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midair, trying to turn her head inside out—
    Three things happened simultaneously. An abrupt sense of nausea washed over her, the light bulb went out, and her chair fell over backward.
    “ Ouch! Dammit!” Something thumped into Miriam’s side, doubling her over as she hit the ground and rolled over, pulling her arms in to protect her face. A racking spasm caught her by the gut, leaving her feeling desperately sick, and the arm of the chair came around and whacked her in the small of her back. Her knees were wet, and the lights were out. “Shit!” Her head was splitting, the heartbeat throb pounding like a jackhammer inside her skull, and her stomach was twisting. A sudden flash of fear: This can’t be a migraine. The onset is way too fast. Malignant hypertension?
    The urge to vomit was strong, but after a moment it began to ebb. Miriam lay still for a minute, waiting for her stomach to come under control and the lights to come back on. Shit, am I having an aneurism? She gripped the locket so tightly that it threatened to dig a hole in her right fist. Carefully she tried to move her arms and legs: Everything seemed to be working and she managed a shallow sigh of relief. Finally, when she was sure her guts were going to be alright, she pushed herself up onto her knees and saw—
    Trees.
    Trees everywhere.
    Trees inside her den.
    Where did the walls go?
    Afterward, she could never remember that next terrible minute. It was dark, of course, but not totally dark: She was in twilight on a forested slope, with beech and elm and other familiar trees looming ominously out of the twilight. The ground was dry, and her chair lay incongruously in a thicket of shrubbery not far from the base of a big maple tree. When she looked around, she could see no sign of her house, or the neighbouring apartments, or of the lights along the highway. Is there a total blackout? she wondered, confused. Did I sleepwalk or something?
    She stumbled to her feet, her slippers treacherous on leaf mulch and dry grass stems. She shivered. It was cold—not quite winter-cold but too damned chilly to be wandering around in pants, a turtleneck, and bedroom slippers. And—
    “Where the hell am I?” she asked the empty sky. “What the hell ?”
    Then the irony of her situation kicked in and she began to giggle, frightened and edgy and afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop. She did a twirl, in place, trying to see whatever there was to see. Sylvan idyll at nightfall, still-life with deranged dot-com refugee and brown office furniture. A gust of wind rattled the branches overhead, dislodging a chilly shower of fat drops: A couple landed on Miriam’s arms and face, making her shudder.
    The air was fresh—too fresh. And there was none of the subliminal background hum of a big city, the noise that never completely died. It didn’t get this quiet even out in the country—and indeed, when she paused to listen, it wasn’t quiet; she could hear distant birdsong in the deepening twilight.
    She took a deep breath, then another. Forced herself to thrust the hand with the locket into her hip pocket and let go of the thing. She patted it obsessively for a minute, whimpering slightly at the pain in her head. No holes, she thought vaguely. She’d once worn pants like this where her spare change had worn a hole in the pocket lining and eventually spilled on the ground, causing no end of a mess.
    For some reason, the idea of losing possession of the locket filled her with a black terror.
    She looked up. The first stars of evening were coming out, and the sky was almost clear of cloud. It was going to be a cold night.
    “Item,” she muttered. “You are not at home. Ouch. You have a splitting headache and you don’t think you fell asleep in the chair, even though you were in it when you arrived here.” She looked around in wild surmise. She’d never been one for the novels Ben occasionally read, but she’d seen enough trashy TV serials to pick up the idea.