“Solina,” someone said in a voice full of awe and amazement. “What are you doing?”
“That is not Solina,” said another, a voice deadened by defeat.
“Then who the hell is she?”
“Look at her. She is the sun. Sol, fully incarnated. She is light—pure and absolute.”
Light is not a stagnant thing. To see it is to see continuous movement. The moment I realized that truth, the me that was Solina went void, and the world disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Tension tugs, pulling, stretching, expanding until taut and pulsing–one instant, one breath before annihilation. The universe shudders, but no, it is merely the spirit of a woman, writhing against pain.
A snap. A rush. With the energy of a tsunami sucking waves from the shore, the expansive substance retracts and compresses into a pinprick of matter, a single photon. The star winks out, and darkness takes its place.
I swam up from the crushing depths of an ocean of blackness to find that, while I was unaware and out of commission, some unnamable force had crushed my bones in a compactor before tossing my remains into an incinerator. That same force retrieved my ashes, reassembled them into the vague shape of a woman, and screamed at me until I woke up. The shrill voice echoed through my head and stabbed into my brain, and bright stars exploded behind my eyelids.
Ash and charcoal coated my tongue. A desert lined my throat. Only an ocean of purified water would quench my thirst, but at least I was alive.
Maybe.
When I opened my eyes, a night sky greeted me. I tried sitting up, but my muscles protested. A cool breeze blew across my skin and brought the realization that while the rest of me had managed to solidify into something resembling my usual body, my clothes had not survived the transformation. Of course not.
I lay on the muddy bank of a huge body of frigid water that lapped at my ankles and calves. I might have been content to lie there for the rest of the night, but then my stomach growled. The longer I maintained consciousness, the more my old self returned. I am Solina Mundy. Sister of Chapman Mundy. I am a baker. Also, apparently, I’m the goddess of the sun.
The sharp pains in my muscles dulled to a throbbing ache, but the migraine refused to relent. My teeth chattered, and a shiver ran over me, head to toe and back down again, until my whole body vibrated in an effort to resist the cold. I reached inside and searched for my fire, but my well was empty—utterly depleted.
I shifted my weight, rolled onto my belly, and pushed myself onto my hands and knees. My head dangled between my shoulders as I waited for the world to stop spinning. When the vertigo eased, I rolled onto my feet and, a few inches at a time, pushed myself into an upright position. My head tried to roll forward again, but I caught it and held it in place.
As I stood, wracked by shivers and waiting for the migraine to stop screaming at me, I scanned my surroundings, searching for a hint of anything familiar. A nearly full moon shone on a boat ramp and pier jutting into a lake about a hundred yards away. A boat ramp signified civilization, so I started toward it, barefoot and shivering.
Mud, cold and slimy, sucked at my feet. I swallowed my discomfort along with my fear of ankle-shattering holes hidden in the shadows, shin-bashing stumps, pinecones, splinters… snakes. I shuddered again, and my stomach growled. It cramped, protesting its emptiness. Food, water, clothes, shelter—the basic necessities of life—I needed them fast. Like, yesterday fast.
With careful steps, I hiked to the boat ramp, stumbling a few times along the way. I paused and caught my breath before climbing the concrete slope. It led to a parking lot that dumped me onto a slim, unmarked road.
The exercise warmed me and the shivering relented, but my gut cramped again. I bowed, almost to my knees, and panted until the spasm eased. I was still huddled over, wheezing like a sick dog, when a beam of light fell over me. I looked up. Headlights.
Concern for my modesty flashed through my thoughts, but at best, I could pull a Lady Godiva and hide underneath my sopping hair. The headlights belonged to a truck. The truck was the kind that had a light bar attached to the roof—the kind law enforcement used. Out here, on the road leading to the marina, chances were pretty good that it was a park ranger or a game warden.
Road grit crunched under the truck’s tires. Brakes sighed as its wheels rolled to a stop a few feet away from me. I crossed my arms over my chest. Load of good it did me.
“Ma’am,” the officer said after stepping out from behind the driver’s door. His voice sounded young. “It’s kinda late in the year for skinny-dipping.”
I didn’t laugh. I didn’t blush either, but my heart beat like a trapped and frightened bird’s. It wasn’t the embarrassment of my nude discovery that unnerved me. After everything I’d been through, I doubted I possessed the capacity for embarrassment anymore. Man-eating wolves and metamorphosis tended to put things in perspective that way. No, it was the threat of identification that had my heart skittering. Call it paranoia, but identification equaled threat in my strange new world. Anonymity meant another chance to run away, another chance for escape. Another chance to fight again when the time was right.
The officer’s shadow cut through the headlights as he approached, but the contrast in dark and bright made it impossible to make out details, and no way was I surrendering the hands tucked over my breasts to shade my eyes. “Is everything all right, ma’am?” he asked.
“Obviously not,” I said.
“Are you out here alone?”
“Alone and freezing to death. You wouldn’t happen to have a blanket, or a towel, or anything, would you?”
The officer jumped to and scurried to his truck. “Oh, excuse me, ma’am. I was just a little… uh, surprised, finding a lady out here on the road in the middle of the night in nothing but her birthday suit. We see that kind of thing in the summer sometimes, but…” His voice trailed off as he dug through the interior of his truck. The dome light illuminated his brown Smokey-the-Bear hat and green uniform jacket. He returned and presented me with a T-shirt and a towel. “They’re from my gym bag. I usually work out before I come to work. Sorry if they’re a little funky.”
“No,” I said, squirming into the huge T-shirt. “It’s a big improvement.”
“You sure you’re all right? You haven’t been… assaulted?”
I pushed my hair out of my face and looked up at the officer’s shadowy face. His concern came across as genuine. “No, I’m not hurt, just a little lost.”
My stomach grumbled and cramped again. I pulled a face, and the ranger noted my discomfort. “Listen, why don’t I take you to the ranger station?” he said. “I’ve got to fill out an incident report. We’ll get you some coffee and something to eat, and you can tell me what happened.”
“An incident report?” I said, following the ranger to his truck. Reports meant evidence of my whereabouts. It meant paper trails and clues for anyone who was looking. Oh yes, I had watched those Jason Bourne movies with Mani. Maybe Helen Locke wasn’t the CIA or DHS, but then again, maybe she was worse.
The ranger opened the truck door for me, and I climbed into the vinyl seat. “It’s just a technicality. I radioed in that I was making a stop for a, um, distressed pedestrian. They’ll expect paperwork to back it up. Make sure I’m not out here goofing off. I’ll need to get a statement from you.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Could this night get any worse?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” he said. “But if I were you, I’d probably be afraid to ask.”
Ranger Terrence Holt poured me a mug of coffee. I cupped it in my hands and imagined the pleasure of soaking in a giant pot of the stuff. He and I had introduced ourselves after settling at the ranger station, and he insisted I call him Terrence. I told him I was Sabrina Moody—a random and fake name I thought I could remember long enough to get through this interview—and prayed that doing so wouldn’t turn around and bite me in the rear.
After finding me a pair of passably clean sweats from a lost-and-found bin and a dry towel for my damp hair, Terrence set a bowl of steaming carbs—microwaved ramen noodles—before me and ordered me to eat. He studied me as I piled food into my mouth, but I didn’t mind him watching. I was so hungry I didn’t care about much of anything except filling the hollow place in my belly.
