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She thought a moment. "You are called 'the Golden,' is that not correct?"
"Yeah. Mostly because my last name's de Oro."
"And I am Uma of the Golden Lakes. It gives me a thought.
We are both dark-skinned giants, you might say, and we cer-
tainly look as if we belong together."
He wondered what she was driving at and just nodded.
"Kaladon will not expect a pair. Let us, at least for disguise purposes,
register as mates."
"Huh?" It took him aback, mainly because he'd love it that way, but he hardly
wanted to risk alienating her by suggesting it. He just wasn't used to women
this aggressive.
"You don't wish it?"
"Oh, sure. I think it'll be fun," he answered hopefully.
"Let's go."
It was like waking up from some really strange dream, although she knew it was
no dream at all. She wasn't physically tired, but she'd come back up to the
room for a little break and found herself just sitting back, relaxing and
thinking, and she realized thinking was something distasteful. She certainly
hadn't been doing much of it over the last few days, that was for sure.
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It was funny how this reaction had hit her, like something out of the blue,
but suddenly, after being almost frantically active, she no longer felt the
desire. She walked over to the mirror in the room and looked at herself. It
was still strange to see the fairy reflection there, to understand that this
unnat-
urally sexy, kittenish, winged figure was herself. But it wasn't the exterior
that was troubling her; it was what had happened inside to her head and heart.
She'd been to every bar and bistro in the city, she felt certain, but they all
blended into one. And the men so many of them all blended into a faceless
crowd as well. Not a single one stood out as a real human being. Instead, they
were objects, things, nothing more. She went over to a dresser and pulled out
the top drawer. It was crammed with junk small items of jewelry, ornaments,
little carvings, even toys. She was afraid to count them and slammed the
drawer shut and went back to the bed to think.
Had she enjoyed acting that way? Yeah, she had, she had to admit to herself,
but it wasn't really her; at least, not the way she always saw herself. Her
whole body still tingled, and on that level she had never felt better in her
whole life. But
file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%2...ods%202%20-%20Demons%20of%20th
e%20Dancing.txt (88 of 222) [1/19/03 4:26:45 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%20Jack%20L%20-%20The%20Dancing%20G
ods%202%20-%20Demons%20of%20the%20Dancing.txt was this what she was to be for
the rest of her life? How long did a fairy live if not killed? Until Judgment
Day, it was said, and nobody knew how long that could be. Hundreds of years,
perhaps. Maybe thousands. All like this?
She remembered the magic time when she had emerged from the volcanic fires as
a "Kauri and she remembered her sisters of faerie. At the time, they had
seemed radiant, magical children at play, but they didn't seem quite so
exciting or magical any more. Instead, they now seemed like what they must
be permanent fourteen-year-old girls, locked forever in the state of
irresponsible and irrepressible adolescence and freed of all inhibitions; a
female version of the Lost Boys, without
104
DEMONS OF THE DANCING GODS
JACK L. CHALKER
105
even Peter Pan, let alone Wendy, to give them any sort of control or
direction, and each one more or less exactly like the others. Even she had
become exactly like them, and that both-
ered her only because the Kauri didn't know any other existence or any other
way, had never faced or understood responsibility or had a single serious
thought in their playfully empty heads.
She had, and that alone set her apart from them.
But she had been that age once and had been frustratingly restricted by her
mother, the school, and the rest of those forces that kept folks in line.
Still, life had been unhappy enough since adulthood that she had grabbed onto
the chance to return to that state of not-so-innocent grace, to become again
that giggly adolescent without any rules or restrictions whatsoever.
Who wouldn't love that sort of chance but as a chance, a lark. It was only now
that she realized that this wasn't some'
second chance but rather a permanent condition.
Already she had hurt poor Joe, the first man in years to be a real friend, the
one whose kindness and pity gave her this second chance in the first place.
She'd not only hurt him, she'd mocked him, and that was far more painful. Her
practical jokes and funny exercises of her strange powers had frightened
rather than amused or reassured him. Worse, she knew deep down that she might
not have the self-control or willpower to keep those impulses from dominating
her again and that each cycle would make them even easier and more natural to
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accept. The more she lived as a Kauri, the more she would become one inside as
well as out. This she knew, although not really from any faerie insight, but
just from knowing herself. Conditioning did work as Pavlov's dogs had
proved particularly when there were no alternatives and an endless future of
such con-
ditioning. The Earth Mother knew this, and counted on it.
Kauri awoke ^ with the setting sun. Kauri played games, danced, sang, flew
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