Her body writhed with orgasmic glee as she spun about the
dance floor looking back at us. We’d picked her up just outside the forest that
circled Fort Montgomery. She’d come out of the woods with grapevines wrapped
about her head like a crown and a dress that made her look as though taking it
off would have been putting on more clothes. From the moment that she joined the patrol it
was as if discipline and order had become distant memories. She laughed and we
laughed with her. She called us her escort and we lifted her on our shoulders and
carried her into the Fort laughing and singing like we’d just won the war.
Captain Davis rushed out his office and stormed over to
us. His face was flush with anger and every stomp across the yard sounded like
a drum beat to my ears. He boomed, “What’s the meaning of this?”
And she laughed. It was like music and as she slide off
the shoulders of Caruthers and Ledbetter this coy smile played across her face.
“Oh don’t be like that Captain,” she said as she ran her fingers across his
chest and laid her head against him. The Captain stuttered and sputtered as she
pressed herself close to him. Then she leaned up and pulled his ear to her
mouth and whispered words that brought a blush to his cheeks and left his mouth
hanging wide open as he wordlessly nodded his head.
“Oh you will,” she positively squealed. “There’s a party
tonight,” she said as she spun toward us, “You all simply must be there.”
It wasn’t a request.
No sooner had she said there would be a party than did
the whole garrison begin prepping for it. No man or woman was spared from
preparing for the party. Hogs were slaughtered, chickens plucked, presents
wrapped, and wine and liquor were brought from every corner of the Fort. Finally
dusk came and the party was to begin. She came walking down from Captain Davis’
office, which he had vacated for her, in a black dress with ivory flowers in
salacious patterns that made you long to trade places with the fabric.
We were all standing as she came down watching for her
return. Watching her walk towards the head table made the world seemingly stop turning.
My breath was caught in my throat and I knew that if she didn’t look at me that
I would die there and then. But she did look at me, and she even took my hand
as she passed and whispered in my ear that I must save a dance for her. If I replied
then providence was with me for I fear that I merely mumbled a reply that might
as well have been cabbages for all the sense it made. Yet she smiled and squeezed
my hand before she took the stage and smiled at all of us. “Time to feast my
darlings,” she said in that beautiful voice of hers.
As one we all tore into the food in front of us with
abandon. Our hunger consumed us and we ate anything we could get our hands on. Meat,
flesh, gristle, and bone were devoured with a ravenous hunger that shocked and
frightened me. Yet I was no more able to stop myself than I was to slow down
any of the others near me.
Then she clapped her hands. So gently and soft that I marveled
at how any of us heard her; yet not a single person failed to stop their
gorging when she did. “My darlings,” she said with a lovely smile, “it’s time
we dance.”
Captain Davis stood and coughed before he said, “Madame,
I’m afraid that we haven’t any instruments save a drum and trumpet. Poor
choices for dancing music I’m afraid.”
“Oh,” she said with a pout, “but I do so want to listen
to music as we dance.”
Men and women tore from the tables and ransacked the town
looking for any instruments they could find that might accompany the drum and
trumpet. Instruments were improvised and a chorus was made on the spot. She was
so happy at our ingenuity that she jumped up and down while clapping her hands
and giggling. We had saved her dance she said!
The band began to play a tuneless song that jarred the
mind and made grown men grind their teeth. Yet she was happy and so we danced.
We danced for hours and hours, till night turned to day and again to night.
Still we danced because she was having so much fun. We didn’t want to
disappoint her.
We were still dancing when the first person died. Old
Lady Ward. Poor thing, her heart just couldn’t take the excitement of it all.
We keep dancing but do you know what the Lady did? She was so concerned that we
might become thirsty that she had a couple of the boys pick her body and let
the blood out. – Not on the floor like some heathen, godless thing but into the
barrels of wine. The dead would keep us going she said with a laugh, and we
laughed with her as we raised our glasses time and time again to toast her health and the dance.
I cannot tell you how long we danced, or how many had
their life’s blood added to the wine, only that I danced long enough to be held
by her. She was even more beautiful than before. She towered over me now,
nearly a foot taller, where before I would have sworn that she were but five
feet. She wrapped herself about me and the thorns that broke her skin and sank
into my own bought a bittersweet gasp from my lips as I saw her lick my own
blood from her fingertips.
“My Lady,” I managed to stammer when she cocked her head
to the side and looked at me, “have I done something to displease you?”
She carefully laid her head on my shoulder. Can you
imagine a giantess doing so innocent and gentle a gesture? Yet here she had her head on my
shoulder and she whispered into my ear, “I’m only sorry.”
“Sorry for what, Dearest?”
“I’m sorry that all of you are having to pay for that
fool Captain’s sins.”
“Sins, Madam?”
She stood up to her full height, towering over the keep,
and the music stopped. “Yes, sins,” she said, her voice booming like thunder. “He
came into my temple and overturned my alter, spilled my sacrificial wine, and
burned my Priestess on the stake. He defaced my images and ordered the temple
burned to the ground. Why?”
I stammered as I strained to look upon her face, “I - I
do not know my Lady.”
She squatted down so I could see her face again and in
her eyes I saw the spiraling depths of the universe unfolding. “Because his god
is modest and meek.” She said it with menace in her voice and a tinge of
disgust. “Modesty,” she mocked, “in all things from dress to sex. Can you
imagine Chee?”
I shook my head, “No my Lady.”
“Of course you can’t my dear, sweet, Chee,” she said as
she ran her massive finger along the side of my face. “You still honor the Old
Gods and our rituals. Even here during the cleansing you poured some wine out
for me before drinking the rest for yourself.”
“I,” but words failed me. Here standing before me was
Abita, the Lady of Amber, Goddess of the Drink, Debauchery, Dance, and
Festivals. She was real and more beautiful than anything I had ever imagined. I
should have recognized her and in my anger I turned my gaze away.
“Now don’t go doing that, little man. No harm has come
from you, yet, and for that you will live even as all the rest die to the Dance
of the Tarantella.”
So it was that I lived and
became her Priest while the rest of Fort Montgomery danced itself to death. She
sent me out into the world with a single message: Honor the Old Gods and their
ways, for they are done with our shit.
Dungeons and Drunkards
Part 2: The Dance of the Tarantella by Charles Akins
