Chapter Two

There was a handy branch hanging down about a foot above Janet's head- grabbing it, she made an almost heroic attempt to pull herself out of the clinging mud.

Unfortunately, all this achieved was to make the branch break and Janet fall back onto her leg with an unforgiving squelch. She winced, quite sure that her pinned leg was by now twisted in a direction in which no leg should twist.

There was nothing for it. Janet took a deep breath, spluttered a little as she breathed in what appeared to be - oh, god! - a blue, shimmering butterfly (in the dead of rainy night?), took another, more cautious, deep breath and yelled out:

"Hoy! I need some help over heAAARGHOUCHfuckitsorryoopswhat the hell?"

"Shh!"

"What? Jesus, you landed on my leg . . . owaarghmmmf. . ." she mumbled as her protestations were brought to a halt by the swift placing of a hand over her mouth.

Well aware of the proper etiquette on occasions such as this, Janet bit the hand. It retreated, accompanied by a hastily bitten off swear word.

"What do you think you're doing?" A disembodied voice- or possibly not, as reason pointed out that it was probably attached in some way to the bitten hand- whispered in Janet's direction.

"Oww. . ." the scuffle had somehow worked Janet free of the mud, and she pushed herself upright against the tree. After gingerly testing her leg, she decided it wasn't going to hold up for long enough to run any significant distance. Maybe she could make it to the couple ahead- who seemed to be glowing now, with an ethereal light- with luck. Bracing herself, Janet simultaneously lashed out with the broken branch in her left hand and began to run stumblingly towards the clearing.

She actually managed to get two metres before being, once again, knocked to the ground by her mysterious assailant.

"You can't go up there! You'll blow our cover!"

"I'll what? Let go of me, you creep- aaaaaaeeeaaasnnrf."

With a little help from a chloroform rag, Janet was out like a light.

Janet woke up in stages. First, her leg started aching. This set off a chain reaction with other various parts of her body, beginning with what felt like a skinned right knee and winding up into a glorious finale with the throbbing mesh of curried sandpaper that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be her head. One eyelid creaked open, seemingly of its own free will. Janet certainly couldn't remember telling it to do so.

Bar. . . bar lights. Bar light? Oh, god, she hadn't fallen asleep in Chem again-

Scrambling to stand up, Janet tumbled off the bench she hadn't known she was lying on and fell to her knees on the floor. Oh, yes, definitely skinned.

But also, definitely not in the Chemistry lab at school. No Chem lab Janet knew of had prison bars across it. Looking around, she realised with a sort of dull panic that the padlock on the door was, in fact, on the other side of the door.

Well, not so much dull panic any more. More a bubbling mix of desperate panic and sheer mindless terror, to tell the truth.

After a few minutes, she stopped screaming, and a voice wavered:

"No one will come down, you know."

And what a voice! It wavered, it trembled, it lilted with tremulous tears and melodiously wove into angelic music that simple hopeless expression of woe. The air, Janet noticed, seemed to brighten and become more sweet with this unseen maiden's voice.

"Er. . . where are you?" Janet was sure she'd seen no one in the room. Turning around and scanning every wall, she became even more sure that the cell was, apart from her self and the wooden bench, completely empty.

The voice laughed sadly, like silver chimes in the rain.

"I'm right. . . here."

"I can't see you." Things were getting worse and worse. This disembodied voice didn't even have a hand to validate it.

"You have to wait after I say that!"

"Oh. . ."

Not quite sure what was happening, Janet waited. Presently, she noticed a glow forming in her and, as several head-shakings and eye-rubbings failed to make it disappear, she decided to continue waiting and see what happened.

It really was, she decided, a sight worth waiting for. First, the glow became brighter and brighter until it coalesced into a sort of really, really bright girl-shaped hole, which then proceeded to become less and less dark until it became an actual girl. Not a hole. Janet thought this was awfully good, and decided to show her appreciation by clapping.

Unfortunately, Janet had been using one hand to hold herself upright by the cell bars and when this hand was removed to perform appreciative clapping, Janet slid to the floor. As her legs seemed to have formed a collective and gone on strike, she was forced to continue watching the show from there.

And what a show it was! For, really, each of the girl's features had to be looked at separately to be properly appreciated. Janet's eyes were caught first by the mysteriously alluring girl's hair, which slid in sheets of pearly gossamer over her shoulders like liquid moonbeams. It reached all the way to the ground and Janet's eyes followed it there, at the same time marvelling over its knotless beauty and suppressing an ugly gnaw of envy in her stricken heart. Then her eyes found the vision's shoes- and what shoes! – masterpieces of softest calf that were nevertheless overshadowed by the perfect brilliance of the feet inside them. Janet's eyes, tearing themselves away from the wonder of those dainty ankles, next rose upwards to take in, in all its glory, the luminescent gown of a blue so pure it brought tears to her eyes. Finally, Janet rested her eyes upon the face of this faultless, perfect, wondrous being.

Oh alabaster brow! Oh eyebrows curved like Diana's bow, which rested angel-like above the emerald orbs that were this Muse's blessed eyes! Oh sorrowful single tear, fallen like a diamond raindrop 'pon that ivory cheek!

The goddess began to speak but so enraptured by the movements of the speaker's cherry lips was she that Janet heard not a word. Finally, her eyes near spilling over with tears at the thought of what agony such an angel much be feeling at being imprisoned in such a cruel, cold cell as this, Janet quavered one single, worshipping question:

"Who. . . who are you?"