from here to the bottom of the gorge appeared to be sheer—at least, with her face pressed against the bars she could see no obstruction below the window. She couldn’t see them, but imagined there must be hundreds of windows like this one overlooking the dry and craggy drop. She stepped back with a sigh.
Yemoja spoke to her again, a series of growls and clicks. Leodora could only shake her head in incomprehension. She said, “The least I can do is try to get you unchained before the light’s gone.” She took a step toward her and Yemoja backed against the wall. “It’s all right,” Leodora said cautiously. She raised her hands to show them empty, then knelt. She had to press her lips tight and hold her breath to get close. Yemoja’s whole body was begrimed, but her slender ankles were worse. The cuffs around them looked to have rubbed them raw, leaving them blackened, maybe putrid. Leodora’s eyes began to tear up and she wiped at them with the back of her hands, then clutched at the cuff all but blindly. The cuff was hinged, the lock a small box exhibiting an odd cross-shaped keyhole. She grabbed hold of it and tried to pull the halves of the cuff apart, but finally sighed and gave up. There would be no removing it without a key.
She withdrew then to the window and breathed the night air until her eyes stopped stinging. She shook her head in exasperation, then withdrew again to the corner beside the door. There was nothing to do now. She needed both darkness and a pool of standing liquid. The darkness was here but she wasn’t going to get the other until someone brought Yemoja something to drink, and she surmised that nobody would be coming tonight. Whatever meals were served, they had been consumed well before this.
“I need to get out of here,” she said. A solution occurred to her then. She stood up and began pounding her fists against the door. “Obviously,” she explained as though Yemoja would understand, “no one can reach the door, so anyone pounding on it is impossible. I just hope somebody can hear.”
As if in response to that, someone shouted. Then other voices joined in, and the cacophony of yelling prisoners drowned out her pounding completely. To her discouragement, nobody came to see what the noise was about. Nobody cared. “And why should they? No one here can go anywhere anyway. If that gorge circles this place completely, then no one can escape very far.” She did give up then, and glumly returned to her corner.
Across the small cell, Yemoja was being reduced to a shadow within a shadow as the last of the light faded.
Leodora drew her knees up and rested her forehead against them. “I have to get out of here,” she said. “Right now, Soter will be yelling at Diverus because he came back without me, and so another performance was missed. Did I tell you we’d gone to the world between all worlds? That’s what it is for all its formal names. It’s full of sorcery, too, and hurled at you from every direction—everything that seems benign on the surface will trick you. I was caught there. Snared. I didn’t even notice, because I wanted something and that’s what that place does, it finds what you want and it entices you with it, giving you a little, and then more and more, until everything else you’ve ever been has been swallowed up in desire. They had stories, all the stories, and I wanted them. I wanted them so much, and if Diverus hadn’t pulled me from there, I would never have left. Diverus . . . enchanted them with his own power. He has power, and a true name. I know his true name now. Orfeo.”
Yemoja looked up sharply at that and repeated, “Orfeo.”
“You know that name? I wish I could understand you. You probably have stories, too, from wherever you’re from, stories I’ve never heard before, and I would like to hear them. I’m greedy, you see. I want them all, all the stories, because my father gathered them before me and I want to . . .” Her throat clutched and her eyes burned hot. She had to wait awhile to go on. “I never even knew him, but we’re alike on this. And we both need someone to watch out for us, too. The only escape route from here is back through