As she sank beneath his assault, again she remembered the weapon she'd found. The box was still in her hand. She raised it to deliver another blow, but as Frank's eyes came to rest on the box his assault abruptly ceased.

There was a panting respite, in which Kirsty had a chance to wonder if death might not be easier than further flight. Then Frank raised his arm toward her, unfurled his fist and said: "Give it to me."

He wanted his keepsake, it seemed. But she had no intention of relinquishing her only weapon.

"No," she said.

He made the demand a second time, and there was a distinct anxiety in his tone. It seemed the box was too precious for him to risk taking it by force.

"One last time," he said to her. "Then I'll kill you. Give me the box."

She weighed the chances. What had she left to lose?

"Say please," she said.

He regarded her quizzically, a soft growl in his throat. Then, polite as a calculating child, he said,

"Please."

The word was her cue. She threw the box at the window with all the strength her trembling arm possessed. It sailed past Frank's head, shattering the glass, and disappeared from sight.

"No!" he shrieked, and was at the window in a heartbeat. "No! No! No!"

She raced to the door, her legs threatening to fail her with every step. Then she was out onto the landing. The stairs almost defeated her, but she clung to the bannister like a geriatric, and made it to the hallway without falling.

Above, there was further din. He was calling after her again. But this time she would not be caught. She fled along the hallway to the front door, and flung it open.

The day had brightened since she'd first entered the house-a defiant burst of sunlight before evening fell. Squinting against the glare she started down the pathway. There was glass underfoot, and amongst the

shards, her weapon. She picked it up, a souvenir of her defiance, and ran. As she reached the street proper, words began to come-a hopeless babble, fragments of things seen and felt. But Lodovico Street was deserted, so she began to run, and kept running until she had put a good distance between her and the bandaged beast.

Eventually, wandering on some street she didn't recognize, somebody asked her if she needed help. The little kindness defeated her, for the effort of making some coherent reply to the inquiry was too much, and her exhausted mind lost its hold on the light.

TEN

1

She woke in a blizzard, or such was her first impression. Above her, a perfect whiteness, snow on snow. She was tucked up in snow, pillowed in snow. The blankness was sickening. It seemed to fill up her throat and eyes.

She raised her hands in front of her face; they smelled of an unfamiliar soap, whose perfume was harsh. Now she began to focus: the walls, the pristine sheets, the medication beside the bed. A hospital.

She called out for help. Hours or minutes later, she wasn't sure which, it came, in the form of a nurse who simply said, "You're awake," and went to fetch her superiors.

She told them nothing when they came. She had decided in the time between the nurse's disappearance and reappearance with the doctors that this was not a story she was ready to tell. Tomorrow (maybe) she might find the words to convince them of what she'd seen. But today? If she tried to explain, they would stroke her brow and tell her to hush her nonsense, condescend to her and try to persuade her she

was hallucinating. If she pressed the point, they'd probably sedate her, which would make matters worse. What she needed was time to think.

All of this she'd worked out before they arrived, so that when they asked her what had happened she had her lies ready. It was all a fog, she told them; she could barely remember her own name. It will come back in time, they reassured her, and she replied meekly that she supposed it would. Sleep now, they said, and she told them she'd be happy to do just that, and yawned. They withdrew then.

"Oh, yes..." said one of them as he was about to go. "I forgot..."

He brought Frank's box from his pocket.

"You were holding on to this," he said, "when you were found. We had the Devil's own job getting it out of your hand. Does it mean anything to you?"

She said it didn't.

"The police have looked at it. There was blood on it, you see. Maybe yours. Maybe not."

He approached the bed.

"Do you want it?" he asked her. Then added, "It has been cleaned."

"Yes," she replied. "Yes, please."

"It may jog your memory," he told her, and put it down on the bedside table.

2

"What are we going to do?" Julia demanded for the hundredth time. The man in the corner said nothing; nor was there any interpretable sign on his ruin of a face. "What did you want with her anyway?" she asked him. "You've spoiled everything."

"Spoiled?" said the monster. "You don't know the meaning of spoiled. "

She swallowed her anger. His brooding unnerved her.

"We have to leave, Frank," she said, softening her tone.

He threw a look across at her, white-hot.

"They'll come looking," she said. "She'll tell them everything."

"Maybe..."

"Don't you care?" she demanded.

The bandaged lump shrugged. "Yes," he said. "Of course. But we can't leave, sweetheart." Sweetheart. The word mocked them both, a breath of sentiment in a room that had known only pain. "I can't face the world like this." He gestured to his face. "Can I?" he said, staring up at her. "Look at me." She looked.

"Can I?"

No.

"No." He went back to perusing the floor. "I need a skin, Julia."

"A skin?"

"Then, maybe...maybe we can go dancing together. Isn't that what you want?"

He spoke of both dancing and death with equal nonchalance, as though one carried as little significance as the other. It calmed her, hearing him talk that way.

"How?" she said at last. Meaning, how can a skin be stolen, but also, how will our sanity survive?

"There are ways," said the flayed face, and blew her a kiss.

3

Had it not been for the white walls she might never have picked up the box. Had there been a picture to look at-a vase of sunflowers, or a view of pyramids-anything to break the monotony of the room, she would have been content to stare at it, and think. But the blankness was too much; it gave her no handhold on sanity. So she reached across to the table beside the bed and picked up the box.

It was heavier than she remembered. She had to sit up in bed to examine it. There was little enough to see. No lid that she could find. No keyhole. No hinges. If she turned it over once she turned it half a hundred times, finding no clue to how it might be opened. It was not solid, she was certain of that. So logic demanded that there be a way into it. But where?

She tapped it, shook it, pulled and pressed it, all without result. It was not until she rolled over in bed and examined it in the full glare of the lamp that she discovered some clue as to how the box was constructed. There were infinitesimal cracks in the sides of the box, where one piece of the puzzle abutted the next. They would have been invisible, but that a residue of blood remained in them, tracing the complex relation of the parts.

Systematically, she began to feel her way over the sides, testing her hypothesis by pushing and pulling once more. The cracks offered her a general geography of the toy; without them she might have wandered the six sides forever. But the options were significantly reduced by the clues she'd found; there were only so many ways the box could be made to come apart.

After a time, her patience was rewarded. A click, and suddenly one of the compartments was sliding out from beside its lacquered neighbors. Within, there was beauty. Polished surfaces which scintillated like the finest mother-of-pearl, colored shadows seeming to move in the gloss.