Frost Moon s-1

by Anthony Francis

  "Her lines are strong, her shading subtle-" the woman began.

  "The Marquis is right," the man interrupted, turning his attention to me, his eyes roaming over my body. "Have you no other samples of your work?"

  "I didn't bring pictures," I snapped.

  "We would not accept them," he replied. "Have you no other living ink to show?"

  "She has no friends here, how would she-" the woman began; then stopped. Now her nostrils flared, and she glared at the man in disgust. "You lecherous bastard,," she said softly.

  "If she has no other ink to show, the Marquis' challenge must stand," he said, smiling.

  The woman judge turned to me stiffly. "Have you no other-"

  "I get the drift," I said, glaring at the Marquis. Thank God I was wearing a bra. I gave the woman a nod of understanding. "I assume you will rip out his throat for me later? If I rip it out I think that might be construed as an insult."

  "Gladly," she said, and the man laughed.

  "Of course I have more ink to show," I cried, throwing up my hands, glaring at the Marquis. I was going to kill him, him and his horny little judge, too. But maybe not the little feral girl, smirking at me; I blew her another kiss, and again she hid, this time behind the Marquis, to the delight of the catcalling crowd. Then slowly, sensually, I pulled off my top.

  The wolves whistled and the stags snorted and brayed as I lifted the rim of the black cloth up and over my head, revealing my sports bra. I'd thought about this carefully and made the movements slinky without turning it into a complete striptease: I had no desire to further taunt an entire crowd full of werewolves and end up raped or eaten. But my movements had another effect: they shifted and stretched my skin, making the tattoos shimmer like fire.

  Tattoos are just pigment inserted into the second layer of the skin, just below the layer of cells you slough off every time you take a shower. So, for starters, you can do with a tattoo anything you can do with regular ink-tint the skin a shade, draw a pretty picture-or draw a design. Some of the simplest 'magical' tattoos are just benevolent symbols inked with, essentially, an alchemists' version of glow-in-the-dark ink.

  But real magical tattoos are filled with the compounds that dispense, control and discharge mana; and with the life force of a living being beating just beneath their surface, magical tattoos are some of the most powerful marks around.

  When I dropped the shirt into Calaphase' waiting hand, the vines rippling down my arms were glowing bright and the gems actually starting to glitter. Tattoo magic worked best when exposed to the air, and I was already feeling the burn on my legs where excess mana was bleeding back into my body; so I reached down, lithely, and unzipped first one boot, then the other, making the snakes curling through the vines move and the butterflies shimmer.

  There was an art to this, an actual magical skill: the magical tattoo artist I'd apprenticed to called it skindancing, and while I didn't know the details of that art, over the years I'd grown quite good at storing and dispensing mana simply by flexing and stretching my skin. Until now, I'd only done it by myself, in front of a mirror; or very occasionally, in front of Savannah.

  As for now, I was glad that the ruddy glare of the torches was hiding my flush of embarrassment. Stripping before strangers, even partially, was terrifying.

  "Do not let the fear go to your head," Calaphase warned, quietly but urgently. "There are werewolves in the audience; they can smell your adrenaline, hear your heart race."

  "Thank you, Calaphase," I said, letting my breath out slowly. Then I turned, and slowly began unbuttoning my pants.

  "Whoo!" cried a young wolf, leaning into the pit, surprisingly close. The female werewolf batted at him, but he leaned back and yelled anyway. "Take it all off!"

  "I would not want to embarrass the Marquis," I replied, twisting so that the pants slid softly to the floor and the rest of the vines and flowers flickered to life. "Nor would I want to be accused of influencing the judges with too many samples of my canvas!"

  The crowd laughed, as I stood there half-naked in front of them in my black bra and panties, turning slowly with a bravado I didn't feel. The male tiger prowled around me and nodded. "It is a fine canvas," he said, ignoring the wolf-woman as she struck him. "And an exceptional body of work-"

  "Those cannot be all her artistry," the Marquis said, eyes boring into me, nostrils flaring.

  "They indeed are," I replied, turning oh so slowly, eyes thanking Calaphase as he dusted off my pants. "I did all but these on my hand and these on my thigh-"

  "You lie!" the Marquis hissed, and the crowd grew silent. "Be careful with your accusations," the male referee said quietly. "She is a guest. She does not know our rules-"

  "She lies!" the Marquis said again. "Can you not see it! All of you who have been under my needle know it. She cannot have done her own knees-"

  "A shaking leg can be held down," I said. By Kring/L, in fact, and it had taken both of his big, beefy hands to hold just one of my legs still-tattooing your knee hurts. "It need not disrupt the hand-" "She cannot have done the dragon," the Marquis yelled. "It covers her whole body!"

  Now my nostrils flared. I prowled across the ring until I stood just in front of the Marquis, then held up my right hand, clamped as if holding the electric needle. Then I slowly bent down, and began to trace the tattoo.

  The Dragon's tail starts curling around my left big toe, a black and gold design with blue and green gems that make it sparkle with life. I lifted my foot off the ground, curling my hand around the toe, the ankle, once, twice, three times, the limit of my balance. I then stretched out my leg and touched the ground, drawing my hand up my leg and over the outer curve of my thigh, tickling the Dragon as it marked its circle around the muscles of my belly.

  By now it was clear to anyone who could see that I'd drawn that one single design where my own right hand would reach. But the Marquis' eyes tightened skeptically, and truth be told, I had done this bit in a sequence of short strokes, alternately twisting over my shoulder and behind my back in a sequence that had taken five sessions over three days. But the crowd and judges were not likely to listen to any kind of explanation; I needed to make a show.

  So I began twisting around slowly, showing off the reach and flexibility of my long arms and supple neck. The movement agitated the Dragon, making his tail flicker and withdraw from my foot. You'll rarely see a skindancer fully covered in tattoos, and not just because we know how to use negative space; it's for the magic. Our tattoos need room to move.

  The Dragon moved as I moved, coiling and shifting about my body as I stretched and flexed my skin, drawing his glittering form underneath my hand as easily as I had when he was just an outline. The Marquis was half right: I couldn't have done the Dragon if he was a normal tattoo; but since he was magic, once the major components of the design, the logic of the magic, was in place, I could move him almost anywhere I wanted to fill in the details.

  But some points were better for the magic than others, and in case the Marquis was savvy enough to know that, I made one final show. As the Dragon coiled around, I moved my hand into that final difficult arc around my own back, ending up in a twisted but still comfortable inscribing position under my left shoulder blade-right as the head of the Dragon slid precisely beneath what would have been the point of my tattooing gun.

  I couldn't quite see whether I'd got it quite right-I had no full length mirror with me this time-but I felt the Dragon rippling under the skin as he moved, and scratched him under the chin with my forefinger. His whole body rippled with pleasure, sending waves of light, movement and color cascading through all the other tattoos over my whole body.

  "Challenging a skindancer about where she inked her tattoos is pointless, and the Marquis should have known that," I said loudly. I turned to look at him through one half lidded eye, then straightened and walked back to my side of the ring without a backward glance.

  "The Dragon is mine," I said. "You cannot top it."

  But the Marquis was n
ot deterred. "I concede your skill… at dancing, if not inking," he said, to the delight of the crowd. "I cannot compete with it. But magic is more than performance. Real magic has function. Show us, Dakota, can your marks do this?"

  I turned, and gasped. The golden cat eyes of the feral girl hovered not three feet from me, barely visible within a column of shimmering heatwaves, like a catstriped version of The Predator effect. She growled and lunged at me, and I leapt back: only then could I see her outline. I sure as hell didn't know any flash that could do that, and had no idea how to top it.

  Then the wolf-boy leapt forward, displacing the girl. He snarled at me, eyes glowing; then the eyes of his tattoo began glowing as well. Suddenly his human head shifted in a blink to a wolf's head, snapping at me, howling at the ceiling; and all the wolves whistled and applauded. I could now see that what I had thought were far-seeing signs were actually the marks of a magical capacitor, and guessed that the applause of the crowd was that the tat had made him a quickchange artist. Impressive… but I was starting to get an idea.

  Now the Marquis stretched his thin chest. Wolf tattoos began to move across his shoulders, and tribal designs on his chest began to shift and interplay. His marks gave off quite a bit of light, and were moving impressively fast-as long as you hadn't noticed the trick. The Marquis was powerful, but he only inked surface magic. His tattoos were shimmering back and forth on his chest in a running display that I assumed was some kind of history of the pack, and the wolves were lapping it up; but all I saw was "A magical screensaver,;" I cried, clapping slowly and loudly. The Marquis's jaw bulged. "Clearly you are an expert at the two dimensional form. I cannot equal you."

  "Well, then-" the Marquis said, confused and suspicious.

  I clapped my hands together firmly and rubbed them against each other, Mister Miyagi style. When I pulled them apart, the mana I'd built up in my magical capacitors on my palms released slowly, into a glowing ball of light.

  The crowd grew silent, then drew back as the ball grew larger and larger, from softball to soccer to basketball. The Marquis just stared, eyes wide, clenching his jaw. I was right. He was a backwoods artist; skilled, but without the training or the flash to do real skindancer marks that could affect anything beyond the wearer. If the crowd's reaction was any gauge, none of them had seen this kind of magic either. Now it was clear why the Bear King feared it.

  "There is more to magic than just show," I said, letting the floating ball rise slowly over my upraised palm, then jabbing it so it exploded in a thousand fiery sparks that jetted out among the crowd and pushed them back a full yard from the edge of the pit. "And more than just function. True magic is beauty incarnate: let me show you.

  Then I swayed my whole body, drawing mana through the vines, concentrating it into my upraised left wrist so the gems gleamed, the flowers bloomed, and the butterfly flapped its wings and raised off my wrist into life.

  There was silence around me as the glowing image of the butterfly flapped in the air, as I sheltered it with my hand like a dying flame, feeding all the mana left in my body into it to bring it back to life. Then I raised my hand, whispered, "Fly," and blew one more kiss to the feral girl-and the butterfly flew with it, on a wind of sparkles and sunshine.

  The girl squealed and held up her hand, and the trailers of magic bounced off her harmlessly. But the butterfly settled on her hand, fluttering, and she stared at it with open, wide eyes, and something closer to delight than fear. It flickered, once more, then lay its wings down and merged with her hand.

  "You get one for free," I said. "More will cost you."

  She cried out with joy, and the Marquis reached over and grabbed her hand, running his thumb over the design, peering at it with wide and inquisitive eyes. Then he looked sharply over at me, and took a sharp bow.

  "How could I not concede to such skill?" he said. "Dakota may ink any of us."

  And then I was swarmed with a hundred werewolves, tigers, and stags, pressing around me, all asking what I could do for them-or just trying to get close enough to rub up against my bare skin. The referees and vampires pushed them all back and made a space for me at the edge of the ring, where, exhausted, I quickly began putting back on my clothes.

  The Marquis and wolf-boy were staring at the feral girl's tattoo. She was alternately looking at it and looking at me with equally wide eyes.

  "I'm sorry," I called out to the Marquis.

  "I do not feel robbed," he said bitterly. "I just lost."

  "I do want your advice on the control-charm tattoo," I said. "I really need your help."

  "I think it is safe, but I will… review it," he said, looking back at me. "I will report my findings to the blind witch, and charge only my standard fee. But if any other… requests… come out of your little display, any other ink for one of my wolves, you must first show me."

  The little putz wanted to see my flash. Fine. Apparently he didn't know the new rules, the Edgeworld rules which recognized our need to collaborate; perhaps it was time to show him.

  "Of course you can see my flash," I said, and he looked over sharply. "I can bring you a selection of designs, even show you how to ink some of the more complicated-"

  "Why are you placating me?" he snapped, almost taking a chunk out of the air.

  "This is the twenty-first century," I reminded him. "And I'm not an old-world, secret-magic practitioner keeping all my best tricks for myself. I'm an Edgeworlder, and we share our gifts with each other and the world."

  I stood, letting my coat drape over me. "Besides, I might get another request for a tattoo from a werewolf. You give me good advice on this one, and I'll send more work your way."

  The Marquis nodded, pulling on his own coat. Then without another word, he swept off, taking with him wolf-boy and the feral girl, both looking back at me.

  I looked up to see Lord Buckhead standing at the edge of the ring, and the Bear King slinking off his stage towards the farther loading docks. "I have smoothed over any remaining difficulties," the werestag said, "but the Bear King does not wish to speak further with you today. We should go, before the crowd becomes… boisterous."

  "Amen to that," I said, shifting my coat, turning back to Calaphase. "You know what? Thank you, Calaphase. You're quite a decent fellow-"

  "For a vampire?" he asked.

  "For not leering like all the rest," I said.

  "Oh, that. Well, I do like to be a gentleman," he said, and then, leaning close, whispered, "And just between you and me? Half the time-your back was turned."

  16. Not-So-Secret Admirer

  I woke up sweaty, feeling warmth beside me in the bed, where one of my cats had curled up into the curve of my body. The rest of them yowled around me, and I shifted sleepily, trying to push off the heat source-boy, they didn't know their own weight, did they?-and ignore them. But my nose wrinkled: whoo, the stink. Had one of them farted or, worse, sprayed? No; the scent was different, less cat stink than gym sweat… with a touch of cinnamon.

  I opened my eyes to see the face of the feral girl.

  "Aaaaa!" I screamed, jumping and klonking my head on the headboard. She was still there, and I shoved away, falling onto the floor, dragging half the bedcovers with me. I lay there frozen a minute-I couldn't see her; had it been a dream?-and then pulled myself up to see the feral girl still curled up on my bed, looking straight at me.

  "I let myself in," she said. "I hopes that's OK."

  "How the hell did you manage-" and then I saw overturned glassware in the kitchen: she'd let herself in through a second floor window. "Never mind. How did you find me?"

  "I followed you. You gots the world's lamest bike. It was easy to keep up-"

  "My precious Vespa is a scooter,; not a bike," I said, "and she gets like sixty miles to the gallon." My brow furrowed. "You mean followed, like on foot?"

  She smiled, her tail flickering up in the air.

  "I find myself less and less enamored of were-whatevers," I muttered, cracking my neck where the collar had
kinked it in my sleep. I reached up to the desk next to my bed and batted at my computer mouse: after a moment the monitor turned itself back on, and I peered at the system clock. "Jeez! It's like, eight in the morning! Who's up at this ungodly hour?"

  "The day is young," she purred, slinking forward to peer down at me on the floor.

  I eyed her warily. I didn't like the way this was going. And in the light I could she was a lot younger than she'd looked at the werehouse. "What's your name, kid?"

  "You called me Cinnamon," she said dreamily. "That will do."

  "Look, Cinnamon, the last thing I need is another spice-themed girlfriend, suitor or ex," I said, standing up at last. "You had a name before I smelled your perfume. What was it?"

  "They called me Stray," she said. "Or Foundling."

  Oh, God. She was serious. That was horrible. "I'm so sorry."

  "Don't-don't you be sorrying me!" she said, face fierce and tragic all at once. "You didn't talk down at me before!"

  "I'm sor-" I stopped, and held up my hands. "I'm sorry you're an orphan and I'm sorry I'm sorry. Get the hell over it."

  She started to get mad, then just smiled, a huge sunny smile. "Okay, DaKOta!"

  I stared at her suspiciously. "How the hell old are you?"

  "Twenty-three," she said proudly.

  "And how old are you when you're not trying to buy beer?"

  Her face fell. "Nineteen."

  "And how old are you when you're not trying to get down my pants?"

  Her face fell further. "Seventeen."

  "Not likely," I said, looking at her face. Lots of baby fat, few lines even for a street cat. She had a lot of tattoos, but-"Not even fifteen. Maybe thirteen-"

  "I am too fifteen," she said indignantly, then held her hands to her mouth.

  "Jeez," I said. "You are not old enough to be alone on the streets-"

  "I can take care of myself," she said.

  "I don't doubt it," I said. "But being able to take care of yourself, and having to take care of yourself, are two different things."