I waited an eternity, eyes closed, for the shock of her bite and the feeling of my life flowing out from me.  It would be warm, I decided, a warm flowing sensation rather like--well, I had never experienced it but I should not be surprised to discover that the act of love would have this same warmth, this flow of young life, this time flowing into old, old death.
     So I was rather unprepared for what I felt--a single rude strike of the hand and a brushing of her clawtips against my cheek.  I opened my eyes.
     She had slapped me.  Slapped me.  Light, playful, but a slap. 
     "Don't think of ya thet way," she said, smiling.  "An' I aim ta keep ya alive 'til it's yer time.  Now getcher cloak on an' le's go."
     Yes, I was disappointed--crushed, really--and I could not help but wonder when my time would be, and how I would know.

​
* * * * *​

  The Elbowbend Saloon was astounding. 
     The floor, instead of hardwood, was stone--yes, actual tombstones, cut and edged very cleverly ("Newbows a real artiste," said Marie) with the names of the dead forming a crazily morbid poetry underfoot.  The whole was overlaid with a glassy surface, a covering I had never seen before ("ain' nothin' but fused silicate," said the Doctor), smooth as glass yet not at all slick or slippery.  In all, an ideal dance floor.
     The two bartenders were unnerving at first; mute automata with green silk vests and handlebar mustaches of beaver fur, they stood behind the cherry-wood bar with single brass arms extended.  Upon each arm was a collection of buttons of odd colours.
     The Doctor waltzed up to me as I was studying these prodigies.  "Care ta see a dem'stration, lil miss?"
     I nodded and he touched the arm of the larger of the two, swiftly pressing several buttons.
     "This here one's Jack," said he. "I git nothin' but grief from this machine."
     A frigid blast of air hit me and I saw a whitish mist erupt from the thing's nostrils.  The arctic wind enveloped the Doctor for a moment and then he emerged from the cloud.  In his gloved hands were two squat glasses, each with amber liquid in the bottom and the most extraordinary crust on the top: it appeared to be a minuscule glacier, fragmented into shards and deposited around the rim. 
     "Iced Drambuie," said the Doctor, "same recipe Bonny Prince Ed give ta Captain MacKinnon after the Battle a' Culloden."
     He handed one to Marie, who giggled and sipped it, and he pressed the other on me. 
     It was amber-coloured, honey-sweet and possessed of a sharpness not unlike malt whiskey, which I had first been allowed, as a slip of a girl, to taste precisely once by my otherwise reasonably abstinent father.  After he died, of course, I drank it with some regularity.  I shivered at the taste but it was not unpleasant.  While I sipped it, I took in the rest of the room. 
     The nickelodeon in the corner had no fewer than five brass heads attached: one played a recorder, one an harmonica, one a brazen trumpet, one an oboe.  Largest at the end was the head that blew the tuba.  Extending all around the chaotic machine were brass appendages bearing cymbal, tambourine, triangle, drums.  At the center, two brass arms held violin and bow and sawed Homerically together.  The music was bumptious and lively; surrounding the machine, indeed the entire establishment, was the abiding cloud of warm mist. 
     Between sips of Drambuie and the interior fog I felt somewhat faint, but I must say the dank humidity made me feel at home.  Precisely like London upon one of the few Saturdays I had been allowed out without an escort (I had told Miss Gibbons it was for a lecture series but I did spend evenings at a pub until my conscience got the better of me; the Darwinist was the last of my rascally escapades). 
     The denizens of the Elbowbend bar!  As the roundels sounded from the fiddle, one and all would leap and stomp, scatter and cut, a scissoring of the legs that was all the rage in England at the moment: I wondered at its popularity here.  The brazen music-maker improvised a number of airs, and the pale legions cavorted. 
    One table was clothed all in black, with ghostly white faces and thin blue lips.  A greenish tinge hung about them, like a leprous contagion they could easily pass on to others.  I pointed them out to Marie.
     "Oooh, them's Deadman's Jawers, honey!  Don't give no trouble 'cept when we got us a newly deceased, then we gotta lock 'em in jail durin' the burial or they'd dig up the remains sure as blazes.  Must say, they have a shakes-amighty cookout when they do git a fresh one."
     "REVOLUTION COMES!   JOIN THE APES OR DIE!"
     A huge wizened creature, tanned and bare-chested, was holding a mug aloft. 
     Marie grinned.  "Et there's Tubal, our blacksmith.  He does NOT like it here'n Cemetery, I'm here ta tell ya.  Mebbe y'oughta date him, ya got a lot in common, hatin' this place."
     I smiled and gave Marie's cheek a slap.  Light, playful, but a slap.
     "FIRST CHANCE, GONNA JOIN THEM!  USED TO BE GUNNER IN BOG WARS!  GUN DOWN WHOLE LOT OF YOU!"
     Tubal then collapsed in his chair, head lolling back. 
     "Noisy but harmless," said Marie.  "When he come through the Hole he wuz a Seminole warrior, died and come back's a dang good blacksmith but still a Seminole.  Strangest thing.  Anyways, we jest leave him be."
     In the corner, their muzzles softly nuzzling each other, sat two great grey wolves.          
     "Them's the Siggersons. I mentioned the old man's 200, his lady's a ripe 199."
     There was a vicious howl and quite without warning the wolves were going at each other, disporting in a most unbecoming manner.  It looked for all the world as if the female had gone blind and the other was pushing her home, from the rear.
     "An' they keep the fire lit," noted Marie.  "Right heartenin'."    
     I giggled.  My corseted lady's manner was rapidly evaporating in a cloud of steam under the effects of the Scottish draught. 
     Marie looked at me and smiled, gave me a sudden hug.  "You gettin a bit more loosened up?"
     I hugged her back; I nodded.
     Then I saw him.
     His eyes held a steely glare, fixed upon me from under his hat brim.  His pale-horse-and-paler-rider face was framed by the black of his clothing and was partly hidden from my sight, not only by his hat but also by the shadowy corner in which he slumped.  An open whisky bottle stood in front of him; he was swilling a smoky liquid from a shot glass.  He set the glass down, continued to stare.
     "Whut is it, honey?" Marie asked.
     "Oh,nothing," I replied.  "Him.  That great black beast in the corner with the funereal face.  I had a nightmare about him. What an ugly bounder, to be sure."
     Marie smiled.  "Yeah, so ugly ya dream about him.  Nothin' wrong with them eyes, honey.  I got me a pair, too, an I been notin' how he keeps notin' you.  An' it seems to me you are commencin' to note him as well."
     I smiled but without humor.  "You think the lady doth protest too much?"
     "I think I got no earthly idea whut thet means."
     "It is Shakespeare, it means that mayhap I am drawn to him but I shall not reveal my feelings."
     "Could'na said 'er better myself."
     "Oh," I said, exasperated, "why do I even talk to you?  We need another drink."  I stood and picked up our glasses for another trip to the bar.
     Marie giggled, "Better bring the bottle."
     "Do you think we shall need more than one drink?"
     "We might, ta be hospitable.  Yer new boyfriend's a-headin' this direction."
     I looked.  He was.   He was walking right towards us.  Right towards me.   He was--oh, good Lord--
     He was at our table.
     He nodded at Marie but kept staring at me.
     "Evenin'," he said.  To Marie.  But he stared at me still. 
     "Evenin', Kid," she returned.  "Right mild night."
     "Tis."
     He finally turned his gaze to her.  She giggled again.
     "Somethin' I kin do fer you, Kid?
     I could see his whole body stiffen, quite as if a plank had been slide down along his spine.
     "Wondert if you wanted ta dance mebbe."
     Marie smiled at him then looked right at me, her tone gleeful.  "Aw, thanks awful, Kid, but I'm comfortable's a milkcow rightchere.  Mebbe later.  Why'ncha take off yer hat ta a' coupla ladies?  Say a nice p'lite hello ta Miss Josephine Wells."
     He slipped his hat off and turned to me quite naturally, as if the plank had been suddenly removed.  His sudden change in demeanor was unsettling as he stared at me yet again.  And he stared a bit more still and finally said, "How's 'bout you?"
     In my mind, I slapped him, not a light or playful one.  I told him what I thought of his pedigree which I had not seen and his manners which I had and I finally told  him that I most certainly would not dance with him, I would see him in the last circle of Hell first.  In my mind.
     In reality I stared back at him without a word. like a trapped animal seeing a bowstring draw taut, and without anothe rworld he took my arm and pulled me like a sack of ambulatory flour out onto the dance floor.  It was a polka, and I am accomplished at those steps (Miss Gibbons had trained us even though I never had a male partner); however, he seized my hands and twirled me and we were off skipping at so vigorous a pace I could barely keep up. 
     Very light on his feet, I must say, but I found it a breathless experience.  He was stolid and expressionless, always looking at me and moving me like a whirligig chess piece across the gravestone board, skipping to one name and then another.  I tried to avoid his gaze and sought to pass the time by  reading the names, but we were moving too swiftly and I was getting dizzy.  I closed my eyes. 
     Finally I spoke to him: "I am sorry but could we perhaps slow down?"
     He said nothing but stopped dead.  We were right in the middle of a party of dancing Deadman's Jawers so "stopping dead" is not an inapt expression.  They eyed him and then eyed me and one reared out a tongue as if to taste of me but the Kid growled and the creature danced on. 
     The Kid turned back to me and said, "Why ya stayin round Cemetery?"
     "Where do you suggest I go, sir?"
     "T'aint safe here."
     I jerked my hands out of his grip and said, "Of that I am absolutely sure.  I doubt any safety is to be had with the likes of you about."    
     His stare grew cold as iron.  He backed away from me.
     "Yew don't know nothin'."  Third time.  Exactly the time they called "the charm", and it repelled me like a charm. 
     "I know enough," I said with some asperity, "to avoid a man who treats me like a common drab, thank you very much."
     "SINNERS!!"
     The great roaring voice cracked the air and shattered the music asunder.  The nickelodeon stopped at a wave of the Doctor's hand.  The cavorting dancers grew still.
     "Howdy, Brother," said the Doctor, and I could swear the machine sighed. 
     Standing at the doorway was the most extraordinary figure.  Tall and broad and wrapped in a brackish green sheet which wound around his body like cross-gartering.  I realized with a start that it was a shroud.  The face that surmounted the cloth was black and leathery, with two great tusks emerging from its mouth, and a sweep of black fur on its head which bristled and seemed to crackle in the bright light. 
     "Your presence is a stench in the nostrils of true beasts!  You defile us with your monstrous lusts and your unnatural desires!  You are anathema!  You are the spirit of Anti-beast!" 
     My hand went to my throat.  The great overweening thing was looking in my direction.  His hand rose slowly.  He pointed right at me.
     "Blood shall be your end.  Blood and the touch of fang and claw.  You would spill our blood, you would take what is ours and make it an abomination, you would defile the sacred traditions of our very civilization.  Get out, sinners!"
     Behind me, a dull hiss.  I turned my head. He had not been pointing at me.
     He indicated a man and woman embracing in the shadows.  They stepped forward, still twined in each other's arms, into the light.  Their bodies were unclothed and their skins seemed to be made up of masses of small blue feathers, framed by white fur that covered their heads like a burnoose, with trails of white fur running down their tufted backs and legs.  As I watched, both male and female opened fanged mouths and extended forked tongues and hissed a second time.        
     Then the male partner contorted his body and twisted his head as if curling into a snake.  He wrapped himself around his partner and extended waving arms that, despite the feathers, appeared to be serpentine.  They curved like the arms of East Indian dancers, then folded around his partner and the two kissed and broke apart, and the man twisted his hips which grew broader and larger, and turned his torso to the side as his chest grew twin mounds, and his tail slipped upward into his body and extended again so that he became the twin of his partner. 
     They were now both female, still embracing. 
     "Get out, you damned things!" the walrus-like creature bellowed.  "You insult the decent ones who come here to swill and rut.  You are unnatural--"
     Without warning, one of the blue-feathers launched itself at the speaker.  It sank its fangs into the walrus-thing's black throat and the two monsters seized upon each other, rolling on the floor and lashing in a battling fury.
     "FIGHT!" yelled the Doctor with more than a touch of glee in his voice. 
     As if at one accord, the whole company of monstrosities fell upon each other, roaring and fanging and clawing.  The scene was straight out of the Inferno, with cacophonous shrieks punctuating each fleshly rip as talon and hair and blood flew. 
     I looked for Marie, but she was lighting furiously into three Deadman's Jawers who seemed the worse for the contest.  I thought to help her but an arm hard and cold as marble gripped me.
     "C'mon," said the Kid as he pulled me to him and ran me the length of the dance floor.  I tried to free myself and when he saw I was fighting him he picked me up like a bundle and slung me under his arm.  I could see the grave names flash by as we sped through the swinging doors. 
     Outside the saloon, the Kid slowed his pace, stopped.  He finally put me down, the blasted insufferable Neanderthal.  He stood staring at me, both of us panting, he with exertion and I with fear. 
     Finally I spoke: "  Never--never--never touch me again!"
     I slapped his face, finally, at last, a right vigorous one, then turned and flew down the first alleyway that presented itself. 
     "Hey, gal!" he yelled.
     I am sorry, bumpkin, I thought, but I am most certainly not your "gal."
     "D____it, not that way!"
     I turned my head to reply that his profanity was intolerable but my feet fell out from under me and I slid downward into the earth, which folded in upon itself to bury me alive in blood-red sand. 

 

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