Desdemona and the Deep by C. Cooney

Author:C. Cooney [Cooney, C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250229830
Amazon: 1250229839
Publisher: Tor.com
Published: 2019-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

10: THE DAMSEL HOLE

DESDEMONA TURNED, heartsick and snowdrift-slow, and saw Chaz.

Or rather, she saw a woman who looked like Chaz.

Or rather, she saw Chaz . . . who was a woman.

Or rather—and the certainty of her next thought swept a wave of gooseflesh through Desdemona’s body that made her fur stand on end—she saw Chaz, who had always been a woman, and whose outward appearance now matched that truth. The Kobold King, as he had done for Desdemona, had given Chaz a new skin. One that she had chosen for herself, her heart’s desire—the skin she should have been born with.

The curves filling out her dress needed no structural support to shape them, any more than the red curls uncoiling past her waist in luxurious disarray belonged to a wig. The long angles of her jaw had filled out and rounded, and the cartilaginous prominence of the larynx that Chaz had always despised was . . . gone. She was dressed in the same high-necked metallic ivory caftan she had been wearing when she and Desdemona drank champagne together in the billiards room at Breaker House. Perhaps this was the billiards room, only two worlds down, and Chaz had never left it. Just fallen through.

“Look at you,” Chaz whispered, her eyes round and shocked like a coconut’s. “What happened to you?”

Desdemona was heartened that Chaz recognized her at all, this strange beast she had become, with too many claws, too many fangs, too many patchwork parts to name. Pleased, her tails began wagging.

“I am a Thousandfurs,” she said, and for the first time since waking in this world, Desdemona smiled.

Something in that smile, fangs and all, must have convinced Chaz that it was all right to burst into tears and throw herself into Desdemona’s arms. The initial impact knocked Desdemona back a few steps, but then she planted her feet firmly and resigned herself to Chaz’s scolding, tear-scalded embrace.

“I thought I’d never find you. You left me! I came all this way—and you were not here!”

Chaz’s usually impeccable maquillage looked like a massacre: her bloodshot eyes were ringed like a meerkat’s mask, there was mud crack in her rice powder, and a smear of streaky scarlet trailing from one corner of her swollen mouth like blood spatter at a crime scene. She was still crying, but more quietly now, without full awareness but with immaculate self-possession, like a piano prelude meant to imitate rainfall.

Tears had always made Desdemona cross.

“Dry up, Chaz! I’ve already drowned once today!”

But she clung to her friend in turn, holding her ferociously close with both arms and several of her tails. “I know I’m late,” she admitted. “I was waylaid. I’m sorry you were frightened, but I’m here now. And we haven’t much time.”

Time. Her forehead throbbed in reminder. Her mind roared with names and flames and time dripping away, and she looked at her friend, who was dearer to her than anyone, and who must not—who must never, never—flee for her life through these cavernous halls with hounds baying at her heels.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.