“Get that sweet-scented dandy!” yelled one of Much’s people. Another musician joined in with a triangle, every fifth beat, a single ting, then every fourth beat, then every fifth beat again. Much spun, flinging his arms up, appealing to the crowd. Probably a good move to try and get the people on your side, Tad thought. Especially with your life hanging in the balance. Much dropped down low, his knees bent, one arm tight across his chest, the other wrapped around his back as though concealing it from Whitehall, then quickly reversing, back, forth, and back again. And still Whitehall did nothing but bob his head, not meeting the gaze of the man across the way, his face a mask of intense concentration. As they circled, Much warming up, Whitehall, as it seemed, in a self-imposed trance, Tad could see their auras growing larger, broader, more distinct. They sharpened around the edges, Much’s the watery gray that faded out around the torso, but flashing pink to light purple when he made an extravagant motion with his arms or stomped his boots on the ground. And the glow, lustrous, radiating from the walls of the house, reacting to the beat. It was contagious; Tad found himself tapping his foot and nodding his head, and he saw others nearby doing the same, watching Much with greedy expressions. Another drum with a deeper, bone jarring thud had joined the first, and suddenly the saxophone burst onto the scene, with a scandalous riff that rattled the windows and caused the crowd to cry out; scattered applause, delighted shrieks, enough to make the blood run cold. Daddy threw his head back and cackled. And as though he’d heard the signal he’d been waiting for all along, the slim Brit, Whitehall, burst into action. He stopped dead in his tracks, and pointed to the people nearest, each in turn, his eyebrows working furiously, nodding his head knowingly, as if confirming a secret that he shared with all of them, and then he was off. The speed and the dexterity were difficult to believe. First a nimble two step, as if walking across hot coals, then pivoting on his back leg with elegant passes of the arm, like a matador courting the ire of a murderous bull. He puffed out his chest and stamped his feet, perfectly imitating each of Much’s earlier movements, but so much more gracefully.
“Eh Much, you don’t ‘ave to take that!” came a less than sober voice from the back of the crowd. “Show ‘em ‘ow we do it in the old country!” Much was watching his opponent’s retaliation and rather than being dismayed, he seemed to be enjoying it. Brother, Tad thought. I think I’m about to have a front row ticket to World War III.
“Nice of you to join the party, me fine son,” Much panted. “Not that it will help. I’m ‘bout to flay ye alive.”
“Save your breath, peasant,” returned the Brit. “You’re going to need it.” And as other strange brass instruments sounded out lustily, and the drums pounded not quite in harmony but rather as though each competed for the upper hand as the dancers themselves did, the contest was joined. For the first minutes, it continued to be Much initiating each new step, with the Brit being content to match him move for move. Much’s dances rustic, earthy things, the stomping and snorting of a caged beast in a pen inadequate to support its girth, with the man’s snarl leaving little doubt as to his frame of mind. He would like nothing better than to have Whitehall’s carcass stretched out on the ground, so he could leave his boot prints on it. Much swung his stout arms like a seaman about to break into a chantey; he spun about, he dipped his knees, he pounded his chest. But all the while there was calculation, poise, and technique. He was not merely some drunkard flailing about. His thick legs and the roll of blubber around his middle hid both grace and balance, and as he whipped out each new step, there were cries of recognition and appreciation from the other members of his crew that stood round. He was the crowd favorite, and he appeared to be pulling out steps that the locals knew well. Whitehall had no cheering section, but didn’t seem to want or need one. He was a man alone, but Tad felt the confidence from his aura, cold and distinct, welling out of him. In the light that rose from the houses’ outer wall and floor, mysterious and strange, he shone, imitating his opponent, who was not clumsy but only looked so by comparison. Where Much’s boots crashed against the planks, Whitehall’s feet tapped softly, clicking like fingers snapping together, and all the while he would not look at his opponent directly, but rather kept one lidded eye on him, just enough to duplicate him step for step and move for move. Tad, who couldn’t dance to save his life (as was taking place here), marveled that the man seemed able to master a new step with each passing moment, after only a brief second of observation. He was a natural mimic.
It went on for some time in this way, with Much, the initiator, leading, and Whitehall willingly following. It was hypnotic for Tad, sensory overload. The warmth that pulsed through his body from the stuff inside him that was like liquid but wasn’t, the cries and the yowls from the many throats, the thump-thump of the drums, and the house itself swaying, though no wind blew. The lights from the building, its very essence leaking out onto the guests that clung to it for dear life, and the stars above, and the auras of the dancers leaping with them. And him standing near, and grinning his wolf grin, and shaking his head so the hat jumped and fidgeted, and laughing, laughing. And the voices, unrelenting, telling him things, and which was truly his, if any of them. He had the notion again of it all being a dream, a particularly vivid, compelling, unsettling dream. It had that unfinished feeling, rough around the edges, as though the reality of the waking world was just behind the veneer, peeping through. It’s interesting, the relationship between the dancing and the music. One normally thinks of people dancing to the music, not the other way around. Here it’s almost as though the dancing conjures up the music and controls it. Indeed, he thought that he could almost see the notes wafting toward the two figures locked in eternal combat, and see their auras grasping at them, squeezing them. The auras fierce, insatiable things, that applied their talons to the music and rent it, bending it to their will.
The two seemed for some time to be at an impasse. Every time Much’s inspiration grew, and the simple joy stood out on his honest face as he felt the rhythm and rode it, owned it, Whitehall was able to match him, and was content to leave things there. But a time came when Much seemed unable to think of new steps. He began to reprise some of his earlier maneuvers, though this time they were not as crisp. Fatigue is setting in. The music was as unrelenting as ever, but Tad noticed that some of the riffs that had seemed fresh before were now becoming somewhat repetitive. As if the joy the musicians had felt at the prospect of an impromptu session with some unknown partners was gradually decreasing, as the possibilities of where things might be taken was being worn out. He had a strange thought, suddenly, that the music, like the crowd, is on Much’s side. As he is being worn out, the music is too. Can that be possible? He believed it could be. Much seemed to be building to a head of some kind. He was twirling in a tightly controlled spiral, picking his heels up and setting them down in a series of rapid, explosive kicks. The very boards of the balcony shook in an alarming manner as he stomped, thud-thud-thud-thud. At last he went down on one knee, executing a complete three-sixty to snap into position on one knee like a man proposing or a courtier bowing before the throne of a monarch. The crowd spoke a mad huzza of approval even as Whitehall snapped off the same motion a few feet away, ending with his knee bent and his head lowered so the crowd could not see his eyes. Tad could see only the thin drawn mouth hanging off his pale face, and it seemed that he smiled. But it was a deprecating smile, and held no true mirth.
The music had stopped, as the players spoke congratulatory words to each other in different tongues. Some shook hands and embraced. Tad looked up at Stitch, who was drinking deeply from the stein. As much as the man swallowed, the level of the cup hardly seemed to change. “Is it over?” Tad said, though he need not have asked; he already knew the answer.
Stitch shook his heavy head, his eyes momentarily glazed as the Essence did what it did. “No. It is a grudge match to the absolute finish. It will end when there is a decisive victor, and not before.”
Much was drinking f
rom a cask handed to him by one of his people who stood by. Mead gushed into his mouth and down his chest, dribbling along the wooden deck. Cries to begin again from the windows above. Daddy had slid off the railing and had his head buried in the cleavage of a large woman with a feathered headdress. Her fat stomach heaved and her legs trembled as she let out cries that were part outraged protest, part ecstasy. Tad turned away with difficulty. Whitehall had not moved. His one knee was still bent, and his shoulders shook slightly as though he were laughing. Turning, Much stepped forward and bent down to his eye level.
“Oy! Can’t get your breath, old son? Maybe you want to apologize to me and mine. Not tha’ it’ll do ya a world o’ good.”
Whitehall straightened his leg smoothly, rising to his full height. “No, I’d venture my breath is regained far more easily and speedily than yours, you hairy lout. I just find it humorous, the clumsy flailing of the limbs that you and your inbred relations consider dancing. And I don’t apologize for speaking the truth about slatterns. I consider it doing the assembly a public service, actually.” He looked at Much coolly, whose face was turning a deep purple that had nothing to do with the physical exertions or alcohol. “Now if you’re done wasting time, perhaps you’d care to follow my lead. I’ll show you and your fellow roughnecks how we do things on my side of the pond.” And he pointed to the band, who hastened to take their positions again, though some of them gave the Brit similar looks to the one plastered on Much’s face. Whitehall spread his arms to their full and considerable length, and the musicians made ready to begin again, though this time the atmosphere was sharply changed. The jovial cheer seemed to be gone from the crowd, and Much was no longer smiling. The band struck up again, tentatively. The drums this time, rather than the pronouncement of a joyous occasion, were the beginnings of a funeral dirge. All eyes were on the slender Brit, who for all of Much’s efforts had never even broken stride or hit second gear. When he began to move, Tad could not look away.
His motion had none of the abruptness or the stomping of Much’s slam dancing. For the first minutes it seemed that his feet never left the ground. Rather than lift his legs, he slid smoothly and swiftly over the rough boards like a figure skater gliding across the ice. It had a gracefulness to it that tantalized, yet was an absurdity, like an optical illusion. No human being or animal can move like that, can they? Indeed it seemed to be the motions of an element in nature, river or waterfall, not a mortal being composed of and reliant on flesh, bone, sinew. The Foxlight that had died down to glowing embers when the music had halted was now slowly kindled again. The misty blue of a smooth millpond in the last seconds of twilight before the darkness swallows the earth. As Whitehall moved, he made a number of mysterious gestures with his hands, bringing his palms close together as if to intertwine them, but they never quite touched. He made rapid shapes with the tips of his fingers, forming hexagons of air, then waggling his digits as if he would banish what he created and fling it contemptuously away from him. He flapped his arms like the wings of a predatory bird, and a reek sprang up from them, that of sweetly rotting meat, pork that has been left to fester out in the desert. Assaulting the crowd, who recoiled, stepping backward. Some crying out in disgust and alarm. Whitehall laughed, the dry clacking of old bones in a shallow grave, shifting. Tad could see Daddy, his upturned face bathed in blue light. At least he seemed to be enjoying himself. Much, a gamer all the way, was trying to copy his opponents’ earlier strategy by matching his movements, but looked painfully out of his element. He could not duplicate Whitehall’s motions. How could he, when it looked as though magnets beneath the slender man’s feet were keeping him anchored to the boards? Try as he might, Much seemed physically unable to slide across the rough surface. What was more, Whitehall could see his discomfort and was feeding off it, smirking as he spun around, exhibiting his talent to the crowd on either side. “What ever is wrong, love?” he called out. “You don’t seem so sure of yourself. Could it be you regret the decision to defend your murky end of the gene pool? Eh? You overstuffed meat-sack!” Much looked across at him furiously, as though he would speak, but he was concentrating on trying to match the motions of the Brit as he flashed past as lightly as a wisp of smoke, now rising up on the tips of his toes and pirouetting like a ballet dancer.
“How is he doing that?” Tad whispered to Stitch, but the big man did not reply. His brow was creased; he was frowning. Having taken his eyes for a second off of Whitehall, Tad noticed that something was happening among those gathered. New additions were infiltrating the crowd. They had been slipping up silently, while all eyes were on the dancers. One was standing near, a tall, solidly built man in a doublet and chain mail and a neatly groomed, rust colored beard that ended in a sharp point. On the doublet the faded blue and red crossbars of the British flag. Next to him another, of equal stature, in a flowing silver robe with his hands clasped at the waist. Tad could see that he wore the flag too; it was at the center of his chest. Their complexions were both very pale, so much so that they almost seemed to glow. Tad could see others sliding into place among the crowd like cogs in a well-oiled machine. Grim faced, but a wicked delight shining in their eyes. And he could see that their auras were the same as Whitehall’s, a heavy and substantial violet, that hummed with an energy and intensity over the frantic strains of music that squeaked from the instruments that now sounded as though they were being tortured rather than merely played. The saxophone rang out with the same pealing note, wailing again and again like a claxon. The crowd was uneasy. They were shifting, and some of them were looking around, having noticed the new additions standing among them. Tad felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, and did not need to look up to know that it was Stitch. He was glad of his presence. The drums had picked up, and haunting unnamed woodwinds spoke to the voices in his head, which were clamoring as though they would like to flee, to leap down from the balcony and race off through the woods into the night. But they were trapped in the gray matter and must bounce from lobe to lobe, and each time two of them struck each other there was a shriek within his head, and Tad’s body shook. He could not stop his knees from trembling. Then he made the mistake of looking at one of the newcomers again, the man in the doublet standing next to him, just as the glowing figure turned in his direction. The man had no eyes! His was a dead face, pale as new-fallen snow, and where his eyes should have been were only hollow patches of dark with cold steely points of light gleaming from somewhere deep down, like a lantern down a dark tunnel. It was too much. He felt that he must do something, faint, shriek, piss his pants. Shuddering, he turned back to the two figures in the center.
Something was beginning to happen. Much had stopped the futile attempt at imitation and had reverted to his own heavy style of dance. His mates in the crowd were vainly trying to rally, crying out in their voices thick with mead, but they were being drowned out by the music and another sound that was swelling slowly, its source difficult to pinpoint. Surrounded, said one of the voices. Surrounded by ghosts! English ghosts! He began to laugh. It was all too much. Run, shouted another. Run for your life. The dead shall rise, the sky shall fall. You know how in a party, the heavies don’t usually arrive until late. “Anyone for scones?” he said. Lucky enough no on heard him. He must be forgiven, to be cracking up a little under such circumstances. His senses twisted, and he only a boy. The mind of a lesser child might well have snapped. But Tad was no ordinary youth, and he held his ground. Perhaps only from a combination of fascination and pure terror, but he held his ground. The noise that was gradually increasing was a reverberating humming, similar to the one that he’d been hearing all night, that he’d felt was being produced by the house itself, but this was more concentrated. He both felt and heard it on a deeper level, and it was obvious that those around him did too. They looked at each other and up toward the sky, like people at an outdoor event expecting rain. Stitch’s grip on his shoulder tightened.
“Stay out of the way,” he said, bending down. Tad barely heard him over the di
n. The noise was increasing, the hum of monster turbines and a hollow sucking, like a giant trying to empty a lake with a straw. The music could still be heard, the heavy drums punctuating each downbeat, the flute trilling, the sax blowing as though the player would burst his lungs. And the other noise, where was it coming from? It could have been from the house, or the sky and stars above, or the Brit’s ghastly supporters (as Tad had come to think of them), or Whitehall himself, or all of them together. He could see that the auras of those in the crowd were fading, whether they were drunk, sober, had ingested the Essence, or were partaking in other concoctions or combinations. But those of Whitehall’s supporters still shone out brightly, like purple beacons melding with the blue Foxlight to create deep oceanic pockets and pools of amethyst and dusky lavender. It would have been beautiful, had it not been for the increasingly desperate expression on the face of Much, who was looking as out of his element as a fully grown grizzly trying to tap dance. Whitehall’s movements, meanwhile, were growing more complex, though the cocky smile that had been growing on his face never faltered. His legs were crisscrossing in a rough approximation of a figure eight. The music and the unearthly hum were building, building toward…something.
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