a large round hole in the floor—it was the beginning of a spiral staircase that was hidden in the twilight. The stairs circled down into the ground.
At first Margaret resisted, but the hawk-woman came up behind her in the gloom and pushed insistently, until finally Margaret went, the hawk-woman close behind. Deeper and deeper they twisted into the underground.
Low and even light came from the walls of the stairwell. These glowed with a soft, green luminescence. Margaret put out her hand and touched the wall to steady herself. She lifted it to her face and saw the hand was covered in dissolved powder—a shimmering green.
Margaret felt weak, unsteady. The farther down the spiral staircase they went, the less clearly she could think. Her thoughts became muddier and muddier, and shortened, too. The underground, it seemed, was the place where long thoughts came to die.
The spiral went on. Margaret’s mind waned. Her feet fell against the stone steps, and she had no prospect or expectation. Something went lax within her.
The stairs opened on a passageway and Margaret’s powers of observation dimmed even as the lights grew brighter. Along the corridor, there were candles in holders that made the green walls shine tacitly, like emeralds in the rough. Margaret was now behind the hawk-woman and followed her through corridor after corridor, turning many times.
At last, the hawk-woman turned into a doorway.
Margaret peeked in. It was a hot, blazing chamber that she saw over the threshold, a small room filled with many burning candles. And not only candles. Floor to ceiling, stacked, were thousands of tin cans. They were piled in giant cubes and pyramids like houses of cards, cans with labels marking sardines, marking green beans, marking coconut milk and olives, and cans of paint too, and bicycle oil, and gesso—and cans without any labels at all. Some cans had labels in styles of ages long past, others were modern, all preserving hermetically everything that can possibly be preserved. On top of the cans sat candles, flames flickering, each one dancing to its private tune. The candles dripped wax liberally—and made a cheaply chemical, floral perfume.
In the very center of the room, there was a railing made of tin cans welded together. Inside was a dais, also built of cans. And finally, on top of this dais was an enormous chair, high-backed and imposing like a throne.
The hawk-woman climbed up and sat down in it.
Perched up there, affectedly, her knees drawn tightly together and toes pointed mincingly side by side, the hawk-woman took a golden cigarette etui out of her alligator-skin pocketbook and also a fine lighter of the same metal. With her manicured hands, she put a cigarette to her lips, struck the lighter’s cap, inhaled, and let out a puff of smoke, the hanging, left side of her face shivering with the effort. She turned her head. Her heavy brow hung low over her eyes. Her grey suit was of a fine moiré (gone was the gabardine), and the waving water patterns of the moiré shook Margaret’s eyes.
The hawk-woman spoke.
“Margaret darling, you pretty little thing.” She inhaled sharply. “You’re to stay with us here now. Congratulations. This is quite the club.”
The cans, the light, the wax—they ate the oxygen in the room, and Margaret thought perhaps this was the reason she could not breathe or think.
Through the cotton of her muffled mind, fear took her.
The hawk-woman pulled out a pair of pince-nez, put them over her half-slack face. She looked up at Margaret. “You’re such an obstinate little gnat. You insist on repressing your merry little life.” She reached into a short cabinet that stood next to her tall chair. “But I’ll help you, Margaret, I’ll help you to be mindful of who you are.” On her crenellated tongue, Margaret’s given name corrupted the air like a curse.
Already now, Margaret began to draw her neck away from the hawk-woman, but the creature’s hands were moving, she was pulling out a glass cylinder of the type used inside of pneumatic tubes. She was checking a long label down its spine; first she rejected one glass tube, and then another, holding each one up to the light. Finally she let out a sharp breath of air.
The woman’s hands lifted the glass tube in triumph, and her veins, in the heat of the room, were popping out of her skin. They were emerald green veins like the walls in the underground corridor.
The image of the woman’s hands was too much for Margaret. It