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“No magic tricks, lady?” Falcon crooned, watching me closely.
“No,” I gasped.
He dropped me in the bloody mud. “Do as you are told. Nothing more. Ever.”
Raising his voice, he instructed the others to see that the servants cleaned up the mess, which included carrying off the charred corpse of the page I’d let die instead of finding it in myself to resist Falcon.
I sat in the mud cradling my injured breast, moisture seeping through my dress to settle stickily against my legs. Stars blazed in an icy rainbow above.
“As for you.” Falcon nudged me with his toe. “Return to your tent and make yourself useful. Tomorrow, set yourself to creating lights for us that won’t burn.”
“In different colors!” Puck clapped his hands. “And bright enough so we can still light up the tents from within, like silk lanterns at Festival.”
“Yes, most definitely,” Falcon agreed. “Off with you, Lady Sorceress. I want nothing more from you tonight.”
I strained up, weighed down by my sodden gown, and staggered slowly away, holding my wounded breast tight. It took me a while, wandering through the dark and soggy camp, to find my own tent. Especially since I stayed close to the tent walls, rather than down the open alleyways between. Keeping to the corners and shadows. Gone was the wild party Puck and I had walked through.
I stumbled over a puddle of a campfire and nearly pitched facedown. I stopped and took a moment to breathe. Looking at the stars, I wished the pain in my breast to diminish—I should be able to fix it when I could see it, and until then I didn’t want to wish the pain totally away, lest it blunt important information about the state of the wound—then sharpened my night vision.
It was a small defiance, this spell-casting, but I knew I had to continue to go against the programming if I was to have any hope of changing the false wiring they’d created in me, before my own habits solidified it forever. Falcon might have scared the living shit out of me, might have pushed those particular buttons that short-circuited my free will temporarily, but I would not allow them to govern my every thought. Not ever again. I repeated it. My new mantra.
Some things were worse than death. I would take death over being lost to myself. If Falcon tried to leash me as he threatened, then they could just try to kill me and we’d see who won out this time.
Dragonfly met me with squeals and intricate jig-steps that made her wings and curls bounce fetchingly. She showed me all her little candles filled with thimbles of water like it was the best thing ever. I asked Dragonfly if she knew the dead page and she did. She hoped the war would also bring her such distinction.
I couldn’t bear to hear it. I sent her off once she helped me out of the mess of soaked red velvet. She could get rid of it, whatever, I didn’t care. And go hang with her servant friends, talk of glory, just leave me alone with some soap and water for a sponge bath. I’d see her in the morning. She happily pranced off with her trophy.
In the cool dark of the tent, still faintly tinged with the lily’s perfume, I wiped myself down of smoke and mud, reaching under my thin shift, much as a conservative Mormon girl would, obediently dressed even when bathing. It probably wasn’t very effective, but I couldn’t bear to look yet. Bad sign, that.
I remembered a photo that had circulated on the internet, accompanied by a story of how a woman had gotten a tropical bug bite on her breast that she bandaged and ignored. Then she was put off by doctors. When they finally examined her, finally looked under the bandage, the terrible pain she had been experiencing turned out to be due to the honeycombed parasitic nest her breast had become. The clever picture with it was made by superimposed images, as so many internet urban myths were. This one, however, had managed to choke me with horror before I took refuge in Snopes.com’s rational and reassuring breakdown of the hoax.
No one here to tell me it was all urban legend.
Even as my left breast throbbed, I knew most of the pain was fear. I was afraid to look. Afraid to see how deeply those fangs had dug into the tender tissue. Afraid that I might see something horrific as that hollowed-out breast swarming with larvae.
For that reason alone I had to deal. I couldn’t risk what my fears might subconsciously create. And I couldn’t let a wound go uncleaned. It didn’t bear thinking about to see what might grow from the flora of Falcon’s nasty maw.
Not giving myself another moment to think about it, I grabbed several of Dragonfly’s little votives and dumped the water into a wash basin. I set them on the little vanity table and, slowly and precisely, wished them to light. They flickered into life. The left bosom of the white cloth was soaked in blood, both rusty and bright crimson.
Looking away, I washed my face more thoroughly, then popped the makeup spell. Back to my less-fuckable self, more than a little wan. Though my hair flowed like sparkling black water, just as I first pictured it.
Darling brushed through the tent flaps, just as I had nearly screwed up the courage to yank off the shift. With a stab of guilt I realized I hadn’t given him a thought. Where had he been during the fire? In happy reply, he sent me pictures of dancing with a group of people wearing some kind of ribbons. He hadn’t seen the fire but had gotten quite wet. He pictured himself, soaking and bedraggled, hissing at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “If it helps, you’re not the only one pissed and, frankly, your damp fur is the least of my worries at this point.”
Darling leaped up on the vanity, carefully avoiding the candles, and arched against my belly. Immediately the throbbing and the fear abated. Forgot how handy he was that way. I popped the pain-diminishment wish, too, but left the night vision in place. I scratched Darling’s ears and he purred forgiveness, along with a sly image of him with a horsehair plume like Puck’s.
“We’ll see.” I chuckled, amusement at his foibles thawing the horror of the night. “Tomorrow we’ll see if I can create light without fire. Then we’ll make your battle armor—whatever you want.”
The cat was better than Percocet. Feeling dreamy and fine, I pulled off the white shift.
Yes, there were the teeth marks, but it wasn’t so bad. They formed an oozing ring around the pink nipple, a harshly red and inflamed insult to the white globe of my breast. I washed the wound with the soap and water—old-fashioned approaches never hurt—and picked out some white and red fibers clinging here and there. I wished the wound clean of both fibers and infection, as I did with water and food. I wished for it to heal quickly. I hesitated to try to heal it completely myself. I had a pretty good idea of the glandular tissues involved and the epidermal layers that covered them, but nothing precise enough to guarantee a perfect reconstruction. If I simply healed the skin, I ran the risk of sealing infection inside to fester. It looked better now, anyway.
Darling purred his approval, then sent me an image of myself with enormous breasts. I swatted him.
“No, I like them fine, thank you! And what is a cat doing thinking about human breasts?”
He winked slyly at me, most un-catlike. I really hoped he wouldn’t turn out to be some kind of shape-shifter who’d show up in human form someday. Darling perked up and sent me an image of him changing into a handsome man who knelt at my feet with an armload of blossoms.
