I fought it with all my strength but was powerless against it. It hurled me hundreds of yards, slamming me into one crackling tangle of foliage after another until finally I fell against the broad red trunk of an immense tree. I was sprawled on its monstrous roots.

I must have been a mile from where I’d been standing. I couldn’t even see the light of the enclosure from here. I could hear nothing.

I tried to stand up but the understory here was too thick for anything but crawling or climbing towards a break in the jungle that surrounded a dim winding pond. A great scummy growth covered much of the surface, but here and there the water reflected the light of the sky like brilliant silvery glass.

It seemed to me that human hands or immortal hands had been at work here, arranging a rim of damp and pitted stones along the banks.

The insects were twittering and whistling in my ears yet staying clear of me. I had a gash in my face but it was of course already healing. They were dive-bombing at the blood and then veering off in natural revulsion.

I sat down on the largest boulder and tried to think what to do. She wasn’t going to permit me to come in, no doubt of that. But what had I just seen? What did it mean?

I closed my eyes and listened, but all I heard were the voices of this rapacious and devouring jungle.

There came a soft living pressure on my back. I went alert instantly. There was a hand on my shoulder. A cloud of the sweetest perfume enveloped me, something of green herbs, flowers, and citrus, very strong. A vague sense of happiness came over me, but this was not originating with me. I knew it was absolutely pointless to struggle against this hand.

Slowly I turned and looked down at the long white fingers, and then up into Mekare’s face.

The pale-blue eyes were innocent and wondering, the flesh like alabaster all but glowing in the dark. No expression actually, but a suggestion of drowsiness, of languor and of sweetness. No harm.

Just the faintest telepathic shimmer: my image, my image in one of those rock videos I’d made years ago—dancing and singing, and singing about us. Gone.

I searched for a spark of intellect, but this was like the agreeable face of some poor mad mortal in whom most of the brain had long ago been destroyed. It seemed the innocence and curiosity were artifacts of flesh and reflex more than anything else. Her mouth was the perfect pink of a seashell. She wore a long pink gown trimmed in gold. Here and there twinkled diamonds and amethysts sewn exquisitely into the border.

“Beautiful,” I whispered. “Such loving work.”