Snakes On an Immortal Dame

by Polly Connor

  “As long as there's pneuma, as long as there's breath of life, you can do something about it. You can bring her back. And there is breath. It's her body you're inhabiting – that's why we didn't summon you in your own.” Oh, his eyes gleamed. It was a long time since Medusa had felt terror of anything, still less unease in the presence of a mortal. “When nothing else would work, and I was losing hold of her, she was slipping away. Mags here,” and he nodded at the witch, who smiled and nodded as if he had her spellbound. No doubt he did, in this little cult of four. “Mags researched it. A god can bring life back, the spirit, by inhabiting the body and summoning the original soul. You can.” He reached out, and took her limp hand in both of his. “Won't you?” he wheedled now. “I love her. We all love her, and we let her down. She shouldn't have died, on a mission to do good, to save the world. You can't imagine how much we care. Will you bring her back?”

  His strength couldn't possibly hold out against her. Even his magicks were not so powerful as all that, not against a god. She could have held out, and fought free, and refused him. She knew she could. But perhaps she was a little bit hypnotised, too. A little bit charmed.

  ___

  At least they gave her clothes, once she'd agreed. Very unsuitable and inadequate clothing, for a goddess, to be sure. No shimmering immaculate toga, no jewels, no head-dress. No, instead rough blue canvas covering for the lower limbs, and a bright stretchy sausage-casing for her upper part. She looked much like Mags, the young witch, when she was done, though she had racked up a few millennia of years more than such a child. And her arse and bosom were ampler, the proportions of a goddess, making it a struggle even to enter and fasten the rough garments.

  That was not her primary concern, however. As if she would give a fig over raiment, when her simple nudity counted as ornament enough. What troubled her was her hair. Or rather, Caroline's hair. It was a fluffy, shiny, repellent hank of candyfloss that adorned her temporary skull, the current prison for her soul. And, dressed, she stood before the looking-glass in the bedroom of the little house she'd been summoned to, in mortal lands. And she complained.

  She'd refrained, up until this moment. Being summoned, and controlled (by puny mortals!) had taken priority. But now negotiations were done, she had other concerns. Petty ones, but still significant to her.

  And with William standing behind her as she primped and fussed, jawing away about spells and power and sucking life out of the underworld, she gave her plaints voice.

  “Give me back my snakes,” she muttered, low and sulky and furious, and she spun around to face him. Oh, he hadn't been listening, the handsome little bastard, and she had to repeat herself. Going up to stand right in front of him, this time, up close, chin to chin, nose to nose. A god should be taller than this. Her temporary mortal abode humiliated her. “Give me back my snakes,” she hissed, quite snake-like herself, angry enough to bite.

  “Oh.” He blinked at her, startled out of his obsessive monologue. “Oh. Well, can't you do that yourself? I haven't completely damped down your powers. And they should be reviving on their own, in any case. You are quite strong, you know.” Oh, the patronage. He was lucky that she was temporarily a weak feeble mortal, and wasn't going to waste her time trying to beat him up.

  And she had tried. Of course she had, what a superlatively stupid question. She stamped her foot – just like a furious, sulking little mortal woman – and glared at him. “Would I ask you, if I could do it myself?” she asked. Hissing it, since his brain was evidently too clouded with grief, and plotting to regain his lost idiot love, to see the obvious.

  “Oh, I see,” he said. And he did: he looked at her, attentively, and Medusa could tell for a moment that he really did see her. It was curiously intense, and her silly girl's body flushed, all over. Then he waved a hand at her, offensively casual. She felt a stirring and a hissing, prickling all over her scalp.

  “Oh, my snakes,” she exclaimed, and it was almost a whimper. Her hands went to her head – and it wasn't her own snakes. It wasn't even true live solid real snakes, part of the mortal body she was inhabiting. But just the illusion of it was like a brief return home, and she felt almost grateful to the arsehole. Grateful! Her! A god!

  That was unacceptable, and so was the little smile on his face – a smile as if he was glad to have pleased her. That was a pretty face he had, for certain. And to distract herself from such idiocy, she rushed on, garbling.

  “Why do we wait so? What is the reason for such delay? If you want your girl back, there is no time to be lost. You have the scrolls, the books, the lists of ingredients and the chants – make ready, and I shall bring her forth for you! Your minions must assist – the witch, the dwarf and the elf. They will be scant enough, compared to the monasteries full of chanting supplicants who would lend true power, but they must suffice! Bring them, and we shall assemble and begin!”

  “The dwa–?” William stared at her for a moment, dumbstruck. And then he shook himself, and seemed to comprehend. And giggled. “Oh. Right, yes. You mean – Alan, Alan is my pal with restricted height. You might want to remember appropriate terminology, before trying that one on him. And Joe, Joe has pituitary issues too, and he's half-Swedish, and very pretty, and – Yeah. Anyway.”

  But Medusa had already turned her back on him. She was busy caressing her snakes as they curvetted around her head, ready to strike or to kiss, their tongues playing over her brow.

  “Go,” she said, distantly. “Don't you want your girl back? I have acceded to your schemes. Go and make your preparations.”

  Still she could feel him pause. She felt him come to stand behind her, and how he hesitated, almost putting a hand on her shoulder. (Such impertinence.) And then he didn't even do that. Instead he reached further forward over her shoulder. And he caressed the head, and neck, of one of the spectral snakes that he'd gifted her with.

  “If I had my powers yet, then I might kill you for that,” she murmured. And yet she couldn't infuse the words with anything like the venom that ought to have come so easily. He didn't even take her seriously, as a result. He just laughed, and petted the snake again, before pulling away.

  “I'm very grateful,” he said, softly. He turned, and took a few steps away from her, out of the room.

  He'd accepted his dismissal, and that was very good. There were more urgent things to be done, than to stand here flirting and fondling with her – snakes – all day, after all.

  And yet she couldn't let him go, and not add one thing more. One thing, just to say – in a dieaway little-girl voice that would have been more fitting to a shepherdess, to a cherub pealing out praises to all gods and powers that might be, rather than to a god herself – “You must love her very much.”

  Oh, what a damn fool thing to say, after all. She might almost fancy herself a stout matron in love with a comely youth, making a fool of herself sighing and pining for him. She'd known a goddess or two fall a victim to that divinest malady, after all. At least it arrested his feet. He didn't reply for a second or two. But then he said, very soft in the softest whisper, “Um. Yes. I suppose I must.”

  Well, that was all there was to it. The contract was made, and only the ceremony was yet undone. Why should she feel regrets, or uncertainty? She wasn't only a god. She was a grown woman, thousands of years old, and knew better than to fall in love via a coup de foudre, with a silly boy in love with a dead girl. She was not such a fool.

  No, no, she couldn't be such a fool.

  ___

  In any case, if she was a fool, she wasn't as much of one as William. He was the one pining after a shade, enough to try to bring her back as a ghoul from the grave. And by the evening of that same day, he had assembled everything she had required of him, everything listed in his antique grimoires, and something he called The Net. (Medusa could only suppose that this referred to a great mystical fisherman's net, set out at sea to reel in pearls of immense value, and mermaids dressed in conch shells, singing and cursing at their sudden servitud
e.)

  And out in the darkness, under a starry sky, in what William referred to as his Back Garden, they set up the chanting circle, and the fires, and the chalked circles. (Really – the little hovels that humans lived in. Medusa longed for marble halls, and grapes, and slaves to do her bidding. But these four fools would have to do for now, since she had given her word.)

  And in the middle of the circle, she stood entranced a moment, fondling at her spirit-snakes in a plump body that belonged to an almost-dead girl. (William looked at that face with such affection, continuously, again and again. He hadn't known Medusa herself for a day, yet. That affection couldn't be for her. Once she'd brought the girl back to life, perhaps she ought to kill her again, for monopolising his affections that way. How dare she, really? It wasn't as if Medusa hadn't snapped the neck of the odd serving-wench or dancing girl who drew the eyes of her current swain too often, in centuries gone by.

  But she had promised William his silly girl back, of course, hale and whole. It would probably be breaking the terms of their agreement, in spirit if not in technicalities, to snuff her out the minute she'd been restored to him. And besides, she wasn't quite sure that she could bear to witness the lost little-boy look on his face, should she take his toy away again. Damn him, for drawing such softness out of her, in hardly more than the blink of an eye. He was a wizard indeed. Oh, and a very pretty one, of course. If she had any sense, and the ruthlessness she'd always relied on – that seemed to have failed her, in the course of enchantment – she'd steal him away and make him her captive slave-boy. If the girl was left well and breathing and silly as ever, in the mortal worlds, wouldn't that leave the terms of their agreement unbroken?

  It certainly would. And she was still teetering on the verge of a resolution, when the circle of faux-monks around her – well, about half of a circle, and they should have been monks, if there'd been any respect for tradition at all left in this world – came to the end of their chants, and started on a low, ominous hum.

  Medusa hadn't been paying the proper attention. She'd been too busy, plotting abduction and estrangement of affections, seduction and possible breach of contract. None of them were lawyers, though. She was probably safe from a case in tort. She hadn't been expecting to get to this point so quick. But here it was, her cue, her big moment.

  And she glared around her – because it brought back twenty-four hours' worth of memories. It wasn't as if she'd forgiven the bastards, for kidnapping her through space and time and other dimensions. That was a matter she'd be evening out the score on, at a later date. But now, she had a part to play. She'd always been a bit of a prima donna.

  The dwarf – Alan – whipped out a fiddle from his cloak. He began to give it all the sad pathos of a gypsy from her last Paris sojourn, making a zither sing and plead. It was appropriate, and gave the ceremony atmosphere. She nodded at him in regal approval, and thought that perhaps she'd make an exception for him, when the time came to rain down punishments and hailing toads upon the sorry shower of them.

  And – since William was holding it out to her – she grabbed at the scroll of incantations. Because they'd got to her lines, and she didn't have them down from memory. “Key of C, preferably,” Mags called out, as if that was in any way helpful. And the elf-boy – well, the abnormally tall, thin, ethereal human boy, apparently, but Medusa retained a certain scepticism on the issue – beamed at her. And raised both of his thumbs, sticking up from his fisted hands, in her direction. Such vulgar human gestures were beyond her – she wasn't up with the latest lingua franca of the kids, in this degenerate age. But she thought that he was wishing her luck, and possibly suggesting she get out there, knock 'em dead and break a leg.

  The patronising little narrow streak of piss. But she would definitely have to deal with him later. She could feel the thrum of power from the chants begin to dissipate, as she failed to hit her marks and come in on the right bar of music. It might fade away altogether, if she didn't pick up and plunge into the ceremony. They'd have to start the whole thing all over again, from scratch.

  Of course, she'd never performed the ceremony before. Why would she? At full strength, not bound about by a mortal wizard's tricks, she had no need of format and procedure. Her power alone was sufficient to give life or extinguish it, to damn or to bless. But he should have warned her.

  William should have warned her, that it would hurt. Perhaps he hadn't known. Certainly his face fell, his mouth dropped open just like the rest of them, when she doubled over with the first line incanted. She screamed.

  But he didn't stop her, mind you. Stayed right on his spot, and only called out for if she was all right, if she was well, just the same as the rest of them. Of course he did. Medusa was only a tool to him, god or mortal, dead or alive. Just as long as she got the ceremony finished, and restored his daffy self-important little love to him, then she was as dispensable as a paper tissue or a recyclable can, a single sheep out of the flock.

  But pain was nothing to her. She was Medusa. Was she going to give in and abandon her intent, all because of a few lacerating unbelievable twinges? She straightened up, by the force of her will, under the dark moon and the clouds that threatened rain. (And she glared at him, and muttered beneath her breath to the snake phantoms hissing at her temples. “Don't worry, my darlings,” she hissed along with them, with eyes that could have bored holes through this idiot at full strength. That did, in the tales that painted her a monster, every time. A terrible exaggeration, considering that it was a power she used only rarely, and when richly deserved.) “He may pay, when we're done. But only when we're done.”

  Because it was an outrage, to think that any mortal ailment – in this stupid soft mortal body – might prevent her from accomplishing the task she'd set herself. And she gritted her teeth, and stood straight, and threw off the elf – the mortal, with his soft fair hair and soft voice – who was the only one who'd sprung towards her. She was no more than a tool to all the rest of them, then. Very good – the tool would do the job. And then they might look out for their own hides, never mind their pal's.

  “Get off me, fool,” she snarled, with a shove that sent him stumbling all the way back to his original place in the circle. “Get humming, stop your mouth up and let me get this done.” And she was good as her word, and there were half a dozen more pages to go, too. Not one line was any better than the ones before. It didn't ease up one bit, as she shuffled and gasped and hissed her way through every word.

  They let her, that was the thing. Even though she was seizing right through it, even though she was inhabiting the throes of agony – they kept up the low hum of the backdrop to her declamations, they kept on with the ceremony. With pious 'oh-dear' faces, of course, with sanctimonious looks of concern. But, beyond that initial instinctive leap of Joe's? Nothing.

  William – she couldn't help but look to him, it seemed, to see his face, his reaction. Although she should of course have had more pride. What was it to a goddess, what a mortal wizard felt and thought, when he saw her suffer? And his eyes were wide and appalled, steady on her but wincing as if he were suffering through it with her. (Except that he wasn't, of course. All very well for him, the sympathetic act. It didn't transfer a moment of her agony to his bill, instead, for him to live through.)

  The third page in, and it took that long for him to even waver, for his determination to falter, to blink at her stoical grit. “Let the shadows gather as they might,” she hissed out, shuffling the fourth page to the top with trembling hands. The wind was cold, and in darkness and firelight she shivered under her rough coarse mortal clothing. “Let the ravens take to flight, so long as souls may now be loosed, freed from manacle and from noose, and this maid who–”

  That was the moment when the most horrible spasm of all gripped her, so that she let a couple of pages drop as she cried out. She couldn't help it, not with a mortal's strength alone to support her. And finally, he stopped making with the big cow-eyes of sympathy and regret, and actually did some
thing to help her, the bastard. Rushed forward, that little bit quicker than the rest of them – in the togas she was denied – and grabbed up the papers. Oh, to stuff them back in her hands, of course, she assumed – because nothing must be allowed to get in the way of the ceremony! This idiot's monomania had no bounds, and there was nothing in his head beyond the silly girl in the photographs littered about his house.

  Medusa had examined them, carefully. The girl was nothing to write home about, by Medusa's judgement. She had a silly, simpering expression, and a look of calculating desire to seek the main chance and her own advantage, in her eyes. A narcissist, no doubt of it, plain and simple. Which was all very well, but unsuitable for mortals. It was a god's mindset, and only properly indulged in with the privileges of a god.

  She was already pushing herself back up off the ground, as he helped her up. And she snatched bitterly at the papers – but William held them away from her. “No,” he said. “Look.” And he hesitated, and said, “Maybe we should forget it. Forget this. I hadn't realised – I had no idea how bad it would be for you. Maybe–”

  But Medusa couldn't stand it. They'd committed themselves, and she'd promised to retrieve the girl from Hades, hadn't she? It would be cruel, to taunt her. To hint that he'd changed his mind, that he might be satisfied with someone other than the blue-eyed mortal ninny he was clearly obsessed with. She couldn't stand to be teased that way. It was better to get things done with, to get on with the job.

  She pulled the papers off him, determined, and gave him a rough shove in the chest, away from her, away. The snakes about her head billowed as if she were standing in a gale, and then gathered together in unison as if they sensed her resolve. William came at her one more time, and she glared at him. Not quite the glare that could drop a man and turn him to stone at a thousand paces. But closely enough related to it that he staggered a little, and fell back stunned. Good. Let him understand his proper place, and that her powers were almost back to normal now, juiced up. His artificial magicks could do only so much, against the likes of Medusa.