She got off one scream, high and loud, and then the beast was upon her. Maws opened like horror of a Scylla, the beast shucked her from the hole as simply as she would pluck an oyster from its shell, caught her clothing in its teeth, and then began to run. First simply around the geode-sphere where the rest of her friends worked to make an opening, as if it were looking for a familiar path. Then it lanced through the air, a leap of breathless grace and deadly edges, down, down towards the ground. It was every shade of shadow, deep violets and cobalt blues fading into the soft shade of a sunlit day. There was a horrible beauty to it, like being devoured by a masterwork. The beast landed on the crystal spire that connected the geode to the world below, and her shirt tore. She fell, hard, on the ground, but had no time to react or run. The beast was on her again, breath hot across her skin. She held very still. Struggling would trigger prey drive. She needed to wait for her chance to flee, to catch the moment when escape held hope. The great cat-like beast did not allow that to happen. It held her down with both forepaws and readjusted its grip on her clothing. Its teeth grazed her skin, leaving white-hot trails of pain. She thought for sure she was about to be shredded. All it would take was a grip on her arm, or shoulder, and one very impressive shake of its head and jowls. But the pain she expected never came. It had tangled its teeth in the seams of her shirt, in the double stitched waistband of her pants. Now it began running again, every sinew rippling under its strange, scaled skin. It ran down, and down, past waterfalls of impressive size, over the streams of water that fed them. Down across plant life with bleached white leaves and flowers that glowed as the Beast ran past. The crystal spire was a descent into a decadent world rich with plants, with flowers, with scent. She watched, terrified, as the geode at the end of the crystal beam retreated, and her entire world with it.


    The beast that gripped her ran with leonine pace, down and further down. Its teeth against her back were a constant source of pain, the ripping of her clothing an even greater concern. If this thing were to drop her, she might fall…and more likely than falling would be a readjustment of grip into her soft flesh, a ripping of teeth and claw and a rending of life. She would die, here and now, the moment this creature decided it wanted its meal.


    Instinct had overwhelmed her. She was too paralyzed with fear to fight, but she’d gained enough of her own sense of self-preservation back that when the beast suddenly dropped her, she could scramble around back to her hands and knees. She cast around for something she could defend herself with. They were no longer on the high crystal pylon jutting down from the Geode, but on firm and solid ground. Oh God. Thank God. She knelt in a clearing, surrounded by white-leaved trees of enormous size. The stones here glowed like the milk crystal above, shedding light like pale gold across the ground. There were soft blue phosphorescent grasses beneath her hands, and fist sized flowers grew from a green-leafed branch. But a few steps away loomed a dark bulk, twice as long as it was tall, phosphorescence and eyes, oh god it had so many eyes, and they were all watching her.


    “You violated my peace, woman.” The Voice came from its mouth. No, she realized with dawning horror. Its mouths. It had what seemed like four of them, one layered inside the other, and it made her whimper with the utter terror of it all. “Tell me why I should let you live?”


    “Oh God it’s talking,” she whispered, and looked directly in its eyes.


    “Oh, Gods, indeed,” hissed the Beast. “You are like them. Defiant to the last.” And it opened its mouths wide, letting her see the soft, rippling flesh of its gullet—


    She thought, Oh god, Alex, I’m so sorry, and braced herself for the pain.


    Light burst between the two, soundless and intense. Hawk, already frozen by the horror of the Beast, collapsed. It was radiant and beautiful and as utterly unlike the Beast before her as night was from day. It covered her with a reassuring blanket of warmth. It seemed to do the opposite to the beast. The Light exposed it, the feline shape of its head and body, the multiple thickness of jowls from its impossible maw. It had four main eyes, each fixated on her, while all the rest of its myriad oculars were closed in agony against the light. It howled and flung itself backwards, making a wreckage of the plants and grasses and flowers…and then it dissolved into shadows and was gone, racing through the grass until there was nothing left but the plants and the light.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    “There, there, there,” an entirely different sort of voice said. “And why don’t we see what Shadow has brought to my door.”


    And with the last few strands of consciousness Hawk could manage, she caught a glimpse of a man in white robes and mask…and then everything finally collapsed into the safer dark of oblivion.


    She woke up the first time to gentle words. Hush, hush. You aren’t alone. I am here. You must be hungry. Here. There was broth and there was kindness, and a hand on her wounds. Opening her eyes was agony. How had she gotten injured? For some reason she thought of anting with Alex, hunting for fertile Queen ants to start new colonies with, finding nests of honeypots with their round bellies glowing. She even felt the taste of honeypot nectar on her lips, as if she’d been given it to drink. Had something happened? Had she fallen down an embankment? Maybe into a cactus, the way her back felt. The broth was herbaceous and tasted of basil, of lavender, of something gamier than chicken. She swallowed it down. What if it’s drugged? Too late, too late, she tried to gag it back up again. The person feeding her laughed at first, but this shifted to concern and then to nothing, nothing at all. She was unconscious again.


    She dreamed she was with Alex, that she was back at her dining room table (was it less than a week ago? Had the world been normal so close to this moment? How was that possible? The fear, the toxic horror, that should have been clear even in those moments. It should infect the past backwards) and was going through the disturbing collection of items her mother, April Rayne, had mailed her and Alex this time. Then she was at Mrs. Cumming’s house, holding the dying squirrel as she dumped cotton balls out of her ant-catching kit. Alex, she shouted, Alex—and then Kaiser’s office, whip-quick, in the white-plastic-walled halls where she and the Lion of Industry had met. Alex, I don’t understand…


    The Bronx zoo, and the last time she’d ever seen Alex, her and her husband making love in an office beside their makeshift showers.


    Her dreams sped her down the same path a thousand times, it seemed. First herself and Alex, before the world fell in. The death of the old woman. The interview with Kaiser. Going to Em’s house, going to the Zoo. And over and over and over again, the horror of Boston, of turning on the television and seeing her whole world, her whole life, ending with the blazing glow of the Event Horizon. She felt as if someone were dragging her through her own history, backwards, as if through thorns.


    She panicked herself back into unconsciousness. Her memory had wrapped around her, boa-like, and it was cutting her off from air.


    The second time she woke, she woke completely.


    She lay in a small, low, comfortable bed that was unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Logs had been lashed together and then laced with ropes. Furs—they looked and felt like rabbit furs—that were well tanned and, from the comfortable smell, well cleaned, cradled her body. There was a pad of them beneath her head, with the furs wrapped around something that smelled fragrant and pleasant. Something like lavender, or maybe chamomile—not either herb, but something new, something that was only like the better-known plants. It was like the apes had been. It was only like an ape. There was a fire. She turned her face towards it. Logs burned in a little, low hearth made of well-fitted stone. It was a rough mantle, unadorned, but it looked as if someone lived there. Nails had been driven in at regular intervals, and someone’s socks—a strange, silken fabric, like silk—were drying on the hearth. Herbs hung in the rafters, beside braided onions and stiffening cuts of cured meat. A little soup pot seemed to be nestled in some embers. Everything in this room was some form of white. White furs, white stones, white plants drying in the rafters, white reeds underfoot. White, milk-crystal walls.


    Primitive, was her first thought. Followed by, knock it off, because that thought was unworthy of her. Not primitive, but someone making do with the best that they had. She stood up, feeling very much in need of a wash.


    There was a door, and as she looked around (Nursing a headache) it opened and admitted the most peculiar person she’d ever seen. They wore white, of course, many, many layers of pure white silk. A hooded white robe with a soft pattern in its weaving—a round white disk, she thought, repeated over and over—with an over-panel of even whiter silk. It smelled musty and spicy and a little bit sweet. He had a fur mantle. The hood was drawn up to his face, which was covered by an ivory mask. This latter was quite angular and made no effort to match the shape of the face beneath it, but rather had a mouth-shape and eye-shapes that kept the being’s actual eyes and mouth hidden. She was pretty sure he was male, and pretty sure he was young, though the hair pouring out from the sides of his hood and mask were also very white.


    “Ah, you’re awake,” he said.