A Hidden Place

Chapter Fourteen

They kept a vigil through the night. Anna was often unconscious. The blue light played fitfully over her. At times she seemed awake but oblivious to them, her lips moving wordlessly her eyes dilated. Travis closed his eyes briefly, and it seemed to him that the room was in some way still visible, but filled with strange translucent shapes, pale emeralds, impossibly faceted diamonds. He sat erect and closed his hand on Nancy’s; they did not speak.

By morning the crisis had passed. A wan daylight filtered through the wallboards. Anna lay in a heap on her mattress—diminished, Travis thought, rice-paper white, stick-thin, only her eyes animate. She sat up, blinking.

Nancy cleared her throat.

“Anna? Is he—is Bone dead?”

“No,” the alien woman said. “Not quite.”

“He’s hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Still coming?”

“Still coming. Very close now.” “Is there anything we can do?” “Not for a time.”

Nancy stood up wearily. There were dark bruises of sleeplessness under her eyes. She stretched. “I’m going to the river to wash. Travis? You’ll be okay here?” He nodded slowly.

Sunlight washed inward as Nancy opened the door. She left it ajar, and Travis watched her descend the slope of the riverbank. In a moment she was out of sight.

He looked back at Anna Blaise.

Now, he thought. If he ever hoped to sort this out, now was the time. While she was weak… too weak, perhaps, to lie.

“It’s all true, then? What you told Nancy, I mean, about another world and—all that?”

“Can you look at me and doubt it?”

She was no longer beautiful, Travis thought, but her voice retained its grace, its seductiveness. Maybe its deceit. “Nancy is sometimes credulous.”

“You were the one who told her I wasn’t human.”

“There is no question of that,” Travis said. “But there are other questions. Nancy believes you mean no harm. Maybe. But this Bone. There have been stories in the papers—”

“Bone is credulous, too. But not evil.”

“We only have your word for that.”

“I’m sorry. What else can I offer?”

She was motionless, not even blinking. Travis guessed she was conserving her strength. He said, “You didn’t mean to come here?”

“Not in this fashion. It was a mistake.”

“Nancy said you and, uh, Bone got separated—”

“The journey between worlds is arduous even for us. There are storms in the chaos between. A misstep in that labyrinth can be a disaster. Yes, we were separated.”

“How come—if that’s true—how come nobody came after you?”

She smiled faintly. “There are more worlds than mine and yours. We were lucky to arrive within the boundaries of a single continent. Bone searched. The time passed. That’s all. Together we can travel back.”

“Even if he’s hurt?”

She frowned, shrugged.

“I don’t understand,” Travis said. “If it’s so hard, so dangerous—why do any of this? Why come here?”

“Why would anyone travel between worlds? To learn. Do you understand that, Travis? To acquire …” “—knowledge?” “Wisdom.”

The sound of Nancy’s singing traveled up from the riverbank. The sun had warmed the air a little. Travis looked almost fearfully into Anna’s huge eyes, but there was nothing there to betray her. Nothing that said this is the truth or this is a lie. “Anna Blaise doesn’t exist, then.”

“I am Anna Blaise.”

“But it’s false. A mask.”

She folded her hands in her lap. Her legs were crossed; she looked, Travis thought, like a frail Buddha. “I am not human. But I have a certain access to human minds. Anna Blaise is in some sense a metaphor of myself, the way a name might be translated into a foreign language. But, Travis, see: if I give back a human appearance it can only be a sort of reflection. A mirror, not a mask.”

Travis had begun to sweat, he was not sure why. The air was still cold. “You weren’t a mirror for Creath Burack.”

“But I was! I had to be! How else to survive, to claim his protection?”

“A mirror—”

“Of his deepest needs. Unspoken. Unadmitted. Creath Burack is a deep well of desires and f ears—all buried, hidden.”

Travis said hoarsely, “You used him.” He was suddenly frightened again. The lines of her face were fluid, mobile; he was afraid of what he might see there.

She said defiantly, “I traded my body for his protection when I was helpless. Which of us used the other, Travis?”

Her voice had subtly changed; it was hauntingly familiar. He said, “That’s dirty—that’s—”

“An old, old bargain. I’m not the first to have made it. And I will not be blamed for it.”

Travis stood up.

He recognized the face now. The face and the voice. “Who’s talking?” he demanded, his own voice shrill and childish. “Who’s saying this? You—or my mother?”

“Both of us, I imagine,” Anna said.

Nancy returned, her hair wet, and pushed through the flimsy wooden door. She saw Travis sitting bolt upright, staring. Anna was as inscrutable as ever.

“Travis?” she said. “Something wrong?”

“No,” he said. “No,” and went to the door. “I’ll be back.” Taking his own turn, she guessed, at the riverside.

Nancy settled down in the shadows, exhausted. “What happened?”

Anna pivoted her head to face her. “Travis wanted to know some things.”

“He gave you the third degree?” She was quietly shocked—surely Anna was too frail for that sort of treatment.

But the alien woman said, “He needed reassurance. I cannot say whether he received it.”

“You told him about being a mirror?”

“Yes. Though I think he understood it, intuitively, long before this.”

Nancy closed her eyes. She needed sleep more than anything. Too much had happened. Weariness moved like a tide in her. “You’re that woman,” she heard herself saying, “the one you say he dreams about—”

“The pale woman. Travis sees her in me, yes. I give back that part of him—that fear, that desire.”

Nancy stifled a yawn. “And what about me? What do I see in you?”

Anna gazed back… frail, emaciated, cast out; like a piece of flotsam, Nancy thought sleepily, washed up on some uncaring reef. …

“Only yourself,” Anna said gently.

When she woke it was past nightfall again. Nancy had slept sitting up_; her back was stiff and she was cold. She had to get back to town, she thought. Her mother might have called the police. Anything might have happened. Travis was beside her.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. “Greg Morrow saw me last night. If he wants to make trouble there’s not much we can do about it.”

“Where else is there to go? Anyway—” She stretched. “—we can’t move Anna. It would kill her. There’s not much left of her but her bones.”

Bones and that terrible light. Anna sat cross-legged on the mattress, hardly breathing. Her eyes were rolled back into her head.

Nancy felt a twinge of concern. “Anna—?”

“He’s near here,” Anna Blaise said suddenly. “He’s very near here indeed.”

And she blinked and looked intently at Travis.