She Wakes Read Free

him.
        From the elbow on it disappeared entirely.
        He strained to see, then closed his eyes and a moment later opened them. There was nothing. Fingers, wrist, forearm-all completely gone. Something shivered across his spine.
        He raised the other arm and started forward.
        It was not like night. It was not like closing his eyes. It was not like both together.
        It was deeper than that, much deeper, like the bottom of a pit that had never seen the light. He could feel his pupils dilating rapidly, trying to accommodate to this impossible environment.
        He inched along, working forward in a direct line from the doorway. The air was much cooler here and damp. But there was no musty smell-just the smell of earth, of something clean and hard. He felt sure he was in nothing man had made now. It was a cave-a natural chamber deep in the belly of the mountain. He was wary of breaks and pitfalls. He scuffled forward groping like a blind man. He was a blind man. Oedipus. Ten feet. Twenty. Twenty-five.
        Still there was only darkness. He did not look back.
        He could hear nothing but the sound of his feet on the rough pitted floor, that and his own breathing. Even the birds were silent.
        He wondered if he was alone.
        Then finally his hands found the cool sweating stone.
        Its touch was electric. He felt something race inside him-a strong, wonderful presence here. So strong he almost spoke to it-yes, I hear you. Yes.
        He turned his back to the wall and stared toward the entrance, its honey glow, the muscles of his back relaxing, relieved to finally see again. He felt the scrape of rough stone across his shoulders.
        And then he froze there.
        He shook his head in disbelief.
        He’d been walking through the dark. Swimming through it.
        Yet ten feet back on either side, spaced evenly apart and resting on slabs of stone, a pair of candles stood burning. Birthday candles. Very small, illuminating only a tiny space of floor.
        But burning.
        

LELIA
        

SANTORINI
        
        It was late by the time she got rid of the Greek boy at the bar and then walked home, and her roommate, the Swedish girl, was already sleeping.
         Cow, she thought.
        The girl slept nude and though the night had started out cold it was milder now so that the sheet and blanket were down around her waist. She lay to one side, one hand beneath the pillow and the other draped over it, mouth slightly open. Her shoulders and back were brown and firmly muscled, the breast flesh very pale and slack by comparison.
        She knelt beside the girl’s bed and blew gently into her face. The eyelids fluttered.
        “You awake?”
        The girl slept on.
        She watched her, thinking of the Greek boy on the dance floor as he’d tried to hold her, thinking how easy it was to get rid of him once she’d wanted to. 'You know what Greek boys like, don’t you?' she’d said, deadpan, and the boy thought he understood so he smiled knowingly and laughed and watched her as she nodded toward his friend at the table, who smiled too, and then she said, 'Am fucking. Go fuck yourselves. The two of you. I’ll watch.'
        She smiled now. There wasn’t much worse you could say to a Greek. He’d wanted very much to hit her but he hadn’t. He hadn’t dared.
        The Swedish girl’s breathing was shallow and even. She slept deeply. Lelia did not and was glad of it. What if someone came to you in the night? Robbed you? Touched you?
        Like this.
        She pressed her forefinger to the girl’s shoulder, rested it lightly there for a moment, then drew it down behind the shoulder blade across the rib cage and finally to the base of her breast. Then she stopped and looked at her. The face registered nothing.
        She turned her hand palm upward and gently moved it down and with the back of her hand to the