She hung a head above it, like a hat on a hook. Eyes and ears in the head, so the abstract space was darkness now and the strained pause was silence.
Legs dangling down until they touched the ground – which had no warmth, no cold, no smoothness or roughness yet to speak of, but it was below her and so it was ground.
She turned a full circle, moving her notional feet in tiny increments.
She reached out with her imagined arms. Resistance on the right-hand side; nothing on the left. It seemed that the place where she was standing was a narrow ledge of some kind, buttressed on one side and not the other.
She was ready now. Ready to defend herself.
I’m not going to hurt you.
The voice was no voice at all. It arrived in her mind without travelling through the air. Even so, it had volume and tonality. It was high and light, like a child’s voice or a young woman’s.
What – what – what – ? Jess thought and tried to say. She had forgotten to put a mouth in her face, so nothing happened. But whatever was out there heard her anyway.
Nothing, it said.
The question Jess had been trying to frame was, What do you want?
A mouth has a tongue. Teeth. Lips. A palate. All those things are needed before you can start to make and shape sounds. Jess tried to get the parts in the right sequence, knowing that even if she did an immaculate job, she would still be missing the magic ingredient, which was breath.
In the meantime, since this thing could read her thoughts, she asked, Why?
Why what? the other demanded.
Why did you help me?
There was a long silence. The unseen other was circling her: she knew that, because the pressure of its gaze upon her shifted as it moved. There didn’t seem to be any room on the ledge for anything to go around her, but maybe whatever she was talking to could walk on air, glide through rock. The rules were different here. Jess turned too, scared of being outflanked.
You said hello to me.
Jess’s mock mouth moved, her mock tongue stirred together soft-edged gobbets of sound. Nothing intelligible came out. I said what?
When I saw you, in the white place. The hospital place. You said hello to me. Most people only see me when they’re asleep. You saw me when you were awake. It was nice. It was nice to be seen.
It was nice. That was what a child would say. But what would a child be doing here, in this inexplicable abyss? What did it say about Jess’s mental state at this point that she had dreamed a child into her nightmare to share it with her?
Show yourself, Jess thought. Let me see you.
No. Quick. Categorical. The other was just as wary as she was, just as slow to trust, for all that it had saved her. What had it saved her for? Or from, for that matter?
The hole goes on for ever. People who go in don’t come out again.
“But I – then how can I—?” She was speaking with her mouth this time. The sounds hung in the air, rough-hewn and shapeless.
You’ll have to climb.
Jess had no idea how to do that. Her new-made body was a flimsy thing, unsuited to serious effort of any kind. Her real body was back in the real world, a great distance away in a direction she didn’t even have a name for. And climbing out of the pit would only be the start of a long and arduous journey. Surely it would be less effort just to wait here until she woke?
And she wanted to know who her rescuer was. She wanted that very much. A strange presentiment had come to her, the outline of a thought that she was almost afraid to acknowledge.
She tried to mount an ambush. She imagined a light, hanging in the abyss above her, pushing back the darkness. She strained her freshly minted heart with wishing for it. And the darkness slowly thinned from black to grey.
The other was gone in an instant. She knew because she was no longer watched. The bubble of its attention had burst against her skin.
The light blossomed too late, like a thin and faded sun in this fathomless night. The feeble glow lit Jess, though she cast no shadow (she was scarcely more than a shadow to start with). It lit the ledge she stood on, an arm’s length wide. It lit a rock face beside her, rusted brown like old blood.
The other was gone. She was alone in her dream.
24
Jess waited a long time for something to happen. For the voice to return, or for morning to raise her up on its back and carry her home to reality. But at last, when it became clear that neither of those things would happen, she climbed.
It was easy enough, at least at first. The rock face was rough and pitted and offered a million handholds. And before she started, she put some effort into refining and improving her imagined body. You couldn’t walk without muscles and sinews. You couldn’t cling on to outcrops without fingers and thumbs, or step up on to ledges and escarpments without toes and heels. She equipped herself with these things, pleased at the way her dream flesh responded to her thoughts.
But the downside of having a more realistic body was that it experienced realistic wear and tear. Though the pain that had brought her here had faded now, Jess was soon tired and aching from the ascent itself.
She climbed for hours. She climbed for ever. The rock wall didn’t change and neither did the abyss. Nothing stirred that infinite column of air. Nothing moved here apart from her.
She knew she was dreaming, but she couldn’t make herself wake up. She thought about allowing herself to fall again – testing the limits of dream logic by letting the pit take her. She found she was afraid to do that. She was also afraid of losing her way at the top of the shaft and wandering for ever without finding her physical body again. That was ridiculous, of course. “For ever” could only mean until morning came and it was time to be given her next round of meds.
But it didn’t feel like that. It felt as though waking up might turn out to be a challenge. Perhaps she wasn’t asleep at all but in a coma.
Or insane.
Or dead.
With that thought she ran out of wall. Her spidering fingers touched nothing but empty air above her. She hauled herself out on to a plateau of black rock that was as smooth as glass. It was only a few steps wide. Beyond that there was nothing but chaos: clashing waves of colour and shape and formless light like a constant explosion. She felt a tidal pull dragging her into that sensory spew. She tried to look away from it, but it was everywhere.
And he was waiting for her there. Although he’d fled when she tried to catch a glimpse of him, he’d paused here at the rim to see her emerge. All Jess could make out was a slight figure crouched on its haunches, a smear of shadow backlit by garish immensity.
“Let me see you,” she whispered, but her gaze kept flinching downwards at the ground. She saw him in momentary glimpses, smeared by the movement of her own eyes.
He didn’t answer or move. She took a step towards him, and then another. Focusing on him alone, ignoring the monstrous storm of images.
He got to his feet and for a moment she thought he might run. But he didn’t. He stood quite still as she walked towards him. His hands were at his sides and his head was bowed, looking at the ground.
She drew near to him. So slowly! She wanted to put off as long as she could the moment when that face looked up and saw her. But there was no choice and nowhere else to go.
He didn’t wait for her to reach him. While she was still about ten paces away, he raised his head to look at her, but his face was mostly lost in moving shadow. His features wavered like pondweed in a sluggish current.
It made no difference. She knew, had known all along, whose face she was going to see. She steeled herself in advance for the shock, but it was wasted effort.