Anthony Francis - Frost Moon

I couldn't quite see whether I'd got it quite right-I had no full length mirror with me this time-but I felt the Dragon rippling under the skin as he moved, and scratched him under the chin with my forefinger. His whole body rippled with pleasure, sending waves of light, movement and color cascading through all the other tattoos over my whole body.

"Challenging a skindancer about where she inked her tattoos is pointless, and the Marquis should have known that," I said loudly. I turned to look at him through one half lidded eye, then straightened and walked back to my side of the ring without a backward glance.

"The Dragon is mine," I said. "You cannot top it."

But the Marquis was not deterred. "I concede your skill… at dancing, if not inking," he said, to the delight of the crowd. "I cannot compete with it. But magic is more than performance. Real magic has function. Show us, Dakota, can your marks do this?"

I turned, and gasped. The golden cat eyes of the feral girl hovered not three feet from me, barely visible within a column of shimmering heatwaves, like a catstriped version of The Predator effect. She growled and lunged at me, and I leapt back: only then could I see her outline. I sure as hell didn't know any flash that could do that, and had no idea how to top it.

Then the wolf-boy leapt forward, displacing the girl. He snarled at me, eyes glowing; then the eyes of his tattoo began glowing as well. Suddenly his human head shifted in a blink to a wolf's head, snapping at me, howling at the ceiling; and all the wolves whistled and applauded. I could now see that what I had thought were far-seeing signs were actually the marks of a magical capacitor, and guessed that the applause of the crowd was that the tat had made him a quickchange artist. Impressive… but I was starting to get an idea.

Now the Marquis stretched his thin chest. Wolf tattoos began to move across his shoulders, and tribal designs on his chest began to shift and interplay. His marks gave off quite a bit of light, and were moving impressively fast-as long as you hadn't noticed the trick. The Marquis was powerful, but he only inked surface magic. His tattoos were shimmering back and forth on his chest in a running display that I assumed was some kind of history of the pack, and the wolves were lapping it up; but all I saw was "A magical screensaver,;" I cried, clapping slowly and loudly. The Marquis's jaw bulged. "Clearly you are an expert at the two dimensional form. I cannot equal you."

"Well, then-" the Marquis said, confused and suspicious.

I clapped my hands together firmly and rubbed them against each other, Mister Miyagi style. When I pulled them apart, the mana I'd built up in my magical capacitors on my palms released slowly, into a glowing ball of light.

The crowd grew silent, then drew back as the ball grew larger and larger, from softball to soccer to basketball. The Marquis just stared, eyes wide, clenching his jaw. I was right. He was a backwoods artist; skilled, but without the training or the flash to do real skindancer marks that could affect anything beyond the wearer. If the crowd's reaction was any gauge, none of them had seen this kind of magic either. Now it was clear why the Bear King feared it.

"There is more to magic than just show," I said, letting the floating ball rise slowly over my upraised palm, then jabbing it so it exploded in a thousand fiery sparks that jetted out among the crowd and pushed them back a full yard from the edge of the pit. "And more than just function. True magic is beauty incarnate: let me show you.

Then I swayed my whole body, drawing mana through the vines, concentrating it into my upraised left wrist so the gems gleamed, the flowers bloomed, and the butterfly flapped its wings and raised off my wrist into life.

There was silence around me as the glowing image of the butterfly flapped in the air, as I sheltered it with my hand like a dying flame, feeding all the mana left in my body into it to bring it back to life. Then I raised my hand, whispered, "Fly," and blew one more kiss to the feral girl-and the butterfly flew with it, on a wind of sparkles and sunshine.

The girl squealed and held up her hand, and the trailers of magic bounced off her harmlessly. But the butterfly settled on her hand, fluttering, and she stared at it with open, wide eyes, and something closer to delight than fear. It flickered, once more, then lay its wings down and merged with her hand.

"You get one for free," I said. "More will cost you."

She cried out with joy, and the Marquis reached over and grabbed her hand, running his thumb over the design, peering at it with wide and inquisitive eyes. Then he looked sharply over at me, and took a sharp bow.

"How could I not concede to such skill?" he said. "Dakota may ink any of us."

And then I was swarmed with a hundred werewolves, tigers, and stags, pressing around me, all asking what I could do for them-or just trying to get close enough to rub up against my bare skin. The referees and vampires pushed them all back and made a space for me at the edge of the ring, where, exhausted, I quickly began putting back on my clothes.

The Marquis and wolf-boy were staring at the feral girl's tattoo. She was alternately looking at it and looking at me with equally wide eyes.

"I'm sorry," I called out to the Marquis.

"I do not feel robbed," he said bitterly. "I just lost."

"I do want your advice on the control-charm tattoo," I said. "I really need your help."

"I think it is safe, but I will… review it," he said, looking back at me. "I will report my findings to the blind witch, and charge only my standard fee. But if any other… requests… come out of your little display, any other ink for one of my wolves, you must first show me."

The little putz wanted to see my flash. Fine. Apparently he didn't know the new rules, the Edgeworld rules which recognized our need to collaborate; perhaps it was time to show him.

"Of course you can see my flash," I said, and he looked over sharply. "I can bring you a selection of designs, even show you how to ink some of the more complicated-"

"Why are you placating me?" he snapped, almost taking a chunk out of the air.

"This is the twenty-first century," I reminded him. "And I'm not an old-world, secret-magic practitioner keeping all my best tricks for myself. I'm an Edgeworlder, and we share our gifts with each other and the world."

I stood, letting my coat drape over me. "Besides, I might get another request for a tattoo from a werewolf. You give me good advice on this one, and I'll send more work your way."

The Marquis nodded, pulling on his own coat. Then without another word, he swept off, taking with him wolf-boy and the feral girl, both looking back at me.

I looked up to see Lord Buckhead standing at the edge of the ring, and the Bear King slinking off his stage towards the farther loading docks. "I have smoothed over any remaining difficulties," the werestag said, "but the Bear King does not wish to speak further with you today. We should go, before the crowd becomes… boisterous."

"Amen to that," I said, shifting my coat, turning back to Calaphase. "You know what? Thank you, Calaphase. You're quite a decent fellow-"

"For a vampire?" he asked.

"For not leering like all the rest," I said.

"Oh, that. Well, I do like to be a gentleman," he said, and then, leaning close, whispered, "And just between you and me? Half the time-your back was turned."

I woke up sweaty, feeling warmth beside me in the bed, where one of my cats had curled up into the curve of my body. The rest of them yowled around me, and I shifted sleepily, trying to push off the heat source-boy, they didn't know their own weight, did they?-and ignore them. But my nose wrinkled: whoo, the stink. Had one of them farted or, worse, sprayed? No; the scent was different, less cat stink than gym sweat… with a touch of cinnamon.