“Hwun! Htwo! Hwun htwo three four…”
Picture a landscape, with the orange light of a crescent moon drifting across it. And, down below, a circle of firelight in the night.
There were the old favorites—the square dances, the reels, the whirling, intricate measures which, if the dancers had carried lights, would have traced out topological complexities beyond the reach of ordinary physics, and the sort of dances that lead perfectly sane people to shout out things like “Do-si-do!” and “Och-aye!” without feeling massively ashamed for quite a long time.
When the casualties were cleared away the survivors went on to polka, mazurka, fox-trot, turkey-trot and trot a variety of other birds and beasts, and then to those dances where people form an arch and other people dance down it, which are incidentally generally based on folk memories of executions, and other dances where people form a circle, which are generally based on folk memories of plagues.
Through it all two figures whirled as though there was no tomorrow.
The lead fiddler was dimly aware that, when he paused for breath, a spinning figure tap-danced a storm out of the mêlée and a voice by his ear said:
YOU WILL CONTINUE, I PROMISE YOU.
When he flagged a second time a diamond as big as his fist landed on the boards in front of him. A smaller figure sashayed out of the dancers and said:
“If you boys don’t go on playing, William Spigot, I will personally make sure your life becomes absolutely foul.”
And it returned to the press of bodies.
The fiddler looked down at the diamond. It could have ransomed any five kings the world would care to name. He kicked it hurriedly behind him.
“More power to your elbow, eh?” said the drummer, grinning.
“Shut up and play!”
He was aware that tunes were turning up at the ends of his fingers that his brain had never known. The drummer and the piper felt it too. Music was pouring in from somewhere. They weren’t playing it. It was playing them.
IT IS TIME FOR A NEW DANCE TO BEGIN. “Duurrrump-da-dum-dum,” hummed the fiddler, the sweat running off his chin as he was caught up in a different tune.
The dancers milled around uncertainly, unsure about the steps. But one pair moved purposefully through them at a predatory crouch, arms clasped ahead of them like the bowsprit of a killer galleon. At the end of the floor they turned in a flurry of limbs that appeared to defy normal anatomy and began the angular advance back through the crowd.
“What’s this one called?”
TANGO.
“Can you get put in prison for it?”
I DON’T BELIEVE SO.
“Amazing.”
The music changed.
“I know this one! It’s the Quirmish bullfight dance! Oh-lay!”
“WITH MILK”?
A high-speed fusillade of hollow snapping noises suddenly kept time with the music.
“Who’s playing the maracas?”
Death grinned.
MARACAS? I DON’T NEED…MARACAS.
And then it was now.
The moon was a ghost of itself on one horizon. On the other there was already the distant glow of the advancing day.