> Suddenly the fire in the fireplace turns black and cold in a fury of soot
> that billows out into the room, driving them back beyond their chairs.
> And from the swirling murk emerges a tall blackened figure carrying a
> large squirming, chittering sack.
>
> "Santa?", the little girl gasps dismayed.
>
> "Sourcerer!" Poly stamps her foot. "What are you doing to my house?" He
> stomps forward, pure carbon black except for glistening blue eyes and
> white teeth showing his grin, and extends the wiggling sack to her...
>
> "What you said. Snagging all my beemice and batcats from the walls and
> woodwork..."
> Then he notices the little stranger, and distracted, lets the sack loose
> not quite in Poly's grip..."Hello. Who are you?" He grins wildly, no
> doubt thinking he's put on a friendly and inviting face...
The little girl looks up, and up, and up. There are silvery egdes to this
spectre; looks like a snowed-on crow fallen down the chimney, same
blue-white eyes as the crow-relatives she knew in Ireland; but they,
remembers the little girl, were much smaller, and had no teeth.
> The sooty apparation towers over her grinning, and the little girl takes
> a step back and raises her arm defensively, "I...I'm..."
>
> "Soucerer!" It's almost too much for Poly to bear! Her lovely quiet
> parlour swirling in soot, and her new friend completly terrified by his
> barbaric uncouthness...and now that dropped sack and the batcats are
> loose, as sooty as their creator, flapping crazily around the room
> shedding showers of soot like moth dust.
>
> One batcat notices the little girl's outstretched arm, takes it for a
> likely perch, and flaps down, digging it's claws into her wrist. Slowly it
> begins to rock back and forth, setting it's claws like a cat kneading a
> rug. The little girl winces from the pain but is too astonished and
> scared to move. Then, it's eyes droop and slowly close, and in one final
> swooping swing, hangs upsidedown from her wrist like a pendant, it's
> batwings folded, and begins to softly purr itself asleep.
The girl slowly cranes her neck around, slowly slowly turns her head
upside-down, and gets a few seconds to study the batcat's little face.
The eyes are slits and the nose is drawn up and wrinkled: a sleeping
kitten with a furled snout. She decides she likes the squinty expression,
and after they take the batcat away, starts practicing with her own face.
> Poly summons the med-daemons, and grabs a handy batcat perch (they're
> scattered throughout the Rancho for just these situations) when Nesta and
> Gene and Nemickol burst into the parlour laughing and shouting, not
> stopped for an instant by the improbable scene before them (it is after
> all Rancho Deluxe where nothing is improbable).
>
> "Hey Poly! Hiya Source! Hiya...you..." they say in chorus.
> "Eyebrown's decorated the flamethrower turrets with holly and poinsettas",
> says Gene.
>
> "And Zeit's stringing lights on the roof", says Nemickol.
>
> "And we've been putting red tree lights in the eyesockets of *all* the
> skulls on the borderline", says Nesta.
>
> "Huey, Louie, and Dewey", thinks Poly, and sighs, and gives up and
> collapses in a fluff of soot in her chair.
>
> "But we..." says Gene
> "Can't find..." says Nesta
> "Omar's skull..." says Nemickol
>
> "Isn't it ready yet?" They chorus.
>
...
Some time later, they are sitting in the soot, having a party. They all
have good things to drink, and little hot dogs on sticks, and sandwich
cookies, and little crackers with orange cheese, and there are baking
smells coming from somewhere, along with another, sort of hazy smell that
makes the little girl feel dizzy. Nesta had come up to the little girl
and handed her something green and familiar, with cherries in it. Now the
little girl is drawing pictures on the fireplace tilestones and watching.
Her glasses have fallen off somewhere and she has two thin white circles
around her eyes, like Spot, except the other way around. Poly has found
The Purple Thing in the garbage bag, and is turning and turning it around
in her lap. She's twined some of the little girl's tinsel into her curly
hair, and the silver strands are standing up about her head in a staticky
halo.
"Where're the sleeves?"
"There's only one sleeve," the little girl replies.
Sourcerer has taken a seat on a small ruby red Ottoman (now streaked black
with soot) and his hands are so big that the mug in them has disappeared
from view and all she sees is the steam emerging. The little girl is
still cautious, but she tries the batcat face on him, and he smiles.
She's getting used to the smile.
"You were telling me your name, little girl," he says with a voice that
sounds just like Goat Rock, California.
"I was? Did you like it?" There's a loud clanging noise from somewhere
deep beneath the parlour, and then a scream, and ragged keening. The
little girl puts her ear to the floorboards for a second, until the noises
stop. She drinks some more absinthe. It spirals through her until she is
clear as jelly and as slow. Nemickol and Gene are doing something odd
with the lights...or is that Zeit waving his hands about excitedly? Then
she realizes that the sparkly things aren't lights after all... She
watches the sparkly trailers spin.
"You could call me little girl," she says finally, "with that Goat Rock
voice. Or 'you' is fine; he"--she gestures across the floor at Nesta,
half-visible in the smoke--"calls me kid. We call each other kid,
sometimes."
A new figure moves through the smoke with a broad tray. She bends over
and the little girl hears her shiny black suit creak. She closes her
eyes--so many smells, this new one is hard to place--warm leather, cold
metal, juniper berries, snow...blood?...chocolate.
"Have a brownie, little girl," Lisa says.
"SQUIRMEL!" shouts Poly, brandishing a yellow-and-orange scrap of fake fur.
Julia
[email protected]
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