Black House

"You’re her Twinner. Judy Marshall’s Twinner." Only the word that comes out of his mouth isn’t Twinner; incredibly, dopily, it seems to be harp. Later he will think of how the strings of a harp lie close together, only a finger’s touch apart, and he will decide that word isn’t so foolish after all.

She looks down, her mouth drooping, then raises her head again and tries to smile. "Judy. On the other side of the wall. When we were children, Jack, we spoke together often. Even when we grew up, although then we spoke in each other’s dreams." He is alarmed to see tears forming in her eyes and then slipping down her cheeks. "Have I driven her mad? Run her to lunacy? Please say I haven’t."

"Nah," Jack says. "She’s on a tightrope, but she hasn’t fallen off yet. She’s tough, that one."

"You have to bring her Tyler back to her," Sophie tells him. "For both of us. I’ve never had a child. I cannot have a child. I was . . . mistreated, you see. When I was young. Mistreated by one you knew well."

A terrible certainty forms in Jack’s mind. Around them, the ruined pavilion flaps and sighs in the wonderfully fragrant breeze.

"Was it Morgan? Morgan of Orris?"

She bows her head, and perhaps this is just as well. Jack’s face is, at that moment, pulled into an ugly snarl. In that moment he wishes he could kill Morgan Sloat’s Twinner all over again. He thinks to ask her how she was mistreated, and then realizes he doesn’t have to.

"How old were you?"

"Twelve," she says . . . as Jack has known she would say. It happened that same year, the year when Jacky was twelve and came here to save his mother. Or did he come here? Is this really the Territories? Somehow it doesn’t feel the same. Almost . . . but not quite.

It doesn’t surprise him that Morgan would rape a child of twelve, and do it in a way that would keep her from ever having children. Not at all. Morgan Sloat, sometimes known as Morgan of Orris, wanted to rule not just one world or two, but the entire universe. What are a few raped children to a man with such ambitions?

She gently slips her thumbs across the skin beneath his eyes. It’s like being brushed with feathers. She’s looking at him with something like wonder. "Why do you weep, Jack?"

"The past," he says. "Isn’t that always what does it?" And thinks of his mother, sitting by the window, smoking a cigarette, and listening while the radio plays "Crazy Arms." Yes, it’s always the past. That’s where the hurt is, all you can’t get over.

"Perhaps so," she allows. "But there’s no time to think about the past today. It’s the future we must think about today."

"Yes, but if I could ask just a few questions . . . ?"

"All right, but only a few."

Jack opens his mouth, tries to speak, and makes a comical little gaping expression when nothing comes out. Then he laughs. "You take my breath away, too," he tells her. "I have to be honest about that."

A faint tinge of color rises in Sophie’s cheeks, and she looks down. She opens her lips to say something . . . then presses them together again. Jack wishes she had spoken and is glad she hasn’t, both at the same time. He squeezes her hands gently, and she looks up at him, blue eyes wide.

"Did I know you? When you were twelve?"

She shakes her head.

"But I saw you."

"Perhaps. In the great pavilion. My mother was one of the Good Queen’s handmaidens. I was another . . . the youngest. You could have seen me then. I think you did see me."

Jack takes a moment to digest the wonder of this, then goes on. Time is short. They both know this. He can almost feel it fleeting.

"You and Judy are Twinners, but neither of you travel — she’s never been in your head over here and you’ve never been in her head, over there. You . . . talk through a wall."

"Yes."

"When she wrote things, that was you, whispering through the wall."

"Yes. I knew how hard I was pushing her, but I had to. Had to! It’s not just a question of restoring her child to her, important as that may be. There are larger considerations."

"Such as?"

She shakes her head. "I am not the one to tell you. The one who will is much greater than I."

He studies the tiny dressings that cover the tips of her fingers, and muses on how hard Sophie and Judy have tried to get through that wall to each other. Morgan Sloat could apparently become Morgan of Orris at will. As a boy of twelve, Jack had met others with that same talent. Not him; he was single-natured and had always been Jack in both worlds. Judy and Sophie, however, have proved incapable of flipping back and forth in any fashion. Something’s been left out of them, and they could only whisper through the wall between the worlds. There must be sadder things, but at this moment he can’t think of a single one.

Jack looks around at the ruined tent, which seems to breathe with sunshine and shadow. Rags flap. In the next room, through a hole in the gauzy cloth wall, he sees a few overturned cots. "What is this place?" he asks.

She smiles. "To some, a hospital."

"Oh?" He looks up and once more takes note of the cross. Maroon now, but undoubtedly once red. A red cross, stupid, he thinks. "Oh! But isn’t it a little . . . well . . . old?"

Sophie’s smile widens, and Jack realizes it’s ironic. Whatever sort of hospital this is, or was, he’s guessing it bears little or no resemblance to the ones on General Hospital or ER. "Yes, Jack. Very old. Once there were a dozen or more of these tents in the Territories, On-World, and Mid-World; now there are only a few. Mayhap just this one. Today it’s here. Tomorrow . . ." Sophie raises her hands, then lowers them. "Anywhere! Perhaps even on Judy’s side of the wall."