Once Bitten, Twice Fly: Chapter 7
Even through the curtains, the sunlight was a nuisance. Ann figured the better idea would be to wait until nightfall to see this “Stibbons”. Until then, she would do just what the card said.
She pondered the difference between normal magic and practical magic.
She pondered over the kind of mind that would send out business cards for a wizard.
She pondered the strange prefixation and suffixation of plusses.
She pondered the very use of the word “ponder” over the more applicable “consider”.
But, most of all, she pondered the strange substitution of punctuation in Stibbons’s c-mail address.
She snapped back into the real world with a jolt, as there came a knock on the door. You can tell a lot about a person from the way they knock. This knock sounded like the percussive equivalent of someone clearing his throat without actually wanting to be heard. This knock told the listener of unsuccessful secrecy, of reluctance, against the odds, to stand out. But, most of all, it told the keen listener that, whoever was knocking, they could only reach three feet up the door to do so.
Ann sighed. “Come in, Nobby.”
He pushed the door ajar, sidled in with his helmet under one matchstick arm and closed it behind him. This was barely necessary, as he could probably just as easily have slid under the closed door and would probably have done so with more dignity.
“Hullo, Ann.”
“Hullo, Cecil.” He winced, but let it slide.
“You weren’t at Society yesterday,” he noted calmly.
Shit... “No, sorry, things have been a bit... weird lately.” Ann was part of the Ankh-Morpork Folk Dance and Song Society. Nowadays, in the changing culture, this bore with it the negative social stigma of being associated with a Morris dancer. The Morris dancer in question was Nobby Nobbs.
“Only we’ve started on the Dolly Sisters Stick Dance and could do with someone who can play a quick jig.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I do but, the Dollies Stick Dance, the music’s a bit like a thingy race, y’know with the stick.”
“Relay?”
“Aye, you take over when the other one breaks a finger.” He frowned a little in recollection. “I used to like relays. Got thrown out of the team on Elm Street.”
“How come?”
“Kept running off with the stick.”
“Baton.”
“Sconner always told me not to play wi’ me food.”
Ann gave up.
Nobby was still standing in the doorway and Ann kept her distance, not just to put as much distance as possible between her and Nobby but also so they could see one another: she wasn’t particularly tall herself but still had difficulty seeing people below a certain height close-up. Nobby shifted uneasily without actually moving and then looked up.
“Oh, yeah, that’s why I come: I’m here to inform you on progress o’ catchin’ the burglar.”
“Oh, good.” There was a long silence. “Yes?”
“That just about covers it.”
“Oh.” She decided to look on the bright side: that meant she was “stuck” in this place, with its comfortable furniture and the curtains which painted the room in warm orange and the salamander reading light that glowed brighter when you tapped it until the poor sod knocked itself out and you had to start all over again. On the other hand, all her worldly possessions were in a box labelled “EVIDENCE”.
“Cheers, Nobby.” He saluted half-heartedly and sidled out.
The deep orange now oozing through the curtains indicated that the sun was just descending the far side of Cori Celeste. A tentative tug at one’s edge revealed the blue of a waiting twilight lingering on the rim. A curious quirk of the Disc’s residual magic field was its effect on light, similar to that of roadworks on commuters, slowing it to six hundred miles an hour. This meant that you could watch the day and the night spread from your point of view across the Disc to wherever it was going, like a wave flooding entire civilisations (at three hundred perceived miles an hour) but could still never see it coming, as the sight of the sun lighting up the rim on its ascent reached you at the same time as that taking a direct route to you. Mathematicians have gone mad standing on the rim halfway between its rising and setting and watching dawn rise but paintings of its passage still delight (because an artist cannot go mad in the same way as the sea cannot turn blue).
She lay back on the bed and tapped the light once, causing a dim, pale glow to thin the almost tangible scarlet-orange.
There came another knock, but thinner and sustained, like tapping on glass. Sure enough, a dark void in one curtain silhouetted a figure, hanging by one arm from the guttering. She ran to it, thinking it the victim of a fall but, on hurling back the curtain, was greeted by the vampire from the Fresh Start Club, smiling amiably and hanging effortlessly by the fingertips of one hand. He waved with the other.
Ann flung the window open, glad that it opened inwards. “Hello again,” he said.
“Claus!”
“Vell vemembered. Can I comm in?”
“I think you’d best.” She stepped aside as he swung in with no apparent propulsion, flipped over in the air and landed facing her.
She hadn’t really taken much notice of him at the Club: he’d been quiet, unassuming although quite twitchy. Now, he stood bold as brass in black smart-casual, his hair combed into a smart parting which almost eliminated the appearance of his widow’s peak. In the reddened light, he looked almost human, but for the sharp cheekbones and sharper teeth, which glimmered as he grinned at her. Under his kind, pale eyes, Ann became glad of her newfound inability to blush.
“How did you get there?”
“Along zer rooftops. It’s a necessary skill in my line of work.” He took out a small wallet gingerly and opened it to reveal a licence, in his name, to the Assassins’ Guild. He folded it up and dropped it back in a pocket. Ann knew better than to protest: the guild was a long-established, well meaning and... well, gentlemanly institution, which performed necessary civil cleanup duties in exchange for substantial donations. It also provided an excellent education, even if you had no intent of being anyone’s dying vision.
“But there’s no way up to the rooftops here - this whole block has no skylights or anything. I’m assuming, here,” she laughed, “that you didn’t start scaling the wall in broad daylight, so how did you get onto the roof in the first place.
He looked at her with dejected confusion and said, simply, “I flew.”
Ann let her mouth open slowly, then clapped it shut with a disturbing click.
“You can fly?” she mumbled.
He grinned, drawing attention to his overgrown canines. “Ve. First person plural.” In the reddened light, with both of them lit in pastel shades of flesh, she’d completely forgotten. Something about Claus made her glad of it, eager to explore its possibilities, her will to be human depleted.
“How?” she couldn’t help the eagerness leaking out in her voice as the smile spread across her face. He grinned conspiratorially, hopped across the room and turned the key in her lock before returning in another hop, took her hands...
And looked deep into her eyes.
There was a flash...
And what felt like a huge sneeze. She could see a dim silhouette of the world fifty times over, each image through every other, overlapping and bouncing hurriedly. She became aware of the sensation of flapping her arms, too many to count, all independently. It began to dawn on her...
She was bats. Completely and utterly bats.
Some of her looked down at the pile of clothes under her.
“Yes, for some veason zat’s not a pvoblem for male vampires...” The words didn’t exactly sound, they just... happened. They hadn’t been said and, then, they had. She focused up again and saw a single bat fluttering calmly a few feet away. It didn’t have a fabric shadow. “Tell me, Ann,” Claus continued, fluttering into her cloud of bats; “haff you ever seen zer city fvom above?”
“No but... how come you’re one bat and I’m so many?”
“Pvactice. I’ll keep you togezer.”
Without any more words, they were gone from the window.
* * * * *
They were climbing quickly, shooting through moonlit clouds that gathered high over the city, the Isle of Gods shrinking behind them.
“You were born in Überwald, weren’t you?” It was a fain attempt at small-talk, and there’s not much other kinds of talk you can make at fifty times four inches long.
“Yes, in Bonk.” The way he pronounced it still fascinated Ann.
“Were you an assassin before you came here?”
“Oh, no,” he laughed. “I vos a blues singer in a Vampire bar in Genua for a long time.”
“Vampire... blues?”
“Oh yes, like depvessing jazz, I don’t know if it’s caught on over here, it’s easily identified: all zer songs seem to all start viz “Ve-ll ai voke up zis evenin’, la la la la la...” and zen improvise fvom zere on in and hope no-one notices it doesn’t make any sense.” They laughed together for a while, then he sighed.
From above, the city sprawl was almost elegant: by day, it hummed but now, by night, it shone; roofs blocked out the putrid vision of the shades and the Ankh’s tectonic flow actually seemed to glisten in the moonlight; even below the peak of the Tower of Art, the compressed streets, many still lit by the archetypal insomniac city life, dwindled into insignificance behind the Patrician’s Palace, the Temple of Small Gods, the Dysk Theatre, the University, and all this dwindled into insignificance behind the fact Ann was flying.
“Vot can you see?”
“Barely anything.”
Claus chuckled. “Now, vot can you hear?”
Ann opened her ears and let the nocturnal bustle, the laughter, the Dysk’s play and the Opera, the dogs and the Gods. There were only two words for it:
“Ankh-Morpork.”
* * * * *
The sun was considering its ascent as they flittered back in through the window. Stibbons would have to wait a day but, right now, Ann didn’t care. Claus changed, clothes and all, and drew the curtain. Ann hung all over the ceiling beam.
“Do you know how to change back?”
“Is it the opposite of the first change?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes. But I’d rather you weren’t here when I do so.”
“Vai?”
“Because,” she said slowly, “my clothes are all in a pile on the floor.”
“Ah.” He made for the window, changing into a bat again mid-step.
“Claus?”
He hovered by the window, turning his head do her.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he laughed and vanished into the dawn.
Ann pulled herself together, pulled the curtains shut again and flopped onto the bed, clothing matters forgotten. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed him at the club - this beautiful personality. Now she’d met him, really met him, they’d just clicked so easily. And he’d held her eyes - not many men could do that. Alright, so he was an assassin but Ann was a guild member. Admittedly, the Musicians’ Guild was a different kettle of fish - an extortionate, heartless institution to free emotion but, at least it wasn’t her footing the membership fee. But the assassins were... more polite. It had been the last remark of many a client (or was the client the one who hired them?), or at least the ones who got to notice, how delicately they acted, why, I never even heard you coming, my word, my compliments to...
And he’d flown up to see her, in daylight, no less, but still had the decency to turn up in person, so as to speak. It made her feel... privileged. The opportunity of a second date with an assassin - no, it wasn’t a date, it was just... a friendly meeting - oh, alright, then, a first date with an assassin... not much of a privilege, that...
With her mind tossing and turning on the pink, fluffy seas of a warm feeling she told herself wasn’t there, she drifted off to sleep on her quilt.