past like transparent silks filled with smooth black ink; her throat burned like a brushfire and her eyes pulsed in their sockets and she could see herself going down flat on her belly, sticking her whole head into that blackness and drinking like a horse.
You’d forget Bill, too, Practical-Sensible whispered, almost apologetically. You’d forget the green undertint in his eyes, and the little scar on his earlobe. These days some things are worth remembering, Rosie. You know that, don’t you?
With no further hesitation (she didn’t believe even the thought of Bill would have been able to save her if she’d waited much longer), Rosie stepped onto the first stone with her hands held out to either side for balance. Red-tinted water dripped steadily from the damp ball of her nightgown, and she could feel the rock at the center of the bundle, like the pit in a peach. She stood with her left foot on the stone and her right on the bank, summoned up her courage, and put the foot behind her on the stone ahead of her. All right so far. She lifted her left foot and strode to the third stone. This time her balance shifted a little and she tottered to the right, waving her left arm to keep her balance while the babble of the strange water filled her ears. It was probably not as close as it seemed, and a moment later she was standing on the stones in the middle of the stream with her heartbeat thudding emphatically in her ears.
Afraid she might freeze if she hesitated too long, Rosie stepped onto the last stone and then up to the dead grass of the far bank. She had taken only three steps toward the grove of bare trees ahead when she realized that her thirst had passed like a bad dream.
It was as if giants had been buried alive here at some time in the past and had died trying to pull themselves out; the trees were their fleshless hands, reaching fruitlessly at the sky and silently speaking of murder. The dead branches were interlaced, creating strange, geometric patterns against the sky. A path led into them. Guarding it was a stone boy with a huge erect phallus. His hands were held straight up over his head, as if he were signalling that the extra point was good. As Rosie passed, his pupilless stone eyes rolled toward her. She was sure of it.
Hey baby! the stone boy spat inside her head. Want to get down? Want to do the dog with me?
She backed away from it, raising her own hands in a warding-off gesture, but the stone boy was just a stone boy again ... if, that was, he had been anything else, even for a moment. Water dripped from his comically oversized penis. No problems maintaining an erection there, Rosie thought, looking at the stone boy’s pupilless eyes and somehow too-knowing smile (had it been smiling before? Rosie tried to remember and found she couldn’t). How Norman would envy you that.
She hurried past the statue and along the path leading into the dead grove, restraining an urge to look over her shoulder and make sure the statue wasn’t following her, wanting to put that stone hardon to work. She didn’t dare look. She was afraid her overstrained mind might see it even if it wasn’t there.
The rain had backed off to a hesitant drizzle, and Rosie suddenly realized she could no longer hear the baby. Perhaps it had gone to sleep. Perhaps the bull Erinyes had gotten tired of listening to it and gobbled it like a canapé. In either case, how was she supposed to find it, if it didn’t cry?
One thing at a time, Rosie, Practical-Sensible whispered.
“Easy for you to say,” Rosie whispered.
She went on, listening to the rainwater drip from the dead trees and realizing—reluctantly—that she could see faces in the bark. It wasn’t like lying on your back and looking at clouds, where your imagination did ninety per cent of the work; these were real faces. Screaming faces. To Rosie they looked like women’s faces, for the most part. Women who had been talked to right up close.
After she had walked a little way she rounded a bend and found the path blocked by a fallen tree which had apparently been struck by lightning at the height of the storm. One side was splintered and black. Several of the branches on that side still smoldered sullenly, like the