Horrors of the Dancing Gods

Alvi turned up her nose. 'I smell like a horse, I need to freshen up and relieve myself, and I can't do anything at all with my arms like this.'

'I think I might be able to do something about those, but we'll have to wait a bit now. There's a Mossuk — that's a mall race that lives inside the tunnels created by these old me trunks — who knows some of the basic spells and thinks he can get you free. We didn't want to try it with you still asleep, and I think he's off doing whatever Mossuks do right now. In the meantime there's a fairly nice pool fed by a warm stream not much farther over, and it's not deep enough for you to drown, so it might be fine for freshening up.'

AM looked around at the somewhat forbidding jungle. 'There are… creatures… around here? All around here? Looking at us?'

'Sure. You get used to it. There's nobody here that's going to hurt you or cares much one way or the other. You leave them alone, they'll leave you alone, period.'

'I–I have to take your word for it. I suppose I'm at your mercy, really. It's just that, well, you'll have to forgive me. I've — I've never been completely on my own before, and I've never addressed any of the faerie at all.'

'Never? That's hard to believe.'

'Not if you saw the ones that lived around our estates. Besides, my father believed that if my true nature were generally known among them, they'd be out to get me or something. Inside the walls was strictly human staff. Many of them knew of me, of course, but like most such staff, they had worked for my father's family for generations. Except for two handmaids, no one ever saw me except fully dressed, properly concealed. Then no one could tell. I don't give off a faerie aura or have much in the way of magical skills. I do have serious problems with iron, but I can sense its presence and be a bit careful around it.'

'So you've been raised as, and passed as, a normal human girl,' Joe said, nodding. 'But surely your father and you knew you couldn't keep this up forever. There would be young men, family influences, pressures to many, and so on.'

She nodded. 'True, but in another two years I would have come into proper inheritance on my own, and my father intended then to sign full rights, title, and birthright to me. After that, well — I should not like to be married to a man who found me repulsive or monstrous. If anyone stopped his pursuit of me because of this, it would be good riddance.'

'Maybe.' Joe personally had her doubts about this. Born a full-blooded Native American, she knew that the value of papers and legal documents when race was an issue wasn't anything sacred and inviolate. And she had seen more than one of the type of man who'd swallow hard, marry, get the money and the estates, then denounce his wife as a monster. In this world her testimony as a halfling against his as a full human wouldn't even bring a contest. Still, it was kind of a moot point now.

'So with all those plans, why were you over here in the middle of nowhere being hunted by these men?'

'I–I'm not sure. One night, months ago now — seems like years — my father woke me up, told me to pack everything I could, particularly clothes, and be ready to leave immediately. He said that some very evil forces were coming that he couldn't fight off or stand against in any way and that we had no choice but to flee. He hoped that we could find safety with old friends, powerful wizards apparently, until things blew over. When I asked him who could hate us this much, he only said that once he'd had to make a bargain with somebody who otherwise he would never even have acknowledged and that he had hoped to be able to fulfill the bargain without involving me or risking everything but that it had proved impossible. He never would say more. We have been on the run ever since, often only minutes ahead of them. When we left home, I saw them ride in.'

'Who? Those guys?'

'No. Ugly, nasty things on shining demonic horses with blazing red eyes and nostrils spouting fire. Tall, scary homed riders in shiny black armor and great bat's wings folded against their backs. Since then I've seen them again, but only in ones and twos and in the dark. Most of the time it's been ones like those last night. Mercenaries and robbers hoping for some sort of reward. Well, perhaps my father's body is enough for them now!'

Joe doubted it. They hadn't shown any care in taking the old boy out, yet they had bound her and had been making ready to take her someplace. No matter what, it was Alvi who was the prize here.

This was getting interesting, and it had been a very long time since anything or anybody had interested Joe.

A small creature, perhaps no more than a foot high, emerged from under one of the big roots. At first glance it seemed like some gigantic bug, but two four-fingered white-gloved hands, big round eyes, a round bright red glowing nose, and a purple mustache over two enormous protruding buck teeth said otherwise.

'Hey, girl! Still want me to look at the halfling's bond spell?' the creature piped, whistling through its teeth. 'Yes! Over here, old-timer!' Joe called.

The Mossuk scurried over and looked at Alvi with a distasteful expression. 'Well, don't just stand there! I can't climb up, y' know! Just set here and look the other way and I'll see what I can do about them cussed cuffs.'

Alvi was startled. 'Um — I'm sorry!' She sat and put out her wrists as much as she could for the little creature. She realized that she was the stranger and the freak there, but all these creatures were so new and so very odd…

There was a sudden click, and she felt the cuffs give way. The sudden pain in her shoulders as she brought her arms forward was more than compensated for by the relief of moving freely again and feeling blood course through her arms.

There was a motion deep within the baggy dress. Joe could almost swear… No, never mind.

'Thanks! Maybe I can do something for you sometime!' Joe told the little creature.

'Could be. Doubt it, though. No big problem here. Simple stuff. Cheap bonds, really. If you could see it clear, you could get it loose. Just a bunch of standard knots, that's all.'

Joe went over to Alvi as the little creature vanished back underground, stood in back of her, and began massaging Alvi's neck and shoulders as she sat, trying to get her fully back to normal.

Alvi breathed an excited and heavenly sigh. 'Oh, don't stop! That feels so very good!'

Eventually it was time to stop, though. 'Where are the rest of your things?' Joe asked her. 'I'm sure you had a lot more than what I saw.'

'We did, but we had to leave it in a hurry. We had two pack mules, but when it was clear we were being followed, we had no choice but to leave them and hurry on.'

'You had no horses?'

'We should have, but a wagon or surrey would have been too large and hard to manage on these kinds of roads, and I can't really handle much of a regular mount, I'm afraid.'

They reached the pool of fresh water. 'Well, you're going to have to take off what you have in any case,' Joe noted. 'For one thing, you'd sink with all that on. For another, it's not practical out here. Third, they're pretty filthy and we're a long way from a laundry.'

'I–I'm sorry. I'm just not used to this! I mean — my whole life has been one of concealment! Now, suddenly, I'm here, with nobody I have known, and I'm — well, it is difficult. I never knew how much the monster I was until we were on this trip. There have been times — it could not be helped — when others have… seen. And I have endured their looks, their pity, their revulsion, and whatever. You are so perfect. You cannot know what it is to be like this! You can never know how I envy you!'

Joe was taken aback. Perfect? Envy me? If only she knew!

But the fact was, putting aside the couple of extra inches of perfectly proportioned height and dimensions, Joe was physically about as perfect as one could be — for a wood nymph. It was just that, well, Joe had been neither born nor raised a wood nymph, or a member of the faerie race, or even female and culturally was even more cut off from this existence. Somehow she'd been feeling so damned sorry for herself that it had never once occurred to her that to any stranger she really was perfection of her race and for this world, anyway, normal and acceptable.

And of course there were far worse things to be than a wood nymph, particularly in this world. Somehow, though, the idea that one who considered herself such would actually feel envy for Joe was unreal, unheard of, and