Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (8 page)

“I am sorry, Your Highness.” (Aunt Domitilla
did not sound sorry at all.) “Your refreshment will have to
wait.”

“For what?” the Trojan prince snarled
testily.

“For the inevitable. When Miss Cubbins’
basket hit the water, ripples ensued.”

“Well, of course ripples—”

“I do not speak of
physical
ripples
alone.”

Tithonus looked bewildered and was not alone
in this befuddlement. Miss Cubbins and I were equally confused, but
my elder aunt saw no need to elaborate. Fortunately, Aunt
Euphrosyne took pity on us and explained:

“My dears, imagine a blazing fireplace
entirely hidden from view by a pair of heavy draperies. Now picture
what might happen if someone dropped a smidgen of gunpowder into
the flames. Even the smallest explosion would be heard on the far
side of those draperies, and the cloth itself well might ruffle or
bell out, and so—”

“—people would suspect that
something
was behind those draperies, even if they could not see it, and they
might draw nigh, in order to investigate it more closely,” I
concluded.

“Oh, my sweet Melantha, if it were only
people
with whom we shall have to deal now!” Aunt Euphrosyne
looked mournful.

“Wait, wait.” Tithonus pinched the bridge of
his shapely nose, eyes shut tight in furious cogitation. “You’re
saying that when the basket hit the water, I
exploded
?”

My aunts exchanged a
look
and sighed
in tandem.

“
Men
,” said Aunt Domitilla.

“
Myths
,” Aunt Euphrosyne amended.
“Though I shouldn’t be one to talk.”

Before she might say more, a faint rumble
arose from beyond the stand of poplars marking the western edge of
the manor grounds. The necessary presence of these trees as a
windbreak was all that had saved them from the Elizabethan
“improvements” committed by Lord Wielward, but now their luck
seemed to be at an end. The proud trees swayed as though caught up
in a tempest. Towering trunks groaned under the strain before they
snapped and fell. Some simply shuddered where they stood before
bursting into showers of splinters, as though obliterated by an
artillery barrage. Miss Cubbins squealed.

She might have saved her breath for more
inspired screaming. It wanted but an instant more of arboreal
destruction before the
real
horrors came.

They poured out from between the ruined trees
in a mob of fur and feathers, scales and squamous skin. Seven swans
came swooping in above a lumbering she-bear, a sharp-toothed
weasel, an assortment of cruelly-horned cattle, and a slither of
nasty-looking snakes. The beasts carried such an air of unnatural
bloodthirst as to turn a reasoning person’s spine to jelly. I vow
there was a mouse amid the throng that looked capable of tearing my
throat out and using my esophagus for a skip-rope!

“This is only the beginning,” Aunt Euphrosyne
murmured. “These are but the metamorphosed beings who happened to
be in the neighborhood. Once word spreads, we shall be
inundated!”

As the creatures neared, I noted fresh cause
for alarm. “They’re
huge
!” So they were, each at least
thrice the size of ordinary beasts of their breed. If the mouse had
startled me before, now it absolutely terrified me. I flung myself
into the sanctuary of Aunt Domitilla’s arms.

She thrust me away unceremoniously. “For
shame, Melantha!” she said with cold severity. “Is this how the
mistress of Dyrnewaed behaves in a crisis? Where is your inbred
gumption? Were you not born daughter to the hereditary primate of
the
Ecclesiam Omnium Daemonum
, whilom prelate of Our Lady if
Dis, Somerset, as well as to our sister Celaeno, whose dark wings
obliterated the sun and whose foul droppings were the nonpareil of
loathsome filth? Shall you not fulfill the promise of your
parentage?”

My jaw went slack with shock. My mother was
famous for her foul
what
? My father once headed the Church
of All
Whom
? (Well, I suppose that sort of religious
affiliation would explain the things in the wine cellar, and the
crypt, and dear old Scylla’s peculiar taste in beverages, but I
always thought we were just schismatic Muggletonians.) Head
reeling, all I could manage to do was wail: “But—but
Mamma’s
given name was Cecily!
”

“Is
that
what you have gleaned from my
words?” Aunt Domitilla was fit to be tied.

“Now, ‘Tilla, it’s our own fault for having
sheltered the child from her heritage.” Aunt Euphrosyne was ever
the voice of reason. “It is rather a lot of family secrets to
absorb so abruptly. You should have done it more gradually.”

“As I intended, dear sister, once the girl
showed us she’d mastered her
mundane
studies.” Here she
glowered at Miss Cubbins and me in equal measure. “Which might have
been accomplished ere now if Melantha had been a more attentive
pupil supplied with a
far
more doughty teacher.”

Miss Cubbins crumpled. “My lady, I swear by
all I love to be the doughtiest of governesses to Miss Melantha in
future, if only you will save us from our present peril!”

“Oh, fine,” said Aunt Domitilla, and threw me
into the spring.

The spot into which she cast me must have
been the deepest part of the pool, for I submerged fully. I had
only an instant to realize my situation before the waters closed
over me. As I fought my way back to the world of air and light, I
thought I heard the muffled sound of two additional splashes. My
head broke the surface in time to see that I had heard correctly:
my aunts were just emerging from the wavelets beside me.

My aunts. . .my goodness, they
were
a
sight! Domitilla and Euphrosyne spread dripping black wings and
tossed back their ebon tresses as fierce shrieks broke from their
feathered throats. As they took flight, I saw that their
still-human faces were now youthful and lovely, their feet
transformed to talons, their breasts indecorously bare. Her Majesty
would
never
have approved.

As for me, the spring had wrought similar
though not identical changes. My shoulders felt oddly heavy,
possessed of strange new musculature. I flexed things I did not
know could be flexed and was rewarded by the leathery crack of my
own unfurled wingspan. I know not by what instinct I soared from
the pool into the sky, only that I did so. Vanity and curiosity in
equal measure made me look down as I ascended, so that I might see
my reflection in the water.

Gracious, wasn’t I the most extraordinary
creature! I had my aunts’ dark wings, but these sprang from a
lithe, reptilian body, and my familiar human face showed a mouth
filled with fangs. Flames flickered in my nostrils, and for some
reason my clawed hind paws were sheathed in black gaiters that went
quite nicely with the scarlet cassock veiling my immature bosom
from view. Part harpy, part dragon, part demonic clergy, all added
up to make me one very odd duck indeed.

Odd, not effective. As my aunts attacked the
approaching wave of creatures with talons and certain unsavory
bombardments, I struggled to find a way in which to help them. The
very notion of a harpy’s traditional strategy—to rain mythic guano
upon one’s opponent—revolted me to the point where my innards
simply would
not
cooperate. I lacked Pappa’s clerical
training, which meant I could not summon any of his former infernal
parishioners. I might have used my draconic strength directly, but
single combat would not be efficient. While I battled one beast, a
horde of others could reach the spring.

The spring! Inspiration struck me instantly.
I turned in midair and dove back toward the source, scooping up a
large mouthful of the transformative water, splashing poor Miss
Cubbins willy-nilly in the process. Beating my wings frantically, I
flew back around the manor house and in one wild, mad,
make-or-break feat of valor. . .I spit on the front door of
Dyrnewaed.

“
What sorcery is’t that wakes me from my
unsought slumber
?” With lightning-tipped staff in hand, the
graybeard wizard Merlin stood amid the wreckage of the heavy oak
panel that had contained his spirit since before Great Eliza’s
reign. “Reveal your name unto me, O mage and savior supreme!”

“Introductions later, magic now,” I shouted,
snatching him up in my claws and whisking him back to the embattled
ground between the woods and the spring.

To his credit, Merlin did not waste time
giving arguments or demanding explanations. His cool blue eyes took
in the situation in a trice, his supernatural sense allowed him to
perceive where to place his loyalties, and his magic enabled him to
raise a spell on the spot. It leaped from his staff and rocked the
ground it struck, causing a wall of warding to erupt around the
troublesome water. Undetectable to mortal senses, the barricade
thrummed with sorcerous power that blasted all of the attacking
creatures off their feet, out of their flight paths, and halfway to
perdition.

My aunts alone were spared from the general
eviction. They hovered in mid-air, astonished by the sudden
depopulation of their theatre of war, until their eyes lit upon the
wizard. They drifted to earth with the grace of autumn leaves and
bowed before him.

“You have our thanks, O Merlin,” Aunt
Euphrosyne intoned. Her harpy voice was considerably more
impressive than her tremulous human one. “What dread agency set you
free from your ages-long durance to aid us in this, our most
desperate hour?”

“The dragon-thing spit on my door,” the
wizard replied simply.

“Melantha!” Aunt Domitilla ruffled her
feathers. “Spitting in the house? And you, a lady born and bred.
What next?
Public nose-blowing
?”

“Excuse me, dear Aello,” Aunt Euphrosyne
murmured, calling her sister by what I presumed to be her true
name. “If we are being accurate, our sweet Melantha did not spit
in
the house so much as
on
it.”

“Do not chop prepositions with me, Ocypete,”
Aunt Domitilla replied in the same wise. “The fact remains that the
child’s intemperate actions have caused a dreadful upset in our
domestic arrangements. We now have a legendary wizard for whom to
provide, as well as the dawn-goddess’ castoff lover. However shall
we manage to introduce
them
to the vicar and the local Hunt?
O, we are socially ruined! I shall never be able to contribute my
tatting to the parish jumble sale again, and you
know
how it
piles up!” She flapped her wings in despair.

“Does this mean you will be staying at
Dyrnewaed?” I asked innocently.

“Of course we will!” Aunt Domitilla (née
Aello) snapped as we all wended our way back to the spring. As my
aunts had chosen to walk rather than fly, out of deference to
Merlin, we made a rather comical procession. Harpies are cruel
grace itself when airborne, but on the ground they tend to waddle.
“It would not do to leave you unchaperoned with both a legendary
wizard and a prince whose manners thus far have been less
than—”

She stopped in her tracks and stared. Miss
Cubbins stared back, her face pale, her expression sheepish, her
hair serpentine. Tithonus was pale as well, though this was due to
his having become as fine a piece of marble statuary as the British
Museum might covet.

“Oh my,” said Miss Cubbins, while her hair
hissed and writhed. “I am most terribly sorry. I did not mean to
turn the gentleman to stone, but when Miss Melantha splashed me, it
simply could not be helped.”

“A gorgon!” Aunt Euphrosyne exclaimed. “Did
we know she was a gorgon when we hired her, Aello? I’m sure
I
was unaware of the fact.”

“Apparently, so was she,” my elder aunt
remarked with a wry smile. Turning to Merlin, she added: “I am
gratified to perceive that your magic has protected you from the
effects of our governess’ coiffure.”

“Shieldings and wardings, Madam,” Merlin said
smugly. “Never cut corners on your shieldings and wardings, I
always say.”

“Indeed.”

At Aunt Domitilla’s behest, the wizard turned
his powers to restoring us to our human guises. Despite the social
niceties, the governess went first. As her fellow Mythics, we were
immune to her petrifying gaze, but my aunts declined to become the
empirical proof of whether our mortal bodies would be equally
unaffected.

Later, over tea, it was arranged that Merlin
should stay on at Dyrnewaed as a long-lost uncle, newly back from
the Afghan border. Miss Cubbins also agreed to remain, with the
proviso that half a glass of spring water accompany her to all of
our lessons, a visual memorandum for me to remain on good behavior
or—as she so crudely put it—else. I thought it beastly of my aunts
to approve this, but had no choice in the matter.

As for Prince Tithonus, Merlin’s magic had no
effect on him, alas, nor did repeated aspersions with the spring’s
restorative waters. My aunts had him removed to the conservatory,
for shelter from the elements, and Miss Cubbins frequently brought
me there for lessons, though certain aspects of his undraped
physique proved distracting for us both.

“Perhaps he has no desire to return to the
flesh,” I remarked. “At least in this state he will retain his
youthful vigor.”

“You need not speak of
flesh
quite so
knowingly, Miss Melantha, nor to
stare
at the poor gentleman
so attentively,” my governess chided, but she was goggling at the
prince’s vigor as much as I. “Now open your Latin book to Ovid’s
Ars Amatoria
and let us begin.”

Ah, the delights of a Classical
education!

Introduction to “True Calling”

Irette Y. Patterson writes science fiction,
fantasy, and romance. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia. “True Calling”
is her first professional fantasy sale.