Suddenly she turned and faced Sebastian, and in his mind, there was blood pumping out of her stomach and she was not Bitty Belina any more, but a girl named jenny. And he gurgled and looked away from her, blinking, crying, but no longer remembering what had stirred him so deeply. The flash of memory was gone. Jenny? Just a name.
“Where is Master Godelhausser?” she asked Sebastian.
Her voice, though small, was not tinny. It did not screech or whine as she spoke. It was a womanly voice in the sense that some little girls, when breathless, sound very adult and somehow sensuous.
Sebastian waved his arms, pointing nowhere, and finally managed to say, “With the lights. As always.”
His throat ached, as if each one of the sharp-edged words had torn chunks of flesh loose on their way from his body to Bitty Belina. He coughed, dry and racking, making his eyes water.
She had her tiny hands on her hips now. Her white, mid-thigh skirt rustled as if made of paper, and it thrust out stiffly over the pert curve of her small buttocks. “Damn him! He promised us we’d have a new ending in the script, like we want, and then he disappears before he comes throughl”
“New ending?” Sebastian asked. He could not understand what she meant, for the story of Bitty Belina was a permanent cycle with him, and the notion that it could be changed was alien and unfathomable. One might as well say the sun will rise in the north and settle in the east or that cows will now fly and birds will give milk henceforth.
“We don’t want Wissa killed in the end,” Belina explained, indicating the wickedly beautiful, dark-haired and sloe-eyed villainess.
“But she . , wants you dead I” Sebastian blurted, amazed at the blonde puppet’s concern for an evil woman lie this.
“Only in the script,” Belina said.
“It hurts so,” Wissa explained. “It hurts with the sword in my neck, because I don’t die very fast. And every time I’m created, it’s all just waiting until I die:”
“We are people,” Belina said. Her pretty face was not as pretty as it usually was, he noticed. “We’re made on a pattern designed according to human gene structure. We’re complete, with brains and emotions-‘
“Oh, hell, he’s retarded,” the prince said. “What are you all standing around talking to an idiot for?”
Sebastian wanted to squash the prince. He could have, too. One swift kick against the wall, a heel brought down hard
Belina stamped her feet, spat on the floorboards, leaving
a little spot of glistening saliva there, a dew drop. “We’ll put it to Godelhausser tonight. Wissa, it will be the last time. That old bastard isn’t going to keep sacrificing you for showmanshipl”
“He’ll refuse to change it,” Wissa Said. “Some patrons like the blood in the end. He’s said so before.”
“Then we won’t perform!” Belina snapped.
“Yeah?” the prince asked. “And how do you plan to refuse him when he is four times taller than you, when you can’t run more than a thousand yards, and when he can refuse you food or water and let you dehydrate until you’re too weak to resist?”
“Or,” one of the three suitors offered, “if we push him too hard on it, perhaps he’ll just stow us back in the Furnace, return us to plasm, and never use our story again. And that’s as good as a permanent death. At least Wissa is always reborn.”
Listening, Sebastian was horror-stricken at such a possibility, and he felt his bladder weakening as he anticipated never seeing Bitty Belina again, never hearing that whispered voice in another show.
“We could kill the old bastard 1” Belina growled, her face furiously red now, her hands fisted on her hips.
The prince slid his hands around her, from the back, cupping her pert little breasts, chewing on her neck. “Calm, Belina. Don’t louse up all we have and give us nothing in return.”
“I suppose,” she said, pouting her lips.
One of his hands slid between the buttons of her blouse, and the rounded mound of one breast was partially visible.