Despite her best intentions, Arla felt her jaw flap open.
Eric Born’s mouth spread in a sharp grin. He seated himself back on the table and held out the cup to her.
Waiting to see how I’ll react, she told herself. Keep it reined in, Arla.
As smoothly as possible, she swallowed the water. It swished uncomfortably in her empty stomach, but she drained the cup anyway. She needed it, badly.
“Thank you.” She added neither honorific or insult.
He set the cup down. “What did they, the Rhudolant Vitae, do after they put you in that room?”
“Kept me there, mainly. Every now and then one of them would come in with a box of some sort and wave it around in the air and babble at me. It sounded like they were trying to talk. I thought they were insane. Then I thought I’d been wrong and they were Aunorante Sangh. Then”—she shrugged—“I started to wonder if I would be stuck in a single room for the rest of my life. Then they brought you to me.
“Is there anything to eat?”
Teacher … Eric Born made a gurgling sound as if he was trying to keep down a laugh.
“You do not have any idea what you have gotten yourself into, do you know that?” He looked down into the empty cup. “No matter. I suppose I had better feed you.” He rubbed his chin. “But I had better show you something first.”
“What?” New fear squeezed against the water in her stomach as she watched Eric approach the room’s far wall.
“Where you really are.” He laid his long hand against the tan surface.
The wall vanished. Where it used to be hung a formless blackness streaked with minute rainbow lights. It stretched up, down, and on all sides. Her eyes strained to find an end, a boundary, anything to give it shape and sense, but there was nothing. Endless, it yawned at her. An open mouth waiting to engulf her mind and soul.
She screamed. She threw herself backward and curled up into a tight little ball, knees pressed tight against her forehead, her belly muffling her shrieks. A voice gibbered at her, said her name, and finally shouted at her, but she could not look up. The blackness waited to swallow her whole. There was no end. No end.
“Arla Born of the Black Wall!” A hand jerked her collar back. The fabric dug into her neck and hauled her head up. “You blasted Notouch, look up!” The Teacher’s open hand crashed against her cheek. “Look up! It’s gone! LOOK!”
Through the tears of pain, she saw the solid wall back in place.
“Wha … Wha …” Her whole body shook like leaves in the wind as he let her sag back against the couch.
Eric folded his arms. “That is the space between the worlds. There is no Black Wall and no arlas in it. It’s all emptiness. There are other worlds in it, though. Other places where people, like those in the Realm of the Nameless Powers, live. We are flying between them, like insects flying from grass to flower. Do you understand this?”
Arla did not, but she nodded. She could sort the explanation out later. What was important now was hearing it.
She tried to stop the trembling in her limbs and completely failed.
“Why show me this?” At least I’ve quit stammering.
“So you wouldn’t get any ideas about trying to attack me when I let you loose.”
She thought about herself left alone in this place with no one but a corpse and an unseen presence, lost in the middle of infinite blackness. She bit her lip and humiliation came on the heels of the fear. This was worse than being tied up.
“Turn around,” Eric ordered.
Arla wiggled herself around and held out her wrists. She felt the bindings loosen. She pulled her wrists apart and brought her arms back around to her front in a riot of creaking, popping joints. She yanked off the remains of the sticky, clothlike stuff that still clung to her skin. She stretched her legs toward Eric. He slit the black strips neatly with one blade of an open pair of scissors. Arla kept her eyes on him as she rubbed her wrists and arms to get some feeling back. He did not look up.
Eric stepped back, keeping hold of the scissors. Arla, wasn’t fool enough to try to stand. Instead, she chafed and flexed ankles and knees. She yanked the sticky strips off her leggings and dropped them on the floor. Eric watched her for a moment before he backed toward the window-wall.
“How do you stand it?” Arla straightened her back. “Wha … what’s out there.”
He shrugged. “I got used to it. The shakes vanish fairly quickly. The rest comes with practice.
“Now, you wanted something to eat.”
He drummed the mosaic and another hole opened. Out of this one, he pulled two packets of an unfamiliar shape. He ripped something off them, made yet another hole open in the wall, and dropped both packets inside.