CHAPTER 19 #2
“If you had some great talent that pleased the City, it might have taken you into the Court itself instead. Do you?”
Emma had to admit she did not. She even managed a rueful laugh.
This seemed to please the creature. “Fear not, little once-a-mortal. I shall steer you aright.”
It drew itself up to its full height and puffed out its chest, clearly ready to perform:
“Debtor, for the City’s payment
You must choose which way is yours.
One joyous gift of beastly raiment,
One servant’s task, one house of four.”
The creature folded its hands modestly. Applause was obviously expected, and Emma did not stint. The creature glowed.
“I wonder, wise one,” Emma ventured. “A ‘gift of beastly raiment,’ you said. So when I choose, I transform? Into a beast. A certain beast for each ‘house,’” she said, watching the creature’s face. It seemed to be willing her along. “Do I stay that way? As an animal?”
“Raiment”—the creature eyed her significantly—“is something that may be put on and taken off at will. But I cannot say more.”
“I already was a beast,” said Emma. “But I didn’t get to take it off.”
“Yes.” It tilted its head to study her. “You have already worn another skin. Which makes you strange, you know. None of the other once-a-mortals here have been like you. Their bargains asked for wealth or freedom or beauty. They came to this room weeping, the bodies they were born with all they had ever known. They could not imagine the joys of a new form.” Emma thought she heard warmth enter the scraping voice.
“But you—you alone asked for transformation as your gift. A year and a day in another form. A true nightdweller’s choice.
As though within, you already belonged among us. Never before has it happened this way.”
“Belonged?” Was that true? Had there always been some part of her that beat with the pulse of the Night City?
“Night is the time of change, little once-a-mortal. Daylight fixes the world in place. To be seen is to be trapped in another’s eye, is it not? Known only as the shape they perceive. But unseen in darkness, things are free to shift. And so darkness reveals the true nature of things.”
“What does that make my true nature, then? A fox?”
Curiously, the creature chuckled. “As though she were meant to be among us,” it muttered, turning to the pillars at the center of the room. “I’ve never seen the like.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
The creature cleared its throat, a sound like a rusty garden chair unfolding. “It does not matter. For the City’s rules are firm. All who come to this room must have free choice of their Lower House and their beastly form. No matter what their bargain may have been. So you must choose your way.”
The needle nails waved Emma toward the pedestals. Five objects hovered above them.
Emma looked along the row. “And what are these? The choices?”
“A test. The little once-a-mortal must enter the Lower House most suited to her. The shape that calls to her inner nature.”
There was a black feather, carved from iridescent obsidian.
On the next pillar, a perfect crystalline droplet.
Trapped within, Emma saw a fin like a delicate fan.
The central pedestal held a ball of pure light, pulsing like a small and furious sun.
After that was a strange, twisted golden square of four points.
Emma leaned closer. Teeth. Four of them, two short, two long, molded from dull gold.
Rodent, a voice in her brain insisted, although she could not ferret out the memory to back it up.
She stopped at the last in the row. A curved amber claw, its ridges picked out in copper.
It glowed with a warmth that did not belong to the cold chamber, as if a fire blazed at its heart.
Emma’s fingers crept toward it. “This is a fox claw. I remember this. How it felt.” Slashing the air. Sharp under moonlight. Emma looked down at the creature. “I was a fox. Does that mean I have to choose this?”
“You have indeed lived as a fox, by your own bargain. But that need not be your choice forever. If another of the Lower Houses might suit you better, then you have now the chance to choose: to change your path. This is your test.”
“And if I don’t choose at all? Am I free to do that?”
“Oh, yes. You remain here.” The creature jerked a needle-nailed finger at the skeleton in the corner. “As this one did. A monk.” The creature shook its head in disgust. “Always praying and moaning. I think it enjoyed dying, although it took a long time about it. No others refused, or not for long.”
Emma refused to give in to the stab of fear in her chest. A choice had to be made, then. Her future depended on it. But one of these Lower Houses might offer a better chance of escape than the rest. She just had to find out which one.
“Someone as clever as you must know all about these Lower Houses.”
The creature tilted its head to one side, flattered. “All who enter the Room of Choosing may hear the riddle. Should you care to?”
Emma nodded, and the creature puffed out its chest once more:
“Which beastly skin shall wrap your own?
Which Lower House, which service owed?
First, with coat of amber burning
Might ye skim of mortal fires;
Or nightwinged, eyes on shadows turning,
Unveil secrets from on high;
Perhaps by magic’s pathways minding
Could ye snake the river’s bends;
Or long of tooth, with steady grinding
May ye serve the City’s ends.
One hundred years shall lap time’s shore
Till unbound shall ye be once more.”
“And this is telling me about my choices? The things on these pillars, and what they mean?”
“I can perform it again,” the creature said hopefully. “If you didn’t get it all the first time.”
“Please.” Emma smiled winningly. “You declaimed it so well. The greatest mortal actor could not have half so much skill.”
The creature swelled, whisking its needle nails together in a pleased-sounding susurration.
“If you insist,” it said with pride.
In the end, Emma coaxed it to repeat the puzzle three times.
“So: coat of amber burning. The fox claw. I take it and become a fox again.”
The creature crowed.
“The obsidian feather. That’s the nightwinged eyes. Crow?”
“Not allowed to give clues,” it said. “The other once-a-mortals didn’t get them. Not allowed to have favorites.” But it winked at Emma and shook its head broadly.
“Not crow? Similar, then… raven?”
The creature grinned.
The fin in the crystalline drop stumped her, and led to many pantomimed headshakings from the creature as her guesses missed the mark.
“Snaking through the river’s bends—but I’ve gone through the fish I can remember.” Her memories were still a blur, that was the problem. “Unless—it’s not a regular fish at all? Snaking. Eel—is it an eel?”
The creature was almost hopping up and down with excitement.
The teeth were much easier to guess. “Rat,” she said, and that was that.
“House of Foxes, House of Ravens,
House of Rats and House of Eels:
Each Lower House owes loyal labor.
And one of them your choice shall be!”
chanted the creature, clearly in high spirits.
What would it be like to fly? To breach the clouds with her wings?
To breathe under water and tumble through the silken currents of the river?
It shouldn’t have meant much, not beneath the shadow of a hundred years’ servitude.
Besides, she had just regained her own shape.
The itch of an unasked-for fox pelt still rippled across her skin.
She ought not to have felt anything like a thrill in her fingertips, in the veins of her chest. But from the few memories of mortal life that had returned, she knew herself.
Knew that to see the world in an animal’s form, to live among them and know their secrets, was a dream closer to the essence of who she was than anything else.
But something obvious was nagging at her.
“Four houses,” she said. “Five pedestals. What of the glowing ball? You missed it. What choice is that?”
The translucent film flickered over the creature’s eyes: once, twice more.
“Ah, that,” it said carefully. “That is a different choice. By this choice, you will be made mortal.”
“Mortal?” Emma’s head swung to the pedestal.
But the little creature hopped in front of her, nails shivering like striplings in a gale.
“Those who walk the path of power
Wear the gift of mortal skin:
They shall owe no gift of service,
But only that which lies within.”
Emma gazed at the ball, lost in the swirl of its fires. Mortal again. No hundred years of service. She saw her hand closing around it, saw the fire leaking through her veins, scouring them of whatever strange magic the Night City had touched her with. She saw home.
The sound of the creature’s nails reached a clashing crescendo. It was almost vibrating with the effort to keep its mouth shut.
“It’s too good to be true, isn’t it?” Emma said.
The creature let out a great breath, and its nails stilled. It nodded.
“What’s within a mortal, then? Ah.” And she saw it. It was so simple, it was tragic. “Mortality. You give what you contain. Everything that you are. And you’re gone. A far higher price than a hundred years of service. A trick.”
The creature nodded. She paced before the pedestals. “So my choices are here.”
She’d never had a wish to be a rat; still less, to serve with steady grinding. But Ravens unveiled secrets with eyes on shadows. Sentries, perhaps. Was she not cunning and quiet? She had lain in wait watching animals often enough in her mortal life. She might make a good sentry.
And Eels minded magic’s pathways. She liked thinking of herself as a guardian.
Swirling around the same bends in the river as the otters she had loved.
She might see the walls of Gabriel College there.
Or watch her friend sitting on the bank, refracted through the water’s surface.
Julia. Emma stretched her hand for the droplet.
She could not take it. A call in her mind stilled her fingers.
Emma turned to the amber claw. It glowed with the warmth of a secret spilled, with the light of a winter’s fire.
She pictured jaws strong with teeth. A pelt, rough and cozy.
A song from her throat, piercing the sky.
And it felt like something known. A part of her that had always been there, waiting for the fire spark of fox fur to unfurl.
And a phrase from the riddle came back: skimming mortal fires.
Whatever service the foxes performed, they were close to mortals.
If she did not escape, if she had to serve a hundred years—Emma pushed down the screaming in her mind at the thought of it—she could not bear it without sight of her friends.
Nat, a strong memory: bright with music and laughter and the sting of chili on her tongue.
Julia, a quieter note, winding through her clouded memories like a ribbon of pale silk.
If she could only be near them, she would survive.
“I’ve chosen,” she said. “The House of Foxes.”
She reached for the claw. Once more a fox. But this would not be like her cold, panicked run through the streets, fear sweat clouding her eyes. This time, it was a choice. She knew what would come.
How her smooth skin, plucked and shaved to the hairlessness so pleasing to humans, would change. Coarse hairs would sprout through her pores, a thicket against invaders. No hint of camouflage. She would be red, only red. A blazing warning to predators: Touch me, and you will burn.
Her softness would go. The curves of her breasts, the small belly like a cushioned pear, the spread of her thighs.
Lost. Winnowed into the lean tension of a fox frame, a coiled spring made flesh.
Her long, sturdy legs would shrink, shedding the strength she had built from years of hiking with her mother or climbing the steps of Gabriel Tower.
So much of herself lost with that woman’s shape.
But she would be fierce. Her jaws would rend; her claws would tear.
She would dance, copper armored under the moon, a huntress in the night.
Was that not something she had always longed for, deep down?
The Emma that would be, if only she could shed her skin of fear and niceness.
Running free through the streets. Elemental. Beastly. Alive.
Emma’s hand closed around the claw. Heat streaked up her arm and settled like a heavy cloak, falling over shoulders, waist, head.
Her ears were full of noise. Joyful barks bounced around her skull until Emma could not think, until she felt her lips pull back and her throat echo the cry.
She fell, and the stone chamber became vast around her.
Her nose twitched, now a bright, damp blackberry at the end of a long snout.
Every particle of scent sang to her of its source.
And through it all, a russet voice frisked through her mind.
we are fox
so quick so clever
blood on claw and jaw
Emma balked. She had been trapped with just such a voice, in a fox form that had been a prison. It had eaten her whole. She could not lose herself again. Emma gasped in a breath, and her senses flooded back. She was bent over, girl hands braced on girl thighs. No longer fox-shaped.
She had not been trapped. This fox form was a choice, not a prison.
Emma forced her breathing to slow. The amber claw pulsed firefly bright in her palm, then crumbled into glowing particles that sank beneath her skin.
She felt the change, beneath the workings of her mind.
The barest whisper of the fox voice. A brush of autumn leaves, skittering in the wind of her thoughts.
“Fox maiden.” The creature looked her up and down with approval. “The test has spoken true.”
It waved. The stone wall fizzed, and a door pushed its way through.
“The Night’s luck go with you, little once-a-mortal.” There was warmth in the rasping voice. It had been kind to her, she thought.
Emma turned with thanks on her lips, and stumbled back in horror.
Reality was stretching, creature and pedestals and walls sliding together like strands of dough.
The room was collapsing on itself. In another moment, the walls would fold entirely and take her with them.
Already, the force of it was pulling her inward.
Emma clawed through the rippling world for the door.
She pulled it open and threw herself through.