Lily was not much for dancing. She had the sure feet and grace to be good at it, but it was too emotional. Too revealing. It made her feel self conscious. But this. This wasn't dancing.
It was flying.
Her two-room apartment faded to grey, then faded entirely, leaving her rushing through thick silver-grey clouds that looked more like paintings than real things. The sensation of velocity was unspeakable, but entirely unterrifying; there was no sense of danger. The drumbeat she'd heard before, that had been so distant, was here louder and multiplied. She heard voices, non-verbally singing along with that primal rhythm, and became dimly aware she was singing too. There was something alongside her, half-hidden in the otherworldly fog.
And then the fog parted, and she burst out into the clear blue sky. Below was the boundary of forest and plain, with a river snaking through. And above...
Above the sky was full of people. They wheeled about, making a complex circle in the air; a mandala of motion. On the ground, at the center of that vortex, was a great circle of men and women, dancing. Fires were lit and smoke billowed up. The ground had been annointed with lines of powder, white and red and blue and yellow. The drums were placed within this pattern, and were being beaten in perfect time.
Are they real? Was it real?
Look up! That jovial, fierce voice she'd heard before joining. Lily looked up, and her heart caught.
Above the level where other people swam in the air, there were...things. She saw a bird like an eagle as big as the sky, with stormclouds brewing under its blue-feathered wings. A grinning canine face poked out from behind the moon and grinned down at the proceedings. Other beings, creatures...all the things she'd seen only shadowy shapes of within the fog, now revealed themselves.
It wasn't possible. As a girl she'd listened to the stories, but when she'd grown up she'd put superstitions aside. They were a thing of her people, and she valued them for their cultural heritage, but they wouldn't win wars. They wouldn't save the tribes from bullets. That had been conclusively demonstrated.
Timing, as they say, is everything!
They went higher, Lily and the Other. There was power in the air. It was something she'd never felt before. Not the buzz of electricity, or the burn of heat, but something else. It tingled on the skin and sizzled in the belly. It filled her like a balloon until she felt she might burst...was she glowing like a light bulb?
Something was happening. The Dance went on, but the pace was increasing. The great spirits were joining in from on high, lured by the growing funnel of energy being gathered. Generated? What was this?
Some of this is yours, urged the Other. Take it. Take it for the hunt! A laugh, deep and exuberant and more than a little wild. You would not hunt without your spear and bow!
The Dance took...she felt herself burning in it, giving to it, fueling it...but it gave as well. To Lily it was an almost physical thing; a seething ball of something not quite visible, but as thick and viscous as gelatin. As she swirled and cavorted alongside it, she dipped a hand into it...and everything changed.
Dimly she heard the Other laugh again. Realization surged through her, up her hand and arm, into her head.
what is flesh is a lie...we live in the shadowsour time has comeagain...I know who I am now...
and that is power
For a moment Lily could see the silvery lines, the same color as the mists she'd come through had been, threading up from the circle on the ground and writhing to connect each of the people in the sky. The calling. The power being called into existence swam into her vision, and it took her breath away. Like a second sun, burning in the sky that they were orbiting. The spell.
What will it do? she asked without words.
Again came the laugh, a little manic, a little patronizing, fierce and warm and both comforting and terrifying.
It is the herald of the new age. The first strike must always be the one that the enemy remembers the most, so that his fear will drive your victory throughout. And of course, like any door, it can be used for more than the builder may intend.
She looked up and saw the spirits of legend swirling overhead, and realized they were doing something too. With the Dance, but not OF the Dance. Tying their own ribbons to it, giving and taking.
Was this the price? Was this why they'd come back now?
Did you not wish to throw wide the gates of heaven? laughed the Other. When you invite Power into your midst, nothing can survive unchanged. Not even your Dance!
It WAS changing too, she realized. Not simply growing faster, but wilder. The beat was more complex, more demanding. Not entirely out of control, but not entirely IN control either. Whatever they'd wanted to do, whatever they were trying to do, it was going to happen but it wasn't ALL that was going to happen. The dawning fear just fed the reckless abandon of it though...there was no turning back. No room for second thoughts.
And if there were? The Other's voice, coyly prying.
It wouldn't matter, Lily realized. She'd spent her life trying to change the world a little at a time. It was about time someone thought big.
The Other laughed again, and she felt it reach down from that blind spot it had hovered in all this time, and grab onto her.
Yes! No fear! No regret! We will hunt, you and I! Soon! But now...see what you have done!
Lily stopped trying to look around behind her and focused again on the Dance.
It was night now. When had the sun set? This wasn't exactly real, she realized. Or rather, what real meant wasn't what she'd thought it had. Despite that, she also knew that it was a representation of something so real that her mind could only clothe it in the seeming of the tiny slice of reality she'd known until now. She'd been wrong about one thing though. It wasn't a sun the spell was creating.
It was the Earth.
No. Not quite. The planet of light she saw suspended in the air, at the heart of the Dance, was an echo. Not the end result of the spell, but a manifestation of its effects. Lines of fire erupted over its surface, connecting and diverging, like veins and arteries. Or...yes...like riverbeds, long dry, suddenly filling with a monsoon. The power they'd gathered; it was rushing out into the world. No.
No.
It was a door. A door to the world. A door FROM the world. A connection.
A beginning.
And through that connection came more power. The REAL power. The circle on the ground erupted in light, and the Dance changed again. Movement, pattern, will...directing that cataract of energy into the crust of the planet, ramming it deep into the slumbering Earth. She could see that was what this had started out as. It was going to have much farther reaching effects, but at its heart, the Other had been completely correct. This was an attack.
The ground trembled. Through the Dance, Lily was connected not just to the tribes, but to the focus of the spell. She danced in the sky, she danced in her apartment, and she danced through rivers of powers long-forgotten as they followed the old lines and lit the fires of the deep. She danced in the lava that roiled and heated; claiming more and more rock into itself, pressing ever harder against the stone that imprisoned it. She danced on the basalt, cracking it under her feet.
When the volcanoes began to erupt, she danced in the unspeakable explosions of rock and ash and magma. She danced in the plumes that stretched into orbit. She danced with the spirits and the tribes, and in the declaration not of war, but of peace.
We are your equals now.
A message written in the molten blood of Mt Ranier, Mt Hood, Mt Saint Helens, and Mt Adams, and mile after square mile of devastation surrounding them.
But of course, not every door that is opened can be closed again.
------------
Lilian One-Arrow woke up. It was morning...or at least daylight. She was splayed in her living room, arms and legs akimbo. Had she simply fallen down when her body gave into exhaustion? The ache in her limbs implied strongly that it was the case. Her eyes and mouth felt sticky and foul, and she nearly fell over when getting to her feet.
In the bathroom she saw the marks on her shoulders. They looked like tattoos at first, but when Lily managed to get a closer look in the mirror she saw that it was by all appearances natural pigment there. They made a complex set of patterns, much like the 'tribal' variety of tattoos people sometimes got, but much more intricate in the details.
It...grabbed me. By the shoulders. But that can't have been real. I can't...fly.
For a couple of minutes though, Lily closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to do just that. She earned an embarrassing moment for her trouble, and set about brushing her teeth.
There was a scream, and she immediately spat and rinsed her mouth, then went to her door. The sound had been from a different unit, but definitely in her building. A man's voice, harsh and angry. A female voice, pleading.
Another day, she would have gone back to her chair for breakfast, grimacing at the ugliness of the world. This time though...
Lily was so tired of ignoring the monsters of the world.
She left her apartment and padded down the hall, still barefoot in her sweat pants and tank top. The second door down on the left was still open, and she heard the man inside shouting something about his daughter. With each step, a kindling excitement quickened inside her; a dim reflection of the exhilaration of the Dance.
In the doorway, Lily said, "You guys want to keep it down? People are trying to sleep."
She couldn't see much inside. The man, holding a large wrench or something, whirled to glare at her with maddened eyes. "what the...get OUT of here!" he bellowed.
Lily grinned laconically. Normally the wrench would be a good warning to back down, or at least go get a gun. It just sharpened that anticipation now though. "Funny, I was just about to say the same thing. Get out. Leave her alone. Don't come back."
There might have been a good reason for him to be upset with whoever this was, but he wasn't interested in gabbing about it with a stranger...and she wasn't much of a mind to either. He started towards her with that wrench. She inhaled, feeling adrenalin sharpen her senses to a razor's edge...and then frowned.
He was taking his sweet time wasn't he?
Far from charging forward, he was plodding, taking one step carefully ahead of each following. His bulging right arm cocking the wrench back like he was going to hand it to someone behind him, not wind up for a devastating haymaker.
Idiot. If he's not going to take me seriously, then I'll just have to convince him of his error.
Lily stepped in and aimed a punch at his solar plexus; left wide open by his glacial reactions and stance. He started reeling back, and she twisted around to deliver a cross to his jaw for good measure. Only then did she realize what was wrong.
The man was falling, stumbling sideways, trying belatedly to cover his vitals as the wrench fell from his suddenly nerveless hands. Falling in slow motion. Even the WRENCH was falling in slow motion. Abruptly she felt her heartbeat...realized it was racing. On sudden impulse she grabbed a forlorn little empty vase off of a counter and tossed it up. It came back down as if it was falling through molasses, and she plucked it back with no effort whatsoever.
In the back of her head, a familiar laugh.
She felt dizzy as she passed the brutish man and entered the apartment proper. In the living room was a woman and a little girl. The girl cowering in her mothers arms. Both were crying.
The girl was...wrong. Pale white skin and hair. Strange, almond eyes the color of spun gold. And her ears. Dear god. Long and gracefully curved...and pointed.
The woman shook her head. "Please help me," she begged. "I don't know what's wrong with her! Don't let him hurt her!"
"He's unconscious," Lily heard herself say roughly. "Get to a hospital or something. Not one he knows you go to."
It's not going to matter though, will it?
This is how the beginning looks for her. A pause. It will be better for some than others.
Like me? This...is your doing?
Another laugh, echoing in her skull.
You were dancing, not me. Too many questions! You've hunted, even this little thing is fine for your first time! Now go! Celebrate! We will speak again soon!
She moved over to let the woman and her...whatever it was...leave, then followed them out to return to her apartment.
What have we done?
