distance to cover with the baby steps her leg irons required, and she could betray the existence of her only weapon every step of the way.
'Come here,' he repeated. His voice was hoarse and weak. 'I need you,' he said. And then, bizarrely, he added, 'Please.'
Aural walked to him slowly, trying to learn as much as she could about the cave as she did so. It was hard to make out anything in detail because each slight move of his head sent shadows winging and lurching about, swallowing each other up as new ones were born to replace them.
Nothing ever looked exactly the same way twice because each breath he took caused the cave itself to move in and out of the light as if it had a pulse to match his own.
As she got close to him she realized that she could have brought the knife after all. He had not turned to look at her yet, and she was now within lunging distance, and now closer, now she stood next to him, looking down.
She could have cut his throat while he lay there, his eyes closed. For a moment she wondered if he was asleep. She was close to the hole now but the light was pointing up and away from it and she could make out nothing beyond a greater darkness in the rock.
She had seen no other exit. If she were to get out, she would have to go into that hole of blackness. Had she not seen him emerge from it, she wouldn't have thought there was room enough for her shoulders to fit in.
The very idea of crawling into such a place filled her with dread.
She would sooner have forced herself into a hole in the ground, knowing there was a snake at the other end, but she also knew she had no choice.
She would do what she had to, when she had to do it. And if that included slicing his throat open, she would do it. She thought. She hoped.
Gazing down at him now as he lay still, breathing shallowly like a dreamer in a troubled sleep, it was hard to hate him enough to kill him.
And then she realized the condition of his face. He looked as if someone had been kicking his head around with cowboy boots. Aural had seen more than one of her boyfriends return from a night in the bar looking that way.
One eye was swollen nearly shut; his nose and both cheekbones were puffed and as dark with broken blood vessels as if he had been painting his face with charcoal.
Traces of dried blood still clung to his nose and upper lip, and overall he had the look of a man tenuously clinging to health.
He opened his eyes and looked up at her and she realized he had not been asleep, but quietly waiting. Conserving his strength and perhaps waiting to see what she would do.
'Hey, slick, you're looking good,' Aural said.
'Where are your boots?'
'I took them off. You go partying with friends?'
'I met a friend of yours,' Swann said.
'You should have brought him home.'
'Get the lantern,' he said. His voice was little more than a whisper, even in the resonating chamber of the cave. Moaning slightly, he rolled to his side, resting his head on his arm so that the light on his hat shone in the direction of the golf sack. Every movement seemed to cost him a great effort. Aural was amazed that he had managed to crawl back through the tunnel. When men administered a beating like the one he had taken, they didn't limit them selves to the face. Not the men she knew.
She did not know how long a trip it was, but she knew that it had taken a long time for her to be brought to the cave once she was forced into the sack in the first place. He must have wanted to get back to me very badly, Aural thought, and the thought frightened her.
She unzipped the sack and found that it was crammed with groceries and supplies. What bothered her most was the quantity of canned food. It must have been the cans that caused the thudding noise, she realized, and there were dozens of them, beans and peaches and spinach and baby peas, and dried apricots, too, and dried sausage and a plastic bag full of hard rolls. Four plastic quart bottles of water, two containers of paraffin oil for the lamp. And three cartons of cigarettes. He was planning a long stay, Aural realized with a sinking feeling. There was enough food for weeks.
The lantern was wedged between pillows and wrapped inside a sleeping bag. There was a pack of dinner candles, red and white and blue, and extra bulbs and batteries for the headlamp. Lighter fluid and flints and even extra wicks. He was taking no chances about running short. But there were no matches. Later, when she had time to think about it, that detail frightened Aural most of all. There were no matches despite all the other flammables, she realized, because in the high humidity of the cave, matches would soon become sodden and useless. He knew this from experience. He had been in this situation before.
The terrifying deduction from that was that he had not only done this with another girl, but he had gotten away with it or he wouldn't be free now. He had done it@ he had learned, he had perfected his method, eliminated his mistakes.
He ignited the lantern with a cigarette lighter which he returned to his front pocket, then placed the lantern in her hand. She thought of swinging it into his face, but his eyes were on her the whole time and she decided to wait.
She had to have either her feet or her hands free before she tried to get away; she had no chance without the use of one or the other, even with him as injured as he was.
If he could drag the sack all the way, he still had a great deal of strength left in him.
'Take it to a flat spot,' he said. 'Then come back and get the bag.'
When she had the lantern in her hands he turned off his headlamp.
Aural carried the lantern back towards her hiding place, studying the details that now sprang up in the increased light. The vertical waves on the wall remained dark, but the rest of the rock took life in a fantastical way. The whole cavern seemed to be tinted a dull yellow, as if it were carved from pure gold. Everywhere she looked, wars, ceiling, or floor, the light reflected back to her with an aureate hue, so that the very light itself seemed composed of the finest translucent golden dust. Under different circumstances it would have seemed a fairy cave rather than a dragon's lair.
'Pretty, isn't it?' he asked, as if reading her mind.
'If you like this kind of thing ' she said.
'It's sulfur oxide,' he said. 'And pyrite, too. Fool's gold.'
'Figures. I finally land in a gold mine and it's a fake,' she said.
'That's far enough,' he said. 'Put the lantern down.'
Aural continued until she was close to her boots before setting the lantern on the rock floor.
'Now come back.'
She hesitated.
With an effort, he rose to one knee.
'Oh, you don't want to make me come after you,' he said. 'That wouldn't be smart at all.'
Leaving the lantern by her boots, Aural returned to the man.
'What friend of mine did you run into?' she asked.
'He didn't tell me his name,' he said. 'I didn't ask.
People like that don't need names, anyway. They're all just the same.'
'I wonder if you couldn't say the same for men in general,' she said.
'Oh, not me,' he said. 'I'm not like other men at all.
I'm what they would want to be if they had the courage, but they don't.
You'll find that I'm quite special.' He sounded convinced and proud.
'Not that I've noticed so far.'
'But we haven't really gotten to know each other very well yet. You'll think I'm special, I promise you.'
'You guys all think you're different.'
'I like your courage,' he said. 'I like that you think you can talk back to me and get away with it. You'll change your mind, but it's nice for now.'
He rose to his feet as she approached him. He was unsteady on his legs, as if his balance were off, but Aural
