Intensity

about it either. At least she could still crawl and stand. No spinal injury yet. Better to feel pain than nothing at all.
        The legs of the chair and the stretcher bars between the legs seemed to be intact. But judging by the sound of the impact, she had weakened them.
        Starting eight feet from the wall this time, Chyna shuffled backward as fast as she could, trying to ram the chair legs into the rock at the same angle as before. She was rewarded with a distinctive crack -the sound of splintering wood, though it felt like shattering bone.
        A dam of pain burst inside her. Cold currents dragged her down, but she resisted the undertow with the desperate determination of a swimmer struggling against a drowning darkness.
        She hadn't been knocked off her feet this time. She shuffled forward. Not pausing to catch her breath, still hunched to ensure that the chair legs would take the brunt of the impact, she charged backward into the rock wall.

    
        Chyna woke facedown on the floor in front of the hearth, aware that she must have been unconscious for a minute or two.
        The carpet was as cold and undulant as moving water. She wasn't floating in it but glimmering along the rippled surface, as though she were coppery spangles of sunlight or the dark reflection of a cloud.
        The worst pain was in the back of her head. She must have struck it against something.
        She felt so much better when she didn't think about her pain or her problems, when she simply accepted that she was nothing more than a cloud shadow riding on the mirrored surface of a rolling river, as insubstantial as the purling patterns on moving water, gliding away, liquid and cool, away, away.
        Ariel. In the cellar. Among the watchful dolls.
         I am my sister's keeper.
        Somehow she got to her hands and knees.
        She heard the hollow thump of paws on the front porch floor. When she pulled herself to her feet against an armchair, she looked at the window that wasn't covered by drapes. Two Dobermans were standing with their forepaws on the windowsill, staring at her, their eyes radiant yellow with reflections of the soft amber light from the lamp on the end table.
        At the base of the stone wall was one of the rear legs of the chair. That length of turned pine was all jagged splinters at the thicker end, where it had been fixed to the underside of the seat. Bristling from the side of it at a ninety-degree angle was the one-inch stretcher bar that had connected it to the other rear leg.
        The lower chain was more than half free.
        On the porch, one dog paced. The other still watched Chyna.
        She worked the upper chain to the left through the spindles at her back, drawing her right hand behind her head, to provide as much slack as possible for her left hand. Then she reached down to her left, under the chair arm and then under the thick slab seat, feeling for the legs. The left rear leg was gone, obviously the one on the floor by the wall. The side stretcher still extended from the left front leg, but with the rear leg gone, it no longer connected to anything, and the chain had slipped off it.
        When she worked the upper chain to the right, to be able to feel under the chair with that hand, she discovered that the other rear leg was slightly loose. She pulled, pushed, and twisted, trying to break it off. But she couldn't get adequate leverage, and the leg was still too firmly attached to succumb to her efforts.
        No stretcher bar had ever linked the two front legs. Now the lower chain was prevented from slipping entirely free only by the stretcher bar between the legs on the right side.
        Once more she charged backward hard, into the rock. Blazing pain exploded through her entire body, and she was almost blown away. But when the right rear leg didn't snap loose, she said, "Hell, no," refusing to surrender to hurt, to exhaustion, to anything, anything, and she hobbled forward and then launched herself backward once more. Wood split with a dry crackle, broken turnings of pine clattered off flagstones, and with a bright ringing, the lower chain fell free of the chair.
        Bending forward, dizzy, filled with a whirling darkness, shaking violently, she leaned with both hands on the back of the big leather armchair. She was half sick with pain and with fear of what damage she might have done to her body, wondering about fractured