Agatha gave him a shrewd look. “Like yourself.”
“Ha! Caught!” He struck a dramatic pose and his voice boomed forth. “You see before you a former cheesemaker’s apprentice, who foolishly stopped to see a traveling Heterodyne show when he was supposed to be delivering a wheel of Hungarian Kashkaval!” Lars threw his arms wide and looked impressive for a brief moment, but he had chosen his stage poorly. His boots slipped on the wet rocks and he toppled, plunging ankle-deep into the water. Agatha laughed and helped him up.
On the bank, Lars continued. “It was The Heterodyne Boys and Their Anthracite Burning Earth Orbiter.” He sighed happily at the memory. “That was over ten years ago and I’ve never regretted it.”
Agatha smiled. “My favorite was always Race to the West Pole.”
Lars clapped his hands. “Oh, yeah. That’s a good one. We haven’t done it in a while, though.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Different shows work better with different actors. It’s not like it’s a problem, there’s so many of them, you know? It just hasn’t come around in the rotation.” He eyed Agatha speculatively. “It’s about due, actually. Hmm... but there are some tough scenes in West Pole. Remember the scene on the burning submersible?” His voice suddenly shifted timbre, becoming lower and more intense.
“Renounce your father, lest his evil corrupt you!”
Lars paused, and looked at Agatha encouragingly. Agatha shivered. His voice, as he’d said the line, had sent an electric tingle down her spine. She thought back to the last time she’d seen the play.
It had been years ago, in Beetleburg, during one of the annual Lightning Festivals. Booths and revelers had crowded the streets. It had been easy to slip away from Lilith, who had been busy dickering over a set of exotic canning jars—and who, Agatha knew, would not have approved of her foster-daughter’s enthusiasm for the show playing on the makeshift stage in the market square. It had been a rare forbidden pleasure, and Agatha had watched intently. Later, she would replay the wonderful story over and over in her head.
Lars had begun the scene where Bill Heterodyne and the villainous Lucrezia Mongfish were trapped together aboard the slowly combusting submarine. It was one of her favorite scenes, and she knew how it went:
“One cannot be corrupted by Science! And Science alone is my master!”
Lars nodded approvingly and moved closer. “Then your master is mad! As mad as you have driven me!”
“Is it madness to see clearly? You only confuse me!”
Lars swept her into his arms. “Allow me to elucidate.”
Agatha tilted her head back and looked him in the eyes. “...It could be an interesting experiment, if I but dared...”
“Don’t tell me you fear the experiment?”
“I fear the result! But the experiment itself—why, that is but Science!”
“For Science, then!”
“For Science!”
On the stage, it was an intense scene, romantic and passionate—and it was meant to end with a torrid kiss. Agatha and Lars blinked at each other. He held her tightly in his arms, pulled close so that their faces were only centimeters apart. She, gazing up into his face, was clutching at his shirt and pulling him down toward her in a most unseemly way.
They broke apart and Agatha fanned herself with her hand. The weather seemed to have turned unseasonably warm, and her heart was pounding.
Lars took a deep breath and grinned. “Say! You’re pretty good!”
Agatha licked her lips. “Really? I never... ah... so that’s acting? I... I wonder if...” A strained wheeze stopped her, and she glanced sideways at Lars. He was staring fixedly up over her head. “Lars?”
He gripped her arm tightly. “Shhh! Geisterdamen,” he whispered.
Agatha slowly turned to look, then froze in shock. Before them were a pair of gigantic, blue-white furred spiders. Eight long legs hoisted each creature’s body easily six meters up into the air. They wore harnesses and saddles, with packs, gear and weapons strapped behind. Astride each of these monsters was a tall, slender young woman. Moving only her eyes, Agatha glanced back and forth between the two and realized that they were identical. Both had extremely pale skin, long flowing white hair, and the same peculiar outfit of folded and draped fabric. Chillingly, both also had the same wide, pupil-less eyes.
The women were regarding Agatha with interest. Their spiders leaned down until the riders scrutinized her from less than two meters away.
“Twerlik?” The far one was apparently asking a question[21].
The closer one raised a staff and casually pointed it at Agatha. “Su fig?” She responded. She leaned back. “Klibber meeenak seg ni plostok vedik kliz moc twerlik?”
The second rider frowned. “Zo—zo flooda vedik.”
“Botcha hey za vedik moc nodok.”
“Za nedik eve za gwoon.”
“Hic mok?”
The second rider shrugged and indicated the circus’ camp. “Zo—voco cheeb? Kloopa. Obongs. Set ve?” She crossed her arms. “Za ‘actors.’”
This startled the first rider almost as much as it did Lars and Agatha. “Actors!”
The second rider made a clicking noise and her spider straightened up and began striding off. The first rider followed suit. Agatha could hear her asking plaintively, “Woge-ze fleepin bo ‘actors,’ bin?”
This was answered with a derisive, “Yan, do hip za cheeb.”
“Hif ni!”
And with that final exchange, the strange women and their giant mounts were swallowed up among the trees.
Lars abruptly sat down on the ground. He looked ill. “I didn’t even hear them coming,” he moaned.
“Who were they?” Agatha asked.
“People call them Geisterdamen. Weißdamen. Spider Riders... all kinds of things. They’ve been around for a long time now. They’re always on the move. Nobody knows anything about them, really.” Lars paused before continuing:
“Except—you don’t want to fight them. They’re really dangerous when you do that. Farmers say that they cause revenants, steal children, blight crops...” He took a deep breath and then bounced to his feet and grinned. “Of course, they say the same things about traveling shows, so...”
Agatha was still staring at the opening in the trees where the giant spiders had disappeared. “I’ve never even heard of them.”
Lars shrugged. “There’re lots of things hiding in the Wastelands that you townies never hear about.” He looked at Agatha appraisingly. “Want us to drop you off at the next town?”
Agatha looked steadily back at him. “No thanks.”
Several of the other circus members burst into the clearing. “You two okay?” Abner asked.
Lars shook his head. “I swear, Ab, I didn’t even hear them coming!” A thought struck him. “Is Balthazar—?”
Abner waved his hands. “He’s safe.”
Captain Kadiiski, who had insisted that Agatha call him Otto (“As you are obviously a civilian”), took his hat off and wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow. “I hates me those creepy girls,” he confided to Agatha. “You should come with me,” he continued. “A wagon we have now prepared for you.”
This was welcome news. Agatha appreciated Professor Moonsock’s hospitality, but the animal trainer had clearly grown oblivious to the smells of her performers, and seemed to find nothing off-putting about mimmoths nesting in the bread-box.
21
The language of the Geisterdamen, developing as it did without any Indo-European influences, has always been a thing of unfamiliar cadences and bizarre word structure. To recreate the sense of confusion and unfamiliarity that the linguistically cosmopolitan Lady Heterodyne must have experienced the first time she heard it, we have helpfully rendered all of the Geisterdamen’s dialogue as gibberish.