The night went on forever, to the limits of unreality and fatigue and then beyond, into total madness. As morning neared, Alice found herself cavorting around with three other lunatics before the altar of a respectable little country church, an ancient, down-at-the-heels conventional place of worship like a thousand others scattered over the face of England. The first rays of dawn showed the tints of stained glass in the eastern windows, the glimmer of a sputtering acetylene lantern cast wild shadows over oak and flagstone and memorial tablets.
And this was only the dress rehearsal! She mumbled the gibberish as well as she could, she copied the others' movements as the four of them leaped and gestured and gyrated, dancing around in a circle between the pulpit and the front row of pews. Miss Pimm sat farther back, thumping intricate rhythms on a drum. No one else seemed to recognize the insanity of what they were doing. None of them even seemed to see that it was rank sacrilege.
Alice never thought of herself as religious. What her true parents had believed, she could not remember. Uncle Cam and Aunt Rona had been upright, moral people, but not members of any formal sect. They had taught her that deeds mattered more than words, that love and duty counted more than ritual or any specific creed. Like Edward, she had been repelled by the overt fire-and-brimstone dogmas preached at them by their Uncle Roland. She had entered a church only once in many years, and that had been only because Terry had wanted a Christian marriage. She had mourned him without clerical assistance.
Nevertheless, St. Gall's was a church, a place of worship sanctified by the devotions of humble, honest people over many centuries. To profane it with this mumbo jumbo was not merely disrespectful, it was horribly wrong. The sense of wrongness grew steadily stronger until she felt she could endure it no more. She was just about to stop dancing and say so, when Miss Pimm ended her tattoo.
"That will do. We'll try it now."
Alice said, "But . . ." and then her courage failed her. She stifled her protest and followed the others back to the vestry, picking her way along the dark nave by the light of the lamp Euphemia was carrying. She waited at the door with the other women while Bill Pepper went inside. She averted her eyes when he emerged without his clothes. She kept telling herself that she had had enough, that she was not going to play this stupid game any longer, and yet she entered with Euphemia and Betsy—who still had a racking cough and certainly ought not to be exposing herself to the icy cold in this unheated church on a rainy February night. Cursing herself for a dupe, a gullible maniac, Alice undressed with them and hurried back to the altar when they did, shivering at the touch of dank air on her skin and the cold stones underfoot. If it been wrong before, how much worse it must be now!
"Ready?" Miss Pimm boomed, and began the beat without waiting for a reply.
"Ombay fala, inkuthin . . ."
Jump, twist, wave arms.
"Indu maka, sasa du . . ."
Mr. Pepper was a tall, hollow-chested man, but he had an astonishingly loud bass voice. Supposing some early riser happened to be passing the church and saw the light of the lantern flickering through the stained-glass windows or heard the drumming and all this gibberish? Next thing anyone knew, the police would be at the door. The gutter press would shriek about satanic orgies. Bare limbs and torsos writhed like pale ghosts in the darkness. It was wrong! It was sacrilege. It was obscene.
With no warning, the gloom split, as if the fabric of reality had ripped. A brilliant jagged rent opened overhead, too bright to look upon. It spread instantly, down beside the pulpit, across the floor, dividing the world in two halves. The ground vanished below Alice's feet and she fell through into hot daylight, rolled on grass. A wrench of anguish twisted through her. She screamed and heard others screaming also. Brightness blinded her. Pain, despair . . . Then someone enveloped her in a blanket and hugged her tight, lying beside her, clasping her.
"It will be all right, Entyika," said a gruff female voice in her ear. "I will hold you and it will pass in a minute."