She shivered in the eternal cold, the scratchy burlap bags chafing without comfort. The sensation of freezing in a Michigan snowbank without the merciful dispatch of a few hours. But she was a thousand miles from home. Heat had been Utah’s first amoral lesson, yet better to wither in the desert, stunned into quick unconsciousness, the sun scorching out life’s heartlight like a thread of tungsten in a brilliant bulb.

How long had she been here, three days, four, a week since the last drop in the water bottles and final crumb of the Power Bars? On her watch, Mickey waved his silly, tireless arms. At first she had tried to keep track, sung, counted, babbled fairy tales, movie plots, observing the daily benediction of a shaft of silver under the heavy door, the barrier that had bruised her aching shoulders. When she still had a voice, she screamed at the dulled sounds of distant airplanes. Were they still looking for her? Then, too thirsty and bone-weary to care, she had floated into unconsciousness.

She sneezed again at the dust, her chest tight with pain, hands still aching from having traced with bleeding fingers the outlines of the shadowy prison. Fifteen by fifteen at foot count, squared rock, a packed dirt floor. A crude bunk bed with a straw mattress sat at one side, her hiking boots tucked underneath. Wire-spool tables and rough shelving leaned against slick walls. Empty bottles and cardboard boxes, a tacked-up wall calendar. Bottle tops with brittle cork and empty cigarette packages faint with tobacco. A place where laboring men slept, not lingered, her museum of heightened senses, a personal jail, soon a mausoleum.

Now she was too weak to leave the bunk, her tongue swollen and her lips cracking against every shallow breath, and she prayed for blessed release back into a warm, wet womb, her own barren into eternity. The tears had surrendered days ago, resummon them though she would to bathe sore eyes. She blinked a final time as cotton closed her ears and the pain fled, leaving her fresh and strong, moving her young muscles with the spirit of a freed colt. Down a long, shimmering road to greet her came Mom and Dad, trotting beside them Nipper the Parson Russell terrier with his eager bark. The light shard appeared faithfully as it always had and always would, its stagecraft approved by a small striped lizard scuttling in search of a tasty bug.