Jennifer Crusie: The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes

Oh, God, not an owl, Lizzie thought, horrified. They were all going to die. But then Dee speared upward, out of the thick fog, and even in the darkness of the storm, her green and gold scales glittered brilliantly. She had outdone herself- a magnificent Chinese dragon, soaring through the air, flying straight at the black and red Xan beast with a shriek of rage. For a moment, the older dragon wavered, and little Py leaped beneath them both, aiming for Xan’s huge black tail with the same determination he’d shown for Lizzie’s bunnies, the ballsiest house cat in Salem’s Fork.

With a scream, the black dragon fell back beneath Dee’s fierce onslaught, howling into the wind with rage and pain, and red mist flew upward like a tornado. The creature within it began to shift again, narrowing, changing, pulsing, until a huge snake remained, black, malevolent, only Xan’s glowing red eyes left with any trace of humanity, all of it bad.

‘Lizzie!’ Mare cried. ‘Do something!’

She wanted to hide. All her power, her self-assurance seemed to have vanished, and she was terrified, helpless. Her sisters were going to die, Elric was going to die, unless she did something. And then she felt it – the power rumbling against her heart, the amethyst pendant burning, and the strength flowing through her, not just her own, but Mare’s, Dee’s, Elric’s, all the power of the universe was surging through her veins, so strong that if she threw a transformation spell it would hit Dee, as well, turning her into a frail human who’d never survive. She tried to move, to get between the two massive combatants, one so ugly, one so beautiful, but the lightning was flashing all around them, and even as she finally slipped between them the snake focused on her, rearing its huge head to strike.

‘Lizzie!’ She heard Elric’s furious cry of warning, and it pulled the last bit of energy through her, enough so that she looked up, arched her back, and threw the spell upward, directly in the face of the snake, as purple smoke exploded around them.

Mare saw Xan draw back to spit poison at Lizzie and lunged to drag her away, but a huge violet crack of lightning split the sky and purple smoke rolled up, gushing over the landscape. Mare screamed, ‘Lizzie!’ and crawled toward where she’d last seen her, hearing Crash yell and then a roaring, and then the rain began to fall, beating down the smoke. As it cleared, Mare saw Lizzie standing like a warrior queen, her arms encircled; and beyond her Dee, human again, sitting naked on her butt in the mud; and beyond her, Crash eyeing a large tiger who looked as confused as he was; and beyond them, Maxine, naked, too, looking startled and guilty as all hell; and in front of all of them, a giant gold snake, frozen in the attack position, glistening in the violet rain.

‘Huh.’ Mare looked up at Lizzie, and then at the giant gold snake, and then back at Lizzie. ‘Finally got that gold thing down, did you?’

Lizzie took a deep breath and smiled and dropped her arms. ‘Yes. Yes, I did. Told you I could do it.’

Danny and Elric walked out of the stone circle, staring at the giant gold snake, even Elric speechless for once, the frog hopping behind them, while Maxine followed, looking lost.

‘She looks like a giant war memorial,’ Danny said as he picked up Dee’s silk dress and helped her slip it on.

‘Yes,’ Elric said. ‘If the war was really strange, and the victors were really rich.’

‘Maybe we should make a nice plaque to commemorate the event.’ Mare shoved her wet hair out of her eyes, trying to wrap her mind around it all. ‘With something from the Evil Overlord Rules. Like Rule Thirty-four: ‘I will not turn into a giant snake; it never helps.’ She looked at Maxine. ‘Hi, Maxine. So, you were a frog?’

Maxine picked up Jude. ‘Yes,’ she said defiantly, cradling him in her hands, trying to pretend she wasn’t naked.

‘Okay, then,’ Mare said and turned back to Crash, who’d come up beside her, keeping an eye on the tiger.

‘She tried to take your powers,’ Elric said, his arms around Lizzie, as he stared up at the snake. ‘That’s why she wanted you all up here united to save us. She wanted your powers bound together so she could take them all’

‘Bitch.’ Dee dusted off her hands.

Py gave up staring at Crash and came up and rubbed his huge, wet, furry tiger head against Mare’s leg. ‘Hello, baby,’ she said, scratching him behind the ears. ‘Do you feel better back to normal? Kind of normal?’

‘So it’s over?’ Lizzie said, safe in the circle of Elric’s arms.

‘Yep,’ Mare said, letting her skirt drop. ‘You and Dee saved the day, all by yourselves. Unless you want me to turn Xan to face the east, I got nothin’ here. And she’d hate facing the east, you know how she stayed out of the sun.’

Dee and Lizzie looked at each other.

‘Yes, it would be a nice punishment,’ Mare said, exasperated. ‘But I lied, I can’t turn her to face the east, either. I’m not much good at heavy lifting. I’m not much good at anything.’ She looked at Crash, and took a deep breath. ‘So the woman who put the True Love spell on you? She’s got no power, that spell is broken, you can leave now.’

‘I love you,’ he said.

Mare swallowed. ‘Still?’

Crash looked patient. ‘I told you this.’

‘She has abandonment issues,’ Dee said.

‘Who doesn’t?’ Crash said.

Mare blinked back tears. ‘You came back for me and you weren’t under a spell?’

‘Like I’d leave you,’ Crash said.

‘I’d rather have the giant snake spitting venom,’ Elric said, casting his eyes to the heavens. Then his face changed. ‘Oh, hell’

‘What?’ Lizzie said and followed his eyes up.

‘This isn’t over,’ Elric said, staring up at the snake’s eyes. ‘She’s still alive in there.’

‘No,’ Maxine said, holding Jude tighter.

Danny pulled Dee closer. ‘How can you tell?’

‘Her eyes’ he said. ‘Just a slight movement, but she’s in there.’

‘How?’ Dee said. ‘She’s gold.’

Elric shook his head. ‘You can only turn like to like. The human body is about eighteen percent carbon, so that’s what Lizzie transformed. Xan’s just a very unstable shell right now. She’s going to change back, and when she does-’

‘Oh, hell,’ Crash said to Mare. ‘I knew the holidays with your family were going to be a bitch. Well, you’ll just have to keep changing her into something else. A piano or something.’

‘The piano from hell,’ Mare said, leaning into him again. All it plays is Tree Bird.’

‘Dee and Lizzie can’t do transformation magic again this soon,’ Elric said. And since my powers seem to be on the fritz from the damn containment spell, and Mare thinks she isn’t good at anything-’

‘Hey!’ Crash said.

‘- I suggest we leave. Xantippe is not going to be up for an intercontinental chase for a while. We should have time for three honeymoons before…’ He looked at Mare with distaste. ‘Tree Bird.’

Mare looked up at Crash. ‘You got any ideas?’

‘No, but you can stop that I’m-not-good-at-anything moan. You’re Queen of the Universe. If you can’t move big things, move something else, but settle that bitch’s hash. She tried to send me back to Italy without you. Fix her good.’

Mare thought, Yeah, she tried to ruin my life and my sisters’ lives, it’s time we did settle her hash. She stared at Xan, trying to see what Elric the master sorcerer saw, trying to believe what Crash the master mechanic believed, and began to imagine what it was like inside Xan right now, what it had been like when Xan had transformed herself from Xan to dragon. If Xan had done it, she could do it. Xan must have just seen her human molecules and maybe rearranged the atoms so they were dragon molecules, and then something had gone wrong and the dragon molecules had become snake molecules. And then Lizzie, Lizzie must have gone in and made snake molecules into gold molecules. And if that was what they’d done, Mare wouldn’t even have to change anything, all she’d have to do would be to wrap her mind around Xan’s molecules the way she’d wrapped her mind around the bed and the sugar grains and the muffins, and then just bang them together and start a chain reaction…