by C J Paget
This was heaven. Tosha closed her eyes and soaked. The water didn’t move. It didn’t have to. She imagined this was how babies felt before they were born—no wonder they cried when they came out and only calmed down when they were wrapped and warm and touching again.
She felt a finger on her ribs. Her eyes shot open, and she jumped. They’d been discovered! She shrieked.
Audrey didn’t give her a chance for her terror to subside, but dove under the water and tickled again, before turning and diving over the small partition that separated the hot water tub from the tepid swimming pool. Her long limbs cut the surface silently and she slid away under the blue.
Tosha jumped over the wall after Audrey, shivering in the colder water. She felt the eddies racing across her skin, a feeling she didn’t even get in the summer when the modesty laws forced bathing women to wear body stockings with frills to protect public order. But her breasts and her hips slowed her down—Audrey’s boyish body and long limbs meant that she moved and turned quicker, and it took everything Tosha had to keep up with her.
They thrashed and laughed, they squealed beneath the water where it wouldn’t be heard. Tosha pushed as fast as she could until she got within reach of Audrey, but the younger girl dove deep to the bottom, then squatted and pushed, rocketing up to the surface and out onto the deck. Tosha grabbed the edge and swung her left leg up, bounding out of the water. Now they were on land, where Tosha could move better. She chased Audrey around the deck, forcing herself to hiss through her teeth instead of laughing out loud as they slipped and bounded around each other. The moment could give them away, ruin everything, but she couldn’t pass it up.
Tosha cornered Audrey back near the hot pool and lunged for her, catching her around the waist and digging her fingers into her sides, dancing across Audrey’s ribs and reducing her to a pile of giggles. Tosha followed her down, crouching over Audrey and continuing the torture until her ire was sated.
She sat back on her haunches and caught her breath, both of them now too winded to keep fighting.
“Chris’, Toshi…” Audrey panted, “ya fights dirty.”
“Ha! You starts with ticklin’ me when m’eyes closed!”
Audrey laughed. “Ya… is true.” She sat up and regarded Tosha enviously. “You’re lucky, ya know.”
Tosha followed her friend’s gaze and blushed. “I’m not that lucky. They’re a big pain. An’ sure’n you’ll get yours soon.”
“Nothin’ like those!.” Audrey reached out and cupped each of Tosha’s breasts as if she were touching a sculpture. “Wish’n I had yours, bein’ so nice!”
“Yours are fine, Audrey.” Tosha pushed Audrey’s hands away. She was getting cold.
Audrey smiled conspiratorially, “I should beat ‘em down so mine’ll catch up.” She cocked her hands back, and Tosha, fast as she could, crossed her arms over her chest. Audrey darted her hand in and gave Tosh’s nipple a light tweak.
“No! Ow!” Tosha winced and hissed sharply.
“I hurtcha?” Audrey seemed puzzled.
“Chris’ yes!” Her left nipple continued to sting, “‘s cold! Sure’n they always hurt in the cold…” Tosha stood and ran back to the hot tub, hugging her breasts to keep them from bouncing and stinging more, and slipped back into the water. The warmth relaxed her aureoles and took the sting away.
“Cummon, Audrey, get back in here! Freezes out there!”
Audrey stood and strode toward the water. Her hips swayed as she walked… they’d started spreading. Tosha’s heart fell as she realized that there weren’t going to be many more sleepovers before the card’s prophecies proved out. The starvation-thin blonde, looking tragically less like a child than before, sat on the edge of the pool and dangled her legs into the hot water.
The full moon was overhead, but the only teller of its tale was the light defusing dimly across the overcast like a lantern above a tent flap. Midnight. The witching hour approached, and Tosha knew that whatever time they had grew shorter by the sigh.
Tosha didn’t say anything for the space of thirty breaths. She wondered if Audrey would break the silence first. The longer she waited, the more relaxed she was. Maybe… maybe… she’d be up for what they’d really come for. Maybe they really could do it together.
Maybe he would want them both.
Maybe… but did they have time? She wanted to see for herself, to be sure. She wanted to make sure the rumors were true, before she actually approached him.
Even with the chill on the air, Tosha couldn’t sit still—the water’s warmth slouched toward burning. She pushed herself up onto the ledge, matching Audrey’s posture, but she couldn’t get comfortable. Her mission nagged at her, and she had to see it through while there was still time. Tonight, while the wizard was gone, she had one chance to make sure this was what she wanted. After tonight it would be too late.
For Audrey, as well as for herself.
She gave up shifting her arse uncomfortably around on the cold concrete. She stood up in the wan light and started casting around for her clothes.
“Toshi? What’s wrong?”
“It’s gettin’ late. He’ll come back and we’ll get taken. He’ll call the ‘thor’ties or worse…” She’d meant only an excuse to get dressed and resume the quest, but as she spoke them, the reasons sounded deadly earnest. “We shouldn’t be here.”
Until now, she’d not descried the danger of her plan.
The breeze picked up, violating the still sanctum of the garden pool and standing the hairs on Tosha’s neck end-on. She silently prayed to the moon to show its face and show them safely home.
The plan wouldn’t work. She’d been a fool to try. She had to get Audrey out before they were both caught.
Audrey’s feet splashed out of the water, making a dull flap-flap as they padded across the deck. “‘s cold, Toshi dear. We gonna dry off with snow?”
“Ah, sod all!” Her wanderlust had them in a fix now—they had no towels, their clothes were so thin they would freeze rigid walking the two blocks home through the alleys unless they stopped and stood in the steam vents—and then got burned. She squatted down over their pile of clothes and sorted one girl’s from another. Flannel pajamas, a flannel wrap, natty hand-darned stockings, shoes that weren’t much better than moccasins. None of them would do.
Audrey cleared her throat, and Tosha craned her neck back to look up at her friend. Beneath her green eyes and pale nipples, Audrey dangled the sheepskin coat playfully in front of her, like Eve with an olive branch.
“Ya canna be serious.”
“It’s better than nothin’.”
Audrey had a point. Tosha took the coat, started with Audrey’s feet. The fleece lining wasn’t happy about being used as a towel, and it took longer than it should have.
Every moment that slipped by made the panic in Tosha’s throat grow thicker. The cold crawling all over as the hot water froze on her skin didn’t help. She worked her way past Audrey’s hips, and stomach, and neck, until she was patted pink enough to show up red in the blue light, then she handed the fleece to Audrey and stretched her arms out like Mother Mary’s little bairn while Audrey patted her down. The dryness didn’t warm her, but it seemed to slow the chilling of her blood. When Audrey got around front to her collar bone, she stopped and looked in Tosha’s eyes.
Audrey’s eyes welled, and she held Tosha’s cheeks in her hands. “Thankee, Toshi. Sure’n I never seen such a thing as all this, an’ could never will again.” Audrey beamed, as if Tosha had given her a puppy, and pulled the fleece from between them and embraced her. The warmth was welcome, but it wasn’t enough. Still, it was good to share the pool, and the moment, and the cold breeze, with this dearer-than-sister that the fates would take from her.
“Cummon,” Tosha spoke softly in Audrey’s ear again, like she should have been doing all along. “Le’sen get our kit on and skedaddle.”
“Aye.”
Audrey grudgingly let her go, and they both crouched to grab thei
r clothes when a sharp cry, like a toddler being burned alive, pierced the garden. They both sprang to the edge of the hedgerow and peered around.
Tosha stuck her fingers in her ears and prayed frantically, afraid to peek around the hedge to see the source of the terrible screaming. What was the wizard doing? Was he sacrificing a baby? They sometimes made sacrifices out of season…
No, she had to see, even if the sound choked her throat shut sure as death. Tosha dropped to her knees, low to the ground, hoping that if the wizard glanced her direction he wouldn’t be able to see. She grabbed a handful of prickles and leaned out cautiously, snaking one eye around the edges of the holly leaves.
She gasped.
There, under the watchful gaze of the statues, a feral cat, hackles up, circled an injured rabbit. The rabbit screamed, oh gods how it screamed! But the wizard wasn’t anywhere in sight. The cat yawled and lunged at the rabbit, and the rabbit slashed at its face and shrieked again.
Tosha knew she had to stop it, the rabbit would give them away. But the primal violence of the scene fixed her to the ground like snow. Her hand squeezed the holly branches, squeezed until she felt blood flow.
“Toshi, Toshi!” Audrey yanked her back onto the concrete. “What is it?”
Tosha snapped out of her trance. In spite of the cold, Audrey’s face was slick with sweat, her eyes wide with panic. Tosha grabbed her neck and pulled her roughly to her and hissed urgently in her ear, “A rabbit. It’s just a rabbit.”
Audrey pushed her out of the way and peered around the corner herself, then let out a cry of dismay and jumped up, running naked in the gloom across the blank snow, etching her signature with every footfall, until she shooed the cat away. The snow wouldn’t melt before the wizard saw their footprints. There was no way out anymore.
Audrey fell to her knees over the shivering, terrified rabbit and picked it up like an infant. It kicked and flailed, digging its claws into her skin in its panic, but Audrey held it firm, murmuring softly into its ears. Kneeling there on the spoiled, glittering canvas, looking for all the world like Brigid suckling a stillborn child, Audrey rocked on her haunches.
The terrible sound stopped.
Nothing stirred within the house.
It hadn’t given them away.
Relief flooded through Tosha’s veins like Irish coffee. The damage was done, but the gods had granted the reprieve she’d been praying for. And, as if in blessing of Audrey’s mercy, the clouds overhead parted and moonlight flooded the garden, dazzling on the frozen white and lighting the statues like they were children of Luna herself.
Tosha had never known that the world held such beauty—she had to be part of it. Before her good sense could get the better of her, she sprang into the middle of the rose-ringed grove herself, joining her friend, touching the wounded animal gently, cooing over it. Audrey smiled at her.
“Try letting her go,” Tosha said. “Sure’n if she can walk, she’ll find her burrow.”
Audrey nodded, and set the rabbit down gently on the snow. The small creature looked up at them, and limped until it was out of arms reach as if expecting to be clubbed, then turned and scampered off into the roses, keeping its weight off its left front paw. “Ye think she’ll be okay?”
Tosha smiled. “Animus Audrey, sure’n she’ll be okay now that you’ve saved her.” Audrey always had the gift for animals, even Tosha’s mother said so, and her healing hands only worked on people.
“Okay.” Audrey grabbed Tosha’s hands and the two of them hauled each other back to their feet. Tosha’s toes were stinging, and Audrey’s legs were bright red where they’d been in the snow. They needed to get back, get warmed up, get home.
But Luna lit the statues up, and they could see now that each one had an incense bowl and an engraving. “He keeps it out here in the garden!” Tosha couldn’t keep them quiet. The words came out, loud as day.
Writing! Writing that was for more than posting the rules and the power schedule, writing that was forbidden for everything else. The writing that told stories about the people in bronze and marble here.
Now that there was light, Tosha could see some of the forms, and recognized them.
Audrey followed her gaze and gasped. “Sure’n these be the townsfolk. Look! L’il Lilly from over the burn, lookin’ jes like she did that day the police took her off.”
And so it was.
Tosha looked around to see if she recognized any other faces. There, off to her right. She rushed to the statue near where they had scaled the wall, the stiff turf stabbing like little needles into the bottoms of her frozen feet.
“It’s Pastor Mathus what disappeared last year! It says here at the base, his name,” Tosha whispered.
“Here’s one of my Auntie what got taken by flu under care of the wizard,” came Audrey’s voice from a few feet to her right.
Tosha moved to her left. Someone else she knew.
Everyone here was someone she knew that disappeared during dealings with him.
“It’s old man Jordan from the woodgas plant!” Tosha hissed, not worrying anymore that it might carry up into the lone, lit window. “The one we used to go and listen to ‘is stories, ‘member?” She turned to her right, expecting Audrey to be standing next to her, but she wasn’t there. She looked around, but there weren’t even any new footprints around the right side of the circle. Every set of marble eyes gazing down at their domain, as if left desolated by the lack of subjects, made the grove feel suddenly empty. Tosha had to stop herself from calling out, and instead she turned to the right and looked back towards the pool.
There, in front of the last statue before the break in the hedge. Tosha strode over to her, suddenly aware that her feet were growing numb. Frostbite. They had to get back to the warm pool, and then into their clothes, and soon.
“Audrey…” She put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. She was shivering. She put her ears up to the light girl’s ear. “Audrey?”
Audrey jumped and backed cautiously away from her, as if she expected Tosha to be carrying a knife. She mumbled incoherently, wide eyed. Terrified.
“Audrey, what’s wrong?”
“G… g… get back.” Her voice was bordering on frantic, and her pale skin in the moonlight washed a ghostly shade of white, like a snow child.
Tosha advanced on her, and Audrey panicked. She turned as if to run. Her legs were longer, Tosha didn’t have a choice. She sprang and tackled Audrey, the snow biting both of their bodies as they wrestled on the ground until Tosha managed to pull Audrey up and slap her, hard.
“Gods, Audrey, what the hell’s crawlin into ye?”
Audrey tried to talk, but she couldn’t form the words. Her terror seemed to brim out of her like a pestilence. She raised a shaking finger and pointed at the statue she’d been studying. Slowly, reluctantly, Tosha turned her head and followed the line of her hand.
“Holy Chris’.” Tosha barely formed the words.
There, in front of them both. Not in stone like the other statues, but in shining liquid black, like oil and lamp at once. There they were, two figures, free floating. A swimming girl, young, nude, still with boyish lines, her form supported by her flowing long hair. And swimming above her, touching her side as if in a tickle, was another girl. With curly hair. And full breasts. And hips. And both figures were laughing.
It was right next to the gap in the hedge leading to the pool. It hadn’t been there when they’d come in, Tosha was sure.
She stood up hesitantly. Audrey hadn’t learned to read yet. Maybe she was wrong. She had to be wrong. It couldn’t be…
But there it was. In Gothic script, engraved into the base. “Audrey Campbell and Tosha Bruce.”
And today’s date.
Tosha whirled around and ran to Audrey, grabbing her by the hands and pulling her up.
“Cummon, love, back to the clothes. Lezgo home!” The two of them started for the bottleneck, for the safety of the hedge and the pool.
But, before they’d gone
two steps, the incense bowls at the base of every statue sprang into flame.
Audrey froze in place.
“Audrey!” Tosha’s voice rang like a gong in the garden. The time for whispering had long past. She could think of nothing but getting over the wall and running home to safety, no matter how much her feet were shredded or her legs were cut climbing and running without protection. “We gotta get away!”
“No.” The wizard’s voice, like a demon’s, seemed to come from everywhere at once. Audrey whipped around to face the house, and screamed. Tosha looked up to see the imposing, willowy man in flowing purple robes, his graying beard coming to a fine point at the end of his chin, standing at the top of the stairs on the entry patio. “Bring them.”
A hand grabbed Tosha’s hair from behind. She screamed and tried to kick and punch her way free. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Audrey clawing and scratching as she wailed cruelly at the faceless man who also had hold of her hair.
They were hauled, their hair nearly coming out at the roots, clawing and crying, across the lawn, up the steps. Somewhere through her fury, Tosha looked longingly down at the pool at the far end of the garden and wished she was back in the heavenly bath. With Audrey.
She wondered how long she had left to hold onto that memory.
Her assailant gave her hair a hard yank and threw her. She landed on a sofa arm, hard, and the air rushed out of her. She tried to move, she tried to breathe, but all she could do was crumple on the floor and gasp like a freshly-caught fish on the monger’s block.
After nearly an hour—or perhaps only a moment—Tosha’s lungs expanded again, and she drank in the sweet, pungent air.
It smelled like roses.
She opened her eyes. Audrey’s arse filled her vision, about three feet from her. Her rib cage was moving—she was breathing. Tosha sighed with relief.
She tried to move her hands. Each of her fingers worked. She took a few more deep breaths, then looked around.
They were alone.
Tosha reached out for Audrey. Her hands rested lightly on her friend’s ribs. Audrey winced.