The fics I remixed may be found here
LLD Chapter 205: Cecile XV There are No Spiders in December
LLD Chapter 244: Cecile XX The Bathtub
LLD Chapter 246: Cecile XXI Darling!
LLD Chapter 248: Cecile XXII You Spoke of My Eyes
MM Part 7 (just prior to this)
Author's Notes, part two: This was originally posted at Robyn's site for the remix challenge. Please click and check out the rest of the entries! Also, please note that the last link above is to a direct message at the hockey-dreams archive. If you are not a member of this yahoo group, you will not be able to read the post.
***
The last thing Igor heard before he walked through the porthole was Lord Odin just beginning to edge into his vague, ominous version of a laugh.
In the instant between stepping into the porthole and stepping out again, Igor heard the laughter, and knew immediately that something was very different. Since something different had rarely happened to him in the many years of his existence, he was intrigued. It wasn't often that Igor didn't know exactly what was going to happen, well before it actually did, so in the first surprise he was experiencing in a long time, he was prepared to welcome the sensation and results.
He was not quite prepared, however, for the complete shock of moving from a humanoid body into one distinctly less evolved.
As the porthole closed behind him and the laughter faded, Igor's curiosity and beginnings of alarm were arrested by an instinct too strong for him to deny: he stayed absolutely still. He didn't move a muscle, not so much as a hair on one of his many legs budged even slightly. In confusion, Igor tried to focus eyes that were no longer two, and to see with vision that no longer had any color. There was light and there was dark, and there were vague shapes, but that was all.
The world (he assumed it was Earth, it certainly felt like Earth, unless the Lord's anger had extended further than Igor feared it already had) was silent. It wasn't just a quiet place to which he'd been transported. There was literally no sound he could understand, for Igor now had no ears. His brain was receiving some information, but in an entirely different way than his human self experienced it, so Igor spent the next while in cautious experimentation and learning.
He carefully flexed one of his legs, and was instantly amazed at the things he knew. The humidity of the air, for example; there was little enough in this place he'd come to. The air was very dry, and, if such a thing were possible, very thin. Curious to know more, he flexed the rest of his legs. All eight of them.
"Well, so I'm a spider," Igor said to himself, in spider fashion. He tapped the surface of the floor beneath him; it made of rough fibers that made the sensitive hairs on his clawed feet cringe slightly.
"Hmm," he said. He'd made Lord Odin angry, and this was the result. He thought for a bit about his situation, and finally decided that it was, as really almost everything in existence, very funny. He would have laughed, except that spiders don't have the physical capacity to laugh. Igor laughed inside.
Walking with eight legs in coordination took some getting used to, but eventually he got the hang of moving them all in concert, and was able to pick up some speed as he roved over the floor and various objects. He could feel the things over which he climbed, and taste their chemical structure, but he could not identify them. He made his way to an impossibly high barrier, deeply curved and ridged at the bottom, roughly textured above. He placed a claw tentatively against the surface and found that it held.
"Why not?" Igor said, and carefully began climbing straight up the wall.
Eventually, the novelty of his new shape began to wear off, and Igor's mind drifted back to his purpose in coming here at all.
"Clearly I am not completely a spider," Igor mused as he moved up the wall with growing confidence. "Since I can still think and reason. I am pretty sure a spider would not remember all the things I do."
As he navigated the walls and eventually the ceiling, Igor thought back to a day or so earlier (he couldn't remember the exact date; when jumping dimensions and time tracks, it was sometimes hard to tell what had happened when). He and his fellow member of the High Council Alexei Gusarov (Igor referred to him as Goose, though not to his face) had become aware that something was about to happen on Earth that would be very bad for everyone involved, and even worse for their alternate life forces. A life was going to end when and where it should not end. It was going to happen, but it wasn't supposed to; some sort of glitch in the paperwork, Igor and Alexei decided. However, they weren't so much concerned with what had malfunctioned so long as it could be fixed.
It was something that had to be handled personally, they both agreed. Igor suggested a game of chess to determine which of them would go to Earth to save the life. Alexei pointed out that time was of the essence, and instead suggested arm wrestling. Igor turned one of his spider eyes toward his front legs and winced at the memory of his sound defeat.
Informing Lord Odin of what was about to occur was vital; the Lord monitored all portholes that operated within His Universe, and an unexplained, unscheduled door was sure to provoke his wrath, even if it was opened by a member of the Council. A courtesy call would naturally have to be paid. And so Igor had removed his sombrero (he and Alexei had just gotten back from one of their Earth vacations to a place called Mexico), put on more appropriate clothing, and went to see the Lord and Master of his Universe.
"You're telling me," the Lord had boomed in His great Voice. "That the life of one silly little Earth girl is worth all this fuss?"
"Yes, Lord," Igor replied respectfully, nodding his head. "She is but a single thread, but she is a foundation; if she were cut the entire tapestry would unravel."
"Oh, how poetic," Lord Odin yawned. Although He rarely made Himself visible, His Voice was all around Igor in the chamber where he had been granted audience. Igor glanced around. The walls were decorated in every bright color imaginable, and each one clashed with the one next to it. Gold friezes adorned the ceiling, and the room itself was full of overstuffed, ornate furniture and colorful carpets. Long bolts of sparkly silk draped windows that looked out on the stars. It was way overdone and horribly tacky, Igor thought to himself. The entire room was one big eyesore.
"I HEARD THAT!" the Lord's voice reverberated, shaking several overdone portraits to the floor. Igor remembered sheepishly that his thoughts were not private here.
"I am sorry, my Lord," Igor bowed to emphasize his point.
"YOU HAD BETTER BE!" There was silence for a moment. "Do you know how this Earth girl will meet her untimely doom?"
"I am not exactly sure of the details," Igor admitted. He pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket, and adjusted his spectacles to read it. "All I know is that it will take place in a small room, and that there must be a pool of water in order to save her."
"A pool of water." Lord Odin repeated. "In a small room."
"A small, pink room," Igor added helpfully, looking up from his paper.
"Hmmmm." Lord Odin paused. It was a long pause. A very, very long pause. Igor refrained from tapping his foot and supposed that if one ruled the Universe, one would naturally feel to take all the time there was. He, however, did not have much time to spare at all. He tried hard to control his impatience.
"Igor," the Lord said at last.
"Yes, my Lord?" Igor replied quickly.
"How dare you criticize the appearance I have bestowed upon this chamber? I DO command this entire Universe, INCLUDING yourself, you know."
"Yes, Lord," Igor said. A small bite of frustration crept into his voice despite his best efforts.
"I like the portraits particularly," the Lord continued. "They were painted by an Earth man in honor of his God. The Creator of Earth's a distant cousin of Mine, you know."
Igor rolled his eyes, just slightly. "That's very interesting, my Lord, but I really must know-"
"CUTTING ME OFF, ARE YOU?" The Lord boomed, and room trembled further in his anger. "Very well, impatient one. I grant you permission to go to Earth, if only to get you out of MY SIGHT!"
The Ruler's rage was fearful, even to one of Igor's powers, but the glowing white of the newly-created porthole in front of him completely absorbed Igor's attention. There was a mission to be had. He could apologize to Lord Odin for his haste later.
"Good luck, IGOR!" Lord Odin's Voice grated against Igor's ears as he stepped through the portal. There was not only anger, but a certain smug glee in his words that made Igor uncomfortable, even as he crossed barriers of time and space. "YOU'RE GOING TO NEED IT!"
"It appears," spider Igor said as he crawled, "that I should have been more respectful." He sighed. It was far too late to apologize now. This was most certainly Earth, and so Igor was forced to remain in the form Odin had chosen for him until he returned to the Universe he normally occupied. Igor paused partway across the ceiling of the room. If he'd had a forehead, it would have furrowed with thought. That was an interesting point, could he bring himself home? Could he, as a spider, summon the power to open a porthole?
"I am putting the... how do they say here? Cart before the horse." Igor said to himself. He was here on Earth for a very important purpose: a girl was going to be killed, and he had to stop it from happening. Was that even going to be possible, in this form?
"Stupid Goose," Igor sighed. "Arm wrestling, I mean really..."
Suddenly, the hairs on his legs registered a change in the air currents. The air was moving. Movement! There was something moving into the room! With his spider self telling him to remain motionless conflicting with his desire to know what was going on, Igor lost his grip on the ceiling and fell.
He landed on a smooth surface that was hard beneath, and from the way it recoiled beneath him, and from what his legs could tell him, it was alive! Igor tried to get a grip on the smoothness, but could not. He slid sideways and tumbled further, far down to the floor below. He lay on his back, winded (his heart was along his back in this form, his lungs on his belly), his legs waving helplessly.
And suddenly Igor knew that the tiny hairs on his legs could also detect sound, because whatever creature he'd landed on let out a monstrous shriek. There was a whoosh of air, and he shook with the vibrations as whatever it was pounded to a corner of the room. As confused and frightened as he was (Igor was rarely frightened, and he was not enjoying the feeling), he found, to his great surprise, that the vibrations reaching his legs were making sense to him.
"Freddy!" the creature yelled. It sounded terrified, and Igor could appreciate the feeling. "Freddy, get help! There's the biggest spider I've ever seen in my whole life and it's got me trapped!!"
Igor thrashed his legs around until he'd righted himself, but just as he'd started to dash away, an air pressure change stopped him in his tracks. He stared, trying to figure out what had changed. He stretched a leg forward tentatively and felt something hard and cool and clear. He tasted it. Glass!
His world shifted as he tumbled, and darkness came from over head. A roof closed over him... a lid! He was in a glass jar! Igor beat his legs against the walls of his new prison, but to no avail; he was good and trapped. His small spider systems rolled over as he felt himself lifted through the air. He could sense he was being watched, and peered hard through the glass to see what was on the other side. It was an odd image, but the light and dark shapes made out what was unmistakably a human face. Igor remembered his fall; he must have landed right on the top of the face's head. As he watched, the face opened its mouth. Igor felt the muted vibrations though the glass.
"Gotcha!" the face said.
Igor froze. He was doomed!
And amid his whirling thoughts and shaken body, Igor had a sudden flash of clarity, and a vision appeared in his mind. He could see the glass around him shattering, and his body flung free. What made this even more horrifying was that he knew, with every fiber of his being and all the power that he possessed, that it would come true.
He quailed. Killed by an Earth dweller, in the shape of a spider, all because he'd been impatient enough to incur Lord Odin's wrath. Was this the end, then, for one of his immense power?
That could be it! Igor thought suddenly. But could he still use that power, though? Trapped in an arachnid body? It was a long shot, but it was his only hope. With a deep breath (how strange to be breathing though a tube in the skin of his underbelly) Igor gathered his thoughts. He reached out with his mind and attempted to contact the face.
"Please!" he flung the thought wide. "Please, don't step on me! Don't hurt me!"
"Don't hurt YOU?" the face repeated. It sounded surprised, but calm, which was good. Igor did not want his prison hurled against the wall, with a scream of terror as the last sound he'd hear. "What about ME? You're the biggest spider I've ever seen!"
"I'm not really a spider," Igor replied, playing for time and using all the inner calm he could muster. "Please be careful with the jar. I won't hurt you."
The face studied him. "Do you promise?"
"Yes!" Igor sent the thought emphatically. "Yes, I promise."
"Okay, then!" and the face actually giggled. With a bound that left Igor reeling, she landed on a large piece of furniture. From the way it bounced, it was probably a bed.
"So if you're not really a spider, what are you?" the face asked. It held the jar closer, and Igor could see a great eye looking at him. "You look like a spider."
"I'm not," Igor thought back. "My name is Igor. A very powerful Lord turned me into a spider."
"Really?" The eye widened. "Why did he do that?"
"He was angry with me for something I'd thought," Igor sent back ruefully. "But I can't do anything about it right now. I just need to stay out from underfoot until He changes me back again. I'm usually a... a very powerful being."
"Oooh..." the face appeared to be impressed.
There was something strange here, Igor thought, this time to himself, and what was strange was that the face didn't appear to act as if any of this WAS strange. Which it definitely was, for someone living on this planet, on this plane of reality. But the face's voice didn't sound upset in any way. It was speaking as if it was perfectly normal to be receiving thoughts from a spider who wasn't really a spider. While the face was silent, Igor extended the mental powers he still apparently could manipulate and probed deeper.
"Ah!" Igor thought to himself. "A child! That explains it." He knew that children of Earth were very open to accepting powers their adult forms denied the existence of, and therefore lacked. No one was sure why; maybe their powers of imagination, which were very strong in their own fashion, made them more susceptible. She was a female child too, Igor surmised, also helpful. Males were more easily distractible, and less aware of the subtleties around them. And if Igor wasn't mistaken (he very rarely was), there was something more to this particular female child. A certain potential... he could almost see it. Maybe if he were in his humanoid shape...
Was this the girl he was supposed to save? She certainly was special, but something inside Igor told him no. This was not the one.
"My name is Jana," the girl told him. Her voice was bold and confident. "Dont worry, Igor, I won't let anyone hurt you."
"Thank you," Igor responded politely. "If anyone stepped on me, it would be very bad."
"They won't step on you in this," the girl named Jana said matter-of-factly. She tapped the side of the jar. Igor winced.
"Please don't do that," he thought at her plaintively.
"Sorry," she replied. "Ooh, you'll need some air holes to breathe, right?"
"That would be good," Igor thought back, again politely. He had to tread carefully if he was going to make it through this. "Though if you let me out, I promise not to hurt or scare you..."
"Nah, I think you should stay in there, Igor," Jana answered cheerfully. "You said you wanted to be safe, right?" She retrieved a long skinny object (it looked like a pen to Igor, though he couldn't be sure) from somewhere and poked several air holes in the lid. Igor made sure to keep his body low and out of the way.
"There, that's better, Igor!" Jana said happily. "Now you can breathe and we can be together! You can live with me and be my friend until the LORD changes you back!"
Before Igor could reply, there was a rush of blurred shapes as two figures came into the room. Igor could see them faintly over the girl's shoulder. Jana turned to them, and Igor set about seeing if he could escape from his jar. While it was all well and good that he was safe, he needed to be free if he was going to accomplish his mission. There was a babble of voices that Igor did not try to sort out through the glass. Just as he was investigating the small air holes in the lid, however, Jana seized the jar with both hands, and he was thrown against the glass as it was raised up high.
A face, another child by the look of it, screamed in terror, and Igor would have screamed too, if he could have. He pounded his legs frantically on the glass, fighting back against the vibrations pounding him. Jana swung the jar again, and this time it was a larger face that screamed. It was a woman's face, and a woman's scream.
And even as he desperately wished he could stop being screamed at, even as he banged fruitlessly against the sides of the jar, something inside Igor's mind clicked at the sight of this latest face, and the sound of her voice. It was her, the one he'd come for. This was the woman who was going to die.
~~~
All in all, Igor was quite sick of being a spider.
Days and days had passed, he wasn't exactly sure how many. It was hard to count when you were a spider, and your home was a jar, furnished with twigs and leaf litter. His body surged with frustration and impatience, and Igor sighed in spider fashion. He could tell that the time was drawing near. He had to get out of here!
He continued to talk with Jana, and every day he asked her to let him go. But she would have none of it. While it was all well and good that she had a child's ability to read the thoughts he sent her, she had a child's stubbornness to go with it. She was having too much fun playing with a talking spider, and was reluctant for the fun to end.
Not that Igor hadn't learned anything during his confinement. He'd learned a great deal more about this woman he'd come to save, Cecile her name was. He'd asked Jana for lots of information about her. But other than the fact that she was the children's nanny, Jana had not much to offer. Eventually, Igor was forced to probe the woman himself.
It was difficult to do through the walls and into another room, but eventually he found her, while she was sleeping. It was good that she slept, for he found a mind with a very subtle power to it. He tested her dreaming thoughts, and eventually surmised that she might even be capable of receiving his own, as Jana was. This was a strangely powerful young woman, and Igor was confident that his first instinct about her had been correct: she was the one.
Igor had also learned that where the event would take place. He'd caught a glimpse of the small bathroom adjoining Jana's room, and though he could not see in color, Jana told him the tub, sink, and decorations were pale pink.
In return for all the information she was giving out, however, Jana demanded information from him. Igor complied, knowing his stories of Witch Land and the Leprechaun King would be passed off as childish imagination if repeated to anyone else. Jana was eager to learn more of these strange lands Igor had been to (when he was not a spider, of course) but, oddly enough, she seemed to be familiar with them already. There was something very special about this girl, Igor decided. When he got back to the High Council, he'd have to keep an eye on her. But though he continued to ask for his freedom, Jana continued to refuse. As the time of the attempted murder pressed near, Igor realized he'd have to do the first step from his jar.
It was quiet as Jana slept, and Igor collected his thoughts from his perch on the bedside table. He reached out, feeling his way toward the bathtub. Relaxing his body under the shelter of twigs, he examined the plumbing. Faulty. Good, very good. He concentrated hard, letting his mind work a spell, drawing the water closer to the surface.
Soon the gurgling of the drain spewing forth water was loud enough to wake Jana. She muttered under her breath as she swung her legs out of bed. She grabbed the jar, carrying it with her as she investigated the noise, but Igor's spider body was worn out from the effort of his non-spider mind. The world went dark as he slipped into an exhausted sleep.
~~~
Igor awoke to Jana's accusatory voice. "Did you do this?"
He opened his eyes wide, and emerged from under the litter. From the brightness about him, it was day, and if his spider instincts were telling him correctly, morning.
"Do what?" Igor replied easily.
"Do what? Do what, do this!" Jana waved the jar toward the bathtub. "The drain keeps throwing up water!"
"Yes," Igor admitted. "I had to do it Jana, I am sorry. And now you have to let me go."
"No!" Jana answered petulantly. "I already told you, it's too cold out there for a spider! You'll get hypo-active in no time flat!"
"Hypothermia," Igor corrected her.
"That's what I said, hyper-thermos," Jana said angrily. "Now you make the drain stop it! You gotta make it stop throwing up! The tub is being groooss!"
"No, Jana," Igor answered patiently. "I have to be let out of this jar."
And suddenly he heard a reply, but not from Jana: a single thought, seeping through the glass and into his consciousness. Nothing complex; it was simply the word "what?" But with a start, Igor realized it had come from Cecile. Before his spider self sensed her presence he knew she was near, and that she had picked up, on some level, his mental conversation with Jana.
Knowing the sight of him frightened her, he hid himself in the litter. He listened to the short conversation that followed between Cecile and Jana, and eventually Jana placed the jar on the floor, between the sink and the toilet. As their footsteps echoed away, Igor banged the glass with one of his legs in frustration. He was in the right place, at nearly the right time, with the right conditions, but he was still trapped and helpless. Knowing there was nothing he could do but wait, he did. He silently awaited his prey with all the patience a spider possessed, but could not help falling asleep again.
~~~
Igor awoke with a start from the first dream he'd had since assuming his spider form. It was the vision he'd had soon after arriving, the moment he'd found himself entrapped in the jar. He felt himself flying through the air, striking something hard. Flying glass and he landed on the floor. He was scooped up by something soft and warm, and he was flying through the air again...
Igor snapped back to reality when he realized what had awoken him. He was not alone in the bathroom. Sounds registered, shrieking... Cecile! She was screaming! A low snarling and shouts accompanied it. Cecile was in trouble! This was what he had come to stop!
Igor hurled his large-for-a-spider body against the jar, trying to force it into the open. He flung himself once, twice, and on the third time, Cecile crashed into view in front of him. She was gasping for breath, curled up in a defensive position. She was only inches from the jar and Igor spread all eight legs against it.
"Please!" he sent the thought. He couldn't tell if it made it through the confusion and fear twisting her mind, but silently thanked Lord Odin when Cecile reached out and curled her hand around the jar. He braced himself for what he knew was coming next.
The loudest sound that the world had ever produced assaulted Igor as the glass shattered, smashing against the toilet and spilling twigs, litter, and spider to the floor of the bathroom. He kicked his legs briefly before he felt Cecile's hand close over him. He wriggled his against her, trying to encourage her to throw him at her attacker. He was not disappointed.
Igor flew through the air and collided with the face of a human male. Igor wrapped his legs around the man's nose and held on with his claws. There was a rush of air as the man sucked in breath, and gave voice to a scream. He brought his huge hands up and swatted at Igor in terror. Igor slid down the man's neck, just managing to grasp his throat and hang on. After that, it was easy, really. Igor gave in to the basest instinct of the creature called spider and bit in deep. He felt a rush of what might be called euphoria as his venom, as powerful in this form as his mind and will were in his other form, spurted from its bladders. It surged through his fangs and into the man's tissue. It was almost morbidly sexual, Igor thought to himself with grim delight. Then the world tipped as the shrieking man stumbled back against the bathtub and fell down into the water.
Underwater was no place for a spider. Igor almost reluctantly released his fangs, and, legs spread wide, floated to the surface. Without wondering if he could, Igor began to swim across the wide expanse of water, aiming for the side of the bathtub. As he reached the porcelain, he saw Cecile looming over him. He was tempted to send her a thought, to see if she might respond, but he was tired already. And it probably wasn't a good idea, he decided. A child who spoke with a spider would be deemed highly creative and intelligent. An adult who spoke with a spider, on the other hand, would be deemed insane and possibly dangerous. He figured Cecile had enough problems to deal with in this life already. He scampered down the tub and across the floor, headed for the safety that lay behind the toilet.
He heard the man in the bathtub leap up from the water, but knew instinctively that the man wasn't long for this world; Igor's venom was too strong. Cecile would be hurt a little more, Igor realized to his sorrow, but she would live. His job here was done.
Suddenly, a bright light hurt his multiple pairs of eyes, and he whirled to see where it was coming from. If Igor had had a jaw, it would have dropped. There before him was a tiny, spider-sized porthole. He had no idea how it got there, or to where it lead. But at this point, he did not care, and quickly scurried through it. His last thought as a spider was a vague regret that he hadn't been able to say goodbye to Jana, and the last thing he heard with legs instead of ears was a loud BANG.
~~~
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Igor was so relieved to hear with his ears again that he grinned at the sound of Alexei's booming laugh. "So, Igor, you are back, yes? Where have you been for all this time!"
"Earth," Igor said, adjusting to the oddness of walking on only two legs, and speaking instead of communicating through thought. He made his way to the table at which Alexei was sitting, and slumped down into a chair beside him. "You remember my mission. Did you open the porthole to bring me back?"
Alexei shook his head. "It must have been Lord Odin. So your mission was successful? The girl is alive?"
Igor nodded.
"HAHAHAHAHA, excellent! Well done, Igor!" He smacked his companion on the back so hard that Igor's spectacles were knocked loose. Igor adjusted them absently. "What was Earth like? Did you meet any lovely young ladies?"
"Several," Igor said, raising his eyebrows at his garrulous friend. "But do not get excited. There was not much I could do as a spider, anyway."
"As a WHAT?" Alexei demanded. As briefly as possible, for he was utterly drained, Igor told Alexei about his adventures.
"AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Alexei pounded the table in front of him, tears running from his eyes as he laughed. "Igor the Spider! Captured by a little girl! A member of the High Council, trapped in a jar with sticks and leaves! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What a great story! Someone should write a story about that! No, I know, a song! A song about Igor the Spider! What do you think, eh?"
Igor, however, did not answer. His face lay pillowed on his arms, and he was deeply asleep.
***
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