The Iron Dragon's Daughter (30 page)

Jane squeezed tight her eyes. Her head whirled. She staggered a step closer to the stone and sank to her knees to keep from falling. "Whose was the voice?" she cried. "Who tempted you?"

"Who indeed? Who was it who punished me for listening to her? Who determined to set the Wheel in motion and decided the guilt for it should be mine? They are one and the same."

"Who?"

The Lamia's voice grew very calm.

"Why, the Goddess, of course. Who else would dare?"

Jane reached out to steady herself against the stone. The instant her fingers touched it, the swirling stopped. Her dizziness was gone. Her eyes snapped open, and she stared up at the Lamia. Up past the perfect geometries of her coils. Past the languid swell and curve of her abdomen. The coral halos surrounding her nipples. Into the universe of her irises, the black holes of her pupils.

The Lamia smiled. It was a warm and confident smile, one that burned from the very center of her being. "You want me."

"Yes," Jane said wonderingly. She had never felt particularly drawn to her own sex before this. Boys had always seemed more interesting. But there was a compellingly androgynous quality to the Lamia, as if she were all that Jane found attractive in the male sex and feminine as well.

"Then kiss me."

The Lamia lowered her mouth toward Jane. Her lips parted moistly to reveal a pink glimpse of tongue. Heart fluttering like a bird between two hands, Jane yearned helplessly upward toward it.

Puck seized Jane by the shoulders and pulled. She stumbled over an ottoman and fell backward onto the floor.

The Lamia had grown old again, old and repulsive. A look of mild regret flickered on the mask of her face for the briefest instant and was gone. She folded her arms, making her hands disappear.

"We're leaving," Puck said firmly.

"I'll turn on the lights for you."

"Don't bother yourself."

Puck hauled Jane to her feet and steered her out of the room. While she dreamed, the mansion had healed itself. The interior walls had been restored, and were covered with flocked paper. They passed through rooms that were genteelly carpeted and comfortably furnished. In the hall, frosted glass sconces gently lit their way. The beer bottles were gone from the stoop when they emerged. The graffiti had been reabsorbed into the stone.

"She's crazy as shit," Puck said when they were back on the street. "All those nutty stories. This stunt tops them all, though. If I didn't need the money so bad I'd—" He made a disgusted noise. Without slowing his pace, he shook open and donned a pair of aviator glasses. Neon rainbows slid across their black glass surfaces. They made him look sinister, insectoid. He should have been blind in them this late at night, but his step was sure and unfaltering.

"What was she trying to do?" Jane asked hesitantly. She was still a little dazed, unsure which was real—the world as she saw it now or as it had been revealed to her in the Lamia's vision.

It was late enough that the grigs and gaunts were out in force, rising up from the subway vents, service tunnels, and storm sewers, forming small cliques by the lampposts, watching the action from doorways. A wolf-boy stared at Jane, chewing on a finger. He spat out a knucklebone as they went past. "You don't know?" Puck said. "She was going to—"

"Hey, college boy!" A behemoth slowed to a stop beside them and a grizzled old troll leaned his head out of the cab. He leered down at them, revealing brown teeth and hideous gums. "How come they ain't kicked you out yet?" He looked at Jane. "See ya got a new girlfriend."

"Wicked Tom." Puck's grin was wary, insincere. "What's the good word?"

They slapped hands and Jane caught a glimpse of a small plastic-wrapped package before it disappeared into her escort's pocket. The troll ran a hand over his brown-spotted head and in a lowered voice said, "Rumor is the bane has hit the street."

Puck took a step back from the curb. "Oh no. I'm not touching that shit."

"Nobody's asking ya to touch nothing," Wicked Tom said irritably.

"Just find yourself somebody else."

"Okay, okay."

"I'm not in that business."

"No? Well, too bad. There's good money in it."

The behemoth snorted impatiently, and Wicked Tom disengaged the clutch and revved the engine to keep it in line. He winked at Jane. "Gotta go now—keep in touch, hear?"

When the behemoth was gone, Jane asked, "What's the bane?"

"Bad news. Don't get involved with it."

In silence they returned to Hindfell and across the skywalk to Bellegarde. As Puck was turning away at the elevator banks, Jane said, "There's something I want to make clear. I am not a rich bitch, as
you
so charmingly put it."

It took Puck a second to remember his earlier comment. When he did, he scowled. "Hey, I said I was sorry."

"You listen to me! I'm here on scholarship, okay? I don't have any other source of income. No patrons, no job, no savings, no nothing. Only my scholarship, and the University just took that away. So what ebbs, must flow. The money's got to come from somewhere."

"But your clothes—"

"I stole them. These clothes are nice because if you're going to steal something, you might as well make it the best, right? So I just wanted you to know. I'm not rich or anything. I'm just doing my best to get by."

"Hey, me too." Puck sounded amazed. "I mean, I'm not necessarily scholarship material, but my education means a lot to me. I'm going to the College of Pharmacology. I'm only going through all this crap to pay for it."

"So okay. We understand each other now." Jane started to turn away. She was trembling a little, though whether from anger or the aftershock of fear, she did not know.

But Puck lingered. "Um, listen. Maybe you'd like to go out sometime? We could go dancing, maybe." He saw her begin to shake her head, and lightly rapped his forehead with his knuckles. "What an idiot—I haven't charmed you yet." He dug about in his pockets, slapping his jeans, thrusting hands deep into his jacket. "You'll love this, it's as close to a foolproof charm as was ever made. If I can only—Ah. Here it is." From his jacket he removed the ghost of a rose. The petals were a red deeper than blood, with purple highlights. It was faintly but noticeably transparent.

Bowing deeply, he presented it to her.

When her fingers closed about the stem, the rose faded to nothing. And Puck was right. Jane was charmed.

"So how about it?"

He pocketed his shades and stared deep into her eyes. There was no mistaking his sincerity. Against her better judgment, Jane found herself liking Puck. There was solid stuff beneath his rough exterior. More than that, she felt enormously drawn to him. Something within her vibrated to his presence. "No," she said.

Jane was still a little stoned when she got back to her room from Jenny Greenteeth's study party. The radiator hissed and rattled, blowing little spit-bubbles from the air vent.

It was a cold autumn afternoon. The City looked dull and inert through the window. Off in the distance, iron-dark anvil heads billowed. Black specks moved before them, storm hags in flight. A few leathery oak leaves, lofted high by who knew what winds, stuck wetly to the glass.

Jane ratcheted the curtains shut and in the subdued light undressed herself. Monkey was away on a field trip and would not return until late tomorrow. She lay down on her bed and began to touch herself, unhurriedly caressing her breasts, running her palm down her belly. At first she thought about Puck, and then she thought about nothing at all.

She lazily stared down between her breasts, past the swelling plain of her belly. Luxuriant hair grew thickly upon the round hill of her pubic mound. Sometimes she liked to imagine it was a forest and she the most diminutive of explorers, wandering through it. Her fingers slipped down to the opening of her labyrinth, felt moistness, and lingered. It was an enchanted forest, and silent. Not even birds sang in the branches. She wandered it, gazing about in wonder. Her fingers moved a little more quickly. Everything was hushed, expectant, waiting. Her fingers slowed. They began to tease out her clitoris. Far ahead there was a rise. In no hurry at all, by roundabout forest paths, she approached it.

Simultaneous with her fantasy, Jane was aware of the dorm room about her, of the bed beneath and the ceiling above. As she played with her button, she felt as though she were rising, the bed shooting up under her with gathering speed, rocketing straight into the sky. The room fell away, the University and the City and all its buildings crumbling and falling down, farther and farther.

The ceiling throbbed and spread out, thinning and attenuating. The first stars of evening appeared through its vanishing haze. They multiplied and thickened. Jane gasped and writhed on the bed. The sheets were bunching up underneath her. Faster now. The sky purpled.

She was soaring.

With a heightened sense of expectation, she began running up the slope. Trees flew by to either side. Faster and faster, in time to the urgent movement of her fingers, she ran, one with the Jane who, worlds away, was rocketing into the sky. She topped the rise and stared in wonder and disbelief.

There was a cottage below.

It was a low house, white, and alien in design, and though surely she could never have seen such a building, it was as familiar to her as a recurrent dream. An outbuilding abutted it, windowless but with a door that filled one wall. A short road, wide as it was, led to that door. On the roof was what must have been a television antenna, for it lacked the warding hexes a lightning rod would have had.

Entranced, Jane followed a slow, winding path to the back door. It opened with a push, and she stepped into the kitchen. Heartbreakingly familiar smells wrapped themselves around her.

A woman was there, and while reason said she must be a total stranger, yet something leaped up happily within Jane at the sight of her. She sat at a Formica-topped table, hunched despondently, head down. A bottle of whiskey and a half-filled glass stood by one elbow, an ashtray by the other.

Jane tiptoed inside, afraid to speak, compelled to draw closer. The woman—her hair was dark, cut midlength and curly—did not hear. Jane touched her elbow. "Mom?" With a little shriek, her mother looked up.

MONKEY HAD GOTTEN INTO JANE'S SECRET CACHE. SHE KEPT it in a cardboard box under her bed with a layer of old pantyhose on top as camouflage. Monkey had hauled it out, dumped its contents on the floor, and pawed through them. Furious, Jane began to pick them up. There was the book she had stolen for the Lamia and which she intended to return to the library someday soon, the bundle of credit cards and ID she'd lifted from Galiagante's wallet, the pipe, hashish, and baby oil she kept in reserve for when she had the time and privacy for them, and a few cherished oddments from her days with Peter and Gwen. Nothing was missing. Monkey had been snooping for information.

There was nothing in the box that would reveal its secrets to Monkey. Jane kept her things hidden not because she feared their discovery but because they had meaning for her and she didn't want anybody running their grubby mitts over them.

Even in her anger, though, Jane felt uneasy. Something was up. Monkey was planning mischief. Jane knew how her roommate's mind worked—this was a message.

There was a burst of laughter in the hall. The other Habundians were decorating their doors with kteis-wreaths in honor of the season. Later they would tear a hog's carcass apart and sprinkle its blood on all the lintels. Jane wasn't going to join them. Her mood was too dark these days for such simple pleasures. The dark and the cold had sunk their talons deep into her spirit. She had never known a winter to last so long.

She drew the shade, shucked her clothes, poured the baby oil down her front, and smeared it about. On her third match she managed to fire up the hash pipe. In her distracted state it took almost an hour before she could transport herself Elsewhere.

"Tell me something about yourself." Jane caught up with her mother walking along a river bank at dusk. She clasped her hands awkwardly behind her back. Her mother strode along with her arms folded. Neither dared to reach for the other.

"Well… I'm a beautician. Frank and I finally broke up seven years ago. Now I mostly live alone." She laughed raggedly. "It doesn't sound like much when it's put that way, does it? I do some volunteer work at the hospital."

"Oh, Mom." She stared down at the stones passing underfoot, at the lines of driftwood and crack vials and plastic drink containers that marked the limits of the gentle upriver tides. She wanted to ask her mother so many things: How did you feel when I disappeared? What did you think happened? Did you search for me, and where did you search, and when did you finally give up? Somehow, though, she wasn't able to ask any of these things. They just never seemed to connect.

"Is that a new blouse?" her mother asked suddenly.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's wrong with it. Why does something always have to be wrong? Only, don't you think it's a little plain? You could look so nice if you only took a little more care with your dress and your makeup. You have the bone structure for it."

"Look, I have plenty of boyfriends, I'm not exactly lacking for attention, okay? So let's not get started on the makeup again."

A sharp tone entered her mother's voice. "You aren't letting them take advantage of you, are you? That's the one thing I regret, that I didn't save myself for my wedding night. Don't you look at me like that. If you let them do what they want with you, they don't respect you afterward. Even your father. I'm convinced that if only—well, never you mind."

A tanker, mysterious in the dim light, was off-loading oil across the river. They stopped to look at it. "Mom, I've been thinking. Maybe you shouldn't drink so much."