6 Fantasy Stories by Robert T. Jeschonek Read Free Book Online Page B

estimated that there were thousands, tens of thousands, all encircling a distant dais in the center of the cavern. All watching a single figure on that dais, a woman, all listening to her voice as it echoed throughout the vast space.
    At first I thought she might be Countess Calypso, but no. I couldn't be sure if she was anyone I'd ever known. I couldn't understand a word she said, either. She was speaking some kind of foreign language, one I didn't recognize. That alone amazed me, because I'd thought I'd known every language on Earth.
    Not that the women in the cavern seemed to have any trouble understanding. As the woman on the dais shouted rapid-fire jumbles of alien words, the crowd around her clapped and cheered and shouted back at her using the same language.
    Bess was no exception. I saw her up ahead at the edge of the crowd, alongside Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan. As I watched, Bess clapped her hands overhead and called out in response to what the woman on the dais was saying. I shuddered, unaccustomed to hearing the words of an alien language emerging from my own dear wife's ruby lips.
    I turned to Lady Crenshaw at my side and leaned close, speaking into her ear. "What are they saying? I don't understand a word of it."
    "You wouldn't, would you?" Lady Crenshaw raised one eyebrow and looked at me with a considering gaze. After a moment, she seemed to come to a decision, and her expression softened. " Lingua femme, we call it. The language of women. A way for women to communicate no matter where they come from or what the dominant language of their homeland might be."
    I scowled at her, taking it all in. "This lingua femme ...you've known of it all along?"
    Her smirk had a trace of playfulness around the edges. "Among other things, darling."
    My mind was working overtime as things started falling into place. I was afraid to ask the next question that occurred to me, afraid to hear the answer from her lips. "Undine." A bitter chill pervaded my body. Cold sweat trickled between my shoulder blades and down my back between the corset and my skin. "Have you been to this place before?"
    Lady Crenshaw giggled. "Now, darling." She hooked her arm around my elbow and led me toward the crowd. "How many times have I told you about asking questions when you already know what the answers will be?"
    *****
    I did not resist as Lady Crenshaw pulled me forward. I was, of course, concerned that Bess would find me out, but a part of me actually hoped that she would. I felt in need of another ally against this army; Bess might be a part of it, but I still held out hope that she would take my side when my true identity was exposed.
    As we drew near to Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan, the speaker on the central dais began to sing an eerie, keening song. The strange music that had been playing through the cavern rose in pitch and tempo to match her, and the army of women sang along.
    As the priestess on the dais (for that was what she seemed to me, a priestess invoking an ancient rite) raised up her arms, so did every woman in the cavern except for Lady Crenshaw. The singing grew higher and faster with each passing second.
    "What on Earth are they doing? " I had to shout for Lady Crenshaw to hear me. "Some kind of incantation? "
    Lady Crenshaw didn't answer. As we reached the crowd, she too raised her arms and sang along with the priestess.
    The red light in the cavern pulsated like pumping blood, growing alternately brighter and darker. Above the priestess, the air swirled with thickening pink mist.
    "Undine!" I shook her by the shoulder. "What's happening?" But she ignored me.
    Suddenly, the swirling mist above the priestess compressed, snapping into a solid form. It was a form I knew well, one that had been foremost in my mind since the day I'd caught my wife coming home late from the market.
    It was the same elongated eyeball mounted inside a pyramid-shaped Egyptian symbol as the one that had hung from the silver pendant Bess had tried to conceal.