4:7
The world shifted. One moment dark with a glowing tapestry stretching across the room, so wide you had to stand back to get a full view of it like that mural Guernica by Picasso. The next lit by candle-speckled crystal chandeliers that sent rainbows dancing across the black and white marble tiles set in a checkerboard pattern that stretched and stretched so far that Kim had to strain her eyes to see the far end.
It appeared to be a large – enormous, ginormous, words were not enough to describe the immensity – ballroom. As in so large they would probably need a water break before they got to the far end. Her feet barked and yapped just thinking about the hike.
“Okay. Yeah. Bigger on the inside. I got that memo at first.” Patti shook her head. “But this is something else entirely.”
Her mouse shook its head, as in in agreement, then pointed forward. When they didn’t immediately move it pulled its little arm back and then pointed with more vigor.
“Yeah, yeah. We’re moving.” Patti groused, turning to the group that were arrayed across the empty expanse of floor. “The mouse says go forth.”
Ben shied his eyes and muttered something like, “we listen to mice now?”
They started off across the floor. They’d made it about halfway when they found the statues. Exquisite representations of dancers in full court-dress, the women with towering white wigs in which various items were sunk and both male and female partners wearing masks that ranged from simple dominos to exotic representations of animals complete with feathers and fur. Kim stopped and stared at one contraption made up of a three-masted ship complete with sails. Wow, someone was a really…
Oh, shit. Kim stopped dead as the eyes of the woman with the boat hair flicked left and right, framed by the lacy mask she wore, like one of those creepy ass dolls with the eyes on pivot.
Kim flung herself backwards, fire jumping instinctively to her fingers as she landed on her ass on the cold marble tile. Ben leaped back with a curse from the couple he’d been eying closely.
“They’re people!” he hissed.
“Yeah, they are.” Kim rose and dusted off her butt, then sauntered back to much more respectfully example the couple. They stood in a formal dance hold, like a couple on the top of jewelry box waiting for the key to be turned and the music to start.
Ivan, Dan, and Prairie had already covered a distance enough that they didn’t hear Kim and Ben’s exclamations. If they had maybe what happened next could have been avoided.
Ivan made a big show of bowing to Prairie. “M’Lady, may I have this dance?”
Closing the distance between them in one large step he took her hand and bent his other arm to take her into a hold that mirrored those of the ‘statues’ around them. She tilted her head back and met his gaze with her limpid one.
“You are very silly.”
“I am very romantic.”
Dan made a gagging noise and stepped back a few steps. Ivan and Prairie looked damned good together. Ivan, looming large and broad, so tall Prairie barely came up to his collarbone; reminiscent of that scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast where the budding lovers danced for the first time while the old teapot sang about a tale as old as time. Despite his pretense at disgust the image of them warmed something in his heart, causing him to smile and stand back to give them their moment.
“Ivan?” Prairie asked.
“Yes, Prair?”
“Can you let go of my hand?” There was nothing in her tone to indicate distress. It was as soft and sweet as ever it was and yet…
Ivan stiffened and started to pull away, hurt adding shadows to his face. “Sure. Sorry. I didn’t mean to… Uh, Prair? Why did you ask?”
“Because I can’t let go of your hand.”
“I was afraid of that. Me neither.”
“How about we try stepping to my left, towards Dan.”
“Sure.”
Dan’s gaze ping-ponged between them, concern mounting in his gut.
“Ivan? Did you try stepping?”
“Yep. You?”
“Yes.” Prairie turned her head to look at Dan with wide-eyes. “Dan? Can you please go get the others? We might have a problem.”
Dan strode across the floor, dodging the statues of the dancing couples and closing the distance as quick as he could.
“We have a problem,” he started as soon as he was in ear-shot.
Siobhan, Ben, Kim, and Patti were staring intently at Gwen who had her hand pressed to the chest of one of the male dancer statues. Her expression was dark and tears were welling in her eyes.
“Trapped. Frozen. So scared.”
Patti’s mouse peeped at Dan’s arrival, catching her attention and turning her head towards him. Her eyes were wide and her eyebrows were pulled inward almost to the bridge of her nose.
“The dancers are people.”
“Ivan and Prairie are trapped.”
They spoke over each other. Stopped. Stared. Then Dan said, “Repeat?”
“The dancers are people. Gwen says they are trapped in a kind of stasis. They can feel everything but they can’t move.”
The implication sank a fist into Dan’s gut. “Ivan and Prairie are trapped. Ivan took Prairie into his arms and…” He brought his hands together in emphasis, then held them firm a short distance apart.
“Repeat?” Siobhan had turned to look at them, as had Kim and Ben. Gwen took her hands from the statue which was a man and came to join them.
“Ivan and Prairie are trapped. They can talk and move their heads but they can’t let go of each other’s hands and they can’t move their lower bodies.”
The group hurried to where Dan had left Ivan and Prairie. At their approach Prairie tried to turn her head to see them but it moved slowly, like it was ossifying.
Gwen rushed up and placed one hand on Ivan’s arm and one on Prairie’s. She closed her eyes. Her lips moved on silent words. Then she stepped back. “There’s nothing I can see. Dan did you try touching them?”
“That isn’t how my Magick works.”
“Try!”
Dan raised his brows at her sharp tone, so foreign coming from the usually gregarious woman, and stepped to comply. At his touch words, like ghosts of clouds, flowed from their skin and over his, seeping into him like they needed to be read. And suddenly his vision was full of words, layered on top of each other. There was Prairie, soft and sweet and kind and with a hidden core of shadows that he drew back more from fear than respect for her boundaries because in them was something hungry that waited for him with gaping maw and dagger-teeth.
But there was also someone else. Someone from a different era. A complacent girl, raised knowing her worth was in marrying ‘right’ and who was dedicated to this goal. Who judged people by their birth and their monetary value, who thought that there were those who ruled and those who were ruled. And she was nothing like sweet Prairie. But the longer Dan left his hand on her arm the less Prairie he saw and the more… Catherine. The girl’s name was Catherine and she was a lady and why was this strange man touching her? With ungloved hands?
The words read, “she screamed.” Prairie did not. But Dan could see the effort it took in her clamped lips and wide eyes. Something was overwriting her as Dan watched.
The same held for Ivan, though for him he was a man named Phillip who had three-hundred annual income and expected this to gain him a woman of title. Dan yanked his hands from Ivan and Prairie, stepping back and swallowing his revulsion.
“That is so wrong,” he muttered, rubbing his left hand over the back of his right and then his right over the back of the left as if he could strip the words from his bones.
Siobhan started to ask what he meant but was interrupted by the sound of a door slamming against the wall. She turned towards the sound to see Jake Rosenthal striding into the space, his voice carrying as he demanded, “What is going on?!”
As if Jake’s presence was the key to some unseen Magick, music swelled through the room, somehow lyrical and dissonant at the same time. Patti let out a cry and pressed her hands to her ears, her eyes wide and her mouth open. Her mouse cowered, its head tucked into her cleavage and its claws scratching her skin.
Released from their stasis, the figures began to move in time with the music. The couples glided, less like they were moving under their own steam and more like they were on disks which were being pulled around the floor by some vast unseen mechanism. They swirled in precise circles. Skirts flared, like petals of fallen cherry blossoms drifting on the air.
Ivan’s eyes widened as he and Prairie were jerked into the dance. They elevated very slightly from the floor, seeming to float on a cushion of air. Spin and spin and spin and spin and her hand clasped in his felt like a lead weight unmoving in his equally unmoving grasp.
The spin of the couples picked up, each creating a swirling tornado of air. Dan, the closest to Ivan and Prairie, was drawn across the floor, his feet skidding and then flung into the air to shoot straight up. The crystal chandelier, so innocuous before, now seemed a weapon. Sharp-edges glinted on the crystals and the brass of the branches loomed a bludgeon ready to cave his head in. He threw his arms over his head, bracing for the collision.
From below him a large globe of shadow flew, engulfing the chandelier. Great, Dan thought, I’m going to be brained by a chandelier I can’t… He passed right through where the chandelier should have been. The spot was cold, a bitter cold that bit into Dan’s bones as he sailed through it. But he wasn’t complaining because a bit of frostbite beat a caved in head.
He was tossed free of the cyclone and went flying towards one of the marble pillars holding up the roof. Again he waited to take the hit but instead slammed into a soft pillow of air.
“Brace for impact!” Kim yelled from underneath him. He tried his best to think light thoughts but still managed to knock her to the ground with him sprawled on top of her.
“Gotta work on that,” she grunted from beneath him, wriggling to be free of his weight, only for them both to slide backwards into the pillar when a gust of wind came whipping across the tiles. “Ow.”
His, “where’s Ben?” was ripped away by the wind which was increasing with each second.
Siobhan, Patti, and Gwen had been farther away from the couples when they began their dervish swirls so instead of being sucked into the vortex of the dance they were instead flung across the floor like tumbleweeds by gusts of wind. Siobhan had grabbed hold of a pillar and was hugging it like it was her long-lost teddy bear, her cheek pressed to its surface and her eyes closed against the buffeting air and the small debris it was picking up to dash across her skin like the nastiest sandblast ever.
Gwen and Patti clung together, staggering to stay standing, and Patti’s mouse had burrowed between her breasts so deep it was completely hidden.
Her “What the ever living fuck!” was ripped out of her mouth and flung into the wall by the wind. She and Gwen’s feet skidded on the highly-polished marble tiles, finding no purchase as she they flew towards the wall. Patti braced for impact but damn… that was going to leave a mark. Or five.
The discordant music and the Song which she was guessing only she heard riding it picked up pace. The spinning dancers, somehow tied to the sound by the Song, did too. And the wind grew worse.
Gwen turned, her hair whipping Patti’s face, and pressed her forehead to Patti’s. “Make it stop,” the words brushed Patti’s skin, her Magick translating the vibration to sound as it drew it in.
“How?!” Was that aloud? Was it sound? Was it vibration. Patti couldn’t think. Couldn’t reason.
The sound of a door slamming from the area Jake had entered barely carried over the whipping wind. Then the music stopped. The spinning slowed and jerked to a halt. And silence reigned.
Wobbling on her legs Patti pushed away from the wall, tightening her hold on Gwen to keep the other woman upright. Together, propping each other up, they hobbled over to where Siobhan still clung to the pillar with her eyes closed and tears making trails down the dust that coated her cheeks.
Ben staggered out from behind a pillar, checking Dan and Kim where they were wrapped around its base.
“’Kay? Kay?” his words were muffled by ears that had taken a battering in the wind.
Kim groaned and unwound herself from the marble. “My bruises have bruises and they are Dan-shaped!”
“What got in your head? I’ve got like ninety-pounds on you!” Dan hollered, concern giving his words an edge.
“More like fifty,” she corrected, “but yes. Stupid decisions are a thing I struggle with.”
Gwen and Patti unpeeled Siobhan from the pillar. Gwen brushed her hands delicately over Siobhan’s lids, wiping them free of the muddy mix of dust and tears. They stepped apart to get Siobhan between them, draping her limp arms around their shoulders, and the three of them made their lurching way over to Ben, Dan, and Kim.
“Did anyone hear where the music came from?” Patti asked.
“The pillars?” Gwen hazarded. “The walls? I don’t know!”
“Ivan! Prairie!” Ben’s gaze darted and he ran to find the pair. His pace picked up as he dodged between couples, searching for his friends. Where did they stop… where did they…
The door in the wall banged open and Jake Rosenthal came storming in. Ben turned in disbelief. How had the guy gotten there! This thought was followed by the urge to get the fuck off the floor before… Too late.
The music came in, like a calliope stuck on slow, and the couples he had been dodging became obstacles to avoid. Running, jumping, sliding, and dodging he flung himself from the dance floor as the wind picked up.
“Cover!” he screamed. It was probably redundant but he needed to scream it. This time everyone had been clear enough of the couples, his being the only dumb ass to return to the floor, so no one was swept up in the mini tornados that swirled around each spinning couple like Dan had been. Small blessings.
Ben was still caught in the wind, skidding across the floor on his ass to collide with the floorboard of the wall. He turned so his back hit. His breath escaped him with the impact.
He forced his head up, the wind fighting to embed it in the wall, and searched for the others.
Patti and Gwen had thrown themselves over Siobhan who was still dazed from the last blast, a dam of arms and legs and torsos that saved her from the worst of the battering. With the three of them they must have supplied enough mass that they were pushed only very slowly across the slick floor and when they came into contact with the wall it was like the slow glide of a hockey puck that had travelled the length of a rink before hitting the boards.
Dan had dropped to the ground and it looked like he’d pulled Kim down with him. He spread his arms and legs, making his surface as large as possible so the wind mostly cascaded over him though he did slide some distance before Kim rolled up on her side, flung her hands in front of her and sent a wind to meet the oncoming blast. It wasn’t a perfect shield by any means but it cut the majority of the buffering down.
Another slam and again the music and the dancers and the wind stopped.
“We’ve got to stop that guy from coming in here again!” Ben hollered from his position along the wall.
Dan raised a thumb from his prone position.
Patti and Gwen unlocked their limbs and carefully lifted themselves up from Siobhan to reveal her guzzling the second of two healing potions.
“We’ve got to stop the music!” Patti yelled.
“Wha…?” Ben cupped his hand around his ear, straining to hear.
“It’s the MUSIC!” she screamed.
“It’s the DOOR!” he screamed back.
And then the fucking door opened again and Jake stormed in again and the music started again and the dancing and the whirling and the wind. The motherfucking wind!
They battened down as best they could but they were tossed around like kindling in a twister. The only one that didn’t hit the wall with jarring force was Ben and that was only because he was already at the wall. As it stood he was pretty sure he was going to leave a Ben-shaped indent in the damned thing from the force that had clearly been attempting to embed him in it.
When the door slammed again, Ben pushed himself up on his fingers and toes and sprang as lithely as a man who’d just been hammered into a wall could, sprinting for the side wall and the door. He felt a wind at his back that he suspected Kim had summoned to move him forward. It was just enough to get him to the door just as it was starting to swing inwards.
He hit the thing like a linebacker, slamming his shoulder against the wood and bracing his feet. Fuck the fuck no!
The pressure on the door increased and then ceased and he slumped against the wood. After he caught his breath, that shit had run somewhere North and did not want to come back, he turned and pressed his shoulders to the door then threw finger-guns in the general direction he suspected the others had landed.
“Nailed it!” he wheezed.
“Situation!” Siobhan yelled.
“Door secured!” he tried his best to project. “Not leaving this damned spot. I’ll hold the door!”
Siobhan limped onto the floor, holding her side. “Natch.”
Dan and Kim stepped up bracketing her and then Patti and Gwen joined them.
“The music has stopped. For now.” Patti stated the obvious but maybe the obvious needed to be stated. Or expanded on. “I hear slash feel something in it though so I think,” she cringed, “that we need to let it play again.”
“Say again?” Dan gritted.
“I think,” she looked down, clearly processing, then said slowly, “I think its broken.”
“And…?” Kim probed. “It needs to be fixed why?”
Patti shrugged, shook her head, and looked uncertain. “I don’t know. It’s a gut thing.”
“Okay. Music is your thing. I’m not going to spot check you.”
“It feels like… I’m not sure.”
“Like this should play out. Like they need to dance and the dance needs to finish and the clock needs to strike midnight?” Dan gestured at a huge grandfather clock centered on the wall at the end of the dance floor. It’s hands were frozen at 11:59.
“Why didn’t any of us see that before?” Gwen asked in a weary voice as she dragged her hair into some semblance of not-a-tumbleweed.
“We were being sandblasted into walls and pillars?” Kim answered.
Gwen shrugged and lowered her hands. The hair was a lost cause. Best to just rock the Brillo-Chic. “Solid.”
“Ivan and Prairie are being overwritten, drawn into the Story as two characters. The only thing I can think is we have to let the dance end to free them.”
“But the music is broken and its making everything go haywire.” Patti finished, gently stroking the head of the mouse that had poked itself out from her cleavage.
“How so?” Siobhan asked.
“It’s like a music box. One of those ones with the dancer on it. If you wind it tight the music plays fast and the dancer spins that way. As the spring winds down so does the music and the movement. It’s the mechanics of the thing.” Patti pet the mouse some more, drawing comfort from the soft exhalations of sighs the creature gave as it nuzzled her fingers. “I’m betting Ivan could explain it perfectly but he’s trapped in it so you’ve got my imperfect understanding. I think this is basically a big magic music box. And instead of the spring winding down its getting tighter and tighter and the figures are dancing faster and faster and we’re getting beat up by the effects.”
“And if Ivan wasn’t trapped he’d probably be able to fix it.” Dan’s shoulders slumped. “And until its fixed Ivan is trapped. Its literally a vicious circle.”
Patti nodded. “Right now the thing that triggers the movement, Jake’s entry, is stopped so we have time to figure this out.”
“But not much.” Dan’s gaze shifted significantly to the clock. “The Story wants to be told and I think if we don’t make it work it will grind us beneath its mechanism.”
“That’s possible?” Siobhan’s voice was barely a whisper, the echo of the pain she experienced when slamming into the pillar riding the sound.
“I don’t know.” Dan shifted his jaw. “You’re probably getting tired of hearing me say that.”
“Nah,” Kim said, tugging her earlobe. “Keep it coming.”
“Uh,” Ben called from across the room. “This door really wants to open!”
Dan slanted a knowing glance at the women clustered around him. Siobhan refilled the two empty loops with healing potions and then squared her chin then hollered across the Ben, “Let it!”
Enter The Woods 