فصل چهل و پنجم

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Don’t Blink

Edie ran into the little square at the foot of the Monument. The door into the pillar was closed. She couldn’t believe it. They’d just been here. It had been open then. She banged hard on the painted wood, before she noticed the scrap of cardboard wedged in the glass window.

BACK IN FIVE MIN’S it apostrophized in a blotchy scrawl of red marker pen.

She stepped back and looked up at the cage in the sky. Her heart was pounding and her knees felt weak. The sea-glass would make her feel better. All she needed was to get it back close to her. As soon as she got it in her hand, she knew she wouldn’t feel this hole in the core of her.

She tried to control her breathing. She kept her head tilted to the sky and closed her eyes. Five minutes was three hundred seconds, which was three hundred elephants. She counted elephants in her head, trying not to speed up, trying to make each elephant last a whole second. . . .

As Edie counts, take a snapshot of the city.

Take a frame of the scene: a girl faces a door at the foot of a tall column, her eyes closed, rocking nervily from foot to foot, long sweep of dark hair swaying in counterpoint, counting elephants in her head to keep calm.

Keep her company. Count a couple of elephants yourself.

Take another frame.

Something’s missing.

The column is there.

The door is there.

The girl is gone.

Look back at the first frame, the one with the girl. There’s something else, something black and blurred on the left of the frame. Something black and blurred and bull-like. Something charging at the girl.

Now look at that second frame. The two-legged bull-shaped blur is just exiting the frame on the left edge. And in its arms is a girl-shaped bundle, mouth gaping in shock.

That’s how fast the Minotaur moves.

So fast that the attendant removing the cardboard sign from the door at the very moment the Man-Bull stampeded past and grabbed her, didn’t see a thing.

That’s how fast Edie was deleted from the scene.

Blink and you miss it.