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.
You slept with him.
Still doesn’t make me an expert. I’m not even sure it’s the same guy.
Great.
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 Co
rvus. “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.
Corvus rose, took her hand. “Let’s go home,” he said.
Or maybe not, one of them thought. Perhaps both of them.
Fall of Light Page 28
