Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) by Kyell Gold Read Free Book Online Page B

had poured all their passion and not-inconsiderable talent into the brushstrokes and colors that brought the ladies to life.
    Thierry stopped me in front of the portrait of a young fox lady with a pure white pelt. Her eyes, a stunning blue, blazed out of the painting at us, and the snowy curves of her body, though not painted with detail, were rendered with sure, passionate strokes of the brush. Her tail curved elegantly behind her, suggestive without being unseemly, and both paws at her hips were presented outward and open toward us: a gesture of welcome, one might think, until one’s gaze was drawn back up to the blaze of those blue eyes, which warned that any welcome would be a negotiation with the proud spirit within.
    “It’s masterful,” I said.
    Without a word, Thierry pointed me to the signature at the base of the painting: Abrazzo. I could scarcely believe that the goat we had spent the afternoon with, whose work I had glanced at and found unremarkable, could have painted a work like this. Even though the subject was undeniably female, I could hardly bear to tear myself away from it.
    The rough carpeting of the hallway gave way to a lush, fine rug, with interwoven patterns of honey gold on a background of blood red. Upon closer study, I saw that the patterns were the sails of a windmill, and the decorations on each of the sails were small figures: sheep, goats, foxes, wolves, rabbits, rats, tigers, wildcats, deer, boars, all climbing the sails in a glorious festival. Thierry had to push me along the corridor, as I was quite absorbed in studying the pattern and we were slowing the progress of a rabbit and badger behind us. I continued to look down until we emerged into the main hall of the club, and here my eyes rose to behold a wilder spectacle by far than had been painted even in my imagination.
    The main room of the club stretched out half the length of the Great Hall of the Senate. Thierry led me onto a spacious floor below a ring of private balconies. Dozens of small tables stood before us, each surrounded by two or three wooden chairs. Hardly any of the chairs were occupied, though, for though the heavy red curtain remained drawn over the stage to my right, the band of musicians in the small pit in front of it was playing in full force.
    I am of course most drawn to the lovely elegance of a symphony, or the delicate beauty of chamber music. But there was a fire, a passion to this music that I had not heard before from any instruments. They had no harpsichords, nor violins, but rather blew horns and rattled on piano keys. They pounded on snare drums and struck an instrument I had never seen, an assemblage of metal bars in a scale that trilled upon my ears behind the other sounds and brought a smile to my lips. I have since learned that it is called a “xylophone,” but at the time it was an exotic marvel. My feet tapped to the beat of the drum and the soaring melodies of the horn, but I was far from the only one.
    I said that hardly any chairs were occupied, and that is not to say that the hall itself was empty. All the people lucky enough to have gained entrance to the club were crowding the spaces between the tables, dancing with each other or by themselves. Their eyes were closed in some cases, open and glittering with excitement in others. They twisted or shimmied in place, or jumped and hopped. They clasped hands in paws, spun each other around in tight circles. They wagged tails, tugged on tails, slapped tails against each other. Some of the dances, I will confess, were much more lewd than I had ever seen in a public place. But to my eyes at that time, there was nothing unsavory or grotesque about it. It was the freest expression of unfettered joy that I had yet seen, and God curse me for a weak thing, but I wished desperately to take part, to let my duties and cares be cast to the wind as so many of those below were doing. I wished to experience that carelessness, that giddy delight in simply being