On the other hand, maybe I should not be running. The 3-D version of me, Amelia, was not supposed to know where the boundary was.
I slowed. There was a moment of pressure… of increased potential… when I passed the actual definite line of the boundary. As if my body, and every atom in it, had to decide which version it belonged in, as if there was a moment of uncertainty.
Did I get a vote? I decided I did. I voted myself to be Phaethusa, the multidimensional native of Myriagon, daughter of Helion and Neaera——-
It was like pushing through the surface of a bubble. For a moment, my higher senses went blind.
I kept up the sprint, feeling that warm light-headedness and sense of tireless strength that come from a really good run.
When I looked again, the boundary was a field of uncertainty, and my act of looking collapsed it again.
This time, it was thirty yards behind me. And…
I stumbled. My feet fell through the surface of the ice coating the snow.
I looked back. No footprints. For the last thirty yards, between the two positions where the boundary had manifested itself, the paper-thin layer of ice on the snow was unbroken.
During that time, I had, unconsciously, made myself lighter. It was my old trick, my ability to bend world-lines. It was back.
I went to go look for some heavy rock to lift.
6.
My ebullience faded, fortunately, before I found any good-size rock. Patience, patience, remember that motto. If Erichtho or Thelxiepia had seen me running along the top of the ice, the bad guys at least knew that my powers were beginning to return. However, since Boggin had not erased years and decades of memory, they must have known that we knew we could do odd things that other human beings couldn't do.
Assume they saw it. What would they think? That I knew what the phenomenon was, why it was caused, what had happened? No.
I went to the gym and stretched out, cooled down.
And afterwards? What would Amelia have done?
That night, in bed with Vanity (do I need to mention that our room was cold again, and we had no fire lit, because the conversation where Boggin had agreed that we could have a fire was one of the things erased from the 'present' story-continuity?), I told her about my ability to walk on top of the ice.
She must have known from Colin where he wrote his love letters, because she said, 'East, the sea, is Colin's direction. Yours is South. The other two boundaries are the graveyard and the rocky, lifeless hills.
Well, it's obvious who goes where. How come I don't have a direction?'
Of course, she did not recall that she was not one of us chaoticists at all. I could not remember if I had told her at the powwow; maybe I had and she'd forgotten.
Or maybe she knew I was putting on an act for the benefit of unseen listeners. Vanity is insightful, and I am not the world's best actress.
To let the unseen listeners believe that we girls were on the wrong track, I said, 'You're thinking three- dimensionally. What if the other boundary is in time? At the moment this estate is sold to a new owner, will be your time.'
I did not tell her (or the listeners) about the four versions I saw.
As I lay, slowly falling asleep, I kept thinking about the four versions.
At some point, I must have truly been asleep, because it was Lord Morpheus, robed in starless midnight skies, his hair dark like moon-smothering clouds tinged silvery at the edges, who sat on my windowsill, a hooded black owl in jesses on his wrist, and said, 'The first you saw was my son's version. In dream, any object can be made to perform any task. The second belonged to the Graeae boy, the son of Proteus; his people see dryads. The third was Telchine, a world of blind and careless atoms. Why do you think your people developed the senses you did? Of course your world was the bright version, daughter of Helion; your name means 'radiance.''
'Why are you here?' I said, or seemed to say.
'I have come to warn you that the Psychopompos, the son of Maia, is your enemy; he has appeared at my house and urged my vassals to disobey me, to raise the comet-streaming banners of Chaos and Old Night to war, and press the infinite armies of phantasy and dream into attack. My son would die, he said, but high honors would bury him, and he be treated as worthily as any of the fallen in war. The Father of Lies spread the rumor that secretly I wished for my son to be sacrificed in our noble cause, I, who have, across many wasted eons, commemorated the undying enmity with cosmos with the death rites of many brave knights fallen in my service.
'I have kept my wife in an enchanted sleep since the day young Phobetor was kidnapped, that she would not weary out her eyes with weeping, which, in our world, is the only cause of death. Will you tell him we still love him so?'
I said, 'I cannot speak while enemy ears hear. As soon as I may, I will tell him.'
'The Emperor of Dreams grants you a boon. Of what would you care to dream this night? I can make phantasms of Boreas or Damnameneus to wait upon the secret and voluptuous desires burning in your loins. I should warn you, however, that it will be my son Phantasmos whom your arms will clasp and your lips caress, should you choose this form of boon.'
'I want to dream about escaping.'
'Then dream of flight. The walls and windows of the Great Hall are set with spells and wires of cunning make, to set alarms to blow should any forbidden hand intrude. Only the heavy door through which you first entered is unwatched. I grant you shall recall this when you wake.'
7.
