Fall of Light (38 page)

He smiled, a benediction. Even shielded, Opal felt its glow.

“Is that it?” said Magenta, and everyone turned on her.

“Cut,” cried Neil. “Damn you! How dare you interrupt my take?”

Everyone did their jobs; stopped taping, finished the shot. Second bell rang shrilly through the clearing.

Everyone again turned on Magenta.

“What? It's a special effect? Everybody gets a green dot? What?” she asked.

“A green dot?” Neil said. People glanced at each other and saw that she was right, everyone else had a small, glowing green dot just above their noses.

Nice redirect,
thought Dark Opal.

Opal touched her forehead, glanced at Magenta, caught her attention, and lowered her finger. Magenta's eyes widened.

Corvus stepped out from under the lights, touched his own forehead, and frowned. Opal walked to him, stared up into his leafy face. There was green among the leaves; she couldn't tell whether he had a dot. His eyes were his own color, no trace of Phrixos in them. “What just happened?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

“Um,” said Magenta. She pointed past them, and they turned.

A giant green figure faded into view on the altar, spinning out of air, sunlight, and diffused klieg lights. People gasped.

“Cameras,” Neil yelled, and dazed camera people started film rolling.

The green mist took vaguely humaniform shape as a seated person. It pushed stumpy arms toward the sky, opened a hole the shape of an orange slice in the lump that was its head, and sighed with pleasure. “So long,” it said, its voice warm and musical, “since I've had the strength to manifest. Thank you, my new children.”

“What are you talking about?” Magenta asked, striding toward it.

“My poor orphan,” said the creature. Something Opal could barely see was rising from all the people in the clearing, including those who had come from behind the backdrop and out of the trailers while Phrixos was talking. A faint mist lifted from each of them and flowed toward the green thing. The form got solider and better defined. It looked cheerful, benevolent, and enormous; it stopped being lumpy and turned nearer to human, as muscular, sculpted, and sexless as an Oscar. It smiled at all of them and rose to its full height, perhaps nine feet tall.

“Do you want to join the rest of your people, or are you determined to be alone?” It leaned toward Magenta, its face blank but somehow attentive.

“Join my people in what?” She thrust her jaw out. “Did you turn them all into your handmaidens? What kind of verbal contract did they just agree to, huh?”

“Nothing that will kill them,” it said gently.

“That covers a lot of ground, some of it pretty bumpy. I say no thanks.”

The god brushed Magenta's cheek with a fingertip—she flinched from his touch, and he smiled gently—and walked past her to Opal. He towered above her. He bent, his face kind, his eyes irisless almonds.

“You,” he said. “My most ardent supporter.”

“Me,” Opal said.

“We have made homes in each other. Why do you cast me out now?”

A whir of replies whizzed through her head—I don't like your use of force/I'm not sure who you are or what you want/I don't trust you, and for good reason/You hurt me, and you hurt my friends. Ultimately, she said, “I got a better offer.”

He looked sad. “I want you back.”

She studied everyone else. They stood quiet, almost like the trance state they had been in yesterday, waiting. Opal shook her head. “No.”

He gazed at her, his attention concentrated, a force that almost made her take a step back. Then he rose. “I will never stop wanting you. For now, I don't need you. I'll ask you again later.” He straightened to his full height. “Now,” he said to all of them, “where shall we start?”

Everyone woke. “We start with making this a damn good film,” roared Neil, “and that's going to take the lot of you working like demons, hear me?”

“We hear you,” said someone, and the rest of them laughed.

“So what else is new?” muttered Magenta. She grabbed Opal's hand and stomped back to the Makeup trailer while the crew, supervised by the tall green man, set up for the next shot, which would be Lauren saying her lines on camera, with Corvus interpolating his lines out of sight. The god helped the electricians and grips move equipment. No one said anything about him being nonunion.

Corvus and Lauren followed Opal and Magenta.

“What just happened out there?” Magenta asked after she had slammed and locked the door with the four of them inside. “Did you become happy little cult members? Who
is
that guy, anyway?” She stomped up to Corvus and stared up into his eyes.

“Isbrytaren, I guess. Who knows who that is.”

“I Googled it,” Magenta said. “It's not a god's name. It means
icebreaker
in Swedish.”

“Icebreaker?”
Corvus repeated. He started laughing, and fell into his chair clutching his stomach.

“Yeah, it's these ships that go out and break ice to let shipping operate in the winter in the northern ports—what's so funny about that?”

He leaned his leafy head over the back of the chair, trying to catch his breath, his belly rippling the black robe as he laughed. Opal and Lauren exchanged a glance. For Opal, it was almost a reflex; she had become used to exchanging glances with her friend. Who had Lauren become since she had said yes to the god?

Lauren shrugged. She smiled the same smile she had used before her conversion. So maybe you didn't have to go all the way into goofiness, the way Erika seemed to have, under the influence of the god.

When Corvus conquered his laughter, he said, “
Icebreaker
. I was thinking more in terms of conversation starters at parties. Weird function for a god.”

“Does this mean he's some kind of Norse god? How'd he get here?” Magenta asked.

“I don't know,” said Corvus. “Why don't you ask him?”

“Maybe I will. But you never did answer my other question. What are you now that you said ‘yes' to him? Slaves? Clones? Handmaidens? Religion pushers?”

“Lauren?” Opal asked.

“I don't know. I don't think the terms were outlined anywhere. I feel really weird, like I just agreed to be the evil girl in the movie, and now I'm going to have to curse all my friends, sacrifice small animals, and run around in slut makeup. But when he asked me, it wasn't like that, it was sort of like he was saying, ‘I'll love you the way no one else ever has, accept you as you are, help you do what you most want, no matter what it is.' ”

“Corr? You were saying all the lines. You didn't say yes. Are you included in this agreement?” Magenta asked.

Corvus straightened, stroked a forehead leaf. “Uh— another good question. I'm not sure. I've already been invaded and possessed. I don't really understand whether the person who's been walking around in my skin, the one Opal calls Phrixos, is the same as the green thing we saw outside. But I didn't answer Phrixos's question with a yes, and I didn't feel quite what Lauren felt. I just felt like I loved everybody. A lot.”

“If that thing walks in here right now and orders you to lick its feet, what do you think will happen?” Magenta asked.

Lauren made a face. Then she made a different face. The first conveyed disgust, and the second dismay. “Shit.”

Someone tapped at the door. Magenta huffed a sigh and went to peek out.

George stood there. “We need Lauren and Corvus on the set.”

They all went back outside.

The god walked behind Neil as the director strode around the set, peering through the camera, speaking with the crew at a much lower volume than he usually employed. Neil stopped to consult with the script supervisor and the director of photography, and finally got mad. “Would you cease
looming
? Why must you be so green?” he yelled up at the god.

“Oh, God,” muttered Lauren. She lifted her skirt and hurried past her lighting stand-in to take her mark.

“Am I bothering you?” the god asked, his tone jolly.

“The green. The glowing. It's fucking with my light balance.”

“I don't want to interfere with your work. I'll go out of sight,” said the god, but instead of backing off, he leaned closer, lowering his face to Neil's as though seeking a kiss from a reluctant partner.

“You great gob, that's worse—” Neil cried, and the god turned to mist and flooded into his mouth. Neil shrieked. His belly pushed out against his clothes like the surface of boiling water, bumps rising and collapsing. He stopped screaming and pressed both hands against his stomach, which continued to bubble under its taut layer of shirt, skin, muscle, and fat. Finally he let out a belch and wiped his forehead. “That's better,” he said.

“Is it?” Magenta muttered.

Neil turned toward Opal and Magenta, his eyes alight with green glow, and said, “Yes. It is. Now let's get this done. Serena?”

Lauren, standing on her mark beside the altar, had her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide.

“Don't worry, love. We'll smooth it out. Ready? Last looks.”

Magenta edged past him and checked Lauren's makeup, then ducked away. She gripped Opal's arm and pulled her toward the backdrop.

“Dark God. You set?”

“I am,” said Corvus.

“Right, then. Sound the bell.”

The bell rang.

“Quiet on the set,” George yelled.

Behind the backdrop, Opal and Magenta collapsed into the actors' chairs, muffling the crack of canvas an instant too late. They both froze, waiting for a scream from the set, but the only sound was Lauren and Corvus, continuing their lines, with the same energy and passion they'd used all day, barring Corvus's brief foray into ad-libbing with the whole crew.

Magenta tugged her duffel out from under Lauren's chair, pulled out a pad and a pen.
Do you think he'll keep being creepy?
she wrote.

Opal took pad and pen and wrote,
I'm not an expert.

They both sighed and sat back. The Props table and Joe's monitor were near. He stared at the screen, transfixed. Finally Opal rose and went to look. It was only Lauren, or Serena, really, looking alternately horrified, fascinated, and excited. Her face was so expressive. Her hesitation, her final surrender, the naked ecstasy of the moment—

Lauren opened her eyes and stared as though she were looking at Christmas morning.

“Cut. Print. Next setup,” Neil's voice called.

“He swallowed a god and he's just going to go on directing?” Magenta muttered.

“Looks like it,” said Opal.

By suppertime they had finished all the filming for the day and shut down the set.

This time, Opal had to use solvents to remove Corvus's makeup, and he scratched frantically at his chest. “I forgot how irritating this can be,” he said as she collected scraps and damp cotton balls into a trash sack.

“Me, too.”

“Could you cheat?”

She cleaned leaves off his face and moisturized his skin. “Maybe. It might invite Phrixos back, though. Is that what you want?”

He sighed. She finished wiping leaves off his neck and gently detached the points elongating his ears.

One of the A.D.s came by with a call sheet for the next day, and Opal paused to study it. Dark God invaded the bed-and-breakfast where Serena was staying—dream or haunting? After lunch, a scene with Caitlyn, her betrayal, eclipsed in all ways by her renegade sister. Lauren would finally get to be evil.

Magenta set her call sheet on the counter. “That's it?” she asked. “We just keep going?”

Opal, too, felt the sense of waiting for something to fall, a boulder, an avalanche, an earthquake, tornado, or tsunami. She glanced toward the door, saw that Neil, eyes still glowing, stood there.

“Is that it?” she asked.

He smiled and nodded. “We'll finish the project. I'll follow it south into postproduction, and give it all the extra help I can, weaving the right kinds of influences into it, and then—”

“Then what?” Magenta asked.

He smiled wide, like someone with a bellyful of good food, and said, “Distribution! People see it. They meet me.” He nodded a head toward Corvus. “Or one part of me. They think about me, and send me energy, and I stay awake.”

“Unless it totally tanks,” said Magenta.

“In which case—in any case—we move on, and make another one. I know I have the support of the crew.”

“What about everybody who wasn't here today?” Magenta asked.

“There's time. We're all working on the same project already. I'll speak to them.”

“In your own special way,” Magenta said, with a sneer in her voice.

“Yes. Will you join us?”

“Not yet,” said Magenta.

“Your choice,” said whoever was inside of Neil. He looked kind.

Opal thought of Other Opal, dressed in knee-high black boots and tight black clothes, like a thief who might need to slip through slender openings. Her black hair was tied back, the white streak swooping along the side of her head and diving into the clubbed ponytail at her nape. She stood, arms crossed, ass toward the fire as she leaned against the mantel. Her amber eyes glowed golden.

No way we're going to join him, not if I have my way,
said Other Opal.
Gonna miss the wild sex, though.