Swan and Eagle fall over the railing and into the shaft. The walls of the shaft iris open and closed. That’s an illusion. Stinking heat buffets them from below.

For the usual reasons, Ken falls farther faster. Jun's vision splits between the railing above and him. The yo-yo hurtles towards railing: she reaches for his hand. She tastes metal in her throat. Where glove meets rope, smoke rises but she holds onto the heat. Her finger’s catch his wrist, pin, grasp. The big knob of his bone, the slickness of his glove, defy her. Then comes the shock at the bottom of the drop.

“AH!“ That’s her as, sweating, she absorbs it.

Temperature rising, blinking water like blood from her eyes, she stretches her muscles, increases the spaces in her joints. She creaks like some overburdened swing and like a swing that must bend when its passenger is too heavy and it flung at great height by greater force, she drops in on herself, looses density, and curves the string, flinging Ken and herself back the way they’d come.

Through their visors, Ken's blue eyes look black.