her, but everyone behind her seemed so matter-of-fact, she knew this must be a normal occurrence for them, just another part of the commute.
So she lay down onto her back, the pack cushioning the rock, and scooted along, feetfirst, into the gap. There was a distinct slope that made forward progress not only possible, but unavoidable, so she lay in the position of a luge racer, except with her arms stretched up over her head because of the low roof, and let herself slide down after Abby.
Only she did not come through the other side. Her boots caught on the roof of the gap, and she was stuck. There was no space above her body to allow her to turn her hips, so her knees could not bend and find purchase for her boots; there was no way to bring her arms down to push herself back up the slope, because the sides were too narrow. Her fingers could find nothing to grab onto above her head: she was trapped in the rock with no way to push or pull herself back up the slope, and she could hear the man behind her preparing to launch himself after her, but when she tried to draw a deep breath to call for help, the rock pushed down on her chest, and she could feel the horror of being enveloped rising up in her and—
She jolted awake, drenched in sweat and feeling the implacable pressure of the rock face pressing against her trapped boots and tingling up the front of her helpless legs. It was one of the most gruesome dreams she had ever experienced, and she had to get up and walk up and down, rubbing at the front of her legs before the sensation of entrapment left her.
There would be no sleep after that.
What she badly needed was either a long walk or a trashy novel, but she could not go out and she would have bet that such a thing did not exist under this roof. Instead, she sat down on her hard chair and opened her diary by the light of the floods, and forced herself to concentrate on an elaborate drawing of the abbey ruins.
After three botched efforts, the immediacy of the dream faded a little, and the drawing became easier. Eventually she turned to draw a boojum tree, and although it occurred to her that the mysterious snark might well live in a low gash in a rock tunnel, the image did not come to life, and she continued to draw lizards and rocks and even, thinking of Jason, a cat.
She was deep into her pointless labors when a small sound knocked her out of her artistic reverie, a noise both unfamiliar and disconcertingly reminiscent of some evil experience. She strained to hear over the sudden pounding in her ears, and waited for it to come again.
When the sound was repeated, she knew instantly why it had acted like a cattle prod on her distracted mind. She covered the distance to the door in two steps, yanked it open, and looked down at Dulcie, in pink-flowered nightgown and bare feet. She had her teddy bear in her arms, and she didn't look cold; other than that, it was all terribly familiar. She pulled the child inside and closed the door.
'What's the matter, Dulcie?' she said in a low voice.
'They took Jason again,' the child whimpered. 'He told me to be a big girl and go back to sleep, but I can't.'
Ana shushed her rising voice and gave her a brisk hug. 'That's fine, Dulcie. I told you to come here anytime, and I'm glad you did. Now, why don't you hop into my bed and see if you can follow Jason's advice?'
'Not Jason,' the child said, obediently climbing up into Ana's bed.
'Jason didn't tell you to go back to sleep, you mean? Then who was it?'
'That man.'
'Jonas? You mean Jonas came to get your brother?'
'With the loud man.' Ana identified this second person without difficulty as Marc Bennett.
'That's okay,' she said, though she feared it would not be. 'We'll settle it like we did before. Now night- night.'
'But where are you going to sleep?' Dulcie asked. Ana looked at the hard wooden chair and the hard wooden floor, and in the end she pulled up the blankets and got in next to Dulcie. The child curled up and snuggled into Ana with a grunt of contentment. Slowly, deliberately, Ana brought her arm up and wrapped it around the thin, warm body next to her.
'Ana?'
'Yes, Dulcie.'
'I'm scared.'
'What, because of Jason?' The wild mop of black hair nodded beneath Ana's chin. 'Don't be, sweetheart. It's like before, he's gone to do some work, only this time it's with Jonas instead of Steven. Big boys have work to do.'
'He was scared, too.'
'Jason was?' Surprising, how normal her voice sounded, how little concerned, when her gut was clenched around a block of ice.
'He pretended he wasn't, but he was. I can tell.'
'I'll bet you can.'
'He was scared before, when Thomas and Danny came and got him,' the child continued inexorably, the words pushed out of her by fear for her brother. 'He was scared, and when he came back he wouldn't tell me what happened, but it made him have bad dreams, and Jason doesn't usually have bad dreams, not like me. And now they took him away again and he was even more scared than he was before.'
She lay in Ana's embrace, waiting desperately for adult reassurance that it was going to be all right, and Ana struggled to find an answer to give her. She never lied to a child if she could possibly avoid it, and she did not want to lie to Dulcie now. For one thing, she knew how good children were at picking up unspoken messages, and she doubted that giving Dulcie any more reassuring words crossed with the pheromones of dread would help matters at all. On the other hand, it was cruel to burden a young person with adult weakness and doubt just when strength was needed most.
In the end, she gave Dulcie a squeeze and told her, 'Dulcinea, I don't know what's going on either, but as soon as people are up and around, I'll find out. I'm with you, Dulcie. You're not alone.'
That seemed to be the right approach, or at least one adequate enough to allow the child eventually to relax back into the safety of sleep.
Not the adult, though. There were no words reassuring enough to quiet the bone-deep trembling Ana could feel inside. Spiritual hypothermia, she diagnosed, striving for humorous detachment; optimal treatment to include a familiar woodstove, two dogs, and the warm company of friends. Although at this point she would settle even for Glen's icy presence—anything but to be there alone with deadly decisions before her.
She was jamming herself down between a rock and a hard place, to be sure, but she was also standing on a high wire, balancing over two abysses.
On the one side was Jason, who was a part of her in ways she could not begin to understand, and who at that moment, while Ana lay with the limp figure of his sister clasped to her, might well be staring at the dim interior of a second metal alembic—this time under the far from gentle protection of Marc Bennett and Jonas Seraph.
On the other side lay the massive responsibility she had for this community. The physician's oath to Do no harm was paramount in every aspect of the work she did with Glen. It infused her daily life, while in the communities she investigated, with the urgent need to tread lightly, to slip into a pre-set role and slip out again, leaving no trace. Her work for Glen had always been based on the idea that the long-term effect was the only goal, the larger good more important than the individual. In earlier cases, her heart had occasionally ached at the mistreatment, as she saw it, of the community's children or one of the adults who found himself to be a round peg faced with a square doctrinal hole, but she had rarely succumbed to the temptation to interfere, knowing that in the long run, Glen and his agency would sort it out. Uncomfortable and uncertain as she might be about Glen, when it came down to it, she trusted him. He would do what was needed.
Now the question was turned around on her. Jason's welfare was at stake here, and it appeared to demand an immediate and aggressive action that Glen was not there to provide. But could she trust her own judgment? The persistent intrusion of Anne Waverly's past and personality into the body and actions of Ana Wakefield, the increasing incursions of memory that had come to a head in yesterday's devastatingly real flashback, was confusing her. She was aware of a constant jittery anxiety focused on the two children, and she worried that Anne's frantic concern for the boy was severely hindering Ana's ability to remain the passive, open-minded individual she desperately needed to be. It was obvious to the rational side of her mind that she was well and truly losing it, hag- ridden by the specters of her past just at the time she most needed to be clearheaded and objective.
