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In their aprons, Dolly Sa her hands on a dish towel, the Riderettes ca roo the stairs heralded eight or ten h the hallway arch

They crowded the farther half of the roo some distance from Deucalion, their expressions so knives Loreen Rudolph covered hera screa so badly that she had to lean on one of her co these cowboys, there were soive a rodeo bull second thoughts about participating in a contest with them But none of them stood as tall as Deucalion or lanced at one another, and Carson thought they ondering how ht be needed to take hiasps and murht throbbing through his eyes Thetaller than they had been a moment earlier, and two more women had raised their hands to their ain, sensed that the ht instead be Deucalion’s But the giant made no effort to intrude or explain himself With stoic acceptance of the fear he could induce without effort, he surveyed those who gaped at him, perhaps much as he had matched the stares of those who ca the dish towel in one of the two patch pockets on her apron, Dolly Samples cah it seerew more tense Just five feet two, Dolly had to peer up at quite an angle to study Deucalion’s nonturned face, and she seemed most intent on the intricate half-face tattoo and on fully understanding the terrible da bone structure

"I drea that Carson expected her to say "The o, it was"

When Dolly spoke the date, Carson glanced at Michael and he at her, for the night of her dreainal, had died in the landfill in highlands north of Lake Pontchartrain

"I drea now," Dolly said "Your lovely face and your poor face, both halves exactly as they are, and the tattoo in all its detail"

Carson realized that the wo screa emotions of a much different kind, and now tears stood in their eyes

"In the dreaht in your eyes, and at first I was afraid, but then I knew there was no reason for fear I thought of a line froht of the eyes rejoiceth the heart’--and I knew that you were our friend"

When Deucalion spoke, his voice seemed deeper and more resonant than ever: "What happened in this dream?"

"We had come to the shore of a sea, the water very dark and turbulent There were so many children with us, our own and children I’d never seen before We were fleeing so We were like the Israelites at the shore, and you ca us You parted the sea and told the children to follow you, and they were saved"

"I can’t part the sea and h it," Deucalion said "But there’s so else I can do that I will show you, and then you can decide whether to entrust the children to me"

Dolly said, "I told everyone about the dream I knew it must be prophetic, it was so intense I knew one day you would appear a us, out of nowhere"

The other women crossed the room to Deucalion, and their men came behind them

Dolly said, "You have suffered very ," he confessed

"We all do, one way or another May I touch your face?"

He nodded

She raised her right hand first to the undaainst his cheek as a loving ers tenderly traced the fractured contours of the daed side, the impossible concavity and the lumpish scar tissue

"You’re beautiful," she said "Very beautiful"

Chapter 40

At first, with three flashlight bea only portions of the glistening contours, causing shadows to swell and shrink, Bryce Walker couldn’t understand what these thingsof the school kitchen Most were suspended over the prep tables, huge and greasy-looking and so in the wide aisles

The surface of each of these objects was rays were silvery patches and veins that glittered like diaenres different from and darker than the Westerns that Bryce wrote, was quicker to identify these ered a response, a slithering noise arose fro in the other cocoons grew restless, as well, and raised a chorus of susurrant sounds, either the friction of countless snakes coiling a one another or their hissed threats, as if this were not the Meriwether Lewis Elementary School, as it appeared to be, but was instead the bottom of the pit of the world, where the oldest serpent of thery

"Be very still," Sully York whispered

Bryce and Travis took the seasoned adventurer’s advice, in part because, in spite of the noise, nothing appeared to move within the cocoons The surfaces of them didn’t ripple or show any strain of iradually quieted, Bryce looked at Travis, whose features gloith the flashlight bea sack The boy’s face--his furrowed brow, his haunted eyes, his grihts as clearly as an e-book reader presented a page on its screen Sometimes insects spun cocoons around the food on which they would feed during their ht be sealed inside these hideous bags, incapacitated but aware, histhat had begun to feast

Bryce shuddered and longed to be in an ar of spiked coffee and a book by Louis L’A worse than hired gunhwayned once ether … look around"