Snakes On an Immortal Dame

by Polly Connor

  And the magicks – his, and her godly ones – were powering into the world about them, now, as she gripped the papers more tightly, more close, and continued her readings. She was still wracked with agony, at every word. She wasn't going to allow it to prevent her will becoming flesh, that was all. What had been a few drops of spitting rain here and there, started drenching them, becoming a downpour. Lightning flashed about them, pushing and hounding at their circle, as if it was about to close in and strike the circle of chanters themselves. Thunder shook the air, shook the ground, shook the trees. Nature was furious, and why would she not be, when she was being transgressed, her rules all flouted?

  The force of it had her four companions falling to their knees, their cloaks soaked and heavy with rainfall, the terror of the storm cowing them. They were puny, and she trembled with contempt. But Medusa was only invigorated, and felt her godly power coursing through her, even against the pain flooding her in waves. She almost gabbled her way through the fourth page, the fifth, onto the final summons and command of the sixth. And the sky was riven and lit up by electricity, white with light, as she spat out the magical words. “Hence out of my own flesh do I bring her forth and give up this body unto the undead, who shall live and breathe again AS THOU SHALT WITNESS–”

  These were the final words, the last line on the last page of the sheaf.

  The pain built up to a crescendo with every word, intensifying unbearably, and only the increasing access to her own power enabled her to actually bear it. Without screaming. And through them, she felt the girl creeping up on her. Caroline, the girl, the girl whose borrowed body she was inhabiting, had been hocus-pocused into wearing like a suit of clothing.

  Creeping up inside her, taking shape in the very body that had been made her own. So that her hands went limp, and she dropped the papers out of those limp hands, and fell to the ground. She couldn't breathe suddenly, everything was so tight from the inside. And she mumbled, “No, get out, get out of me!” in a last panicked protest. The transparent ghostly snakes floated about her head, as the four of the circle ran to her and kneeled at her side.

  William was the closest, of course. And she just managed to roll her head around, to get one last look at him. Before she felt the triumphant internal grab. It was Caroline – dead Caroline, pure virtuous smug Caroline, Caroline whom she could feel for a lying little power-hungry grabber – taking back what was hers. Hers before, and hers now again.

  And Medusa – poor, foolish Medusa – had been the one to sing, and to chant, and make magicks, no matter what it cost her to do it. It was too late for second thoughts, too late to whine that after all she might like this human body, and that human boyfriend, and being frail and mortal and living in the warm strange eccentric mortal world. Liked being a girl again, what she'd been before she'd been plundered, and rewarded for silence and cooperation with Zeus' corrupt powers.

  She hung on, despite that, for one second more, grasping on to the railings like a suffragette, like refusal in human form.

  But she'd made the fool girl too strong, and herself temporarily too weak in the process. She felt the boot in her back, from one who'd been almost dead, not quite alive. And now was only too alive, with all the life force Medusa had conjured for her.

  One minute she'd been securely housed, in a body that was more pleasureful and comfortable than she'd realised, soft and plump and warm. And then her spirit was out, and loose, in a cold mortal world. And the body she'd left behind...

  Medusa was invisible, now, no more than spirit alone. And she had to watch, as the girl took possession of the body, and feigned a shy, sweet, docile awakening – all doe-eyes and uncertain, trembling smiles. “Oh, where am I?” she simpered, as if she didn't know right well. “Will, it was so dark, so strange, where have I been? But you brought me back!”

  And as William fell on her, gripping her too hard, and weeping. Crying, “Is it you? Caro, Caroline – is it you? It worked – it worked!” Of course he was weeping – weeping with joy, and the rest of their merry band too. Medusa was gone, as far as they were concerned – the sitting tenant, ejected from her body by the newly arrived rightful owner.

  Medusa turned away, furious. Furious with herself, for being furious, too. What kind of a foolish dream had she been spinning? How had she developed such a softness for a pretty powerful fool, in so short a time? Well, it served her right, and she would know better than to let herself be so vulnerable, the next time.

  But at least she had her power, every last drop of it, could feel the flash and zing of it through her veins. She was a goddess, and she had all of Paradise at her disposal. It seemed a hollow fantasy, now, but it was all that she had to return to. And she was all ready to make her exit in the next breath, too. She had her snakes at least – not the semblances and dream-ghosts that William had given her, but the spirits of her true snakes, curling about her spirit-head and hissing at her. Not the dumb wordless hisses of the pretend-snakes, but actual language and conversation. Medusa had been talking to her snakes for millennia of existence, and they talked to her back. These were malignant little hisses that they caressed into her ears. Amongst them were included, “You should kill him before we go,” and, “Your royal dignity has been affronted. It should not be forgiven!”

  It was a great comfort. But she found she hadn't the heart to act upon it, sound counsel though it undoubtedly was. It was easier to fade away, invisible and unthought of. And in the next second, she'd have been gone.

  Except that a hand upon her arm stopped her, and almost stopped her immortal heart too. (For a moment.) She was without substance, a spirit on the air, undetectable to mortal senses now, without a mortal body to occupy as a resentful prisoner. How could anyone see her, still less lay hands upon her ethereal incorporeal form?

  But he was a powerful wizard, a precocious youth with strength beyond his years, belied by his pretty baby face and his casual manners. William. It was William, of course.

  William's hand on her arm. Except that it wasn't quite on her – she didn't have that much substance, and he (perhaps) didn't have quite that much power. But it caught and held a moment against the prickling, light-filled surface of her insubstantial self. There was a friction there, a heat and sensation, that was more than human flesh and bone moving through air. He felt her, and almost no mortal, even no wizard, could have.

  And he saw her, too. She spun around, and his eyes were on her, and they stared at each other, wild and surprised both. Maybe he was as surprised to be able to see her, as the fact that he could see her surprised Medusa. He seemed it.

  Maybe she was special. Maybe this was special. It made her feel special – and not in the way of being a goddess, either, but a special girl, just a regular mortal girl – the way he reached out a hand, and hesitated. Hesitated, and didn't quite touch her cheek. Her companions probably had something to do with that, her snakes. The way that they hissed and snapped at him, eager to defend the godlike pride and honour of their mistress, had to help. He was probably scared to touch her. (He needn't have been.)

  So at least he'd bothered to say goodbye to her, to think of her at all. What about the girl? Medusa glanced her way, where she was still crumpled on the ground. The rest of the little gang of supernatural do-gooders were hunched around her, still petting and cooing, enough to make an immortal goddess sick. It was clear that it was only William who could still see and sense her, the only one with powers sufficiently strong and refined. Or, at least, the only one out of all of his original troupe of acolytes and disciples. Barring the girl Caroline herself, where she was lying in a pitiful little heap on the grass, and milking the situation for every last little drop of attention and sympathy she could extract out of it. Or she clearly had been, up until that moment. But right at this minute, instead, she gazed at Medusa – or at the blank empty spot that ought to have been all she could detect in the space where Medusa invisibly lingered. And she glared. Glared with focus, attention and specific direction, much as if
she could see Medusa, every bit as well as William could. Could see her, and see William lingering at her side, talking to her, devoting his attention to Medusa. When every last iota rightly belonged to her, as she evidently considered the matter.

  Well, well. So the little bitch was a magically gifted little bitch, then. Medusa shrugged, at the revelation, shrugged right at her, glaring back. It was nothing to her, and only meant that the little whore had best not cross her, now she'd popped up and surfaced from under the radar, now Medusa knew she was gifted and therefore a threat. Probably she wouldn't be that stupid. And in any case, the mortal little heifer had won. William was hers, and sufficiently devoted to drag her back from the grave, wasn't he?

  And now he drew Medusa's attention back, to himself, a much more attractive prospect in any case. He teased at her snakes, drawing a finger through the air just out of their reach – dicing with danger, or he would have been if she – and they – had been in corporeal form. Even as spirit, they did their utmost to take his finger off, to be sentries at the gate of her person. It got her attention on him, and he smiled, holding her eyes boldly. Gods, but he was a pretty thing, and forward, and she had not lost her heart in millennia, not so quick and easy as this. Perhaps abduction was still an option? It was traditional amongst her kind, after all.

  “Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?” he asked now, leaning his head a little sideways, his smile ebbing away. There was something accusatory about it, as if he couldn't believe that she'd do something so duplicitous and hurtful to him. Oh, he was gifted with natural powers, all right, as much in flirtation as in magic.

  “It seemed not as if I'd be missed,” Medusa replied. She was a little stiff, and could not unbend to save her life. The lightness of his tone was out of reach for her. How could a mortal flirt better than a goddess?

  “You look so different,” he said abstractedly, veering off in a direction that barely qualified even as a tangent. “I never thought about what you really looked like. I was used to how you looked before.”

  Of course you were used to it, she thought, stricken. He hadn't given a thought, then, to her true face, her real snakes, her actual person. She really was nothing more than a tool to him. “I looked like your girlfriend,” she noted, stiffer than ever. “Of course you were used to it.”

  “Oh, I suppose that's it,” he said vaguely. And he cast a considering look, Caroline's way. She was glaring at the pair of them, now. And rudely ignoring Joe's solicitous tenderness, Alan's attempts to bandage the grazes she'd sustained. And Mags' casting of runes and a shimmering haze around her, trying to deduce if she'd come back to them whole, unharmed by her sojourn in the darker realms. (In which cosy spots she well belonged, if you wanted to ask Medusa. She'd be right at home, there.) It was fortunate they were all making themselves so busy. At least they had no attention to spare for William, standing there ignoring his girlfriend, whispering like a lunatic into thin air. “But she's not my girlfriend, you know,” he said now.

  Which now, would have been enough to knock Medusa over, as if with a feather. Even if she hadn't already been so insubstantial as to be wafted away by any passing breeze. But she still didn't let such a tactic make a fool of her. She'd been dealing with amorous gods and lusty shepherds, two-timing military generals and misbehaving seraphim for eons now, after all. “Really,” she said, suspiciously. And ebbed away from him a little, floating on the breeze. Let him follow her, let him give chase: she wasn't an eager fish to be caught on the first hook bobbing by.

  And follow he did – a step, two, following after her as if unconscious of it. “Will?” Joe called after him, from the little gathering in the cold dark behind them, sounding bewildered. But Medusa was fishing herself, now, and did not care.

  “Well, not so much as all that,” Will said now. And he was looking into her eyes, and then his eyes followed the gyrations of her snakes, as if hypnotised. “I mean... sort of. But a good friend, anyway. And I felt guilty – she was caught by those demons, on my watch...”

  Because she was a stubborn self-aggrandizing idiot, Medusa thought privately. But she was too canny to say it out loud. Trashing the opposition might work in certain select circumstances, but only with the right audience, and this wasn't that. “I must go,” she said, looking away, affecting disinterest. Because he was going to be collected and dragged back, by one of his companions, any minute. And that poxy little madam was glaring at them again – while still doing her helpless fetching damsel routine – and probably on the point of sending a hound off to hunt him down and bring her prey back to her talons.

  “Oh, not yet, don't go,” he said, compulsively. Medusa liked that. He stepped that little bit closer, into the dark, into the darkness that was her. And this time, when he put out his hand, her snakes didn't hiss, didn't try to bite with phantom fangs. One wound itself about his wrist – as if they'd come around to him. As if they meant to keep him.

  And they drew his hand in closer, to caress her spectral cheek. “Why don't you stay?” he asked, and his voice was quieter, more seductive. He hadn't looked into her eyes, so deep, this way before. His hand was warm, against skin that was barely there. “I never thought you would be so beautiful. In the books they say you're a monster – a powerful monster, but a monster just the same. But you're...” His eyes skimmed over her ample curves, the stone fire of her eyes, the pout and dimples of her pretty face. Over the snakes that were humming and singing a song of seduction his way, now. “And your snakes are so beautiful,” he added, his voice warm. Ah, a man who could appreciate her darlings. He was a rare one, indeed.

  But there were voices behind him now: Joe, and Mags, abandoning their sulking wounded charge, to come and retrieve him. It wasn't the moment. “Will? Will, what the hell are you playing at? We've got Caroline back – thank God. But she's not well. She needs you, Will. We need to get her into the warm. Come on, stop staring into the dark like you've lost your wits, you loon. Come on.”

  “Come with me?” she whispered to him, and he was still for a moment. Like he was definitely considering it.

  But the others were almost on him – and he looked around to them, and sighed. “I can't,” he murmured. “I have things to do, here. Can't you–” And he gazed at her, suddenly hopeful. Suddenly worshipful, as befitted him. It was what Medusa liked to see, in an approaching lover. It was appropriate. “Will you come back? Will you come visit?”

  There it was, her invitation. And she'd be back, all right. “I'll come back for you,” she promised, as she faded, atom by atom and spark of light by spark of light, into the airy cold darkness of the night, on her way bit by bit back to paradise. “Keep watch. You owe me, my love. A god does you a favour, you'd better be careful what she claims back.”

  But her last glimpse of him, he did not look frightened. Only excited. And her snakes hissed, “Ours. We'll come back and claim him, in time.” As she disappeared into the higher realm, into the dark.

  The End

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  Did you love Snakes On An Immortal Dame? Then you should read The Longest Ever Very Short Phone-Call by Polly Connor!

  When narcissistic family members and money troubles meet, an explosion is probably going to result! Simone has money troubles, and business troubles, but most of all she has family troubles. To be specific, her new business has money troubles, which her personality-disordered mother has decided to come riding to the rescue over... But should she trust her mom, one last time? Short, approximately 2000 words.

  Also by Polly Connor

  Jane In Space

  Jane In Space I

  Jane In Space II

  Jane In Space III

  Standalone

  The
Longest Ever Very Short Phone-Call

  Snakes On An Immortal Dame

  Christmas Kisses in Space