Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

"Does it matter? I'm still here, a prisoner expected to reprise a role I never had, never would consent to."

"What did you mean, you might have a way with mirrors?"

"I see things in them other people don't."

"That's a very minor talent."

"Have I ever claimed to be a useful magician's assistant?"

"Cicereau expects your dazzling stage debut by tomorrow night."

"Then we dazzle, but meanwhile, how can I move around this hotel, unseen?"

"With Sylphia, but you would have to trust her webs."

"She's as trapped as anyone here. How can she be untrustworthy?"

"Her webs are part plain spit and part fairy dust. Her nature is predatory, to bind and devour, despite her deceptively dainty look. I care for her, but I can't control her. If you partner with her, you risk your life."

"This is your familiar?"

"A familiar should be both sheath and weapon, wall and goad. Were they not dangerous, they would not be useful."

"Swell." But his words kind of defined the role of Snow in my life, didn't they? "She was kind to me."

"She has a heart and a mind, only her nature is always…uncertain. And she is very jealous of me."

"These shower 'conference calls' of ours?"

"Have made her suspicious and bitter. A familiar is a jealous god."

Didn't I know it?

I was used to being a failure, but I wasn’t used to failing at a job.

After Madrigal's last Margie-less show was over and the myriad stagehands had left, I crept back to the theater and climbed the black iron ladder against the outer brick wall high into the flies.

Above me the deadened lights-as shuttered and heavy-lidded as a hooker with industrial strength mascara-could cast no cold, critical eye on my feeble maneuverings on the wires and lines that stretched down to the stage.

I just wanted to rehearse on my own, discover what I could-and couldn't-do in this new arena I'd never chosen.

I grasped one of the bungee cord lines, wrapped it around my wrist as Madrigal had instructed, and…jumped. Flew like Peter Pan. Dive-bombed. Let myself out on a string of elastic until I thought I would crash and burn, then let myself be snapped back to the top of the building, waiting for my skull to shatter bricks.

I was a human yo-yo. I never hit sidewalk or sky, but boomeranged back and away from disaster at the very instant of impact.

I finally clung to one of the high perches where the performers rested before the next death-defying plunge. Scared, exhilarated, and beginning to get the rhythm of fall and rebound, of being a human Slinky. Also of trusting the equipment, the instructor. Wait! Wasn’t this all a metaphor, maybe, for human relationships?

Madrigal would not let me crash and burn. His masters didn't want that. He wouldn’t tolerate it, no matter how bound he had been. I crouched, panting alone in the dark, watching the one bare light bulb left burning below, an ancient theatrical custom called the "ghost light."

I guess I was beginning to know a few things about ghosts. And light. And myself.

The impact came out of nowhere like a clock's narrow metal pendulum swinging into me: unannounced, sudden, slicing.

I was off my safe perch, spinning into empty air, grabbing for any stopgap.

I caught a hanging bungee cord. It burned the skin from my palms before allowing me to rebound, then bounce down and up, and finally dangle forty feet above the stage floor. Low enough to see salvation. High enough to die.

I tried to decipher what had happened.

I was alone. I was working the ropes and bungee cords. I was making progress! I had been…seen. Watched. Sabotaged. Torpedoed.

I looked down. None of Cicereau's very earth-bound werewolves were prowling. Even Quicksilver had been left cooped up in our quarters. Dumb me, thinking I was a solo act.

So I looked up.

I spotted two gleaming figures, lithe and alien.

One came plunging down at me, spewing loops of lucent fibers like strings of pearls.

The other came sweeping across my lifeline, living tendrils from her head whipping around my bungee cord and severing it.

I had no choice but to grab a viscous rope of…spider web.

Ooh. Sticky. Stretchy. The black stage floor was rising like a solid wave, ready to crack my skull. The brain inside that skull understood that Madrigal's familiars were strenuously objecting to my new alliance with him.

Familiar. I didn't spin spider silk from my…well, let's not think what. I didn't have snaky Medusa locks to use as hangman's nooses.

I knew something they didn't know. I had a familiar of an albino.

I felt a strong silver tug. I was instantly wearing a strongman's belt, an all metal-mesh waist-cincher draped with chains on silver rings. The chains whipped out to loop around Phasia's snaky tendrils and pulled her down, down, down.

I heard a strangled screech.

I was too busy rebounding up to the ceiling to much notice.

Sylphia, she of the temporarily tender heart, was scurrying, all four limbs working in mirrored tandem, so they were eight, up the farthest reaches of her glittering web.

I floated like a butterfly, I stung like a bee. My silver chains sliced through her web like a buzz-saw through butter.

Once again I found a tiny perch high above everything and clung there.

Sylphia and Phasia surged upward at me, possessive female venom on the move. They were tiny, super-strong blends of will and tenacity and pathetic need. Madrigal was their god, but he was not their species, as I was not.

For the first time, I understood the driving frustration of the vampires at Howard Hughes' hospital bachelor pad who had striven to claim me, in vain. (Excuse the expression.) These creatures and I were not compatible, and Madrigal wasn’t compatible either with his lethal, ladylike familiars, but they were locked into an uneasy trio.

What, or who, was I compatible with? Ric. Ric. I wanted to think just Ric.

But also, a little…with Madrigal, or these spider/snake harpies would have never tried to destroy me.

And…maybe, on a very bad day, Snow.

Shit.

But I had to use what tools I had.

I sent out my own built-in tendrils (although they were actually add-ons) and after ten frantic minutes of old-time herding and roping I had both familiars trussed up under the ceiling in cocoons of silver chains, silk, and snaky hair. They were bundled up like spider food, but they reminded me of naughty Victorian girl-children: pretty, dainty, and malevolent, like the illustration of the "The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf in a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, who had ended up chained down in Hell covered with spiders and snakes and other creepy-crawlies, oh my.

I left the Slime Twins to work their way out of their own webs and mine. The silver chains broke off my belt and kept them in tight custody while I slipped down.

Before I left, I asked Sylphia to meet me in the theater after the final rehearsal the next day. I had to use what tools I had, even if they venomously hated me.

Quicksilver sat by my side in the theater's empty seating area when Sylphia came spinning down from the flies, a fugitive pale glitter against the dark. Theater houses are always dark, even in the daytime, lacking any light but that provided by spotlights.

I knew and had recently felt Sylphia's compassion. It was running short now that Madrigal and I had been forced to confer daily in pseudo-sexual situations. I doubted that there was any likelihood of consummation between them, only a deathless bond that had no natural way, like sex, of expressing itself.

I patted Quicksilver's head as Sylphia landed on the neighboring seat, playing the butterfly rather than the bee at the moment.