The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

velocity set to their destinations, her determination yoked like an ox to work in someone else’s field.
    And what had she wanted instead? Miss Temple was not without insight and she saw how genuinely free the Process had madeboth Marchmoor and Poole, and—she did not frankly doubt it—how Lydia Vandaariff would now find her will of steel. Even Roger—her breath huffed around the gag with a plangent whine as his visage crossed her inner eye—she knew had been formerly restrained by a decency rooted in fear and timid desire. It did not make them
wise
—she had only to recall the way Roger could not reconcile her present deeds with the fiancée he had known—but it made them fierce. Miss Temple choked again as the cotton wadding nudged the slick softness at the back of her throat. She was
already
fierce. She required none of this nonsense, and if she’d carried a man’s strength and her father’s horsewhip these villains would as one be on their knees.
    But in addition Miss Temple realized—barely listening to Miss Poole’s disquisition—that so much of this struggle came down to dreams. Mrs. Marchmoor had been released from the brothel, Mrs. Stearne from fallow widowhood, and Miss Poole from a girlish hope to marry the best man within reach … which was all to say that of course she understood. What
they
did not understand—what no one understood, from her raging father to her aunt to Roger to the Comte and the Contessa with their wicked violations—was the particular character of her own desires, her own sunbaked, moist-aired, salt-tinged dreams. In her mind she saw the sinister
Annunciation
fragments of Oskar Veilandt, the expression of astonished sensation on Mary’s face and the gleaming blue hands with their cobalt nails pressing into her giving flesh … and yet she knew her own desire, however inflamed at the rawness of that physical transaction, was in truth elsewhere configured … her colors—the pigments of her need—existed before an artist’s interposition—crumbled, primal minerals and untreated salts, feathers and bones, shells oozing purple ink, damp on a table top and still reeking of the sea.
    Such was Miss Temple’s heart, and with it beating strong within her now she felt no longer fear, but near to spitting rage. She knewshe would not die, for their aim was corruption—as if to skip the act of death completely and leap ahead to the slow decomposition of her soul, through worms that they would here place in her mind. She would not have it. She would fight them. She would stay who she was no matter what—no matter what—and she would kill them all! She snapped her head to the side as one of the Comte’s attendants loomed over her and replaced her white mask with the glass and metal goggles, pushing them tight so the black rubber seal sucked fast against her skin. She whined against the gag, for the metal edges pressed sharply and were bitter cold. Any moment the copper wires would surge with current. Knowing that agony was but seconds away, Miss Temple could only toss her head again and decide with all the force of her will that Lydia Vandaariff was a weakling, that it would not be difficult at all, that she should thrash and scream only to convince them of their success, not because they made her.
    Into the theatre two soldiers brought this Miss Dujong, slumped and unresponsive, and deposited her onto the floor. The unfortunate woman had been bundled into the white robes, but her hair hung over her face and Miss Temple had no clear picture of her age or beauty. She gagged again on the wadding in her mouth and pulled at the restraints.
    They did not pull the switch. She cursed them bitterly for toying so. They would
die
. Every one of them would be punished. They had killed Chang. They had killed Svenson. But this would not be the end … Miss Temple was not
prepared
to allow—
    The straps around her head were fast, but not so tight that she did not hear the gunshots … then angry shouts from Miss Poole—and then more shots and Miss Poole’s voice leapt from outrage to a fearful shriek. But this was shattered by a crash that shook the table itself, another even louder chorus of screams … and then she smelled the smoke and felt the heat of flame—flame!—on her bare feet! She could not speak or move, and the thick gogglesafforded only the most opaque view of the darkening ceiling. What had happened to the lights? Had the roof fallen in? Had her “gunshots”