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CHAPTER

ONE

THE WOMAN

BEFORE

T he woman looked down at the palm of her hand. The sound of drums and chanting voices were getting louder.

They seemed to brush up against her ears as though they were real things, as solid as the hard-packed sandy floor where she sat.

Smoke filled her nostrils, the smell shifting from rich and pleasant to sour and sweet.

A bonfire danced in the center of the room, sparks escaping only to extinguish themselves against the rough stone walls.

She tried to ball her hands into fists, but she could no longer figure out which muscles to use.

Her limbs had been working just fine. She was still quite sure of that. She had gripped a rough clay mug, lifting it to her lips and imbibing the herbal brew within.

But her fingers were shifting now, growing longer before twisting, warping, crawling upward toward the top of the hut.

They no longer looked like hands at all.

They were slithering flesh, like pale snakes coiled together, waiting for an unlucky soul to tread upon them in the dark.

She tried to swallow the sudden sick feeling that pooled in her gut.

This was wrong.

All of this was horribly, terribly wrong.

The world she had known was washed away, replaced by something different altogether. Something vast. A sky with stars and black holes in equal measure, a fickle place where a thousand doors waited to be opened.

And there was no way out.

There were no fingers now, no sturdy stone walls, no shifting smells, no fire.

People had been there moments before, she remembered.

At least ten of them, casting their dark shadows in the firelight, chanting together, their voices blending as one.

Now, they were gone, replaced with waves of light that seemed to undulate through the air like smoke, a spectacle of a thousand colors.

She didn’t know if she was chanting or not.

She heard her voice, meek and high-pitched amid the bellows of the others, but she couldn’t make her mouth open or close. Her tongue felt dry and thick.

She couldn’t make herself scream.

Her breathing felt fast.

Sputtering exhales followed rough inhales as smoke choked at her throat. She couldn’t look down at her chest, but it was expanding and shrinking again, in and out, fast and ruthless.

It felt real. Breathing still felt real.

It was something. Something to hold on to.

She closed her eyes, trying to hold on to the sensation of air rushing into and out of her lungs. Even the wrongness of the smoke was welcome. It was unpleasant and blessedly real.

“You don’t need to be afraid.”

A voice was there now.

It seemed to be beside her.

It was his voice.

But no longer could she open her eyes and see her beloved Professor.

“You’re doing just fine for your first time. I promise. Don’t fight it. Just surrender. Trust me.”

She breathed again and again, grasping for her thoughts in the frenetic show of color and thundering sound.

Two words entered her mind before leaving it again, carried on the smoke and the waves of light.

“I’m scared.”

She hadn’t spoken them aloud, but she knew that he heard her. Some part of herself, a part that felt very far away now, was certain of it. She could trust him, just as she always had.

She felt herself beginning to relax at last.

The Professor was there beside her in the hut, and everything would be all right.

He was there.

He was still holding tightly to her hand.