Intensity

Ariel, Chyna said, "Honey, we're ready to go."
        The girl rocked.
        Chyna took hold of one of Ariel's hands. This time, she didn't have to pry the fingers out of a marble-hard fist, and at her urging, the girl got up from the chair.
        Carrying the sponge mop in one hand, leading the girl with the other, Chyna crossed the living room, past the two big front windows. She moved slowly and didn't look directly at the Dobermans, because she was afraid that either haste or another moment of confrontational eye contact might spur them to smash through the glass.
        She and Ariel stepped through a doorless opening to the stairs.
        Behind them, one of the dogs began to bark.
        Chyna didn't like that. Didn't like that at all. None of them had barked before. Their disciplined stealth had been chilling-but now the barking was worse than their silence.
        Climbing the stairs, pulling the girl after her, Chyna felt a hundred years old, weak and depleted. She wanted to sit and catch her breath and let her aching legs rest. To keep moving, Ariel needed constant tension on her arm; without it, she stopped and stood murmuring soundlessly. Each riser seemed higher than the one below it, as though Chyna were the storybook Alice in the wake of the white rabbit, her stomach full of exotic mushrooms, ascending an enchanted staircase in some dark wonderland.
        Then, as they turned at the landing and started up the second flight, glass shattered into the living room below. In an instant, that sound made Chyna young again, able to bound like a gazelle up stairs made for giants.
        "Hurry!" she urged Ariel, pulling her along.
        The girl picked up her pace but still seemed to be plodding.
        Leaping, desperate, to the top of the second flight, Chyna said, " Hurry! "
        Vicious barking rose in the stairwell below.
        Chyna entered the upstairs hall, holding tightly to the girl's hand.
        She could hear the galloping thunder of ascending dogs louder even than her own heart.
        To the door on the left. Into Vess's bedroom.
        She dragged Ariel after her, across the threshold, and slammed the door. There was no lock, just the spring latch activated by the knob.
         They're dogs, for God's sake, just dogs, mean as hell, but they can't operate a doorknob.
        A dog threw itself against the door, which rattled in its frame but seemed secure.
        Chyna led Ariel to the open window, where she propped the mop against the wall.
        Barking, barking, the dogs clawed at the door.
        With both hands, Chyna clasped the girl's face, leaned close, and peered hopefully into her beautiful blue but vacant eyes. "Honey, please, I need you again, like I needed you with the power drill and the handcuffs. I need you a lot worse now, Ariel, because we don't have much time, not much time at all, and we're so close, we really are, so damn close ."
        Though their eyes were at most three inches apart, Ariel seemed not to see Chyna.
        "Listen to me, listen, honey, wherever you are, wherever you're hiding out there in the Wild Wood or beyond the wardrobe door there in Narnia-is that where you are, baby?-or maybe Oz, but wherever you are, please listen to me and do what I tell you. We've got to go out on the porch roof. It's not steep, you can do it, but you have to be careful. I want you to go out the window and then take a couple of steps to the left. Not to the right. There's not much roof to the right, you'll fall off. Take a couple steps to the left and stop and just wait there for me. I'll be right behind you, just wait, and I'll take you on from there."
        She let go of the girl's face and hugged her fiercely, loving her as she would have loved a sister if she'd had one, as she wished she had been able to love her mother, loving her for what she had been through, for having suffered and survived.
        "I am your guardian, honey. I'm your guardian . Vess is never going to touch you again, the freak, the hateful bastard. He's never going to touch you again. I'm going to get you out of this stinking place, and away from him forever, but you have to work with me, you have to help and listen and be careful, so careful."
        She let go of the girl and met her eyes again.
        Ariel was still Elsewhere. There was no flicker of recognition as there had been for a split second in the cellar, after the girl had used