yourself. Language is a fickle thing when it comes to this kind of heady crap.”
Oh God, Oh God, there are so many SO MANY. Make it stop, please take me away, take me back, please don’t make me watch—
The Panda Man spoke on, audible despite the billions of wailing voices and her own screech of agony. “Would you have believed this without seeing it? Would anyone? Could anyone?”
All that screaming. The racket, the sticky chaos of all those moving limbs. The smell of them, the trapped festering stink of myriad unwashed droves. She would go mad if she stayed. It would only take seconds, and then she would be cuckoo, loopy-loo. It would all go away.
Just take me home let me go back go back now I want my Daddy please let me see him just for a second please help DADDY!
A moment passed when even all those wailing voices seemed nulled by the strength of the Panda Man’s reticence. Then he said, “I brought you here to show you this because you have a rare opportunity to make big changes, and not only for those poor bastards trapped here. For everyone.”
They’re trapped. Taken. Chained up like animals and put to work.
But for what? And by who?
She didn’t know. But behind all the pain and confusion and darkness, she felt something bad: evil. That was the only word for it. It was just a distant echo, a fingerprint, but even that was blinding, nauseating. It would swallow her up if she concentrated on it too long.
I can’t do it. Take me back—take me back now!
The Panda Man’s droning voice went on calmly. “You can help everyone, right a balance bigger than all of us, more than this one petty little corner of reality. But I had to show you this because it can only be your choice. If you want to go back to your Daddy, I can’t stop you. But he will die, and the sickness in him will work its devilry on you just the same.”
Tears should have been trickling into the corners of Billy’s eyes, but here things were different. Not real, not quite. But that did nothing to dull the ache in her chest.
Daddy couldn’t die. Not now, not ever. Without him, what would she have? Who would she be?
“And when you’re alone, you’ll choke your last breath, looking out across the sea, trying to spot that little farm you all left behind, where the bones of your mother lie buried. And then things will just go away, that’ll be that.”
Billy was weeping, but felt no tears on her cheeks. Here, in all this darkness, there were no tears. Just pain.
“Or … you can roll the dice and take what I’m offering: a chance.” Another pause.
The Panda Man laughed, a noise so absurd amidst all the hurt that it cut like glass. “When you hear it put like that, I suppose it’s not a choice at all. But we all have our little parts to play. The question is, are you going to play yours?”
Billy could feel herself slipping away, towards the abyss of insanity. All those voices, all that pain, all that endless darkness. There was something else, too; an evil thing behind it all, and a great swinging behemoth to which all these stolen people were chained, holding up—
They’re holding the swing, the swing of the Pendulum. What Pendulum?
I don’t care, I don’t care, let me go, let me out! Daddy!
She couldn’t abandon Daddy for this craziness, she couldn’t.
But the fact was that, right now, that seemed a distant flaky nonsense, here amongst all the woe and penury, the grand scale of all, and the irresistible hold of the Panda Man on her wrist.
“What do you say, Billy?”
Let me go home, let me go, let me go!
All that screaming. All those people. All those years they had been trapped here holding up the swinging pendulum, a great obsidian shaft, the source—
“What say you, Billy?” His voice had grown stentorian, huge and ringing and cold. Her wrist would cave under the pressure of his grip. They were still flying over that endless carpet of writhing Vanished, screeching in contorted torpor.
Let me go.
Daddy’s image was fading. The darkness, the pain, the Vanished. The Pendulum.
“What say you, Billy Peyton?”
Let me go, just let me go back to before with Ma and Daddy and Grandpa before it all went bad. Please let me go back, let me be happy, let me go!