Part 15 (1/2)
”Yes! Yes, I believe you!”
”Could the car have hysterical paralysis?”
”No. Oh, Andy, I couldn't just turn on hate against you. I couldn't.” His arm ached where she clutched it. ”What are they? My G.o.d! What is it?”
”I don't think they're human,” Thurlow said.
”What're we going to do?”
”Anything we can.”
The rainbow circles beneath the dome s.h.i.+fted into the blue, then violet and into the red. The thing began to lift away from the grove. It receded into the darkness. With it went the sense of oppression.
”It's gone, isn't it?” Ruth whispered.
”It's gone.”
”Your lights are on,” she said.
He looked down at the dash lights, out at the twin cones of the headlights stabbing into the grove.
He recalled the shape of the thing then -- like a giant spider ready to pounce on them. He shuddered. What were the creatures in that ominous machine?
Like a giant spider.
His mind dredged up a memory out of childhood: Oberorn's palace has walls of spider's legs.
Were they faerie, the huldu-folk?
Where did the myths originate? he wondered. He could feel his mind questing down old paths and he remembered a verse from those days of innocence.
”See ye not yon bonny road
That winds about yon fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland.
Where thou and I this night maun gae.”
”Hadn't we better go?” Ruth asked.
He started the engine, his hands moving automatically through the kinesthetic pattern.
”It stopped the motor and turned off the lights,” Ruth said. ”Why would they do that?”
They! he thought. No doubts now.
He headed the car out of the grove down the hill toward Moreno Drive.