‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to looking at this,’ she said, her voice little more than a rushing sound in her ears. The landscape was different to the one at Godwort’s compound. The sky was yellow and streaked with black clouds, while the stony ground was littered with all manner of strange, unlikely rocks. Boulders as big as houses perched precariously on top of each other, flat rocks with wide holes in their centres stood lined up together as though someone had thought to make a passageway somehow. Everywhere she looked, rocks stood in circles or in lines, or on top of each other. There were patterns everywhere, so many that they broke down, intersecting their neighbours and ruining the symmetry of it. As she watched, she realised that the clouds were moving, as if with a brisk wind.
‘How can that be?’ She moved closer to the crystal, until her fingertips threatened to brush its surface. Her breath pillowed there, reminding her that she stood next to a solid object. ‘The landscape was still at the other Behemoth, although I suppose it’s possible there was nothing to move there, or we left before—’
A figure lurched out from behind one of the tall rocks and Vintage gave a breathy little scream, jumping backwards as she did so. A tall woman with a sheath of black hair falling untidily over her face stumbled towards her. She wore tight-fitting travelling leathers, functional and well used. There was a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles hooked over the collar of her shirt, and she looked no older than thirty, yet Vintage knew her to be much, much older than that.
‘Nanthema?’ Vintage found that she was gasping for air even as tears rolled silently down her cheeks. It was the damn spectacles, glinting in the light of an alien sky. Twenty-odd years later and she still had her damn spectacles.
The woman looked stunned, her eyes as round as moons as she approached the edge of the crystal. Vintage saw her lips move, saw her asking disbelieving questions, and then she broke into a grin. She was speaking faster and faster now, shaking her head.
‘Nanthema, my darling, I can’t hear you, I can’t.’ Vintage went back to the shard and without any thought for what it might do, pressed her hands flat to the surface. She did not fall through into the strange landscape, but when Nanthema placed her hands on the other side, her voice abruptly filled the chamber, tinny and strange, as though coming from a very great distance.
‘– if anyone could find me, of course it would be you, of course it would, I don’t know why I even worried for a moment –’
‘Your voice!’ blurted Vintage. She felt a wild impulse to crash her fists against the crystal, but controlled it. ‘I can hear you!’
Nanthema looked down at where her hand was pressed against Vintage’s, separated by a layer of crystal and an unknowable distance. Cautiously, she took it away, and Vintage saw her mouth move, asking a question. Then she put the hand back.
‘Can you hear me now?’
‘Yes, I can bloody hear you, what are you even doing in there?’
‘It’s the contact, somehow,’ Nanthema was saying, peering at their hands. ‘I would not have guessed that. Of course, I’ve had no way to find out.’
‘Nanthema!’ This time Vintage did knock slightly on the shard. ‘You have been missing for twenty years! Do you have any idea what that has done to me? I thought you had run off, left me, decided I wasn’t interesting enough . . .’
Vintage’s words ran out. Nanthema was standing quietly, just watching her, in that way she had.
‘Oh, Nanthema.’ Vintage gave her a watery smile and they stood in silence for a moment, both pretending the other wasn’t crying. Eventually, Vintage cleared her throat. ‘How can I get you out of there?’
‘As far as I know, you can’t,’ said Nanthema, shrugging slightly. ‘The rest of the chamber is empty, if I remember correctly.’
‘I will be back.’ Vintage left the shard and did a slow circuit of the room, looking for something, anything – some sort of handy lever, perhaps, or a rope to pull. Aside from the remains of Nanthema’s ladder, it was entirely empty. She returned to the shard and placed her hand against the crystal again. ‘You’re right, as ever, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way out of there. I will find it, even if I have to search this entire stinking wreck.’ She took a breath. ‘How did you even get in there in the first place?’
‘Would you believe me if I told you I don’t remember?’ Nanthema looked rueful, an expression Vintage remembered well. ‘I was asleep, Vin, in this chamber. I had spent a good week inside this wreck, barely sleeping, trying to see as much of it as I could, and when I found this place – well.’ She grinned. ‘It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?’
Vintage glanced at the yellow sky above the other woman’s head. ‘It is certainly that.’
‘It’s also quite cosy, or as cosy at it gets in this place. I decided it was safe to have a nap. I woke up on my feet, walking through a crystal that I had previously thought to be entirely solid. By the time I was on the other side, it was too late. I couldn’t get back through.’
‘First of all, exploring this place for an entire week is utterly out of all realms of sense. Secondly, doing it alone it lunacy, actual lunacy. Third,’ Vintage frowned slightly, ‘I have missed you a great deal.’
Nanthema grinned. ‘You haven’t changed at all, Vin.’
At that, Vintage felt a surge of sorrow in her throat so thick that she could not swallow. Not changed at all, except that she had – she had grown older while Nanthema was trapped in here. Her skin had lost that deep burnished luminescence that the young take for granted and there were strands of grey in her hair. But Nanthema had not changed, not even the tiniest bit. Her crimson eyes were still clear, her black hair hadn’t turned grey or fallen out. She blinked.
‘Never mind that. How are you not dead? Is there food in that place? Where are you, exactly?’
‘Vin, this place . . .’ For the first time, Nanthema looked troubled. ‘I’m not sure I can explain it to you, and I know you will hate that. I’m not dead, Vin, because I’m not hungry, or thirsty. I don’t feel those things here. Time itself seems to have no meaning, and I don’t really seem to feel that either. You said I’ve been in here for twenty years? I had no idea. Vin, if I had been sitting here in these rocks for twenty years, wouldn’t I be a gibbering wreck by now?’
‘But it has been that long,’ Vintage insisted, feeling a fresh wave of sorrow at the thought. ‘Look at my face, if you don’t believe it.’
‘I can’t explain it to you.’ With her free hand, Nanthema pushed her hair away from her face. ‘It’s like . . . like I am held in place, in here. Unchanging. This place, is unchanging.’ She gestured behind her. ‘You remember that chunk of amber I bought at the market in Jarlsbad, with the locust stuck inside it? That creature must have been ancient, but it looked like it could hop right away. That’s how I feel, in here. Stuck in syrupy sap.’
‘And have you explored it? This place?’
Nanthema snorted. ‘What do you take me for? Of course I have. This place . . . I don’t think it’s real.’ She shuffled her feet, real discomfort on her face at dealing with something she could not explain. ‘There is an invisible boundary, and although it looks like there’s more of this miserable landscape, you can’t reach it. And if you look carefully at it, the rocks and the ground are blurred, out of focus.’
Vintage felt cold. ‘Nanthema, none of that makes sense.’
‘Oh, that’s the least of it. It’s also stuck in a loop.’