Vanity said, "Colin is not a witch flying on a rafter. Don't look at me like that! That was in the poem he said."
Quentin said, half to himself, "That little poem' is the words of the High One."
"Besides, the little poem Quentin said is meant to prevent witches from returning to their day-shapes, isn't it?"
Quentin just sighed, and said to Victor, "I am sure that someone versed in the true science could restore Colin swiftly. I am an apprentice without a master, working from a book."
Victor said, "Do you have anything else you could try?"
Quentin sighed, and looked at the cabin ceiling for a moment. "I could ask Marbas, who is a great president, and governs thirty-six legions of spirits, and who also can change men into other shapes—but that demonstration would require that I accomplish the figure of memory first, which I can only do on the new moon…
"There are a number of basic steps, amulets, and phylacteries I should have been using since long ago, and certain consecrations I ought to do before attempting anything more. Like you, I don't have some basic tools my book talks about. I've been using a butter knife for my athame. I do not have any sort of athanor or any way to make one. It is all going to take time I do not think we have.
"And if I did something wrong, as Vanity says I did, I might have trapped Colin in that shape by mistake."
Vanity said, "You said chapter two had the bestiary in it."
"It was chapter three. Chapter two is the celestial hierarchy…"
"Whatever! You know the true names of the lord of eagles, and the true name of Colin, so why can't you just zap him?"
"Well, watch…" Quentin put out his hand. We had not yet unpacked, so all the Paris clothes boxes and scuba gear and stuff was simply lying piled on the divan. The white birch wand jumped across the room from the pile into Quentin's hand.
He touched the wand to the bird first with one end, then with the other. 'Ter! Remove this false shape from one who is not your son. Phobetor! Return to your own human shape, without hurt or pain, and stand before us. I charge and compel you in the name of the Third of Choirs: Eliphamasai, Gelomiros, Gedobonai, Saranana, and Elomnia!"
Vanity looked at the bird curiously. "Was something supposed to happen?"
"There is a tiling called the Almadel I am supposed to make, but I haven't gotten the chance yet. A square of wax written with holy names and bearing the Seal of Solomon. So, I guess I am not doing it right. But even without that, if there was a curse keeping him in this shape, I should have just revoked it."
Quentin put his white stick down beside him and reached into the food again. "Hey! This is soup in this container. Smells wonderful. Did they give us spoons? Oh, and before I forget…"
He tossed the ring of Gyges across to me. I caught it, but I said, "Don't give it to me! I am the only one here who doesn't need it. I can step half an inch into four-space, so that photons slide past me without touching. I can do better than invisibility."
Victor was pouring ketchup on some potato things, which (in my opinion) defeated the whole purpose of having them baked with spices. "Not me," he said, "I might demagnetize it by mistake. I think all that thing really does is interfere with the visual centers of the brain, anyway."
I tossed it to Vanity, who caught it. "What!" she said. "Am I the cripple in the group or something, the only person not from Chaos, so I need to be able to turn invisible? It is obvious that Colin has to get this ring, and for the same reason Grendel wanted it. If Colin wears it, he can stop Miss Daw, but Mrs. Wren cannot stop him. If Grendel is dead, they can't mount an effective attack on us. Amelia is now our trump card. No one can neutralize her. She neutralizes Dr. Fell, and with Fell out of the way, Quentin can blast them with magic."
Quentin murmured, "Not exactly 'blast.' I can tell them the true name of the first Salmon."
I said, "Maybe I was wrong about who stops whom. If someone other than Quentin tried to unstick Colin…"
Victor said, "You are not wrong, Amelia. Quentin, show her the diagram."
Quentin said, "I cannot believe they did not give us spoons. Does anyone mind if I just drink this straight out of the container? I mean, if no one else wants any…"
Victor said, "Quentin, the diagram, if you please."
"Oh, sorry. Here." And he took his grimoire out from an inner pocket of his long cloak, waved his hand over it in a mystic gesture, while unlocking it with his other hand (I saw him do it), and opened it to the frontispiece.
"There it is, right in the beginning," Quentin said. "Your table of oppositions. The four houses of Chaos and their relationship to each other."
I saw a diamond, whose opposite corners were connected by the arms of a cross. There were heraldic signs surrounding each corner, and writing along the lines in some sort of crooked, cursive script. The script did not actually change when I was looking at it, but I kept getting the strange feeling that it just had changed.
I said, "I cannot read the faerie letters."
Quentin said, "Don't worry about that. It correlates the houses with the four elements, the four seasons, and so on. You can still look at the pictures. The apple blossom symbol at the top is your people. The pomegranate at the bottom is mine. The poppy flower to the left is Colin, and the mistletoe to the right is Victor's group, the Telchine. Here is what is interesting. The horizontal line connecting poppy to mistletoe, marked with a white lily, represents the Phaeacians; the vertical line connecting pomegranate to apple blossom, marked with a red rose, represents the Olympians, although you can see a thyme leaf where the Olympians touch you, and a sage herb where it rests on me…"
All these flowers were confusing me. Apple blossom? Why was I an apple blossom?
I interrupted, "So what is the deal with all this? What's it mean?"
Quentin said, "We think it means your table of opposition was a correct theory, and that you guessed right about the two non-Chaotic powers. This chart implies that the Olympian power is a mean between multidimensionalism and the True Art, your paradigm and mine. A second implication is that the Phaeacian power is a mean between or combination of materialism and mysticism, Victor and Colin."
Vanity said, "It was Miss Daw and Mrs. Wren who were tending me when I had pneumonia. The so-called pneumonia."
Victor said, "Which means we need Colin to fix Vanity."
Vanity said, "Maybe Colin is stuck because he still wants to be stuck. I mean, did he really enjoy himself when he was a boy? Sometimes, I do not think he was very happy. It's hard on a fellow who is stupider than everyone around him."
Quentin frowned at her, his face dark, and real anger in his eye. "Don't say such things again. You were brought up better than that!"
Vanity said, "Why are you standing up for him? You were the one he always picked on!"
Quentin said, "Colin? He never picked on me. Where do you get these ideas? I won't have you speaking such ill of him, especially as you are the one he is going to save, once we get him back. Don't let such words pass your lips again!"
5.
The scene of mild-mannered Quentin browbeating the bubbly Vanity over what was obviously just a light-hearted joke made me uncomfortable. (Besides, Colin did pick on Quentin, all the time. How could Quentin not see it?) I stood up. "Listen—I am going to go to my room and change out of these Grendel things. I cannot believe I have been wearing them all day. You guys keep talking. Figure something out."
I gathered an armful of dress boxes and the things I wanted to put on.
Vanity leaped to her feet, all smiles. "I have the answer! I have an idea! I've got it!"
I had my hand on the door to my cabin, and I turned to see Vanity, the Colin eagle resting in her hands, come skipping after me. "Come on!" she said to me.
"What?" I said.
Bird in one hand, she urged me into the bedroom. She paused to stick her tongue out at the boys, and danced into the room, closing the door behind. The lights had a dimmer switch, and she turned them only to a dim, golden half-
light. Everything was touched with soft shadows and rich textures in that light.
Vanity put the eagle on the headboard of the bed. 'This is such a good idea. I know it is going to work!"
I put the boxes and stuff on the foot of the bed, and started to unbutton the first of the two shirts I was wearing.
Vanity came dancing back, grinning, and put one arm around my waist. She turned and smiled at the eagle.
She said through her teeth, "You're not smiling!" This came out sounding like: lour nn't sn'lingk!
"I am entirely convinced you have lost your mind, Vanity," I said. "What are we doing, here, exactly?
And move your hand so I can take off this smelly shirt."
She skipped a step back, still grinning. "Okay! But do it more slowly! And look like you are enjoying yourself."
She started to unbutton the top buttons of her blouse, too, but she was swaying her hips and rolling her shoulders, as if dancing to music I could not hear. I wondered if she were under some sort of spell or hex cast by the enemy.
"Do—what? What are you going on about?"
But now her eyes fell upon the transparent misty top of the fairy dress I was wearing, which became visible as I shrugged off my second shirt.
Vanity said, "You are going too fast! And— Wow! What is that?"
I bent to push the two pairs of pants off my hips. They were so large and baggy that I thought I could just slip them off without unzippering them, once the belt was gone. It was a little tight, but I wiggled and slid them down my legs.
"Now, that was really good!" said Vanity. "But you should be the other way around…"
I straightened up and put my hands on my hips. Vanity had her shirt off and was standing there in just her skirt and stockings. The bra she had bought in Paris was a lacy black thing with the tiniest little red bow deep in her cleavage. I don't think I had ever seen black underwear before, not in real life, and the bra must have been a padded support bra, because her breasts looked even larger and perkier than normal in it. I thought it looked very pretty, though maybe peach would have gone better with her light complexion.
"Vanity, what the heck is going on?"
Vanity bent down, pouting seductively, and with little, teasing tugs, tugged her skirt off with a slow, very sensuous motion, and it clung for a moment to her hips and buttocks, and dropped gently to the floor.
She was now posed with one hand on her knee, one hand caressing her own hip, and the shining curve of her slip exposed to the soft, sepia-toned light.
Why was Vanity smiling over her shoulder at me? Why were her eyes half-lidded, as if she were aroused by some deep romantic passion?
We undressed in front of each other naked every single night of our lives. Why was she making such a big production number out of it tonight? But there was no mistaking her attitude and gestures. She was doing a striptease. She…
She was not smiling at me. She was smiling at the bird. At Colin.
I turned my head. The bird was staring at me with bright, bright yellow eyes.
Vanity pouted and said softly, "Are you sure you don't want to be a man, Colin? There are soooo many things men can enjoy that birds can't! We'll both give you a kiss if you turn back into a man…"
I was wearing a floating cloud of fairy vapor, which exposed my nipples. My pubic hair was visible as a faint bluish triangle, at which all the pearl strands running through the wasp-waisted corselette pointed.
The bodice of this dress was webbed with something like a fishnet body stocking, exposing every curve and making them curvier. This dress left nothing to the imagination, except where it hid just enough to make the imagination of an aroused man more aroused.
And I was standing in it, naked, worse than naked, in front of Colin mac FirBolg.
I shrieked and yanked up the skirt Vanity had discarded, trying to hold it over me, yanking it high to cover my top, yanking it low to cover my bottom, and probably not covering very much.
Victor's voice came from the other room: "Is everything all right in there?"
Vanity called out gaily, "Yes! We are all fine here! Just fine!" She reached over and pinched me.
"Ow!" I said. "Stop that!"
Vanity said, "You've got to help! Why aren't you helping?"
"This was your plan? To wiggle and strip in front of Colin mac FirBolg? The world's only walking bag of hormones, the guy who uses testosterone rather than neural fluid to convey charge across his brain cells?"
"You know how much he wants to fly. We have to offer him something he wants more. Something he can't get when he is a bird! You are the one who told me his powers are based on desire. So!" And she took the skirt out of my hands and tossed it on the bed. "Start acting desirable!"
I stood there, my mind a complete blank. "How do I do that?"
Vanity said, "I don't know. Dance around a bit. Flirt. Make eye contact."
I tried striking a few poses. I tried folding my arms behind my head and arching my back. I wiggled my bottom at the bird. I gave him my best smile. The eagle stared at me with his yellow eyes.
I put my arms down. "I feel silly."
Vanity said, "Just do what comes instinctively. Girls know what turns boys on!"
She leaned over the footboard, pouting and making kisses toward the eagle, drawing her elbows into her abdomen so as to squeeze her breasts dangerously close to popping out of her black bra.
Looking at her sidelong, I imitated the same pose. "Is this instinctive?"
She tilted her head to one shoulder, then to the other, pouting and batting her eyelashes. And she was straightening one leg and relaxing the other, and then reversed, so that her hips cocked from one side to the other, over and over, a little sort of dance rhythm. It did not look particularly sexy or unsexy, one way or the other. More like the kind of thing a person did on an exercise bike.
She answered me: "You should know instinct girl stuff instinctively!"
"Remember, I am actually a squid with wings. I don't think I have those instincts."
"Well, he's staring at you. Project sincerity. Look at him sort of sideways and lower your lashes. Hmm.
More sincerity. Tell him you want him to rip your clothes off."
"Colin, please rip my clothes off, if it's not too much trouble…"
"No! No! No! Tell him with your eyes!"
"What? Blink in Morse code?"
She straightened up and put her hands on her hips, and her eyes flashed and her nostrils flared. "Amelia!
You're being obstreperous! He's trapped that same way you were trapped by Grendel! He rescued you, even though he got hurt! You can at least try to rescue him!"
That comment struck home. Here was Colin, my comrade-in-arms, who had jumped on Boreas the Wind god with nothing but a stick in his hands, risking his life so that we could get away. And he lost his life, his human life, at least, his ability to think and reason.
And when he was left with nothing but the miserable life of a bird in the wild, he risked that, too, and let himself get mauled by a bear in order to save me. The first feat had been to save the group. The second had been just for me, Colin's personal gift to me. My freedom and my life were from him.
Vanity was saying with angry passion, "Think of Colin! What would he do if you were stuck? If he thought stripping half-nude and wiggling his fanny at you would save you, he'd do it!"
What's funny is, I thought she looked prettier when she was angry. That stuff she was doing before looked silly and fake to me. But, if she knew what she was doing…
"Okay! Okay!" I pouted. "Just tell me what to do. I'll do anything you say."
"Well… it's clear we have to pull out all the stops… hmm…" She slipped out of her slip, so she was only standing there in her garter belt and panties.
"Hey, is that a garter belt? Why didn't you get normal stockings?"
She held out her leg, showing off her stockings, and looking pleased. "I thought Quentin might like it. Feel the fabric. Look at how sheer!"
&nb
sp; I caressed her upper thigh. "That's nice. I'm sure he'll like it. Pretty color, too. I wished you had bought some for me." For the moment, we had both forgotten about the Peeping Tom with feathers.
Vanity glanced at the eagle, and I saw her face light up. "Oh! I've got it! I've got an idea! Here! Kiss me!"
I leaned down and gave her a peck on the cheek.
"No, no, a real kiss!" i straightened up. "Vanity, I am not going to give you a kiss on the lips."
She rolled her eyes in angry exasperation, stood on tiptoe, and threw her arms around me, holding me tightly. "This will work! Guys think this stuff is kinky!"
"How do you know what stuff guys think is kinky?"
"Colin told me! Come on! You promised!"
Well, I had promised.
Vanity stood on tiptoe with her hands on my shoulders, her head tilted back, eyes closed.
Kissing a girl was odd. Her lips were cool, and I could taste a hint of the lip gloss she used. There was nothing particularly interesting about it.
Of course, maybe that was the way kisses were supposed to go; my only experience was Quentin trying to shut me up in midair, and Grendel giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
When I pulled my head back, Vanity looked up at me in surprise. "You don't close your eyes when you kiss."
I said crossly, "Quentin got to kiss me before Victor did, and now you. I'm kissing everyone I don't want to! Life stinks." And I turned my head to scowl at the bird. "Change back!" I snapped.
But he didn't Colin was being stubborn.
Then, to Vanity, I said, "Arrgh! He's faking. He could change back any time he wanted! He's probably watching and enjoying all this."
"We're getting close! I can feel it! Here! Try this!"
Vanity kept one hand on my shoulder and put her other arm around my waist She raised her left knee to the level of my hip, struck a pose, and said to the bird in a husky whisper: "Oh, Colin… ? Amelia and I have been lesbian lovers few years! In bed, at night, she forces me to pretend I'm you, and has me spank her bottom…! Turn back, and we'll show you… ?"
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