John Wright - Titans of Chaos

Another noise came from the near distance. Women, many women, shrieked and screamed and sang: "Ite Bacchai! Ite Bacchai! Ite Bacchai!"

I saw a pine tree tremble from root to crown, and sway, and topple grandly.

A woman stood there. She wore a tattered toga, and the torn strips fluttered like strange wings around her. Around her waist was wound a zone of ivy; her breasts were scratched and exposed, as if she had been nursing wild beasts. A wreath of ivy rode aslant her wild and disordered hair, and curlicues of green vine twined through her straggling curls. In one hand she held a slender wand, wound with grapevine, topped with a pinecone.

With her other hand, a hand as slim and delicate as my own, she plucked a second pine tree up by the roots with an easy gesture, and tossed it lightly aside. The tree was a hundred yards high. She let fly several tons of lumber, as if the weight were nothing to her.

Her mad eyes, dancing with odd dreams, lit upon me. She tilted her head to one side, almost shyly, and smiled a smile of happiness. She pointed the wand at me. "Yoo-hoo! Sisters! Here she is, here she is, here she is! Alone, alone, all on her own!"

A second maiden, a girl perhaps fifteen years old or less, stepped into view behind her. Her dress was as torn as the first girl's had been, and her anadem was made of rose thorns and belladonna.

She also held a wand tipped with a pinecone, but in her other hand she held a little baby, upside down by the foot. I did not see the baby moving; I thought it might be dead.

This second girl sang out: "Fall upon her, wild maenads! Tear and bite and rip and slay! The daughter of the Daystar-Htan shall be our raw pork!"

I saw blood was coming out of her mouth. I wondered if she had bitten her tongue.

I have heard a crowd scream before, at a rugby match Headmaster Boggin took us all to once, a treat for doing particularly well that semester. The crowd there was men and boys, and their voices were deep, and their roar, when they roared, was like an ocean noise. There were women in the audience that day, but I doubt if they had screamed with such bloodlust and abandon as the men.

Now I heard a noise not unlike the roar that rang when the final winning score was made, and the crowd of men had screamed in joy. Except this noise was an octave or two higher. I had never heard so many high-pitched voices scream at once.

In horror movies, girls scream only when they are terrified, not to terrify. Of course, in horror movies, the buxom blondes are usually not breaking rocks in two with their feet, knocking trees aside with their hands.

A throng of girls, all of them young and shapely, some in torn dresses, some in panther or leopard skins, some nude, some running upright, some running (hips impossibly high) on all fours like beasts, some bounding from tree to tree like frogs, now came through the forest like an avalanche. The noise of timber falling was like the noise of the end of the world.

Did I mention that I was running away at this point?

Maenads

By pure lucky mishap, I had not had time to don the evening gown I had entered the store to buy.

Instead I was in my lightest pair of sneakers, the running shoes Vanity had bought me in Paris. I would have hated to try to run, leaping bushes and rocks, dodging around trees, wearing heels.

Also, I was wearing blue jeans like a proper American girl. Thank God for blue jeans.

Ululating, shrieking, screaming, the maenads tumbled and thundered and flew through the trees after me.

There was no one giving orders. Had they merely sent two teams of runners to my right and left, they could have surrounded me. But no: The mob just all came in the straight line toward what they saw, trampling each other.

But they were so strong and so fleet of foot, they really did not need a plan. Every moment as I ran, they cut the distance between us in half.

A one-hundred-yard length of pine tree came crashing like a battering ram through the air behind me, flung like a javelin. I ducked and swerved in time, and saw the wall of bark, yard upon yard of it, sailing by, a few feet from my face, wrinkled black texture of the bark whistling and whispering.

Some drunken girl had thrown a tree. At me. Thrown a tree. You would think, once I found out I lived in a world ruled by pagan gods, that not much would surprise me. I staggered and gawped at the sight of a mast-tall tower of living wood, dirt clods still clinging to its many roots, slipping past my face.

The stagger saved my life. A boulder the size of a car hissed past me to the other side, flung like a baseball, and shattered against the ground with a sound like a bomb igniting, sending rock chips flying. Pow. If I had not stopped to stare, I would have been right about there right about now.

A shrill yell like a flock of falcons screeching rent the air. They thought it was cute to throw rocks and trees. Now they all wanted to do it.

I stopped short and turned, and saw, like a herd of whales jumping all at once, arching, fifty huge and ponderous cylinders of wood toppling grandly, hugely, unstop-pably, crashing down through the air toward me.

Two of the airborne trees had shrieking maenads clinging to them: One was yodeling like a cowgirl, happy to the last; the other was covered in blood and tried to leap clear of the branches as the tree toppled. Apparently these women did not pause to find out who or what was in the things they threw, or who or what was in the way.

I sprinted toward the area that seemed most clear of landing lumberyards, the part of the forest with the most trees and other obstructions to slow the immense rain. Only one or two rocks were rocketed my way-there simply were not that many boulders for the shrieking women to pull up.

The trees all fell, uprooting other trees, quaking and crashing, and the earth cried out in pain and shook. I ran toward the thickest part of the dust cloud, which now expanded, gale-winged, out from the toppling wreckage of the broken forest.

I was blind for a moment and ran with my best sprinter's speed. These maenads were all stronger than me, and faster, too, but they could not hit what they could not see.

When I came clear of the dust cloud, the trees were thicker than before. Only a handful of the maenads had me in direct sight, and one of them was sitting down to cry, because there was dust in her eyes.

Into the thicket. Breath short. Lungs burning from dust. Left, right, left again. Double back. Leap a fallen trunk. Graceful leap, good form. Still too close behind me. Heard trunk behind me snap in half. Less graceful form. Dodge right. Broken half of fallen trunk smashes trees and bushes to my left.

Suddenly, ravine. Two sharp cliffs, with a trickle of water at the bottom. Thornbushes and trees on the far side, no place to land. Trees on far side splintered and broken, fallout from maenad-fury earlier?

Think I can make it. Too late to stop anyway.

Up. Good takeoff.

Air.

Oops. Not going to make it. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.