Something pressed upon her, angular and limp. It must be him. She strained to push him aside, and he flopped bonelessly to the stone floor. He was unexpectedly heavy, and she realized why when she heard the thunk of stone sliding off him to the stone floor, along with the soft sound of stone dust and smaller rocks tumbling from his back.
She fumbled for the lamp, feeling dirt and rough stone beneath her bruised fingers. There were rectangular stones too, and gradually she came to the disconcerting conclusion that the room had collapsed around them. Shattered bits of glass sliced her fingers. She couldn’t tell how badly they were bleeding in the darkness.
A faint breath of cold air told her where the exit was, though she couldn’t guess whether the hallway was still standing or whether the air came from some collapsed portion of the wall.
The lamp was useless, and she resigned herself to feeling her way through the dark toward the air. The hallway was more or less intact, and a faint glow of light at the end hinted that the exit might be accessible.
She carefully made her way back into the collapsed prison cell.
She shrieked when her questing fingers touched the nightmare king’s standing form. He stood swaying in the darkness, and he flinched at her touch.
That tiny movement gave her the courage to say, “Come with me.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, the manacle cold against her skin. She tugged him forward gently.
He stumbled after her.
She didn’t look at him, focusing on finding the enormous stones littering the floor before she tripped over them. He followed blindly. His wrist felt horribly thin beneath the thick crystal of the manacle; her fingers grew sticky with blood.
They rounded a corner, and she continued without looking back.
At last they emerged from the dusty darkness of the tunnel into the star-swept darkness of a breezy midnight.
Claire breathed a sigh of relief and turned, with some reluctance, to face the nightmare king. She dropped his wrist, facing him from a distance that still felt too close.
His expression was lost in shadow.
“I don’t know what to do next. Only I think we should probably get away from here.” Her voice shook; the sound of her fear, the raw edge in her voice, caught her by surprise. I thought I’d at least sound brave. But I just sound terrified and exhausted. He frightened her as much as anything else she had faced. Now, atop a desolate hill under a million unfamiliar stars, battered and bruised and thirsty, she wasn’t even sure whether she had done the right thing in freeing him.
He said nothing for so long that she licked her lips, wondering whether she should say something else.
Then he crumpled forward into the grass with a thump.
Claire listened for sounds of pursuit. The night was quiet but for the faint rustle of the wind in the grass and the distant trees. The rubble shifted with a low rumble and then the sound died away into silence again.
The nightmare king lay awkwardly, his face mashed into the grass. One arm was beneath him, the other by his side, as if he had not attempted to break his fall. She knelt beside him, holding her breath until she could hear a faint, disturbing rattle in his exhalation.
At least he’s alive. I think that’s a good thing.
Exhaustion swept over her. The starlight shone down cold and clear and merciless, silvering the blades of grass beneath her. The blood smeared across her palms and between her fingers looked nearly black. She looked at the king again, at his matted hair thick with stone dust and crusted dirt, at the blood dried dark behind one ear. His shirt was worn threadbare across the shoulders and at the elbows.
She couldn’t think; the day had been a thousand years long and her body and mind rebelled against another demand. She couldn’t very well carry him, she didn’t know where she was going, and she was too tired to stand up anyway.
So after one last, cursory look around, she curled up a short distance away and closed her eyes.
The nightmare king sat in the corner of the chalkboard room, still wearing his straightjacket. He leaned his head back against the wall, his strange blue-gold-silver eyes following Claire as she walked slowly around the room.
Old writing was barely visible on the chalkboards, as if it had been vehemently erased but not actually washed with water. Claire tried to read it, but nothing was legible; faded swoops of elegant writing blended with what might have been mathematical equations.
“Is this your mind?” she asked.
The king did not immediately answer, and she glanced at him. He was staring off into the distance.
That’s what they call a thousand-yard stare. “What did they do to you?” Claire whispered.
The king’s gaze did not waver. His mouth was set in a tight, narrow frown that seemed, to Claire’s eyes, to be either angry or regretful. Perhaps both.
“Can you hear me?”
His gaze flicked toward her, then away. “Sometimes.” His voice echoed strangely, as if the chalkboards flung back the lowest tones with greater force.
“Is this your mind?”
“Not exactly.” His narrow, bony knees were drawn up in front of his chest, and he looked down, studying the thin fabric drawn tight over them. “But I made it, and it is mine, and I let you in.” He did not look at her. “We sprung the trap. We’d better leave soon.”
“The trap?”
He thunked his head hard against the cement behind him, once, and again, and then a third time even harder.
Claire cried, “Stop it!”
Again and again in a rhythm that made Claire’s insides turn upside down.
What if he dies while I’m stuck in this nightmare? Will I die too? Will I be stuck in this room with his corpse forever?
She screamed as he did it again and lunged across the room to grab his head with her hands, straining against his convulsive pounding.
Claire was reminded that it was a dream when her hands slid into his hair. The white-blond strands were fine and soft, the back of his head matted with crusted blood. How did I not see that before? This is an old wound. She hauled him away from the wall, pressing her knee into his shoulder to keep him from thrashing free.
The back of his neck showed the strain of wiry muscles through paper-thin skin. The canvas of the straightjacket had rubbed the skin raw in several places.
Abruptly he stopped moving altogether. She froze, wondering what he was doing, whether he was dangerous even now, whether she was helping or hurting him. He shuddered, as if her touch were unbearable to him, and she pulled away.
Claire watched him warily as he sat motionless.
The silence drew out for long minutes.
Finally Claire said softly, “Your head is bleeding.”
His gaze slid toward her, fixed on her throat for a moment, then slid away. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” He smiled as if thinking of something long past. “I didn’t think you would come.”
“I didn’t want to.”
His lips tightened. “I imagine not.”
The silence was like a living thing, coiling around Claire’s heart more tightly with every passing moment, until she thought she would weep.
Finally he looked up, and the blue-gold-silver of his eyes meeting hers felt like a spark through her body. “They’ll be coming. We sprung the trap.”