Louhi has modified the room for her own purposes. Set at a right angle to the tub is a high platform, which he recognizes as a hospital gurney. It is oriented so that one end protrudes over the bathtub. A bracket, just the right shape to hold a human head, has been attached at this end. A basin has been placed within the tub beneath.
With a barely concealed shiver, the Changer realizes these tools’ purpose. He swallows hard and waits to be told what to do, fighting back contradictory impulses to flee and meekly to place himself where he knows he will end up.
Louhi studies the arrangement. Then she places a few glass vials etched with arcane symbols on a broad part of the tub meant, doubtless, to hold such things as bath oil and soap. Finally, she shakes out over the gurney a cotton cloth beautifully embroidered with yet more symbols.
“Undress,” she commands, “then lie down there with your head over the tub.”
“Why does he need to strip?” Sven asks from where he lounges against the doorframe, trying unsuccessfully to hide his discomfort at the situation. Perhaps it reminds him overmuch of a time when he resided in like confinement. “Can’t you get what you need just from his upper body?”
“I can and I cannot,” Louhi says, and refuses to say more.
The Changer knows that arguing would be undignified and, ultimately, useless. Moreover, he does not share the frequent human psychological reaction that equates nudity with vulnerability.
He obeys Louhi’s command and, once he is in place, begins the physical restructuring he has delayed until now lest some small action of his give it away.
Reaching inside himself, he numbs in both eyes and their vicinity the nerves that carry sensation. Next, he stimulates his bone marrow to build replacement blood. This is more tricky, since the body normally does so only after a crisis, rather than in anticipation of one. He knows, vaguely, that some human athletes “blood dope” themselves before an event, but without knowledge of the details, he had not wished to attempt any such with so little time to prepare.
Louhi sets out various pieces of vaguely surgical equipment on a wooden TV table that has been covered with red velvet. She makes no move to sterilize them or to create a sterile environment. Doubtless, she trusts the Changer’s own resilience to keep him from infection—or she simply may view the risk as his own to take.
With the portion of his attention he can spare from keeping his heart from racing, the Changer notices that Sven has retreated, closing the bathroom door behind him. Louhi also notices this, and her lip curls in scorn.
Glancing at a portable alarm clock set on the washbasin counter, she tightly straps down his arms and legs. Obscurely, the Changer feels grateful. He cannot disgrace himself by struggling overmuch.
Then she assumes a parade-rest pose and glances down at her victim. “You may wonder,” she says philosophically, “why I don’t knock you out either magically or chemically.”
The Changer does not trust his voice to remain steady, so he keeps quiet and hopes she takes silence for stoicism.
Louhi smiles. “I could do so, if you must know, but my tests show that either type of anesthesia seems to retard the processes that I am working toward. It is as if the magic knows that sensation has been deadened and perpetuates that lack of sensation in the new host.”
Dread emanates from the Changer’s heart as he realizes in what direction this speech is heading.
“We are but a few minutes before midnight, at which time I would like to begin my work. The time, however, is only a matter of esthetics. I can work at a later hour. What that means to you, however, is a prolongation of suspense and pain.”
She raises a hand in which she holds a pinch of something white. “This is fine-ground salt. To it, I have added some citric acid. I am going to sprinkle it in one of your eyes…”
The Changer winces despite himself.
“You understand my purpose.” Louhi’s tone is gently lilting, like a little girl explaining to a doll why it must be spanked, reveling in having power over someone. “If there is no reaction, I must convince you to alter your physical composition until the nerves react as they should. My methods of persuasion will not be verbal.”
She raises her other hand, showing a scalpel. “And will make clear to Sven why your nudity was preferable.”
Even as she speaks, the Changer has been shifting his nerves back to full sensitivity, never once doubting that the sorceress will do as she has indicated. A threat is not a threat when there is every intention of turning it into action.
When Louhi sets down the scalpel and holds open the lids of his right eye with her free hand, he has finished the reversal. The powder burns like a sandstorm on the shores of the Dead Sea. His tear ducts well to clear away the intrusion.
Louhi squirts saline solution to rinse the tormented orb. “Very good… or very wise. Do not alter the situation. I have little patience with those who toy with me.”
The Changer would nod, but his head is held fast. “No doubt,” he says gruffly. “Now, get on with it.”
“The hour is just midnight,” she says. “I believe I shall.”
Singing in Finnish, her words a parody of an ancient love song, she raises a tool rather like a demitasse spoon, though the bowl is a bit less deep and the edges are sharpened.
The Changer does his best not to pay attention, yet he cannot help but flinch as it comes toward his right eye. Louhi impatiently pries his eyelids apart.
Trying desperately to disassociate himself from what is happening, the Changer is aware of pressure against the bone beneath his eye. The pressure intensifies; then he feels pain and heat as blood pours along his cheek.
He screams.
Louhi continues to sing.
Afterward, he hears Louhi talking to Sven. “I took all the blood from the catch basin and needed to drain about a half pint more to reach my quota. Neat work, eh?”
“Neat indeed,” Sven replies in strangled tones.
The Changer, free now from Louhi’s constraints, deadens the nerves around his right eye. He wonders if Sven’s ardor for the sorceress is at all dampened and marvels at the resilience of his own odd sense of humor.
“Keep the Changer strapped down,” Louhi orders, “and wheel him into one of the other rooms. Then bring me the Head. I wish to place the eye within the hour.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am,” Sven says.
He is still chuckling over his pun as he wheels the Changer from the bathroom.
Although the Changer longs for nothing so much as sleep to speed the healing that he has already set in motion, he forces himself to remain awake so that he can eavesdrop.
“Does the Eye-father live?” the Head asks Sven as the other brings him to Louhi. “Thunder loud, tempest terrible were his pained plaints.”
“He’s alive,” Sven answers, “and I suspect you’ll be screaming pretty loudly yourself in a couple of minutes.”
“The babe, newborn, bellows at birth,” the Head says, complacently, “so bellow I at body’s birth.”
“I’m glad you feel that way about it,” Sven says. “I wouldn’t. I’ve had enough of pain.”
The Head’s reply is muffled by the closing of the bathroom door. Several minutes later, the Changer hears Louhi begin to croon another spell song. Then the screaming begins. It sounds less like the squalling of an indignant newborn than the shrieking of a soul in torment.
Tommy Thunderburst lounges loose-limbed in the midst of his drum kit, the sticks balanced rather than held in his long-fingered hands. His eyes are closed, his head lolling slightly back so that his golden brown hair brushes to the middle of his bare back. To one who does not know him, he might seem asleep or utterly stoned, but he is far from either.
Touching the snare, he warms into a swirling, almost military tattoo, a sound that can make even a pacifist straighten with unconscious pride. That sound holds part of what he wants, but there must be more than pride. Pride alone is empty.
Leaning behind him, Tommy picks up a syr
inx from the windowsill. He likes its haunting notes, its simple, limited scale. Almost every culture has its drums and flutes. The syrinx is a simple flute in a way—its sounds akin to the music every child learns to make by blowing across the neck of a bottle. There are more tones, of course, but the similarity is there.
Drums and flutes. Many types of each, not just the skirl of the snare, but the heartbeat thump of the tom-tom, the raindrop patter of fingers on a tight skin, the thunder of a timpani.
He’ll avoid the shrillness of the fife, but the silvery notes of the flute d’amour would be nice, and perhaps the simple hooting of the ocarina.
What about strings or woodwinds?
He considers. Yes. There must be some of each. Violin played as a fiddle for joy and an oboe for secret sorrow. No keyboards, though. They wouldn’t be quite right.
Each instrument will carry the melody at some point—even the percussion will do its part.
The theme of the composition will be the different elements of the self: emotions, life stages, loss, and gain. If he does it right, he should be able to touch every athanor, whether someone millennia-old like Arthur or alive merely a couple of lifetimes.
Joseph Campbell was onto something when he talked about the hero’s journey in every person’s life, but for the athanor that journey is made more difficult by its very extension. There is no quiet fading off into age, no basking in glory. No wonder so many of their most ambitious have chosen suicide, however disguised as heroic risk or self-sacrifice.
“Lil?”
Lil Prima, who has been lounging on the sofa, reading Variety, rolls to face him. In honor of the summer day, she wears a very short skirt in a multicolored cotton print and a coordinated sleeveless blouse.
“Yes?”
“I think I’m about ready to start recording the different instrumental tracks for this new piece.”
“I’m glad. It’s been taking a lot of your attention this past week.”
“Oh,” he says innocently, unaware that she means this as a criticism. “It’s going to be taking a lot more. What I have in mind is orchestral in scope.”
“Can’t we just hire musicians to perform it?”
“No way! I’ve got to play all the parts. What I want you to do is sit in on the sessions and try that trick you’ve been working out for the new video.”
“Why?”
“I want to make certain that more than just the music gets recorded. I want something of my own…” He stumbles under her critical gaze.
“Charisma?” she supplies, her tone acid.
“Yeah. That. This is an important piece. I don’t want to just trust to the sound alone.”
Lilith swings her long legs to the floor and studies him. “Your ‘charisma’ came across pretty well via audio recordings during our last venture.”
“I know, but, please, Lil. For me?”
“This is the piece you’re composing for Sven Trout, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah. He gave me the idea. What of it?”
“What’s in it for me? Why should I use my powers for Sven, of all people?”
“You’re not using it for him. You’re using it for me. Darling.”
He smiles a slow, sleepy, sexy smile and despite herself Lilith is stirred. Still, she is not instantly won over.
“I don’t understand why this composition is so important. What I’ve heard is nice, but it’s not precisely marketable.”
Tommy looks affronted. “I’ve given you marketable stuff. I’ve made us both rich time and time again. Now I’m writing a song that I want to write.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going John Lennon on me!”
“Lil, I’m never going to become a hermit and give up the crowd. I love them, too, babe. I just want to do this one piece. It’s important.”
“Important.”
“Yeah.” He pouts, his expression akin to a little boy threatening to hold his breath until he turns blue. “And until I get it recorded just right, I won’t be able to do anything else… like that new album you’ve promised the record company.”
“That’s blackmail!”
“Turnabout, sugar, darling mine, love. Turnabout is the best type of fair play.”
Lil gets up from the sofa, saunters across the room, threads her way through the drums, and drapes her arms about his neck. Looking deep into his eyes, her Cupid’s bow lips only inches from his own, she nuzzles him.
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“That’s not the only thing that’s hard…”
“And I’ve been wanting a chance to practice that ritual anyhow. I’m not certain I can do it fast enough…”
“Fast isn’t what I have in mind…”
“To pull it off in a recording studio.”
“So you’ll do it?”
She glances down. Tommy has set aside the drumsticks, and he’s unbuttoning her blouse.
“What are you asking about?”
“Uh… the ritual.”
“I’ll do the ritual for you, Tommy.”
“Later,” he suggests, his breath coming fast. She can feel his heartbeat against her breast. “There’s something I need first. Inspiration.”
Lil lets him stand, then wraps her legs around his hips, and puts her arms around his shoulders. “Those jeans are in the way of inspiration,” she comments.
“That can be taken care of,” he promises. “As soon as I get out of all these drums.”
Amused, Lil lets him carry her, lay her against the carpet, consider the open curtains and damn them. In the midst of the frantic activities that follow, they seal her promise to help him record his composition. Somehow, though, they both forget Sven Trout’s role in instigating the whole thing.
Anson A. Kridd tries to hide his nervousness as he awaits the time when he can reasonably leave to collect the Changer. Still, by the time he paces into the kitchen for his third glass of iced tea in an hour, Vera must smile.
“Come and sit with me in the courtyard,” she offers. “I’m taking a turn minding Shahrazad. Arthur has decided that she cannot be left alone.”
Anson nods. “I took her for a run around the grounds this morning. Though I can have more legs than two, I was much pressed to keep up. She has energy and to spare, that one.”
“I like her,” Vera says in the tone of one who is still surprised to discover this. “I even like her father.”
“The Changer,” Anson says, walking with her into the courtyard, “is a difficult person to understand, but there is much to like about him.”
The courtyard is warm and sunny. Shahrazad is happily basking in a sunbeam, her sides round from a recent heavy lunch. On the table, Vera has set up a small bead loom and arrayed a dozen shallow bowls, each holding a different-color bead.
“You’ve known him for a long time?” she asks, picking up a line of beads and working them into their places between the warp threads before fastening them with a stroke of her needle.
“Truer to say, I’ve known of him for a long time,” Anson begins, then stops and corrects himself, “but I forget, you are of the younger ones.”
“Hardly!”
“Sweet lady, I meant no offense.” His tone is melodious, just barely teasing. “I thought a lady didn’t like being reminded of her age.”
Vera accepts the teasing with a smile and continues her weaving. “But I am not precisely young. I remember when the Greek city-states were being formed, and I saw Athens rise to glory and fall again.”
“Long enough,” Anson admits. “You knew the Changer when he was called Proteus, then?”
“Like you said, I knew of him. The myths capture well how he was one of the old ones even to those of us who called ourselves the Olympians.”
“Yes. Not one to seek out athanor company, even then.”
Vera nods, tilts her head, and examines her pattern. Not liking something, she rips out a line or two and sorts the beads back into their appropriate holders.
“What are you making
?” Anson asks.
“I’m trying to evoke the Amazon river,” she says, tilting the loom so that he can see the twisting blue bordered by green, splashed with brilliant colors. “It’s more abstract than representational, and I’m not completely happy with it.”
“Ah.”
They sit in silence for a time, Vera weaving, Anson watching. When the Spider drains his glass and begins swirling the ice cubes about the bottom of the glass, Vera asks: “Are you worried about the Changer?”
“Impatient to know what has happened, maybe, and, yeah, maybe worried, too.”
“Jonathan doesn’t seem worried.”
“I know. I tried to talk with him this morning before I took the pup for a run, and he smiled inscrutably, quoted himself, and walked off to his room with a law book.”
Vera smiles. “Jonathan told me once that he didn’t say half of the things attributed to Confucius, but, since everyone thought that he did, he memorized all the sayings.”
“No!”
“Truth.” She runs a line of blue and green, the latter interrupted with splotches of orange, then looks at Anson, her grey eyes serious. “I think that Jonathan’s worried, too, but I’m not certain he’s worried about the Changer.”
“No? Maybe not. And what are you worried about, Vera?”
“Does it show so clearly?”
“You’ve been tearing out almost as much as you weave, dear lady, not exactly what I’ve learned to expect from you.”
“Ah.” She considers, rips out a line, puts it back in again after replacing some of the light blue with a darker shade. “I am worried. I’m worried about the Changer—I’m more worried that Sven Trout has chosen to make war on him.”
“Sven. Yes.”
“Sven is not one to forget that fire burns,” Vera says. “Any hold he has over the Changer is flimsy at best. What does he believe will stand between him and the Changer’s vengeance?”
Changer (Athanor) Page 42
