Tuesday is the day for words placed sequentially in order to have meaning from a fictional standpoint. It’s time for the weekly entry into the lives of shapeshifters!
Last week the bandersnatch escaped with the twins, leaving Claire and her Winged Riders – as well as Sadie – injured and lost in his den. We’re following that devilish bandersnatch this week, so get your hate stares on.
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The Shape of Family
Part Thirteen – Worship
by Rick Cook Jr
A setback, a setback. It’s only a setback, he thought. Twisting through the woods, shifting constantly to carry the girls. Pushing himself harder than he should with his injuries.
Injured by a mutt. An abomination. The bitch. The shapeshifting bitch.
But it was okay. It would be okay once he got to the church.
The sun was setting. That was good. He could secure his church and fill it with bodies.
He reached the edge of the churchyard, set way back in the woods, but not far from Stalbridge proper. And though the girls fought him, they couldn’t hurt him. Not in this form. But they cursed and cried out and he threw them to the ground in the yard, scoffing.
“One of you is bound. The other is not. If you flee,” he said to the free one, “I will make your mirror hurt like she has never hurt before.” He shifted into a dragon’s form, screeched at her as she stared, angry and resolute. But she nodded, and he grinned in his reptilian form.
At that moment the doors to the church banged open and out stepped the good preacher. The bandersnatch shifted into the form of the priest and called out before the man’s eyes set upon him.
“Ah, Father!”
And the preacher laid eyes upon his old friend and shouted, “Kingsguard! He’s here!”
And the creature’s smile vanished. So much for trickery.
Soldiers filed out around the preacher, brandishing spear and saber. He sighed. “I suppose someone escaped to tell a little tale?” He felt the girl’s movement behind him and backhanded her so that she fell to the dirt, moaning and holding her cheek. “You’ll not catch me with the same trick,” he said to her, raking a hand with claws along her cheeks, marring her youthful face. The other yelled and kicked at him ineffectually, shouting curses about his mother, words unbecoming of young ladies.
Good. Strong. They’d serve their purpose well.
He turned back and shifted to oil and smoke as the five soldiers surrounded him. They pressed in from all sides, afraid to engage.
And the fighting began. Useless sword swipes through smoke, through oil. Smoke became claws became smoke, and one by one the Kingsguard fell, superficial wounds all, but enough to incapacitate. And the preacher stared on, eyes horrorstruck. He slammed the doors shut, signing the sigil of the sun across his chest as he did.
The bandersnatch grinned and entered the church. Doors couldn’t block him. No building could stay his smoke. He wafted in under the doors and the preacher backed away down the rough pews to the altar at the back. And here the creature found his luck had increased.
A few more of his worshipful parishioners, huddled in fear. He made quick work of them all, secured them with rope in the back of the church. Rope he’d made sure was always stocked.
Then he retrieved his soldiers and his broodmares. None had made it far, though all had attempted to run. It took no time at all and the girls were trussed upon the altar, awaiting his pleasure.
The soldiers and the preacher and the parishioners he let huddle in a group. Most were still praying to him, to the god of the sun he had presented himself as. But a couple of the soldiers, and the preacher, knew better now. They prayed to the Hundred, and encouraged the others to do so. To cast off the chains of devilment.
“You all look alike to me,” the creature said to the soldiers, shifting into a healthy young man, the better to do his duty. “Which of you told them I was not what you thought?”
None answered, just stared sullenly or prayed.
“It’s no matter, I guess.” He inspected his body, stripped his clothing, found it utterly lacking. “How humans ever procreate I will never know.” He paced, stopping in front of the preacher, shifting to the old man, the sun priest.
“You trusted in me once, old friend,” he said to the preacher. “I would have shown you a world of freedom. And I will.”
“Your freedom is salt in an open wound,” the preacher spat. What was his name? Did it matter?
“You are… Father Mason?” The preacher nodded slowly, eyes narrowed. “Would it make you feel better to know you will bear witness to a return? The old ways return. The bloody wood will drown in all the fresh red I bring to it. My children will be your salvation.”
“Hundred protect us, guide us,” Father Mason chanted. “Deliver us from evil, from the wants of the flesh, from the desires above ourselves.”
“If the Hundred are listening,” the bandersnatch said, “I hope they find you wanting. Turn to them only in your hour of need. Religion. Hope. Faith.” He spat the words at those assembled. “Conveniences to be tossed aside. Manipulations. If you need to worship something, worship the cycle of death and life that is inherent to us all.”
He laughed. “All except for me, I suppose.”
One of the girls laughed from behind him and he twisted in his form, taking on the shape of the young man again. “Do I amuse you, mirror?”
“My sister hurt you once. That lady what turned to jellyfish gave you them pretty little puckers on your neck and chin. You ain’t no immortal.”
He felt at the stings of the jellyfish. When switching forms he couldn’t heal those hurts as he could damage to the mind, as he could wounds of the flesh.
“Maybe so,” he snarled at the girl, lashing her face to match her sister, enjoying the cry of pain. “And yet a mere human whelp has no hope of harming me. Not as I will harm you.” The girl shuddered as his fingers caressed the bleeding rips in her cheek.
“They’ll find us, you know,” the other girl said. The one who stabbed him. The one who broke a bowl against his head. How close that one had been! And yet now they thought him impervious to their abilities. The risk had made him too dangerous to thwart now.
And yet they kept trying. He smiled at them again.
“And how will they do that, my dear?”
“I don’t know, but they will. Claire is like a bloodhound on the fox hunt.”
He grimaced and patted her face, let his hand form to smoke when she tried to bite him. She coughed and spat as he laughed.
“It will be time, soon, my mirrors. I wonder how many you’ll give me.”
He walked to the edge of the room, stared out of the rough-hewn windows. Just a day or two until the mating season began, he could feel it. He regretted being bound by biology, locked into the rituals when his body, however smoky and ephemeral, was ready, and not before or after. The price all creatures paid, great or small.
The bandersnatch in the form of the sun-priest clutched a rosary made of his own body, and hoped that the dogged bitches wouldn’t come. No more interruptions. He couldn’t afford another.
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It’s all coming to a head; can Claire and Sadie track the beast in time to save the girls?
Panning For Clouds 