Museteasers collection volume 2
I have not yet written that bath drabble. But! I did go to the gym, do more than two hours WPL work (including finishing a Heartland book, hooray!) and write something for an old museteasers prompt.
To be fair, it was because I was reading the ones I'd already done, thought about a scene I know about but don't think I've written down before, and then went looking for a prompt to fit.
Anyway, since I have posted all my museteasers snippets in this journal once before, I thought I would do it again. Tadah. The new one, if anyone is curious, is 'Committed Indifference'.
There are quite a few more White City ones than Cressida ones this time round. This is partly because it is so very easy to set practically any prompt during the wandering round Faerie being lost stage and make it make sense (see: 'Malicious Fish'). On the other hand, some of the following are bits of actual Cressida plot too.
Foxfire
‘Silver.’
Cressida glanced down at the kitchen table, at the collection of bottles and boxes in front of her. She passed the wooden box marked ‘silver’ across the table to Rhys and watched him open it, take out some silver flakes with a pair of tweezers and drop them into the glass flask. He peered into the clear mixture as the silver drifted to the bottom, lay there for a moment and then dissolved in a couple of purple swirls.
‘Liquid nitrogen.’
Cressida passed the bottle over. A couple of drops turned the mixture white and made it fizz.
‘Foxglove.’
Cressida picked a flower from the plant and handed it across. Rhys crushed the petals between his fingers and dropped them in. Nothing much happened.
‘Was that wrong?’ Cressida asked, fascinated.
‘No, we’re OK.’ He swirled the mixture carefully with a glass stick. ‘All right - have you got the fire extinguisher ready?’ Cressida held it up. ‘OK then. Pass me the fur,’ said Rhys. Cressida passed over the last ingredient - a couple of strands of red and orange fur. Rhys held it in one hand and the stopper of the flask in the other and took a deep breath. He dropped in the fur. It floated to the bottom, and when it came into contact with the petals the whole mixture ignited. Rhys got the stopper on just in time, and he and Cressida watched the contents of the flask burn with a pulsing red and orange light. Rhys looked pleased with himself and presented the flask to Cressida.
‘Foxfire,’ he said.
The Book of Bombast
Cressida shuffled her feet. She scratched her ears. She peered at the floor. She stared at the ceiling. She flicked through the elderly copy of Vogue for the thirteenth time. She sat down, stood up, walked around the sofa and sat back down again. She looked at the books on the bookshelf - a complete history of Scottish wildflowers in thirty volumes, the official biography of the admirals and commodores of the British Navy from 1500 to 1900, in twenty volumes. And down at the bottom, something called the Book of Bombast. She was just reaching for it when the door opened and Barker came in.
‘Well, finally,’ she said, turning around.
Accidental Landscape Modification
‘Are you all right?’ Gabriel sat beside Zerrin and offered him his bottle of water.
‘Yeah,’ Zerrin said, ‘I’m fine. But that was no accident,’ he added, running his hands through his hair and breathing deeply. ‘Someone put that there on purpose to stop things coming through from this side.’ He looked down the path towards the sparkling blue river and the huge trees and the tiny white flowers, and then across the valley towards the ruined tower and snow-capped mountains. ‘I’ll have to try and remember to report it to the Wanderers.’ He fished a piece of paper and a pen out of his bag and began to sketch the view from the hill.
‘The Wanderers?’ Gabriel asked.
‘The Royal Cartographers,’ said Zerrin. ‘Or the Queen’s Glorious Regiment of Royal Cartographers, Mapmakers and Keepers of the Doorways, to give them their full name. They wander, and record as best they can, though there’s not much point attempting to map this place outside the Certain Points so they’re mostly a bit… unstable. But they’ll definitely want to know someone built a bloody great iron angel over one of the doorways.’
Gabriel looked out over the landscape.
‘Do you know where we’ve come out?’
‘Not a clue,’ said Zerrin cheerfully. ‘Do you know where we’re going?’
‘… not exactly.’
‘Well, we should probably head towards the Court. If it’s here, Titania will probably have a better idea of where it is than anyone else. And if we follow the river we’re sure to bump into someone who can give us directions to Court.’
Somewhat Sentient
Michael was falling behind. Gabriel realised at a most unfortunate time, when they were just coming to a steep rocky slope and even Zerrin could barely make out the path. Remiel was circling overhead, trying to find the easiest route to the top. Gabriel desperately wanted to get to the back of the group, to help his brother up the difficult path, but there was no space to let anyone overtake him. He looked back again, and caught Amy’s eyes. He couldn’t feel her read his mind, but he knew she had done because she slowed down, and Michael began to catch up to her. Gabriel sighed and concentrated again on where he was putting his feet.
‘You OK?’ said Amy, in her typically blunt fashion. Michael sighed and brushed his hair out of his eyes for the hundredth time that morning. ‘Want to stop for a bit?’
‘No. I’m not tired. It’s just…’ he wriggled his shoulders against the heavy leather sheath on his back, and flapped his wings irritably.
‘Is it uncomfortable?’
‘Not exactly. I can just feel it. All the time. It’s… somewhat sentient. It knows what it wants, and what it wants is death, and it keeps telling me so.’ Amy squeezed his hand, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Calibration
There was something on the floor. Piles of metal. Cressida tried to concentrate. Her head was still swimming. She could feel Helene beside her, still unconscious, her breathing shallow. Something had happened, something really important. She searched her memory, but after the explosion of glass and brick all she could remember were voices and sensations, nothing solid.
They’d been caught. They’d been caught together.
They were bound and gagged in the corner of a big space, a huge empty space with a white canvas roof, like an enormous tent, and there was something on the floor made of metal, and people - no, not just people, members of the Pack and hundreds of them, more than she had ever supposed existed, were moving over it. They stood pieces of metal up and laid others down on the floor. They screwed and hammered. They slotted pieces into each other.
And there were noises that didn’t fit. Shaking her head, trying to will her heart to shut up a minute so she could hear and think, she concentrated. Clanking metal, footfalls, shouting… and something was going bwip, bwipwip, bwipbwipbeee.
Saladin was crouching on one edge of the slowly assembling metal contraption, pressing buttons and muttering to himself. The air around him glowed.
Metal and magic, and the Pack, and both of them tied up. Deep down, part of Cressida began to panic.
Darned socks
‘Ah, crap. I’ve torn my skirt on something, look.’ Cressida showed Dawi the rip. He looked closer.
‘Take it off,’ he said. She raised her eyebrows at him.
‘Have we got time?’ He met her eyes.
‘Sadly, no. But there is time for me to fix your skirt. Come on, hand it over.’ Cressida pouted theatrically and did as she was told. Dawi reached into a pocket and pulled out a leather purse. It was decorated with lines of tiny pictures - curves and triangles in various combinations. From inside it Dawi produced an ivory needle and some thread, and started stitching. Cressida sat on the arm of the sofa in her boots and stockings and watched him work, and in barely five minutes the tear in her skirt was almost invisible.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’ He gave her that look. That look that said he didn’t understand how she could have lived so long and not learned to sew and carve and make all things useful. That look that resonated with the pain of a culture that had all but died out at the hands of men who hunted to extinction and then threw away the bones. Then he smiled.
‘It’s a useful skill,’ he said. ‘But I refuse to darn your socks.’
Dumbfound
Cressida stared at the young man. She knew her mouth had fallen open and she could feel her skin rubbing against the chains as she leant forwards, but for a moment she was paralysed and struck dumb.
The man stared back almost as hard. Set peered at him.
‘What?’ he demanded, first of the young man and then of Cressida. ‘What? Come on, she’s not that pretty,’ he said, just to fill the silence.
‘Tommy,’ said Cressida. Tommy flinched, but didn’t say anything. Set raised his eyebrows at them, but Cressida’s eyes were still fixed on Tommy, and now she narrowed them. ‘It is you! Thomas Gregory Harrison, what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? Of all the - you untie me this instant!’
‘So, you two have met,’ said Set.
Malicious fish
‘Maybe it’s better that we do stay for a while,’ said Lucy quietly. ‘We don’t want to offend them. We’re all quite tired, and it’s safe here…’ Gabriel met her eyes, and gave in.
‘All right, yes. We’ll stay. But not too long, Luce. We’re not on holiday, you know.’
‘I know,’ said Lucy. ‘That’s exactly my point. We don’t have much time to take in the sights, so we should do it while we can. You too,’ she added, prodding him affectionately in the chest. ‘You need to find something to take your mind off it all. Get Zerrin to show you around. I’m sure you’ll find something worth the staying for.’
And so they stayed for a few days at Court, seeing the sights. Zerrin took on the task of entertaining Gabriel with relish. Sometimes with the others and sometimes on their own, they looked at the libraries, the ballrooms and the endless galleries. They rode out to the town and met craftsmen and ate sweet rosewater pastries. They went for endless walks in the grounds, seeing giant trees and fields of sweet-smelling flowers and magical herb gardens, and fountains full of fish that leapt out of the water and tried to bite Gabriel’s fingers.
Even Gabriel had to admit, accepting Titania’s invitation had been a very good idea.
Author's Note: 'Get Zerrin to show you around. I'm sure you'll find something worth the staying for.' OMG Lucy knows. I'm pretty sure I did not write that on purpose at the time.
Sartorial Splendour
For all his pristine shirts and heeled boots, all his sartorial splendour, there was an emptiness at the heart of him. An icy, desperate black hole, and all he could do to stop it consuming him entirely was feed it. With blood, sex, hedonism, deviancy and depravity and occasional random acts of heroic kindness, but not enough of the latter, never enough to balance the karmic scales.
Hijacked
Cressida had stolen horses before. She had hijacked coaches, and hotwired the occasional car, all in bright daylight. But horses don’t explode if you don’t drive them right - coaches just fall pretty gently apart if crashed, and even cars aren’t so deadly if you pay attention.
An aeroplane, though, was a completely different matter. She was pretty sure that if this hijack attempt went wrong, it would go fatally wrong, even for her. When all the planning was done, when she was sure she had all the bribes and threats and charm-offensives down pat and the coordinates of their new destination memorised and a selection of inoffensive-looking weapons secreted in her handbag, she still spent the last ten minutes before the boarding call chewing her thumb and going over crash scenarios. The best thing, she decided, would be if it was dark when they crashed, because then the vampire blood would kick in and she might have a chance of getting out, or healing the internal injuries. On the other hand if the plane caught fire at night she’d go up like a box of matches doused in paraffin.
Probably better not to crash, after all she thought.
Committed indifference
‘I’m rather keen on that tall one,’ Ellony grinned. ‘Remiel. Guh.’
‘Oh, everyone is,’ Zerrin said. ‘You’d be amazed how hard it is to shake off his fan club after a few nights in one town.’
‘And what about Gabriel?’ Ellony asked.
‘Yes? What about Gabriel?’ Zerrin said, with committed indifference.
‘Hah!’ Ellony scoffed. Zerrin met his sister’s eyes and then looked away.
‘Oh, Gabriel,’ he said. ‘Well, yes, Gabriel. He’s Gabriel. You know. Archangel Gabriel, with the wings, and… he’s Gabriel.’ Ellony drummed her fingers on the bedpost. ‘He’s my friend,’ Zerrin said slowly, ‘and my travelling companion, and I suppose my captain should it come to fighting, and he’s good and strong and… passionate, and, well yes, he’s gorgeous, but he’s presumably straight and anyway he’s Gabriel, and oh god Ellony I love him more than life itself and I want to have his impossibly handsome babies.’ Zerrin collapsed forwards onto the bed with his face in his hands. Ellony stroked his hair.
‘There there,’ she said. ‘I thought so. I don’t mean to pester, but, I did think you might rather desperately need someone to talk to.’
Moisture assessment
Asnath shook his head once, then twice more. His dreadlocks flapped against the train window. He twitched, and then rubbed his hand across his cheek and around his ear.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Amy.
‘Rain’s coming,’ said Asnath. He looked out of the window. ‘Rain on the river. Rain in the town.’ He blinked, and for a moment Amy thought she could see his whiskers, the way she could see Cerberus’ extra heads if she squinted. Then they were gone again.
‘Do you not like getting wet?’ she asked. Asnath looked at her.
‘Gets under my fur,’ he said, despite not currently having any fur to speak of. Then he smiled at her. ‘But I lived on Bodmin,’ he said. ‘I am accustomed to wet.’
Rationed Roughage
‘It’s a great delicacy,’ Zerrin whispered as the waiter floated in carrying the large green vegetable on a silver platter. Gabriel peered at it suspiciously.
‘It’s a cabbage,’ he whispered back.
‘Just watch,’ said Zerrin. Gabriel watched. The waiter laid the platter down in the middle of the table, and with great ceremony and a specially shaped silver fork, he peeled back the outer leaves. A light sprang up in the middle of the vegetable. Sparks shot out of the top and an opalescent sheen covered the inner leaves. The sparks didn’t come down again, but danced over the heads of the guests.
‘… OK, it’s not a cabbage,’ said Gabriel.
Unabashed
‘What’s your marital status?’
‘Homosexual.’ Lettie nearly swallowed her tongue. She looked up and met Taurus’ eyes. He grinned and stretched languidly in his chair, despite the fact that it had practically been designed to suppress languidity in all its forms.
‘… I’ll, um. I’ll put bachelor.’
‘You do that.’
Poet’s Heart
‘Oh yeah?’ Taurus raised his eyebrows. ‘I bet I’ve broken more poets’ hearts than you.’
‘Hah!’ Cassius rolled over. ‘Go on then, you start.’
‘Auden.’
‘Byron.’
‘Ha! Also Byron.’
‘Oh come on, I don’t think I know anyone who didn’t have sex with Byron. Apollonius.’
‘Catullus.’
‘Now you’re not even trying. Homer.’
‘Blake.’
‘Christina Rosetti.’
‘You can’t count women, that’s an unfair advantage! That’s cheating!’
‘You never said that,’ Cassius grinned at him. ‘I don’t see any rules.’
‘All right, fine.’ Taurus held up his hands and counted on his fingers. ‘Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke, Bosie Douglas, Robbie Ross, and - darling Oscar.’ Taurus looked pleased with himself. Cassius paused, for dramatic effect.
‘Shakespeare,’ he said.
‘You didn’t. Really? You mean while he was in London?’
‘Jealous?’
‘No, just surprised. I was with Kit Marlowe at the time.’
‘… how did we manage not to see each other? We must have been in so many of the same places.’
They contemplated this.
‘You know, the only reason you got all the war poets was because I was out of the country at the time,’ Cassius said. Taurus hit him with a pillow. ‘And I did shag Bosie Douglas once. He reminded me of you.’
‘Bosie was a twat,’ said Taurus.
‘A very pretty blonde twat.’
‘… point. Flatterer.’
Catch of the Day
They camped beside a stream. Gabriel insisted on poring over Zerrin’s sketched map again, though he knew there was no way it could possibly help them find their way. Katie, Amy and Remiel went off together in search of firewood, with Cerberus trotting at their heels. Michael lay on the grass, exhausted from a full day’s travel, but happy to be talked to and even happier to have Zerrin sit down beside him and chatter harmlessly at him.
Asnath crouched beside the stream, staring into it with big golden eyes. He perched with his hands and feet on the edge of the bank and leant so far over that Lucy thought he was going to fall in. His dreadlocks dragged in the water. Then he leapt, and in mid air he changed shape - his legs shortened and his torso lengthened and his dreadlocks retracted back into his head. His hands turned into paws, and he landed claws first in the stream. There was an explosive burst of water and a growl, and then Asnath emerged from the stream in human shape again, holding three large fish.
‘Dinner,’ he said. Zerrin got up and looked the fish over, and pronounced them almost certainly edible. Lucy and Jesus volunteered to prepare them. Asnath turned back into his panther shape and shook himself vigorously.
Petty Conversation
Cressida wriggled irritably against her bonds.
‘Careful,’ Set teased, ‘You’ll wrinkle your lovely Gucci shirt.’
‘It’s Dolce and Gabbana actually,’ she said.
‘I would’ve said Armani,’ Taurus called over from the other side of the carriage.
‘That’s what I thought when I saw it,’ Cressida agreed. ‘They’ve got very similar buttons on.’ Taurus leaned over to peer at Cressida’s buttons.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘But the stitching’s very D and G, now I look at it.’
‘See, I like the stitching but it was the fabric that really drew me to it. It’s got this lovely shiny touch to it on the inside.’ Set rolled his eyes. Cressida realised he was fuming quietly to himself. Taurus had obviously realised it too.
‘I bet it’s dry-clean only though,’ he said.
‘Well yes,’ Cressida admitted, ‘But I dry-clean practically everything - you know, no matter how careful you are, you always find a couple of spots of blood and it’s hell to get out of silk…’
‘Oh god, tell me about it! I spend a bloody fortune on shirts. I know I ought to stick to dark colours, but…’
‘You can’t go round in black and red your entire life,’ Cressida agreed. ‘I don’t mind gothing-up a bit for a night out…’
‘Beware, though, you go too far into the goth territory and you start thinking in ‘vampyr’. Before you know it you’ve got your head so firmly wedged up your own arse you don’t even use contractions any more.’
‘Shut up!’ Set finally burst out. ‘You!’ he said, waving a finger at Taurus, ‘You will stop… fraternising!’ Taurus smirked at him.
‘Yes sir,’ he said, glancing meaningfully at Cressida. She stifled a laugh.
Lockstep
Cressida climbed out onto the roof and sat with her back propped up against the chimney, watching the lane over the tops of the trees. They weren’t expecting any more refugees this evening, but it was always worth their while keeping an eye out. Anyway, it was a lovely warm evening and she felt like watching the sun go down. He was too far away to hear her if she spoke to him, so she just watched.
After the sun had set, but before it was properly dark, Cressida saw a patrol come down the lane towards the house. She gripped the roof tiles, holding her breath. The fear was always there - maybe tonight would be the night they were discovered, maybe today the Nazis would figure them out.
The patrol goosestepped onwards, down the lane, towards the place where the gate used to be before they’d carefully planted long-stemmed bushes across the entrance to the drive. They came closer, and closer… and passed on without looking up.
When they got to the end of the lane they had to pass through a narrow gate into the next field. Their goosestep turned into a lockstep as they pressed together to get through, and then one of the Nazis stood on one of the other Nazis’ foot, and their horrid neat lines turned into a shambolic, gesticulating mess. Cressida giggled at them, amazed at how something so deadly serious could descend into farce. And then she went back downstairs, suddenly gripped by the urge to find Miryam and give her a big hug.
To be fair, it was because I was reading the ones I'd already done, thought about a scene I know about but don't think I've written down before, and then went looking for a prompt to fit.
Anyway, since I have posted all my museteasers snippets in this journal once before, I thought I would do it again. Tadah. The new one, if anyone is curious, is 'Committed Indifference'.
There are quite a few more White City ones than Cressida ones this time round. This is partly because it is so very easy to set practically any prompt during the wandering round Faerie being lost stage and make it make sense (see: 'Malicious Fish'). On the other hand, some of the following are bits of actual Cressida plot too.
Foxfire
‘Silver.’
Cressida glanced down at the kitchen table, at the collection of bottles and boxes in front of her. She passed the wooden box marked ‘silver’ across the table to Rhys and watched him open it, take out some silver flakes with a pair of tweezers and drop them into the glass flask. He peered into the clear mixture as the silver drifted to the bottom, lay there for a moment and then dissolved in a couple of purple swirls.
‘Liquid nitrogen.’
Cressida passed the bottle over. A couple of drops turned the mixture white and made it fizz.
‘Foxglove.’
Cressida picked a flower from the plant and handed it across. Rhys crushed the petals between his fingers and dropped them in. Nothing much happened.
‘Was that wrong?’ Cressida asked, fascinated.
‘No, we’re OK.’ He swirled the mixture carefully with a glass stick. ‘All right - have you got the fire extinguisher ready?’ Cressida held it up. ‘OK then. Pass me the fur,’ said Rhys. Cressida passed over the last ingredient - a couple of strands of red and orange fur. Rhys held it in one hand and the stopper of the flask in the other and took a deep breath. He dropped in the fur. It floated to the bottom, and when it came into contact with the petals the whole mixture ignited. Rhys got the stopper on just in time, and he and Cressida watched the contents of the flask burn with a pulsing red and orange light. Rhys looked pleased with himself and presented the flask to Cressida.
‘Foxfire,’ he said.
The Book of Bombast
Cressida shuffled her feet. She scratched her ears. She peered at the floor. She stared at the ceiling. She flicked through the elderly copy of Vogue for the thirteenth time. She sat down, stood up, walked around the sofa and sat back down again. She looked at the books on the bookshelf - a complete history of Scottish wildflowers in thirty volumes, the official biography of the admirals and commodores of the British Navy from 1500 to 1900, in twenty volumes. And down at the bottom, something called the Book of Bombast. She was just reaching for it when the door opened and Barker came in.
‘Well, finally,’ she said, turning around.
Accidental Landscape Modification
‘Are you all right?’ Gabriel sat beside Zerrin and offered him his bottle of water.
‘Yeah,’ Zerrin said, ‘I’m fine. But that was no accident,’ he added, running his hands through his hair and breathing deeply. ‘Someone put that there on purpose to stop things coming through from this side.’ He looked down the path towards the sparkling blue river and the huge trees and the tiny white flowers, and then across the valley towards the ruined tower and snow-capped mountains. ‘I’ll have to try and remember to report it to the Wanderers.’ He fished a piece of paper and a pen out of his bag and began to sketch the view from the hill.
‘The Wanderers?’ Gabriel asked.
‘The Royal Cartographers,’ said Zerrin. ‘Or the Queen’s Glorious Regiment of Royal Cartographers, Mapmakers and Keepers of the Doorways, to give them their full name. They wander, and record as best they can, though there’s not much point attempting to map this place outside the Certain Points so they’re mostly a bit… unstable. But they’ll definitely want to know someone built a bloody great iron angel over one of the doorways.’
Gabriel looked out over the landscape.
‘Do you know where we’ve come out?’
‘Not a clue,’ said Zerrin cheerfully. ‘Do you know where we’re going?’
‘… not exactly.’
‘Well, we should probably head towards the Court. If it’s here, Titania will probably have a better idea of where it is than anyone else. And if we follow the river we’re sure to bump into someone who can give us directions to Court.’
Somewhat Sentient
Michael was falling behind. Gabriel realised at a most unfortunate time, when they were just coming to a steep rocky slope and even Zerrin could barely make out the path. Remiel was circling overhead, trying to find the easiest route to the top. Gabriel desperately wanted to get to the back of the group, to help his brother up the difficult path, but there was no space to let anyone overtake him. He looked back again, and caught Amy’s eyes. He couldn’t feel her read his mind, but he knew she had done because she slowed down, and Michael began to catch up to her. Gabriel sighed and concentrated again on where he was putting his feet.
‘You OK?’ said Amy, in her typically blunt fashion. Michael sighed and brushed his hair out of his eyes for the hundredth time that morning. ‘Want to stop for a bit?’
‘No. I’m not tired. It’s just…’ he wriggled his shoulders against the heavy leather sheath on his back, and flapped his wings irritably.
‘Is it uncomfortable?’
‘Not exactly. I can just feel it. All the time. It’s… somewhat sentient. It knows what it wants, and what it wants is death, and it keeps telling me so.’ Amy squeezed his hand, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Calibration
There was something on the floor. Piles of metal. Cressida tried to concentrate. Her head was still swimming. She could feel Helene beside her, still unconscious, her breathing shallow. Something had happened, something really important. She searched her memory, but after the explosion of glass and brick all she could remember were voices and sensations, nothing solid.
They’d been caught. They’d been caught together.
They were bound and gagged in the corner of a big space, a huge empty space with a white canvas roof, like an enormous tent, and there was something on the floor made of metal, and people - no, not just people, members of the Pack and hundreds of them, more than she had ever supposed existed, were moving over it. They stood pieces of metal up and laid others down on the floor. They screwed and hammered. They slotted pieces into each other.
And there were noises that didn’t fit. Shaking her head, trying to will her heart to shut up a minute so she could hear and think, she concentrated. Clanking metal, footfalls, shouting… and something was going bwip, bwipwip, bwipbwipbeee.
Saladin was crouching on one edge of the slowly assembling metal contraption, pressing buttons and muttering to himself. The air around him glowed.
Metal and magic, and the Pack, and both of them tied up. Deep down, part of Cressida began to panic.
Darned socks
‘Ah, crap. I’ve torn my skirt on something, look.’ Cressida showed Dawi the rip. He looked closer.
‘Take it off,’ he said. She raised her eyebrows at him.
‘Have we got time?’ He met her eyes.
‘Sadly, no. But there is time for me to fix your skirt. Come on, hand it over.’ Cressida pouted theatrically and did as she was told. Dawi reached into a pocket and pulled out a leather purse. It was decorated with lines of tiny pictures - curves and triangles in various combinations. From inside it Dawi produced an ivory needle and some thread, and started stitching. Cressida sat on the arm of the sofa in her boots and stockings and watched him work, and in barely five minutes the tear in her skirt was almost invisible.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’ He gave her that look. That look that said he didn’t understand how she could have lived so long and not learned to sew and carve and make all things useful. That look that resonated with the pain of a culture that had all but died out at the hands of men who hunted to extinction and then threw away the bones. Then he smiled.
‘It’s a useful skill,’ he said. ‘But I refuse to darn your socks.’
Dumbfound
Cressida stared at the young man. She knew her mouth had fallen open and she could feel her skin rubbing against the chains as she leant forwards, but for a moment she was paralysed and struck dumb.
The man stared back almost as hard. Set peered at him.
‘What?’ he demanded, first of the young man and then of Cressida. ‘What? Come on, she’s not that pretty,’ he said, just to fill the silence.
‘Tommy,’ said Cressida. Tommy flinched, but didn’t say anything. Set raised his eyebrows at them, but Cressida’s eyes were still fixed on Tommy, and now she narrowed them. ‘It is you! Thomas Gregory Harrison, what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? Of all the - you untie me this instant!’
‘So, you two have met,’ said Set.
Malicious fish
‘Maybe it’s better that we do stay for a while,’ said Lucy quietly. ‘We don’t want to offend them. We’re all quite tired, and it’s safe here…’ Gabriel met her eyes, and gave in.
‘All right, yes. We’ll stay. But not too long, Luce. We’re not on holiday, you know.’
‘I know,’ said Lucy. ‘That’s exactly my point. We don’t have much time to take in the sights, so we should do it while we can. You too,’ she added, prodding him affectionately in the chest. ‘You need to find something to take your mind off it all. Get Zerrin to show you around. I’m sure you’ll find something worth the staying for.’
And so they stayed for a few days at Court, seeing the sights. Zerrin took on the task of entertaining Gabriel with relish. Sometimes with the others and sometimes on their own, they looked at the libraries, the ballrooms and the endless galleries. They rode out to the town and met craftsmen and ate sweet rosewater pastries. They went for endless walks in the grounds, seeing giant trees and fields of sweet-smelling flowers and magical herb gardens, and fountains full of fish that leapt out of the water and tried to bite Gabriel’s fingers.
Even Gabriel had to admit, accepting Titania’s invitation had been a very good idea.
Author's Note: 'Get Zerrin to show you around. I'm sure you'll find something worth the staying for.' OMG Lucy knows. I'm pretty sure I did not write that on purpose at the time.
Sartorial Splendour
For all his pristine shirts and heeled boots, all his sartorial splendour, there was an emptiness at the heart of him. An icy, desperate black hole, and all he could do to stop it consuming him entirely was feed it. With blood, sex, hedonism, deviancy and depravity and occasional random acts of heroic kindness, but not enough of the latter, never enough to balance the karmic scales.
Hijacked
Cressida had stolen horses before. She had hijacked coaches, and hotwired the occasional car, all in bright daylight. But horses don’t explode if you don’t drive them right - coaches just fall pretty gently apart if crashed, and even cars aren’t so deadly if you pay attention.
An aeroplane, though, was a completely different matter. She was pretty sure that if this hijack attempt went wrong, it would go fatally wrong, even for her. When all the planning was done, when she was sure she had all the bribes and threats and charm-offensives down pat and the coordinates of their new destination memorised and a selection of inoffensive-looking weapons secreted in her handbag, she still spent the last ten minutes before the boarding call chewing her thumb and going over crash scenarios. The best thing, she decided, would be if it was dark when they crashed, because then the vampire blood would kick in and she might have a chance of getting out, or healing the internal injuries. On the other hand if the plane caught fire at night she’d go up like a box of matches doused in paraffin.
Probably better not to crash, after all she thought.
Committed indifference
‘I’m rather keen on that tall one,’ Ellony grinned. ‘Remiel. Guh.’
‘Oh, everyone is,’ Zerrin said. ‘You’d be amazed how hard it is to shake off his fan club after a few nights in one town.’
‘And what about Gabriel?’ Ellony asked.
‘Yes? What about Gabriel?’ Zerrin said, with committed indifference.
‘Hah!’ Ellony scoffed. Zerrin met his sister’s eyes and then looked away.
‘Oh, Gabriel,’ he said. ‘Well, yes, Gabriel. He’s Gabriel. You know. Archangel Gabriel, with the wings, and… he’s Gabriel.’ Ellony drummed her fingers on the bedpost. ‘He’s my friend,’ Zerrin said slowly, ‘and my travelling companion, and I suppose my captain should it come to fighting, and he’s good and strong and… passionate, and, well yes, he’s gorgeous, but he’s presumably straight and anyway he’s Gabriel, and oh god Ellony I love him more than life itself and I want to have his impossibly handsome babies.’ Zerrin collapsed forwards onto the bed with his face in his hands. Ellony stroked his hair.
‘There there,’ she said. ‘I thought so. I don’t mean to pester, but, I did think you might rather desperately need someone to talk to.’
Moisture assessment
Asnath shook his head once, then twice more. His dreadlocks flapped against the train window. He twitched, and then rubbed his hand across his cheek and around his ear.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Amy.
‘Rain’s coming,’ said Asnath. He looked out of the window. ‘Rain on the river. Rain in the town.’ He blinked, and for a moment Amy thought she could see his whiskers, the way she could see Cerberus’ extra heads if she squinted. Then they were gone again.
‘Do you not like getting wet?’ she asked. Asnath looked at her.
‘Gets under my fur,’ he said, despite not currently having any fur to speak of. Then he smiled at her. ‘But I lived on Bodmin,’ he said. ‘I am accustomed to wet.’
Rationed Roughage
‘It’s a great delicacy,’ Zerrin whispered as the waiter floated in carrying the large green vegetable on a silver platter. Gabriel peered at it suspiciously.
‘It’s a cabbage,’ he whispered back.
‘Just watch,’ said Zerrin. Gabriel watched. The waiter laid the platter down in the middle of the table, and with great ceremony and a specially shaped silver fork, he peeled back the outer leaves. A light sprang up in the middle of the vegetable. Sparks shot out of the top and an opalescent sheen covered the inner leaves. The sparks didn’t come down again, but danced over the heads of the guests.
‘… OK, it’s not a cabbage,’ said Gabriel.
Unabashed
‘What’s your marital status?’
‘Homosexual.’ Lettie nearly swallowed her tongue. She looked up and met Taurus’ eyes. He grinned and stretched languidly in his chair, despite the fact that it had practically been designed to suppress languidity in all its forms.
‘… I’ll, um. I’ll put bachelor.’
‘You do that.’
Poet’s Heart
‘Oh yeah?’ Taurus raised his eyebrows. ‘I bet I’ve broken more poets’ hearts than you.’
‘Hah!’ Cassius rolled over. ‘Go on then, you start.’
‘Auden.’
‘Byron.’
‘Ha! Also Byron.’
‘Oh come on, I don’t think I know anyone who didn’t have sex with Byron. Apollonius.’
‘Catullus.’
‘Now you’re not even trying. Homer.’
‘Blake.’
‘Christina Rosetti.’
‘You can’t count women, that’s an unfair advantage! That’s cheating!’
‘You never said that,’ Cassius grinned at him. ‘I don’t see any rules.’
‘All right, fine.’ Taurus held up his hands and counted on his fingers. ‘Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke, Bosie Douglas, Robbie Ross, and - darling Oscar.’ Taurus looked pleased with himself. Cassius paused, for dramatic effect.
‘Shakespeare,’ he said.
‘You didn’t. Really? You mean while he was in London?’
‘Jealous?’
‘No, just surprised. I was with Kit Marlowe at the time.’
‘… how did we manage not to see each other? We must have been in so many of the same places.’
They contemplated this.
‘You know, the only reason you got all the war poets was because I was out of the country at the time,’ Cassius said. Taurus hit him with a pillow. ‘And I did shag Bosie Douglas once. He reminded me of you.’
‘Bosie was a twat,’ said Taurus.
‘A very pretty blonde twat.’
‘… point. Flatterer.’
Catch of the Day
They camped beside a stream. Gabriel insisted on poring over Zerrin’s sketched map again, though he knew there was no way it could possibly help them find their way. Katie, Amy and Remiel went off together in search of firewood, with Cerberus trotting at their heels. Michael lay on the grass, exhausted from a full day’s travel, but happy to be talked to and even happier to have Zerrin sit down beside him and chatter harmlessly at him.
Asnath crouched beside the stream, staring into it with big golden eyes. He perched with his hands and feet on the edge of the bank and leant so far over that Lucy thought he was going to fall in. His dreadlocks dragged in the water. Then he leapt, and in mid air he changed shape - his legs shortened and his torso lengthened and his dreadlocks retracted back into his head. His hands turned into paws, and he landed claws first in the stream. There was an explosive burst of water and a growl, and then Asnath emerged from the stream in human shape again, holding three large fish.
‘Dinner,’ he said. Zerrin got up and looked the fish over, and pronounced them almost certainly edible. Lucy and Jesus volunteered to prepare them. Asnath turned back into his panther shape and shook himself vigorously.
Petty Conversation
Cressida wriggled irritably against her bonds.
‘Careful,’ Set teased, ‘You’ll wrinkle your lovely Gucci shirt.’
‘It’s Dolce and Gabbana actually,’ she said.
‘I would’ve said Armani,’ Taurus called over from the other side of the carriage.
‘That’s what I thought when I saw it,’ Cressida agreed. ‘They’ve got very similar buttons on.’ Taurus leaned over to peer at Cressida’s buttons.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘But the stitching’s very D and G, now I look at it.’
‘See, I like the stitching but it was the fabric that really drew me to it. It’s got this lovely shiny touch to it on the inside.’ Set rolled his eyes. Cressida realised he was fuming quietly to himself. Taurus had obviously realised it too.
‘I bet it’s dry-clean only though,’ he said.
‘Well yes,’ Cressida admitted, ‘But I dry-clean practically everything - you know, no matter how careful you are, you always find a couple of spots of blood and it’s hell to get out of silk…’
‘Oh god, tell me about it! I spend a bloody fortune on shirts. I know I ought to stick to dark colours, but…’
‘You can’t go round in black and red your entire life,’ Cressida agreed. ‘I don’t mind gothing-up a bit for a night out…’
‘Beware, though, you go too far into the goth territory and you start thinking in ‘vampyr’. Before you know it you’ve got your head so firmly wedged up your own arse you don’t even use contractions any more.’
‘Shut up!’ Set finally burst out. ‘You!’ he said, waving a finger at Taurus, ‘You will stop… fraternising!’ Taurus smirked at him.
‘Yes sir,’ he said, glancing meaningfully at Cressida. She stifled a laugh.
Lockstep
Cressida climbed out onto the roof and sat with her back propped up against the chimney, watching the lane over the tops of the trees. They weren’t expecting any more refugees this evening, but it was always worth their while keeping an eye out. Anyway, it was a lovely warm evening and she felt like watching the sun go down. He was too far away to hear her if she spoke to him, so she just watched.
After the sun had set, but before it was properly dark, Cressida saw a patrol come down the lane towards the house. She gripped the roof tiles, holding her breath. The fear was always there - maybe tonight would be the night they were discovered, maybe today the Nazis would figure them out.
The patrol goosestepped onwards, down the lane, towards the place where the gate used to be before they’d carefully planted long-stemmed bushes across the entrance to the drive. They came closer, and closer… and passed on without looking up.
When they got to the end of the lane they had to pass through a narrow gate into the next field. Their goosestep turned into a lockstep as they pressed together to get through, and then one of the Nazis stood on one of the other Nazis’ foot, and their horrid neat lines turned into a shambolic, gesticulating mess. Cressida giggled at them, amazed at how something so deadly serious could descend into farce. And then she went back downstairs, suddenly gripped by the urge to find Miryam and give her a big hug.