Changer's Daughter (65 page)

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.

I
n 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.

a short story of the athanor

“
D
on’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.

This last puzzles Shahrazad. She isn’t surprised to learn that Demetrios is an alpha. Even when all he had smelled of was nerves and tension, the other fauns had deferred to his authority. Even the satyrs—bigger and stronger though they tended to be—had taken Demetrios’ opinions into account.

No. It’s the odor of sex that puzzles her. She herself is sexually immature, but her father radiates a similar sexuality, so it is an authority she knows and respects, even while remaining immune to its lure. But her father tends to react only when a mature female is present.

Striding through his forest, muscles tautly visible even through his shaggy brown goat pelt, Demetrios is unconsciously signalling to females of his kind. But Shahrazad has never seen a female faun, nor heard mention of one.

Do they even exist or is Demetrios’s body crying out to emptiness?

Johanna had earmarked this patch of woodland a while back as a good place in which to go foraging. From the road it had looked pretty much untouched. She’d swear there were virgin elements in there, and even the second growth forest was old.

A month ago she’d rented a small plane and made an aerial survey, but that hadn’t worked too well. Gusts of unexpected turbulence had arisen, making the pilot insist that they divert away from the area. Thermal upthrusts, he’d said, but his eyes were wide with fear. There were rumors that this patch of woodland was haunted, that more than one group of hikers had seen things they would never talk about afterward. That a few who’d ventured across its borders hadn’t come back at all.

Johanna hadn’t bothered to try and make the pilot stay. The jolting of the plane as it tossed from thermal to thermal, the funny way the wings had bent had made her breath come fast and nearly brought her breakfast up. Anyhow, she’d seen enough—glimpses of meadows, fascinating groupings of tree species that hinted at old agriculture gone feral. She figured she could learn more from satellite maps.

The satellite maps proved disappointing though. The images were blurred, even when Johanna did everything she could to improve the resolution. The tech she complains to says that there had probably been light cloud cover on the day the images had been downloaded. Still, there is enough information that Johanna is able to plan her day’s hike with some confidence.

She’ll enter near where a ravine undercuts the fencing. At other times of the year the stream that runs through the ravine would make this difficult, but this is the dry season, before snowmelt swells the current.

Cutting the fencing is out. It is all electrified, and she doesn’t know what alarms an interruption of current might send to the owners. She makes note of any streams or other large obstacles that might force her to reroute into areas where she might encounter the owners of the land.

Meeting up with the owners of private property is always a problem when you are trespassing—especially when the gear you are carrying makes it clear beyond any doubt that you are trespassing with intent to steal.

Frank had gotten called away in late autumn. By the time winter is putting the trees into dormancy, Shahrazad is at home on Demetrios’s sprawling, forested acres. Forests are a change from the scrub growth of pinon and juniper where she had been born or from the mostly evergreen stands on Frank’s ranch. She likes the change, likes the sharp acrid scent of rotting leaves, likes chasing after the little creatures who live in the thick leaf mold.