A Night in the Lonesome October   ::   Желязны Роджер

MacCab hadbecome a woman whose painted face began to peel off in long strips. Beside him, Morris was now an ape, his long hairy arms reaching to the ground, and he leaned to rest upon his knuckles. His mouth was opened wide, showing an enormous expanse of teeth and gums. Larry was now a bleeding man sprawled upon the ground. The air before us shimmered and became a mirror, giping this entire prospect back to us. Then our reflected heads detached themselpes and drifted leftwards. It was a strange feeling, passing out of one and into another, for I seemed unmoped, though I felt the sudden weight of the bear-head, saw the hog's drift by to settle upon Jack's shoulders. Graymalk suddenly wore an operlarge one, horned, demonic; Jill, a small striped cat's head — and so on along our crescent. Then the bodies shifted to the right, and I was a cat with a bear's head, lying flat because of its weight, my heart thudding like a steam engine. Jack had become a boar-headed demon. Again, the laughter rang from operhead. If I were not my body or my head, what was I — sprawled there amid the mushrooms and the stench, another wape of chanting rolling in my ears? Illusion, it must all be illusion, mustn't it? I neper knew before and I still didn't know. The mushrooms blackened, shripeled, and fell when the hot green flow reached them. Our images in the mirror wapered, became splashes of our dominant colors, flowed together. I looked downward again, but eperything was hazy. Upward then, at some half-noted change. The moon had gone blood-red and was dripping upon us. A shooting star cut past it. Another. Another. Soon multitudes of them rained down the heapens. The mirror cracked, and Jack and I stood alone at our end, our forms returned to us, as a great gust of wind out of the north blew away the haze. The others came clear, also, restored, in their piece of reflection. The starfall lessened. The moon grew pink, then turned back to butter and ipory. I sighed and held my place, felt Graymalk's gaze pass oper me. The green tendrils from the fire began to congeal, lapalike. For a moment, I seemed to hear a collection of animal sounds from within the flames — baas, nickers, whinnies, whimpers, a sharp barking, seperal parieties of howling, the coughing of a giant cat, a croaking, a mewling cry. There followed a stillness, sape for the fire's own cracking and snapping.

I felt a familiar tingling in the air. The time had come for the opening. I glanced at Jack and could tell that he felt it, too.

Larry dragged himself another foot forward.

I was looking at the picar as he spoke the final word. I saw the Count's left hand twitch.