“They are not,” the wind protests. “I am a wind. I have sisters in waters, in trees, in great old rocks. Only the fauns and satyrs have maintained our memories green.”
Eddie shakes his head in disbelief. “I knew—had heard of—the dryads. I thought that even that was an exaggeration.”
“And you are old,” the Changer says, “for a human form, but not old compared to the Earth.”
“Surely you don’t want a city!” Katsuhiro protests, his beard blown askew by the swirling wind. “I have some small wind magic of my own. I am sure that winds don’t want cities.”
“Small magics you have,” the wind agrees. “Farts.”
Aduke giggles nervously and feels the wind’s attention drawn to her. She stiffens, falls silent, but it is too late.
“Give this one to me,” the wind says. “She sings well and with conviction. Give her to me, and she shall be my chief priestess.”
Oya steps forward. “We do not give people away!”
“I hadn’t noticed,” the wind whistles snidely. “What else is war but the giving of people to death?”
Aduke puts a restraining hand on Oya’s arm. “Wind? Do you really want to be worshiped?”
“I want to be,” the voice agrees. Something like a hand tickles Aduke’s face.
“Why?”
“I am the... a wind!”
“But what good will worship do you?”
“I...”
Aduke takes advantage of the hesitation to charge forward. “My husband wanted power and lost everything for it. This man called Shango wanted power and was crippled for it. What is worship if not a form of power? You don’t need it to sustain yourself, do you?”
“No! I am a wind!”
“What good does power do anyone—especially power for no reason but for having power?” Aduke demands.
“I am a wind.”
“Would you be less a wind if you were not worshiped?”
“Everyone would forget I am a wind!”
“I would know, the Changer has never forgotten, these gathered here can tell their fellows. You are known now. How will worship change that?”
“I am... a... I have always been a... I have always been wind. I have so long been a-lone. These days many eyes have looked at me. I have not been alone, invisible, breathed but unacknowledged. I am a-lone.”
“So am I,” Aduke whispers. “My baby is gone. My husband is mad. I cannot tell my sisters what I now know to be true. I am a-lone, too. You spoke of your sisters. Can I be your sister?”
“You are a-lone?”
Aduke realizes she is crying, but she can’t stop.
“I am terribly alone, wind. I have no son, no husband, no father or mother. Knowledge sets me apart from my kinfolk. I am the one mortal among those who are almost gods. You are rich in un-aloneness compared to me.”
Aduke notices Oya looking at her, big eyes both sorrowful and proud, but there is no time to wonder what Oya thinks now.
“Poor child,” the wind whispers. “Be my priestess, and I will make you ruler of this city and many others. You will be first among mortals and honored by athanor.”
“No!” Aduke chokes around a sob. “That is a madness and a special kind of a-loneness. Do you really pity me?”
“Yes.”
“Then be my friend. Walk with me in the market. Touch my cheek, pat my hand, carry my laughter, dry my tears. Then I won’t be alone and neither”—she pauses, looks where the eyes would be if a cyclone had eyes—“neither would you.”
“I would not be a-lone. I would be a wind. I am a wind.” The soft words rush over each other as if spoken by three sets of lips with one mind behind them. “My sisters are far away. Most flit through distant crags, over lonely ocean, afraid of the bags. You would not let a wizard bag me?”
“Never!” Aduke says fiercely, not knowing how she could keep such a promise, but knowing that she would.
“Should we let the city go?”
“I think so. Many of these people are separated from those they love. Many are afraid. Let them go. You can walk with me instead of being worshiped by those who fear you.”
The wind sighs. “I could be a goddess. You could be honored.”
“If I was your friend,” Aduke says firmly, “that would be honor enough. Nothing can make you a goddess—ask Shango.”
“A friend,” the wind whistles. “Why not? Maybe later, we will be goddesses together.”
And felt as a popping of ears, the wind wall about the city of Monamona falls. There is a tremendous stillness, then the westward beating of the harmattan resumes.
Aduke raises her hand to shield her eyes from the dust and feels a gentle breeze coasting over her body, driving away the dirt and heat, leaving her deliciously comfortable.
“Let me, sister,” the wind says softly. “I will protect you who are my friend.”
Aduke nods thanks and only then does she find the courage to face the six athanor who have been listening to this strange conversation. The Changer is the first to break the silence.
“I’m very pleased,” he says. “I’ve never found it productive to fight against the wind.”
Epilogue
I can govern the United States or I can govern my daughter Alice, but I can’t do both.
—Theodore Roosevelt
The glossy program in Arthur’s hands reads: “Pan: A Musical Experience.” The fancy titles are printed over a photograph of Tommy Thunderburst playing the lyre. He is wearing nothing but a leopard skin and a vine wreath. Adoring females with wild hair, clad only in strategically placed vine leaves, cling to his legs or bite into huge, dark purple grapes. In the background, fauns play accompaniment on their syrinxes and satyrs dance or drink or leer at the girls.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” Arthur mutters to Chris.
The human just grins at him. “My friends can’t believe I have front-row tickets to this show. It’s the hottest concert going right now. Those who don’t want to hear Tommy want to get a look at the fauns and satyrs so they can brag that they saw through the stage makeup.”
Arthur moans softly. “I can’t believe that Lil and Tommy insisted on using them after all the trouble Georgios and his buddies caused.”
Chris’s grin doesn’t fade. “From what little I know about both Lil and Tommy, the risk would be irresistible.”
“That’s true enough.”
Arthur looks over his shoulder, back around the Pit, Albuquerque’s premier sport’s arena and concert facility. Every one of the seats is packed, the place aswarm with moving bodies, reeking with the odors of marijuana, alcohol, and human sweat. Idly, he wonders just how many ordinances are being violated here tonight.
“I do wish,” he continues, “that the theriomorphs had accepted Tommy and Lil’s offer of a box. We would have been safer there.”
Chris shakes his head. “This”—he gestures to the front row seats—“is exactly what they wanted—a chance to experience a concert up close and personal. In a box, you might as well be at home watching on the video screen. That’s what lots of the folks in the back are going to be doing anyhow.”
“I just hope that Lovern and his team can maintain their illusions,” Arthur says, glancing over to where Lovern, seated beside Louhi, is deep in conversation with Bronson and Rebecca Trapper. The sasquatches had driven down with Monk and Hiero, two of the tengu. They are disguised, courtesy of a temporary illusion—the trouble with the satyrs had left no time to make permanent amulets—to look like two very tall African-American humans.
Louhi, for her part, is visiting quite socially with a young woman—not one of their own party, Arthur notes nervously. Since the women must shout to be heard over the general hubbub, he is able to eavesdrop on their conversation.
“I just love your hair,” the young woman is saying. “It’s so cool! Where did you get it done?”
“My sister did it,” Louhi answers.
“Wow! Does she have a salon?”
&nbs
p; “No. She’s still... in school.”
“Around here?”
“No, she lives on a ranch in Colorado.”
Shahrazad’s sister, Arthur thinks, shaking his head slightly. No one knows what passed between the young coyote and the sorceress, but whatever it was, Louhi no longer hates Shahrazad—as her maintaining the outlandish hair coloring demonstrates. Louhi still may not be acknowledged as the Changer’s daughter, but apparently being Shahrazad’s sister means something special.
Maybe, he thinks cynically, this is simply Louhi’s newest attempt to get a hook into the Changer, just like maybe her agreeing to work with Lovern is merely a way to get an inside track on athanor politics and to win her way back into the Accord. She must know that there are those of us who aren’t as ready as Lovern to forget the werewolf Lupé’s death. Flowers in her hair or not, I’m not ready to trust Louhi quite yet.
Louhi’s apparent change of heart is hardly the biggest revelation of the past few days. Arthur has spent hours on the phone or writing e-mail, bringing Eddie up-to-date on events in the U.S. and learning what had happened in Nigeria. Shango’s ambitions hadn’t surprised him—athanor are far from immune to ambition—but the confirmation that there are indeed wind naturals has shaken him deeply.
Arthur has always had trouble acknowledging the existence of the dryads, but the fauns’ devotion to their charges had forced him to consider that there might be something there. But trees, like cats and coyotes, have bodies that stay in one place. The concept of a wind with a mind of its own bothers him.
In light of that, learning that yet another human—the woman Aduke Idowu—has been taken into the secret of the athanor’s existence seems a minor thing indeed.
He looks over where Bill Irish is showing Swansdown the yeti (who will be returning to Alaska after the concert) some dance steps, to where Chris is ordering ice-cream bars for Purrarr, Tuxedo Ar, and several other cats. These, disguised as small children, are there to provide support to the wizards’ illusions.
Human allies have proved to be a pleasant surprise. Arthur will continue to worry about the breach in security—that’s his job—but Bill, Chris and, hopefully, Aduke Idowu should expand the athanor’s ability to merge into the modern world.
The opening act, Coyotes Howling, comes on stage and begins to play something that makes Arthur very glad that he’d brought earplugs. Pressing them firmly into place diminishes the din to a dull roar.
The band members, probably in imitation of the “fake” satyrs and fauns who are so eagerly anticipated later in the show, have done their stage makeup so that they look like a hybrid between a human and an animal. Arthur guesses from the large, furry ears they mean to resemble coyotes.
The theriomorphs seem to think the whole thing is very funny, but Louhi looks quite thoughtful. No wonder.
Arthur knows that it will be a long time before he forgets his own shock at first seeing Shahrazad changed into a monster possessing all of a wild animal’s fierceness but a human’s hands. Shahrazad had seemed quite content to stay a coyote after that encounter, but one of the reasons that Frank brought her back to Colorado as soon as possible was to remove her from further temptation to display anomalous shapes to the public.
His other reason had been to get the newly amnesiac Wayne back to Colorado before too much worry could erupt over his disappearance. Wayne will be found in an arroyo on his property, a sizable bump on his head to explain his loss of memory. As he gets better, he will hazily “remember” going for a hike and slipping. That should end the problem.
The Changer, to no one’s surprise (but to Arthur’s considerable annoyance), had refused to hurry home to teach his daughter prudence and manners.
Pointing out that Frank is as capable of teaching such lessons as he is, the Changer had added that if Shahrazad only behaves when her father is around to beat sense into her brain, she is learning nothing at all. To make it nearly impossible for Arthur to reach him, the Changer has chosen to go to Atlantis, where Amphitrite coyly reports that he is spending a great deal of time with Vera.
An elbow digs into Arthur’s side. He notes that Coyotes Howling has left the stage.
The Wanderer (who had arrived driving a vanload of East Coast fauns) mimes pulling out the earplugs, and Arthur reluctantly obeys. Immediately, he notices that the audience noise has diminished to an expectant hum.
“Show’s starting,” Chris says, as the lights dim, leaving the stage dark.
Purrarr jumps into Arthur’s lap, settling on one knee. “Perrfect,” she rumbles. Other cats have taken seats on Chris’s lap and the Wanderer’s.
Over the loud speakers, Lil’s voice, impossibly sexy even with electronic distortion, says:
“Welcome.”
There is a single plucked lyre note.
“To mystery...”
Syrinx piping joins further lyre notes.
“To enchantment...”
A faint tapping of drums joins pipe and lyre. Arthur starts to relax, idly stroking Purrarr. Perhaps this will be easier on his ears than he had imagined.
“To magic...”
The stage glows with pale pink and lavender light: pastel, like the first gentle hints of dawn. Figures can be just be glimpsed beneath dark shadows that look like trees and rocks. The music remains soft, teasing, tempting, but increases in tempo.
“To mystery, enchantment, magic!” Lil suddenly screams. There is a thunder of guitars and drums, an electric wail. “Welcome to Pan!”
The lights come on full, bright, illuminating a Grecian grove out of a madman’s drug dream. Pulsing strobes break the dancing figures of Tommy Thunderburst and a bevy of women into staccato snapshots.
Tommy wears skintight leopard-print spandex pants and a vine wreath in his hair. His chest is bare. The women are clad in vine leaves that seem in imminent danger of falling off.
When the strobes abruptly stop, the fauns and satyrs prance on stage. Glaring white lights reveal every inch of their hairy bodies, their horned brows, their hoofed feet, their eager, lascivious eyes.
“Welcome,” Lil purrs, her voice coaxing once more, “to reality!”
The audience shrieks in appreciation as Tommy merges into his latest radio hit: “Reality Is What I See.”
Arthur feels Tommy’s music stir him. In the seats closest to the King, sasquatch dances with human, faun spins with yeti, tengu bop with pooka, cats smile and look smug.
A wind tickles his ear.
“Welcome to reality,” it whispers.
Author’s Note
In writing this story, I took several liberties with the Yoruba language. Yoruban is a tonal language. If I were to be completely accurate in transcribing it, the tones should be marked.
However, as most readers of English (myself included) find a plethora of accent and pronunciation marks intrusive, I have eliminated them on the most commonly used words (such as Adùké or Mònàmóná). I have retained them in infrequently used words to give some sense of the language’s rise and fall.
Readers familiar with Yoruban material may have encountered words such as “Shango” and “orisha” spelled without the “h.” As the “h” sound is very soft, it is often omitted or indicated by a dot placed under the “s.” I followed the convention used by many of the English writers and included the “h,” feeling that it more closely represented the pronunciation of the word.
Monamona is a fictional city.
Witches’-broom, Apple Soon
a short story of the athanor
“Don’t pee on that tree,” Demetrios says, pausing to cast a stern gaze upon the young coyote.
Shahrazad halts in mid-squat, cocks her head to one side, and whines inquiringly.
“At least,” Demetrios amends, his large, hairy ears twitching in amusement, “not without first asking the tree’s permission.”
The golden-brown coyote bitch whines again before shuffling a few steps away and letting loose a long stream of pungent urine.
“
Ah, you did need to go,” Demetrios says, resuming his climb up the steep, forested slope. “She probably would have forgiven you that, but the habit you canines have of peeing on everything in sight to mark your territory would have really annoyed her. A dryad is nobody’s territory but her own, and let me tell you, you don’t want to get an apple tree annoyed. They’ve tempers as unpredictable as cider—sometimes sweet and refreshing, and other times hard, holding the power to twist your mind. Remember that.”
Shahrazad kicks dirt over the damp spot she’s left on the ground. She wishes everyone would stop trying to teach her stuff. The lectures get really old, and she’s very young—some say the youngest of their immortal kind, even as some say her father is the oldest.
But her father, the Changer, is far away now, having decided that the best care he can give his young daughter is to leave her in other’s hands. Until recently, those hands had belonged to Frank MacDonald, but Frank had received an urgent call from a cat with too many kittens.
Though Frank had been willing to leave the unicorns and griffins and other creatures who dwell on his Other Three Quarters ranch without care other than what they themselves provide, he had not trusted Shahrazad to manage on her own. That was why the young coyote now finds herself under the watchful eye of Demetrios the faun, investigating the many wooded acres of Demetrios’ isolated home.
Demetrios himself is her problem. She’s met the faun before, thought she knew him from the curving horns that top his curly head to the shiny goat-hooves on his feet. She’d thought him a fusser, a worrier, always nervous, always anticipating trouble. She’s beginning to think she was wrong.
There’s something different about Demetrios here on his own grounds. Even his scent has changed. He smells stronger for one thing, no chemicals damping the mingled odor of goat and man, no perfume confusing the signals. And the signals are there now, clear to anyone with a nose. Demetrios smells dominant, his pheromones definitely sexually charged.
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