by Diane Duane
But something else, too. Who’s doing the calculating? Caroline thought. Or what? For as she looked at him now, she thought she could see something else behind the mica-like sheen of the eyes: something that was struggling, like a just-eaten mouse inside some snake in a pet-shop aquarium. Not just something: someone. Trying to get loose, trying to warn her: but as helpless as the mouse inside the snake…
You could be imagining it, some freaked-out part of her mind insisted. But somehow Caroline doubted it. Even before he started looking like this to me, there was something about him that was changing. On and off, like flipping a switch. What’s doing the flipping? Is it Matt? Or something inside him—or something done to him? For her mother had said, You will see spells, curses… At the time, she hadn’t believed it. But now—
And that was when the hair started to stand up on the back of Caroline’s neck again. How many other women have flipped this switch? she thought. How many others have been charmed by him, and done the My Place Or Yours thing… and never seen ‘their place’ again?
The switch. Could it be—that the moment he starts to feel something for somebody—then something done to him, the curse laid on him, wakes up, takes over?
Her heart leapt at the thought: but her heart was cold, too. She had been eating the tiramisu more or less on automatic pilot: now she picked up the wine glass for one final sip, waiting for the espresso to arrive.
Across the table, golden eyes, unblinking, were fixed on her. “You’re quiet all of a sudden,” the snake said. “Are you okay?”
She kept her smile in place. Absolutely not! But this is something I have to deal with. There’s something else under the surface here. If I don’t do something about it, he’ll do something about somebody else. And whatever her friends in Belfast might have thought, there was enough death in this city as it was. What kind of person would just turn their back and walk away and let more of it happen?
Caroline swallowed. Then she took one more sip of the wine, staring down into the glass, catching there the dark reflection of her own eyes, in which no one would have needed the Sight to see her fear. Caroline blinked, drank, put the glass down, and very, very slowly—because it took some work—she raised her eyes again, and smiled at Matt.
“Do you want to come back to my place for coffee?” she said.
***
They went back slowly, at a stroll: or what was a stroll for Caroline. Next to her, the upper third of his body upright like a cobra’s, the giant serpent glided along, seemingly as leisurely as she. It’s going to drive me nuts, she thought, if I can’t remember what mum said these things were called.
She was thinking hard, paying no attention to the rain, which had started up again, or to the yellow glow of the streetlights, or the white and red glare of headlights and taillights pouring past. In Caroline’s mind, another light suffused everything: firelight. Underlying it, she could hear the murmur of the stories her mum would tell her while she lay on her stomach, as close to the grate as she could get without singeing herself: watching the shapes take form in the flames, springing from the wood, in New York, on the peat, back in the little country townland of Aghalee.
When she was younger, the action in those stories had seemed random, unpredictable: a spell cast here, an evil fairy cutting up cranky there, people turned into beasts or monsters, people turned back. But later in life, when she’d done some study of folktales as part of her college education, Caroline had started to realize that the randomness was an illusion, mostly born of uneven storytelling. Inevitably, when you took them apart, spells had breakers built into them. It was just a matter of finding them, figuring out what they were. And it’s not like we’re exactly prepared for this kind of thing, any more. You can’t walk into a bookstore and buy Spellbreaking for Dummies. Or download the user’s manual from the manufacturer’s website.
But if the stories were the user’s manual…. Or what’s left of the stories. For so many of them had been dumbed down over time, Disneyfied—rendered more politically or environmentally correct, less potentially offensive. And who knows whether the active ingredient, the real information about the ‘unreal’ world, is still there? Have we removed the reason the stories were told in the first place? If we have, the de-Grimmifiers and the Hans Christian Andersens of the world have a lot to answer for…
But those answers were going to have to come later. Right now she and Matt, or the serpent-thing that was pretending to be Matt, came to her building’s lobby door, and Harry the doorman opened it for the two of them. She saw his glance at Matt: veiled curiosity, nothing more. Plainly everybody else sees the disguise, no matter what I see. Interesting.
And will it stay that way after he eats me? said some cold thought in the back of Caroline’s brain as they went up in the elevator. And what exactly am I planning to do about him? Lecture him on the error of his ways? What if, to keep him from eating me, or anybody else, I have to kill him? Whose body winds up on my kitchen floor? A giant snake’s, or Matt’s?
The elevator door opened, and they headed down toward her door, where Caroline paused, fumbling around in her bag for her keys. She paused in front of her door,
So…coffee. Take your time making it. Think. Think. “Regular coffee,” Caroline said, slipping out of her coat and tossing it over one of the dining room chairs, “or more espresso?”
“Regular’s fine,” the snake said.
“Milk? Sugar?”
“A lot of milk.”
Yeah, she thought, milk. Snakes were supposed to like milk. It’s in Kipling. But Kipling was the wrong place to be looking for answers right now. He had that story about the sea serpent, but that thing was the size of a steamer. No hints for me there. Caroline looked into the little living room, saw the snake gliding gently along the wall and looking at her artwork, or pretending to.
“Some nice watercolors,” the snake said.
It was almost Matt’s voice: almost. There was a strained quality to it. The mouse, inside, struggling—
“Got them in Scotland,” Caroline said, turning away for a moment, trying to get a grip on herself. She glanced at the knife block on the counter. They were all extremely sharp. There was also the gun in the gun safe, but probably no time to get it out or do anything useful with it. And do guns work on curses? Cold iron is the usual thing, in the fairy tales..
The coffee machine burbled quietly to itself. Caroline wandered into the living room, knelt down by the fireplace, where the fire was laid ready as usual, got down a box of matches from the mantelpiece, and reached in to open the damper. The wood caught quickly: it was dry. She looked up, saw the snake looking down at her, gleaming a little already in the light of the flames that were coming up.
She stood up hurriedly. “Sorry,” she said. “I was distracted.” Smile, smile like it’s him that’s distracting you. Or like it’s Matt! Hang in there, Matt! “You take sugar?”
“No, milk’s fine.” With those big cold golden eyes he looked up at the watercolor over the mantelpiece, a landscape, all Scottish heather and clouded hillsides, and a stream running through the heart of it.
Caroline swallowed, turned away again: then paused, surprised. Matt’s coat was over the back of her own, over the dining room chair. Now how’d he manage that? she thought, picking it up: anything to buy herself a few more moments of time. His clothes, then, aren’t just part of an illusion. They’re real, they’re just hidden somehow—”I’ll hang this up for you,” she said, and headed back to the hall closet.
“Thanks,” he said. Caroline was uneasy about turning her back on him, but at the same time, he didn’t seem likely to do anything sudden. Why should he? He thinks he has me where he wants me….
Which he does! yelled one of the more panic-stricken parts of her mind. But Caroline took a long breath, opened the closet, felt around for an empty hanger, didn’t find one right away. She pushed her coats and jackets aside, one after another. All these coats, who needs all this stuff, they’re all out of style, I should take som
e of them to the Goodwill. If I live that long!
She found an empty hanger, and put Matt’s coat on it. Without warning, in the back of her mind, something surfaced—a strange image. Something to do with snakes, and clothes. Now what on earth—?
Caroline paused. A woman taking off some item of clothing. A snake shedding its skin. And a sudden memory of her mother’s voice: just a phrase or two. And she told them to light a fire in the bridal chamber, and hang a pot of lye over it, and leave on the hearth three strong scrub brushes –
Caroline’s mouth dropped open.
Lindworm! That was the name!
Her eyes narrowed, and she smiled; and this time the smile was real. She remembered the whole story, now. And now she knew how this story could end—if she was smart about it.
In the kitchen, the coffeemaker chimed. Caroline closed the closet door, and as she went back through the living room, she looked over at the fire, which was burning brighter every minute. You really are with me here all the time, she said silently to her mother. Now we’ll find out if you’re here enough…
“You want a mug, or a cup?” Caroline said.
“A mug’ll be fine,” said the lindworm, slithering down so it lay against the couch, in front of the fire.
Yeah, Caroline thought. You get yourself real comfy there while I think this through. She got two mugs down, filled one of them two-thirds full, one nearly full: dropped three sugars in that one, poured the other one nearly full of milk. She brought them both over by the sofa and handed the milky one to the lindworm, which took it with some difficulty in those delicate little claws. Then she put the other one down on the hearth.
“Would you excuse me for a moment?” Caroline said. “I want to go slip into something… different.”
The lindworm smiled.
So did she, as she vanished into the bedroom and shut the door.
It took about ten minutes to do what she had in mind. At the end of that time she came out into the living room again and sat down on the floor, in front of the sofa, next to the lindworm. And instantly Caroline broke out into a sweat: because she was now wearing, over her Friday casuals of oxford shirt and jeans, a total of six more pairs of pants, five shirts, two sweaters, and a hoodie.
“How’s the coffee?” she said, picking up her mug and sipping at her own.
The lindworm stared at her with those great chilly golden eyes. It was impossible to make out expressions in them: but the voice, when it spoke, was a little rough around the edges: the sound of a surprise which the speaker was trying to conceal.
“I think,” the lindworm said, stretching some more of the length of its body out toward the fire, “that you should really take all those clothes off.”
She gave him as level a stare as she could manage. “I think,” she said, “that you should really take all yours off first.”
He smiled, slowly, and the front fangs glinted in the firelight. “Mmmm… kinky.”
“Not half as kinky,” she said, working to keep her voice steady, “as a one-night stand with a giant snake.”
He held absolutely still.
“Oh yeah,” Caroline said. “You think I didn’t notice?”
“Uh,” he said, sounding very much like he was trying to find a way to respond that wouldn’t give anything away. “Maybe you’ve had a little too much to drink.”
“Oh no,” Caroline said. “Just about enough. And as for you— You think I couldn’t just about hear you thinking, anyway? Asking all the right questions, finding the right answers. Your dream date, huh? No parents. No kids. Perfect. She vanishes and it’s just another missing person. And when you’re hungry again—a couple of weeks from now, a month, I don’t know or care—you find yourself another date. And then before too long, you change companies, because it’s smart to get out before anyone who might start investigating these murders starts seeing a pattern.”
The cold, brassy, blank eyes rested on her, just watching her with that dry unmoved gleam. That’s what freaks people out about snakes, she thought suddenly. The eyes aren’t wet. At least that’s what’s freaking me out… At the same time, she was watching the way the rest of the lindworm’s body was coiling away from the fire, getting a little closer to her…
“Oh no you don’t,” Caroline said, standing up. “That’s not how it’s going to go down.”
“And what makes you think you get to say how it’s going to go?” the lindworm said.
“Because I ‘read the F-ing manual,’” Caroline said, “and I know how this curse works. If we’d gone to your place, this might have been a whole different story. There’s still a game to be played, sure. There are some moves that have to be gone through. You’ve got your chance to win. You’ve just got to get the clothes off me first… because only a nonmagic snake would be stupid enough to eat someone with their clothes on: it’d come down with a case of gastroenteritis that’d kill it stone dead.” She grinned—a far more savage look than the one she’d been holding in place for the last half hour. “Problem is, those little claws aren’t strong enough to do much more than hold a menu. And type, I guess. Any clothes that come off me, I’m going to have to remove.”
“And why would I go along with you on this?”
“I’m betting,” Caroline said, “because having gotten this far…you just can’t resist the challenge. How many other poor women just fell into your arms, pulled their clothes off, never had the wherewithal to resist? Easy meat. But this time—this time you get a crack at someone who knows what’s going on. You get to see how good a curse you are. Can I wear you down before you do the same to me? Let’s find out.”
“And suppose I decide to force the issue?”
Those golden eyes were somehow looking bigger than they had any right to as they bent close to her. The mouth opened, slowly…
Caroline reached under the hoodie and whipped out the vintage eighteen-inch carbon steel Henkel kitchen knife, the one that her father told her Julia Child had used to refer to as “the fright knife”, holding it right in front of the lindworm’s nose. It shied back sharply. “This isn’t stainless, Slinky-boy,” Caroline said. “Cold iron. You betting you can try something cute with me before I do you some serious damage? Let’s find out.”
The lindworm closed its mouth, saying nothing: but the eyes started to look angry.
“So,” Caroline said. “When I take off a piece of clothing, you take off something too.”
“Like what? I have no—”
“Snakes,” Caroline said, “shed their skins. That’s ‘like what.’”
The glare became more furious still—but this time Caroline saw what she’d been waiting for: a tiny glint of fear.
“And just to make sure that everything goes ahead in a nice organized kind of way—”
She turned to the sideboard up against the wall, pulled a drawer open, rummaged, then shut the drawer, turned, and onto the shining mahogany surface she dropped a pack of cards on the table.
“I’ll deal the first hand,” she said. “Five card stud?”
The lindworm’s eyes narrowed. Again it said nothing… then glided around to the far side of the table.
Sweating, sweltering, Caroline sat down. To her left, the fire burned bright. It glinted on the snake’s scales, burned in those golden eyes. Caroline tapped the deck of cards out of the pack, tapped them even on the table, started to shuffle, dealt.
They played. Caroline studied her cards, watched her adversary do the same. It was not the best hand she’d ever had, not the worst. Thirteen hands to play, she thought. The law of averages may be my best friend tonight. At least half the deals are mine…
It proved so on the first hand, at least: her ace-high flush against the lindworm’s three of a kind. It stared at its cards as if it couldn’t quite believe what was happening.
“Well?” Caroline said.
The lindworm glared at her again. Then it put the cards down, lowered its head…
The skin split all down one side of it
with a weird, wettish sound like a nylon zipper. The lindworm scrabbled at itself with its little claws, and scratched and scraped against the edge of the mahogany table as the translucent old skin started to peel away.
“Hey, watch the finish,” Caroline muttered: but the lindworm paid her no mind. Finally the skin was off, and the much shinier, damper-looking lindworm seized the cast-off skin in its little claws, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it onto the table.
“Your turn,” it said.
Caroline stood up, pulled off the hoodie and the old ski pants that made up the outermost layer, rolled them up and chucked them onto the table too. Then she pushed the cards across the table to the lindworm.
It shuffled, though not terribly well: the claws seemed to interfere. Then it dealt.
She picked up her cards, shook her head. Straight: nine, ten, jack, queen… “Hit me,” she said. But the draw didn’t improve matters. The best she could come up with was two pair to the lindworm’s full house. It laid down the cards with a nasty look of triumph, and said, “Your turn…”
Caroline let out an annoyed breath and pulled off a sweater and another pair of pants, three years-ago’s superannuated baggies. She took the cards and started to shuffle…
…and had to stop, for she found herself feeling an increasing sense of pressure, and not anything to do with those tight clothes, either. She glanced up quickly, and then glanced down again, realizing that that had been a mistake. Those golden eyes were fixed on her, huge, insistent, and it was from them that the sense of pressure came.
“I gave up staring games in grade school,” Caroline said, resuming her shuffle. “Let’s go.” She dealt—
The cards were much better this time. But somehow she had trouble feeling good about it. She already felt very hot, and suddenly she started to feel very tired as well. And why not? It’s been a long day. It’d be great to just lean back in the chair and close my eyes for a moment…
Caroline shook her head. Not right now. She studied her cards, glanced across the table, looked no higher than the delicate little claws. They were rock-steady: she supposed it was too much to ask to see her opponent trembling with any kind of emotion. She hung on, keeping herself still. When the cards went down on the table, she had four of a kind against the lindworm’s straight. Not bad. Stay with it…