“Is her mind whole?” Nona asked, concerned.
No, it was only about two-thirds there; the rest was in a dirty gray pile on the ground.
She is conscious, Seqiro thought. But unable to speak or move.
“I must heal her!” Nona said. She embraced Colene, pressing Colene’s head to her bosom.
Darius would rather have that treatment, Colene thought wryly. She herself had hugged him so, when he was worn out from hauling the wagon through the Mode anchor, but she simply lacked the volume and quality of upholstery Nona had. And of course she lacked the magic of healing, along with all other magic. But this was no good for Nona to do, because Colene’s messed-up brains were leaking out onto her nice clean blouse.
Then Nona’s magic took hold. Colene felt herself healing. No, don’t do it, she wanted to cry. Let me die in peace. That will solve everything!
But her brains sloughed off the dirt and formed back into their natural convolutions. The crack in her skull diminished into a crevice and healed over, and her blood-sodden hair rinsed itself clean and became its normal lusterless brown. She was whole again.
She opened her eyes. “What happened?” she asked. She knew what had happened, but wanted to ascertain how they had experienced it.
“You fell off Burgess,” Darius said.
“And bumped your head,” Nona added.
You were unconscious, Seqiro thought.
Burgess had tried to catch her with a trunk, but had only succeeded in slowing her fall.
That was all? No flying through the air, no splattered brains? Obviously not. She had suffered yet another bad dream. Even though she had known it was a dream, she had somehow come to believe in it. She hadn’t been blown through Burgess’ trunk; it was laughable to think she could even fit, since small stones were the largest things he could handle. And that business about her brains falling out! She had a gruesome, self-destructive imagination. What else was new?
But now she saw that there was a pattern to these bad visions. Whoever she focused on became the object of the next bad scene. If she focused on two, then they both turned bad—There was no protection in numbers.
So how could she protect her friends from her warped dreams? Because she knew they were all good folk, not deserving of her foul imagination. Darius would never rape anybody; Nona would never try to hurt Colene, whether by marriage or anything else; Seqiro would not turn dumb unless caught in a Mode that prohibited telepathy, which seemed unlikely; Burgess would not suck up anyone through his trunk. They all meant well, and were cooperating to get her to the next anchor so she could escape the mind predator. All she had to do was hang on. Even if it felt as if they were playing a stream of water on her body and freezing it, in their effort to rescue her from the fire of the mind predator’s hunger. Hang on. Hang on and on.
And how could she best do that? She was bound to be thinking of something. On what could she focus, without mischief? Probably the mind predator could distort anything; that was part of its strategy.
But what about herself? Maybe even that would be distorted—but at least she wouldn’t be wronging anyone else. She herself was the only one she had the right to malign.
So she climbed back onto Burgess, took hold of his contact points, and promised not to fall off again. After all, he was carrying her to safety. She focused on herself, knowing that this was unlikely to be pleasant.
“Come on, mind thing,” she urged. “Do your worst. I’m calling your bluff.” Just like that, it happened: she woke. She was sitting cross-legged in a cold chamber, shivering in a flimsy nightie. There was a chamber pot nestled within the clasp of her bare thighs, and from it issued a stench that stung her nose.
She looked around. It was dark, but dawn was coming and she was able to see that she was in a shed, with an array of things propped against its bare walls. An ancient, battered teddy bear, a Raggedy Ann doll, a couple of books, a guitar, a picture of a horse, an artificial flower. Around her, on the floor, was a tattered blanket she must have had hunched over her body. Also a kitchen knife.
Now she knew where she was. In Dogwood Bumshed, her hideout. Ready to commit suicide. Because she hadn’t truly believed in Darius, and he had returned to his distant world, and then she had known the extent of the folly of her disbelief. She had had the chance for the love of her life, and had thrown it away. Had she really wanted to believe? Or had she merely been looking for a pretext to kill herself and be done with the agony of existence?
She had set herself up, ready to slice her forearms with the knife, and bleed them into the pot so as not to mess up the floor. If she filled the pot and wasn’t dead yet, she would take it out behind the shed, empty it by the roots of die dogwood tree, and bring it back in for another filling. In due course she would be all the way dead, and it would be done at last. At least the dogwood tree would have good fertilizer.
But she had chickened out. She had sat here with the knife in her hand, and her bare arms over the pot, and not been able to make the cut. So she had sat here, her bare bottom getting creased on the floor, trying to force the courage to do what she had come to do—and instead had gone into the most wonderful of dreams.
She had dreamed that she had heard a thought in her mind: COLENE! Wait for me! Then, after a pause, Take hold! And she had reached out with her mind and taken hold of the Virtual Mode, and had become an anchor person, and had gone out across the realities to meet Darius. And on the way had found Seqiro, the magnificent telepathic horse. And later the others, and adventure galore. They had gotten trapped in the DoOon Mode, where the Emperor Ddwng wanted to get hold of the Chip Darius had used to send up the Virtual Mode, and wouldn’t let them go until he had it. He threatened to slaughter Seqiro, to make Colene cooperate, and he threatened to cut out Colene’s ovaries for their eggs, to make Darius cooperate. But they had escaped, by tricking Ddwng into freeing his anchor, and found themselves in the Julia Mode with Nona. That was another whole adventure, because those folk could do all kinds of magic. Finally they had won free of that and found the Shale Mode, and the adventure continued.
Until the mind predator had come after Colene, and now it had done its worst: dumping her back here in dreariest reality. Costing her everything. All the wonderful adventures, all her hopes and fears along the Virtual Mode, all her love for horse and man.
So had she really dreamed it all? Or was this the bad dream? How could she know? Because if the whole Virtual Mode were a dream, she was doomed. But if the mind predator was doing it, then she was locked into its power, and was doomed. Because she knew without trying that this time she was not going to be able to snap herself out of it by screaming or crying. The grip of the mind predator had been growing stronger, and now it was too strong.
So was there any point in being concerned about it? She was locked into destruction either way. If she had dreamed it all, then it was time to kill herself, because Earth had nothing for her. If the mind predator had her secure, then she might as well kill herself too, because life in its embrace was too horrible to contemplate.
Could she kill herself in a bad dream? Would that kill her in reality, depriving the monster of her mind and emotion? For the thing fed on her fading dreams and fears, as worms fed on a decaying carcass, and if she died there would be nothing for it.
There was one way to find out. She took up the knife again and oriented it above her left arm. This time she wouldn’t chicken out!
Yet there was a faint demurring thought. Not hers; it was Burgess. It didn’t make sense for her to die, when she was so close to the anchor and freedom. If she died, the mind predator would have beaten her.