Force Majeure by Daniel O'Mahoney Page A

on her stomach. It wasn’t morning; the only light in the room was a ferocious glare from the door. She groaned. She swore, air escaping.
    ‘I need my sleep, I’m up first thing,’ she protested in a strangled, just-woken voice. She was already alert but feigned sluggishness. Quint hunched over her, shaking, a blurry monkey-king crouched on the bed. Luna, fainter still, lurked at her shoulder.
    ‘Not this morning; you’re promised somewhere else.’
    Both wore grey gowns and pallid, earnest expressions clean of make-up. Flower-of-the-Lady was watching from the doorway. Kay hadn’t seen her since her first morning, but she hadn’t changed. Her lamp, roaring paraffin, filled the cell with clean light, then the nausea of burning oil. A car crashed in Kay’s memory. A boy flitted from the scene, leaving the scent of singed hair. She almost made a connection, but it was gone, vanishing into the woods and sleep.
    Luna and Quint succeeded in tumbling her out of bed. Her naked soles touched frosty carpet scrub. Her bare legs felt comfortably warm, then they didn’t. She gave up the pretence of tiredness. She estimated she’d slept for two, maybe three hours. She could cope with that. She swatted away the cajoling arms of the Gestapo Twins. Across the way, Azure’s cot was already empty and the bedclothes strewn violently, as if she’d been ripped out of the world.
    ‘You said you’d be there for her,’ Luna said accusingly.
    ‘I didn’t realise it would be this soon.’ She dressed. The clothes were yesterday’s; she felt herself putting on yesterday’s grime and slick sweat like an extra layer of warmth and protection. She sniffed at the fabric cautiously. Meat. She would smell of dry, day-old beef. The wooden charm was still in the pocket and jutted awkwardly into her hip.
    ‘This’d work a lot better if you were a man,’ Flower-of-the-Lady remarked, with indifference not disapproval. Like the others she was in grey, but where Quint’s and Luna’s gowns were full and promised concealed bodies, the-Lady’s was shapeless and might have been empty beneath the folds. In the shadow behind the lamp, her hair curled like climbing flowers or weeds.
    ‘Don’t listen to her,’ Quint interjected. ‘Azure thinks you’re right for the job, so you’re right for the job.’
    ‘Men always cock this up,’ Luna added acidly. ‘So do women, but not as often.’
    ‘So what does she do?’
    ‘She becomes a bird.’
    ‘Is it going to hurt?’
    ‘That’s up to you.’
    ‘And what do I do?’
    ‘You follow me,’ said Flower-of-the-Lady. She stepped back from the door, and the light emptied from the room, turning Quint and Luna into wicked-curling lines of white teeth in darkness.
    Kay went barefoot into the passages of the house, with the chatelaine lighting the way. Quint and Luna locked arms with her and bore her along after the-Lady’s hem. She preferred to stride, but they set her an ambling, leisurely pace. They wouldn’t let her look round as they walked, so she became convinced that they were being joined by more and more followers until she was marching at the front of a silent, odourless procession. Unable to turn, she looked down. Both her escorts were barefoot, their feet crushed, like hers, into the shape of the inside of the shoes. She stumbled, but momentum kept her going.
    The old free house never rested and was suffused with light, whispered gossip and the scent of cinnamon, but their path soon took them away from the front-stage. They travelled downwards, always down, by lift or staircase, through gently sloping corridors, while the air tightened as if they’d left the structure of the house and were venturing into mines, into the mountain, and from there into the centre of the Earth. Furnished passages gave way to bare wood and plaster, to white brick, to crudely worked stone, all echoing with no-sound.
    The path led them out of the tunnels and onto the mountain slope. There was no sign of the