Tuesday is here! It’s time for Part Six of The Shape of Family. Let’s see what that old bandersnatch is up to these days..
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The Shape of Family
Part Six – Den
by Rick Cook Jr
He released the mirror image from his silken, smoky grip and she clattered to the ground, scrambling away from him and babbling. He swirled with delight at his success and she watched without really seeing. He knew the look. Fear and shock.
His den was undisturbed, as it always was. No creatures dared enter the great redwood even while he was away. The mushrooms within never shied from his presence, though, and he cultivated them for their glow.
He had taken the girl deep into the hollow tree. If she attempted to flee, well, that just made the chase more exciting as she fled blindly in the maze of roots and tunnels.
But she wasn’t fleeing. That may come later, he mused.
He shifted his form, taking the image of an unassuming elderly man he’d culled from a field earlier in the year.
Though he’d been smoke given form, becoming a creature – a mewling, pathetic human – awoke her to her situation.
He hummed to test the form’s vocal cords, grimaced at their lyrical talent, and forced his voice to come through instead. Deep, silken, hypnotic.
“What are you, mirror?” he asked, and she gasped, trying to burrow farther into the rootwall as if she could scurry away like a mole.
She didn’t answer, and he scooped up a rough bowl he’d scavenged some untold year ago, filled it with water from the dripping roots, and offered it to her.
“It has an earthy musk, but I find it calms even the smallest of minds to slake a thirst.”
He set the bowl in front of her and she settled visibly, refusing to look at his – ah, of course. He formed a pair of itchy fur leggings and rocked back on the balls of his feet. Such a weird form. But he’d need it, maybe a heartier version than this old thing, but a human likeness all the same.
“Go on, mirror, drink it.” He nudged her with a toe and she slapped it away.
“Why do you call me ‘mirror’?” she asked, voice quavering.
“Should I call a tool that is identical to another tool by another name?”
“A tool?” she stammered.
“You humans have… designations. Meaningless sounds to mark one from another. What are you called, mirror?”
“I’m not a mirror.” She was frightened, shaking, the bowl she’d taken and sipped from almost vibrating in her grip. And yet she was calm.
“You are.”
“Did you attack my sister?” she asked, setting the bowl down at her feet.
Sister. He nodded, smiling. “Your mirror.”
“We’re just twins.”
He shrugged. She shied back, fighting tears. Terrible tears.
“Humans,” he spat. “Mewling, lachrymose weaklings. Always leaking from some hole or other. It is a pity I need you.”
“Need me for what?”
He turned from her with a smug grin. It felt good to grin in a human form, though he’d never admit that. Such shame. “You needn’t worry over needful things, mirror.”
But the bowl smashed over his too-human head and he fell to the musty earth. He wavered, shadow and silk forming and unforming while his human shape cried in agony. Suddenly his own eyes dripped with oily, black tears of rage and pain.
The little bitch. The harlot. He forced the change to shadow, gaining his mind back from the brink, and gave chase.
Oh, the chase. How he’d missed it. Shifting into sniffing creatures, following the mirror’s scent. Only she was running straight for the tree’s labyrinthine exit and he doubled his pace in following. Surely her memory couldn’t be that good.
But she dashed out into the Red Forest and he took the form of the bandersnatch, giving a wild howl of pleasure. And worry. He needed her, but she was escaping. Couldn’t escape.
She couldn’t escape. The bandersnatch couldn’t quite grin, and he longed to change back to the human and stretch those muscles. The forest at night would be a mystery to the mirror. Humans had such poor eyesight and the moon only showed itself in disorienting shafts. She’d trip and fall. Run into a tree, or one of the other horrors of the forest, long before she escaped.
He howled with pleasure again and closed in. It wouldn’t do to let another beast claim his prize, his desperate vessel.
And the forest shook with the bounding of a horse’s hooves. This deep? It couldn’t be.
The mirror cried out a name and a voice returned the call. “Marie!” “Renee!”
Designations. Which was which? Did it matter?
The bandersnatch fought his aggression when he scented the return of the great black horse. The damned foul creature!
He threw himself at the silhouette of the two girls scrambling atop the horse. The scent of their blood filled him, overrode the bandersnatch’s caution. He leaped and tore the one from the back of the saddle, where she bashed her head on a tree and crumpled to the forest floor.
The other girl, the mirror, cried for the sister. And the black horse bolted back the way it had come, back out of the Red Forest.
The bandersnatch was angry now. Prey wasn’t supposed to get away. How dare that little breeding mirror thwart him?
He sniffed at the girl on the ground, was relieved to feel her breath. So he shifted into silken smoke and swirled her up into a tree, tangled in thick limbs. The creatures of the forest wouldn’t have her.
And he would have another. Mirror images to breed. Twice the brood.
He howled with smoky laughter as he followed. The black horse was fast, had a head start, but he gained on it. It was fleeing and his confidence grew. Any creature that ran was surely prey for the taking.
Gaining, shifting under fallen logs, over trickling streams. Through a herd of vein-runners that scattered at they knew not what. He let his laughter echo as he followed the scent, shifting to a bandersnatch to reclaim the path when necessary. Then, the sound, and finally he caught glimpses of the midnight horse fleeing, the broodmare upon its back.
And he leaped for it as they left the Red Forest, into a swirl of torchlight as he became the bandersnatch, a whirling flash of teeth and claw, tasting blood, savoring the screams. Men atop horses, armor gleaming in the smoky torchlight. Surprised and scattering.
Frightened kittens. Hardly men at all. But the horse had stopped as the mounted soldiers recovered. There were ribbons of flesh and hair on the bandersnatch’s claws.
And they chased him back into the woods. Too many, he thought. So close to having my second breeder.
But he left the road without any real regret. He still had the first seed of his new empire, and it would flourish under a mirror image. He allowed himself the luxury of becoming a man long enough to grin after he had evaded the soldiers, lost them in the inky darkness of the bloody woods.
Yes, it felt good to smile. So long since he’d had a reason. So long.
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And that’s Part Six! Next week we go back to visiting with Sadie.
Panning For Clouds 