Silver didn’t speak, but started marching through mirrors. Jake wasn’t sure how he managed to keep up. Finally, they reached the cave.

Well, Jake had assumed it was a cave. The place was vast, encrusted with something like limestone. Stalactites met stalagmites in bars of encrusted rock. The centre of the room was a large, plain chair, crumbling stone creepers curling around the honey-coloured covering. It might have been silk once, but now it was evenly topped with the same rock substance as everything else.

Silver laid her hands on the back of the chair and spoke softly, her words hushed and solemn.

"Hidden deep beneath the sands."

Little by little, breezes chased each other through the corners, scattering particles and sending light rippling over the walls- no, that was a steady pattern now, from the shapes that couldn’t quite be made out. Silver stood in the middle of it all, head thrown back. The whispers on the top of Jake’s skull might have been a monument to chaos in her head, but whatever was going on in there wasn’t something Jake cared to speculate upon. Finally the light settled, and Silver gave Jake the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen.

"Perfect. All the data is intact. My mind and his, recorded in their smallest thoughts."

"Is that safe?"

"Not entirely. Now, I need your help. I’ve got to link up to the systems, which means my mind will be slaved. You’ve got to watch over me until I wake. After one hour, if I’m not back, pull me free. Got that?"

Jake nodded. There was something in her voice... That was it. He’d never seen her afraid before. He touched her face, and felt her stiffen.

"Be careful."

"I will." She gently removed his arm, and patted his shoulder. "Pray for me?"

"Yeah."

Taking a deep breath, Silver settled herself into the chair. The whispers grew louder and Jake could have sworn the tendrils were shifting in expectation" Suddenly sickened, he realised they were burrowing into her, a certain pinkness indicating where they’d opened the skin on the arms and forehead. Just as he was considering getting her away from there, Silver relaxed with a sigh that sounded suspiciously contented.

She looked even more vulnerable now, and Jake wanted, more than anything else, to keep her safe. It was weird, he’d only known her twenty-four hours, but she’d turned him into this idiot that cried at sad songs and considered starting fights with guys twice his size.

But as the minutes ticked by he relaxed, aware that he could stop and think for the first time. And this was strange. No, this was strange. Maybe the same effect that told him he saw humans had been keeping him from realising what kind of life this was. It had to be a credit to Silver that she’d survived more or less sane, although he wondered if she’d really been the shy little thing she’d indicated. Actually, in a funny sort of way it fitted. That ‘oh, I’m only a little library worker’ act might have been how she used to be. Before ‘he’ came along.

She must have loved him, he thought, to give up a normal life and come live in all this.

A deep, ragged breath alerted him to events. Silver was waking, the tendrils retreating. Her skin, covered in some kind of light dusting, simply sealed up where it had been parted, without any evidence left behind. She shook her head, and the dust on her caught the light.

"That was... quite reassuring, actually. Sometimes I have this dream, just fusing myself with the records of his mind, letting the crust grow over me" Well, I know what we have to do. It looks as though you and I have a job to do. But first, I’d like a fairly sharp word with a Harlequin."

"Do they just show up?"

"There’s no way of summoning them, if that’s what you mean. Now, there are a number of people we need to contact on Earth. The Cáirneach, Professor Steve Watson, and a colonel I know."

"Okay." Jake helped her down from the chair. "Why?"

"You don’t want to know."

"Yes, I do."

Silver sighed, and looked down at the floor. Under the minerals that covered the room, Jake could just make out mosaics of strange animals.

"The Cáirneach have brought on the wrath of the Unity. And the wrath of the Unity tends to spill over with extreme prejudice."

"Graham, Susan, we’ve got some more footage." Harris produced videotape, and the couple let him in with a certain degree of ceremony. They’d been through this many times in seven years.

The footage was that of a library, but the bit that interested them was when she opened the Portal, and then went back for the boy. The woman, Susan, winced when she shot him.

"I wish she wouldn’t. I know she only stunned him, but even so. How old is this?"

"Yesterday. As you can see, she’s fine."

"Good." The colonel, Graham, nodded. "She seems well. Those people haven’t got her or anything. I just wish..."

He didn’t have to say it. The cameras, photos and eyewitness accounts were always after the event, sometimes up to a year so. This meant that they never caught up with her. If only they could talk... Deep in Susan’s dressing table was the only letter or word they’d had from her in seven years.

‘Dear Mum...’

 

© Naomi 'Ni' Claydon 2000. No copying without permission.