The notes didn’t sound quite right, nor did his voice, but he persisted. Distortion was only to be expected under the circumstances. It still seemed a waste of time, until something vast and glowing could be seen coming toward them. It was an enormous lambent shape, like a small sun, though within the light he thought he could make out the dim outline of something almost familiar.
Dormas shrank away from it, and Mudge and Sorbl tried to flee. As Jon-Tom played on, only Clothahump held his position. For he recognized it immediately. Its appearance was not only proof that Jon-Tom’s spellsinging was working, but of the true size to which they’d been reduced.
“Stay,” he ordered the others. “It is quite harmless. It is only a gneechee.”
A single gneechee, those can’t-be-seen specks of light that were so much more. They were attracted to active magic, and this one had sought them out to cavort in the echoes of Jon-Tom’s spellsinging.
As he played himself on, the eerie wail became real music. He found that regardless of the results, he was enjoying himself. It is one thing to play an instrument well enough to feel it is a part of you. It’s quite another to make it all of you.
As he sang on, played on, the sky began to lighten. From a liquid translucence it brightened to yellow, the first true color he’d been able to perceive since the perturbation. The yellow intensified to gold. The sun seemed to be coming straight toward them. Not the gneechee this time but the bright, glowing orb that warmed the world: the true sun.
The by-now familiar mental snap, a moment of complete disorientation, and he staggered momentarily as he fought for balance, clutching with one hand at the duar hanging from his neck and at a rock with the other.
Back again.
A single bright spot of light vanished from the comer of his vision. He bid a silent farewell to the gneechee, hoping it had enjoyed the concert. Music rang through his brain, reverberated the length and breadth of his body. These aftereffects of the perturbation and his time as an instrument did not linger long, for which he was sorry. Not every perturbation made you feel lost or ill. He had been granted a few moments to live the musician’s dream. From now on he would only be able to live up to those moments of musical epiphany in his memory.
Around them the forest stood silent sentinel, seemingly unchanged. Before him he saw their campsite and supplies.
Clothahump lay on his back, kicking violently and attempting to right himself. Mudge sat on a rock, grasping at various parts of his body as if to reassure himself of his restored solidity. Dormas lay prone on the far side of the fire. She quickly rolled onto her knees and stood. Once more capable of flight, a relieved Sorbl took to the air to scan the woods surrounding them, darting in tight, happy circles overhead, whistling the defiant cry of his clan.
Clothahump barked an order at Jon-Tom, snapping him out of his rapidly fading chordal reverie. “Don’t just stand there gaping, my boy! Give me a hand. I’d turn myself, but I fear the transformation has weakened me more than I first thought.”
Lazy, Jon-Tom thought. The turtle was perfectly capable of standing by himself. But he put his duar aside and, together, he and Mudge stood the wizard back on his feet.
“A bad one, that,” Clothahump commented. “I should not have enjoyed continuing through life without a skeleton.
Mudge settled himself back on his tree. “You’re right. There’s worse things than goin’ through a change o’ sex. At least you look like somethin’. Me, I could use a good stiff one.”
“Under the circumstances, I believe we could all do with a drink.” He waddled toward their packs. “Will you join us, Dormas?”
“Under the circumstances, you bet your shell-shocked ass I will.”
The bottle was passed around, and when each of them had sipped from the same opening, shared the same liquor, the feeling of a real bond between them was stronger than ever.
“I’ll just repack it for you, Master.” Sorbl tried hard but failed to completely mask the eagerness in his voice.
“I will manage.” The wizard fumbled with the carton from which he’d extracted the bottle. “Otherwise we will not have the advantage of your excellent eyesight for very long. We may need it the next time this happens.”
“You’re sure there’ll be a next time soon?” Jon-Tom inquired.
“I did not mention a frequency. There is no way of predicting the perambulator’s perturbations. We could suffer three or four in a single day and then go for weeks without incurring anything more upsetting than momentarily blurred vision. One of the few certainties about a perambulator is its uncertainty. One can no more predict the frequency of occurrence than one can the severity. Truly it is most unsettling.”
“Tis freakin’ weird is wot it is, guv’nor!” Mudge slid down atop his bedroll and put a paw to his forehead. “All of a sudden I feel like I ate somethin’ with little green things growin’ out of it.”
Jon-Tom would have grinned, except for the discovery that his own stomach was doing flip-flops. Sure enough, all of his companions were suffering similar dysenteric effects. Dormas was trembling on her feet.
Looking none too healthy himself, Clothahump was studying each of them in turn. “Yes, I, too, am experiencing the symptoms of an unpleasant internal disorder.” He winced, closing his eyes briefly. “It appears to be developing with extraordinary rapidity, for which we may find reason to be grateful.”
“Another—perturbation already?” Jon-Tom groaned.
“No, I think not. Rather, the aftereffects. The minuscule creatures we became, it seems, were not entirely harmless. As you may recall, each was slightly different in size and appearance from the other.”
“You think they’re causing the pains we’re feeling now? That they were disease-causing organisms?” Jon-Tom wondered aloud.
The wizard sat down very carefully. “We did not notice this at the time because a disease is most unlikely to generate its own symptoms within itself. Now it is different. We have each of us become the disease that we were.”
Jon-Tom’s stomach settled even as he felt beads of sweat start from his forehead. First upset, then fever. At least whatever it was they had contracted was moving through their bodies with unnatural speed. He glanced over at Mudge.
“How about you? My stomach’s okay now, but I’m bum-ing up.”
“No fever in me, I thinks, mate,” replied the otter. “Trouble is, I’ve developed this bloody itch.”
“That’s too bad. Where?”
“I’d rather not get too specific, mate.” He looked to his left, to where Sorbl was landing unceremoniously in the bushes. Unpleasant bodily noises soon reached them.
Emulating Clothahump, Jon-Tom took a seat. Since this wasn’t a perturbation but merely the aftereffects of one, it should pass soon enough. He might have tried to spellsing them back to health, but he didn’t want to push his luck. Besides which, he didn’t feel very much like singing just then.
From what little he could tell, Dormas appeared to be suffering from an unbelievably accelerated case of hoof-in-mouth. Clothahump was now blowing his nose nonstop and giving every indication of trying to ride out a severe cold. He stared across at Jon-Tom through suddenly swollen eyes.
“How interesting. Red blotches are beginning to appear on your—on your—achoo!—face.”
“Measles.” Jon-Tom swallowed, wiping sweat from his brow. “I never had the measles. This isn’t so bad after all. I’ll have them and be done with them permanently in a day or so instead of a couple of weeks. How about that? We finally get something beneficial out of a perturbation.”
“Don’t try to tell that to Sorbl.” The wizard nodded toward the trees behind Jon-Tom. From within the brush pitiful retching sounds alternated with less pleasant ones.