DASH #3
"He's dancing," she tells Grimshaw.
"Then you need armor-silk." He picks up his shears. Long, silver, etched with runes along both blades. "Hold the bolt flat. Both of you."
The fabric senses the shears.
The entire bolt convulses. Black silk whips upward off the table like a sail caught in a gale. One edge snaps toward Grimshaw's face. He ducks. The shears clatter to the floor.
"Pin it!" he screams.
I slam both hands down on the bolt. The silk writhes under my palms, alive and furious, bucking with a strength that has no business existing in a textile. It coils around my left wrist. Tightens. The weave compresses against my skin with the pressure of a python and the texture of water.
Magnolia throws herself across the far end of the table. She's on the fabric. Both arms spread. The silk bucks her upward, actually lifts her torso two inches off the surface before she grabs the table edge and hauls herself back down.
"It's pulling!"
"Lean into it! Dead weight!"
She drops her full body onto the fabric. One hundred and twenty pounds of bakery owner spread-eagled across enchanted silk. The bolt still writhes beneath her, but slower. Contained.
Grimshaw scrambles onto his platform. Shears in both hands. The runes glow faintly blue.
"Keep it flat! Both of you! If it rolls, it cocoons!"
"What happens if it cocoons?"
"Suffocation! Mostly!"
He cuts. The silk screams. Not metaphorically.
An actual high-pitched keen erupts from the weave, vibrating through the table and up through my forearms into my teeth.
The section under my right hand whips free and lashes across my face, leaving a welt from jaw to temple that burns like a rope drag.
Magnolia's end surges. The fabric humps upward beneath her stomach, trying to fold in on itself. She slams her elbow down. Pins it.
"Faster!" she shouts at Grimshaw.
"I'm cutting sentient fabric with enchanted shears while a human woman rides my cutting table like a mechanical bull! I will go the speed I go!"
Another cut. Another scream from the silk. A panel falls free, already shaped like a jacket front. It hits the floor and goes limp. Dead. Inert black silk, beautiful and still, as if it never moved at all.
The remaining bolt thrashes harder without its severed piece. Grief, maybe. Rage. My left wrist is going numb where the silk has coiled to the elbow. I peel it back with my free hand. The weave fights every inch, thread by thread, until I rip it loose and slam the freed section against the table.
"Magnolia! Shift left! He needs the shoulder panel!"
She army-crawls across the cutting table, dragging her body over the heaving fabric. Her vintage dress rides up past her knees. Her hair has come loose from its pins and hangs across her face in dark tangles. She reaches the left edge and throws both arms over the corner.
Grimshaw cuts. The silk shrieks. A sleeve panel drops free.
"Two more!" the kobold yells. "Back panel and trousers! Hold! HOLD!"
The silk makes its move.
The remaining fabric rears up between Magnolia and me, a wall of living black textile, and wraps around both of us simultaneously. My torso, her shoulders, binding us together across the table with our faces eighteen inches apart. The weave cinches. Tightens. Pulls us closer.
Twelve inches.
Eight.
Her breath hits my chin. Warm. Fast. Smells like cinnamon and something floral. Her eyes, very brown and very close, fix on mine. Sweat beads at her hairline. A strand of dark hair sticks to her cheek where the flour crescent used to live.
Six inches.
"Don't. Move," Grimshaw hisses from somewhere above us. The shears glow brighter. "It's settling. When enchanted silk binds two hosts, it imprints. If you struggle, it bonds permanently and I'll have to explain to my insurance adjuster why I've fused two people into formalwear."
Magnolia's fingers dig into the table edge. Her knuckles go white.
"How long?" she whispers.
"Until it chooses."
The silk pulses against me. Against her. A shared rhythm, syncing with something I refuse to identify. Her heartbeat transfers through the weave directly into my sternum. Fast. Strong. Stubborn.
The silk loosens.
Falls slack between us. Grimshaw cuts it in three rapid, vicious snips, and four panels drop to the floor, perfectly shaped, perfectly still.
Magnolia peels herself off the table. I straighten. The welts on my wrist and face throb. Her hair is destroyed. Her dress is wrinkled beyond civilian repair. Her cheeks are flushed a shade of red that extends down her neck and below her collar.
Grimshaw gathers the panels from the floor, already pinning them together with practiced claws.
"Thirty minutes for assembly," he says, pushing his spectacles up. "The silk has accepted him. It won't fight the needle now." He glances between us. Pushes his spectacles up again. "It's also accepted her, which is unusual. Armor-silk typically imprints on one host."
Magnolia straightens her dress. "What does that mean?"
"Means the tuxedo will be very comfortable."
That's not what it means.