hallway toward the Blue 3 common area with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jumper. All the passages at Ravenwood were these weird octagonal shaped affairs that he hadn't yet been able to put a practical use to. Architecture on a military base rarely inclined to the artistic, so there must have been so functional purpose to it, but he couldn't imagine what that might be. Regardless, it did tend to discourage loitering -- no decent place to lean one's back against was a remarkably effective deterrent -- and it was very good at making sure there were nearly no shadows anywhere even with the minimal lighting provided. The upper left and right angles were nothing but solid blocks of light diffusing plastic, behind which were intensely bright low-power light emitting diodes.

The only down-side to the LED lighting, in David's opinion, was the barely-perceptible flickering with the cycle time of the electricity powering it. They said you couldn't see it, that it was too rapid for human senses to detect. They said it was purely . . . what was the word? In your head, anyway, is what it boiled down to. It's just part of adapting to a new environment, Pagano, the doctors had said. What the hell did they know anyway?

Still, tonight David Pagano was in the best spirits he had been since he had transferred to Ravenwood from Mille Roches. He took his time heading over to Blue 3 but it took an effort of will to avoid actually humming or, gods forbid, singing to himself on the way. He'd been here for six months now, played countless hands of Contact with the rest of the security team, drank far more shine than could possibly be healthy and smoked more Moulinette cigars than he'd even seen in all his days before drawing the Ravenwood post. Thursday nights were Contact Night now and he'd come to see it as the highlight of the week. Notwithstanding that more often than not he would return to his bunk in Grey 1 with far lighter pockets than when he had left. It really didn't matter anyway, they all got isolation pay way out here at the edge of the empire. Even pissing away half his weekly pay in an evening here still left him with enough to be able to buy himself a nice, three-story block when he got back to civilization. Maybe not in The Roches, but he didn't like big cities like that anyway. Something smaller, Souris maybe. Or Courcelles.

That wasn't what put him in such a good mood tonight, though. All the crews were on different rotations, probably something concocted by the head shrinks back at The Roches with the intent of making everyone's stay seem shorter by having things changing all the time. At the start of this week Maint-1 had rotated out and been replaced by a new group. That was what had put David in such a good mood. Fresh meat at the table always meant easy pickings for the first few weeks.

· · ·
"Y're late, Pagano," Randash called from the far side of the Contact table, a small rain of ash falling from the cigar already clenched between his teeth.

"Fuck you," David laughed as he took up his usual seat with his back to the eastern window. "Not my fault you always finish early, y'know."

The other men at the table laughed at the tired joke. The exchange was almost rote now between Sergi Randash and David Pagano, but everyone acted like it was new. This week maybe for the benefit of the newcomers.

"Watch your mouth, Grey," Randash came back, flicking a burnt-out matchstick at David. The nickname for security staff, Greys, came from them all being housed in Grey dorm and it certainly wasn't a secret, but something about it always had a vaguely offensive feel to it and it never made an appearance at the Contact table.

"What the hell?" David asked defensively, sounding annoyed but actually feeling a little hurt for being singled out like this. Greys never showed up at these games, they were technically against regulations, after all, but no one had ever objected to David playing before. He was about to up the ante in this unexpected confrontation with Randash when everything suddenly became clear.

"Why don't you tell me who this new person is, Sergi," an impossibly sweet, almost girlish voice came from the far end of the room. David craned his neck to look over Randash's shoulder and heard himself actually gasp at the raven-haired woman approaching the table.

She had long hair that looked to David like it was molded pitch covered in a sheen of water, so black and so shiny was it. It appeared to be cut in long layers and the right half of her face was hidden completely behind her bangs. That isn't even close to a regulation cut, David thought distantly. The one eye he could see was a brilliant green that seemed to glow in the weird, not-flickering lighting of the common area and for a moment she seemed to look right into his eyes, sending an icy chill down his spine. A slightly up-turned nose and full lips above a narrow, slightly pointed chin completed the picture for him. Somewhere he registered that she was wearing the yellow coveralls of maintenance staff, tied at her waist to reveal a plain white t-shirt covering her chest, but this was a distant observation at best. He found himself almost incapable of tearing his attention away from that one, at once innocent and sensual eye.

"... Pagano," Randash was saying, with a slightly irritated note in his tone. "He's our token security guy to keep things nice and legal." Scattered laughter around the table, most of it still apparently uncertain about how they should react to this subtle hostility directed toward David.

"What?" David asked, suddenly feeling ike he had been caught napping in class. "Wh-what? Huh?" He shook the confusion off as Hurt, sitting on his right, hit him in the shoulder and said something about laying off the private shine stash. "Ye-yeah, well, y'know. We spend most of our time boozing it up in the security office. What else're we gonna do sitting on our butts in a room full of guns, right?"

Relieved laughter passed around the table but was almost instantly cut short by the woman's soft tones trying out the feel of the new arrival's name. "David Pagano," another chill raced down David's spine. "What does that mean, David? Your name."

David smiled uncertainly, in a heartbeat he was again feeling like he'd been caught sleeping in class, "It, what?"

She was walking around the table now and he had to fight down an irrational urge to run as she approached. "Your name, David. What does 'David Pagano' mean?" She reached him as she said this and was now resting her hand lightly on his shoulder. The contact sent a thrill through him and in the first moment after she had touched him all he could think about was taking her back to his bunk and to Kur with Randash. Somewhere in the back of his mind he recalled hearing her name seconds ago. Aaren. He wondered what kind of name that was, but he couldn't manage to organize his thoughts enough right now to turn the tables on this strangely exciting woman.

"It--it doesn't mean anything," he stammered, feeling his cheeks flush and wondering how much abuse he was going to take from the other guys for this display later. "It's just my name."

"Oh that's not true, David," she purred. "Names mean everything. Names are power."

Silence.

David tried to say something but his throat had gone so completely dry he couldn't even manage to swallow to try to get a whisper out. He was starting to feel like he might not even be able to breathe, but he couldn't tell for sure.

Silence.

"We playin' or what?" Hurt finally asked and David felt his abdominal muscles relax. He hadn't been aware he'd been clenching them.

"Yeah, c'mon, deal," Gabriel thumped his hand lightly on the table. Out of the corner of his eye David saw Randash start to shuffle the cards with all the ethusiasm of an automaton. The woman named Aaren finally stepped away, trailing her fingers along David's shoulder for a long moment before finding a spot on a sofa away from the Contact table and picking up a magazine.

Five Minutes

"Five minutes remaining to reach minimum safe distance," the bland, androgynous voice announced in the same measured tones it used for all base-wide notifications.

They really should've made it a little enthusiastic about the end of the world, David thought to himself as he watched the video monitors. No, not enthusiastic, but at least like something more important was happening than a meeting of the social committee in the cafeteria in blue wing at seven.

Someone had probably even suggested that, might have even gotten as far as a trial implementation, but they the board would've reviewed it, or it would have been focus grouped all to Kur and back, and eventually someone would've piped up about how if Rowan sounded alarmed it might induce panic in the base personnel. And that would've been that, back to the monotone for announcing a cataclysm.

"Four minutes, fifty seconds remaining to reach minimum safe distance," it updated him.

David pushed his chair back from the console, the wheels making the usual, annoying kwee-kwee sound as the bearings rotated around the shaft, carrying him across the security office floor. He reached the emergency panel and tore off the plastic tab, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as an alarm sounded. At least something around here gives a shit about what's going on.

He retrieved the heavy black flashlight, hefted it experimentally, then dropped it on the floor and removed a brilliant chrome cylinder that easily weighed fifty kilograms. He grunted against the mass as he carried it over to the main speaker in the security console. A few beads of sweat forming on his wrinkled brow, he stood over the speaker until Rowan began again.

"Four minute--"

CRASH

"Shut up, Rowan," he whispered as he watched the cylinder roll off the console, trailing bits of shattered speaker behind it, and smashed into the floor with a hollow bang. He could still hear the automated countdown being piped through the whole complex, but at least it was a distant sound now. It hadn't really bothered him until it reached the five minute mark when the designers had decided, for reasons which eluded David entirely, that it should start warning every ten seconds.

Gods damned nuisance is what that was.

Back at the monitors, David spared only the briefest glance at the dorms. Randash was still organizing the group in Blue 3, but they were far too late. Even if they could find a way out, David had already ensured the compound had been cut off. The outer gates had been sealed and the security fence engaged. He had never been clear on why the base had been constructed with nearly as much interest in keeping people in as out, but he was glad for it now.

"Daaaaaavid, why are you doing this?" Aaren's pouting, vaguely playful voice came from the direction of the security office door and in a flash David had produced his pistol. "Oh David, don't be like that," she purred, laughing softly as she strolled across the room toward him.

"How did you get in here?" he demanded, as his blood turned to ice in his veins. He willed himself to squeeze the trigger, to put her down before she could take another step, to put an end to this nightmare, but somehow his hands had stopped responding to such requests. He found himself fascinated as he watched her walking toward him, slow, elegant heel-to-toe, one foot precisely in front of the other, steps as if she were walking on a catwalk or a tightrope.

"You ask such silly questions, David." She was nearly within arm-reach now. Even in the shapeless blue jumper all of the Ravenwood maintenance staff wore he could still see the hints of her figure. He raised his gaze from her feet to her belly with an incredible effort. The barrel of the pistol was aimed almost exactly where he imagined her belly button was. "It's not too late, David," she had a way of working his name into nearly every sentence. Once he'd found it charming, now it filled him with terror. "We can still finish the work."

That did it. Somehow that tripped something in him and he smiled brightly up at her. "I'm about to finish it now," he murmured.

"David, what--?"

Her question was cut off by the report of the pistol. David felt a warm spray on his face but before he could even consider what it might be the world ended.

· · ·

At the way station three monitors winked out. A moment of silence passed, then an androgynous monotone informed the empty building that Ravenwood was no longer reporting. Another moment passed, followed by a second alert. "Final telemetry from Ravenwood indicates probable reactor breach. Please begin standard radiation treatment regimen."

Magician

Floating. For a moment he was the embodiment of the name he had chosen for himself. Pure, childlike joy without any pretense or notion of self-consciousness. He was joy.

Above him was a cloudless blue sky. Supporting his form was a large body of water. He listened, fascinated, to the sound of the water sloshing in and out of his ears as his head bobbed slightly with the tiny waves. At the very edge of his peripheral vision on the right he could see a wide, sandy beach. All details were lost, but he knew he was quite far out and there almost certainly was no one there to help him even if he were to call out.

But nothing was going to happen. He had a destiny. He had seen it, and drowning was nowhere in his future.

Of course there were the distressing dark periods in the future. Like small valleys in the plains, he could see both sides but he couldn't see what lay inside them, only what awaited him on the other side. And much of it made no sense at all. There was a towering city of shaped stone and gleaming metal, a tired old man who held his fate in tired hands and on the other side of one of the larger valleys . . . a shadowy woman. He could see only her form, no details he could use to identify her. No matter. She was waiting for him on the very edge of the valley and on the near side The Magician.

The Magician, he thought as a chill passed over him.

· · ·

"What about the magician," She asked softly.

In a flash Joy had passed from completely asleep to hyper-alert, crab-walking away from her again and backing himself up against one of the boulders that littered the landscape they'd been traveling across. "What?" Undirected fury clear in his voice.

"You were talking in your sleep, love," she purred and not for the first time Joy imagined what sounds she would make if he were to throw himself at her and try tearing her throat out.

She'd laugh, because I'd be a broken heap before I even got close, he thought bitterly. "He killed me, that's all. But you already knew that."

Her hollow gaze made his mask itch and it was all he could to to keep from reaching up to finger the imagined crack in the cheek. She doesn't believe me. She knows I'm not telling her everything I know and she's going to--

"We'll reach Futility today," she announced finally. Then, without another word she stood up and strode away from the miserable little camp, leaving Joy and the still-sleeping form of Pop-top alone.

Hope Springs

Mayor could feel the storm coming as soon as he woke up this morning. By noon the grey clouds overhead were thickening and growing dark. Now, in the late afternoon, he had felt an undeniable urge to walk out here, to the edge of town, and see with his eyes what he already knew in his bones.

He crouched down in the dust at the edge of the main road leading into Hope Springs and retrieved a handful of something so small and so smooth it couldn't rightly be called dirt anymore. When was the last rain? Not since the turn of the year, he knew that, but how long before that? Despite the best efforts of the records keepers in the town hall, it was getting harder and harder to keep track of the passage of time. They'd known for a long time now that the days and nights were longer than they were in the older days. And they'd been sure that there were now not just more hours in the day but more days from one year-end to the next, but the records . . . something was wrong.

He stood up, shifting his weight from the front of his square-toed boots to the rounded, well-worn heels. Slowly he began to let the handful of impossibly-dry dust slip from his grasp. Anyone watching might see him trying to judge the direction the wind was blowing, it had become unnaturally calm in the last few hours, but he was doing this simply out of habit. There was no wind and the angry purple sky toward Pile of Bones told him all he needed to know about what their immediate future held.

The dust gone from his hand, he brushed the last of it off with two quick slapping motions. The old man imagined he could feel his calloused palms cracking, the dust having leeched the last bits of moisture out of his skin, as he slipped them back into the pockets of his worn trousers. He stood there a moment longer, looking longingly at the clouds, whispering a silent prayer to the Old Gods that it would bring rain and knowing there would be nothing but wind and blue-white fire.

· · ·

Mayor stepped slowly through the batwing doors of The Reagent Saloon and stood there, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness inside. Already the colour was draining out of the perpetually steel-grey sky as the storm approached and inside Sarah hadn't yet lit the kerosene lanterns, leaving the common room far darker than it would be at mid-evening.

"Afternoon to y', Mayor," Sarah called from behind the bar. Mayor squinted, hoping to make out some detail of the woman, but failed. It wasn't just the days and the years that were slowing down, his own body refused to adapt to changing conditions as quickly as it had been when he was young.

Maybe the world's just hitting end-life too, old man, he thought ruefully. Well, even so I've still got a fair few of these longer-than-years-years left in me. He started toward the voice even though he still could only make out a vague shape silhouetted against the startlingly bright mirror behind the bar. "Afternoon, Ms. Tunstall," he replied, narrowly avoiding a chair that had been pushed out from a table and left abandoned. The resident likely off to the wash, or someone would have already returned it to a safer location.

By the time Mayor had reached the bar his damned eyes had adjusted and he could make out the smile on Sarah Tunstall's weathered face. She was already pouring him a shot of the clear white alcohol she kept in stock. The crops had failed for three harvests running now and there was barely enough to keep the town alive. The trains had stopped running . . . not last year, but some time after the drought had come . . . say two years now, and supplies were tight, but somehow Sarah managed to find a way to bring in something to take the edge off.

Mayor didn't ask about it, he just thanked the Old Gods that she had found a way.

"Storm's on its way," he rasped as the alcohol burned the back of his throat.

"How long we got, y'think?" She tried to sound interested but her tone said that she was just making conversation.

"Evenin', I think. Maybe a bit longer."

"Mayor," Sarah leant forward, her lips close to the old man's ear and her voice nothing but a breathy whisper. "She's back. She was asking for you again."

He pulled back from the proprietress and gave her a suspicious, almost angry look. She bore it well, simply nodding toward the back corner of the room. Four hours from now it would be well lit and filled with the drunken singing of the townsfolk as they tried to follow the music from the upright piano, but now it was shrouded in darkness. Mayor peered into the gloom, unable to make out any details at all until an orange flare of a cigarette tip told him She had returned.

"I'll get this next time," he told Sarah brusquely as he stepped away from the bar. Sarah shook her head to tell him it was, as always, on the house. He nodded a brief thanks to her, turned on his heel and, casting a vicious look toward the orange glow, strode back out into the street.

Somewhere Else, Years Ago

"You don't understand, you don't understand, you don't understand . . ."

Pop-top seemed to be stuck in some sort of mental loop. For a long moment Joy considered hitting him the way he might've hit a malfunctioning television to restore the picture a lifetime ago. Not much chance of that, he thought sadly. If a good, solid smack was ever likely to unscramble that brain, it would've been administered long ago. Chances are that's just the sort of thing that got his gears loosened in the first place.

"Help us understand," She said softly. Her voice was gentle, delicate, a spider walking cautiously over the back of your hand.

Pop-top's long past understanding, too, Joy thought bitterly, turning his back to the pair. He had no idea what She expected to get out of the mental wreckage known as Pop-top, but he felt confident she was going to be disappointed. He reached a hand up to touch his smooth, cold mask, the fingers of his right hand straying absently over the left cheek. He didn't know why but he had a nagging feeling that there was a crack there -- or that there should be one -- but every time he examined it he found nothing. He hadn't quite reached the point where he was willing to remove the mask to study it with his own eyes but he was close, oh so very close now.

I wonder if I've finally gone insane and this is all in my head, he thought absently. Pop-top was still rambling, blubbering now almost, as She tried to pry loose the information she needed. Just watching the two of them together, her speaking in the warm flannel tones of a parent comforting a frightened child, him with his random sputtering, made Joy furious. He felt . . . what? He couldn't bring himself to even mentally articulate the word that first came to mind. Even the hint of it made him furious.

"--the knife-thrower is dreaming he's awake," Pop-top informed her, the words tumbling over themselves as he spoke so much so that he was in danger of tripping over his tongue.

Slow down, Joy thought, then realized he was actually laughing softly to himself. Oh shit! He stood perfectly still for a moment as he tried to determine if She had heard him. She was never very forgiving and an outburst like that . . . he quashed that line of thought before it went too far, but under his mask he felt his skin crawl.

"Go on," the spider-feet on skin again.

"Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. Death's killer is watching, waiting, but the web . . . the web . . . the horrible beauty of the web. Blood and wire and Fate."

Joy walked a little further away from them, the nameless fury had passed but the stink of Pop-top's insanity was making him ill. And what if it's infectious? He touched the smooth, icy cold surface of his mask again before he realized what he was doing. With a start he yanked his hand down and forced it into the right pocket of his pants. What's the compulsion, though, he thought. That I can't stop thinking about the crack in my mask, or that I wouldn't dare take it off to look at it even when I'm alone? And what do I do if I find out there is a crack?

Joy had a feeling he had slipped into the realm of insanity -- not the overt, noxious style Pop-top sported, but some subtler and probably more dangerous type. Long ago. Maybe even Before.

"Dixon, dear," she prompted Pop-top gently and Joy thought he was going to scream. That voice, the motherly, cajoling one she was using now was worse than Pop-top's ranting, worse than his own crumbling sanity, worse
than the extended black outs he seemed to be suffering. That voice belonged to Belle Gunness, Madame Popova, or Lila Young.

Joy hoped never to hear his name pass through those full, perfect lips. Whatever remained of his sanity wouldn't survive the experience, he knew that at the very core of his being.

"Sleeping . . . dreaming . . . in my memory," there was a dull thudding sound as Pop-top rapped his fist against his own mask, trying to explain what he knew. "Sleeping, lonely, like Lucifer."

"Yes, we know that, we know the companion has left us," she said with a touch of sadness in her voice. The emotion was so false, so hollow it made Joy want to retch. "But he left us a prize, didn't he?" her tone lightened as if she were reminding herself to look at the bright side of a summer rain shower.

"No, no, no, nononononono," Pop-top was losing it. Joy could hear it even from his place well outside the cold grey-green light of the fire. She had managed to tease a bit of sanity out of him, but that was all she was going to get, just a taste.

"Yes," She cooed at him. "Yes, he did. And you can find it, can't you, Dixon, dear?"

There was a muffled grunt of protest but Joy couldn't tell if there was supposed to be anything intelligible behind it. He looked briefly over his shoulder at the two figures silhouetted against the sepulchral flame. He was just in time to see her tear Pop-top's mask from his face. There was a terrible ripping sound as the mask came away from the
unfortunate's profile trailing something behind it. Pop-top let out a howl that, had he still been alive, would have surely shredded his vocal chords. At the same time his hands flew to cover his exposed visage and he began to flop around on the ground like a fish out of water.

"Dixon, dear," she repeated softly and now her voice sounded to Joy like a metal wire snapping. It was almost musical but the implications of that music left him feeling sick. "Show me, please," She may have phrased it like a request, but Joy knew the negotiations had come to an end. Pop-top made some gurgling, warbling sound from behind his hands that could have been anything, but apparently She was satisfied. She leant down and touched her face to his. There was a repulsive suckling sound and then a moment later the two of them stood up.

"We're leaving," She called to Joy. "Pop-top has agreed to help us find the doorway our friend left for us. Tell the others."