by Heide Goody
Nell realised, in a way that she could not articulate, that there were other constants at her disposal. There was the air: high, cold and capricious. There was the water: filling the emptiness with its gentle relentlessness. And the earth too: a limitless realm of rich chord-filled depths. The possibilities of the instrument opened before her like a yawning pit. She balked with a momentary vertigo then, with her uncle’s wordless encouragement, launched herself into it, taking control of the music and guiding the melody into new territory.
Kantzaros stopped playing. “Some say that the auloi were invented by Athena,” he said. “She tossed them aside when the puffing of her cheeks ruined her pretty little face.”
Nell played on. She wasn’t sure she could have stopped even if she wanted to. The music had been given free rein and it rode her with a certain inevitability.
“However, the master of the pipes was Marsyus, the wisest of all satyr. There was no greater musician in the entire world. He knew this and challenged Apollo to a contest. Marsyus versus Apollo, the auloi versus the lyre, freedom versus reason. Apollo was god of light and truth; Marsyus the emissary of the great Dionysus: the giver of unmixed wine, Dionysus the hidden ruler, the false man. Dionysus the wild, the liberator; he of the loud shout. Dionysus the big-balled, the black goat, the goat-killer, the winnower. Dionysus who brings release from care and worry.”
As Kantzaros recited the litany of names, Nell felt, as she had in previous evenings, the shadows gather in the corners of the room; in the corners of her eyes. Through Kantzaros’ invocation, something more beautiful and more terrible than she could bear was taking on form in the room.
“In such a contest, only Dionysus could win,” grinned Kantzaros. “But Apollo would never admit defeat. Marsyus was forced to pay for his hubris. Apollo took him to a dark and windowless cavern and flayed the skin from his back, leaving him there for dead.” He winced. “I still carry the scars.”
She played on, possessed by the music.
“Marsyus and the auloi survived, down amongst the roots of the World Tree. He rises still to lead the Bacchanalia: the cult of drunken frenzy.”
Nell saw without seeing that there was not one figure in the room, but several. A host emerging from a moonlit copse behind her, moving in time to her music.
“And the dance will go wherever it will,” said Kantzaros, smiling at the shadowed forms. “The ladies of the dance offer their gifts, their wine, their bodies to whoever they meet, killing those who refuse them.”
There were other instruments accompanying hers now: cymbals and drums and things she could not name. Nell felt power ripple through her: a caress and a shiver. Kantzaros raised his hands high in welcome, a wine bottle in one of them.
“We shall share our Bacchanalian mysteries with those willing to learn; the mysteries of fig and ivy and pine, mysteries of bull and goat. The bull whose horns we drink from. The goat whose hide makes our wine sacks.” He grinned at those assembled. “For what is an old goat for, if not for storing wine?”
He drank deeply. His smile broadened and his voice grew larger and more resonant than was humanly possible. “We lead the dance, and everyone must follow us or perish.”
Nell stopped piping. The shades who accompanied her did not vanish instantly, but faded into the gloom, their music disappearing like a balloon slipping from a child’s hand.
Kantzaros looked at her, awaiting her response.
“I like that,” she said.
“Of course you do.” He pointed at the clock on top of the television. “It’s midnight.”
“My birthday.”
“My last day in the world above.”
“Let’s make it one to remember.”
*
People will find it hard to imagine how the minions at the Blame ‘n’ Claim call centre could have possibly failed to see the radical change that was worked upon them that day. But those same people, just like the rest of us, perfectly aware of the invisible progress of the hour hand, are still capable of looking up at the clock and declaring, “Is that the time?”
Each person found their own way into that other world. Some entered the call centre humming tunes they thought they’d heard on the radio that morning. Others had heard the echoes of birdsong in the trees by the car park. And others, driving in, had glimpsed cavorting figures emerge from the Harvester pub: crooked-legged men and women, their faces raised to the sky in exultation. Those witnesses carried their experiences into work, like seeds in their pockets.
During the morning, several callers made mention of the unusual voices they heard whilst on hold: strange and sibilant, enticing them with offers, though of what they couldn’t be certain. There was the old woman sat in one of the toilet cubicles (a toilet cubicle that was both a dark and mossy bower and, simultaneously, quite clearly a toilet cubicle). The crone uttered prophecies to every woman who stopped to listen, and read the fortunes of the few who dared ask. There was the music which bled in through the office PA system: a constant rolling tune that was sometimes pipes and sometimes drums and sometimes voices. It was utterly natural. They all knew the tune. They had always known the tune.
When the call-handlers and paper-shufflers saw that the music wasn’t coming from the overhead speakers, but from the instruments and mouths of the party-makers amongst them, this too seemed obvious. Christmas and New Year may have been nearly a week gone but it was still the season for parties.
The parade of drunkards wound its way through the aisles, between the tiny desks and swivel chairs, encouraging men and women with offers of wine and food. A banquet was set out along one wall: trestle tables laden with platters brought in by an industrial catering company that no one had booked. Few of the minions questioned what was going on about them. Even fewer questioned it once they had a cup of wine in their hands or, better still, in their bellies. Kantzaros’ wine was heady stuff: even after barely a cupful, many of Nell’s co-workers were stumbling about drunkenly.
Nell watched Kantzaros hopping from hoof to hoof in the midst of a circle of women, making loud, lewd and ecstatically received boasts about his ‘horn of plenty’. She saw Robert refilling his cup at the drinks machine (spontaneously producing frothy, golden wine). He lifted his head and, spotting her, gave a little wave. At another time, another Nell would have returned the wave; but it was a tiny gesture, signifying nothing. For today at least, she was not a woman of tiny gestures. She blew on her pipes, raising the volume and tempo of the music she controlled.
A ragged cheer and sweeping, drunken laughter rippled around the room, spinning the party into dance. Drummers and singers, bare-breasted call-handlers and wine-addled desk-jockeys locked arms and seized waists and kicked their legs to the music.
“You want to dance?” Kantzaros was beside her, leaning on the banqueting table and nibbling on something red and papery.
She stopped playing, leaving the music to its own whims. “I don’t dance.”
“Everyone dances.”
“I don’t. I do many things, but I don’t dance.”
He humphed but said nothing.
“You do know you’re eating a napkin,” she said.
He spat gently and inspected the chewed thing he held. “I was wondering what it was. Well, you know, as a great man once said, try everything once except…”
“Folk dancing and incest?” she prompted.
“No. Tin cans and cardboard.” He shook his head. “Folk dancing and incest? Where did you hear such rot? I bet you’ve never tried it.”
“Which?” asked Nell.
“Watch,” said Kantzaros. “And play.”
He turned on one hoof and sharply raised one knee: a sharp motion, like a whip-crack, cutting through conversations, demanding that every eye be on him. He turned and switched feet, cocked an elbow in one direction and thrust his face in another. It should have looked ridiculous: Kantzaros stepping out with jerky sudden movements like a spastic chicken; but it transcended absurdity, became something profoun
d and compelling.
“Play!” he commanded, snapping into a fresh pose.
Nell put her pipes to her lips, picked up the tune and shaped it to Kantzaros’ movements, transforming the people’s dance into their dance: hers and Kantzaros’. She stepped in behind him and – not to her own surprise, because surprise would indicate that she was in something other than perfect control of the situation – but to her glowing pleasure, she lifted her naked legs in time with his. Shifted, pivoted and kicked. The men and women of Blame ‘n’ Claim, ecstatically drunk, unkempt and at peace, had no choice but to fall in behind. Some took up improvised instruments; joining the music with stapler castanets, filing-tray tambours and paper-clip shakers.
Nell spun and flung her head back. She saw Robert, pulled towards the dance but clearly hovering at its edges, and cast a trilling counter-melody over him. Dragging him to her side, his cheeks flushed and his eyes glistening.
“Eu-oi!” sang Kantzaros.
The crowd sang it back to him. “Eu-oi! Eu-oi! Eu-oi!”
They progressed through the office, pulling in dancers until everyone had joined the procession, willing subjects of the Bacchanalia. Heads thrown back and eyes glazed, feeling the drumbeats guide their limbs while the melody tugged at something more elusive, they abandoned themselves to dancing and capering and shouting; filling themselves with a spirit that was not their own.
They danced out into the reception area. Nell’s supervisor, Josephine, came running up from the ranks. She threw herself in front of the double doors, arms spread wide to bar their exit. The dancing did not stop but Kantzaros drew to a halt in front of her.
“You’re not going anywhere!” said Josephine, glaring at Nell.
There was laughter and booing. “Come on!” yelled out someone. “Have a drink!” yelled another.
“This is wrong!” shouted Josephine.
For a moment, Nell was struck with an unpleasant thought; a peculiar connection. She remembered the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin: leading away the children, luring them into a cave, never to be seen again. The fear vanished as quickly as it had come. Kantzaros was not leading these people into the darkness; he was leading them out: into the air and freedom.
“The dance will go wherever it will,” he was saying to Josephine.
Julie from Accounts tried to press a cup of wine into Josephine’s hand.
“The ladies of the dance offer their gifts, their wine, to whoever they meet,” said Kantzaros.
Josephine looked at it and sneered. “Just look at yourselves!” she shrieked, pointing at their dishevelled, half-naked bodies.
The merry folk of Blame ‘n’ Claim looked first at themselves, then one another, and decided they very much liked what they saw. They cheered.
Kantzaros dipped his head and danced forward, sweeping Josephine aside like a creaky gate; out into the wintery afternoon. Their breath misted in the air and the cold pricked their eyes. They fought back with loud voices, and enthusiastic leaps and spins on the icy path leading to the road.
“You can’t do this!” Josephine chased after them. “There are calls going unanswered in there, claims waiting to be made.”
“We lead the dance,” said Kantzaros. “Everyone must follow us or perish.”
Josephine, running in high heels, stepped on a patch of ice and slipped. Nell heard the dull thump and the scream. Without thought, she incorporated that high pure note into the tune.
They led the tipsy, pissed and near-catatonic across the ring road, past the retail park and on towards the town centre.
The wild procession collected all in its path. The throng, both solid and shadowy, grew and grew. Although Kantzaros and Nell led it, eventually the mass reached such enormous proportions it became impossible to distinguish which was Bacchanalia and which wasn’t. As the alcohol flowed and the music spread and the short day ended, it wrapped itself endlessly around the world. At which point, with the logic only the truly drunk are capable of, the dance of Dionysus simultaneously became the world and vanished from it.
*
Nell and Kantzaros, alone and in silence, danced up the stairs to the landing and spun in each other’s arms until nausea and laughter made them stop. As Nell fumbled for her keys, Kantzaros staggered and slammed against the door.
“Ow,” he declared slowly. “S’very hard door.”
Nell said, with great difficulty, “I should puddup a sign.” She let them in.
Kantzaros rebounded off both the sofa and the wall before slipping, by chance, through the kitchen door. There was the sound of many pieces of crockery almost breaking.
“Time for one last drink!” he called.
“No!” shouted Nell.
His head poked round the doorframe, the bottle of nectar in his hand. “No?”
Nell very gently placed her auloi on the table and patted them as one would a sleeping child. “Never say it’s the last drink,” she said.
Kantzaros jiggled the dark bottle in the general direction of the clock. “Less than an hour to midnight.” He smiled ruefully. “The World Tree’s healed. I have work to do. Those tree roots won’t saw through themselves.”
Nell wilted. “You mean this is it?”
“Yup.”
He popped back into the kitchen and returned with two glasses. He pressed one into her hand. “A toast!”
She looked into her drink’s yellow-green depths. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“What have we achieved?”
“What were you expecting?”
She swept her arm round in a gesture that included her hideous goat legs and the unlovely flat she had somehow acquired. Lacking sufficient appendages, she added a grimace to indicate the formless unchosen life she had similarly acquired. He looked at her blankly.
“Oh, what’s the use?” She turned away and went into the bedroom. She stood at the foot of the bed and knew that he was behind her.
“I expected things to change,” she said. “But all we did was drink far more alcohol than was good for us. We’ve spent more time drunk than sober. We’ve pressured everyone into joining in just because we wanted them to, and only did what we’ve done because it seemed a good idea at the time.”
“Dear girl!” said Kantzaros softly. He took her by the elbow and turned her to face him. “You have it entirely wrong.”
“Really?”
“What we did was drink far more alcohol than is good for us. We spent more time drunk than sober. We pressured everyone else into joining in just because we wanted them to, and only did what we did because it seemed a good idea at the time!” He grinned widely and there was definitely a twinkle in his eye. “If that’s not an achievement, I don’t know what is.”
He raised his glass. “A toast, my love. An end to care and worry.”
She raised her glass and clinked it against his. “An end to care and worry.” She drank, and leaned down to plant a kiss on the corner of the satyr’s beard-wisped mouth. “You are, without a doubt, my favourite uncle.”
“Or brother.”
“Or father or king. It doesn’t matter. It’s all good.” She drained the glass and felt the intoxication flood her cheeks, her body and head. “Def’n’ly my last drink,” she giggled.
The back of her knees connected with the bed. She toppled backwards. Grabbing at Kantzaros for support, she dug her fingers into his shoulder and pulled him down with her. Something bounced off the bed and smashed against the skirting board, but they were laughing and barely heard it.
*
Nell woke to the sound of her phone ringing. She rolled over and reached out for it blindly, not ready to open her eyes. Something felt different; felt odd. She stretched. She was alone in her bed. Kantzaros had gone, although his not unpleasantly earthy smell still clung to the sheets. That wasn’t the odd thing. It was something else.
The phone continued to ring.
Her fingertips brushed against the edge of her bedside table. She narrowly avoided knocking
the phone onto the floor, catching it in time.
“Hello?” she croaked.
“Oh no. You don’t sound well.”
“Robert?”
Something in the freshness of his voice, or perhaps it was the faint noises in the background, made her wonder what time it was. She came fully awake.
“I was just checking that you were all right.”
“I’m fine.” She knuckled her sleepy eyes.
“There’s obviously a virus going round. Either that or a lot of people throwing sickies today.”
“Hangovers will make people do that,” she said.
“Hangovers?”
Yeah,” she said. “You know because of—” She didn’t continue. She just knew how the conversation would go if she tried talking about what had happened the day before. “Virus,” she agreed. “Yeah, that’ll be it.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No,” she said, sitting up and scrunching her toes. “No – wait!”
“What?”
“I want you to come out with me Friday night.”
“Special occasion?”
“Our first date.”
“What about our first date?”
“We’ll have it on Friday night.”
“But—” He stopped. “Okay.”
She flung back the covers and covered her grinning mouth to stop herself laughing down the phone. “Some food and drink.” She looked at her ten pink toes, wiggling in the condensation-streaked light of Epiphany. “And maybe even some dancing.”
From the Authors
We are Heide Goody and Iain Grant. We’re married but not to each other.
One of us lives in North Warwickshire with a husband and family. The other one lives in South Birmingham with a wife and family.
If you liked the stories in this collection, be assured that there’s some silliness of equal measure in our co-written novels.
