Some creature that looked like a feathered lizard, its coxcomb yellow and black, scuttled into view, and out again.
It halted, seeming to look back through the door at her: a beast that belonged in some book of medieval monsters than in such proximity to her.
She glanced back at Zeffer, who was still being lectured by Katya. With the door open, and the visions beyond presented to her, she saw no reason not to step over the threshold, just for a moment, and see the place more plainly. After all, she was protected against its beguilements. She knew it was a beautiful lie, and as long as she remembered that, then it couldn’t do her any harm, could it?
The only thing in the landscape that was real was Todd, and it was to him that she now went, crossing the dirt and the windblown grass to go to him. The feathered reptile lowered its coxcomb as she crossed the ground, and slunk away, disappearing into a crack between two boulders. But Todd wasn’t watching animal-life. He had his eyes on several horsemen who were approaching along a road that wound through a dense stand of trees. They were approaching at speed, kicking up clods of earth as they came. Were they real, Tammy wondered, or just part of the landscape? She wasn’t sure, nor was she particularly eager to put the question to the test.
Yet with every passing second she was standing in this world the more she felt the power of the room to unknit her doubts. She felt its influence seeping through her sight and her skin into her mind and marrow. Her head grew giddy, as though she’d downed two or three glasses of wine in quick succession.
It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation by any means, especially given the extreme discomfort of the last few hours. She felt almost comforted by the room; as though it understood how she’d suffered of late, and was ready to soothe her hurts and humiliations away. It would distract her with its beauty and its strangeness; if she would only trust it for a while.
“Tammy … ” she heard Zeffer say behind her. His voice was weak, and the effect his summons had on her was inconsequential. She didn’t even acknowledge it. She just let her eyes graze contentedly on the scene before her; the trees, the horsemen, the road, the rocks.
Soon, she knew, the riders would make a turn in that road, and it would be interesting to see how their image changed when they were no longer moving in profile, but were coming towards her.
She glanced back over her shoulder. It wasn’t far to the door: just a few yards. Her eyes didn’t even focus on whatever was going on in the passageway. It seemed very remote from her at that moment.
She looked back towards the horsemen. They had turned the corner in the road, and were now coming directly towards the spot where Todd and she stood. It was the oddest visual spectacle she’d ever witnessed, to see them growing larger as they approached, like illustrations emerging from a book. The landscape around them seemed to both recede and advance at the same moment as they approached, its motion throwing them forward as the ground beneath their horses drew back like a retreating wave. It was an utterly bewildering spectacle, but its paradoxical beauty enthralled her. All thought of Zeffer’s summons, or indeed his safety, were forgotten: it was as though she was watching a piece of film for the first time, not knowing how the mechanism worked upon her. She felt Todd throw her a sideways glance. “Time to go,” he said.
The earth beneath their feet reverberated as the horsemen approached. They’d be at the door in thirty or forty seconds. “Come on,” he said.
“Yes … ” she murmured. “I’m coming.”
She didn’t move. It wasn’t until Todd caught hold of her arm and pulled her back towards the door that she eventually obeyed the instruction and went. Even then she kept looking back over her shoulder, astonished. “I don’t believe what I’m seeing,” she said.
“It’s all real. Trust me on that,” he said. “They can do you harm.” They had reached the threshold now, and she reluctantly allowed herself to be coaxed back over it and into the passageway. She was amazed at the speed with which the room had caught her attention; made itself the center of her thoughts.