Nightworld

"Jeffy?"

Her little boy stood stone still with his hand on the hilt, staring at it. Sylvia had jumped to her feet and rushed to his side at his cry of pain. Now she hovered over him, almost afraid to touch him.

"Jeffy, are you all right?"

He did not move, did not speak.

Sylvia felt a rime of fear crystallize along the chambers of her heart.

No! Please, God, no! Don't let this happen!

She grabbed him by the shoulders and twisted him toward her, caught his chin with her thumb and forefinger and turned it up. She stared into his eyes.

And his eyes…

"Jeffy!" she cried, barely able to keep her voice under control. "Jeffy, say something! Do you know who I am? Who am I, Jeffy? Who am I?"

Jeffy's gaze wandered off her face to a spot over her shoulder, held there for a few seconds, then drifted on. His eyes were empty. Empty.

She knew that face. She fought off the encroaching blackness that her mind hungered to escape to. She'd lived with that vacant expression for too many years not to know it now. Autism. Jeffy was back to the way he used to be.

"Oh, no!" Sylvia moaned as she slipped her arms around him and pulled him close. "Oh, no…oh, no…oh, no!"

This can't be! she thought, holding his unresisting, disinterested body tight against her. First Alan and now Jeffy…I can't lose them both! I can't!

She glared across the room at Glaeken who stood watching her with a stricken expression. She had never felt so lost, so alone, so utterly miserable in her life, and it was all his fault.

"Is this the way it has to be?" she cried. "Is this it? Am I to lose everything? Why? Why me? Why Jeffy?"

She gathered Jeffy up in her arms and carried him from the room, hurling one final question at Glaeken and everyone else there as she left.

"Why not you?"