Her deep, gentle face looked out at him with disbelieving gratitude and love. It was cut in several places from the short spikes which lined the inside of the mask; but as she had remained very still the damage was not deep. He found an iron bar leaned against the ground, remounted the altar and began to pry away the rusted bands. It was not possible to do so without hurting her, but she bit her lip and endured the pain.
And as the last shackle came off her wrist she slid into his arms. And suddenly she knew him, and trusted him, and he embraced her heavily, weeping. She returned the affection weakly, touching the back of his neck with her fingers. He had never felt this way, nor ever thought he could. The tears would not stop.
"I'm so glad I found you," he stammered. "Dear God, I'm glad. What if….. What if I had never found you?" He stepped back, and an incomprehensible horror engulfed him.
The words echoed all around him, down the row of tombs, endless.
"Never found you. Never found you. Never found….." And with a sudden fearful burst like the realization of death, he remembered. Remembered where he was, and understood. Dear God, he understood.
She slipped back out of his grasp as darkness poured into the room. Like reverse action she was back upon the wall, the iron hoops replacing themselves. The mask was up and she was crying. Her blood flowed gently down the spikes.
"NO!"
But the room began to spin, to break into fragments, and she was gone. He floated again in the cold wet nothing, the world without order or hope. He shrank into a weeping ball and clutched his head with his hands, lost as he had never been lost.
But then to his bewilderment, he began to feel a weight of substance around him, a materializing structure: his ship was coming back. A floor, walls, then the hull returned, and he knelt in the familiar control room, looking up at the monitor. The inky black was patching, broke, and he could see the outline of a vast web. This time he did not fight as the ship drew closer, and closer still. A great silver shaft was above him. . .and he emerged once more into the present, living, and unchangeable world.
*