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She believed hiether for a couple of hours, chatting about ers, weather and food, never touching on politics, plane crashes, or the cares of the world To her surprise, she drank three beers and felt nothing but a light buzz: "Howie," she said quite seriously when she left hirateful to you for the rest of my life"

She returned to her room alone, undressed, slid under the sheets, and felt sleep stealing over her even as she put her head on the pillow

Pulling the covers around her to ward off the chill of the air conditioner, she spoke in a voice slurred le down inwhere that had come from and what she meant by it, she fell asleep

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh

Though she was in the stone-walled rooain, the dream was different in , she was not blind A fat yellow candle stood in a blue dish, and its dancing orange flame revealed stone walls, s as narrow as eh the ceiling above and disappeared through a hole into the room below, and a heavy door of iron-bound timbers Somehow she knew that she was in the upper chamber of an old windmill, that the sound-whoosh, whoosh, whoosh-was produced by the ht wind, and that beyond the door lay curved lih she was standing when the dreaed with a ripple, and she was suddenly sitting, though not in an ordinary chair

She was in an airline seat, belted in place, and when she turned her head to the left, she saw Jim Ironheart seated beside her "This old o," he said sole in that stone structure, lifted by its four giant woodslat sails the way an airliner was kept aloft by its jets or propellers "We’ll survive, though-won’t we?" she asked Before her eyes, Jim faded and was replaced by a ten-year-old boy She ic Then she decided that the boy’s thick brown hair and electric-blue eyesto the liberal rules of dreaical and, in fact, altogether logical The boy said, "We’ll survive if it doesn’t come" And she said, "What is it?" And he said, "The Enemy" Around the and contracting, pulsing like flesh, just as her ed with li its substance from the very limestone "We’ll die here," the boy said, "we’ll all die here," and he see to come out of the wall WHOOSH! Holly ca each of the past three nights But this time no element of the dream followed her into the real world, and she was not terrified as she had been before

Afraid, yes But it was a low-grade fear, more akin to disquiet than to hysteria

More important, she rose from the dream with a buoyant sense of liberation Instantly awake, she sat up in bed, leaned back against the headboard, and folded her ar neither with fear nor because of a chill, but with exciteue lubricated by beer, she had spoken a truth as she had slipped off the precipice of sleep: "Snuggle down in my cocoon, be a butterfly soon" Now she knehat she hadthrough ever since she had stues that she had only begun to realize were under hen she had been in the VIP lounge at the airport after the crash

She was never going back to the Portland Press She was never going to work on a newspaper again

She was finished as a reporter

That hy she had overreacted to Anlock, the CNN reporter at the airport Loathing hiuilt on a subconscious level because he was chasing a h she was a part of it If she was a reporter, she should have been interviewing her fellow survivors and rushing to write it up for the Press No such desire touched her, however, not even for a fleeting moust and tailored a suit of rage with enormous shoulders and wide, wide lapels; then she dressed herself in it and strutted and seethed for the CNN camera, all in a frantic attempt to deny that she didn’t care about journalis to walk away froht would last all her life

Now she got out of bed and paced, too excited to sit still

She was finished as a reporter

Finished

She was free As a working-class kid fro need to feel irew into a brighter woman, she had been puzzled by the apparent disorderliness of life, and she had been compelled to explain it as best she could with the inadequate tools of journalism

Ironically, the dual quest for acceptance and explanations-which had driven her to work and study seventy- and eighty-hour weeks for as long as she could renificant lover, no children, no real friends, and no more answers to the difficult questions of life than those hich she had started Now she was suddenly free of those needs and obsessions, no longer concerned about belonging to any elite club or explaining huht she hated journalism She didn’t

What she hated was her failure at it; and she had failed because journalis for her

To understand herself and break the bonds of habit, all she had needed was toairline tragedy

"Such a flexible wohtful"

Why, good heavens, ifaway froht, then surely she’d have figured it out just as soon as Ji a cleverly rhy about the differences betise and stupid choices in life

She laughed She pulled a blanket off the bed, wound it around her nude body, sat in one of the two arhed as she had not laughed since she had been a giddy teenager

No, that here the probleiddy

She had been a serious-er, already hooked on current events, worried about World War III because they told her she was likely to die in a nuclear holocaust before she graduated froh school; worried about overpopulation because they told her that fa the world population in half, deci even the United States; worried becausethe planet to cool down drastically, insuring another ice age that would destroy civilization within her own lifetie news in the late seventies, before the Greenhouse Effect and worries about planetary war She had spent her adolescence and early adulthood worrying tootoo little Without joy, she had lost perspective and had allowed every news sensation-soenuine problehed like a kid Until they hit puberty and a tide of hormones washed them into a new existence, kids knew that life was scary, yeah, dark and strange, but they also knew that it was silly, that it was meant to be fun, that it was an adventurous journey down a long road of time to an unknown destination in a far and wondrous place

Holly Thorne, who suddenly liked her na and why

She knehat she hoped to get froood story, journalistic accolades, a Pulitzer What she wanted fro, and she was eager to confront hiave her what she wanted, she ful existence She knew there was danger in it, as well If she got what she asked froht be dead a year from now, a month from now or next week But for the moment, at least, she focused on the prospect of joy and was not deterred by the possibility of early death and endless darkness

Part TWo Nowhere can a secret keep always secret dark and deep, half so well as in the past buried deep to last, to last

Keep it in your own dark heart otherwise the rumors start

After many years have buried secrets over which you worried no confidant can then betray all the words you didn’t he say

Only you can then exhume secrets safe within the tomb of memory, of memory, within the tomb of memory

-THE ROOK OF COUNTED SORROWS In the real world as in drea is quite what it seems-THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS II ’I

AUGUST 27 THROUGH AUGUST 29

Holly changed planes in Denver, gained two tieles International at eleven o’clock Monday e, she retrieved her rental car frouna Niguel, and reached Jim Ironheart’s house by twelve-thirty