Denver stretches out her right arm and takes a step or two. She trips and falls down onto the pallet.
Newspaper crackles under her weight. She laughs again. "Oh, shoot. Beloved?"No one answers. Denver waves her arms and squinches her eyes to separate the shadows of potatosacks, a lard can and a side of smoked pork from the one that might be human.
"Stop fooling," she says and looks up toward the light to check and make sure this is still the cold house and not something going on in her sleep. The minnows of light still swim there; they can'tmake it down to where she is.
"You the one thirsty. You want cider or don't you?" Denver's voice is mildly accusatory. Mildly.
She doesn't want to offend and she doesn't want to betray the panic that is creeping over her likehairs. There is no sight or sound of Beloved. Denver struggles to her feet amid the cracklingnewspaper. Holding her palm out, she moves slowly toward the door. There is no latch or knob —just a loop of wire to catch a nail. She pushes the door open. Cold sunlight displaces the dark. Theroom is just as it was when they entered-except Beloved is not there. There is no point in lookingfurther, for everything in the place can be seen at first sight. Denver looks anyway because the lossis ungovernable. She steps back into the shed, allowing the door to close quickly behind her.Darkness or not, she moves rapidly around, reaching, touching cobwebs, cheese, slanting shelves,the pallet interfering with each step. If she stumbles, she is not aware of it because she does notknow where her body stops, which part of her is an arm, a foot or a knee. She feels like an ice caketorn away from the solid surface of the stream, floating on darkness, thick and crashing against theedges of things around it. Breakable, meltable and cold.
It is hard to breathe and even if there were light she wouldn't be able to see anything because she iscrying. Just as she thought it might happen, it has. Easy as walking into a room. A magicalappearance on a stump, the face wiped out by sunlight, and a magical disappearance in a shed,eaten alive by the dark.