The Waking

5

S unday morning brought a sun shower, the sort of thing that seemed only to happen in spring. Light rain fell outside Kara’s window, beading up on the flowers that were blooming around the house, but the sun shone down in spite of the rain and the colors of the flowers were vivid. When, in mid-morning, the rain stopped, she was almost sorry.

She spent the morning with her father, cleaning up around the house and talking about the week they’d both had. He seemed glad that she’d made friends already, just as she knew he would be.

“What about you, Dad?” she asked while they were making lunch. “You’ve been thinking about this adventure longer than I have. Is it what you were hoping for?”

He took the question more seriously than she expected, brow furrowed in thought. Then, slowly, he nodded.

“So far, so good. It’s certainly a big adjustment, and we don’t have as much time together-”

“We’re together all day!”

He grinned. “You know what I mean. With the long school hours, we’re just busier.”

“I’ll try to ask more questions in your classes,” Kara said.

Her father shook his head as he went to stir the chicken and vegetables they’d chopped into a frying pan. “We’ll be fine. It’s not just my adventure, Kara. It’s ours. All of it.”

She leaned against the counter. “Then you won’t mind if I go over to school after lunch? I have a study date with Sakura and Miho.”

With a fork, he split a piece of chicken in the pan to make sure it was cooked through, then looked up at her. “Like your father’s ever gonna stop you from studying. Or from checking out what it’s like to live in the dormitory. Go and have fun. Will you be home for dinner?”

“Definitely.”

The first thing Kara saw when Sakura opened the door to her dorm room were the masks. There were three of them hanging on the far wall, to the left of the window, lined up one above the next like a totem pole. The top and middle masks were ugly, monstrous things, but the bottom one was the pretty, elegant face of a woman.

“Wow.”

Miho looked up from the book she was reading. “English? You must like them.” She smiled and sat up on her bed.

“They’re amazing,” Kara said. “Noh masks?”

“Yes!” Miho beamed.

“She collects them,” Sakura explained as she closed the door. “Fortunately, she leaves most of them at home.”

Kara admired the masks as Miho stood and pointed to them each in turn.

“The top one is Karura, a great bird of legend, who flies in four heavens and eats dragons,” Miho explained, and now Kara saw that the green-painted mask did have a beak and a red crest so that it looked vaguely like a bird. “Next is Daikijin, Great Devil God, who protects festivals and ceremonies from evil spirits.”

Kara blinked. The white and silver mask had been crafted with such care that its beauty was undeniable. But with its horns and shaggy mane and the sharp fangs in its wide-stretched, blood-red mouth, it was also ugly and frightening.

“It looks like an evil spirit,” she said.

Miho frowned in disapproval. “You should not judge only by appearance.”

Kara gave her a small shrug. “Of course. I meant no offense.”

Sakura laughed. “Don’t let her get to you. She loves those ugly things too much.”

Miho shot Sakura an unpleasant look and then smiled and gave them a small shrug. “I can’t help it.”

“What about the bottom one? The woman?” Kara asked.

“That is Zoh-onna. She is not a goddess or spirit, only a woman of purity and serenity,” Miho said.

Sakura sat on a cushion in the floor. “I always ask if there’s one that is the opposite of those qualities. I’d like to wear that one.”

The girls laughed. They were both in T-shirts and pajama bottoms, and seeing them like that gave Kara a relaxed, familiar feeling. She’d worn black jeans and a green hooded sweater and felt comfortable enough, but Sakura’s silky-looking red pajamas and the cotton, very American-looking bottoms Miho had on-white and covered with the red and yellow S-crest that Superman wore on his chest-made her wish she’d worn pajamas as well.

Kara surveyed the rest of the dormitory room. There wasn’t much more to see. The beds were wooden boxes with soft futon mattresses that unrolled for sleeping. At first she thought there were straw tatami mats on the floor but then realized the whole floor was tatami. There were a couple of big zabuton cushions on the floor. The two desks were tiny, and a slender laptop sat open atop one of them. There were bamboo sliding doors that must have been closets and two bookcases. One held mostly school books, but the shelves of the other were lined with manga digests.

“I can guess whose bookcase that is,” Kara said, pointing to the manga.

“I’ll let you borrow some,” Sakura replied.

Miho crossed her arms. “Why not show her your art?”

Sakura’s smile evaporated and, for the first time since Kara had met her, she shifted and glanced around awkwardly, unsure of herself.

“You draw?”

“She draws manga,” Miho said. “She’s really good.”

“I’m not. I’m awful,” Sakura mumbled.

Kara dropped down onto another cushion beside her. “I’m sure you’re not. I’d love to see some of your art. But I understand if you don’t want to show me today.”

They were friends now, but they were new friends. Sakura’s art clearly meant a great deal to her, particularly since she kept it mostly secret. She only shared it with people she trusted.

After a moment, she nodded and went to her bed, sliding out the drawer built into its wooden base. She withdrew a thick sketchbook and handed it over. Kara felt honored that Sakura would share this with her but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

The three girls spent twenty minutes just flipping through pages and then looking at other drawings Sakura pulled from her drawer. To Kara’s delight, she was really talented.

“Wow. Between this and Miho’s Noh theater stuff, I feel like I have nothing to contribute. I don’t do anything special.”

Miho sprawled on her belly on the bed, ankles crossed, and poked her face between Kara and Sakura, hair falling across her glasses. “Don’t say that. You are a photographer. And you told me you play guitar.”

“Yeah,” Kara said, “but you guys haven’t heard me play or seen any of my pictures.”

“We will,” Miho promised. “And I’m sure you’re very talented.”

“And if you’re not, we just won’t be friends with you anymore,” Sakura said.

Kara blinked, hurt, and then Sakura laughed. Miho whacked the top of her head and Sakura turned to attack her. Despite their obvious differences in personality and style, the two girls had become like sisters. Perhaps the way their families had cast them aside had made them closer. They didn’t really have anyone but each other.

Sakura pinned Miho in about six seconds.

“I surrender,” Miho said, and Sakura got up, pretending to react to nonexistent cheering from a nonexistent crowd.

“You watch too much television,” Miho told her.

Sakura went to sit in front of the window. “You listen to too much bad music.”

“Rock’s been dead since before I was alive,” Miho countered.

“I’d rather have resurrected rock rot my brain than pop candy so sweet it can rot your teeth.”

Kara watched this back and forth like a tennis match, grinning in amazement. Miho had such a quiet demeanor during school, but here in her own room, she obviously enjoyed sparring.

“What do you think, Kara?” Sakura asked. “Rock or pop?”

Kara shook her head. “Oh, no. You aren’t getting me in the middle of this. Besides, there are a thousand definitions for rock and pop. You’d have to play me some music to compare.”

As Miho started for the laptop-presumably to play music- Kara held up a hand. “No, no. That wasn’t an invitation.”

Sakura laughed. “Okay. We’ll leave you out of it, this time. But you’ll have to play your guitar for us soon.”

“That’s a deal. Next time we’ll study at my house. There’s a lot more room there anyway.”

Miho looked concerned. “You don’t think your father would mind?”

“He’d be happy to have us there,” Kara said.

Sakura sighed.

“You don’t want to come to my house?” Kara asked.

“It’s not that. You just said a terrible word,” Sakura said.

Kara reviewed what she’d just said, fearing that she had somehow offended her friends. “What word?”

Miho threw a small cushion at Sakura. “ Study. That is what we’re supposed to be doing today.”

“Right,” Kara said. “I was doing my best to forget.”

Reluctantly, the three girls dove into their studies. Most of their assignments for the weekend involved reading, and Kara still had math homework she had been avoiding.

They spent a contentedly quiet hour in one another’s company, until finally Sakura let out a groan and stood. She walked to the window again and gazed outside.

“I need a cigarette. Can we go for a walk?”

Miho tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I ought to read these last few pages.”

Sakura smirked. “The boys are outside playing baseball.”

For a moment, Miho hesitated. Then she slipped a marker into her book. “I can finish later.”

Kara laughed. “I thought you were only interested in American boys.”

Miho glanced away, perhaps even blushing a bit. “That depends on what you mean by ‘interested.’ My curiosity is like a-” She said a word that Kara didn’t understand.

“What?”

Sakura kicked off her pajama pants and slid into a pleated skirt much shorter than the one she wore with her school uniform. She looked up. “A scientist who studies people.”

“A sociologist?” Kara said in English.

Miho repeated the Japanese word and Kara stored it away.

“It’s like watching animals in their natural habitat,” Miho explained.

Kara smiled. “Then by all means, let’s go watch the animals.”

Sakura untucked her T-shirt, searched around for her cigarettes and lighter, and then went to the door.

“Miho, you’re not coming?” Kara asked.

“She’s coming,” Sakura said. “She’s just more proper than I am.”

Kara smiled. At home, she and her girlfriends changed in front of one another all the time. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder, but now she realized that things might be different in Japan. Probably were. Or maybe Miho was just shy.

They waited for her in the hall, but a minute later Miho appeared in a cute blue dress from the downtown shop she’d taken them into the day before. She and Sakura put on light jackets, and they all went downstairs and out the back door.

On a secondary field behind the dorm, a group of boys had put together a baseball game. They were wisely batting away from the building, toward the tree line at the distant edge of the school property, but Kara still thought they were risking knocking out some windows. One foul ball spun backward off a bat could easily end the game with the shattering of glass. But she wasn’t about to volunteer her opinion.

“Baseball club?” she asked.

Sakura nodded. “They’re not good enough to be on a team.”

But for Kara, it was nice just to see the game played. She had never been much of a baseball fan, despite the two World Series the Red Sox had won in recent years. Earlier in the week, Hachiro had been very disappointed when she didn’t show as much enthusiasm for her hometown team as he did. He seemed to know everything about American baseball, so she wasn’t surprised to see him playing the outfield.

Most of the boys wore caps with the school insignia, which she assumed was some sort of official baseball club thing. Hachiro wore a Red Sox cap. It surprised her. Sakura’s hairstyle was one thing, but she didn’t dare wear her pins or patches on the outside of her uniform or show her art to other students. As much as they might talk about their talents to Kara, her friends were no different from most Japanese students. They were taught that it was bad manners to stand out, except through academic achievement, and even that was frowned upon by some. But Hachiro grinned broadly out there on the field, proud of his Red Sox cap. It reminded her how much she liked his smile.

The guy up at bat hit one straight at the third baseman’s head. The kid playing third barely had time to raise his glove but somehow managed to catch the ball. The batter was out and Kara cheered.

Miho and Sakura looked at her.

“You picked sides already?”

Kara shrugged. “Hachiro’s team is on the field. I have to cheer for them.”

The two girls shared a knowing look and mischievous smiles.

“So you like Hachiro?” Miho asked.

Kara arched an eyebrow. “Nothing like that. He’s very nice.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s very nice,” Sakura said, teasing her.

A moment later, a shudder went through Kara and she sensed someone standing beside her, a shadow blocking the sun. She turned to find that the soccer club girls had come to watch the game.

Ume gave her a dismissive look. “The bonsai likes baseball. What a surprise. A bunch of foolish boys trying to be something they’re not. No wonder it appeals to you.”

Kara took a deep breath, feeling herself blush. Back home, she knew girls who got into hostile confrontations all the time-they seemed hardwired for that kind of thing-but she’d managed to avoid fights or even grudges. Worse yet, she knew Japanese custom demanded she ignore or deflect Ume’s animosity somehow. Just because this girl didn’t care about how she was expected to behave, that didn’t mean that Kara had to stoop to her level.

But the other soccer girls were whispering to one another and doing that little smiling-behind-their-hands thing that annoyed the crap out of Kara. They were so happy with themselves, behaving like perfect little Japanese girls during school but full of quiet, malicious nastiness.

“If you’re not interested in boys, I certainly won’t judge you,” Kara said. “It leaves more for the rest of us. And you have plenty of pretty girls to choose from.”

The arrogant smile slipped from Ume’s face. “I’m sure you’ve had your share of boys.”

Kara felt her right hand clench into a fist. The implication- that she was some kind of slut-could not have been clearer.

“I ignore your taunts in school for my father’s sake,” she said, “but we’re not in school now.”

Miho slid her arm through Kara’s and leaned over to whisper, “Don’t let her make you do something you’ll regret.”

Kara glanced at Miho. Just beyond her, Sakura stood staring at Ume, jaw tight with anger or hatred, or both. She looked more furious than Kara felt. When Miho started to escort Kara away, she thought Sakura might not follow, that there might be some kind of fight after all. But Miho called to her to come along, and Sakura took a deep breath and joined them. In the midst of that tension, Ume did not so much as glance at Sakura. The queen bitch behaved like Sakura wasn’t even there.

Some of Ume’s friends called out, “Good-bye, bonsai” as they walked away, but Kara didn’t turn around.

“Not worth it,” Miho said softly as the three of them walked around toward the dorm. “Someday fate will punish her. She’ll regret the way she treats people.”

“You think?” Kara replied. “In my experience, girls like that just keep getting away with it.”

Sakura gave a soft laugh. “Not forever.”

“So she was trying to bait me?” Kara asked. “You think she wanted me to do something?”

“Of course. Your father may not blame you, but Ume’s parents are wealthy. Her father is a diplomat, very influential. Who do you think would be blamed if you fought with her?”

Kara considered that, and what it would do to her father’s position at the school. No matter how unpleasant Ume got, Kara would have to ignore her. She couldn’t risk getting her father in trouble.

“I can’t dishonor him.”

“Exactly,” Miho said. “In Japan, you must be careful of such things.”

Sakura gave another humorless laugh. “I don’t care if I shame my parents. I could hurt her for you.”

“That’s not helping,” Miho scolded her.

Now Sakura’s grin did have some humor in it. “I know.”

“It’s hard not to react to her. I was raised to speak my mind and stand up for myself,” Kara said.

Miho sighed. “I would love to visit America someday.”

“We’ll go together,” Kara promised.

“Not until I have a cigarette, please,” Sakura said.

With her nicotine addiction leading the way, they went around the dorm, across the field that separated it from the main school building, and down the path between the eastern wall and the woods. Kara looked for the recessed doorway where she knew Sakura went to smoke. In anticipation, Sakura took out her cigarettes, tapped one into her hand, and put it between her lips. She produced her lighter and flicked its flame alive.

A scream tore across the school grounds and Sakura’s hand froze. Kara and Miho exchanged a look and a second scream filled the late afternoon sky.

“It came from that direction,” Miho said, pointing toward the front of the school.

They began to run. Sakura dropped her cigarette and vanished her lighter into a pocket. The girls hurried around to the front of the school to see other students rushing toward the bay shore.

Kara felt an unpleasant twist in her stomach and the back of her neck prickled with dread. People were gathering at the edge of the water, not far from the trees-not far from the shrine to Akane. A few of them had cell phones out, frantic conversations merging into a low buzz of chatter.

When the girls reached the shore, all they could do was join the crowd milling about the edge. Kara tried to listen to the mutterings of the other students, and she heard the Japanese word for “body” before an opening appeared in the mob and she saw two girls comforting a third, who wiped tears from her eyes. A pair of boys had taken off their shoes and waded knee-deep into the bay, peering down into the water.

Shouts and footfalls came from behind them now, and Kara glanced back to see other students coming around from the rear of the school, boys in their baseball caps and spectators from the game. Someone must have gone to get them, or else they’d been on the receiving end of cell phone calls. Word was spreading fast.

One of the boys in the water closed his eyes and took a step back from whatever they’d found.

“Stop that,” the other boy said. “Help me.”

He bent and reached down into the water, grabbing hold of something heavy. The other boy hesitated, but then a young teacher, Fujimori-sensei, pushed his way through the students, calling out “ doite ” as he made his way to the water’s edge. He didn’t pause to take off his shoes, and Kara felt sure someone must already have told him what was happening. Kara wanted to turn away, but she couldn’t seem to manage it.

Mr. Fujimori reached into the water and helped the boy drag the body onto the shore. The dead boy’s face was bloated and pale, and his clothes squished as they set him down. He wore no shoes, and for some reason that detail was the thing that snapped Kara out of her mesmerized state. She swallowed hard, covered her mouth with a hand, and turned away.

As she did, she saw Sakura’s face, etched with horror and a kind of panic.

“Jiro?” Sakura said.

Kara blinked. Jiro? She knew that name. Pale and puffy, she had not recognized the dead boy, but if it was the same Jiro, he was a friend of Hachiro’s.

Miho stepped up to Sakura and took both the girl’s hands in her own. “Are you all right?”

Sakura shook her head. “I dreamed it,” she whispered, eyes wide with shock. “I dreamed he was dead.”

Mr. Fujimori had his cell phone out now and was calling the police. A voice rose above all of the mutterings and questions and crying.

“Jiro! No!”

The crowd parted to let Ume through. Hachiro followed a few feet behind her, looking numb and lost. But Ume clutched at her clothing and twisted her hair as she stood a few feet away from the dead boy. Then she screamed, tears spilling down her cheeks. Several of the soccer girls tried to pull her away and Ume slapped the one nearest her, screaming at her to get away. The girls backed off, but Mr. Fujimori moved to block her view of Jiro’s corpse.

Ume shook her head from side to side, sobbing in her grief. Her whole body trembled as she tried to get by the teacher. Mr. Fujimori attempted to hold her, but Ume brushed him off and fell to her knees. The bay water gently lapped the shore. The corpse’s legs were still in the water, and it shifted slightly with the ebb and flow.

Kara could never have predicted something so horrible, but she found herself regretting her exchange with Ume. The girl was so distraught, so inconsolable, that she wished she could take the words back.

But then Ume exploded. She leaped up and turned on the crowd.

“Sakura!” she screamed, running into a cluster of students. She pushed her way through half a dozen others. “This is your fault, somehow. You did this!”

Miho and Kara put their hands up to stop Ume, but the girl stopped short. She shook as she pointed an accusatory finger at Sakura, who stunned Kara by beginning to weep.

Mr. Fujimori grabbed Ume by the shoulders and physically moved her away from the crowd, along the shore to a place where he could try to calm her, speaking in kind, quiet tones.

“Why would she say that?” Kara asked, turning to Sakura. “What’s she talking about?”

But Sakura could only shake her head, unable to reply. After a moment she stepped away from them and fled back toward the dorm.

Miho looked at Kara, hesitated a moment, and then opened her hands in apology and went in pursuit of her roommate.

Kara could only glance around at the other students, lost for any explanation. No one paid any attention to her, and she felt more than ever like the bonsai Ume had named her. Hachiro stood by Jiro’s body, looking stricken, but Kara didn’t know what to say to him. Though her books were still in the dorm, the only place she wanted to be now was at home.

She didn’t belong here.

“We should never have come.”

Rob Harper sat on the small sofa in the living room, holding his head in his hands. With a sigh, he leaned back and stared at his daughter, eyes wide with a dawning realization.

“I should get you out of here.”

Kara’s mouth dropped open. “No, Dad,” she said, sitting next to him.

“Seriously, honey. This is starting to seem like a very bad idea.” They were speaking English tonight. The things they were discussing, what they were feeling, were too raw to take the time to translate.

She took his hands in her own and sat with him. In jeans and an old green sweater, he ought to have looked right at home, just Dad. But the lines around his eyes had started to deepen and he looked tired. The worry etched into his face didn’t help. He looked older to her.

Kara nudged against him and he put an arm around her. She pushed her face to his chest, listening to his heart. Perhaps two minutes went by, but they felt like forever to Kara. At last, she spoke up again.

“They call me ‘bonsai.’ ”

Her father blinked. “What?”

“Bonsai. Like the tree. Cut away from where it belongs and planted someplace else.”

“Who calls you that?”

Kara shrugged. “Some of the girls. But it doesn’t really bother me. I kind of like it, really. Not the girls. There are some real bitches, but you find them everywhere. It’s almost comical how stereotypical they are, thinking they’re special when they’re just like a million other girls. I mean, I’ve kind of taken the ‘bonsai’ thing to heart. That’s me. I’m a bonsai. But bonsai grow, and people think they’re beautiful and special and they take them into their homes. I have been cut away from where I came from and planted someplace else. And sometimes that means I’m going to be awkward or uncomfortable and feel like I don’t belong-”

“Kara,” he started.

She held up a hand to forestall any interruption. “But that doesn’t mean I want to leave. If anything, it makes me want to work harder, not at fitting in but at just living, at-what’s the word?- thriving, in my own way. It’s important to stay and see this through.”

Her father shifted, studying her as though seeing her for the first time. “A boy died, Kara. And there was another-a girl back in the fall. The school administration won’t talk about it, but Miss Aritomo says she was murdered.”

Kara nodded. “I know. Her name was Akane. She was my friend Sakura’s older sister. But, Dad, think about what you’re saying. We’re going to run home because of this? It creeps me out, yeah. I feel a little sick, actually. But would we have moved out of Medford if the same thing happened back home?”

“Of course not, but-”

“What? What’s different?” The question silenced him, and Kara knew what he was thinking. “I know you want to take care of me.”

“That’s my job.”

Kara took a breath. There were so many things she could have said: that he couldn’t have prevented her mother’s death, that life didn’t work that way, that he could not be with her every second. But they’d had many such conversations after the accident that killed her mother.

“We’re supposed to take care of each other, remember? That was the deal,” she said.

His smile was weak, but it was there.

“This has nothing to do with me,” she told him. “And we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. It’s terrible, but Jiro could have killed himself. Or it could’ve been an accident. Don’t panic just yet.”

He took a deep breath, then pulled her toward him, kissing the top of her head.

“Okay,” he said. “But no wandering by yourself for a while. Honestly, honey, I’ve been a little worried about you anyway. You haven’t been eating much, and you’ve been looking kind of tired.”

“I am tired. But I’m a teenager. We’re supposed to sleep twenty-three hours a day.”

He chuckled. “All right. But I’m going to keep an eye on you.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She stands on the shore of the bay, the lights along Ama-no-Hashidate like stars against the darkness of the water and the black pines on that spit of land. The bay ripples and Kara steps into the water, unable to resist. Something brushes against her ankle and she looks down.

The corpse that drifts there stares up at her with her mother’s face.

Kara doesn’t run. Her chest aches with grief, a physical pain that is all she’s ever known of sorrow. Her throat closes and she feels tears burn the edges of her eyes, but when she reaches up to wipe them away, she finds only smooth skin.

No eyes. No mouth. Once again, she has no face.

Under the water, her mother’s corpse begins to move, but this time it is not the wind-driven ebb and flow of the bay that shifts the cadaver’s arms and legs. No, the body moves under its own power, rolling over onto its knees, naked back rising, slick and wet and gleaming in the moonlight.

Mom? she says, but has no mouth to speak the word.

The corpse rises, but the long hair is too black and the body too thin. She lifts her head and the face has now changed. Her mother’s features are gone, replaced by brown eyes and high cheekbones that could almost be Sakura’s. Yet it isn’t Sakura, either.

Which is when Kara realizes that Akane has risen from the bay. She has never seen the girl, but it can only be her. The resemblance to Sakura is too strong. Kara reaches out a shaking hand, thinking of the horror Akane had endured here on the shore of the bay, but the dead girl arches her back and hisses, baring sharp, tiny teeth. Her eyes have changed. They have the slit cruelty of a cat’s eyes.

And she starts out of the water.

Kara cannot scream, but she can run. She turns back toward the school and catches sight of something moving over by the trees… by the shrine the other students have built to remember Akane. In amongst the photos and flowers and messages prowl a dozen cats. As Kara glances at them, they freeze and turn toward her.

Look at her. Notice her.

Again she turns to run, but abruptly she is no longer by the bay. Instead she runs along the corridor inside the girls’ wing of the dormitory. A door stands open on the left side of the hall, just ahead, and a terrible knowing fills her, for she recognizes immediately whose room this is.

She only sees the blood as she begins to slip, and then she falls, scrambling along the floor of the corridor in a long puddle of blood that smears her hands and face, mats her hair, and stains her clothes. When at last she stops sliding, trying to get up, knees and hands slipping in the sticky blood, nose full of the terrible stench, she raises her head and finds that she is right outside Sakura and Miho’s room.

The door hangs wide open.

Sakura lays on the floor on bloodstained rice mats, a thousand tiny claw marks slashed into her face and chest, arms and legs and throat. She stares at Kara with a single, blind, dead eye. The other is missing, leaving a dark crater behind, claw marks around the edges.

Sitting atop Sakura’s corpse is a cat with copper and red fur.

It purrs happily.

Kara woke with a scream, then lay in the dark, heart pounding, waiting for the sounds of her father rising. But the house remained quiet, and after a few moments she rose and went out into the hall, opened his door, and peeked inside. He lay in his bed, sound asleep. She tried to tell herself that her scream had been short and not as loud as she’d imagined. Or that it had been part of her dream, and she’d not screamed at all upon waking.

The alternative, that he’d slept right through her terror, was too awful to consider.