Isn't that enough? thought Ruth. Then she remembered. “I felt as if this blackness, which in the beginning had seemed a very long way off, was coming closer and closer. As if the walls were squashing me. And I just knew, without even having to look, that in the centre of the floor was a trap door, and that soon, very soon, it would suddenly open and drop me into the pit of fire far below.”

There was silence. Even Angela had no words.

“And you were there for three whole days?” Someone asked at last.

“And nights,” said Ruth cheerfully and went on with her dinner.

Teacher Jonson stopped at their table. “My goodness, girls. What slow eaters you are today. Hurry up now or you'll be late for Ark duty. Dishes today and there are all the tables to be scrubbed.”

There was a groan. Dishes and scrubbing came low on the list of jobs that must be done to keep the city running.

“Oh, not you,” Teacher Jonson added as Ruth jumped up and began to stack plates. “Leave that for the others. You're to report to the Initiator's office for special training.”

Ruth tried to keep the smile from spreading across her face. “Sorry I can't stay to help. See you later.” She ran out of the dining room feeling both triumphant and guilty at the awful stories she'd told. Though I was careful not to say that any of it actually happened, she told herself.

IT WAS her only moment of triumph. For the next four months she worked harder than she had done in her whole life before. She still had to attend regular classes and struggle with the daily practice making of the Web. Every other moment of her day was spent with the Initiator or her helpers.

It was lucky that the Initiator was a patient woman, because Ruth fought furiously at the bending of her psychic will to another's.

“Trust me,” the Initiator would say, after the books had somehow been plucked off the shelves in her office and hurled across the room.

“I do. Honestly I do.”

“Then relax. Remember the game you used to play in Grade One, where one of you was blindfolded and had to learn to fall backwards into the arms of another person? You didn't know that the other person would be there, but you trusted.”

“Y ... yes.”

“Then trust me now. Let go, Ruth and let me in, or we can't even begin.”

Ruth would try, but the second she felt the Initiator's psyche touch hers she would bristle up again.

“Just like a porcupine!” exclaimed the Initiator in disgust. Ruth went to the library to find out what a porcupine looked like. Prickly and difficult to love, she thought, as she looked at the pictures. That figures!