Paia stirs. How curious. What has happened to her ability to tell dream from reality, or waking from sleep? Too much of that unaccustomed dreaming. She thought she’d waked cradled in Luco’s arms, not a terrible place to be. Now she feels a subtle floating sensation that calls up memories of the Citadel’s elevators. Either she’s still dreaming or . . . she drifts away, then back, suddenly awash with relief and an explanation. Luco has brought her home, through some miraculously secret back entrance!
But her head is clearing, and logic intervenes. The Citadel is four hard days’ travel away. Even at the speed of those mad cart animals, such a distance could not be accomplished . . . unless they’ve been traveling in one big circle since they left the Citadel. But Luco said his locator was out of range. She must be dreaming. Where else could there be a working elevator? Paia ponders this muzzily as the cab continues to drop.
Further proof of the dream: she can’t seem to move or talk. Still wrapped in this tenacious drowsiness. It smoothes out any impulse to exert brain or muscle. She’s paralyzed with lassitude. Well, no worry. The God will show up soon, as he does in all of her dreams. So what if he’ll be furious.
Over the background hum of the elevator comes a soft babble of voices. In her dream, even though the words sound unfamiliar, Paia seems to understand them. One man is trying to explain to another man what an elevator is. She summons the effort to open her eyes. The first face she sees tells her she’s dreaming for sure. It’s the man with the sword, the man from her dreams, who stood in the crowd and stared at her as if he owned her. Now she begins to question that sighting. The rocking sedan chair, the soporific heat . . . had she dozed off, and dreamed in daylight? But here he is again. He’s still staring at her. She should be insulted by his boldness, then and now. Instead, Paia welcomes it. She’s never seen a more beautiful man.
There are others in this dream, as well: a tall skinny youth who looks like he’s of pure African blood. Paia recalls colleagues of her father’s who resembled him. Perhaps this dream figment is the embodiment of her survivor’s guilt. She has suffered it since childhood, since the floods and epidemics that wiped out most of the African continent.
The next figment is a younger boy, no, it’s a girl dressed as a boy. A pretty girl, but with little sense of herself. Perhaps she is the beautiful man’s child, though they look nothing alike except for the lightness of their complexions. For some reason, Paia thinks of the chambermaid, and what her inventive hands could do with this girl, with her dark curly hair and her impossibly pale skin. Then there are two older men as well, smaller, darker than herself but clearly of local stock, except for their strange accents and their very independent manner. Why would she be dreaming these people? No matter. This dream has a mind of its own.
She is about to sneak another look at the man with the sword when the elevator breathes to a stop and the door lifts. A current of blessedly cool air swirls in and around her as she rests in Luco’s strong arms. Paia hears the quiet sigh of climate control, and has another seizure of being sure she’s back at the Citadel. Even dreaming, she’s glad of the long sleeves and the long soft pants she’s wearing. It’s cold down here.
The light outside the door is dimmer than inside. The elevator seems to pour light like a liquid into the darkened corridor. When Paia’s dream characters step out, the door closes behind them and there is just enough light in the corridor to see the way, as if half the recessed ceiling fixtures are burned out and the rest set to low power. But it’s enough light to see all the books, piles and piles of them, real books as well as the electronic kind. Not carefully shelved and catalogued like her father’s, but scattered about, right out in the open. Where are the servants, to clean the place up? There are stacks of papers and rows of storage cabinets lining the hallway left and right. They narrow it to a single lane or sometimes none, where a pile has been pushed aside into the path or simply tumbled down like a paper landslide.
The taller of the older men leads them through the mess. They pass intersections with other disordered, obstructed corridors, and many half-open doors that reveal dimly lit rooms stocked with more books, more shelving, and storage racks.
“It’s a library,” Paia says finally, and in the dream, everyone turns and looks at her. She has startled them. “It’s even bigger than my father’s.”
Luco stops, shifting her in his arms. “You’re awake.”
“I am?” Paia realizes he’s right. She’s not even sure when the transition happened between the dream and reality. “I’m not dreaming? I thought I was dreaming.”
Luco sets her down gently. “Can you walk?”
She gets her balance, but her eyes will not focus. “Where am I?”
He supports her elbow, urging her forward. “Wait.”
Some of the drowsiness returns and it’s all she can do to walk. “I didn’t know,” she mumbles, “how exhausted I was.”
“Of course not,” Luco murmurs. “We’re almost there, and then you can rest. Just like I promised.”