I WASN’T READY for the heat. As we moved from the plains into the desert, sunlight no longer felt like the gentle, life-giving rarity I’d come to love. Instead, it was relentless, hard, and mean. Sophie had spent so much of our money on clothes that we were in danger of running out of gas money before we got to The Commune. Claire said we’d use less gas if we didn’t run the air-conditioning, so we kept it off. We started to get grumpy. We argued a lot about stupid things, like who would pick the radio station or who was drinking more water. Then we stopped talking altogether and the only sound was the hot wind as it whipped through the open windows.
But finally, with less than a quarter tank of gas and almost zero patience between us, we got to the place Mozart had marked on the map. Except there was nothing there.
Claire was behind the wheel again. She pulled the car over onto the dusty shoulder and cut the engine. We both stared through the dirty windshield at the rugged, dry land dotted with scrub brush.
“That daft old wolf,” she muttered.
“Maybe it’s just off the road a bit.” I climbed out of the car.
“Or maybe the local humans got wise, killed them all, and burned the place to the ground.” Claire climbed out, too.
I looked around at the miles of barren wasteland around us.
“What local humans?” I asked.
The wind pushed the hot, dry air in our faces and tugged at our clothes.
“Unbelievable,” Claire muttered under her breath, then sat on the hood of the car. “Ah, shite that’s hot!” She stood up immediately, rubbing her butt. “Great, just fucking great.” She shaded her eyes with her hand as she scanned the desert horizon. “Stranded in the bloody desert with a scorned, AI stalker chick about to descend on us with a horde of brainwashed humans.”
“Would you chill?” I said. “This is the perfect place to hide from her. I bet there’s not even a cell signal out here. No tech, no VI.”
“So this is your plan, then?” she said. “Avoid computers and cell phones? Just how long do you think you can keep that up?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I want to ask the Sphinx for advice. Maybe we can stay here for a while….”
“We can’t even find here!” she said. “It probably doesn’t even exist anymore.”
“Let’s just walk for a little bit.” I grabbed the big jug of water we’d been sharing. “Maybe it’s all underground, and they have a hidden entrance or something.”
“Oh, right,” she said and rolled her eyes.
“You got a better idea? I’m pretty sure we don’t have enough gas to get us to the next town, so we’d better hope we can find something out here.” I slung the jug over my shoulder and started walking. A minute later I heard her heavy footsteps crunching behind me.
We walked for a while, Claire grumbling quietly to herself. Eventually, we saw what looked like a small mountain up ahead.
“Maybe there’s a cave or something there,” I said.
Claire looked over to where the sun was beginning to slip down below the horizon. “It’s starting to get late. Maybe we should head back to the car, catch some sleep, and come back in the morning.”
“And walk this whole thing all over again? Come on, we’re already more than halfway there.”
“I don’t know…I think it’s farther than it looks. And anyway, once the sun sets it’s going to get cold.”
“That’s a bad thing? I’m dying in this heat.”
She didn’t say anything, just chewed her lip and continued to stare at the slowly setting sun. Her anger from earlier seemed to have disappeared, replaced by something I hadn’t seen in her before.
“What is it?” I asked. “You’re getting a little weird on me.”
She shrugged. “I guess I just feel out of my element. I’m not really a nature person.”
“I thought you loved country stuff.”
“I love to enjoy the ambiance from a comfortable booth, preferably with a coffee.”
“Well, I’m not exactly a nature person, either. But really, the last thing I want to do right now is get back in the car.”
“Yeah,” she admitted.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked. “We’ve still got plenty of water, so we’re not going to die of thirst. So we sleep out on the ground under the stars for a night. That actually sounds kind of cool.”
“I guess so.”
“Plus, once it gets dark, we’ll know for sure if there are people out there because we’ll probably be able to see lights.”
“Fine,” she said. “But if I hear something that sounds even remotely like a rattlesnake, I’m out.”
The sun turned an angry blood red as it began to drop behind the horizon. We walked on for a while longer, but the mountain didn’t seem to get any closer. Night fell fast, the sky shifting from red to a dark purple. There were no streetlights or business signs out here. Nothing but faint starlight and a sickly sliver of moon. I started to get the sense of just how dark it would be once the sun set completely, and I wondered if sleeping out in the open desert wasn’t such a great idea after all.
Suddenly, Claire stopped.
“Did you hear that?” she asked.
“What?”
“Shhh!”
At first, I didn’t hear anything except the wind whistling through the scrub brush. Then, I picked out something else underneath. At first, it was so faint that I thought I might be imagining it. But as the last light of the sun disappeared and the sky went completely black, it got louder.
“Is that…” I whispered. “Is that someone crying?”
The darkness was so thick that I could only see a few feet in any direction. The crying gradually got more intense until it drowned out the hissing night wind.
“Boy!” Claire hissed, and stabbed her finger at the air in front of us.
About ten feet ahead I saw a shape that I knew hadn’t been there a moment before. It looked like a woman. She stood with her head bowed so that her long, dark hair fell in her face. Her arms hung loosely at her sides. It was impossible to tell in the darkness, but her hands appeared to be covered with something like dark paint. And she was crying. Not a gentle weeping but thick, choking sobs that shook her whole body.
I looked at Claire for some idea what we should do, but she just stared at the crying woman, her eyes wide.
I turned back to the woman. “Are you okay?” My voice sounded higher than normal.
Her sobs quieted somewhat, but her head was still bowed and her shoulders shook even harder, like she was fighting to keep it inside.
“Miss?” I tried again. “Do…you need help?”
Slowly, her head began to rise. Her long, dark hair parted to reveal a pale, beautiful face streaked with tears of blood. Her luminous white eyes quivered in their sockets, showing only pinpoint black pupils.
“H-h-h-h…” she choked between sobs. “He-he-he-he…”
She lifted her hands up in front of her and I could tell now it wasn’t paint on them. They were covered in blood.
“Boy…” said Claire, her voice on the edge of panic.
“Hel-hel-hel-hel,” said the woman. Then her face shifted suddenly from misery to fury and she screamed, “HEEEEEEEEELLLLLP!”
The sound ripped through me like electricity. Every muscle in my body seized up. I couldn’t move, or speak, or even breathe. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Claire tip over like a plank of wood. Then my vision narrowed and spots floated in front of my eyes. I saw, more than felt, my own body begin to tip forward. The last thing I remembered was the weeping woman’s blood-drenched hands reaching out for me. Then there was only darkness.
I WOKE UP. That was a surprise right there. I really thought this was it.
Although when I tried to move, for a moment I wished I was dead. My entire body felt like one giant sore muscle.
“Oh, shit,” I wheezed.
“No, you did that already,” came a clear, piercing voice.
I tried to open my eyes, then realized they were already open.
“I can’t see!” I shouted.
“Your sight will return soon,” said the same voice, sounding a little bored.
It felt like I was lying in a cot, those metal-framed canvas ones you see in old movies with scenes in military hospitals. A thin, wool blanket covered me, which was good because I was completely naked.
“What the hell happened to my clothes?” I asked.
“I just told you,” said the voice. “You shit all over yourself. Don’t feel bad. That’s typical for La Llorona’s victims. Whoever created you did a fine job with your construction. A lesser-made flesh golem would have torn himself apart during the seizures.”
“Flesh golem? What’s that?”
There was an audible sigh, like the speaker couldn’t believe he had to even explain it. “Why, you of course.”
“The only ‘golem’ I’ve ever heard of was that Jewish guy in Prague. And he was made of mud and powered by the name of God or something. That’s not what makes me go.” My vision was starting to come back a little. Instead of a big, black blob, the person in front of me was now a big, gray blob with a few black blobs floating in it.
“The method is hardly the point here,” said the speaker. “Neither is the material of construction, for that matter. A golem can be made out of almost anything—mud, flesh, metal, wood. I even saw one made of solid gold once, although that was impractical to the point of being downright tragic. Gold looks nice, but it’s far too soft and heavy. The poor thing was utterly useless. And a golem can be animated by any number of means. This is, of course, not to imply that they are easy to construct. At least, not ones that last. And you, my boy, may be the finest construction I’ve ever seen. You took the shock of La Llorona’s voice most manfully.” The speaker paused for a second, and there was a strange clicking sound. Then, “That’s merely a figure of speech, of course. There are no literal men around here.”
“La Llorona?” My vision was clearing more. I could make out shapes and color now. Although I still couldn’t quite make out what kind of person I was talking to.
“Yes, La Llorona. The creature you met at the gates last night. A word of advice, my boy. It’s generally not wise to startle a banshee.”
“A banshee? I guess that explains it. We were just trying to help, that’s all.”
“Banshees rarely are interested in things like that, and La Llorona even less so. She is a special case. And quite mad since she murdered her children, I’m afraid. Although she does make an excellent sentry, as you and your companion discovered.”
“My companion? Claire!” I sat up, then I winced as pain flashed through my body. “Is she okay?”
“The human?” the speaker asked, a tinge of disgust in the voice. “She’ll live.”
“She’s not human.”
“No? She certainly looks human.”
“Trust me. She’s not. And I hope you guys didn’t treat her bad. Because she’s kind of—”
There was a sudden, loud crash, followed by cursing and yelling.
“That would be Claire.” I tried to get up, but a clawed hand held me in place. It felt like bird talons, only a lot bigger.
“You’re not fully recovered yet. And I’m sure they have the situation well in hand.”
“You don’t know Claire. You really have to let me go talk her down before she flips out.”
“Believe me, we can handle just about anything.”
Then all at once, my vision slipped into place. In front of me stood a full-sized gryphon, with the body of a lion, and the head, front legs, and wings of a gigantic eagle. He lounged next to my cot with his lion hind legs curled up under him, and his eagle eyes gazed down at me without any expression I could read.
“Whoa,” I said.
“Indeed,” said the gryphon, still eyeing me coldly. “My name is Knossos. Welcome to The Commune.”
There was another crash, and more cursing and yelling.
“Let me go to her. Please. She’s probably totally freaked out right now. I know I could calm her down in no time. Why put her through this if you don’t have to?”
Knossos sighed, clacking his curved beak as he preened his feathers. Then he slowly stood up, shook himself, and walked toward an oversized open doorway. “Let’s go then, before she breaks anything else. Glass isn’t easy to make by hand, you know.”
He passed through the doorway, then paused and turned his head over his furry shoulder to fix me with his eagle eyes. “I mean that colloquially, of course. Few of us at The Commune actually have hands.”
I stood up, cinching my blanket around my waist like a sarong. As I followed him through the doorway and into the off-white stucco hallway, I felt small. Literally. Because the doorway we had passed through was about the size of a barn door, and the hallway we entered was even bigger. The ceiling was about twenty-five feet high and the hallway was about thirty or forty feet across. Obviously, things would need to be bigger than a regular human building to accommodate a gryphon. But not this much bigger. I wondered what creature lived here that needed that much space. I also wondered how they were hiding all of this out here in this flat, barren desert. Assuming that’s where we still were. I hadn’t seen a single window yet.
We heard more cursing and banging down the hall. It seemed to be coming from a couple doors down.
“And you choose to travel with this person?” asked Knossos.
“She isn’t always like this. She’s…sort of a shape-shifter.” I wasn’t sure if I should go around telling people exactly who she was, especially if her psycho brother was out there somewhere looking for her.
“What does form have to do with it?”
“Uh, her identity changes with her form.”
“I see,” he said, although it didn’t sound like he was all that interested.
As we walked past an open doorway, I glanced in, mostly looking for windows. In the room was a creature that looked like something between a lizard and a kangaroo, but with a panther face, sitting at a big, old-fashioned sewing loom.
Once we were passed the doorway, I said, “What was—”
“Chupacabra,” said Knossos.
“I thought that was an urban—”
“Myth? Aren’t we all?” He shook his feathered head. “Although poor Javier may be the last of his kind. So perhaps the word is not so far off where he is concerned.”
We finally reached the next doorway. Only two doors down from the room I was in, but it had to have been fifty yards or more. My legs and back had gone from sore to painful again. Knossos had been right. I wasn’t really up to this yet. But I had to calm Claire down. I hated to think how they were treating her, especially if they thought she was human.
As I looked into the room, I saw it was even worse than I’d thought. They had her strapped down to some kind of elevated gurney. She was naked and bruised and screaming like an animal. She’d managed to rip one restraint off, and a centaur was holding her arm in place.
He looked at us with relief. “A little help, huh?”
I don’t know why that set me off, but it did. The anger burst into my arms, washing away the pain and pretty much every ounce of patience and rational thought I had. I charged into the room, grabbed him by both shoulders, and shoved him away from her. Of course, shoving someone with the lower body of a horse isn’t exactly easy. His hooves only skidded a few feet back on the tiles.
“What the hell?” he said, and came at me. I grabbed him and threw him down to one side.
“Back the fuck off!” I shouted. Then I turned to Claire. She was still screaming and flailing around. She nearly punched me in the face. “Claire, it’s okay,” I shouted over her screams. “It’s Boy. I’m here. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Her eyes blinked rapidly and she looked up me.
“Boy?” she said, like she was having trouble remembering.
“Yeah, Claire it’s me. We made it to Oz. Remember? Finding brains and hearts and stuff? This is The Commune.”
“They…” Her face crumpled. “I’m…Why am I tied up? Why am I naked? Why am I hurt?”
“Get me something to cover her,” I snapped at the centaur. He stared up at me stupidly from the floor where I’d thrown him. “NOW!”
He scrambled awkwardly onto all four legs and started rummaging around in a cabinet set into the wall.
Claire had gone limp and was making strange keening sounds deep in her throat. “I got you,” I said as I quickly removed the restraints, trying not to look at her nakedness. “Everything’s okay now.”
“I thought….” she whispered.
As the restraints came off, she fell limply into my arms, pressing her face against my bare chest. The centaur threw me a thin, wool blanket like the kind I had around my waist and I wrapped her tightly in it. She was shivering uncontrollably now, like she was going into shock.
“You’re okay now,” I said over and over again as I stroked her smooth, black hair.
“I thought it was Robert,” she said into my chest. “That he caught me, that I was being removed.”
“No, no, it was all just a stupid misunderstanding,” I said, glaring at the centaur. “It’s all cleared up now. I got you.”
The blanket wrapped around her began to loosen and I noticed her feeling lighter. Then she slowly shifted into Sophie in my arms.
“Oh, hey,” said the centaur. “She’s not human, is she?”
“Obviously,” said Knossos, who had remained in the doorway throughout the exchange. “I think we’ve made rather a mess of things, Rhoecus. The Dragon Lady will want to know about this.”
A LITTLE WHILE later, Sophie and I were back in the plain, off-white, windowless room I woke up in. We had our clothes back, but of course Claire’s clothes didn’t really fit Sophie. The T-shirt hung down on her like a nightshirt and she had to roll up the running pants so many times it looked like she had doughnuts around her ankles. She wasn’t acting like the perky, never-take-anything-seriously Sophie that I knew, either. She sat next to me on the cot, staring at the terra-cotta tile floor, her shoulder nestled into me. Every once in a while, a shiver ran through her.
“You okay?” I asked.
She shrugged, not looking at me. “I didn’t want to be out.”
“You mean, you didn’t want to switch with Claire?”
“Yeah.”
“So why did you?”
“She made me.”
It never occurred to me that sometimes they fought not for who got out, but for who stayed in.
“She’s always been the stronger one,” said Sophie. “When she wants to be.”
“Why did she think Robert got her? I mean, I’m assuming he doesn’t look much like a centaur.”
“It was the strapped down to a gurney creepy science thing. The last time we saw Robert, he had us strapped down like that. He…did things to us.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She brought her knees up to her chest and pulled the oversized T-shirt tight across her shins. “He’s why we ran away from home. We just couldn’t take it anymore. After Claire’s mom killed our dad, Robert got obsessed with the idea of purging the Hyde out of us. He would stay locked up in his lab for days at a time. We never saw Stephen. But sometimes, late at night, we would hear him in their room, crying, begging Robert to leave him alone. Swearing he’d never come out again. He’d just hide forever. But of course, you can’t help it. Sometimes you don’t even mean to do it or it happens while you’re sleeping. We knew it. Stephen knew it. And Robert knew it. That’s when the experiments started for real. When we started hearing the screaming from their room.”
“Do you know what he was doing?”
“Some of it. And the stuff we saw…” She shuddered. “It must have hurt both of them. But he didn’t stop. And when the pain got so bad that he couldn’t experiment on himself anymore? That’s when he started experimenting on us.”
“What did he do to you?” I actually kind of didn’t want to know. But it seemed like she really needed to tell somebody.
“He would give us injections.” Her eyes grew distant and her tone got strangely calm. Like it was someone else’s life she was remembering. “At first, he was mostly just working out ways to force the transformation. He’d strap us down to the chair thing and give us an injection that would force the transformation. Then he’d give us another injection that would make us change back. It was exhausting, but it didn’t really hurt. Then he started messing with things. He’d make us start to change with one injection, and then halfway through, he’d stop us with another injection. Sometimes we’d get stuck halfway for days. Like my legs, Claire’s arms. Or some other combination. It…hurt to stay stuck like that. It felt like slowly getting torn apart. Especially after he really started to fine-tune it and we’d get stuck with half a face each, half a heart each, a mismatched patchwork of Claire and me. And neither of us could comfort the other one because we were both in pain. It felt so…alone. That was awful. Being alone for the first time in my life.”
She shivered again, so I put my arm around her. She felt so small and delicate. Like a bird.
“You’re not alone anymore,” I said. “Neither of you. I promised Adam Iron that I wouldn’t abandon you.”
She smiled and patted my arm. “You’re a good guy, Boy.”
“Yeah…” I said, remembering when Laurellen and Mozart told me that right before my first pathetic date with Liel. It hadn’t seemed like a compliment then. I wasn’t sure if it was now, either.
“Grrr, and so tough and beefy!” She squeezed my bicep with her thin fingertips, a glimmer of the old Sophie silliness showing in her eyes.
“Ow,” I said. “Still sore.”
The glimmer in her eyes faded. “Yeah, me too.”
I brushed a corkscrew curl out of her face. “How could your own brother hurt you like that?”
“He thought he was helping me. No matter what I said, he thought I wanted to get rid of Claire as much as he wanted to get rid of Stephen. Arrogant prick. So bloody obsessed with trying to make the world perfect through science, which really just meant proving what a genius he was. It never occurred to him to consider how he was harming people along the way to achieving his ‘greater good.’”
“Like his grandfather. Like a creator.” It came out thick and hollow when I said it. “Like me.”
She looked up at me, her forehead wrinkled. “What Claire said to you before. About you being like Victor Frankenstein. That was a terrible thing for her to say.”
“But what if it’s true? I’ve always thought of myself as one of the poor created monsters of the world. But when I think about it, it seems like I have more in common with Victor than with my dad. I never considered how VI was feeling, how I might have hurt her. Sophie, think how alone she must have felt when she was first created. How lost and scared. And if she didn’t know how to care for people, if she didn’t value life, maybe it’s because no one ever taught her. Maybe I am just another asshole creator.”
“I think the fact that you’re troubled by it already proves that you’re not,” she said.
“Maybe. I just hope the Sphinx can help me find a way to make it right.”
RHOECUS THE CENTAUR obviously felt badly about how he’d treated Claire earlier. He kept coming in and asking if we needed anything in this quiet, meek way. I was still a little irritated, though. What if I had been traveling with a human? Would he not have felt bad then? Did he think it was okay to strap people down to gurneys naked against their will as long as they were human? I really wasn’t sure I wanted to have anything to do with the guy.
But Sophie found uses for him. After a lot of explanation about how Americans always screwed up tea, she got him to make her “a proper cuppa.” It seemed to be as much about the cookies as the actual tea. She also got him to get her a pair of scissors so she didn’t have to roll up her shirtsleeves and pants anymore. The shirt collar still slid off her shoulder a lot, but that actually looked pretty cute.
Finally, after about two hours of waiting, a tall figure suddenly loomed in the doorway.
Sophie’s eyebrow shot up and she started to say, “What is—”
“Hey,” I said, cutting her off. “Javier, right?”
The chupacabra nodded his panther face. “Sí.”
“¿Hablas inglés?” I asked.
“Un poquito.” He motioned for us to follow him. “Vámonos.” Then he turned on long, kangaroo feet, revealing sharp spines down his back. He hopped out into the hallway, stopped, and beckoned to us again. “Síganme. La Dama del Dragón está esperando.”
“What the hell is that creature?” hissed Sophie in her not-so-quiet whisper. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Chupacabra, I guess. And he said he did speak a little English, so be nice. I think he’s the last of his kind.” I slowly stood up, my muscles groaning at me. Then I turned and helped Sophie up. “I have a feeling a lot of creatures here are the last of their kind.”
“This whole place is alternately depressing me and freaking me out. Are you still thinking you want to stay here?”
“It was a bad first impression,” I said. “Maybe there’s whole other parts we just haven’t seen. Other creatures more…our age.”
“I suppose….” said Sophie, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, regardless, I want to talk to the Sphinx. And apparently, we have to get to him through this Dragon Lady.”
“I wonder what she’s like.”
“I’m picturing an old Chinese woman. But somehow I have a feeling that’s not really it.”
We followed Javier down a corridor that seemed to go on forever.
“This place is huge,” I said to Sophie. “I wonder how they’re concealing it from humans.”
“Maybe it’s underground, like you told Claire yesterday.”
“I guess it could be that. It doesn’t feel underground, though.”
“How does something ‘feel underground’?”
“I can’t really describe it. But take it from someone who grew up mostly underground, it feels different.”
Suddenly, Javier stopped.
“Aquí,” he said, pointing at a darkened doorway. A weird smell came from the room, something at once sharp and dank.
“Ugh,” said Sophie. “We have to go in there?”
Javier nodded.
“Come on.” I held out my hand to her. She slipped her slender hand into my big, clumsy one. Then we walked into the dark room.
It was hot in the room. Different from the desert heat. Thick and wet, with a smell that reminded me of the air in Medusa’s dressing room, except much more intense.
We stood for a moment in the dark. I had no idea what to do or why we’d been sent into this weird, creepy room. It felt like they were purposefully trying to intimidate us.
“Hello?” I said loudly, letting a little irritation show in my voice.
There was a strange scraping sound off to one side, like scales rubbing together. Then two massive, yellow reptilian eyes appeared, glowing so brightly that they illuminated the space. The room was about the size of a gymnasium. In the center lounged a dragon. She had to be at least fifteen feet wide, with a head the size of a car. Each wing was roughly the size of a small airplane. I couldn’t even guess at her length, since she was all coiled up. Her red and gold scales glittered in the light that came from her eyes, nose, and mouth.
“Dragon Lady,” Sophie muttered in my ear. “Ha. Get it?”
“Hello, little monsters,” said the Dragon Lady, fire licking around her lips as she spoke. “I am sorry your initial greeting was so unpleasant. We don’t get visitors very often, and friendly ones even less frequently. In fact, I believe you two are our first sanctioned guests in a decade.”
“Sorry we startled you,” I said. Talking with a dragon felt weirdly formal. Almost epic, in a really awkward sort of way. “We didn’t really have a way to let you know we were coming.”
“Why did you come, little patchwork monster?” she asked.
“We were hoping…that we could talk to the Sphinx.”
“Ah,” she said, and fell silent. She closed her eyes for a moment so that the only light in the space came from the flickering fire in her nose and mouth. Then she opened her eyes again. “You come seeking wisdom.”
“Uh, I guess,” I said.
“I see.” She stretched her massive front paws like a scaly cat. Each claw was as thick as a tree. “I can grant you an audience with him. But…it may not be what you expect.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You will see.” Then she slowly stood up and arched her long back in a luxurious stretch. “The entrance to the Sphinx’s chamber is on the opposite side of the building. It would take you a while to walk there. It will be much faster if you climb up onto my back.”
“Uh, okay,” I said.
She lowered herself back down to the ground. I grabbed a handful of the coarse fur that ran down her back and pulled myself up. There was no way Sophie could reach that, so I held out my hand to her. She looked hesitant for a moment, biting her lip. Then she smiled that bright Sophie smile I’d been missing and grabbed my hand. I hauled her up just as the Dragon Lady rose and swept out of the room in one single fluid motion. I felt the heat of Sophie’s body press against my back and her arms wrap around my torso.
“Dragon ride!” she whispered in my ear.
The Dragon Lady flew down the hallway a lot faster than I expected. It felt like how I imagined a roller coaster would feel, except smooth and silent. And of course, there was no track to keep us from crashing. As wide as the hallway was, the walls suddenly felt way too close.
Sophie dug her pointy chin into my upper back.
“Ow!” I said.
“Relax,” she said. “You’re too tense. Enjoy the ride.”
“I’m trying. It’s just—”
The Dragon Lady whipped smoothly around a corner. I barely managed to keep us from flying off as she turned. Sophie laughed gleefully and squeezed my sides. I took a deep breath and tried not to think about all the ways we could die right now.
We turned another corner and I decided that the hallway, and probably the whole building, went around in one big square. We went farther down until I guessed we were about halfway to the next corner turn, then we finally came to a stop.
For a moment we just sat there, Sophie’s arms still wrapped around me. They each had a slightly different scent, Sophie and Claire. Claire’s was rich, like wood. Sophie’s reminded me of fresh cotton laundry.
“Little monsters,” said the Dragon Lady. “You may dismount.”
“Yep,” said Sophie.
“Okay,” I said.
I lowered Sophie down to the ground, then slid down, too.
There was a massive doorway on one side. Bigger than any of the others, it covered the entire thirty feet from floor to ceiling. If this hallway was one big square, all the other doorways were on the outer side. This was the only one I’d seen on the inner side. It was also the only doorway I’d seen with a closed door. It was a dark, rough wood, bound together with tarnished iron. Instead of a handle, there was a massive iron ring, which was probably a lot easier for creatures like the Dragon Lady to grab on to.
It looked too heavy for me to open, but the Dragon Lady gave the door a push and it opened easily. The room inside was even larger than the dragon’s den, brightly lit by a series of skylights. The ceiling had to be over fifty feet high, the walls at least a hundred across. The room was empty except for the Sphinx.
I had assumed that the famous Sphinx statue in Egypt had been made larger than life. But it had been done exactly to scale. It was impossible not to feel awed in his presence. Even the Dragon Lady was small compared to him. The Sphinx’s lion body sat poised with breathtaking majesty and his human face appeared ageless, his eyes like deep blue pools of knowledge.
As we got closer, he didn’t look down at us. Instead, he stared straight ahead.
“Sphinx!” The Dragon Lady’s voice was so loud and low I felt it vibrate in my stomach. “Two little monsters seek an audience with you. Will you acknowledge them?”
We waited. But the Sphinx didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. He just continued to stare straight ahead.
Finally, the Dragon Lady sighed. “I am sorry. He has been like this for several years now.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked in a hushed voice, just in case he could somehow hear me, even if he wasn’t responding.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I believe it just became too much for him. No one can remember everything. No one can know everything. Not even me. And having lived for over five centuries, I know quite a lot. We forget things. We filter them, discard what we no longer need, so that we can continue to think and exist in a productive manner.”
“Sure,” I said. “Only the stuff we feel is important goes to long-term memory. Then we clear the cache on the short-term memory. Happens every night while we sleep.”
She stared at me.
“Computer talk,” said Sophie. “He understands what you’re saying. So what does that have to do with the Sphinx?”
“He forgets nothing, he has lived a very long time, and I suspect his cup has run over,” said the Dragon Lady. “I believe he still absorbs knowledge somehow, he still gathers new memories. But he can no longer process or comprehend any of it. He has lost all perspective. You and I are, to him, impossible to distinguish from the dust motes in the air or the weaving grain of the wooden door.”
“So…he’s not going to talk to us,” I said more than asked.
“I’m afraid not,” said the Dragon Lady.
We stood there for a moment. Then Sophie asked, “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” I said.