. . . floating again . . . the pain gone . . . lost to that old reality I am no longer in . . . floating, floating, floating . . .
WAKE UP. DO IT NOW.
The voice was insistent, jolting her awake . . . and then another voice, this one familiar to her, reached out from beyond.
"Daniela?"
A siren's call from outer space. Totally improbable . . . but Lyse was here. Lyse had come for her. Her sister . . . no, Lyse wasn't her sister . . . was more like her cousin . . . the terminology was unimportant. She was related to Lyse by blood and that's all that mattered.
Lyse is here for me, Daniela thought. How is that possible?
She'd been so alone for so long . . . and now that loneliness was replaced by the joyful knowledge that she was joined to Lyse forever. They were family.
"I know you can hear me," Lyse said, her voice scratchy. She sounded like she'd been crying.
Daniela wanted to open her eyes, wanted to see if the voice truly belonged to Lyse, but it was just too difficult to make her body do what she wanted. Near impossible, even.
"I explained about the gloves. They've put them on you. They didn't understand, at first, didn't realize they were making you worse . . ."
Lyse's voice trailed off.
. . . no, I trailed off . . . back to floating in the sludge . . . I want to stay here . . . so warm and safe . . . only the floating . . .
WAKE UP, DANIELA.
The voice demanded action from her and so she followed it back to life:
"She's coming around."
Another voice she recognized, low and mellifluous . . . it could only be Arrabelle. She really wanted to open her eyes and see if she was right, but her eyelids only seemed willing to flutter.
"I think she's trying to open her eyes."
This voice she didn't know. It was softer than the others, younger and broken-sounding. It was as if upon hearing it for the first time, a well of sadness opened up underneath Daniela and she fell headlong into it. Fell far and fell fast.
. . . I am falling . . . but not the same . . . black . . . black . . . blackness . . . no lights . . . no warmth . . . tentacles slithering around me . . . searching me out . . . wanting to pull me down further . . . wanting to wrap around me and squeeze me into oblivion . . . not death . . . but a death of some sort . . . an end I won't be able to escape from if I stay . . .
WAKE UP. THIS WILL BE THE LAST TIME. WE PROMISE.
She believed the voice and she fought to return to the old reality, aggressively wanting to come back now. She didn't want to go down to the sludgy place ever again. Something had changed and it wasn't the same as when she'd left it. Not safe and warm, not womblike.
". . . she's here. I feel her for the first time. She's coming back."
Open your eyes, Daniela thought. Open, dammit!
It was working. Her eyelids were fluttering . . . but disappointment flooded her brain when she realized they still wouldn't budge.
"Daniela?"
Lyse was close to her. She could smell the other woman's scent like a talisman, drawing her out of the abyss. Back to true consciousness.
"I can't touch you-even though I want to," she heard Lyse say, a catch in her voice. "But I'm here and I need you back. Do you understand? I won't lose you, too."
Daniela felt something hot and wet fall onto her cheek. A tear. Lyse's tear.
". . . yse . . ." she moaned, her lips barely moving. ". . . yse . . ."
"I'm here," she felt Lyse murmur close to her ear. "I'm not going anywhere."
This time when the fingers of unconsciousness grabbed her, they did not try to steal her soul . . . they merely took her to the oblivion of sleep.
• • •
She dreamed-and her dreams were crazy. A collage of images that made no sense.
At one point she was inside a strange metal box made from sheets of aluminum soldered together to form a perfect square. She was alone, lying there, staring up at the cold metal ceiling, but then she turned her head and realized that she was actually lying on a hospital gurney-and the box was not a box . . . but something much more sinister . . . a giant metal oven.
She lifted her head, her chin pressing into her throat, and ahead of her she could see an observation window cut into the metal. There were men in camouflage fatigues standing on the other side of the window, staring at her, the assault rifles in their hands trained on her through the glass. She tried to sit up further, but her ankles and wrists were bound to the hospital gurney by stiff metal cuffs that cut into her skin, drawing a circle of blood in the flesh.
She blinked and her world shifted . . .
Now she stood on a slender wooden dock that was shrouded in a thick, gray fog that blotted out the landscape around her. Glowing orbs of light stood like sentinels on either side of the deck, providing the only illumination visible in the fog. She reached out with both hands and discovered that the orbs were actually candles, their flames flickering in the wind. She looked up, but there was no moon to light the sky. Only a velvety black cover that seemed to spread out above her for eternity. She felt cold, goose bumps breaking out on her arms and legs-and when she looked down, she was surprised to find herself naked and not wearing her own skin. The body she was clothed in was utterly alien to her, its curves of rounded flesh unrecognizable. She didn't try to understand what had happened to her. She just stared down at the curling mound of soft pubic hair, the wide hips and flat stomach, the whiskey-colored skin that gleamed with glittery flecks of gold as she stood in the soft glow of the candlelight.