daughter. Poseidon’s men overcame me, and at that task I failed. Erichtho trapped me in a box, as a toy for Boreas, and my spirit was tormented and would not rest; but I walked the world to and from my box, searching for the Lady Nausicaa again. My hate kept me awake, and I would not sleep. I watched and sought, watched and sought. I knew not then that the North Wind had other watchers watching me, unclean spirits as restless as myself, and when I scented some trace of the Lady Nausicaa, they fled to inform Boreas. Against my knowledge and against my will, my own loyalty to the Lady Nausicaa was used to snare her. I knew it not, but I was one of the watchmen of Boreas, and I kept the Lady imprisoned.”
In the dream, I could move and speak. I said, “What do you want with me?” And my fingers trembled and my limbs shook, because of a terrible cold which came from the man, and a smell of dried blood, spoiled meat, and putrefaction.
“Eidotheia, child of the Graeae, buried my bones, and paid the toll for the ferry man, Chiron. Your prayer reached me in Hell, where I walk in the bloody forest hanging with corpses, set aside for kin-slayers, and gave me wings. I sped by the fifty heads of Cerberus, his teeth like daggers and his slobber more venomous than any serpent’s and, though he howls and seeks me now, I am here. Once the cock crows, I am done for, and I return to double and triple punishments.”
Out from the stained and tattered cloak, now he spread white wings, like the wings of a dove. The wingtips to either side almost touched the opposite walls of the cell. The starlight from the window caught the edges of each feather, and traced them in silver.
“Can you help me?” I said.
“I am a shadow. I can touch nothing.”
“Why did you come to me?”
“Erichtho set wards around Eidotheia and Phoebetor; the Telchine boy, Damnameneus, has no soul. But the music which walled you in is silent now, and that silence allows my approach.”
“What can you do?”
“I can bring you in dream to one who dreams of you.”
“Will that help me?”
“No. But you will come, because you will hope that it will.”
He touched me with his spear, and I sat up. The collar and the chain melted away.
He pointed to the far wall. In the moonless dark, it receded from us, forming a long, dark corridor.
Down it I went, hugging myself in my white flannel nightgown, and the floorstones were cold on my bare feet.
2.
In dream, time and distance were without meaning. It might have been minutes I walked that dark and unreal corridor, or hours, or years.
Or, I might have been in that corridor since the beginnings of forever and would always be there, a lonely girl in a white nightgown, stepping on silent, bare feet down a black corridor that led away from imprisonment and toward some uncertain goal; while behind me walks, and will always walk, a dead man who died in the line of duty, but who still seeks, somehow, without hope, without fear, without life, to carry it out.
3.
At the end of the corridor was a square of reddish light. It hurried toward me like the light of an oncoming train in a tunnel, approaching far more quickly than my hesitant steps could account for, as if the corridor were collapsing like a folding telescope.
Then, with a motionless jolt, like the shock of waking instantly from a dream, I was there. Behind me there was no sign of the corridor through which I had come. I was backed up against the edge of a short desk or workbench. My hands were gripping the rough edge of the workbench to either side, and I could feel the wood pushed up against my bottom, through the flannel fabric of my nightie.
The fire in the stove was burning low, but its black iron door was open, and the dying embers still cast red shadows into the small interior of the hut or shed where I found myself. Wood was piled next to the stove, dingy with rodent droppings. There were holes gnawed in the baseboards, made by rats or mice.
There was a cot, smaller than my cot in my jail cell, on which a bundle of rags had been heaped. Beyond that was a refrigerator, two feet high. Half-empty cartons of take-away Chinese food lay on the floor before the refrigerator door. There was other litter here and there on the floor.
There was a cracked mirror above the stove to my left. In it, it looked as if I were half-sitting in the edge of the bench, about to rise.
Anyone who has had a normal life would not have understood what I felt then. I was entirely fascinated and entirely repelled. I had never seen mess before. I had lived in a manor house my whole life; servants kept the place clean, and I kept my things shipshape and tidy, or else was slapped on the knuckles by Mrs. Wren’s dread meter stick. (That meter stick and the welts it raised is one reason why I will always prefer the English system to the metric.) The grounds and gardens were orderly and trimmed; everything was put away at nights.
But this… I had not imagined that people could live this way. It looked like the den of some animal rather than a place for people.
I wondered where in the world I was.
In the mirror, I saw the rags on the cot move, and a brown bear poked its snout out of the fabric and rolled off the cot with a squeaking of rusty hinges and old wood.
I gasped and turned my head. Mr. Glum was sitting on the cot, blinking stupidly. He wore a long night-shirt of dull red, patched and holed in places, and clumps of his chest hair peeked through the holes. One leg was on the floor. I saw his stump, and saw how the flesh had been folded over below his knee and stitched into a rough seam.
“Ah, Melia,” he said. “You’ve come.”
I tried to shrink back, but this only pressed the edge of the workbench more rudely into my bottom.
“Come over here,” he said. “I’m in no mood to chase you. I am not to marry you, if Boggin has his way, but there is much to do which will not touch your maidenhead. Take off your shirt and get down on your knees, here.”
The narrow door to the shed was on the far side of the cot from where I was. I started to edge toward my right, my hands still white-knuckled on the workbench, around the foot of the cot.
He gave a hollow laugh. “Stick, I truly want you now!” He put his hand out and his crude cane, made out of a hoe staff, flipped up from the mess on the floor and into his grip. He painfully levered himself upright.
Tottering on one leg, he thrust the cane against the boards of the narrow door behind him. “Door! Never have I wanted more that you should be locked fast, and let no fair maiden as fine as this escape my grasp.”
I heard a heavy lock click shut, even though I could see plainly that there was no lock on the door.
Between the edge of the wall and the foot of the workbench was a corner. I pushed myself into it as far as I could go.
Here I was, a big and sturdy girl, tall and athletic, and there was him, short, old, and crippled. No doubt I could have pushed past him, clubbed him in the face with something, jumped over him, gotten away. If he had been a one-legged man in truth.
But I did not think he was a one-legged man. At that moment, I was convinced he was a three-legged bear.
Grendel cocked his head to one side, squinting. “You’re out of the collar I put you in. You look better in it. It shows the world that you’re mine. I want it, I want it, I want it back on!”
He raised his hand and made a crook-fingered gesture toward my throat.
In the mirror, I could see my frightened face, and I could see a little shadow beginning to circle my neck,
