Aiffe had begun to move slowly around Sia, not in circles, but in hexagons, octagons, dodecahedrons, weaving straightline patterns that glazed the air, dimming Sia to Farrell’s sight. Nicholas Bonner sang, “But now you must go where I will never go again, to lie down howling in that place you made, that place where you have sent me time and time, and you must wait for someone to call you back to light and warmth and pity, and no one ever will, not you, never. And this is nothing but the least bare justice of the gods, and you know that better than anyone except your son.” The old woman shuffled from foot to foot, never looking at him.
“Oh, mother, goodbye,” Nicholas Bonner said. Aiffe danced through one last binding figure and raised her arms in a way that Farrell had never imagined. At his side, Ben sprang up and charged, screaming. A vine caught him at the shins, dropping him flat on his face. Nicholas Bonner turned toward the commotion, his laughter soaring as Aiffe’s arms came down.
But from the far side of the clearing, in two gigantic bounds and a desperate, yelping leap, Briseis came skidding through the air like a tailless kite in a downdraft. All four legs extended, she crashed full tilt into Nicholas Bonner, who went down harder than Ben and lay where he fell. The stone under his head had not been there a second before. Briseis, half-stunned herself, wandered groggily away into the overgrowth, limping and farting. Aiffe hesitated only an instant in completing her banishing gesture, but Farrell missed it because he was hiding his face against Julie’s wet cheek. He kept it there until Sia’s own laughter began.
He would have known that sound anywhere, in whatever throat. Young and rough, and as much of the earth as Nicholas Bonner’s laugh was of that part of the universe where the stars end, it shook the green vines like a wild wind and set birds fluttering and calling where there had been no hint of any other life in the clearing. Sia said, “The justice of the gods. As old as he is, and he still believes that.” Farrell thought he heard Briseis whine, but it was Aiffe.
When he opened his eyes and turned, he saw that she and Sia were standing so close together that they almost touched, and that the air around them was clear again. Aiffe was plainly trying to back away, and just as obviously could not, for the old woman was chuckling gently, “No, no, child, it was your magic that bound me to you. A very pretty spell, beautiful even, but you let yourself be distracted. Magic is easily offended.” As Farrell, Julie, and a bloody-nosed Ben stared, her body began to grow round and solid once more, her eyes to focus, her skin to restore itself. She explained placidly to Aiffe, “You see, you would never have let me so near to you if I looked even a little bit threatening. And I am only really good at very close range these days. I think I must need contact lenses.”
Farrell realized that she was dancing too, that all her apparently aimless shuffling was taking her in a little sly circle with Aiffe at the center. Aiffe, shaking off her moment of shocked paralysis, glanced once at Nicholas Bonner, who stirred slightly. She said two words in a sweet, curious tongue, made one ugly gesture with three fingers twisted together, and stepped easily away from Sia, pointing derisively at her. “Pathetic,” she said. “You think you’re such hot shit, but you’re just so pathetic. I don’t need anybody to help me with you.”
For a few moments they circled each other, Aiffe moving in swift, taunting dashes, almost skipping, while Sia swept around her with liquid economy, appearing to partner rather than challenge her. Aiffe kept up a constant picket-fence rattle of mockery, saying, “Old, old, old. You aren’t immortal, you’re just real, real old, there’s a difference.” Sia laughed and nodded appreciatively and said nothing.
Julie whispered, “But she’s just standing still. She hasn’t been moving at all.” Farrell blinked, craned his neck absurdly and understood, as suddenly as Aiffe, that nothing of Sia was dancing except her eyes and one foot. The eyes were leading Aiffe, keeping her in motion, forcing her to match her steps to steps that were never really taken. How does she do that? What the hell are we seeing? Aiffe was shaking her head weakly, knowing what was happening to her and trying to break free of it. Sia began to sing.
There were no words to the song, and her lips did not open; yet Farrell found himself humming it with her, although he had never heard it before. It was not like the song she had sung to Ben, but it filled him with the same childhood longings, wordless themselves. Sia’s sandaled right foot was swinging idly back and forth, the posture and her big single braid making her look like a bored schoolgirl. Aiffe stood still. Her head bobbed slightly in rhythm with the foot’s pendulous motion, as did the heads of Julie, Ben, and Farrell, equally hypnotized. The bare, pebbly spot where the sandal brushed the ground was peeling back, was dissolving into mud, into smoky mud, and then into the white-gold madness of lava, as wrong as the idea of looking down at one’s own flayed ribs or bubbling lung. Sia went on singing quietly. The raw, roiling wound under her pawing foot grew wider, spreading between Aiffe and her with increasing speed. Farrell could smell it now, like impossibly overheated brakes.
Slow, sleepwalking, teeth bared to the gums, Aiffe raised one hand as high as she could, until it began to spill over with blue light. She gave a rasping, plaintive cry, which was the last thing Farrell heard clearly for some moments. The blue light leaped from her hand and exploded, turning everything in the world to the color of lava. Farrell’s vision returned before his hearing, showing him Ben and Julie sprawled on the ground. Aiffe herself was down on one knee, rubbing her eyes.
Sia was standing by her, offering her own hand, saying—once the words swam together in Farrell’s head—“Now, that is a long-distance weapon, the oldest of them all. Did my son teach you to use a thunderbolt close to? You should not take him quite so seriously, my dear—there are some holes in his understanding.” She turned away, thoughtfully studying the place where the ground had healed completely, the few tufts of grass not even singed. “But you do well, truly. You should never be ashamed.”
She kept on turning where she stood, dancing for herself, reaching up to loosen her hair, as she had done when she tried to help Micah Willows. The coarse, grizzled hair fell down differently this time—endlessly lengthening, enveloping her body in a sparkling haze, within which she turned and turned, spinning a chrysalis of light. The thick body seemed to be elongating with her hair, hips lilting languidly, stumpy legs visibly growing slender and graceful.
Aiffe danced zigzags, arrows, patterns like a shattered mirror. Her straight lines probed for a way into Sia’s glowing spiral, now beginning to move off slowly toward a rise of ground just beyond the clearing. The sandy earth buckled and flowed under them; trees toppled soundlessly; and the rise became a little hill, with one of the fallen trees replaced carefully on the crest. Wonder why she changed it from rosewood to a willow. Maybe that’s her idea of repotting.
“Mean old, ugly old bitch,” Aiffe said, and hurled what Farrell thought was another thunderbolt after Sia. But this handful of brightness boiled over in midair, condensed and coalesced and was a striped snake the size of a pool cue, its skull bursting almost out of its skin with eagerness to strike. It vanished into Sia’s hair and was never seen again.
Sia glided on, still spinning her changes, while Aiffe danced around and ahead of her to lean impudently against the willow tree, arms folded. “Just to save you some time, I am really fantastic with trees. I’m just trying to be fair.” Sia passed by her, slipping straight into the willow like sunlight. Aiffe made a silly grab for her and drew back, crying out softly in pain, as the rough bark began to shine and tremble. Even from that distance, Farrell could watch Sia’s presence moving in the willow, could mark her progress from root to crown, along every waking bough to the tip of each long, trailing leaf, as the tree drank her up greedily. Damn thing even looks like her now. It is her.