Part 6 (1/2)

The next night, she was already in the darkness, rising into the first light.

Above the light was darkness. Above it was light. Above it was darkness. Above it was light, again. And in that light, she noticed that there were joined cracks in two of the walls, creating darkness big enough to go through. As she hovered in the air, sleeping, there was, as always, darkness above her. But now, for the first time, there was darkness in the direction of her feet and darkness in the direction of her head.

She had the option of hovering not only above but aside.

She hovered there, asleep in her dream, watching herself sleep and hover, unable to decide which way she should let her breaths take her.

Eventually, she hovered in the direction of her head, only to think that she was missing something in the direction of her feet. She hovered back in the direction of her feet, then stopped, thinking that she had been right the first time.

She hovered to and fro the entire night, and thoughts of everything she would lose sight of caused her to wake in cold sweat.

Eventually, she picked the direction of her feet. She learnt that what existed in the direction of her feet was more darkness, and beyond the darkness, another room full of light. And in this room, too, there was more darkness in the direction of her feet.

Although there was not much new in these rooms, they felt different because they were aside and not above.

She hovered through many, many rooms that night. And each was slightly different, and each gave her excitement.

The next night she was once again in the original junction, having three options. This time, she picked the direction of her head. She hovered aside into darkness. And past darkness was another room, another variation of the rooms she had seen the night before. But now she noticed that there was no crack in the floor. She had not risen from the floor of this place. If she wanted to, she could choose not to hover, but to walk.

She hovered above the floor, a long time, asleep, afraid of putting herself back on the floor, of waking up. Thus she hovered for the entire duration of the dream.

The next night, she came, again, to the room with the floor.

Slowly, her breaths brought her down to the floor. Feeling herself sleep from the outside, she felt the coldness and coa.r.s.eness of the floor on her cheek and on the skin of her body. Slowly, she brought herself awake, opened her eyes. And now she looked upon the new place, upon the new room, as if she had never seen such a place before, with all its lights and blankets.

She woke up. But she would not have this. She went to sleep again and forced herself to dream once more of the waking up.

And she succeeded.

She faced a room she had never seen before in wakefulness. She looked around, in awe and excitement. There were so many lights. The world was so alien and strange. And the strangest of all was the sensation of the floor on her bare skin. The new room felt more real.

She slowly pushed herself up with her arms until she was sitting.

She slowly and carefully rose to standing and looked in all directions. Awake, standing on the solid floor, she beheld the new room. She beheld the light. She beheld the blankets. And she beheld another crack to the side, big enough to walk through.

She walked into the darkness and the room was gone.

She walked in the darkness and felt there was more around her. There was darkness to every side. And to every side there were more asides, more possibilities, more things unseen, she knew. But the great exhilaration was that she was walking, solid, in the darkness of nothing. There was nothing firmer.

And as she walked into another room full of lights, she woke up and this time could not fall back to sleep.

And now she began to walk in her dreams, walk between the darkness and the light, walk into new places and out of new places, walk in the darkness, spin in the darkness, change directions suddenly in the darkness. The darkness gave her confidence, gave her joy. She would spin in place. She would jump. She would jump and hover for a second, only to land solidly on the ground in the darkness.

Some nights she spent only in the darkness, enjoying herself.

And one day, instead of walking, she ran.

She ran in the darkness. And ran and ran and ran endlessly and always in one direction. Always in one direction.

For weeks she ran in her dreams, ran in one direction. She ran and jumped and whenever she found a new place with more lights, she shunned it and continued on into the darkness.

A year pa.s.sed, and her dreams settled on the darkness and directions she would choose in the darkness. Only occasionally would she come to a place with light, and that place would always feel more and more like her own world of waking. She revelled in darkness, and each time she would invent something new to do in it.

And sometimes there was nothing new to invent, and she would simply run endlessly in one direction, further, ever further in that direction. And sometimes she would choose another direction and run ever further in that direction. There were so many directions, and each one felt different from the others.

And so it continued. And so she slept every day. And the Levantine experimenters could not doc.u.ment this and did not know of this, for it was in her sleep.

But time, as always, brings change.

And the Levantine Experiments were discovered, the scientists jailed, the labs broken into.

Thus it happened.

Two years and two months after the crack appeared, Sarah heard a sound from nowhere. She sat up immediately, looking around, frightened.

There were more sounds, which she could not describe, for she had never heard anything like them.

Hours pa.s.sed, and the sounds a.s.saulted her. They were loud and seemed to originate from the walls themselves. As if the walls were attempting to talk.

Sarah clung to the wall farthest from the sound. And then she noticed that the opposite wall was beginning to shake. It moved slightly with each sound. The sounds were getting harsher and clearer, and each time--bang!--they became--bang!--shorter--bang!

And then a new crack was formed in the wall.

Her breath caught.

With another sound, the crack widened, and light came through it.

Sarah straightened, her body taut, staring at the light.

Another sound, and the crack widened, and the light grew brighter.

”Don't worry,” a voice said. Sarah knew words, because she had been taught them at an early age. But she had never heard this voice; she had not heard another's voice in nine years. ”Don't worry,” it said again. ”We're coming for you. Stay away from the wall.”

Sarah stood there, motionless, rigid, staring at the light.

And suddenly the crack was ma.s.sive, and a piece of her world fell on the floor. And where it had been, now there was light. And from the light, a face appeared and looked in. But Sarah did not recognise what a face was, not having seen any from the age of two. And Sarah did not know the distinction between male and female. A new thing simply came through the wall, and fourteen-year-old Sarah stopped breathing.

Soon, more pieces of her world came tumbling down, and a figure emerged from the light. She stared at it, unable to run, unable to do anything, knowing that it came from the different world, that it came from the world of light and darkness.

It came close to her and its hand hung in the air next to Sarah's head, yet she did recognise what a hand was.