"Give it time," he quipped.
Behind him, he heard the horsemen approaching. He glanced around, calling again to Katya.
"Hurry up, will you?"
When he returned his gaze to Tammy it was clear that she'd taken in, as best her disbelief would allow, the incredible sight over his shoulder. Her eyes were wide with astonishment, her jaw slack.
"So this is what it looks like."
"Yes," he said to her. "This is it."
Tammy threw a look back at a stooped, older man standing on the stairs behind her. He looked almost incapacitated with fear. But unlike Tammy, whose expression was that of someone who had never seen anything like this before, it was Todd's sense that her companion knew exactly what he was seeing, and would have liked nothing better than to turn right there and flee.
Then Todd heard Katya calling from behind him, naming the man.
"Zeffer," she said, the word freezing the man where he stood.
"Katya . . ." he said, inclining his head.
Katya came up behind Todd, pressing him aside in order to cross over the threshold. She pointed at the trespasser as she did so.
"I told you never to come back into this house!" she yelled at Zeffer. "Didn't I?"
He flinched at this, though it was difficult to believe she posed much physical threat to him.
She summoned him down the stairs. "Come here," she said. "You worthless piece of shit! I said: come here!"
Before he could obey her, Tammy intervened. "It's not his fault," she said. "I was the one who asked him to bring me down here."
Katya gave her a look of complete contempt; as though anything she might have to contribute to the conversation was worthless.
"Whoever the hell you are," she said, "this is none of your business."
She pushed Tammy aside and reached out to catch hold of Zeffer. He had dutifully approached at her summons, but now avoided her grasp. She came after him anyway, striking his chest with the back of her hand, a solid blow; and another; and another. As she struck him she said: "I told you to stay outside, didn't I?"
The blows were relatively light, but they carried strength out of all proportion to their size. They knocked the breath out of him, for one thing, and she'd come back with a second blow before he'd drawn breath from the first, which quickly weakened him. Tammy was horrified, but she didn't want to interfere, in case she simply made the matter worse. Nor was her attention entirely devoted to the sight of Todd, or to the assault upon Zeffer. Her gaze was increasingly claimed by the sight visible through the open door. It was astonishing. Despite the fact that Zeffer had told her the place was an illusion, her eyes and her mind were wholly enamored by what she saw: the rolling forest, the rocks with their thickets of thorn bushes, the delta and the distant sea. It all looked so real.
And what was that?
Some creature that looked like a feathered lizard, its coxcomb yellow and black, scuttled into view, and out again.
It halted, seeming to look back through the door at her: a beast that belonged in some book of medieval monsters rather than in such proximity to her.
She glanced back at Zeffer, who was still being lectured by Katya.
With the door open, and the visions beyond presented to her, she saw no reason not to step over the threshold, just for a moment, and see the place more plainly. After all, she was protected against its beguilements. She knew it was a beautiful lie, and as long as she remembered that, then it couldn't do her any harm, could it?
The only thing in the landscape that was real was Todd, and it was to him that she now went, crossing the dirt and the windblown grass to reach him. The feathered reptile lowered its coxcomb as she crossed the ground, and slunk away, disappearing into a crack between two boulders. But Todd wasn't watching animal-life. He had his eyes on several horsemen who were approaching along a road that wound through a dense stand of trees. They were moving at speed, kicking up clods of earth as they came. Were they real, Tammy wondered, or just part of the landscape? She wasn't sure, nor was she particularly eager to put the question to the test.
Yet with every passing second she was standing in this world, the more she felt the power of the room to unknit her doubts. She felt its influence seeping through her sight and her skin into her mind and marrow. Her head grew giddy, as though she'd downed two or three glasses of wine in quick succession.
It wasn't an unpleasant sensation by any means, especially given the extreme discomfort of the last few hours. She felt almost comforted by the room; as though it understood how she'd suffered of late, and was ready to soothe her hurts and humiliations away. It would distract her with its beauty and its strangeness; if she would only trust it for a while.
"Tammy . . ." she heard Zeffer say behind her. His voice was weak, and the effect his summons had on her was inconsequential. She didn't even acknowledge it. She just let her eyes graze contentedly on the scene before her; the trees, the horsemen, the road, the rocks.
Soon, she knew, the riders would make a turn in that road, and it would be interesting to see how their image changed when they were no longer moving in profile, but were coming toward her.
She glanced back over her shoulder. It wasn't far to the door: just a few yards. Her eyes didn't even focus on whatever was going on in the passageway. It seemed very remote from her at that moment.
She looked back toward the horsemen. They had turned the corner in the road, and were now coming directly toward the spot where Todd and she stood. It was the oddest visual spectacle she'd ever witnessed, to see them growing larger as they approached, like illustrations emerging from a book. The landscape around them seemed to both recede and advance at the same moment as they approached, its motion throwing them forward as the ground beneath their horses drew back like a retreating wave. It was an utterly bewildering spectacle, but its paradoxical beauty enthralled her. All thought of Zeffer's summons, or indeed his safety, were forgotten: it was as though she were watching a piece of film for the first time, not knowing how the mechanism worked upon her.
She felt Todd throw her a sideways glance.
"Time to go," he said.
The earth beneath their feet reverberated as the horsemen approached. They'd be at the door in thirty or forty seconds.
"Come on," he said.
"Yes . . ." she murmured. "I'm coming."
She didn't move. It wasn't until Todd caught hold of her arm and pulled her back toward the door that she eventually obeyed the instruction and went. Even then she kept looking back over her shoulder, astonished.
"I don't believe what I'm seeing," she said.
"It's all real. Trust me on that," he said. "They can do you harm."
They had reached the threshold now, and she reluctantly allowed herself to be coaxed back over it and into the passageway. She was amazed at the speed with which the room had caught her attention; made itself the center of her thoughts.
Even now, it was still difficult to focus her attention on anything but the scene beyond the door, but finally she dragged her eyes away from the approaching horsemen and sought out Zeffer.
He had fallen to his knees three or four yards from the door, putting up no defense against Katya's assault.
"I told you, didn't I?" she said, slapping his head. "I never wanted to see you in this house ever again. You understand me? Ever again."
"I'm sorry," he said, his head bowed. "I just brought—"
"I don't care who you brought. This house is forbidden to you."
"Yes ... I know."
His acquiescence did nothing to placate her. The reverse, in fact: it seemed to inflame her. She kicked him.