Anthony Francis - Frost Moon

After a moment inspecting the Marquis and his pets, the referees or judges or whatever they were returned to the center of the ring and conferred. "Her marks are equal," the woman cried.

"You lie," the Marquis cried. "Her flowers are no match for my beasts!"

"Her work is of exceptional quality," the man said.

The Marquis' nostrils flared. "And how could you tell from such little work? It is easy to ink one line. Only a true artist can do so consistently. Is she consistent?"

"Her lines are strong, her shading subtle-" the woman began.

"The Marquis is right," the man interrupted, turning his attention to me, his eyes roaming over my body. "Have you no other samples of your work?"

"I didn't bring pictures," I snapped.

"We would not accept them," he replied. "Have you no other living ink to show?"

"She has no friends here, how would she-" the woman began; then stopped. Now her nostrils flared, and she glared at the man in disgust. "You lecherous bastard,," she said softly.

"If she has no other ink to show, the Marquis' challenge must stand," he said, smiling.

The woman judge turned to me stiffly. "Have you no other-"

"I get the drift," I said, glaring at the Marquis. Thank God I was wearing a bra. I gave the woman a nod of understanding. "I assume you will rip out his throat for me later? If I rip it out I think that might be construed as an insult."

"Gladly," she said, and the man laughed.

"Of course I have more ink to show," I cried, throwing up my hands, glaring at the Marquis. I was going to kill him, him and his horny little judge, too. But maybe not the little feral girl, smirking at me; I blew her another kiss, and again she hid, this time behind the Marquis, to the delight of the catcalling crowd. Then slowly, sensually, I pulled off my top.

The wolves whistled and the stags snorted and brayed as I lifted the rim of the black cloth up and over my head, revealing my sports bra. I'd thought about this carefully and made the movements slinky without turning it into a complete striptease: I had no desire to further taunt an entire crowd full of werewolves and end up raped or eaten. But my movements had another effect: they shifted and stretched my skin, making the tattoos shimmer like fire.

Tattoos are just pigment inserted into the second layer of the skin, just below the layer of cells you slough off every time you take a shower. So, for starters, you can do with a tattoo anything you can do with regular ink-tint the skin a shade, draw a pretty picture-or draw a design. Some of the simplest 'magical' tattoos are just benevolent symbols inked with, essentially, an alchemists' version of glow-in-the-dark ink.

But real magical tattoos are filled with the compounds that dispense, control and discharge mana; and with the life force of a living being beating just beneath their surface, magical tattoos are some of the most powerful marks around.

When I dropped the shirt into Calaphase' waiting hand, the vines rippling down my arms were glowing bright and the gems actually starting to glitter. Tattoo magic worked best when exposed to the air, and I was already feeling the burn on my legs where excess mana was bleeding back into my body; so I reached down, lithely, and unzipped first one boot, then the other, making the snakes curling through the vines move and the butterflies shimmer.

There was an art to this, an actual magical skill: the magical tattoo artist I'd apprenticed to called it skindancing, and while I didn't know the details of that art, over the years I'd grown quite good at storing and dispensing mana simply by flexing and stretching my skin. Until now, I'd only done it by myself, in front of a mirror; or very occasionally, in front of Savannah.

As for now, I was glad that the ruddy glare of the torches was hiding my flush of embarrassment. Stripping before strangers, even partially, was terrifying.

"Do not let the fear go to your head," Calaphase warned, quietly but urgently. "There are werewolves in the audience; they can smell your adrenaline, hear your heart race."

"Thank you, Calaphase," I said, letting my breath out slowly. Then I turned, and slowly began unbuttoning my pants.

"Whoo!" cried a young wolf, leaning into the pit, surprisingly close. The female werewolf batted at him, but he leaned back and yelled anyway. "Take it all off!"

"I would not want to embarrass the Marquis," I replied, twisting so that the pants slid softly to the floor and the rest of the vines and flowers flickered to life. "Nor would I want to be accused of influencing the judges with too many samples of my canvas!"

The crowd laughed, as I stood there half-naked in front of them in my black bra and panties, turning slowly with a bravado I didn't feel. The male tiger prowled around me and nodded. "It is a fine canvas," he said, ignoring the wolf-woman as she struck him. "And an exceptional body of work-"

"Those cannot be all her artistry," the Marquis said, eyes boring into me, nostrils flaring.

"They indeed are," I replied, turning oh so slowly, eyes thanking Calaphase as he dusted off my pants. "I did all but these on my hand and these on my thigh-"

"You lie!" the Marquis hissed, and the crowd grew silent. "Be careful with your accusations," the male referee said quietly. "She is a guest. She does not know our rules-"

"She lies!" the Marquis said again. "Can you not see it! All of you who have been under my needle know it. She cannot have done her own knees-"

"A shaking leg can be held down," I said. By Kring/L, in fact, and it had taken both of his big, beefy hands to hold just one of my legs still-tattooing your knee hurts. "It need not disrupt the hand-" "She cannot have done the dragon," the Marquis yelled. "It covers her whole body!"

Now my nostrils flared. I prowled across the ring until I stood just in front of the Marquis, then held up my right hand, clamped as if holding the electric needle. Then I slowly bent down, and began to trace the tattoo.

The Dragon's tail starts curling around my left big toe, a black and gold design with blue and green gems that make it sparkle with life. I lifted my foot off the ground, curling my hand around the toe, the ankle, once, twice, three times, the limit of my balance. I then stretched out my leg and touched the ground, drawing my hand up my leg and over the outer curve of my thigh, tickling the Dragon as it marked its circle around the muscles of my belly.

By now it was clear to anyone who could see that I'd drawn that one single design where my own right hand would reach. But the Marquis' eyes tightened skeptically, and truth be told, I had done this bit in a sequence of short strokes, alternately twisting over my shoulder and behind my back in a sequence that had taken five sessions over three days. But the crowd and judges were not likely to listen to any kind of explanation; I needed to make a show.

So I began twisting around slowly, showing off the reach and flexibility of my long arms and supple neck. The movement agitated the Dragon, making his tail flicker and withdraw from my foot. You'll rarely see a skindancer fully covered in tattoos, and not just because we know how to use negative space; it's for the magic. Our tattoos need room to move.

The Dragon moved as I moved, coiling and shifting about my body as I stretched and flexed my skin, drawing his glittering form underneath my hand as easily as I had when he was just an outline. The Marquis was half right: I couldn't have done the Dragon if he was a normal tattoo; but since he was magic, once the major components of the design, the logic of the magic, was in place, I could move him almost anywhere I wanted to fill in the details.

But some points were better for the magic than others, and in case the Marquis was savvy enough to know that, I made one final show. As the Dragon coiled around, I moved my hand into that final difficult arc around my own back, ending up in a twisted but still comfortable inscribing position under my left shoulder blade-right as the head of the Dragon slid precisely beneath what would have been the point of my tattooing gun.