Horrors of the Dancing Gods

for in all this, other than because it's good symmetry?'

'Yuggoth is dangerous in the light of day, but it is truly nasty at night. You are a nocturnal with a great deal of immunity to the sorts of things that might threaten others at that time, and you can fly.'

She shook her head sadly. 'I think this is sick. Still, let me see the kid and I'll see if I can talk him out of this?'

'The kid,' Ruddygore repeated, smiling. 'I think you might well be a bit disoriented on this as well. Come, let us go and find him by all means!'

The imp was about a foot tall and purple, with a perpetually nasty expression, rotten sharp teeth, and the personality of the gargoyle it resembled. It snarled and spat and its eyes flamed, and it was clearly a very dangerous creature restrained only by the candlelit barriers and the Tetragrammaton within.

And this was when it was trying to be helpful and nice. Irv couldn't imagine what the thing would be like if it didn't like him.

The human, wearing only a cotton loincloth, sat in a slightly modified lotus position facing the imp. In front of him were a series of small clay bowls with different-colored sands in each of them. Carefully and in the prescribed manner of the Rules on this aspect of shamanism — Volume 16 to be exact, which he had off to one side — he reached in and took a handful of several different sands at once, and with soft chanting and great care, he began to draw a design in front of him by letting the varicolored sands drip slowly from his fist. Although he had no control over the colors or the mixing, the result was an exotic design not unlike a varicolored mask of some strange, ancient creature on the dirt below.

The imp studied the design critically, craning its neck to follow the drawing at the correct angle as much as possible.

'Not too bad for an asshole,' it commented. 'Only thing is, this is a cross between a totem of the Benin City-States in the 1400s and Anastazi circa 1200. That kind of inconsistency weakens the totem. You get two different entities tryin' to answer, and they don't like each other much. Combine 'em and they just hate themselves.'

'I can't deny my twin natures,' the human responded.

'I keep tellin' you, it's concentration, you idiot!' the imp stormed. 'You got to decide what in hell you're goin' for before you go, that's all! Isolate what you need from what you are. It's like you got a purse with coins of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and nationalities. You need coins that'll spend in this place, now, at this time. You don't reach into the purse and pick out all the coins and insist that they're all good! And you don't melt 'em down and give 'em a lump — which is about what you're tryin' here. You reach in and pick out the coins that spend where you are and put the rest away, right?'

'Yeah, well, that's a lot easier to do with coins than with your mind and soul.'

'Of course it is! Otherwise everybody'd be doin' this and we'd never get any rest! That's the final knack of it. Most of the rest is all mechanical. Craft, that's all. The art's in how you can control yourself. What you got there is a plea for a hot fudge sundae from the god of turnips. The best you can hope to get is chocolate-covered turnips.'

The young man shrugged. 'Might make turnips edible, anyway.'

The imp blew up almost literally in sheets of purplish flame. 'Now, see! That's just what your problem is! You ain't got no discipline at all! They'll eat you alive when they get the chance! How you gonna ever best somebody who can call on the gods of war when you call up the gods of nosebleeds? Get with the program or say 'the hell with it!' and find something you can do well! You got all the talent, boy, but you ain't got the mind for this!'

And with that the imp vanished in a ball of flame.

Irving sighed and made a pass with his clenched fist over the bowls, allowing a little sand from each to drop, and each color went back into its proper vessel. Once it was empty, he used his hand to completely rub out the weird face he'd drawn. What did they expect of him, anyway?

How could he make them see just how miserable he was? He'd been miserable since having been yanked here years before by his father, then abandoned while dear old Daddy went off to save the world — and did so at the cost of being turned into a green Playboy centerfold. The funny thing was, his father never even knew that he knew Dad hadn't died in the war. Nope, instead, brave old Daddy had run away in shame and hadn't been anywhere near his son, leaving said son to be raised by Santa Claus and his elves, all of whom lived in the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West.

He had the only father who'd flunked out both as a father and as a mother. Irving couldn't help but wish, as he had many times before, that Dad had at least tried one of those roles.

He heard someone coming and deliberately put the stuff away and got to his feet just as Ruddygore and Marge entered the chamber.

It was unclear which of them, Marge or Irving, was more shocked at the sight of the other. Irving at least had seen Marge and creatures like her, although not up close for a very long time. Ruddygore and the others here had spent a great deal of effort trying to ensure that he didn't have any private encounters with nymphs.

The last time Marge had seen the boy, he'd been literally that. Nothing so marked the dramatic passage of time in anyone's experience than seeing a child at one stage and then not seeing the same one again until long afterward.

Although young, the person who rose and stood facing her was hardly a child anymore. Irving was in fact pushing six feet tall with no absolute assurance that he'd stop growing. He was a handsome young man, too, with a finely honed muscular brown body that would have been the envy of almost any of his contemporaries and a finely featured angular face that seemed quite exotic-looking, blending the sharpest and most distinctive features of his Native American father and his African-American mother. Still, for all his lack of European ancestry, there was something of the Greco-Roman god in him, some kind of ancient ideal in deep, dark bronze, yet it was also clear by his looks that they had been attained by nature, not by any of Ruddygore's tricks.

Holy cow! Marge thought, a bit awed by the sight. He wasn't just a good-looking guy, he was gorgeous! She felt a little odd in a way she had nearly forgotten. She hadn't felt this way about the sight of a man since… since she'd been human.

'Irv, this is an old friend of your father's who was originally from your world. Marge, meet Irv,' Ruddygore said.

'I don't remember seeing anyone who looked like you when I was growing up back on Earth,' Irving noted, his voice already deep and rich yet with no trace of an accent at all.

'I've changed a bit since I got here,' Marge assured him, sounding both nervous and a bit skittish. What was getting into her?

'It seems to happen pretty regularly,' Irv commented a bit sourly. 'After all, how many other people do you know whose fathers are wood nymphs?'

'I — well, nobody, of course.' Damn! What was wrong with her? 'It wasn't really his fault, though. It was that or die.'

'We've been through this, Irving,' Ruddygore commented patiently. 'Until you are in a spot where you would have to make that choice for yourself or for someone else you care about — which I devoutly hope you won't have to ever do — you cannot sit in judgment on others. And by doing what he did instead of taking death or surrender, he also was able to dispatch one of the most dangerous and evil people I have known and make it possible to foil a plot to take over the whole world. I'd say it would have taken a lot more courage to do what he did than not to do it and let evil win.'

'Yeah, well, I wasn't there,' Irving responded petulantly. Damn it, this is Joe's kid! Marge told herself, and got back some self-control. She was fascinated by his reaction in spite of the problems she was having. 'I was,' she managed, 'and Ruddygore is right. I can promise you that.'

'Yeah, well, it's what some of my tutors here have said. Dad won the war, but he blew the peace. Seems to me that if you have the guts to make that kind of decision, you should have the guts to learn to live with it, too.'

'What…?' Marge was totally confused at this attitude.

'Joe never told him,' Ruddygore explained. 'And didn't stay around very long afterward, either. Irving found out on his own. Somebody on my own staff slipped; still, we'd have to have told him sooner or later, anyway.'