February Thaw

by Tanya Huff

  "No!" Donna's scream got lost in other screams, in the spitting roar of the pair of submachine guns, in lead impacting with flesh. She didn't feel the pavement rip through her jeans and into both her knees as she flung herself down by Bradley's side. Two crimson rosettes blossomed and spread across his chest and a line of them stitched colour down his leg.

  But he was breathing. And conscious.

  "Donna?"

  "Shut up!" She snatched his hand up off of the ground, forced the bent fingers straight, and pressed Shing Li-ung into his palm. "Here, this is yours now, I'm giving it to you."

  He blinked. Tried to focus on his hand. Couldn't do it. "Wha...?"

  "Fucking stupid, Kae Bing."

  And the world came back.

  "You just signed your death warrant, you know." The quiet conversational tone was infinitely more terrifying than an attempt to terrify would have been. "You and your girlfriend."

  "My... sis... ter."

  "Rough luck for your folks," said one, shaking his head.

  "Say good-bye," said the other.

  The guns came up. Donna saw fingers tighten on the triggers and afterwards, although she knew it was impossible, she swore she saw the first bullets emerge.

  Then the street between them became filled with thirty feet of scarlet and gold dragon.

  "Ho... ly... fuck."

  Shing Li-ung bent its massive head down until its golden moustaches brushed the pavement and just for an instant Donna saw her brother reflected in the starlit depths of its eyes. "YOU RISKED YOUR OWN LIFE FOR ANOTHER," it observed. "YOU ARE WORTHY."

  "Awe... some."

  The dragon smiled. "YES."

  Then it turned and faced the gunmen.

  Donna closed her eyes. The wail of a police siren snapped them open again. She should have realized. Fifty-two division was barely four blocks away. They must have heard the shots.

  "Shing Li-ung! Look out..."

  Then she was looking through red and gold after-images at a police car and an empty street. Two submachine guns lay by the opposite curb and a rain of bullets dropped harmlessly to the pavement between. An Asian police constable stood half out of the car, staring wide-eyed at the space Shing Li'ung had filled, murmuring Tien Lung over and over.

  "Jesus H. Christ!" His partner obviously saw only the bodies and the blood.

  The next little while became a kaleidoscope of flashing lights, loud voices, and the lingering scent of ginger. Gently, but firmly, the ambulance attendants moved Donna away from her brother and she found herself standing beside the young woman whose life he'd saved.

  Cold fingers clutched at her arm. "The dragon can't let him die."

  "It doesn't work like that."

  "Then tell me his name, I'll pray to the Buddha for him."

  Donna closed her hand around the enamelled pin that had slid to the pavement when her brother had lost consciousness. The curved loop of Shing Li-ung's tail cut into her palm. It took a moment for her to find her voice. "His name," she said, swallowing tears, "is Kae Bing."

  *

  The graveyard was still and quiet, the only sound a cicada high in one of the surrounding trees. Donna laid Shing Li-ung down on top of the tombstone and dug a stick of incense out of her purse, her hand a little unsteady as she bent and pushed one end into the grass.

  She stepped to one side as Kae Bing knelt and pulled out a disposable lighter.

  "Not very traditional," he muttered, "but it'll have to do."

  Donna slipped a hand under his elbow to steady him as he stood. Over a month in hospital had left him weak and pale, tiring easily still in pain, but alive. His trial was scheduled for October 6th, over thirteen weeks away, but everyone concerned seemed to think his dramatic change of heart combined with a willingness to co-operate would keep him out of prison.

  No one mentioned the dragon.

  The bodies of two gunmen still hadn't been found.

  "Are you sure this is going to work?"

  "Look..." Donna sighed and pushed her hair back off her face. "...we agreed that Shing Li-ung is too much for one person to handle."

  Kae Bing patted the warm marble of the tombstone, brows drawn down. "Grandma managed."

  "Grandma knew who she was. She had centuries of history behind her. What do we have? We're not white, we're not Chinese..."

  "But we have a dragon." Shaking off the melancholy, her brother grinned. "Let's get on with it."

  They each gripped one corner of the dragon pin between thumb and forefinger and held it over the rising column of blue-grey smoke.

  "If this doesn't work, we're going to feel like idiots," Kae Bing pointed out, nervously licking his lips.

  "If this doesn't work," Donna reminded him, squinting through the smoke, "we've got something much bigger to worry about."

  "Yeah. About thirty feet bigger." His brows dipped down again. "I wonder where it came from."

  "Maybe, it came from where we're sending it."

  He blinked and shook his head. "Deep Donna. Very deep. So let's do it on three..."

  Their unison sound a little ragged and, over her brother's deeper, measured tones, Donna could hear her voice shaking.

  "We give Shing Li-ung, Shining Heart, to the spirit of Chinese-Canadians so that spirit might be protected."

  They'd argued for weeks about the wording.

  The colours of the pin began to move; to throb to the beating of a pair of hearts; to swirl about in a pattern too complicated to understand.

  Then all they held was memory as the smoke from the incense rose over their heads and disappeared.

  Kae Bing swallowed audibly. "Holy shit. It worked."

  "Yeah." Donna stared down at her fingertips then slowly raised them to brush at the tears trickling down her cheeks. She didn't know why she was crying. It wasn't as though they'd actually given the dragon away.

  "Uh, Donna? We forgot, I mean, how are we going to know if it considers them... us... worthy?"

  *

  "Mommy! Look at the kite! Look at the dragon kite."

  A number of people at the Annual Chinese Heritage Festival squinted skyward, heads turned by the piping cry of the child. High overhead, far above the other kites, a scarlet and gold celestial dragon gleamed iridescent in the sunlight and danced with the wind. It swept over the crowd, then rose on a hundred breaths exhaled in wonder.

  Donna, her fingers white around the frame of the kite she carried, felt as though her ribs were suddenly too small to contain her heart. Faces all around her seemed lit from within. Even her parents, pulled protesting out of the suburbs by the determination of both their children, watched the dragon with a new awareness shining from their eyes. Kae Bing lifted one hand to the sky in salute.

  She bit her lip, afraid she might cry out. So, Shing Li-ung, she gave the thought to the wind. Does this mean we're worthy?

  From deep within, and from high above, and from all the people around came the answer.

  "DID YOU EVER DOUBT IT?"

  Not surprisingly, this story was for an anthology called Elf Fantastic. There were a lot of fantastic anthologies going around for a while; so many my agent once suggested there needed to be a Fantastic Fantastic, an anthology about fantasy household cleansers. Unfortunately, that never ended up going anywhere. Can't understand why...

  With the deadline for Elf Fantastic breathing down my neck and no story idea presenting itself, I spent a lot of time watching the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. In that particular Olympics – for the young and the non-sports minded – the big story was about NBA players being allowed to compete for the first time and how that would change the game. At the same time, there was a Sprite commercial in heavy rotation about how basketball players were "...tall, really tall." Hmm, I thought, elves are tall. Then I wrote this story in an afternoon in the white hot heat of inspiration. Which, I assure you, is not how I usually write.

  A few of the things reported in this story actually happened, but you'll have to decide which things for
yourself. Character names not taken from Shakespeare are the names of actors who were his contemporaries.

  “A Midsummer Night's Dream Team” may be my favorite short story title ever. I sincerely doubt I'll ever come up with one as perfect on so many levels. I love this title more than pie! Heck, I love this title more than Dean Winchester.

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream Team

  Long years ago, when lesser were the shadow veils

  That hang 'tween this world

  And the courts of proud Oberon,

  Who rules the spirits with fair Titania by his side,

  Men oft times saw the elven folk.

  Saw them in the waters,

  And riding beasts of bone or horned head,

  Saw them duel each other and more than saw;

  Battles there were in those days, great battles.

  Blood did spill red and hot upon the ground

  As immortal warriors challenged mortals of renown.

  But Gentles, times do change,

  Though slow within the Faerie court,

  And battles now must be a different sort.

  *

  "One hundred and ninety-seven countries, ten thousand, seven hundred athletes; we've been at this for two hours and we're only at Belize!" Sam Gilburne squinted through the viewfinder on her camera, saw that the entrance to the stadium was still perfectly framed and leaned back. "We're going to be here for-fucking-ever." The camera went live as the director cut to her wide shot, but the red light blinked off again almost immediately when they went in for a close up on one of a multitude of mobile units. "Mobile. Yeah, right. If you're a steroid carrying member of the weight lifting team." Fixed positions might be boring – all right, fixed positions were inevitably boring – but boredom never produced a hernia.

  She checked her shot again, made a miniscule adjustment in focus just for something to do, and wiped at the sweat dribbling down her neck. Years of practise blocked out the steady chatter in her headphones; when they wanted her, she'd hear them.

  A number of the European countries were using computer controlled units in their fixed positions, but the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, while as fascinated by high tech as anyone in the industry, recognized two very important things. The first; even the best computer couldn't respond to the unexpected the way a trained operator could. And the second; since, this time, they had lots of room on the trucks, people were cheaper.

  Although she swore to deny it later if anyone asked, Sam found herself caught up in the excitement as the Canadian team entered.

  "Camera one, when they all get down into the bowl of the stadium, I want you to give me a long, sweeping shot. Start at the flag and move back. I want to see happy faces."

  "I thought three was doing the happy faces."

  "Just give me the shot, Sam."

  As the last of the Canadian team stepped off the ramp, Sam unlocked her camera.

  "Just keep it moving. Ready one..."

  By the time she got to the end of the team, she'd grown heartily sick of all that smiling. There were those around the CBC, those who'd worked with her for almost twenty years, who believed Sam herself never smiled. That wasn't entirely true, although it was highly possible that they'd never seen her actually do it.

  When she finally managed to re-frame her establishing shot, the Ethiopian team had almost reached the bottom of the ramp. Behind them, heat shimmered up off the concrete.

  Shimmered in the gap between Ethiopia and Fiji.

  "Camera one, what are you doing?"

  "There's something wrong with my focus."

  "There's nothing wrong with your focus, lock it and leave it."

  Sam locked the camera in place and squinted around it toward the stadium entrance. Ethiopia. One of the irritatingly frequent empty spaces. Fiji.

  She took another look through the viewfinder.

  The heat shimmer maintained a careful distance behind the Ethiopian team. Within it, under a gossamer flag, shapes with flowing edges took form for a heartbeat then faded, replaced by others, who were replaced by others in their turn. Some bordered on the grotesque. Some on the beautiful. But they were all tall.

  Real tall.

  *

  "Swimming?" Sam glared up at the assignment board. "Why swimming?"

  One of the technical directors handed her a cardboard cup of coffee. "Why not swimming?"

  "Chlorine makes me itch."

  "You're not going to be in the pool, Sam." He nodded at the board. "You're up by the booth."

  "Great. Announcers make me itch."

  *

  "Camera one, what are you doing?"

  Sam frowned and flipped her microphone back around in front of her mouth. "I'm establishing the venue. What does it look like I'm doing?"

  "If I knew, I wouldn't have asked. I want the pool framed, one. You've got way too much deck at the bottom of the shot. There's only eight lanes."

  In the ninth lane, naked women, with flowing hair the colour of a sun-lit sea, swam lazy circles and waited.

  Many of the men, irrespective of country, swam a personal best that day. Personally, Sam was amazed that none of them drowned.

  *

  "Horse Park?" When she got an affirmative, Sam climbed onto the bus and collapsed into the first empty seat. Because daily temperatures were expected to climb into and then out of the thirties, Equestrian events started at seven AM. In order to have everything ready in time, crews were pulled out of bed at five. Sam didn't do so well at five. "What the hell is a three day event," she muttered darkly.

  Her seat mate stared at her in astonishment. "You don't know horses?"

  "Not biblically, no. I'm just filling in for Burbage; he's down with heat exhaustion. Don't look so worried, I can fake it if I have to."

  She didn't have to fake it; she had to remember not to follow the horned horses, the skeletal horses, or the horses who left flaming hoof prints on the course.

  "Do you hear dogs baying?" one of the Irish sound techs asked, fiddling with the bass gain.

  "I don't think they're dogs," Sam said.

  *

  "So, how'd your day at fencing go, Sam?"

  Sam shook her head as she swallowed a mouthful of beer. "Can't say as I'm surprised we only had one camera there. It's either so complicated it's beyond me or it's just plain old fucking dull."

  One of the gaffers laughed. "Got that in one."

  "What do you think it needs to jazz it up, Sam?"

  "How about two guys, six-and-a-half, seven feet tall, with hair down to their butts, wearing thigh-high boots, skin-tight pants, no shirts, and one hell of a lot of jewelry, hacking at each other with great bloody swords until one of them falls to his knees and begs for mercy."

  The din in the bar dropped by about two decibels as everyone in earshot fell into a thoughtful silence.

  "I'd watch that," a video editor muttered at last.

  Sam finished her beer. "Damn right."

  *

  On the second last day of the games, the crowd around the assignment board seemed more animated than usual. As Sam approached, one of the younger cameramen exploded out of the group and grabbed her arm. "We've got the two CBC spots at the basketball finals, Sam! You and me! Gold medal round! Do you know what that means?"

  "It's almost over?"

  "It's the US against Yugoslavia! It's the game to see! You'll be able to tell everyone back home you were there!" He paused, actually focused on her, and released her arm. "Okay, maybe not."

  "You're John Lowin, right?"

  "The very lucky John Lowin, that's me. I don't believe I'm going to be shooting this game!"

  Sam studied his face for a moment, wondered how much of these Olympics he'd been aware of, and had no chance to ask as the rest of the team descended.

  Assignments were non-negotiable. Those were the rules. In spite of the rules, Sam could've retired on what she was offered for her spot. Another time, other games, she might've been tempted.

  "You've be
en at this a long time, haven't you?" John asked as they started their equipment check.

  "Long enough," Sam agreed.

  "I bet you've seen pretty much everything."

  "I used to think so."

  *

  Tucked into the bottom third of an enormous stadium packed with over 35,000 screaming fans, the game turned out to be unexpectedly exciting basketball. The Yugoslavian team stubbornly refused to fold and stayed to within two points until the US centre finally kicked it into high gear in the last thirteen minutes.

  Not all the sweat dripping off the US team had to do with exertion. Losing would be an embarrassment none of them would ever live down. In the end, they managed to fulfill expectations – if not as easily as they'd all believed they would.

  "Camera one, what are you doing?"

  Sam zoomed back until she had the whole court in focus. "Waiting."

  "For what?"

  "Something's going to happen." All the hair on the back of her neck was standing on end. The static electricity was so high she wouldn't have been surprised to see lightning jump from rafter to rafter, run down the bleachers, off the backboard, and hit nothing but net.

  "It's already happened, one. Get in close and let's get some shots of those idiots sniffing the sho..."

  Then another team appeared at center court.

  Their bodies were too perfectly in proportion, their movements too sensuous, their faces too eerily similar for them to be human. And, if all that wasn't proof enough, beneath meters of multicoloured hair clubbed back with gold and silver bands, their ears came to graceful and prominent points.

  The audience, the players, the officials, who had all one short moment before been hooting and hollering and just generally carrying on, stared in silence. Even Sam, who'd expected an appearance of some kind, found herself at a loss for words.

  "What are you guys, Vulcans?" one of the US players demanded at last.

  "This isn't some freakin' Star Trek episode," the man beside him added.