before she fell. Pretty funny, when you thought about it.
She struck the open wound on the inside of her wrist as she landed. Pain. lit up her right arm like the lights on a Christmas tree and this time when she screamed it was all pain. She bit it off quickly when she felt herself drifting away from consciousness again. She opened her eyes and stared into her husband's torn face. Gerald looked back at her with an expression of endless, glazed surprise-This wasn't supposed to happen to me, I'm a lawyer with myname on the door. Then the fly which had been washing its front legs on his upper lip disappeared up one of his nostrils and Jessie turned her head so quickly she thumped it on the floorboards and saw stars. When she opened her eyes this time, she was looking up at the headboard, with its gaudy drips and tunnels of blood. Had she been standing way up there only a few seconds ago? She was pretty sure she had been, but it was hard to believe-from here, the fucking bed looked approximately as tall as the Chrysler Building.
Get moving, Jess! It was Punkin, once more yelling in that urgent, annoying voice of hers. For someone with such a sweet little face, Punkin could certainly be a bitch when she set her mind to it.
"Not a bitch," she said, letting her eyes slip closed. A small, dreamy smile touched the corners of her mouth. "A squeaky wheel."
Get moving, damn it!
Can't. Need a little rest first.
If you don't get moving right away, you can rest forever! Now shag Your fat ass!
That got to her. "Nothing fat about it, Miss Smartmouth," she muttered pettishly, and tried to struggle to her feet. It took only two efforts (the second thwarted by another of those paralyzing cramps across her diaphragm) to convince her that getting up was, at least for the time being, a bad idea. And doing so would actually create more problems than it would solve, because she needed to get into the bathroom, and the foot of the bed now lay across the doorway like a roadblock.
Jessie went under the bed, moving with a gliding, swimming motion that was almost graceful, blowing a few errant dust bunnies out of her way as she went. They drifted off like small gray tumbleweeds. For some reason the dust bunnies made her think of the woman in her vision again-the woman kneeling in the blackberry tangles with her slip in a white pile beside her. She slid into the gloom of the bathroom and a new smell smote her nostrils: the dark, mossy smell of water. Water dripping from the tub faucets; water dripping from the shower head; water dripping from the washbasin taps. She could even smell the peculiar waiting-to-be mildew odor of a damp towel in the basket behind the door. Water, water, everywhere, and every drop to drink. Her throat shrank dryly inside her neck, seeming to cry out, and she became aware that she was actually touching water-a small puddle from the leaky pipe under the sink, the one the plumber never seemed to get to no matter how many times he was asked. Gasping, Jessie pulled herself over to the puddle, dropped her head, and began to lick the linoleum. The taste of the water was indescribable, the silky feel of it on her lips and tongue beyond all dreams of sweet sensuousness.
The only problem was that there wasn't enough. That enchantingly dank, enchantingly green smell was all around her, but the puddle below the sink was gone and her thirst wasn't slaked but only awake. That smell, the smell of shady springs and old hidden wellheads, did what even Punkin's voice hadn't been able to it got Jessie on her feet again.
She used the edge of the sink to haul herself up. She caught just a glimpse of an eight-hundred-year-old woman looking out of the mirror at her, and then she twisted the basin tap marked C. Fresh water-all the water in the world-came gushing out. She tried to voice that triumphant shriek again, but this time managed nothing but a harsh susurrant whisper. She bent over the basin, her mouth opening and closing like the mouth of a fish, and lunged into that mossy wellhead perfume. It was also the bland mineral smell which had so haunted her over all the years since her father had molested her during the eclipse, but now it