It is also paying attention to you, but sort of in a remote way. It is checking your location.'
Checking my location. I did not like the sound of that.
I said, 'It's a promise I made Boggin. I said he would not regret leaving my door unlocked, so I could use the bathroom.'
She put her hand on the door again. 'But the door is locked. I get that not-this-way feeling.'
I blinked. 'What 'not-this-way' feeling? What is a 'not-this-way' feeling?'
Vanity said, 'I thought everyone got them. In the Gothic romances they do. You know when the heroine is the only one awake at night, and she is only wearing a filmy, flimsy nightshirt, and she is standing at the top of a dark, deserted stair, which leads into the one cellar her mysterious husband warned her not to go into, and all she has is one stub of a candle that is sure to go out? She puts her foot on the top stair, and all of a sudden she shivers… ? You know. Not this way.'
I pointed to the wall beneath the seventh goblin face. 'Try over there.'
She did. Vanity walked over and pressed her cheek against the stones. Her eyes popped open. 'Hey.
This way. But it's a brick wall.'
'Secret passage. Don't you read the Gothics?'
And I handed her the candle snuffer and told her about the switch in the mouth of the goblin on the wall.
Vanity poked the hook into the wall ornament. It clicked. The panel in the wall slid open. 'Oh my gosh!'
exclaimed Vanity. 'That is
'You found it.'
'Gosh!' she said, shaking her head in delight. 'I can't wait to get my memory back. It sounds like I am a really cool person.'
2.
We dressed quickly. The fabric of our blouses and slacks was ice-cold from the drawer. I had not thought of Vanity's trick of sleeping with our clothes in the bed; even if I had, I might not have done it, for fear of alerting the watchers to our plans. In a minute or two, we were in the tunnels, crawling. I had her go first, since she was the one (I thought) who might be bending time and space to make these corridors possible. I also wanted her to give me a signal if she got the not-this-way feeling, or the being-watched feeling.
But this time, I was looking out through the walls at the surrounding rooms. I was expecting to see the space-time sharply curved in the fourth dimension, perhaps in a toroid.
3.
Some of the walls had the rooms and chambers of the Manor House behind them, much as you'd expect.
But other walls had strange things behind them. Strange beyond description.
Odd things. Spiderwebs with mushrooms growing under them; tiny men armed with stings from bees and wearing acorn caps for helmets; grinning gnome faces hanging in midair who winked at me; women made of smoke, whose hair streamed in swirls behind them, looking over their shoulders as I passed.
Other walls had forests beyond them, or starry night skies of alien constellations, mountains with carved faces rising from the sea, or fields of flowers luminous with moths and fireflies. Here were windowless domed houses, inhabited by squat, sluglike creatures, blind and slow, who oozed gelatinously across a landscape of gray ash and silent craters of black oil. There were forests thick with hanging orchids, flowers larger than parasols, and troops of albino elephants trooping through the moss.
I saw squat trolls dancing waltzes with fairy maidens with wings of ice; I saw myself and Colin and Quentin, dressed as lords and ladies, crowned with flowers and candles, riding winged horses; I saw a city of basalt towers, above which coffins as large as church steeples loomed, as if a race of pygmies had erected their town at the feet of monuments in the mausoleum for giants. I saw a dark place from which the sound of bones rustling against bones issued, and horror, and fear, and panic seeped from that darkness like a colorless light.
I saw a Lady, huge and very fair, like a mother might seem when seen from a child's eye. Her eyes were kind and her hands were soft. To either side of her sat a metal hound, one of silver and one of gold.
I saw a man with red hair; he was very thick through the chest and broad at the shoulder, and a sly half-smile played at the corner of his mouth. He was dressed in beggar's rags, but beneath the rags came a glint of rich armor, such as a warrior-prince might wear. In his hands was a bow made of rhino horn.
Dreams. I was seeing Vanity's dreams. And what I saw was affecting me: Fear and longing, touches, soft sounds, memories, were floating through my brain.
I closed two or three of my higher senses and just kept an eye on Vanity. I could not see her, but she was my guide, and she was the person I needed most in all the world, at the moment. In my usefulness-detector, she glowed like a star.
4.
There was no reason not to talk while we crawled.
I whispered, 'Do you actually like Colin?'
She said, 'He's a fathead. I might like the man he'll grow up into. If he loses his baby-fat-headed-ness.'
'When did you stop liking Quentin?'
'I am just getting tired of waiting for him to make up his mind. There is such a thing as too quiet, you know. What has he ever done?'
'Quentin discovered how to fly! He broke into the meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors, discov-ered who the enemy was, and was almost killed for his trouble. You'll remember everything in a little while… I hope.'
