PRIDE'S CHILDREN - a novel of obsession, betrayal, and love. Book 1

Chapter 1 end, Scene 5

“Ms. Winter, it’s time.”

Karenna Ashe couldn’t trust her voice. She nodded, obediently got to her feet. She clutched Yorktown Harbor for a shield. Was this how Marie Antoinette felt when the jailer came for her? I can’t do this. God, I’m so tired.

Something slowed the nerve impulses to her legs; she followed Melly by remote control until Melly stopped before a chair in the wings. Kary caught her first sight of the packed auditorium. This was how the crowd waited for the queen’s head. Millions of people will watch this. Live.

The single canvas-backed chair stood in a little circle of parquet. Rushing air overcooled her skin, muffled the sound from the audience, the speakers. A dead spot. Intentional?

Out on stage, the host of Night Talk bantered with the actor, who lounged with his arm over the back of the chair as relaxed and confident as a Serengeti lion. She wondered what his movie was about. Obviously successful. Or was it an act? I can’t follow that—I’ll be as stiff as a stick.

The follicles on Kary’s forearms contracted, making each little hair stand straight up. She dissociated, monitoring, from a place outside herself, her more gruesome physiological reactions to panic. She contemplated the third response possibility: not fight or flight—invisibility. Authors are people whose prose flows like warmed honey, not impostors like me who struggle with every word.

Melly looked concerned. “Do you want me to stay?”

Kary heard herself say, “No. Thanks.” She knew her smile stank. And that the producer couldn’t afford to take notice. I’m going to look like an idiot.

“Back in a sec then.”

Kary saw, rather than heard, the audience laughing—something the actor said?

What would happen if I walked away, grabbed my coat, took the elevator down, hailed a taxi? Nothing. They’d manage: Dana would keep the actor talking—the audience’d like that, he already had them eating out of his hand. Elise would spin it, probably get better publicity. No one will know what I look like, no one will ask me again to do the impossible.

Impossible? You are incredibly self-indulgent. And what’s worse, you’re a coward. Exhaustion hasn’t kept you secluded; fear has. Ordinary. Common. Fear.

Her knees turned to quicksand; she was grateful for the chair.

The fear-beast crouched at her feet, clinging monkey-child, its claws embedded in her flesh. She stroked its head. Face the fear, reassure it. Dance with the fear. Surely Dana has plenty of tricks for inarticulate guests—I can’t be the first. You should never meet the author, anyway: it ruins the book.

She bowed her head, closed her eyes. The eight-hundred-page brick weighed her solidly in place.

Fear is for children.