Jon looked around at the scenery as they gradually made their way up to the city proper. She wasn't used to cities that had a definite boundary with walls around them; she knew some still existed, in Europe and elsewhere, and she knew it had used to be much more common, but it was still kind of bizarre to see. Like the witch's cottage, it felt like she was stepping into a fairytale of some kind; but they never told you about the mundane little details like the flocks grazing just a comfortable distance outside the gates, so they could get safely within the walls if something came up. Of course, she supposed the flocks weren't usually tended by another sheep, either. Just how many different races of people were there in this world?
She wondered about the ruins the sheep-shepherdess had told her about. She remembered Athena and Chloe's parents saying that there were ruins up in the mountains that the wizards they'd told her of were investigating; she supposed these were probably more of the same. More accessible, she imagined, but probably already well picked-over for just that reason. Then again, if the city was built on top of part of the ruins, there might still be stuff that hadn't been dug up because people were currently living on top of it. That was another strange thought; she wasn't used to thinking of it like that, though she knew that plenty of cities historically were built on the ruins of older ones; after all, resources like good soil or a well-sheltered port don't just up and vanish when a city or a civilization falls...she wondered what it was that had brought those first inhabitants here. Well, the bay, probably. But up in the mountains, where the other ruins were...?
"Where are we goin' in the city?" Maggie asked. Jon snapped back to reality to find that they were almost at the gates. "Huh?" she said dazedly. "Oh, there's a tavern here. The people who sent me this way said the owner would be able to help me until I can figure out how to deal with...stuff." She didn't mention the bit about trying to find a way to change back to normal; she wasn't sure what Maggie would think of that, but she had a sneaking suspicion it would involve weeks of the smaller harpy imploring her to stay as she was. Better to roll with it for now and deal with that later, when she finally did find a way to return to normal.
The little harpy-girl frowned. "The sheep lady said we were gonna need money," she said. "'Zat mean we hafta give them some?" She looked a little crestfallen, which Jon figured was due to the prospect of being without some of their shiny coins. She smiled and patted the smaller girl on the shoulder with one wing. "We'll see," she said. "I'm hoping we can hang onto it for now. They might have some kind of work we can do instead." She wasn't particularly thrilled about having to balance any kind of a job with her quest to restore herself to her true form, but there was probably no way around it. She just hoped it wouldn't be anything too terrible.
Maggie brightened, then gave her a curious look. "Whaddya mean, work?" she said. "Like, stuff that's hard to do?"
Jon stared at her for a moment, not quite sure what to say. She'd just kind of assumed that Maggie would understand that, but then again, it sounded like harpies in general tended to live a wilder existence, and even Maggie was only familiar with cities from flying over them. Apparently she didn't actually understand the idea of a "job."
"It...depends," she said. "It's just when someone has something that they want done, and they give you something you want in exchange for doing it. If they want us to clean their house or something, then they give us money or food or something, and we do it for them. Stuff like that. It's not always hard, necessarily."
"An' that's how they do things, in cities?" Maggie said, clearly curious. "Why don't they just do 'em themselves?"
Jon laughed. "Well, not everybody is good at the same things, right? So if someone needs, say, their shirt mended, but they're not good at sewing, they go to somebody who is and give them some money, and then she does it for them, and then she has money to get something she wants. Otherwise they'd have to just patch it up as best as they could, and that might not be very good."
"Ohh," she said, thoughtfully. "Izzat why the sheep-lady has the sheep, 'cause she's good with 'em?"
Jon chuckled. "I hadn't thought about it that way, but I guess that's probably it, yeah."
Maggie stared at the ground slightly, wheels clearly turning in her mind. "So...if I wanted people ta give me shiny coins...'work' would get 'em to?"
"Uh, yeah, basically," Jon said. She wasn't sure the little harpy really grasped the point behind having money, but then at that age he'd hardly thought about it himself beyond having money to get the next Lego set that caught his interest.
Maggie grinned. "A'kay!" she chirped. "Let's go find some work, then!"
Jon wasn't sure it would be quite that simple, and wondered what she would do with an energetic, hyper-curious little harpy-girl all day if they couldn't find something for her to do. Were there schools in this world? Could she get Maggie to sit through classes (and pay attention) if there were? But they were at the gate already.
It was fairly impressive in its size, at least as far as Jon had any basis for judging that, but it was mostly unadorned; not ugly or crude, but a simple, functional set of heavy wood-and-iron doors that looked about as unlikely to give way as anything she could imagine. At the moment, though, they stood partly open, with a guard on either side of the entrance. They were also done up simply but functionally; they had plain bullet-shaped helmets with the nose-guard thing, bronze body armor, and an odd sort of metal "skirt" made up of concentric cylinders that put Jon equally in mind of The Jetsons and some of the uglier lampshades she'd seen. Each of them had a short sword tucked away in a sheath at their waist. Neither of them seemed to be on particularly high alert, though they were at least paying attention.
The shorter of the two stepped forward, and Jon could see that, underneath the helmet, he was a fairly good-looking sort of guy, with a darker, somewhat olive shade to his skin and a bushy black beard. The other fellow, who remained at the entrance, had a similar complexion, but was a hulking bull of a man who looked something like Bluto. She wondered if the guard was going to say something like "Halt!" just on principle, even though she'd already stopped, but he smiled and raised a hand in greeting. "Good afternoon, miss," he said. "Are you looking to enter the city?"
"Uh, yeah," Jon said, feeling a bit nervous. Between getting rained out of the sky, having her clothes and supplies stolen, meeting a witch, and getting saddled-slash-gifted with a little girl to watch-slash-learn-from, she hadn't actually given any thought to what was going to happen when she got to the city, or what might be involved in the customs process. It was a bit of a consolation that the guards didn't seem to be in any particularly belligerent or wary mood, but she didn't even know how to start this off.
Fortunately, it apparently wasn't up to her. The big fellow back at the gate reached over to his side and rang a little bell that hung from the wall. In short order, a small, busy-looking man in a toga came out with something like a clipboard without the clip, on which he had a sheet of some kind of paper, a quill pen, and a little bottle hanging off the side which Jon assumed held ink. He stood in front of her; even though he was probably a bit taller than she was, he had a habit of hunching down and holding his clipboard up almost to his chest like some kind of secretarial praying mantis, so that he was actually peering up at her. "Name?" he said, somehow managing to clip a single syllable short.
"J-Jon Madison," Jon said. Maggie might think she ought to have a different name, but she wasn't in any hurry to change it, and anyway it was probably better not to lie to a public official. The little man gave no indication that he found it unusual, or even that he had any thoughts about it as a name; he was far more focused on getting it written down on his form. After a moment, he looked back up at her. "What is your business in Alethia?"
"I'm...here to look for work," she said. The big guard failed to suppress a snort; she supposed if most harpies lived like Maggie's flock apparently did, it was probably kind of funny to think of one holding a job. She hoped that wouldn't affect her chances of lining up work or anything. The customs agent, or whatever he was, simply noted it down on his form. "I see," he said. "Then we'll need to know where to find you for tax purposes."
Jon sighed. Great, another thing to worry about paying for, on top of living expenses for herself and her young charge. She wondered how long it was going to take her to save up enough money for...for whatever supplies or help she'd need if she was going to trek up into the mountains to find the people Athena thought might be able to help her, and then whatever it was they'd want in exchange... "They told me to check into a tavern called the Rooster," she said.
The man nodded and wrote that down as well. "Very good," he said. "One last thing - what is your daughter's name?"
Jon sputtered. Why did everybody assume that!? Well, okay, on the face of it that seemed reasonable enough, but still! "I...she...um, she's not my daughter," she said. "She-"
"She's my big sis!" Maggie put in, before Jon could finish. She thought about correcting her, but the interviewer already had it down. There it was, on the official record, in indelible ink, that this energetic young harpy was her little sister. She sighed. Oh, hell, why not; it was easier than trying to explain the reality of the situation, and it seemed from what Maggie said like this was just how harpies generally thought of the members of their flock, even if they weren't blood relations. She nodded.
"Very good," the man said. "Welcome to Alethia; we hope you'll find yourself a comfortable place in the life of our fair city." He went back inside, nodding to the guards, who stepped aside to let them enter.
Zoe watched her friend go with a combination of confusion, concern, and exasperation. What the hell was all that about? she wondered. She'd never seen Athena that obviously put-out. Somehow she seemed to have the idea that she needed to get in contact with this "Jon Madison" person? But as far as she knew neither of them knew anybody by that name. Zoe tried to think of any relatives named Jon, or John, but the only one she could think of was off on her mother's side of the family, with a totally different last name. And why would Athena have a sudden interest in this person anyway? It almost seemed like...like she thought they should have already known him, or something. And that business in the guest room...
Zoe suppressed a shudder. There had been something uncomfortable about that situation. Maybe it was just down to Athena's bizarre behavior, but she'd gotten a sort of feeling like...like something wasn't right, like the room wasn't as it should be. But it was just a guest room; it'd been that way ever since she could remember, although oddly she couldn't recall ever having guests sleep there. Had she just not been paying attention, or...or...?
Now she was starting to get irritated with Athena. It'd been a perfectly normal afternoon hanging out together, and then she had to go and pull some weird shit that was getting her all rattled even after she'd left and there was no good reason for any of it because she didn't even know this Jon person and...and...and!
Zoe thumped a fist into her mattress; it made a satisfying whumph and sprang back to her. She huffed in irritation. The worst part of it was that this whole nonsensical, irrational business was beginning to stick in her mind. She knew this was all crazy talk, she knew she didn't know this person Athena seemed to think she should know, she knew that photo was just badly framed, she knew there was nothing unusual about the guest room, and yet...and yet...
And yet it somehow had the ability to get under her skin regardless. Even though she knew perfectly well it was nonsense, Zoe couldn't help wondering what it would be like if something was missing - it was one thing to forget something (or someone,) but what if she didn't know she'd forgotten? What if somehow it'd all just...just vanished from her mind, and she didn't even have the mental links pointing to where the thing she didn't remember should be? It'd be like it was never there, unless someone else remembered.
But that was a whole different thing from...from a whole person just disappearing. For not just her, but her entire family to suddenly forget about that...that was difficult to believe. And certainly the guest room wouldn't just spontaneously transform from something else. It was impossible that none of them would remember...
...wasn't it?
This time she couldn't quite hold back a shudder. Telling herself to calm the hell down and stop letting her imagination run away with her, she went to get ready for bed.
Jon and Maggie made their way through the city a bit slowly. It was a new experience for both of them. For Maggie, it was the first time she'd ever actually been down in a human city, and not just above one; for Jon, it was the first time she'd been in a city that wasn't designed around motor traffic. Everything was so much closer together here; it almost felt like a miniature set even though everything was built to a human scale.
They made their way through street after street; several times, Jon had to stop and steer the her little companion away from street vendors selling miscellaneous baubles. While most of the humans here seemed to be of a type with the people they'd met at the gate, there was still a fair bit of variety on display, and an even wider variety of other species. Jon wondered whether the whole world was quite like this, but she supposed you were probably likely to see a greater variety of people in a port town generally. Maybe all these merchants hailed from their own little villages of...fox-creatures, centaurs, what looked for all the world to be a cave-woman selling furs off the back of a small riding dinosaur...she shook her head in wonderment.
They stopped for lunch by a nice little fountain in the main market square; that was the last of the food Athena's family had packed for her. After some asking around, they finally got themselves pointed in the right direction by a friendly older woman with a single horn growing from her forehead, and made their way down to a quiet corner of town, where the Rooster tavern was located.
It wasn't a terribly impressive building, even by the standards of this world, but it wasn't any kind of a rat-trap, to look at it. (Barring the one person sitting on the bench outside who happened to actually be a rat.) It was constructed in the same sort of budget-Mediterranean material style as the centaurs' farmhouse had been, with a slightly dilapidated tile roof, but it was built as part of a continuous row of small buildings, which almost gave it a bit of old English style, to Jon's admittedly inexpert eye. She opened the door, took a cautious look inside, then let Maggie in.
It was small and dark inside, and the ceilings were low even for someone as comparatively short as Jon was now. But it was a cozy kind of dark, lit by the glow from a large central hearth where a large leg-of-something-or-other was roasting. The floor was jam-packed with tables and benches, except at one end, where there was a bar, and the other, where there was a small stage. Nobody much was here at the moment; she guessed that people tended to show up here after work for drinks and/or dinner.
Jon approached the man at the bar. He was a stocky, balding, red-faced man in a wrinkled shirt and a heavy apron, who looked like he could've fit in essentially this same job in basically any era of human history; kind of the Platonic ideal of a saloonkeeper. He looked up at her with exactly the kind of pleasant indifference that the role demanded. "Get you something to drink?" he asked.
Jon shook her head. "I'm actually here to...to ask about getting work," she said. "I'm trying to get established here while I look into some opportunities, and I met the centaurs at Meadowbrook Farm down on the southern tip of the island; they thought you might be able to help me?"
A smile slowly spread across the bartender's great ham-hock of a face. "Oh, Peter's family!" he said. "Yeah, they're good people. You must be one of those folks trying to find some crazy treasure or other in the ruins, right?"
Jon shrugged. "...Something like that."
He laughed. "I know, I know. Don't want to tip anybody off to your big score. Heard it all before. Wee-ell, as far as work goes...hmm." He took a moment off from wiping out his supply of large ceramic mugs to scratch his head. "Bit difficult," he said. "I can't exactly have you waiting tables, without no hands. But...well, I do owe Peter and his boys a favor or two, and...tell you what. One of my regular acts jumped ship to some big gambling house away east on the mainland, and I been having to pay people to come in and play in the evenings. If you can take over evenings for her, I'll give ya room and board upstairs, you and yer kid."
"...Acts?" Jon wasn't sure she liked where this was going.
"Sure, you know. Sing or dance or somethin', doesn't matter to me as long as it works."
He wanted her to perform? In front of...in front of people? "I...I've never done that kind of thing before!" she protested. Then, almost as an afterthought, "And...just room and board?" How was she ever supposed to save up anything if she wasn't getting paid more than living expenses?
The tavern keeper slapped a meaty hand on Jon's shoulder. "Never too late to start, eh?" he said. "Look, it ain't that hard. You don't gotta be brilliant or anything. It's the show plus the drink plus the food that keeps 'em comin', not the show by itself. 'Sides, you folk are good at that stuff." He shrugged. "And that's room and board for the two of you, mind. But I ain't no miser, I'll let you keep anything they give you on top of that. Just put out a hat or somethin'."
Jon was hesitant, but...well, it wasn't like she was swimming in other options. This was the only lead she had, and while she could go off somewhere else in the hopes that a better offer might turn up, it also might not. And anyway, she supposed that room and board wasn't exactly nothing. And she might be able to line up a second job in the mornings, if she could figure out what to do with Maggie. She shrugged. "...I guess I'll do it," she said.
He laughed heartily. "Atta girl! Go ahead and dig through the stage stuff there; gotta be something in there you can use for your act."
"C'mon, c'mooon!" Diana said, wishing Sarah would pick up the pace. She wanted to hurry up and get to the ship, so they could get going to some place where she could find someone who could help her get back to her own life and her own body! Why were they just waiting around here, anyway? It was miles to the village the wolf-lady - um, Melina - had said she'd meet them at! They should get going now so they could be there as soon as-
"Easy there!" Sarah said, trying to keep her balance as the little cat-girl tugged at her arm. "Didn't your friend say it was going to be a few days before she got there?"
Diana just about tripped as the realization hit her. She'd totally forgotten about that! But...but she wanted to go now! "We...we could...get goin'..." she said, but Sarah shook her head. "It's only a few miles to this 'Robin's Heath,' from what the villagers say," she said. "That won't take us more than a morning. And if we go early, we'd have to arrange some place to stay; the people here are letting us stay for free."
She reached down and rubbed the cat-girl behind the ears. Diana found herself pressing into the older girl's touch only half-voluntarily. "Don't worry," Sarah said, smiling down at her. "We'll get there soon enough."
Diana tensed. She'd been all comfortable just now, but...but there was that tone in the clockwork girl's unusual voice. Not irritation, not anger; those would be one thing. Bemusement, though...there was no mistaking it. Sarah thought she was being a...a silly little girl! She felt her tail beginning to puff up and stand out straight. She tried to fight it, tried to keep her ears from pinning back, but she heard Sarah give a soft chuckle and she whirled around, tail standing out straight like an exclamation point, stamped her foot on the ground, and gave a sharp hiss.
Despite the fact that Diana was easily over a foot shorter than her, Sarah was visibly taken aback. Then again, so was Diana. She bit her lip to try to stop it from quivering. These...these stupid cat instincts! They were so hard to control, and...and her feline pride just kept getting needled when people treated her like she was a child when she knew she was really a grown-up, and she didn't mean to do that, really she didn't!
Sarah stared down at the little cat-girl, who was visibly upset. Geez, she thought, I didn't realize she'd take it like that. She seemed fine a couple minutes ago. She almost felt like calling Diana out for her behavior, but it was obvious that she was upset about it herself. Sarah sighed; to be fair, it wasn't like she hadn't been quite the little drama queen herself as adolescence took its toll on her. Or, well, even after that, if she were perfectly honest. She pulled the cat-girl into a gentle embrace; Diana tensed noticeably at first, then calmed down and let Sarah hold her.
"I'm sorry," the clockwork girl said. "I wasn't making fun of you, honest."
Diana nodded and just let the older girl hug her for a bit. Finally, Sarah stepped back. "All right," she said. "Let's get these things back to Millicent's place, then we can catch up with T-" She frowned, trailing off. "Oh, not...a...gain..."
Diana stared up at her for a moment; she seemed to have stopped moving. She had a brief sinking feeling, wondering if it was something she'd done, then noticed that the soft ticking sound that followed Sarah wherever she went was gone. She remembered that morning, when she'd seen Tom grab the big metal key that stuck out of the clockwork girl's back and give it a couple twists, and finally put the pieces together.
It was weird seeing Sarah just frozen in place like that. Her eyes didn't even blink. Diana stepped around back of her. The key was pretty large, and even though she could reach the top loop, it was a bit of a stretch for her to grab both the top and the bottom at the same time. But she could do this, right? It was just like the old alarm clock she'd had the first time she was a kid, only there was a person attached to it instead. She reached up and got a good grip on both ends, then began to turn it.
It took some doing. While she was hardly frail, as a little girl she just didn't have that much muscle mass, and winding the key required a lot of force to begin with. But she was able to make decent progress once one end was on the way down, just with the aid of gravity. She gave it a few good turns and then released it.
Sarah whirred back to life almost immediately, and looked around to find the little cat-girl behind her. She smiled. "Thanks," she said. "That was a big help; if it hadn't been for you I'd probably have been stuck there until someone went and found Tom."
Diana beamed. After all this, after losing her temper when she was trying not to and being treated like a little kid and almost sent to boarding school and everything, it meant so much to the adult part of her mind just to know that she was useful to somebody...Sarah scratched her behind the ears, and she pushed back into it; then they started off towards Millicent's burrow for the second time.
She did still wonder, though, about what the mouse-lady had said, about gaining more cat features. Was that really possible? It'd be one thing for, say, the tailor's niece to just not grow up as much as they thought she would, but to actually have her body change into something more animal? That was a crazy thought!
She wondered what would cause that to happen, if it really did happen. Elizabeth had said something about "to match her instincts" - but did she really mean it like that? Would...would giving in to her cat instincts make her more of a cat? She hoped not; it was strange enough being a little girl with cat-ears and a tail, she'd hate to wind up like some of the people in the village, walking around on all fours and covered in fur!
Sarah was getting a little ahead of her now due to her longer stride. Diana sped after her, her whiskers twitching softly in the gentle breeze.
Jon sat down on the little stage with a sigh. She really didn't know what she'd expected, but it definitely wasn't this. It was hard to make the argument that she'd be useful in a more normal manual-labor capacity, considering the fact that she didn't have hands - she'd managed a bit at the centaurs' farm, but even that had mostly been just so she could give something back in exchange for their hospitality. In a fast-paced environment like...well, pretty much any service-industry job, there was no way she'd be able to keep up.
Still...working as an entertainer!? Like many teenage boys, Jon had briefly dabbled with learning to play guitar at one point, but also like many teenage boys he'd given it up without getting all that far. And she had absolutely no experience as a performer. And on top of that, how could she be expected to play without hands!?
Okay, okay, let's stay focused, she tried to tell herself. Deep breath. It could be a lot worse, she decided; if this world were like half the crappy '80s sword-'n-sorcery flicks she remembered watching with her older cousins, she'd probably be expected to work as an exotic dancer or something. Merely being asked to do something she had no experience with in front of a crowd of people who were all expecting her to entertain them and not screw up was still a step up from that. And maybe they'd be too busy drinking to care...
Still, the question remained: what was she going to do? She hadn't actually tried out her singing voice since finding herself in this body, but she'd never been any particular expert on the technique, anyway. And if her voice alone couldn't carry a performance, what was she supposed to do for accompaniment? With no hands...
"Hey, lookit this!" Maggie piped up from the far corner of the stage. Jon stood up and walked over to see what she was talking about. The little harpy had been digging with abandon through a small cupboard of miscellany; it took a moment for Jon to realize that it was a small collection of props and accessories. Guess they really do make a point out of having a show here, she thought. She hunkered down next to Maggie to see what all was in there.
It was mostly visual props - scraps of fabric that could be used as scarves, veils, set dressing, or whatever, a couple faded hangings with colorful backdrop-type pictures, and, of all things, what looked like a flannelgraph set, plus some balls and flags for juggling (Jon assumed the clubs were left out in order to avoid any unfortunate accidents,) a pair of castanets, a tambourine, and...she peered at it for a moment, not quite sure what it was at first, then pulled it out for a closer look.
The mystery object was a largish wooden box with a hole in the top and a set of strings stretched all along its length and off on a little extended plank. It took a moment for Jon to realize, but it was essentially some kind of tabletop guitar/dulcimer affair - right down to the fretboard. Maggie stared at it. "Whaddya do with that?" she asked. Jon laughed. "It's a musical instrument," she said. "Never seen one before?"
The little harpy-girl shook her head. "I seen some humans carry things like this with 'em, out on the roads an' in the villages," she said, "but I never saw anybody usin' 'em. It makes music?"
"Not by itself," Jon said, chuckling to herself. "You play it, like this." She set it down on the floor and settled down next to it. Setting one talon on the fretboard, she plucked at the strings with the other, then winced at the resulting discord. Maggie frowned. "It's not very good music," she said.
Jon laughed. "I don't think anybody's used it in a while. Lemme see..."
Actually getting the thing in tune took a solid half-hour, between Jon's inexperience at doing fine manipulation with her talons and the awkwardly tiny tuning pegs she had to fiddle with. Maggie eventually got tired of watching and went back to digging through the cupboard, but kept glancing back to see if she was finished. When she'd finally gotten it into something like proper tuning, Jon made another attempt at producing a musical sound out of it. This time it worked, and Maggie turned from the cupboard with a smile on her face and curiosity in her eyes.
Still, Jon wasn't sure this was particularly viable. For starters, her talons only had three toes apiece, and one talon had to work the frets. Even if she somehow managed to work in the little dewclaw on the back, that was going to seriously limit what she could play. She thought about that for a bit, then had a flash of inspiration. She scooted a low stool over next to the guitar and seated herself on it so that she had a better angle to work from, then turned so that both talons were situated over the fretboard. Arcing one claw, she snapped it down onto the string below, thwacking it firmly against the board.
She was pleased to find that it produced exactly the note she'd intended. She tried another, and gradually began tapping her way around, finding where the notes were. She was a long ways out of practice and she'd never actually tried playing this way before, but it came back to her with surprising ease. Maggie sat down opposite her as she began to actually pick out a tune, trying to remember how any of the songs she knew went. "Are...'re we gonna do music for 'em?" the little harpy asked eagerly.
Jon regarded her thoughtfully. "Do you want to?" she asked. "They're probably going to want us to play for most of the evening."
Maggie grinned. "'Course I do!" she said. "An' I like stayin' up anyway."
Jon laughed softly. We'll see about that, little miss, she thought to herself.But the prospect of having another person to share the job was encouraging, plus Maggie's obvious enthusiasm was, as usual, pretty infectious. "Okay," she said, as she found the pattern she'd been searching her brain for. "I'm gonna go through this once, and then I'll have you try taking the response parts the second time around, so listen close." She hummed a few notes to herself, getting a feel for her own range for the first time, then began to sing:
"The Queen of Light took her bow,
And then she turned to go..."
Zoe was sitting in a room. She didn't see it from what should have been her own perspective; instead, she saw herself sitting in a room, like she was watching herself in a movie. The room was not one she could recall ever having been in, but it felt instinctively recognizable even though it was bizarre and unfamiliar. She sat in a large Naugahyde chair on a dais at one end of the room, which was covered in dark red shag carpet, and looked down at the rest of the room.
The decor was something like a demented funhouse version of an early-'60s cocktail lounge - overstuffed fake-leather furniture with brass fittings, a rather violent black-and-white tile pattern on the floor, potted miniature palms, awkwardly-arranged faux-Classical columns at either end, and hideous wooden paneling along the lower part of the walls, or rather the burgundy curtains that hung where walls should've been. The layout was bizarre, lacking any clear pattern; the different pieces of furniture and decor were scattered around the room, but in a curiously un-random way. The only clear exception was in the center of the room, where there was a large, round wooden table surrounded by twelve chrome bar stools. It stood out from the rest of the furniture, in that it was rough-hewn, obviously hand-crafted, and very old. On top of the table was an enormous model of an island - also roughly circular, but with a large bay scooped out of one side.
From somewhere, there was an eerie, hollow, almost bell-like hum.
She noticed an old, white-haired man in a natty suit and fez standing just behind her; it was impossible to say if he'd only just appeared there, or if the strange outside perspective she was seeing the scene in had only just revealed him to her. He shuffled busily, twitchily around to stand in front of her with about twice the motion actually required to do so. She could hear his feet on the carpet; the sound seemed to be lagging behind a bit. He smiled in a way that was as unsettling as it was apologetic. "hhOurr uwaves are rrunneeng late todaye," he said. His voice sounded strange, as if he were speaking from a completely different acoustic environment. She noticed that his cap had a moon and stars pinned to it, like a cartoon wizard's hat.
The next thing she saw (or the next thing she was shown) was the face of a teenage boy, as if in closeup. He was sitting on one of the bar stools at the central table, by the bay side of the island. She found him familiar, troublingly familiar, but couldn't actually place him. He had feathers loosely arranged in his hair; he stared at her with a glassy-eyed smile and slowly pointed up. She saw a view of the ceiling, and discovered that the columns at the ends of the room were actually the arms and legs of a giant woman, who was stretched across the top of the room. Her body was bare, and on her skin were countless stars.
"Hwo do eyou think that is, thenn?" asked the old man. She stared up at him. "I think I know him from somewhere," she said, then to the boy: "Don't I know you?"
"Hiy think Iy know me from somehwerr," the boy said. His empty smile turned to a vague frown. "Ddon't Iy know me??"
"Hhe is a zurprise, halways," the old man said, as blithely as if they were discussing the weather. "Hwone day che mayy be 'real?'" He peered down at her. "Hwould eyou laik a 'Drrink?'?"
She didn't know what to make of that. "Um, please," she said. He made a gesture, and there was a little girl in front of the dais. She had a headband with cat-ears on it, and she was dressed like a waitress. She held out a tray with a cocktail glass on it. Zoe took it; it appeared to be a martini, if the olive-on-a-toothpick were any indication. She swished it around in the glass, or attempted to; it sloshed very slowly from one side to the other, as if it were running at a different speed than the rest of the world. The old man gave her an unnerving grin. Curious, she tipped the glass to one side, only to have a good portion of the liquid suddenly spill out exactly as it normally would. She sputtered and tried to brush it out of her lap.
"Miss?" the little girl said. Zoe looked her in the eye.
"When nobody looks," she said, "things can...unhappen." She snapped her fingers. Zoe saw that the drink was back in the glass.
Then she saw that the carpet was still wet.
"But the echoes take time to fade," the little girl said. "Do you know?"
Zoe stared at her, trying to process this. She saw that the carpet was dry now. When she looked up again, the girl was gone.
The old man gave her that unnerving grin again. "Che's nnot hwat che zeems," he said. "Hwe hwill awl be gatherred in the playchouse soon."
The hum seemed slightly louder now. The boy smiled at her again. Behind him, at the far end of the room, a spotlight was shining, and the house lights went down. A man, somewhat swarthy, with thick, curly hair, appeared in the spotlight. He was dressed in a white tuxedo and had a stethoscope around his neck, which he grasped as if it were a microphone and began to sing an old jazz standard. His voice reverberated around the room in exactly the way that sound shouldn't in a place with velvet curtain walls.
She stared into her drink. She'd never tell her parents, but it wasn't her first. Not that she made a habit of it, but as long as it was here...she lifted it to her lips and took a sip, then frowned. Whatever this was, it wasn't gin.
"Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
Wherever she may be,
She can look this wide world over,
But she'll never find a sweet man like me..."
The hum had crescendoed into a roar, and the reverberation of the singer's voice was deafening. She looked into her glass to find that the drink was finished, despite the fact that she'd only taken one small sip. Then she noticed that the olive wasn't an olive; it was a cat's eye, though it seemed none the worse for being disembodied and run through with a toothpick. Coughing and spluttering, Zoe dropped the glass in shock and heard it smash on the floor as she leapt to her feet and looked for an exit.
The old man motioned her to the wall behind the dais, where she found a narrow hallway. The world seemed to sway around her; she wasn't entirely certain it was the alcohol. She inexplicably felt a small, olive-sized object gently settle into the pit of her stomach. The world all but completely dissolved in a wall of pure sound as she rushed to the other end of the hall...
...only to stop dead in her tracks as she re-entered the exact same room.
Zoe woke with a start. She'd had a dream about...about...something. She couldn't remember much of it. Something something cocktails with eyeballs in them? No. No, that had been weird and gross, but that wasn't the important part. She felt vaguely ill thinking about it, and there was an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach, but that wasn't the important part. The important part was...was...
Damn it. She'd known it, she was sure. It had been on the tip of her tongue...but she couldn't remember it. And now she was really good and rattled...
She didn't get back to sleep that night.
