Free Chasing the Dragon by Justina Robson Page A

have been looking for
you. But I am not the only one." The figure barely moved. Its hands
on the pole had only three fingers, or two and some kind of thumb that
opposed them. The grey was not exactly grey, she decided, looking at
its odd flesh, only colourlessness.
    "Am I dead?" She thought not.
    "Not enough," it replied in its smooth, silent way. "But if you like
you need only step forward."
    "How do I go back?"
    "You are already slipping away. The living cannot linger. Give me
a token so I can find you again."
    "Who the hell are you?" She had no intention of obeying such a
request.
    "I am one who seeks to prevent you from falling into the grasp of
She Who Waits."
    "And I believe you because?"
    "I am one of Ilyatath's servants."
    The use of the correct name for the elf floored her suspicions. She
had a lot more questions, but the river and the bridge were fading away and the bright, brassy colours of Otopia were every moment more
brilliant.

    The hooded figure held out its hand and opened it. On its thick,
gigantic palm lay a tiny flower, grey in petal and stem, and a crumpled
piece of soggy cardboard. The flower, she knew, was one that Tath had
carried to show his allegiance to the elven revolutionaries. The card ...
with disbelief she could read enough of the writing on it to know it
was the one she had just left behind. As she watched the card became
dust and the words alone remained, caught in the air, their lines
twisting around one another. They moved like snakes.
    "Do you know her?" she cried out. She had nothing on her that
would do. In desperation she tore out a few strands of her own hair and
tried to give it across. To her alarm the words slithered out of the creature's palm and around the strands, coating them in black, before
recoiling to turn and writhe. She saw them snatched away and pocketed. The vision was so flimsy now that it was almost invisible.
    "Do not come here again unguarded," the figure said before it was
gone. It held up its fist, shaking with the effort of holding the words
at bay. "Do not give life to the things of this place."

    She stood on the burning hot road. A medic was trying to get her attention, spritzing her with something stinky out of an aerosol and patting
her face with a wet swab. She swatted him away irritably and gathered
her bearings. Of course the bike was toast. She hadn't thought her heart
could drop another notch, but at this realisation it did.
    The machines buzzed like summer bees in her head, dizzy, drunk,
their pattern grown slower to repeat but no clearer. Lila stooped to
gather the rags of the dress in her hands like an old dowager and began
to walk stiffly towards the exit ramp. A variety of individuals continued to try talking to her or treating her, but eventually they settled for photographing her and insults when she showed no signs of cooperation. Later a smelly, noisy old car drew up beside her and the door
of it opened with a creak.

    Malachi leant back in the leather seat, his elbow on the car door,
fingertips at the wheel. He looked through the windscreen, shades flat
to his face. "Get the shit in."
    She got the shit in, yanked the dusty dress train around her ankles,
and shut the door. They growled off into the burning heat, wind
dashing over the shield and messing her hair, turning it into a thousand little whips.
    Lila flipped down the sunshade and uncovered the small vanity
mirror on the back of it. Ghastly was the word for it. She flipped it
back up again.
    "Have you ever met the dead?" she asked. "Or I mean, the people
in Thanatopia who aren't dead." And then after a second of speculation, "Do faeries even die?"
    Malachi drove in silence for a minute, but slowly his agitation lessened and finally he said, "We don't die in the way that you do. We
wouldn't go to that place you mentioned." But he didn't sound 100
percent certain.
    "It wasn't like the first time I was there," she said. "Nothing like
it. Only there was a