A few more people arrived and filled up the chairs around me. The woman who sat down next to me had long dark hair in lots of skinny braids, with undercuts shaved above her ears, numerous piercings, and tattoos that snaked all over her arms and torso. She was dressed in a leather halter bikini top and low-slung black pants full of rings and zippers. I noticed that one of her earrings looked like a silver tentacle curling around her ear. She had intense dark eyes and a narrow mouth sharply painted with inky lipstick that matched her long polished nails. She turned to me and held out a plate. “Bacon-wrapped date?”
The offer wasn’t what startled me. It was her voice, deep velvet and musical, combined with a bright smile that showed slightly crooked front teeth. “Thanks,” I said, setting my drink down to take one. It was crispy and chewy and salty and sweet and absolute heaven. I offered her some of my popcorn in return, and she took a handful.
“This movie is my favorite ever! It’s absolutely terrible. I love your honeybear buns, by the way.” She jerked her chin up at my hair, catching me off guard again.
“Thanks, I was just thinking I love your braids, too.” That was a total lie. I mean, the braids were gorgeous, but I was thinking more about how to keep her talking, and whether I could keep from full-body blushing if she did. Something about the combination of her carefree high energy and that gothic dangerous look was incredibly hot. I was always a lot more awkward around women I found attractive than men. With women, it was a lot harder to tell the difference between pure friendliness and reciprocated interest. I was always afraid of offending a fellow chick by flirting with her.
The movie was truly awful--something about zombies--but in that way that’s so bad it comes all the way back around to being fun, especially with a whole crowd of bad-movie fans who’d been drinking and partying and who were loaded for bear with their own commentary. My drink was strong enough to make me silly, and I was enjoying the hell out of myself, laughing at everything, savoring my popcorn. My new friend shared more of her bacon-wrapped dates and I got more popcorn for both of us, and she was giggly too, so we kept setting each other off. I had tears in my eyes and my stomach hurt and it was magnificent.
When it was over, the screen changed to animated art shorts, which normally I would’ve gobbled up like the popcorn. But people were shifting around, stretching and talking and not settled back into viewing again yet, and my new friend was smiling that huge perky-goth smile at me. “Did I tell you? It’s kind of transcendently bad, isn’t it?”
“It was great.” I meant it.
She stood and stretched, exposing a smooth expanse of soft, slightly curved, tattoo-adorned belly. I tried not to stare. “I have to go put my plate away,” she announced. “Want to go for a walk?”
That’s the thing with women. If a guy had asked me to walk to his camp, I’d have been pretty sure he was interested in sex, and planning to try to have some with me. With a girl, a walk is often just a walk. Even if one or both of you is thinking about sex. “Sure.” I tried to sound casual. “I’m Mari, by the way.”
“I’m Sarafina,” she said. I got up and fell in beside her as she picked her way through the crowd. She was very tall, partly owing to big stompy boots, but even without them she’d have had at least a couple inches on me, and at five foot ten, I’m hardly petite. “Are you new here?”
“To Morph, yeah, it’s my first time.”
We reached the path. Someone in a grotesque troll mask ran past, clutching a bottle of booze and cackling, pursued by three shouting people in tutus. We let them pass and she glanced at me with a raised eyebrow and a glint. “Do I get to give you a virgin’s spanking?”
“I need a whipping boy.” I rolled my eyes. But that was more because I was going to trip over my own feet if I met her gaze.
She laughed. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. It’s kind of a dopey tradition, anyway. If people want to go around spanking each other or getting spanked, they should just say so and not make up excuses.”
I changed the subject because I wasn’t going to be able to talk to her intelligently if I started thinking about anyone’s pants at half mast. “How long have you been coming?”
“Let’s see...I went to Burning Man the first time back...I guess it was close to ten years ago now. Yeah. So the next year I went to every regional burn I could get to, including Morph. But this is the only one I get to every year, because it’s where I celebrate my anniversary.”
“You’re married?” Something drooped in me a little bit.
“Oh, no.” Again that throaty, unrestrained laugh. “I mean the anniversary of my transition.”
I could tell from her amused look that she was seeing the tumblers in my head fall into place as I realized what she meant. “Oh, you’re-- oh.” I felt like an idiot.
She grinned. “Does that bother you?” She didn’t sound all that concerned about it, but she was studying me out of the corner of her eye.
“No,” I said hastily. “I mean...I’ve known some trans people but--I just didn’t realize it. With you. I mean.”
“You have a foolproof way to tell?” She still twinkled with amusement; I was glad she didn’t seem to find my awkwardness offensive.
“I guess not,” I admitted.
Before I could act the doofus any more than I was, she pointed just ahead of us. “Here we are!”
Sarafina’s camp was somewhere between Science Faction and mine, a traveling-circus-themed tent village tucked away off the beaten path. In between the largest two red-and-white striped pavilions there was an open lawn, and a gate beside the road that was formed from two metal pipe sculptures hooked up to propane containers and lit with flames.
On that lawn, a circle had been marked out with rope on the ground. Outside it were spectators, and within it were fire performers. On the far side of the circle, more performers soaked the wicks on their fire props, while safety people crouched with wet towels and eyes fixed on the current performers. “Why don’t you enjoy the show?” said Sarafina. “I’ll just drop this off at my tent and I’ll join you.”
Okay, so “a walk” was just a walk, for now. I was relieved and disappointed--relieved, only because although my Beloved had never asked me to be exclusively his and he wasn’t even human, it had always felt somehow disloyal to do anything with anyone else. Disloyal, and very lonely.
I just nodded and moved closer to the circle, becoming transfixed by the whirling flames. Right now, there was a duet going on, a guy and a girl spinning poi together in impossible intricate patterns, weaving the flaming balls around each other in perfect sync. This camp had a small sound system--probably not more than a high-end portable stereo--that was playing music with a mix of tribal percussion, electronic loops, exotic instruments, and industrial noises that was both seductive and spooky. They were dancing with each other as well as spinning, graceful and fluid, almost a tango.
Another man stepped out of the shadows, carrying a staff. One of the safety people called out to him, waving him away, but he ignored it. He circled the spinners, joining their dance as their poi flames started to shrink and go blue. He stepped between them, holding the staff as though to keep them apart, a fragment of story told through fire. He muttered something to them, and the two dancers backed away and stared holes into each other as they let their poi come to a stop. The staff wielder knelt with the staff across the back of his neck, and the poi spinners stepped forward together to light either end of his staff with the last of their flames. As his wicks flared, they gave a half dozen tight, controlled spins to put out their poi, and strode out of the circle in opposite directions. It was a beautiful, dramatic, a flawless transition. The safety person left off protesting.
The staff wielder stood up and began spinning and tossing the staff. He was strange and compelling--short and barrel-chested, his hair a wild mat of unkempt curls beneath a red newsboy hat. His nose was long and his features
sharp. I couldn’t tell exactly what was strange about his eyes, but they were intense, unsettling. And at first I thought his skin was ruddy, but then I realized that nearly every visible inch of his flesh was covered in elaborate patterns of fine red lines, maybe henna designs. His pants were mottled red and black, like faded black jeans that had been washed in red dye, and he wore no shirt but a denim vest covered in studs and spikes that glinted in the fire, and that had a big leather patch on the back with MOTOR CITY painted onto it. No one could take their eyes off him. He smiled, baring teeth that were dingy, crooked, and oddly spaced. His performance in this tucked-away camp with its clustered striped tents and flaming sculptures and roped-off ring, with all the performers and costumed onlookers, with the flames that just barely held off the encroaching darkness, made me feel like I’d stumbled into a wild otherworld that would vanish by morning.
He stroked each of his arms in turn with one end of the staff, and flames licked along his bare red-marked flesh. He tossed the staff and caught it on top of his head, where it slowly revolved as we all gasped and he held out his arms, somehow still flaming. With quick swipes, he extinguished his arms and took up the staff again. He reached bare-handed for one end, seeming to pluck a ball of flame from it, and hurled it toward some of the spectators. They shrieked and jumped back, but the fire winked out before it reached them. Excited babble swept the crowd. He did it twice more, then blew a stream of flame from the end of the staff toward the onlookers. The safety people rushed in with their towels, quenching the ends of his staff and saying something angrily to him. He curled his lip, snarling at them, threw down the staff, and stalked back off into the night.
Sarafina appeared beside me again. She’d traded the zippered pants for a lavish flowing skirt with a fringed brocade shawl and several coin- and shell-adorned belts over it. “What did I miss?” The crowd was still murmuring and shuffling.
“Some crazy dude,” I said. “Had some amazing moves, but a real ‘safety third’ type. They chased him off.”
“My turn, then.” She lifted her chin and smiled. She crossed the circle, holding out her hands, and someone handed her a pair of iron fans. She lit their wicks and entered the circle, holding them behind her like wings and pulsing them.
She began to dance as a new piece of music started, Spanish guitar with deep electronic beats behind it. Of course, because she wasn’t gorgeous enough, she was also a masterful tribal fusion belly dancer. She undulated, her hips twitching in perfectly-controlled shimmies and drops, the fan wicks like blossoms of fire stirred by the serpentine rippling of her arms. She used them like they were emanations from her hands, like she was an ancient Babylonian sorceress performing wordless ritual. She twirled, her skirts blooming around her; she traced fire along her torso as her chest and abdomen rolled with the movement, as if drawn to the flames.
I was so spellbound that I probably wouldn’t have taken my eyes off of her, except that she dropped to her knees to execute another backbend and before I could look down, I noticed a newcomer across the circle.
He was in a long dark coat hanging open, hovering almost behind the big pavilion, but his face was pallid and seemed to float in the darkness. What I saw, though, were his eyes. Not eyes at all, really, so much as twin voids, roiling in on themselves. Voids that would normally have taken up his entire face, save for this flesh mask he’d constructed.
He wasn’t paying attention to Sarafina. He was looking at me. Looking into me. And he smiled, with a mouth full of long, razor-like teeth. He hadn’t looked like that when he dragged Charlie away, because we were in a spirit realm. But I remembered all too well that razor smile from my own past. From my bedroom, curled up clutching a razor sharp as those teeth, clutching the covers like they were a shield, his voice in my head, coaxing me. Would you feel better if I smiled...?
Sarafina stood up again, her fan moving between me and him with a whoosh of flame. As I adjusted to the darkness behind her again, I saw only a bit of his coat as he slipped away.
My heart skidded and thumped on the wall of my chest. My fingers were icy. I looked wildly around, wanting to run away, afraid to leave the comfort of the firelight for the vast darkness all around. I took a half step, stopped, turned, hugged myself, shivered, started to move again, stopped. No. No. I had broken free of him. Hadn’t I? I had promised myself, no more fear. I gripped my upper arms as if I could still my own trembling.
He was here. I had hoped--but no. No refuge here. No time to prepare before facing him, whatever I was supposed to do about that.
I slipped through the crowd and braved the dark, ducking around tents and speed-walking back to the path. There was no sign of him, but I was sure he was going to jump out at me from behind everything I passed. I was jogging by the time I reached the bigger road and could walk down the center of it, comforted by the flickering lamps and the crush of people around me.
I beelined back to my tent and ran inside, zipping it shut with the fervor of a little kid leaping the last couple of feet into bed to avoid the monsters under it. Only then, enclosed in my Sharpie wards and nylon walls, did I start to feel safe again. The adrenaline drained off, leaving me weak and limp. I checked my watch. It was after four in the morning. This was crazy--it was late, I was still worn out and traumatized, I’d had a drink that packed a punch, and this event had a very time-out-of-time feel to it. I’d ducked out on Sarafina without a word, and I felt bad about that, but I wasn’t even sure I could find my way back to her camp now.
Now that the panic was wearing off, I decided that I needed to call it a night. After a good long sleep, I’d be much better equipped to figure out what, if anything, I should attempt to do about this.
I had settled into my sleeping bag and was on the verge of falling asleep when the thought came to me. The only time I’d ever seen him materialize was when I was preparing to die. And as desperate as my life was in a lot of ways now, I knew for sure I wanted to live. Is he here for me, or is he here for someone else? But it was like a shout into ocean waves, faint and washed away as sleep crashed over and submerged me.
CHAPTER SIX
When I woke, I’d been dreaming about Lola and about my memories of going to cranky, nasty old Florence Grayson’s funeral.
I’d been about about eight years old, and I lived in a neighborhood in Florida where the houses kept a discreet distance and a neutrally patrician tone while chaos raged behind my parents’ door and my mother’s wildflower garden overtook the lawn. The one thing my parents could agree on at the time was that it was best to have me out of their hair while they finished ripping their marriage to shreds. Lola, my mother’s best friend, was a suitable third party; related to neither of them, loved and trusted like family by my Russian mother, sharing a Cuban heritage and community ties with my father. She welcomed the chance to shelter me from their battles and have me to herself.
I saw her small house in her scruffy neighborhood as a refuge, and her single, working-woman life through romantic eyes. Although I was still so young, she treated me as my own person. My parents’ other adult friends would be Mr. this or Mrs. that, but she was never anything other than Lola to me. Lola kept bees in her tiny backyard, in the midst of a wild herb garden that replaced the grass, much to the neighborhood’s and my consternation. Among the many things Lola taught me while I lived with her was the microcosm of a beehive, including their finely-tuned instincts and communication dances, and to thank them for the honey I learned to collect. She had no fear of bees and encouraged me to let go of my fear of them, too. If I understood them, she said, I would respect their behavior and live in peace with them; and if one poor frightened bee did sting me, I should feel compassion for it. It was only being brave in the face of something much bigger than it could understand, and its sacrifice was much more painful to it than the discomfort of a sting was for me.
That was life with Lola. And then there was Florence Grayson.
Mrs.
Grayson lived next door, a widow with no children and a perpetually sour expression. I disliked her because she was thin and wizened and scary-looking, and if I strayed an inch onto her brownish stamp of a yard, she’d yell at me through the window. Lola knocked on her door a few times a week, always bearing some small treat-- raw honey we’d gathered and bouquets of fresh, fragrant herbs, or a piece of the cinnamon cake she and I had labored to bake together, or a bag of coffee beans because she “happened” to get an extra at the store, or a copy of the Sunday paper. The old woman accepted it with great suspicion, her mouth never straying from its disapproving pucker, but Lola smiled and greeted her as warmly as if they were old friends.
On Easter Sunday, Lola made up a pretty basket lined with dried Spanish moss and filled with an assortment of little treats, and instructed me--still in my pretty dress and Mary Janes from church that morning--to take it over to Mrs. Grayson. I was a real brat about it. I wheedled and moaned and made faces and flung myself about the room like my Oscar depended on it, but Lola was unmoved. She asked me, in an exceedingly reasonable tone, to please just take it over and let Mrs. Grayson see my nice outfit, and to make sure to wish her a happy Easter.
I dragged my heels with every step, taking the long way down the walk and across the sidewalk instead of the shortcut across the yard that would have gotten me yelled at. Despite my best attempt to paste on a smile and use a cheerful voice, she just stared at me with her mouth still twisted in that mean-looking way and her ancient features blurred by the mesh of the screen door. The stale air that wafted out of the house smelled like an old person’s house, that musty mothball smell that makes every child uneasy. She hesitated, looking me over, and then she opened the screen and reached out and grasped the handle with her knobby-knuckled fingers. She pulled back with it like a turtle ducking into its shell and closed the door without a word.
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 8