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“Ha!” said Bob. “Don’t call me Bob. That is my slave name. I now remember my name from before, when I was a man. I am Theeb the Wise!”
“Theeb! Theeb! Theeb!” the People chanted.
“Hey, you guys can talk,” Audrey said. She felt she really should have been more frightened, but being menaced with a spork by a fourteen-inch-tall megalomaniac in a beefeater’s uniform seemed too absurd to be frightening. Especially when she had collected and sewn his parts together herself. “What did you do?”
“We have collected our bodies from markets across the city, parts from Chinatown, from animals who died in the road, from trash bins. We have taken these unwanted parts, and we have made new People. We have stolen the souls from the Death Merchants and with the Book of the Dead we have given them voices.”
“I didn’t know how to do that when I made them,” said Audrey. She really felt quite bad about it. She’d learned as she’d gone along. Bob and Wiggly Charlie had really been the finest examples of her craft, although there had been some mistakes along the way.
“You have trapped us in these horrible meat creatures, with no voices, with no genitals, except for him.” Two Squirrel People, mostly lizard, pulled Wiggly Charlie through the crowd. His little arms were taped at his sides, his feet bound together, and his enormous willy dragged across the rug.
“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie.
“Hi, W.C.,” Audrey said. “I’m so sorry.”
“What did you do to him?” asked Bob. “He seems, well, he’s kind of goofy.”
“Head injury,” said Audrey.
“Really, but his soul is gone.”
“He fell really hard. I really should make a helmet for him. I know, I’ll make helmets for you all.”
“No. You have done enough.”
“It’s no bother, really,” Audrey said. “Helmets for everyone!”
“Helmets for everyone! Helmets for everyone! Helmets for everyone!” the little People chanted.
“Good crowd,” Audrey said to Bob under her breath.
“There will be no helmets!” said Bob.
Various moans and murmurs of disappointment sounded around the room.
“That’s on you, buddy,” said Audrey. “Don’t blame me if you take a tumble and end up like him.”
“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie.
“No! You have made us miserable meat creatures and now you shall be a miserable meat creature. Seize her! Take her to the hall of souls.”
A score of Squirrel People lifted Audrey, which was very uncomfortable, but she didn’t struggle because most of them had sharp claws and she’d already learned that the more she struggled, the more scratched up she got. They carried her through the parlor, into the butler’s pantry, where one of them kicked the wastebasket out of the way while the rest shoved her head into an uncovered vent. Which was all that fit. Just her head. Her shoulders caught on the side.
“She won’t fit,” said a little voice.
“We can’t take her in through outside, she won’t fit though the hall of glass either,” said another voice.
“New plan!” said Theeb.
“New plan! New plan! New plan!” the People chanted.
The Morrigan waited, peering out of the storm sewer at the Buddhist Center until darkness fell, then they flowed across the street like miscast shadows, their edges fringed with the ragged pattern of swarming birds. Babd saw a window cracked open just an inch on the second floor and so flowed up the wall and through the crack. Macha and Nemain flowed around either side of the downstairs walls, looking for an opening, then, finding none, slipped under the back porch, down the passageway made of auto glass, then up through the vent and into the butler’s pantry, not even remotely aware that they were passing just a few yards from the Squirrel People’s cache of soul vessels.
In the parlor, Theeb the Wise stood between Audrey and Wiggly Charlie, who lay trussed up on the floor, and finished reading the p’howa of forceful projection to move Audrey’s soul into W.C.’s body. With a great flourish Theeb finished the reading, enunciating the Sanskrit perfectly with his newly grown lips, then loomed over Wiggly Charlie. “Now you know the suffering that is our lot.”
“Need a cheez,” said W.C.
“He still doesn’t have a soul,” said the duck-faced guy. “No glow.”
