Lips Like Ice

III

"Not I," the creature says. There is a soft splash as it slides into the water of the bath. For all that the furniture is outsized for Lydia, the creature is only nine or so feet tall—it can sit in the seat easily, the bathwater coming up to the tops of its shoulders. "My mother. She is a strong spell-worker."

"A spell?" Lydia feels faint again.

"Translation. Forgetfulness. And... compliance."

She whips around to stare at the thing in the bath. "What?" "A pet must be content in its new home, and must be able to both understand and obey," the creature says with a Gallic shrug that makes the water ripple.

Lydia's knees give way a second time and she finds herself sitting on the stone floor, dazed and sick with disbelief. "You chipped me?" She reaches desperately for a memory, any memory. She can recall her fish, her apartment, but there is no feeling with them. Her parents, she can see their shapes, their faces, but they are behind a shroud of gauze. There is no sense memory, no smell, no attendant sound of laughter. There is no detail, no tangibility. Her friends... surely she had friends... and colleagues. And a job? Was there a job?

Lydia covers her mouth with her hand and retches, fear and horror rising quick and sharp, burning acid on the back of her tongue. She swallows and swallows, panic making her heart race and her lungs clench against the strange, thick, spicy air. She can imagine things, she can conjure the shadow of people, she can compare them, but she doesn't see, not clearly.

She can't remember. And worse than that, she doesn't care.

The creature picks up the decanter of soap and gestures with its other hand, clearly a beckoning gesture. "I do not know what that means. Here, come. If she is so determined to share my bath, she may wash my hair."

"No!" Lydia sputters, aghast. She doesn't want to be anywhere near this thing, let alone touch it so intimately. Not when it's...stolen... violated...

The creature narrows its eyes at her. For a moment it looks like it's about to shout, then it takes a deep breath, sets down the decanter, and cocks its head, lizard-like. "Ah. I see. This is her testing her limits. I have read that this is what new pets do: attempt to determine the boundaries of the leash."

"I'm not a pet!" Lydia protests.

The soprano-tenor laugh ripples along the stone walls and the surface of the bathwater. Lydia covers her ears with her hands, trying to muffle the ringing echoes, not caring how juvenile it might look.

"She is far more amusing than I first assumed she would be," the creature says.

"I'm not a pet!" Lydia repeats, and forces herself back onto her feet. Hands balled into fists, wrapped in only a damp towel, her hair dripping, she fumes. "My name is Lydia and I am human. And you can't keep me here!"

"Can I not?" the creature asks. That foreign, eerie laughter fills the bath chamber again, and a hot lump burns in the hollow of Lydia's throat. Fear prickles the bottom of her feet, urging her to run, to skirt the bath and escape into the bedroom, and through that into the parlor. There must be another door there somewhere, and beyond that a hallway. And then what? A house? A palace? More of these creatures? And how far could she reasonably expect to get, nude and wet and unarmed? And if she did manage to escape this building, then what? The city outside of the amber windows is huge, and unknown, and wrong. Where would she find clothes? And shelter? And food?

Despair and realization swims across her skin, pricking and honest. There is no way to escape unless this thing lets her go, releases the... the spell... and escorts her home. There is nowhere to go. Even the streets may be better than luxurious captivity, but not streets that are unfamiliar, dangerous, inhuman. A sure and unwavering death.