by P. R. Frost
“I agree,” MoonFeather added. Her keen gray eyes pinned me with otherworldly knowledge. “I’ve seen in the stars grave portents on your horizon.”
I don’t like that word grave, Scrap added.
Interlude
MOONFEATHER’S DABBLINGS IN astrology looked like chimpanzee art next to Michelangelo’s Pieta compared to the way the Warriors of the Celestial Blade, male and female, study the stars. Their faith, their sole purpose in life, and the reason they gather together into cloistered armies, centers on a single configuration in the sky. When the Goddess reveals her face in the skies, then Her warriors will be blessed with victory over demons and the world will be safe for another space of time.
Far be it from me to scoff. Imps have their own Gods and sacred rituals that mean everything to us. The warriors’ Goddess might not do much for me, but then garbage dumps in cold storage don’t do much for humans.
I’ve seen the face of the Goddess and so has Tess. We’ve seen the aftermath of a demon battle.
The first new quarter moon after Tess was up and about in the citadel, Sister S invited her to watch—not participate, just watch—as the Sisterhood gathered to pay homage to their Goddess.
A lot of cultures watch the stars, and a lot of cultures worship at the full moon, or the dark of the moon. I hadn’t run into any other that worships at the new quarter moon.
As darkness fell, the Sisters drifted away from their dinner, their study, their exercise into the central courtyard. Each of them carried a lighted taper with a hand cupped around the flame to shield it from view as well as the wind. If one of those tapers ever snuffed on its own before the ceremony ended, ill winds blew for the entire Sisterhood. Each Sister had an adult imp on her shoulder to help protect the candles. They talked and joked softly among themselves, cheerful; family going to church on Sunday morning. Except this was a Tuesday night.
Tess shuffled out of the infirmary wing on the arm of her doctor, Sister Serena. She stood a little straighter today. Sister S had taken the stitches out of her belly incision the day before.
Tess also took slightly firmer steps than yesterday. But only I could discern the difference, because I watched her so closely, so lovingly.
A swarm of older Sisters stood three deep in a crescent facing east, at the point where the moon would rise. The honored dozen of the leadership of the order assumed seemingly random spots within the arms of that crescent. All of the youngsters and the bulk of the warriors took their places across the top of the formation, assuming east as the top, in a scattered wash. Imp wings kind of made the entire formation look fuzzy and bigger to my eyes. Sort of like looking through an out-offocus telescope.
Tess stood apart, on the top step of the infirmary building.
Of all those present, we alone could see the pattern of lighted tapers and compare them to the miracle that was about to rise in the sky.
This courtyard, though protected by high walls—ten, twelve feet, what do I know of exact measures?—was slightly elevated and gave a clear view of the eastern horizon.
They all got real quiet, all at once.
The quality of light changed as the moon thrust one curved arm into view. One day, soon I hoped, I’d become Tess’ Celestial Blade, in a good imitation of that waxing quarter moon.
Sister S, standing among the leadership, began a soft hymn of praise. I didn’t understand the language. I don’t think Tess did either. An ancient hymn preserved through countless generations of Sisters pledged in the eternal fight to keep this dimension safe from interlopers known as demons. The others joined her song, swelling the courtyard with music that raised goose bumps on Tess’ arms and made me spread my ears to gather maximum sound.
The hymns continued, all in the haunting language that lingered in the back of the mind, almost understood, not quite discernible. Like a racial memory or an atavistic need.
The moon rose higher. The night grew darker. Overhead, the Milky Way spangled the heavens with a river of light.
And then the top of the moon touched the Milky Way. A few stars below the elliptic plane of the galaxy burst into view.
The Sisters raised their tapers high and continued singing.
“The face of the Goddess,” I gasped in wonder as the constellations and moon came together in the sky. For one breath I felt a part of something bigger, something greater and more important than my solo life, the pain in my scars, and my grief.
The Sisters stood in imitation of the miracle I saw reflected in the sky. I needed to be part of that homage.
“Hush,” a Sister in the courtyard below me hissed.
“The Goddess has not yet appeared. Your place is to watch, not to comment.”
“But…”
“Hush.”
Of course they couldn’t see Her. Kynthia. The Goddess of the Warriors of the Celestial Blade. They had their candles above their heads, blinding them to the wonders in the night sky. A kind of mist covered the lot of them.
Dimwits. They should extinguish their candles, or hold them below their faces, so the flames didn’t blind them to the miracle above.
The image lasted only a moment. Clouds gathered. A breeze came up.
Spielberg couldn’t have staged it better.
“There,” someone shouted as her candle blew out.
Other candles extinguished. Other Sisters gasped at the fading magnificence in the sky.
“To arms, Sisters, to arms! The demons march this night.”
“Inside. Stay low, stay safe. Whatever you hear, whatever you think you might want to do, do not emerge from your room,” Sister Serena commanded, suddenly appearing at my side. She shoved me into the infirmary and firmly locked my door behind me.
I pounded on the door, suddenly afraid of the darkness and the way the base of my spine tingled. Energy coursed through my blood as it never had before, demanding I take action.
No one answered my demands.
Over the course of the next several hours, I heard the clash of blades, a strange ululating battle cry, and screams of pain.
“Let me out, I can help,” I pleaded over and over again.
But my Sisters had other concerns that night.
After a while, the cacophony of chaos gave way to bumps and thuds within the infirmary. Women gave orders, equipment moved. Lights showed beneath my door.
In the morning I learned a small contingent of furred demons, perhaps two dozen of them, had broken through the portal the citadel guarded. Three Sisters, including Sister Serena, had received serious wounds. A fourth had died.
But they had beaten the monsters back.
“That doesn’t sound right,” I said when I sat beside Sister Serena’s bed the next day. “I write sword and sorcery stuff. It doesn’t make sense for them to send only a small contingent against the full Sisterhood. Of what? Two hundred fifty, maybe three hundred, trained warriors?”
I held a glass of water with a bent straw to the doctor’s mouth and let her sip.
“Unless the demon population is way down and they are desperate to breed with humans. Otherwise, why didn’t they send more to secure the portal?”
“You know nothing of demons,” Sister Gert, the leader of this citadel, snarled from the doorway. “We were triumphant and suffered only minor losses.”
“Sounds more like a diversion to me,” I muttered.
“What else were the demons up to last night?”
“You know nothing! Your place is to watch and learn, not to question.” Sister Gert turned on her heel and left before even inquiring about the health of their doctor.
“She is right,” Sister S said quietly. “We of the Sisterhood do not ask questions. We follow tradition, and do our job. ’Tis the only way to keep the demons subdued. You were not raised here. You have never fought a true demon.”
Oh, yeah? What about the demon of grief? What about the demons in my fever dreams? No questions, my ass, I thought, but kept my mouth shut.
This time.
C
hapter 7
The smallest bat, the bumblebee bat, weighs less than a penny. Its forearms measure barely twentyfive millimeters. The largest bats, the Old World Flying Foxes, have a wingspan of two meters and can weigh seven hundred fifty grams.
“YOU KNOW WHAT I LOVE about my job, Scrap?” I asked the next weekend. I threw open the French doors of my room at the Double Lion Hotel in San Jose, California. The balconied room looked out over the pool rather than the parking lot or the freeway.
Such luxury! “Now that I’m really making money, I get to go to West Coast conventions as well as those closer to home.”
I drew in a deep lungful of dry air scented with some desert plant I couldn’t name. A touch of salt on the edge of my taste buds told me that rain would come in from the Pacific Ocean tonight.
Scrap just slithered into the air conditioner looking for mold. The little glutton.
“Time to go to work, Scrap. I’m going down to the green room to register and get my schedule.” I’d also nosh on the goodies spread out for the visiting pros. Airplane food had become nonexistent in the latest economic crisis. “I’ll buy you a beer later, Scrap.” He still didn’t answer, too absorbed in his feeding frenzy.
I’d started attending conventions—or cons—in college with friends who had grown up in the culture of fandom.
They soon became an addiction. Any weekend of the year, somewhere in the US, there is an SF convention.
Three or four days, depending on the weekend, of costumes, books, writers, readers, gamers, filk—the folk music of science fiction and fantasy—nonsense, and fun.
Just because I hadn’t been able to sing since Dill died didn’t mean I couldn’t listen to the filk concerts. But I didn’t go to the filk circles and open sings anymore.
Oh, and did I say books? Book dealers, new and used, classic and potboiler, abound at cons. They tend to stock up on books by visiting writers so the fans can get them autographed. I loved the atmosphere as much as I loved the people who dashed up to me wanting an autograph or those who came and sat in rapt attention when I did a reading or spoke on a panel discussion.
During the lean years, when my writing barely put food on the table, and I had to work as a substitute teacher in Providence to keep a grubby little apartment, I had to limit my cons to New England. If I could conveniently drive there and crash with friends, I attended, had a great time, and promoted my books as much as I could.
Then there was High Desert Con in Tri-Cities, Washington.
My oldest friend from college, Bob Brown, the man who had first introduced me to cons, ran programming on that convention. I always scrimped and saved or went into debt to attend his con.
I was just beginning to make more from writing than teaching when I met Dill at High Desert Con and everything changed.
I hadn’t been back since.
I’d be guest of honor, or GOH, there in a few weeks with my expenses paid by the con. I wanted to see my old friend again, but… I just wasn’t sure how I felt about going back to the place where I’d met Dill.
Would he haunt me there as he had in Portland? I almost hoped so. I desperately needed to see his smile again, feel the special warmth his love gave me.
I also dreaded the pressure he had put on me to discard Scrap.
Bright and friendly smiles greeted me in the green room. Three volunteers jumped to answer my questions, provide me with maps of the sprawling hotel, introduce me to everybody and anybody. I glad-handed my way around the room, basking in their welcome. Then I smelled the cake. Chocolate. Rich double devil’s food chocolate.
I barged into the connecting room, the lounge, of the suite and made a beeline for the luscious treat. My feet came to a skidding halt and backpedaled.
The cake had come from a bat-shaped pan, Halloween orange-and-black candy sprinkle bats littered the dark frosting. It was the weekend that bridged September and October. Appropriate decorations for the season.
I lost my appetite.
What’s the matter, babe, afraid of a little bat candy?
Scrap goaded me.
“I am not afraid. Just turned off.”
“Tess, I may call you Tess, might I? I’m Dee Dee Richardson, head of costuming.” A short, blowsy, bleachedblonde held out her hand as she zoomed in on me from the registration area. “I’m sorry to impose on you and your busy schedule, but one of my judges for the masquerade just canceled out. Emergency appendectomy. Is there any way I could impose upon you to take her place? Having a celebrity like you on the panel of judges would be such an honor,” she said all in one breath.
Gratefully, I turned my back on the bat cake and led her back to registration. “Of course you can impose. I love costuming. I used to do quite a bit of sewing myself and consider myself quite competent to judge workmanship as well as creativity.”
The heady aroma of ranch-flavored chips and dip began to blot out the now nauseating smell of chocolate.
“Did you know that I knit and crochet as well? My Grandmother Maria taught me la frivolité, ‘tatting’ you call it. I love textiles,” I blathered on.
“Yes, I noticed how your details about clothing and textile textures add so much richness to your books.”
That settled, I went to find some dinner so I could enjoy the rest of the con.
I met up with some old friends from the costuming guild in the hotel garden café. I sometimes wonder if this same café teleports around the country for each and every con. It looked the same in every hotel. We had a marvelous discussion about how the development of scissors had changed clothing construction.
A few people dining near us sported Star Trek and Star Wars costumes. A few others were more creative and elaborate. I saw everything from elegant and historically accurate Regency and early Georgian wear on both men and women, to green-painted ogres wearing horns and wispy rags. I noted a lot of women and children had commercially made fairy wings stuck down the back of their outfits. Chiffon drifted and floated nicely out from a wire framework. I almost wished I had brought some of my own garb.
The best costumes would come out tomorrow night for the masquerade. I wiggled with happy anticipation at being allowed to judge them.
Then a large family group with three small children filed into the café. They all wore black leather with brown fur hoods. When they raised their arms, black leather bat wings connected them from wrist to knee. A tall man, their seeming leader, threw back his fur hood revealing a thick black braid going halfway down his back. His hair was going gray at the temples, like silver wings.
Where had I seen him before? Some con probably.
Not a con, Scrap whispered to me. The underground garage where you cowered because a bat dared fly past you on its way to dinner.
I shuddered in memory of my own stupid fears.
The man smiled, and the entire room seemed to go quiet, more relaxed. He raised his hand to smooth back that magnificent head of hair. His bat wings flowed out from his costume.
Breathing became difficult. I couldn’t think, couldn’t move. My heart beat overtime and cold sweat broke out on my brow and back.
Then the three-year-old began running around making squeaky noises. My companions all “Ahhed” at how cute she was.
I lost my appetite and pushed away the remnants of my otherwise excellent salmon Caesar salad.
My room seemed the best respite from the bats at the con. I scuttled away and turned on the evening news, something I never do at a con. Reality has no place here. But I needed a heady dose of reality right then.
While the local anchor prattled on about bank robberies, gang violence, and road rage, I yanked the antique comb out of my hair and began brushing my curls, now long enough to cover my neck. And… and definitely lighter in color. I seriously contemplated cutting it. But I really liked wearing that comb.
A particularly tight tangle broke off in my hand as I worked the brush through. As I stared at the near transparent gold strands, a word on the TV caught my attention.
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br /> “Another in a series of dog attacks that have plagued the Pacific Northwest…”
“What?”
The screen flashed briefly with a picture of the hind end of a big dog—it could have been any big dog—and then the face of the scholar with the clipped accent who had followed me from Alder Hill to the book signing at Simpson’s.
The station went to a commercial.
Five agonizing minutes later, the news came back with a thirty-second story including one sound bite from Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe. “This dog seems to be on a mission,” he said.
Time up. Old news now. New story.
The news readers reported a Sasquatch sighting in the wilds of the high desert plateau east of the Cascade Mountains. They both had to bite their cheeks to keep from laughing out loud.
The base of my spine tingled. I wanted—no—needed, to rent a car and drive up to Pendleton, Oregon, near the Oregon and Washington border and quite close to Tri-Cities, Washington. Also part of the high desert plateau east of the Cascades. Once there, I could check out the latest dog attack upon a Native American adolescent girl. Too far to go during the con. Monday would be too late.
And what was Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe doing there?
Needing to do something, I called my agent, Sylvia Watson. “What have you heard about Cynthia Stalking Moon?”
“Who?” She sounded distracted. I gulped an apology for calling so late. I’d forgotten the time difference.
“The Indian girl I wanted to help get back to her tribe.”
“Oh, yeah, Cynthia Stalking Moon. Last I heard, the tribal lawyers were working on it. They’d found a second cousin willing to take her. Middle-aged man with grown children. Empty nest syndrome if you ask me.”
“Is it done yet?”
“Don’t know.”
“Oh.” The dog was still out there, and I didn’t know for sure if Cynthia was safe.