Page 67 of The Familiar

But they weren’t pointing at Luzia or any of the hopefuls. They were gesturing to the stage where the puppets of the sorcerer and the queen on her dragon were cowering before the thorns. Their shadows were not.

The puppet queen raised her tiny fist at the puppet hopefuls. The shadow queen put her hands on her naked hips and stuck out her tongue.

The puppet John Dee tugged at his beard in frustration. The shadow John Dee turned his back to the vicar and lifted his robes, baring the silhouette of his ass cheeks.

The audience’s laughter was nervous and Luzia wondered what the king’s confessor and the Vicar of Madrid would think of such lewd humor.

“How is it done?” she asked Teoda. “What bit of stagecraft is this?”

Teoda shook her head. She was backing away from the stage. “This is no illusion. Something’s wrong.”

“Is it part of the trial?” Gracia asked.

The shadows of the puppets were lengthening now, their shapes changing. The queen’s head was too long, her arms too thin. They ended in claws. One of them reached out and slashed at the Elizabeth marionette. The body tore and Luzia heard a cry from behind the black batting as the puppeteer dropped the marionette’s strings.

The shadow shape behind John Dee was hairy and hunching, two horns protruding from its shadow head, a tail lashing the air, a massive phallus protruding from between its thighs. It leapt onto the Dee puppet’s shoulders, strangling it as the crowd shrieked and rose from their chairs, stumbling backward.

“It’s a test!” cried Fortún. “It must be a test!”

The shadow queen was on her knees and the shadow dragon was behind her, mounting her. On the dais, the vicar and his holy men rose, seemingly as one, but they didn’t take up their crosses or pray; they ran, fleeing down the steps into the gardens.

“The devil is here!” cried Gracia.

“Run,” said Luzia, grabbing her arm.

But the demon shadow was the size of a cat on its hind legs now and it leapt off the stage. Gracia screamed and it lunged for her, crawling up her skirts.

Without thinking Luzia grabbed for it. But when her hands brushed its body, she hissed in revulsion. It had no real form and yet it filled her with disgust. She forced herself to reach for it again and seized its wriggling body. It squirmed in her hands, hairy and shrieking, and she hurled it as far as she could, desperate to be rid of the crawling, slippery loathing that filled her.

Luzia lurched away from the stage, searching for some kind of help, but the world around her had dissolved into nightmare. She couldn’t see Fortún or Teoda or Santángel. People were screaming and knocking over their chairs, running for the gravel path or back to the palace. The torches had toppled and the tented dais had caught fire. She heard the pounding of hoofbeats and saw guards on horseback streaming into the garden.

“It’s real,” Gracia said, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes were wide as moons, her whole body shaking. “It’s real.”

Luzia wiped her hands on her skirts and hauled Gracia to her feet. “Run, Gracia! Come on, you gorgeous lump, I can’t carry you!”

They stumbled toward the palace. Surely there had to be safety there. Light. Order. Sense. Everywhere she looked she saw only smoke and fire, people shouting in fear.

“Why did no one tell me?” Gracia wept.

“You thought we were all pretending?” Luzia couldn’t quite believe it. “You thought we were all frauds.”

“Of course I did!”

“But you couldn’t have hoped to win!”

“I didn’t come here to win!” Gracia bellowed. “I came here to find a husband!”

If Luzia hadn’t been so terrified, she would have laughed. “There!” She pulled Gracia toward the doors that led to the ballroom. Someone had gotten them open.

Luzia lost her footing, her legs tangling in her skirts. Gracia turned to help her, then screamed, her face contorted in alarm. Luzia felt something crawling up her back.

She reached over her shoulder and struggled not to retch as her hands made contact with something shivering and vile. But she couldn’t get purchase. Its claws were in her hair, digging into her scalp.

She fell to her knees and then she was on the ground, as the thing on top of her pressed her face into the muck. She could feel the weight of it on her ribs, her neck, impossibly heavy, shoving her down, crushing her ribs.

Hell had come for her, and her mind was too full of fear to find words of salvation. All she could think of was the Ave Maria. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

She felt herself yanked upward, saw sky and branches, then nothing but the ground racing by beneath her. She let out a grunt as her hip took the brunt of a saddle’s pommel.