Book 2 The Gods of Light and Liars

Chapter Six: The Ivory Mask

She woke up the first time to gentle words. Hush, hush. You aren't alone. You must be hungry. Here. There was broth and there was kindness, and a hand on her wounds. How had she gotten injured? For some reason she thought of anting with Alex, hunting for fertile Queen ants to start new colonies with. Had something happened? Had she fallen down an embankment? Maybe into a cactus, the way her middle felt. The broth was herbaceous and tasted of basil, of lavender, of something gamier than chicken. She swallowed it down. What if it's drugged? Too late, too late, she tried to gag it back up again. The person feeding her laughed at first, but this shifted to concern and then to nothing, nothing at all. She was unconscious again.

She dreamed she was with Alex, that she was back at her dining room table (was it just two weeks ago? Had the world been normal so close to this moment? How was that possible? The fear, the toxic horror, that should have been clear even in those moments. It should infect the past backwards) and was going through the disturbing collection of items her mother, April Rayne, had mailed her and Alex this time. Then she was at Mrs. Cumming's house, holding the dying squirrel as she dumped cotton balls out of her ant-catching kit. Alex, she shouted, Alex—and then Kaiser's office, whip-quick, in the white-plastic-walled halls where she and the Lion of Industry had just met. Alex, I don't understand...

The Bronx zoo, and the last time she'd ever seen Alex, her and her husband making love in an office beside their makeshift showers.

Her dreams sped her down the same path a thousand times, it seemed. First herself and Alex, before the world fell in. The death of the old woman. The interview with Kaiser. Going to Em's house, going to the Zoo. And over and over and over again, the horror of Boston, of turning on the television and seeing her whole world, her whole life, ending with the blazing glow of the Event Horizon.

When she was finally released into dreamless slumber, she was more than ready to go.

The second time she woke, she woke completely.

She lay in a small, low, comfortable bed made of sticks and furs. Logs had been lashed together and then laced with ropes. Furs—they looked and felt like rabbit furs—that were well tanned and, from the comfortable smell, well cleaned, cradled her body. There was a pad of them beneath her head, with the furs wrapped around something that smelled fragrant and pleasant. Something like lavender, or maybe chamomile. There was a fire. She turned her face towards it. Logs burned in a little low hearth made of well-fitted stone. It was a rough mantle, unadorned, but it looked as if someone lived there. They'd hung herbs in the rafters and braided onions together, though these sat in a corner well away from the fire. A little soup pot seemed to be nestled in some embers. Everything in this room was some form of white. White furs, white stones, white plants drying in the rafters, white reeds underfoot.

Primitive, was her first thought. Followed by, White. She stood up, feeling very much in need of a wash.

There was a door, and as she looked around (Nursing a headache) it opened and admitted the most peculiar person she'd ever seen. They wore white, of course. A hooded white robe with a soft pattern in its weaving—a round white disk, she thought, repeated over and over—with an over-panel of even whiter silk. It smelled musty and spicy and a little bit sweet. He had a fur mantle. The hood was drawn up to his face, which was covered by an ivory mask. This latter was quite angular and made no effort to match the shape of the face beneath it, but rather had a mouth-shape and eye-shapes that kept the being's actual eyes and mouth hidden. She was pretty sure he was male, and pretty sure he was young, though the hair pouring out from the sides of his hood and mask were also very white.

"Ah, you're awake," he said.

"Yes," she managed, and then winced. Speaking was a mistake. A very, very big mistake. Her head felt like the Army Core of Engineers were using the drill on her cranium. "I don't suppose you have a cure for a headache, do you?"