No Name
Wouldn’t it be better if your guests arrived at night?
Plainly Dressed Woman
No……
No one enters after dark.
No Name
I’ve come here to ask for directions out of the city
Plainly Dressed Woman
Go to the room called Boundary of Blood. It is through that passageway and down the hall.
Bows low
It is the first door on your right
Moving along the hallway the darkness soothes No Name’s eyes.
As she wanders, she notices the walls are covered from floor to ceiling with delicately carved inscriptions. Each is written in a separate language.
Every language ever spoken upon the earth is represented, and each tells the same story.
Small statues also line the hall, each one the same size.
These had been carved or molded from every material imaginable, from the most common things to precious stones and gleaming gold and silver, including substances of a future time, still to be discovered.
No Name thinks many of the statues pretty.
She touches a few of them, marvels at their beauty, but she has no true understanding of their exquisite artistry. She avoids many of the more perfect art forms either because she doesn’t understand them or because she finds them repulsive.
She stops when she comes to four long rows of soldiers, each one different in its armor and weaponry, each from a different age.
She smiles. Their machines and uniforms hold her in fascination for a long while.
As she admires these forms, she becomes aware more and more that something is wrong about them.
She looks more closely…their faces are all the same. Slowly a horror creeps over her.
She picks up one of the statues and studies it closely, trying to see what it is that frightens her.
There it is just below the skin, the grinning face of indescribable terror.
Shaking, she drops statue to the floor and runs and runs….
…finally she stops and leans against the wall, catching her breath.
Then she notices the door inscribed “Boundary of Blood,” the door the blind woman told her to enter.
She opens the door and steps inside.