Fugitives of Chaos

The deck heeled over at a forty-five degree angle. I slipped and fell to the carpet. The divan was bolted to the deck, but the pile of clothes boxes atop it was not; fabric and cardboard and scented crepe paper fell over my face. I heard crashes behind me as the bottles slid out of the wet bar and clattered to the floor. Our television, our luxurious television, toppled from its stand and fell with a noise of shattering glass.

"I'm not paying for that," said Colin, who was facedown on the deck.

An alarm hooted through the ship. I heard tumbling crashes, shouts, and screams of alarm and panic ringing from the other cabins and staterooms.

"That felt like we hit an iceberg," said Quentin, from somewhere behind me.

The lights in the cabin flickered and went dark. It was black as pitch. There were no lights anywhere.

"No," I said, raising my voice to be overheard above the rising wail of mixed people's voices crying out from the cabins around us, the hoots and klaxons or various alarms. "It's Echidna. Grendel's mom. She's pulled the ship off course."

5.

Yellow emergency lights spluttered and came on. As soon as the ship was done with her sharp-angled turn, the deck went flat again. The captain's voice, immensely amplified, rang from loudspeakers, telling the passengers that the ship was still afloat, urging them to be calm. "We may have caught up against an obstruction. We are investigating the cause…"

I was looking through, or, rather, "past" the decks and bulkheads and hull of the ship.

Victor said, "Do you see what's happening?"

I said: "The water is dark, but, when she grabbed the keel of the ship, there was a flash like emerald-green lightning igniting the water in the sea for a moment. She has transparent flukes like an eel and a sting in her tail like a scorpion sting. I can see the shape of her arms and hands, and the cloud of her long hair as it streams back. She had just ripped away the rudders and propeller of the ship; they were tumbling in the water around her. Her face is very beautiful, but pale and terrible.

"There is something else: ahead of us, at right angles to this normal continuum, is another time-space, intersecting. The intersection takes place along a tubelike zone of discontinuity. Where the tube meets the water, there is a circle of ocean whose inner nature is slightly different than that of our world. Directly below this circle of water is an undersea mountain with a flat top; there is a courtyard and a temple atop this flat area, and lights shining in the windows of the temple. In the courtyard is a sailor, tied upside down to a post, with his eyes torn out. The remains of a sailor. It is about fifty fathoms down. That is where she is taking us. We are going to be passing over that position."

There was a moment of silence while Victor absorbed this information. Everyone looked blanched and strange in the harsh glare of the emergency lights.

Colin said, "Orders, Leader? And let me just take this moment to say, I hope the words 'run away'

appeal' somewhere in the commands you are about to baric: out. And I think I speak for all the parts of my presently unkilled body when I say this."

Victor said slowly, 'There may be complicating factors. This isn't Lamia. Grendel's mother may be here simply to kill the human beings aboard. If we are obligated to risk or sacrifice our lives to save the mortals, we cannot run away."

Colin quirked his mouth to one side. "Hmph. Sacrifice lives. I did notice the words 'run away' did appear in the orders, but not exactly in the word order I would have wanted…"

"Enough chatter. The question may be moot," Victor said, frowning. He looked at Vanity.

She said, "I can't tell how far away my boat is! She heard me when I called; I can tell she can tell where I am and she is coming, but I don't know any more than that"

Victor turned to Quentin. "If this is Grendel's mother, and she operates on his paradigm—that is the psionic paradigm, right? The inspiration paradigm? Quentin, you are supposed to be able to trump that paradigm. Can you summon up or banish the inspiration energies, the power source, she is using?"

I said softly, "I know what it is. The inspiration. She is coming to build another pile of skulls in her garden behind her house."

Quentin said, "Let me see what I can do. Incanto sanctum circumque" He tapped his wand on the ground and a soft, pearly light issued from one tip. He held it out at arm's length and waved it around his head. The pearly light drew a clearly visible line of light into a perfect circle around him. A ring of pure light hung, floating, in the air at about the level of his shoulders, serene, luminous, wonderful. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen.

Quentin took out a hand mirror and placed it on the carpet between his feet. He lowered his head and stared down at it, muttering: " Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas…"

Victor turned to Vanity. "Either to fight, or to flee, or to find your vessel, we will have to get up on deck.

All the normal passageways and hatches were locked after the storm reached hurricane proportions.

Look for another way out."

Vanity said doubtfully, "I don't think people build secret passageways on boats."

"Look for one nonetheless."

There was noise from the corridor. I could hear voices, calm, loud, authoritative. It sounded as if a gang of the ship's staff were going from door to door, reassuring people and asking if anyone needed help.

Victor said, "Amelia, keep an eye on Echidna."

Vanity yelped. "She can hear it. When you say her name!"

Victor said calmly to the rest of us, "No one say her name again. Say 'fishmonger.'"

Victor stepped over to the door. When the officers knocked, he called out that everything was fine in here. I did not see whatever energy or particle-beam left his body and flashed through the door at them, but I sensed its utility to Victor, and its internal nature. Glassy-eyed, the men turned and continued on down the corridor.

Victor looked over his shoulder. "Progress?"

Colin said, "I am doing a whole fat lot of nothing here."

Vanity said, "Found it. The air duct. For some reason, they built it large enough to crawl through. You would think they'd only make it wide enough to let air pass, wouldn't you? But here it is."

Vanity had her head halfway into a square hole which had opened in the wall above the wet bar. With a click, electric lights came on in the hole, and shone around her body. "There is a switch," she said.

I said, "Something is distorting space-time. That undersea mountain is no longer far away. Now it is almost directly underfoot. We are about to pass into the intersection zone."

Colin looked at the porthole, as if to see outside.

Blackness pressed up against the glass. The roaring waves of rain beat a tattoo on the glass.

A whisper came from the light-encircled Quentin. It sounded like his voice, as if he were doing ventriloquism. His voice seemed to be coming from the mirror at his feet. I could sense it was useful to someone other than Quentin, that voice, and its internal nature was alien to this time-space.

"Death, painful death, is all fate holds in store; some will die for want of air, some for terror, hunger and despair. Death if you approach her, one or many, of your four. And yet among your number there are five. Let her return what she has stolen, and she may yet return a…"

Colin cried out and put his hands up as if to ward off a blow. The mirror at Quentin's feet cracked. The mirror above the wet bar turned into a spiderweb of shatter lines with a noise like a gunshot. From the bathroom, I also heard tinkling glass and the clatter of falling shards.

The stone on Vanity's necklace gave off a lancing green dazzle, like a flash of summer lightning. And she shouted. Her shout was a shout of joy, however.

I turned to look at the bathroom, expecting to see the mirror broken there. But instead, walls and surfaces blocked my view. For a moment, I was confused. How could a merely three-dimensional surface prevent me from seeing "over" it? Then I squinted, letting out a low moan of fear and annoyance.

I had been girlified again. Three-dimensionalized. Ameliorated, so to speak.

Victor said, "Report."

Everyone started to talk at once.

Victor said, "Oldest first."

I said, "Powers shut off." Keep it brief.

Vanity said, "I sensed what she did. We just passed over a boundary. It is so obvious! I should have figured it out before! This necklace has a boundary stone in it, just like the green table, just like Boggin's ring on his toe. All you are doing is attracting or deflecting the attention of whatever enforces the laws of nature. That is why I can sense when people are paying attention to me, you see? It is so I can do what I do. That is the principle the ships are built on; that is why they can read minds! I know how to do it now!

The trick I did with Bran's Head to turn people's powers off and on! I know how to do it!"

Victor said, "Do so. Do it now."

Vanity said, "Well, I can't do it now. My power is off. But if my power got turned back on, I could turn it off. Other people's, too. You have to be near a boundary for this to work. Something decides where boundaries are…"

Victor said, "Later, please. Colin?"

Colin said, "I had a dream while the voice was talking. Knowledge just came into my head out of nowhere. Were you guys wondering what I am supposed to be able to do, like Amelia seeing through walls and Victor seeing molecules and magnetic fields? I saw something with my heart. I saw the future.

Fishmonger is going to capsize the ship and trap an amount of air in it. She is going to push it to the bottom. She is going to eat the people a few at a time. She is going to keep them alive, keep the air fresh, for a long, long time. Like a crab tank in the restaurant. I saw an old couple, lying in bed in an upside-down room. I thought they were hugging each other. At first, I thought they were kissing. You know, saying good-bye because they both knew they were both about to die. The old gal was already dead. The guy must have been very hungry because he was eating her face…"

Vanity said, "Ugh! Stop! No descriptions of cannibal face-eating! No! Ugh!"

Colin said, "A lot more will kill themselves, or each other. It's going to be pretty bad. You know that scene I never translated right in the Odyssey? The one where Odysseus and his men are trapped in a cave by a man-eating Cyclopes? Okay. The fishmonger here is from that same background story, see? It will be pretty bad for the people."

Quentin said, "The fishmonger must have pushed us over a ward, in addition to pushing the ship into another sphere of reality, because my friends all fled The one who was talking was one of the Dukes of Hell, a fairly influential fellow, and the largest spirit I had yet called up. I was going to use him to drive away the influences controlling the fishmonger's powers. I waited too long. We could have won, and been free. I wasn't expecting this. I didn't think our powers could just be shut down like that. The undersea shelf we are passing over must be an area like the school grounds back home. Kind of clever of her, actually."

Colin bent, picked up one of the shards of the broken mirror, and, before anyone could stop him, he drew the sharp point along one arm, making a scratch and drawing blood.

"Gross!" said Vanity.

Colin then dropped the shard, passed his hand over the cut, and wiped the blood away. The scratch was wiped away as well, and his arm was whole.

Colin looked up. "Leader, I can report my powers are still on."

Victor sat down in a chair, and bowed and put his face in his hands.

We were all silent, staring at him.

I had never seen Victor hesitate before. I had never seen him afraid.

The noises in the background, the stir of the wind, the shouts of alarm from other cabins, grew dim.

Perhaps the storm was dying down, now that we were overtop the undersea mountain.

Victor raised his head, and his face was pale and stern. He spoke in an even-toned and level voice:

"Either we have an obligation to save the human beings, or not. If not, we should run away. If we have an obligation, then we cannot risk ourselves fighting a monster, because good evidence suggests our death would immediately trigger an attack on Cosmos by Chaos, and entail the destruction of the Earth. There are more people aboard Earth than are on this ship. The people here aboard ship, if they viewed the matter objectively, would agree that their sacrifice, in order to preserve the Earth, is a reasonable exchange. Logically, of course, these people aboard ship will perish in any case if Chaos destroys Cosmos. In either situation, whether we are obligated to defend the humans or not, logic suggests that we should run and leave them to their fate."

I could feel the blood draining out of my face. The others had strange, strained looks on their faces, too.

Colin was looking particularly annoyed.

Victor continued, "A second factor, though, is the fact that they rescued us. They did not know we were not in any real, danger, but, nonetheless, the crew of this ship rescued, to the best of their ability, a group of us stranded in a motorboat. As a general principle, in order to encourage the rescues of ships at sea, there must be an incentive rather than a disincentive attached. One incentive is that the rescued party should operate according to a reciprocal standard, and perform such rescues as may be needed when called upon to do so."

His voice trailed off.

Colin said, "What does all that goobledygook mean, Mein Fuhrer?"

Victor said, "We must see if there is anything we can do without getting ourselves killed, since getting killed, so it seems, might entail the destruction of the Earth by Chaos. We have Colin turn into something large enough to hold us all, something that swims or flies. If we cross back over the boundary we just crossed, our powers may simply turn back on again; Quentin may be able to vanquish the fishmonger in short order."

I said, "In case I wasn't clear on how big she was, let me say again; Grendel's mother is twice as long as this boat; there is no way to get into the water without being right next to her. As for a flying thing, I'd be surprised if Colin could take off in this weather."

Quentin said, "If we cross the ward, and my friends return, I will not be able to send anything back across the ward to where she is wrapped around this ship. We will be able to save ourselves, but not this ship. That is assuming Colin is able to change shape, carry us all, and get us across the ward—which remains to be seen."

Colin said, "What if Colin quits the group?"

As what he meant sank in, I felt as if I had been slapped. Quit the group?

Vanity looked too outraged to speak; I saw the feeling of betrayal and treason written on her features.

Quentin bowed his head slightly, turned to one side, hiding his reaction.

Victor remained calm. "I hope you would do us the courtesy of waiting till we are no longer in the middle of an emergency."

Colin said, "I am not sure I want to be in a group that is going to run off and leave this whole ship's complement to die horrible, horrible deaths. What kind of people would that make us? I'd rather be dead than be that kind of person."

Quentin said softly, "And rather have the Earth destroyed in the process, too, I suppose."

Colin barked at him, "Yes! Why not? I am not responsible for what the folks in Chaos do! I didn't start this war!"

The deck tilted slightly underfoot. We all felt it. After a moment, the deck righted itself.

The sensation would not have been strange for someone in a smaller boat. Boats always rock when someone climbs over the side. A ship this size, as steady as a fortress even in the heaviest waves, would not rock if any lesser creature climbed aboard. But Echidna was not one of the lesser ones.

Victor said, "We have no time to debate, no time to come to a consensus. At the moment, you cannot quit the group, since we are in the middle of an emergency. It is possible, I admit, that my orders are ill-advised, or even wrong. Nonetheless, you will all obey them, promptly and without question, while the emergency lasts."

Colin said, "And what if I just say, stuff it, and go off and fight the monster myself, since no one else seems to be able to?"

Victor spread his hands: "It would be somewhat out of character for you."

Colin's face turned red: "Are you calling me a coward?"

Victor said calmly, "I mean, before now, you displayed great strength of character. You have been, till now, entirely devoted to the group, even to the extent that you committed acts of vandalism and extraordinary disobedience in order to attract attention and pull punishments onto yourself which would have otherwise fallen on other members of the group, especially Amelia, who seemed not to notice your self-sacrifice. I thought it was obvious what you were doing. It showed that you were serious. Serious about the group. Are you not serious anymore?"

Colin said, "We can't just let all these people get killed! They rescued us! You said it yourself!"

"Nor can we all go shooting off any which way we like," said Victor.

For some reason, Colin looked at me when Victor said that. I realized that I had not told Colin about the episode when I would not obey orders during Grendel's attack. That did not mean someone had not told him about that event. And he might have heard a version much less flattering to me than what I might have said.

Colin compressed his lips and said nothing.

Victor was saying, "We are losing time by this talk. I will point out that the fishmonger has already climbed aboard the deck. It is only a matter of moments before she begins tearing up hull plates and killing people. Since this matter is serious, however, I would be willing to have a vote of no-confidence right now, if someone will propose another candidate for group leader. I will ask for a straight vote with no debate. Pausing to debate might cut off any possibility of escape. Fishmonger may be sitting on the hatch that this vent leads to. Candidates?"

Colin said, "Me. I want to lead. And I do not think we can run away. If I am elected, I am going to go fight her."

Victor said, "No speechmaking, please. Any other candidates?"

Quentin said, "I nominate Victor. And I vote for him, too."

Colin said, "I vote for me. Two to one."

Victor said, "I have not voted yet. It is one to one."

Vanity looked at me. She said, "What do we do, Amelia?"

That really surprised me. I suppose Vanity still thought of me as the wise older sister, the person to turn to when the boys were fighting. And although no one had raised a voice, or raised a fist, this was a fight, a fight to the death, really. Colin was challenging Victor's supremacy as the king stallion of the herd.

And it was my fault. It was all my fault. I was the one they were really fighting over.

And the fact that Echidna was here was my fault, too. If I had not taken the wedding dress, she would not be here. It had been hanging on a branch, and I had paused to take it and put it on. My four friends would not be doomed.

Because if Colin fought her, he would die. The voice from Quentin's mirror, the Duke of Hell, had said so. If any of the four of us approached her, either singly or as a group, we would die. The voice said so.

But there were five of us.

Let her return what she has stolen, and she may yet return a—

A what? Return a book to the library archive? Return around five? Return all roasted like a pig, apple in her mouth, spiced with garlic and chive?

Alive.

I said, "Alive."

Vanity said, "Amelia…"

"Rhymes with five. Alive."

Victor said, "If you would please pay attention to our present political crises, Amelia, we…"

"Me," I said, "I am the one he was talking about…"

Vanity said, "I second the nomination and cast my vote for Amelia."

I blinked. "What? I wasn't nominating myself for leader—"

Victor said, "I also vote for Amelia." He laughed and looked quite relaxed.

I said, "Wait a minute—"

Victor said, "The leader has ordered us to wait a minute. Everyone please wait."

I said, "How am I leader? Not everyone voted."

Victor said, "If you vote for Colin or for me, that will tie it up one to two to two. But since you nominated yourself, the vote tally now stands at three to one to one, doesn't it?"

The deck shivered underfoot. In the distance, we heard the scream of metal as some huge amount of deck plate was ripped up from its moorings.

Quentin raised his hand to his brow, and gave me a snappy salute. "I change my vote. She knows what we have to do. I see it in her face. Four to one."

Colin raised his hand and gave me a stiff-armed Nazi salute. "Who am I to stand in the way of progress?

Five to naught. Hail, Dark Mistress! I yearn for your whip! What are your orders? Do we fight or do we flee?"

More snapping of metal overhead. Echidna was tearing the hatches open.

I said, "Neither. You flee. The four of you. Colin, turn into something. I have to go face Echidna alone…"

Colin blenched. "Fuck, no! You cannot just sacrifice yourself to—"

"Quiet! No back-talk! No debate! Everyone in the crawlspace! Snappy! Double-time! Go, go, go!"

I ran into the other room and shoved aside boxes. There it was. I lifted the lid to make certain I had the right box. Soft fabric lighter than smoke, with glints of pearl and shivering dew drops, shone back at me: the wedding dress.

1.

Vanity's crawlway led only a dozen feet. There was a set of grilles through which rain was blowing, and a cylindrical housing for some sort of pump or turbine. Unfortunately, the metal cylinder of the turbine occupied all but the merest sliver of the crawlway, and was between us and the grilles which opened out onto the deck.

Colin was in front, and I was in the rear, behind Victor. Vanity and Quentin were in the middle. We heard Colin grunting and straining for a moment or two.

Vanity called to him (shouting over the storm noise), "Use your powers on it!"

He shouted back, "Inspire me!"

Vanity shouted, "Amelia and I will do another striptease act for you if you get that vent off!"

"Ho ho. That would be nice, if I believed you," said Colin.

Well, on the one hand, I did not want to be embarrassed. I should say, I did not want to be crucified with embarrassment. On the other hand, being stuck in an air-shaft on a ship about to be pulled underwater by the eldest mother of all monsters who ever preyed on humanity was not such a great option either.

I wished I could have just whispered this in his ear.

I said to Victor, 'Tell Vanity to tell Colin that I promised him anything."

Victor, over the storm noise, said back, "I beg your pardon?"

"Pass the message forward. The promise I made to Colin. Anything. I said, I'll do anything."

Victor spoke to Quentin; Quentin spoke to Vanity. I heard the murmurs of their voices up ahead.

Vanity shouted back to me: "He doesn't believe me! You have to tell him yourself!"

Oh, God. I put my head down on the cool metal surface on which I was kneeling. Was I going to have to say this in front of all my friends? In front of Victor? Oh please, no.

I waited a moment for some miracle to occur, to spare me from this humiliation. But Providence was obviously busy somewhere else today, or maybe this was one of the things that is supposed to build character.

I shouted, "I said I'll do anything you want, Colin!"

He shouted back, "Anything, anything?"

I shouted, "Yes!"

He shouted back, "Just so we are clear on this, we are talking about sexual favors, are we not?"

I was really not sure what kind of character this was supposed to be building.

"Yes!" I shouted back.

"Yes, what?" he shouted in return.

"Yes, we are talking about sexual favors! I want you to cover me with hot fudge and lick it off!"

2.

There was a noise like the end of the world. Over the shoulders of everyone else in the way, I saw the huge engine-cylinder get crushed like an empty tin can, and smashed out through the broken grilles. Part of the wall had been exploded outward, also.

Colin called happily over the noise of the storm, "Well! I guess I am feeling kind of inspired tonight!"

Soon we were all on deck, being lashed and drenched by the storm. I could not face any of them. I kept my head turned to the wall, and I clutched the box containing the wedding dress to my chest with both hands.

Someone put a hand on my shoulder. I thought it might be Victor, and the thought that Victor would understand, and would come to comfort me, was comforting.

But Colin's voice came into my ear, "Hey, uh— Amelia. We were just kidding around, okay? I mean—

don't be mad at me—okay?"

I shrugged his hand off. It was not Victor. Victor no doubt made his judgment based on the words he heard coming out of my mouth; and no doubt it was a harsh judgment. Not that I blamed him.

I said, "Go to the stern. Change shape. Save the others. Try to get back over the boundary, the ward.

No talking. Go."

The hand was removed from my shoulder. In the midst of the storm noise, I heard no sound of footsteps, no final words, well-wishing, or good-byes. Maybe there were none. Maybe they expected me to live through this.

3.

The winds buffeted me as I moved forward. When I came to the main deck, I took shelter underneath an overhang of the deck above. Originally, there had been deck chairs and cafe tables here. Now the space was empty, and metal grates had been pulled down across the windows.

You might wonder where I found the strength, the courage, to go forward. Any reasonable person would have run away.

But I was upset about Colin and Victor.

Upset? Upset is not the word. I was choking on tears.

My life had been ruined, and there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn't bravery. I wasn't sure I had a life worth worrying over. Maybe that is what saved me.

But I was crying, and sobs made it hard for me to breathe, and my eyes felt raw.

I sat in the rain-shadow of the deck for a time, weeping. I hope it was a short time.

When I looked up, I saw that there were lights shining from upper windows, but the ship seemed strangely silent. I could not hear the alarms or klaxons. Had they been shut off? Or was the wind merely drowning all noise? ,

Lightning flashed. I saw that part of the deck before me, the beautiful deck with the handsome appointments and polished rails, had been driven in, and the bulkhead smashed inward as if a freight train had plowed through the steel and glass.

I picked my way across scattered rubbish and litter. Metal fragments screeched and hissed as they were pushed along the deck surface by the winds, scraping.

There was light to my left. Three decks of balcony and bulkhead were crumpled and staved-in as if a tree had fallen on them. It would have had to have been a redwood tree, I suppose, and made of iron.

Perhaps dropped from orbit. Never mind the tree; it looked like a bomb had gone off.

The covered pool was now open to the sky for at least half its length. I walked forward, and was standing on tiles. Not long ago, this had been indoors. There were lights burning on the balconies to the left; those on the right had been extinguished. The balconies, deck upon deck of them, were cracked and leaning, and tables and chairs had been flung each way like leaves in a hurricane. There were metal shards and crumpled wreckage to my left, where tons of steel had fallen as the roof and upper deck had collapsed. To my right was the deep end of the pool. The diving board was still intact. There were tables undisturbed and pretty, sitting beyond, and doorways and storefronts of certain shops built along that deck. It all seemed so normal, that little corner. The shallow end of the pool was beaten to froth by the rain. The deep end was tranquil.

I saw headless corpses floating in the water. One of them wore a white jacket. Was it Miguel? Another had a green-and-gold jacket I had last seen on Klaus, the man who had wanted to take a Jacuzzi bath with me.

I heard a slithering sound behind me. Glass and metal snapped and groaned.

I turned.

4.

Fathom upon fathom and yard upon yard of snaky folds were draped across the deck. Some sort of phosphorescent crusts or barnacles were clinging here and there in scattered scales along her belly. Her scales were gray and green, but with spots and dapples of rich purple, vermilion, poisonous yellow, blood-red. Every few yards along the coils of bunched muscle, translucent flukes of singular delicacy waved like the fans of an angelfish.

Up from the mass of knotting and unknotting coils rose two swaying columns of scaly flesh. One was her tail, which was fluked like an eel, and bore an enormous swollen sting, lolling like the sting of a scorpion, and the stinger was going in and out, wet with shivering venom. The other blended into her curving hips, narrowed to a sudden waist, above which was an ample bosom, delicate shoulders, graceful arms with slim fingers. She had them over her head at the moment, like a ballerina caught in mid-gesture.

Atop a slender neck was a girlish face, but of a classical beauty: a firm chin, perfect cupid's-bow lips, a straight nose, deep and large eyes beneath level brows. Her hair hung in dark ringlets across her shoulders and down her back, curled like ivy vines, but black as nighty and shining with water. Imagine the Statue of Liberty if she were younger. Her eyes were turned upward at the moment. I don't know what she was looking at.

Between her naked breasts, on a necklace that glinted with mingled silver fire and starlight, hung a green stone, a tear of polished marble. It was not the twin of Vanity's necklace, but it was at least a cousin, the work of the same craftsman.

There was darkness overhead, and she stood framed in a great panel of wreckage where she had pulled loose the bulkhead and several balconies. Rain fell all around her.

I do not know how she was able to shrink from something twice the size of an ocean liner to something merely twenty yards long. But it should have occurred to me before this that she could change, or ignore, her mass and length and dimension. After all, the dress I was carrying in my arms fit a girl my size.

She caressed one arm with the other, in a gesture that at first seemed very odd. But then I recognized it. I did it in the shower. She was washing.

She rubbed her hands together, and then, sliding forward in a tremendous rush and rustle of scales, knots of coil opening and folds unfolding, she bowed her head a bit, and dipped her hands into the water of the indoor pool. She shook pink stains off from her delicate fingers. Her profile seemed so serene, so pretty.

Echidna was washing blood off her hands.

It was only then she seemed to notice me. Her head was no higher than mine off the ground at the moment, for her snaky body had dipped to let her touch the pool water. She turned her classic profile, and I looked into her eyes. It was like looking into the eyes of a glacier. Her face was drawn and pallid with anger and grief. Her lips were drawn and bloodless.

Her face was so cold. So pretty, and so very stiff and cold. Imagine a fury and a sorrow too deep to leave any trace of expression.

I didn't know what to say. I didn't say anything.

She stared at me, frozen in surprise, a lioness seeing a bunny sitting fat before her, not running.

I opened the box and shook out the dress. The fairy garment shone and shimmered like smoke.

I held it out.

Echidna stared at the dress, and her eyebrows drew together. A slightest wrinkle of frown creased her ivory brow. There was no other change of expression.

I took one step forward, then another. I held the dress up.

She cocked her head to one side, perhaps puzzled, or perhaps feeling a greater anger beginning to build.

She did not reach for the dress. With one white finger, she reached toward my face. I closed my eyes when she touched me. I don't know what I expected. I expected pain. I expected her to poke an eye out.

She caressed my cheek very gently with a fingertip. I opened my eyes. She lifted a drop of water from my cheek with a fingertip, brought the finger to her lip, and kissed it No, she did not kiss her finger. She was tasting the drop from my face.

I do not know how she could pick one teardrop out of all the rainwater on my face, and I do not know how I knew that was what she had done. But I was sure.

Gently, she lifted the dress from my arms with her other hand. She smoothed the fabric with her hands, and smiled at it, a smile of long-lost memory, wistful and sad.

Still moving with slow gentleness, she reached out with her hand again and took my shoulder. Her fingers dug into my shoulder cruelly. I winced, but did not cry out.

Like a second head of a two-headed giant, her scorpion tail now rose over her shoulder, pointed its stinger blade at my heart, and drew back.

I said, "I am sorry for your son. I am sorry I didn't love him. I am sorry that he died for me. But I did not kill him. None of these people on this boat killed him."

There was a blur of motion as the scorpion tail shot forward. I closed my eyes, expecting death. I felt the breeze of rapid motion near my face. Her hand was still digging into my shoulder.

I opened my eyes again, and wished I hadn't. The sting was now hanging four inches in front of my eyes.

I could see every little detail in the way the sting was constructed. The barb had many little backwards-pointing hairs epoxied together into a single shaft. I saw the mucous membranes surrounding the orifice where the sting retracted and extended from the poison sac. I could smell the heady smell of the venom. It smelled a bit like turpentine, or almonds.

I heard a voice. I am not sure if I heard it in my ears, or in my heart.

Who, daughter, who?

I said aloud, "Will you promise to spare the people aboard this ship?"

Who killed your bridegroom, daughter?

The fingers dug more deeply into my shoulder. The long red nails drew blood from my flesh.

I said, "Ow! Promise me. Uh—Mother… ? Promise me, please—ouch! Ow!"

A look of impatience came over her face. I could see the tension in the tail rise to a peak, and…

"Mavors! Mavors sent his bird. But it wasn't his fault. Grendel was about to kill Colin, and he…"

She took her hand from my shoulder, raised one finger, and laid it softly across my lips.

Hush, daughter

With another great surge and rustle of snaky folds, her head went swooping away from me, and train upon train of serpent-mass rose and slithered and folded after her. She did not move like a sidewinder, but, rather, she undulated in an up-and-down sine wave, hypnotic.

Echidna moved away. Chairs and tables, pillars and posts, were torn up and thrown aside in the wake of her passage.

She sine-waved out into the storm, and crossed the wreckage of the deck.

Now she was at the rail of the ship, and her size had in-creased by tenfold. She seemed also to be surrounded with a shadow that grew and grew darker as she grew.

Echidna turned and looked over her shoulder at me. Her hair lifted up in a weightless cloud, as if she were already underwater again, and drew a veil across her chins and lips.

Over top of that veil, I could see her eyes, her cold, mad, crazed eyes. In those eyes there was a look of softness.

None of the other women wept for him.

Like an avalanche falling from a sea cliff into the sea, with her graceful hands sweeping back in a swan dive behind her, Echidna fell into the sea. The train of her body surged up in a writhing mass and unwound in midair to follow her into the waters.

After she was gone, I fell to my knees and put my face in my hands, and wept, and wept. These were merely tears of fear, coming now, senseless, now that the cause for fear had passed.

5.

The rain hammered down, less and less.

I looked up when I heard a noise. The rain was getting weaker. I saw a silvery ship in the waters below me, shining.

I heard quick footsteps behind me. I turned just as Vanity, her red hair all plastered down by rain, and sopping wet, threw her arms around me and gave me a hug.

Colin was a few steps behind her.

Vanity sobbed into my shoulder, "You're alive!"

I said, "Where are Victor and Quentin?"

Colin said, "Victor is lowering a lifeboat. Quentin is with him."

I said, "And what the hell are you doing here? My orders were for you to change shape and run away."

Colin spread his hands, raising his eyebrows and looking innocent. "I tried, Dark Mistress, really I did. I just wasn't inspired. I couldn't fly with you left behind—my heart wasn't in it."

"That is the same tone of voice you used to use on Dr. Fell when you hadn't done your assignments."

"It's my paradigm…"

"The making-up-excuses paradigm! You are going to get us all killed if you don't learn to obey orders!

We are going to have a court-martial, and you are going to be punished for this. Don't tell me I can't punish you; I can have Quentin turn you into a newt!"

Vanity said, "It's my fault. My powers just came back on. I felt…"

"If it's your fault, then you will be punished, too! We can't survive if the group doesn't follow orders!"

Vanity looked shocked, and her lower lip trembled a bit.

Colin stiffened into a proper beefeater's attention and snapped out a salute. "Leader! Ma'am, yes, ma'am! We thought you were dead! We thought you were committing suicide to let us get away! You forgot to appoint a second-in-command! Ma'am! There was no way to vote in a new leader, ma'am! It was a two-to-two tie! Ma'am! So actually, it's your fault, ma'am, if you don't mind my saying so, ma'am!

Private First Class Fair reports that someone is watching us now! We may be under attack!"

I said to Vanity, "What's going on?"

I could see that she really didn't want to talk to me, because she thought I was being unreasonable and cruel, but she straightened her spine and stiffened her trembling lip and spat out in a voice as calm and controlled as anything Victor could do: "The moment you were killed—we thought you were killed—something far away turned and looked at us. Like an alarm bell ringing. I thought it might be Mavors. Ma'am."

I opened my mouth to say she didn't have to call me "ma'am," but then I closed it again. Maybe she did have to. It might be good for her. Build character.

Vanity forgot about being angry with me in the very next second. "Oh my God! There she is! It's my ship!

Yoo-hoo! Hullo!" And she pointed toward the waters behind me.

There was a flash of lightning at that moment, and all the sea was lit up.

In that single, suspended split-instant of dazzle, I saw the fleet surrounding us.

These were warships of ancient make, like Vanity's ship, but black as night.

The gods of Olympos had come.

Here Ends Fugitives of Chaos, Volume Two of the Chronicles of Chaos to Be Concluded in