We meant to leave the next morning. We honestly did.
But we were up te, revelling in the music and as many of the other performers as we could. Kildar and company were wonderful, even if you didn’t consider the fact that when they were onstage, their combined skills made for a spectacur colourful light show immediately around them, with no need for lumina stones hung from the arch, plus they sounded like a lot more than six people. They were, however, definitely not the only amazing performers, and they were as ready to join enthusiastically in the audience of someone else’s turn as they were to put on an extraordinary performance themselves.
When we finally, one at a time, dragged ourselves awake and out of our tents, and rejoined the band for breakfast, it was actually closer to lunch. Terenei had heard that one of his favourite bands was here and pying soon; just because, we used the time until then to switch to clothes that were more fun, Serru in the loose trousers and belly-baring top and sandals she’d worn in Ottermarsh, Aryennos in his blue and violet, Terenei whipping up something for me simir to what he’d created then and for himself a lot of fanciful lightweight rainbow fabric that flowed and shimmered with every motion.
One of the many stalls selling an abundance of diverse foods ran out of a savoury dish that turned out to be in much higher demand than expected; they had, or could borrow from other food stalls, nearly everything except for a couple of key unusual spices that defined the dish. Rather improbably, Heket had seeds for one of them in her waist-bag, left over from the work she’d been doing right before the storm, and when word spread, another farmer produced seeds for the other. We chose a spot near the river, since I’d need water, but not too badly in the way, and as we had at the school, Heket broke and prepared the ground. While she finished the second plot, I pnted seeds in the first according to her instructions; while I added charged water to the first, she pnted the seeds in the second so all I had left to do was water.
None of the food stalls would let Heket or I pay for food after that. The dish in question was absolutely delicious and definitely worth the effort for a chance to try it.
I rexed enough to accept when Kildar offered his own guitar so I could be part of a jam session that involved half of that band and another amateur and a pro from a different band, and while it didn’t work perfectly, no one cared and it was still immensely fun.
Heket ran into a friend who was also a storyteller. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t a sort of duet, the pair alternating between the threads of two different characters. The parallels running between the two lines were intricate and kept them linked despite appearing to be unconnected. Finally they came together, and at that point, Heket let her friend mostly take over but she kept doing the voice and actions of her own primary character. They had to have done that together before. There was just no way, even here, they’d completely improvised that. It wasn’t poetry, not exactly, but it had a sometimes-alliterative rhythm to it that was consistent and powerful.
It was, for me, a mind-blowing experience. It was vivid and engrossing, even though they had only two voices and a single prop each. Heket had a drum with a head the size of a dinner pte, the body goblet-shaped and painted white, and the many intricate cords cing the head in pce were a graduated rainbow all the way around. She used it for emphasis, and drew some surprising variation from it. Her friend had a thing cradled in both hands that reminded me of a very rge 20-sided die, made of non-reflective bck metal; whichever facet was at the top allowed light to escape from inside, while all others stayed dark, but each was a different colour, and he turned the thing with the skill of a musical instrument without ever looking down, bringing up colours that fit whatever the current mood was and allowing them to spill across him and Heket. Props aside, he was remarkably good at voices, and somehow they were both always audible no matter what else was going on, even if they dropped to a whisper for drama.
Aryennos’ family did another turn on stage.
Another storyteller, one Heket’s friend apparently knew, challenged Heket to a game. That turned out to mean two storytellers seated on the ground, facing each other. Between them were four piles of face-down cards, which Aryennos murmured to me were locations, characters, events, and items. Each pile had a shuffled combination of cards with two different backs, marking their owners—apparently storytellers often collected such cards, which had bnk backs, and the shops that sold them were able to imprint the backs with the storyteller’s own design. Somehow. I didn’t care about the details.
They told a single story, alternating back and forth, but it wasn’t that simple. Whichever was listening had until a small hourgss ran out to flip the top card of any pile and then take over, incorporating whatever was on the card into it before the other storyteller took their turn. I found it fascinating that they weren’t trying to sabotage each other—the goal appeared to be showing off skills and entertaining their rapt and cheering audience, not trying to make each other look bad. And man, did they have skills. How did one create alliteration and a smooth alternating rhythm at speed like that, while improvising?
Leave it to this world to have a storytelling rap battle crossed with a trading card game and a dash of improv theatre games, and then make it non-competitive.
When they finally wrapped it up, they ughed and accepted compliments while sorting the cards back to their respective owners. From what I saw, each had a soft fabric case with four compartments, each able to hold quite a lot of cards and they did. The whole thing had a top fp to fold down, then the case could be folded inwards, then in half, then tied and tucked into a bag.
And by then it was time for an evening meal, and...
Well, we ended up still there as twilight deepened. It was a dey but it didn’t feel like one.
And it was still hard to get my head around the fact that after twenty-four hours or so at a music festival, I hadn’t needed to so much as pull out a Quickheal potion, let alone changing to my centaur form and making use of my healing magic.
Many people were still partying when we gathered back at our own campsite to set up tents and start winding down and digging out everyday clothes to sleep in. We really needed to get moving in the morning. We really did.
Someone walked directly into the middle of our campsite. She was wearing a dress that reached her ankles, with loose sleeves that allowed barely a glimpse of her fingertips, and a sleeveless vest over it that included a wide deep hood, which she had pulled up.
As she came into the circle of light around our campfire, she pushed back the hood to let it rest on her shoulders.
Terenei grabbed Serru and dragged her back, putting himself between her and the stranger; Heket gathered Myu up into her arms protectively, her ears ft against her skull and her near-white tail shing. Aryennos retreated towards the ornithians, keeping himself in the middle.
Not all that far away, I heard someone scream, a sound of pure panic, and realized that it was cutting across a ripple of noise from one direction that was not music or ughter, it was urgent and anxious voices. I didn’t have time to deal with that right now.
The new arrival had green moss growing along one side of her face and skull, either on or repcing the skin; it was impossible to tell the extent of it under her clothes. The hair on the other side had been cropped short, softening the contrast to a limited degree. Very limited.
“Get out,” I told her. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“I have something to say to you, though,” she spat. “You’re a liar. To me and everyone.”
“I beg your pardon? The only thing I’ve ever said to you is that I wasn’t interested in visiting you. That was absolutely the truth, believe me.”
“How dare you act like you have any right to pretend you’re a woman of any species? The Quincunx doesn’t make mistakes but it can get confused. It gave you a female centaur form! That almost certainly means that you’re one of those men who feel entitled to pretend that you have any idea what it really feels like to be a woman.”
“How about what it feels like to be part of a minority even more the target of violence and discrimination than women? Since I’m guessing you’re defining ‘what it feels like to be a woman’ as ‘have experienced patriarchal gender-based oppression,’ and you had better believe that trans people know all about that, sometimes from cis women. Have you lost whatever mind you still had? My gender identity is none of your business. And I could point out that being a woman is less of a leap than having four legs, or fur and a tail, or being amphibious! Did you seriously send some poor ensved puppet here to tell me that you’re just as much of a bigot as Zombie Boy? I already knew that. Terrorists and tyrants don’t tend to be much into universal rights.” Okay, it wasn’t my most eloquent response ever, but switching gears from still bubbling after a wonderful day to being confronted by a TERF tantrum... that was a bit too abrupt. It was a step or two up from a schoolground retort, at least. Where was I supposed to even start with that, anyway?
“I am not a bigot, a terrorist, or a tyrant! I’m here to protect my world from contamination and patriarchy’s evils! I was chosen for that, because I know what to watch for! And freaks like you, who think you can just decide that you’re women and define what women are and appropriate what we fight for, you’re one of the things to watch out for!”
“Have you looked around at this world? At all? Even a little? There is no gender binary here! No one cares about anatomy or identity or, for that matter, what colour someone’s skin is or how many legs they have or whether they’re disabled or who they love! People are just whoever they are! I understand this world better than you do, and I’ve only been here for maybe a month! The only person trying to put anyone into boxes is you!”
“There is always a binary! Men and women are not the same!”
I was starting to get fshbacks to why I’d been minimizing my social media time recently. “No, they aren’t, but that isn’t the same as being unequal and it doesn’t mean there’s no fuzzy ground in between, in every world!”
Serru jerked free of Terenei and stalked over to face her, arms crossed. “Look at me.” When that got no response, she stepped in between her and me. “Look at me! Do you know who I am?”
“What?” The Moss Queen barely gnced at her. “Why should I know you? Get out of the way. You have no idea what you’re helping.”
Serru nodded, and I could see the muscles tightening across her shoulders. “That might have been the one thing that could make me forgive you, at least a little. I’ve heard enough from Nathan to understand how enormous a change it is, coming here from your world, and to have some idea just how bad things could potentially be.” The calmness of her voice grew colder and more brittle with every sentence. “If you were using the infection you created to actually try to understand our world and find peace here, if you were learning anything, then just maybe, that would be some thin excuse. But you learn absolutely nothing, do you? No comprehension or even effort, just control. This is not your world. It is ours. You are not entitled to act as though it should all be reshaped to match your personal expectations and values. You were not chosen by anyone or anything. You are not wise and omniscient and altruistic. You are ignorant and arrogant and selfish, just like the Zombie King.”
“How dare you talk to me like that? He’s part of what I’m trying to protect you against, you stupid little bitch!”
I was pretty sure the st word didn’t transte, but the meaning probably got across clearly enough.
Interestingly, I didn’t hear the sounds of fear around us now, only absolute silence. All the noise was farther out.
“Really?” That was openly anger I heard now. I wasn’t sure I could stop Serru; I wasn’t sure I should try. I did step sideways so I was almost beside her, but not blocking her. “You want to keep this world pure and peaceful and harmonious, do you? There’s an emotion that did not exist in this world before you, because we had no reason for it. We have no word for it and none of us who have been attacked by you have ever had a way to describe it even to ourselves. I learned a word from Nathan, though, because it certainly exists in your world. Hate. Every single person you have ever infected hates you, and only you, and had never felt that before you gave it to us.” Her volume was climbing, and so was the rage. “How is what you do to your victims, and that’s another new word for us, any better than what Nathan says about a man using violence to make a woman have sex with him or forcing her to belong to a single man and serve him regardless of her own will? You do not care about consent or equality. You take and you force and you viote, also not our word or concept, and you use and you abandon without a thought. That is your utopia, Carol? That everyone should live knowing that at any time they can be stolen away from their lives and loved ones, unable even to die? That their innermost self can be ripped open and peeled and diced like a fruit and then stirred forcibly into that vortex to be mostly lost but just self-aware enough, intermittently, to understand? This is your equality and sisterhood and harmony? You are not a... what’s the word? Goddess. You are not the voice of this world or its protector. You are its first and worst poison!” Shaking, she shifted her weight backwards so she was immediately beside me. “Nathan, free her. Please.”
“What? Oh. Yeah. On it.” I shook myself, changed to centaur, and reached for my Purification spell.
“Don’t you dare,” the Moss Queen said coldly. “You are not going to like the consequences if you do anything to my messenger. I can take all of your friends and you besides.” She raised one hand.
Metal hands, very gently, pinned the messenger’s arms to her sides and lifted her off the ground by a hand’s width.
“Sorry,” Heket said, through the open canopy of her mecha, “but I think your messenger will forgive us. Whether you do or not, no one cares.” Myu sat up straight beside her in the basket around the inside, watching alertly.
“Go think about what you just heard and maybe about why you’re too much of a coward to actually face me in person. Bye bye.” I spped a hand against her messenger’s chest, and the other on the centre of my wheel.
The eyes of the messenger in question widened just for a heartbeat, and met Serru’s with a hint of a smile, before she went completely limp in Heket’s grasp.
Several voices nearby cried out or yelped, one in something close to a scream.
With great care, Heket lowered her body to the ground, arranging her decorously with arms across her abdomen. That, however, wasn’t my current highest priority.
I wrapped an arm around Serru’s shoulders. “I really have no idea what I can say that might work, here.”
She made a sort of half-choked ugh and turned to burrow into my arms. “You don’t need to. Thank you. I needed to say that.”
I heard Thelsan’s raised voice, from by or maybe on the ne nearby. “Show’s over, folks, nothing more to see here. Lots of music and entertainment to pay attention to, and just a small incident here that’s under control.”
Oh. Right. We were in public. In fact, in the middle of quite a rge crowd of people who were very actively moving around and getting involved in everything. Well, they had been. Now they were frozen and stunned—had they ever seen anyone argue with one of their eternal nightmares before? Possibly they were as stunned by Serru’s tirade as the Moss Queen had been. I did a quick mental rewind. People had seen her coming into the festival, they must have, and it would make sense to be nervous about anyone covering themselves that completely. That might account for the noise far enough out that they couldn’t have overheard what had happened here.
Serru let go, or maybe I did, and I saw Thelsan crouching next to the body of the messenger.
“Poor thing,” he said, with a sigh. “But well done. Word started going around about someone keeping all skin covered. Of course she was headed here. What was all that?”
“She has narrow views of gender as a strict binary,” I said. “It’s a thing some people believe in my world. And she thinks I’m harming all women by not identifying absolutely and unequivocally as a man, which she thinks means being inescapably violent and selfish. She thought I should know that.”
“She... what?”
“I didn’t say it makes sense.”
“The someone harming women,” Meridel said, ying a hand on Serru’s shoulder, “or anyone, for that matter, is not you, Nathan. Are you all safe?”
“She didn’t touch me,” Serru said, and raised her voice. “If she scratched or bit anyone on her way in, then you need to come here, immediately! If it’s still very early, it can be stopped by our healer!”
“Spread the word on that,” Thelsan said. “Quickly, please, and better that people hear it multiple times than that someone doesn’t hear it at all.”
That led to a flurry of motion and voices.
I hoped she hadn’t.
She had. Two friends urged a terrified aquian in my direction; I remembered watching en dance early that day, joyful and completely at home in ens body, cherry skin painted with metallic golden swirls all but glowing hypnotically in the sunlight, long creamy hair dyed with rainbow stripes swinging expressively with every move. Now en was cwing in panic at the green stain on one arm, and the water on ens cheeks wasn’t from swimming.
I cast Purification again, and watched in deep satisfaction as the green turned brown and fked off, leaving irritated and swollen skin but nothing worse.
The aquian stared at ens arm, then flung both arms around me, crying outright, but in relief now.
“It’s okay,” Terenei said soothingly. “You’re safe. C’mere, let’s get some Ointment on that.”
Then there was a young cervid woman, barely out of her teens if that.
And then another victim.
And another.
And they weren’t coming from the same direction anymore. These weren’t just people the messenger had encountered on the way in.
