A Little Night Music (151)

PSI-2

“There are pigeons in the house, Magnificent.”

Maggie groaned and threw the covers over her head, revealing her bare feet and muffling her voice, “Are you positive it’s not Corinne breaking in to say hi, or somebody eating leftovers or someone who wants help from Hyacinth or anything other than some burglars we are allowed to blow up for my education?”

“…I suppose I cannot yet deduce their motivation and they may be here to murder or vandalize us,” the General said, sitting forward. “But I am reasonably certain it is not any of the other things and you would be as well if you were paying attention. We will wait for visual confirmation before beginning the lesson, of course.”

Maggie sat up and bundled the bedclothes in her lap. “Oh, yeah. That’s fine. That’s all I was worried about. I like having school randomly at three in the morning. Let’s get up and go.”

“It is evident I will not need to provide a lesson in sarcasm,” the General said. She put on her slippers, which were frayed and yellow and rather nondescript since she’d removed the cartoonish canary heads. “What do you think about turning people into frogs?”

———

There were three men in the front room wearing black turtlenecks, black knit caps and dark trousers — two had found black pairs, one was making do with dark blue.

The one standing just inside the open door was waving frantic gestures at the other two and hissing, “Get the lights! Get the lights, get the lights, get the lights!”

The mage lights stuck to the ceiling had come on when they detected movement, as usual, and they were two storeys above and unreachable.

“There’s no switch!” snarled the one in blue pants, who was madly feeling up the stained wallpaper.

The third had overturned one of the upholstered chairs and was over-agitating a can of spray paint while he gazed at the lights and tried to decide what to do.

He disappeared in a fountain of silver glitter and when it faded there was a black frog the size of a dinner plate sitting on the floor beside the chair with its throat sac bulging.

“Oh, shit…” The one standing by the door took off as if his shoes were on fire. The one with blue pants, attempting to follow, ran into the door itself, which the General had just closed and sealed.

She opened the door to Room 202 the rest of the way and flung an explanatory gesture. “So apparently vandalism was at least a partial motive, Magnificent. It is lazy to refer to these people who break into our house as burglars, and it would be rather silly to refer to them as breaker-and-enterers, so in a metaphorical sense, pigeons will do. Stop clawing at our door, you miscreant. We haven’t any more paint and I shudder to think how Hyacinth would choose to apply it if we did.” She spun the man with blue pants around with a gesture, backed him to the door and stuck him there for future disposal.

He opened his mouth to scream and no sound came out. He attempted to put his hands to his throat but his arms were glued to the door.

“Your commentary is not required, silence spells only cover a specified area and the walls in this house are thin,” she said. “I will return your voice when we are done with you.”

The corpulent woman in the white nightgown approached the railing overlooking the foyer and motioned the little brown girl with braids nearer. “You will notice that the illusion holds up quite well from this angle, Magnificent. Motion on behalf of the victim or the illusion quite spoils the effect, but that is easily prevented, and with this method stillness is required in order that the effect remain reversible.”

The girl leaned over the railing and peered at the men as if she were observing fish in an aquarium. Not even a really interesting aquarium with sharks in it. This was more of a guppy display. “So there’s a little guy in there, and all he knows is suddenly he got way shorter and he can’t move or speak?”

“‘Guy’ may not be the correct term, but there is a conscious human occupant. Save perpetrating a war crime and performing a mental alteration, this method is the most likely to fool the victim. His structure approximates the physical sensation of being frog-shaped and he is unable to examine himself.”

Maggie looked back with a grin. “Will you turn off the frog so I can see?”

The General considered with a hand to her mouth. “What remains of the gentleman is necessarily without clothes, but his situation is not particularly obscene. I suppose, in the service of education I will show you how to arrange a man to fit a frog.” Maggie ran down the stairs and stood by the overturned chair, waiting.

The General shut her eyes for an instant and disentangled the optical effect from the physical one, then dispelled it.

The frog vanished as if someone had flipped off a switch. In its place sat a frog-shaped lump of human flesh, covered in taut, pale skin with blue veins and red cracks running through it. There was little definition and no separation of the limbs, save a few stubby, finger-like appendages at the front, and two bowed pieces of cartilage at the back which suggested legs. The back of it was covered in coarse black hair. There was a perfectly-formed human ear on either side of it, where a real frog’s ribs would have been. It had no head and no face, only a rounded projection suggesting a muzzle. Above this was a red, open mouth with white teeth. It could not close; jammed inside of it, lidless and staring, was an enormous, oblong eye, with a conjoined iris of bright blue and two dark pupils. It quivered and rolled, desperately searching. It found Maggie and focused, pleading with her.

“Oh, my gods, Mom, eyes don’t go there!” Maggie cried.

The man glued to the door threw back his head and made screaming motions.

“The space constraints…” the General began, then the door to Room 102 banged open and a red man with a nightshirt and his arm in a cast glared out at them. A pair of green arms wrapped around his waist and a green face with a pinched expression and an empty metal socket where one eye ought to be peered past him.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Mordecai demanded. “People are trying to sleep!”

Maggie rushed forward with her hands up and said, “Mom, put the frog back before Erik sees!”

The General waved a hand. Maggie looked behind her to make sure the horrifying abomination was once again a comparatively friendly frog. She smiled at Erik in a way she hoped was reassuring. “Hey, Erik. Some guys broke in. You know how it is. We got ‘em. You’re safe.”

“Red… jackets?” Erik managed softly.

“Nah,” Maggie said. “Regular idiots. It’s okay.”

“I apologize,” the General said evenly. “My daughter must cultivate self-control. We strive to take care of these things without disturbing the household.”

“I heard them come in,” Mordecai muttered. “I’m trying to sleep on nothing but paracetamol, because apparently,” he made his voice higher and cut quote marks in the air with the fingers of his free hand, “I have ‘an addictive personality!’” He scowled. “Cargo-cult psychology, constructed from spare parts! I do not have an ‘addictive personality,’ I have maladaptive coping strategies for stressful situations, and nobody is dropping shells on us at the moment, so I am in no danger…”

The door to Room 103 popped open and a woman with tangled dark hair and a white men’s t-shirt leaned out, rubbing her eye with a fist. “Em? Are you yelling? Do you need help?” She glanced sideways, then her whole head went sideways, displaying a freckled nose and a grin. “Oh, sweet! Babe, look at this huge frog!” She ran out. She was wearing plaid boxer shorts and argyle socks. “I’m gonna…”

“Stop, please, Calliope,” the General said. “Stop. It is not a frog, it is a frog-shaped simulacrum made of human flesh and imbued with the consciousness and sensory ability of a terrified, foolish man; if you remove him he will lose all connection with his missing body mass and die, and he will not make a good pet.”

“He looks like a frog,” Calliope said doubtfully.

“It is an illusion. Turning a human into a frog, unless you have a rare individual who is naturally froggish, is more of a thought experiment than a task that can be accomplished in reality. Rather like squaring the circle, in order to do it you must cheat. It was my intention to show Magnificent a few of these cheats, since these volunteers have presented themselves.”

“And you’re sure they didn’t come here for medical care or anything, aren’t you?” Mordecai said sourly.

“I…”

A man with long red hair and a white nightie appeared at the door to Room 103, holding a blanketed infant against his shoulder. The infant was making some unhappy noises, if not quite crying, and appeared to require attention. The man was wearing round, rimless glasses and he pushed them up to examine the situation.

Milo absorbed the upset furniture, the can of spray paint and the man in dark clothing stuck to the door. (The frog was irrelevant, but it was quite huge, as Calliope said.) His frown crumpled into a murderous snarl. He turned his body sideways, carefully covered Lucy’s eyes with his cupped hand, and glared at the man on the door.

“Mr. Rose!” The General said. She trailed off, staring at him with narrowed eyes. “Mr. Rose!” she reiterated, somewhat breathlessly. “Stop…” She waved a hand in the air, grasped nothing, and then flung it away. She opened her mouth to speak and then paused for another gesture, this one with both hands as if drawing a bow. “Mister — Rental tarantula! — Mr. Rose, stop trying to kill my daughter’s magic lesson, he is quite harmless!” she spat.

Calliope had been examining the tiny man who looked like a frog. She wasn’t sure if it was okay to pet it. She looked up with a frown, “Babe, we don’t kill people. Come on. What’re you doing?”

“Illogically-constructed magic!” the General said. She panted for a moment and then smoothed back her hair, which was too short to need it. “It is quite easily dealt with,” she said evenly.

Maggie was shaking her head, wide-eyed. She shared a glance with Erik, but she didn’t dare say what she was thinking. Her mom took stuff apart quietly. She might pull out a ‘show me’ to get a look at the construction if it seemed interesting or she was doing something complicated, but it was a point of pride that she did countermagic in her head — without resorting to preconstructed measures hooked up to gestures or words. That was battle magic right there, premade, all-purpose spells with a quick trigger that might do enough damage to a specific thing to keep it from killing anyone. Quick and sloppy and for emergencies.

And Milo wasn’t doing that at all. Maggie was pretty sure he didn’t know how to do that.

Milo can’t be better at magic than my mommy, nobody in this house is better at magic than my mommy. What’s going on here? Am I asleep?

Milo was standing next to the man on the door, who was still trying to scream, and gesturing at him like an avant garde sculpture that needed explaining. But, Calliope! It’s a bad guy! He’s in our house, it’s way too late and the General is playing with him! Look, he’s wearing bad guy clothes! Like a serial! He pulled off the man’s knit cap and showed it to her. The bad guy could’ve hurt you and Lucy and he needed to die, okay?

“Milo, cut it out, that’s not yours,” Calliope said. She tugged the knit cap back on the screaming man. “Hey, Glorie, are you sure this guy’s okay on the door like this? He seems upset…”

Mordecai approached, looking annoyed, “Excuse me, Mr. Apparent Criminal, do you perhaps have some kind of medical emergency which we are making exponentially worse?” He sighed at the silent, but very emphatic mouth movements. “General D’Iver, whatever you have removed from this man, will you put it back in so we can talk to him?”

Milo took a step back and considered the man on the door. Am I upset that this person is glued to something and can’t scream? I mean, I was going to explode his heart, it seems kinda silly to be upset…

Ann, am I being a bad person?

I’m not sure, but will you please not explode any part of this man while there are children present, Milo?

I covered Lucy’s eyes.

Erik and Maggie, Milo.

Oh. Okay, I won’t in front of Erik, but I think Maggie could handle it okay…

“There is little point,” the General was saying patiently. “His companion, who is no longer present, was directing him in a low voice to find some way of turning off our lights, and the one whom I have, in a manner of speaking, turned into a frog had already tipped over the chair and was shaking a can of spray paint. If I allow the screaming, he will only wake the rest of the household.”

Mordecai investigated the chair and the frog and discovered the can of paint, which he picked up before someone could step on it and fall. He set it on the end table. Free spray paint. I’m sure Calliope will want it for something. “You know, they say stupidity should be painful,” he said. He approached again and lowered his voice to a growl, “The only reason I am not kicking you in the worst possible place for coming in here and trying to tear up our home and scare us while my child is still having nightmares… is that he is watching me right now and I’m an example. But I’m going to let her mess you up however she wants. Scary, isn’t it?”

The man redoubled his silent attempts at communication, whipping his head back and forth.

Milo winced. Ooh, that’s mean…

He shrugged to himself and turned away. He deserves to die, scaring him is less. If he can’t talk anymore or give people hugs, he won’t do this again.

Milo, I’m fairly sure breaking and entering is a misdemeanor…

And trying to hurt Lucy and Calliope is punishable by death. Unless you don’t really mean it, but this guy put on bad guy clothes and bought paint with his friend the frog, so to hell with him.

Milo, you and I really are going to have to have a talk about matters of degree before Lucy is old enough to play with other children…

Mordecai collected Erik and nudged him back towards the bedroom. “Come on, dear one. This isn’t our business. The General can deal with it.”

“Scared,” Erik said softly.

The red man paused and crouched down to the boy’s level. “You are or that man is?”

Erik pointed at the man on the door.

“We scare them so they talk about it and other people don’t do this,” Mordecai said. “It stops them from hurting us and it stops other people from coming here to get scared. It’s not nice, but you can’t always be nice when you’re trying to protect yourself. Sometimes you have to pick whether to hurt someone or let way more people be hurt. And scared isn’t forever. This is minimal damage, Erik.”

You didn’t see what my mom did to that guy’s eyes, Uncle Mordecai, Maggie thought, but she bit down on her tongue and didn’t say it. They were trying not to upset Erik. Erik had a lot of reasons to be upset.

It was just that that was a really bad place for an eyeball and she didn’t get a chance to ask if that guy was in pain…

Erik winced up at his uncle and bit down on his lower lip. You’re talking about John, how it’s not okay to be friends with John. You’re not trying to tell me it’s okay to kill people or teach me how to shoot because you don’t know about that. I don’t think you’d say what you’re saying if you knew what I almost did, Uncle.

But he knew he couldn’t tell his uncle that, and he didn’t think there was anyone safe in the house to tell. Auntie Hyacinth didn’t kill things, even ants, and she’d say it wasn’t okay, that’s bad, we don’t do that, and maybe tell his uncle because she was worried. Maggie was just the opposite, and it looked like Milo was too, if he was gonna kill that scared guy on the door right now. And the General, as if he’d talk to her about anything, but he knew what she’d say. They’d all tell him it was fine. Sure, you kill people if they’re bad, no problem. Good job!

He thought Calliope was probably another automatic no, like Hyacinth, but in any case Calliope wasn’t a person you went to for moral advice. You went to Calliope if you needed the good paper or help drawing a kitty. Her brain didn’t work… No, he didn’t want to say ‘didn’t work right’ because it seemed to work fine for her and a lot better than everyone else in the house, but it didn’t work normal.

Maybe he could talk to John about it.

If they could still be friends. It seemed like his uncle was leaning towards ‘no’ at the moment, but he wasn’t going to bring it up. Maybe Uncle Mordecai just needed more time for that, like for his arm.

“Isn’t… he… scared… enough?” Erik said, not scolding, just trying to get an honest opinion.

Mordecai sighed. He was trying to be a better person and he was going to be an example no matter how awful he was and good people probably shouldn’t allow torment to go on, even if the victim had volunteered. He cupped his hand to his mouth and hollered upstairs, “Hyacinth the General is turning people into frogs down here and since that isn’t physically possible, she may be damaging them! We’re gonna need your opinion on this!”

While the thuds of footsteps and the occasional collisions emanated from room 203, the General narrowed her eyes at Mordecai and opined, “It seems you recognize how little authority you have.”

“I keep abdicating,” Mordecai said. “They fired you.”

The General opened her mouth and Hyacinth opened her door in tandem. The lady in the flannel nightshirt with tangled blonde hair clinging to the corner of her mouth got words out first, “Nobody kill anybody! What…? Oh, goddammit, Barnaby, when do you have time to paint the furniture? As if this place isn’t weird enough!”

“Pardon?” the General said. The furniture appeared to be perfectly in order to her.

“Stand where I’m standing, it’s for me,” Hyacinth said. “Go on!”

It was more curiosity than respect that resulted in the General’s compliance. “Ah, I see.”

On the bottom of the overturned chair, in yellow lacquer which he had borrowed from Calliope a few weeks after she moved in, Barnaby had written in neat script: Lower your voice, Alice. I’m doing my best to sleep through it. Wake me for breakfast!

Beneath this, he had drawn a smiley face.

“I will have Magnificent remove it, if you wish,” the General said. “She is learning…”

“No, thank you, we’d better just leave it. Barnaby will be annoyed if it’s supposed to have some additional context later.” Hyacinth further suspected if she allowed Magnificent to practice paint removal on her chair, she’d be down one chair. They barely had enough chairs in this house as it was. She turned back to the General and wiped the hair out of her mouth. “Pht. Are you killing people out here?” She pointed a stern finger, “Because don’t!”

“In deference to the terms of your medical service and your household rules, we use only non-lethal methods when dealing with pigeons,” the General replied. “Metaphorical pigeons,” she added.

“You can’t really turn people into frogs,” Hyacinth said. “It kills them. It’s a myth.”

“I would say it is more of an intellectual exercise, such as squaring the circle or mechanically-derived perpetual motion…”

I’m totally going to figure that out one of these days, Milo thought. I just need an infinite energy source, that’s all. I could fix the sun… Ann, am I allowed to fix the sun? I know…

No.

Okay, I get people are using it but, like, theoretically…

No.

Calliope would play with me. You’re no fun, Ann.

Calliope doesn’t know sometimes you’re serious, Milo.

“…but this attempt at solving the insoluble is an illusion,” the General went on. “One of the more complicated ones which is sometimes even able to fool the victim.”

“There’s a guy in there?” Hyacinth said of the frog. “Where the hell’s the rest of him?”

“In slipspace. But it is anchored to his location rather than what remains of his body because…”

“Don’t ask her to take it off so you can see!” Maggie cried, shaking her head and waving both hands. She turned to Erik and beamed at him like a friendly bathroom attendant who lived on tips. “He’s fine! I’m sure he’s fine. It’s fine!”

Erik shook his head at her, wide-eyed. Maggie, that doesn’t sound fine…

“Because,” the General continued, tightly, “it is an alteration rather than a transmutation, which is intended to be removed in tandem with…”

“Did you make that guy mentally a frog?” Hyacinth said.

The General broke off with a snarl, “No, because I do not commit war crimes in deference to international law! I am trying to explain to you that the physical alteration is meant to be removed in tandem with the illusion so that the victim, er, subject is never seen in his altered state as anything other than a frog and does not experience frog-like sensations when he is not an apparent frog! Now is there anything in the substance of this lesson that you disagree with?”

“I disagree with being woken up in the middle of the night to deal with it,” Hyacinth muttered, glaring at Mordecai.

“As long as you’re up, give me drugs,” the red man replied.

“I could make browww-peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” Calliope said. She gazed up at the ceiling and rubbed a hand on the back of her neck. “Yep. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Don’t mind me, I say weird things all the time.”

Milo patted her. It’s cute, Calliope. Don’t apologize.

“Ba, ba, ba!” Lucy demanded, pudgy arms extended and fingers splayed. Milo handed her over.

“I’m gonna be up anyways, Lucy seems pretty wired,” Calliope said. She settled the baby against her hip and bounced with her. “You like frogs, Lu? Wanna see the frog? We can’t keep him or chew on him. Sorry.”

“Ada!” Lucy agreed.

Hyacinth sighed and clutched her fingers in her wild hair. She tipped back her head, then straightened and regarded the General. “Look, it’s not like I object to your reign of terror, we do not live in a nice place and it keeps the neighborhood in line, but this lesson has gone so far sideways there’s no point anymore. Nobody’s going to sleep with this going on…”

“Mordecai was already awake and heard them come in,” the General said curtly. “No amount of stealth on my part or my daughter’s would have prevented him from interfering and waking the rest of the household. However,” she allowed, “I should have accounted for his injury. I regret the error.”

“This is your fault for the paracetamol, Hyacinth!” Mordecai called up at her, waving.

“This is your fault for the gang warfare!” she snapped back. She metered her voice and added, “I know it’s not your fault, Erik. You’re a good kid. You don’t start shit. You don’t like to hurt people. We’ll work on that.”

Erik just stared at her, looking appalled. She guessed that was better than traumatized.

“Excuse me, man glued to our door?” she went on. “Can you nod?”

The man glued to the door, who had been watching this scene unfold with increasing confusion and who hoped very much to live through it, nodded wildly.

“Super,” said Hyacinth. “If we let you down and un-frog your friend, do you promise to go away and never come back?”

There was no abatement in the nodding.

“Fabulous. One more, this one’s for credit, do you promise to tell everyone who asks and some people who don’t what happened tonight and how mental and dangerous the people living in this house are? The correct answer is more nodding.”

There was lots more nodding.

Hyacinth nodded too, but only once. “General D’Iver, school’s out. Let them go so the rest of us can go back to bed — after I give you more drugs, Mordecai.”

“Ah!” Mordecai could not clap, but he touched his fingers together in an attempt to look delighted. “All I wanted to hear. Thank you for breaking into our house, stupid men!” He saluted them. “Now I know she responds to being irritated and I won’t wait for an excuse next time. Come on into the kitchen, Erik.” He patted the boy on the shoulder and turned him away from the scary criminals. “I’ll make tea. We’re safe, dear one. But you don’t have to go back to bed until you feel better…”

Erik departed with uncharacteristic disinterest in the cool magic in progress. He didn’t care about turning people into frogs, he just wanted bad guys to leave them alone.

“Please observe the components of the reversal as best you are able, Magnificent,” the General said. “I will write out the spell for you later, but you will need to wait until another opportunity presents itself to practice it.”

Milo observed with a frown and an arched brow. The frog (it was an okay frog) disappeared in a fountain of silver glitter (it was okay glitter) and a man wearing a black button-down shirt and black pants appeared when the glitter faded. Yeah. Okay.

The glitter was obviously to hide her putting back whatever she’d taken off the guy to get him that small. You couldn’t just shrink people, not if you wanted to put them back the way they were. Something to do with collapsing atoms and explosions. The way to make people smaller was to put parts of them in slipspace, and build something conscious out of whatever was left. Like a head with one leg under it or something. Or maybe a vase made out of bone with an eye hidden in the design so they could still see, that would be clever. But then you couldn’t anchor the missing pieces to what was left of their body, because when you put the pieces back it would change so much the anchor wouldn’t recognize it anymore, and they’d lose the connection and die. So you had to anchor them to the space. And that meant if somebody picked up that vase with an eye, it would also break the connection and kill the person.

I’d probably have to stick down that vase with an eye, Milo thought. Unless it was a bad guy, then I wouldn’t care…

The man in black clothes opened his mouth, possibly to comment on his situation in a rational manner, and a frog noise so cartoonishly stereotypical that it could’ve come off a soundboard emerged. He gasped and covered his mouth with both hands.

Milo did likewise, a sharp sound that was not quite a laugh. That’s funny! He frowned and regarded the General. You’re not funny. Evil people aren’t funny. What’s going on? Ann, is this real life?

I often wonder about that, Milo. I really do…

“Mom, that’s really mean,” Maggie said, grinning.

Hyacinth snickered in spite of herself.

“Glorie, is that forever?” Calliope asked.

“It is more of a decorative flourish, but I suppose a curse of some kind would be appropriate, and merely a simple alteration of the spell…” the General said.

“No, thank you, emotional scars are enough,” Hyacinth said. “I don’t need these people coming back here begging me to fix them… No matter how hilarious they sound.”

“As you wish,” said the General. She waved a hand. The front door popped open and the man who had been glued to it fell to the floor. On hands and knees with head bowed, he seemed inclined to kiss the tile. “Your escape is now permitted, gentlemen. Whenever you’re ready.”

They were more than ready. The one who had almost been a frog hit his friend in the face with the door in his haste to exit, and the other man scrambled to his feet and followed after, ignoring a bloody and perhaps broken nose. From the porch, there was the sound of somebody tumbling down the stairs, and the snap of a splintered railing, or it could’ve been an ankle.

Hyacinth sighed. “You know, I did mention I didn’t want them coming back here asking me to fix them.”

“I have little control over their incompetence,” the General said acidly. “Would you prefer I levitate them safely onto the street next time…?”

———

The two men in dark clothing ducked into Green Dragon Alley, stopped short of the whorehouse and stood against the derelict storage building, panting, with their shaking hands clutching the bricks.

“Juh-Joey?” one hazarded hoarsely.

“Daaan?” said the other, shakily.

There was a good thirty seconds of prolonged swearing and Dan felt over his face with both hands.

“Was I a frog, Joe?” Dan said.

Joe shook his head, wide-eyed. “You were a… a… Fuck if I know! That… That…” He couldn’t remember if it was a man or a woman. He had a vague impression it was a famous person, in pajamas. “Dan, why can’t I remember what the hell any of those people looked like?”

Dan was shaking his head too. “It was some kinda historical figure… Diane Desdoux!”

“The lady on the quarters? Danny, you moron, she’s dead!”

“Well who was it then?”

“…Chancellor Sikora! From Piastana!”

“He’s in Piastana! He’s gonna get on an airship and come to Strawberryfield to turn people into frogs?”

“Maybe he came here to bang Diane Desdoux!” Joe snarled.

“This is Bartholomew’s dogs, we were just in there!” Dan stabbed a firm finger back towards the crazy house with the magicians.

“You wanna go back in and check?” cried Joe. This sobered both of them. They quieted and edged a little farther towards the whorehouse.

“What happened to Mac?” Dan said.

“Run off.”

“This was his idea!” Dan declared. “Fuckin’ around with magicians and getting turned into frogs and our brains scrambled!”

“Man, fuck Mac,” Joe said.

“Let’s find Mac and kill ‘im,” Dan said.

They staggered off towards Strawberry Square, Dan limping on a twisted ankle which almost gave the appearance of a hop.