“Big Ears, come!” the man shouted, then repeated it again and again. The crowd took it up, making it a chant: “Big Ears, come! Big Ears, come!”
“You seal your own doom!” Allouette cried, but their voices drowned her out.
“It wants you only for toys!” Cordelia shrieked, but even her shrilling couldn’t penetrate their chants.
“Big Ears, come! Big Ears, come!”
As they chanted, the giant cat grew more and more solid.
Quicksilver turned to face it, sword in hand, bracing her mare for a charge.
“Big Ears, come! Big Ears, come!”
“I accept!” Big Ears yowled in triumph. It leaped down to the ground, its eyes wild and wicked, its teeth showing in a greedy grin.
The people shouted approval—and as they were still cheering, the monster turned and pounced on the man with the knife, crying, “Learn how your cats felt!”
The crowd screamed, some turning away sickened, some riveted to the sight in horror.
Big Ears lifted its huge head from its gruesome meal, blood dripping from its fangs. “Fools, to host one who thirsts for your blood!”
“But we invited you, we praised you!” one of the cat holders cried in terror. “Will you not favor us for that?”
“Favor indeed,” Big Ears said, flashing its teeth, “for you shall be the first to be plundered and murdered. Know how my master Zonploka honors you by this favor, for your deaths shall be quick! But he cannot yet come to visit you, nor any more of his host of warriors. Continue the ceremony, fools, or you will die slowly and in agony instead of quickly and cleanly.”
The people moaned, crowding away from the grisly creature.
“Do not listen!” Cordelia shouted. “Do not believe the monster! It is your emotions it desires, not your bodies! It will drink in your fear and your pain! It kills and tortures only to arouse them! Turn away from this thing of evil!”
“Aye, turn away,” Allouette cried, “for it has no power but that which you give it by your fear!”
“You have lived too long, interfering wench!” Big Ears spat, and crouched to pounce on her. “Disrupt my Taghairm, would you? Seek to deny me entrance to your world? For that you shall be next, you fat and juicy tidbit!”
“Fat? How dare you!” Allouette cried, outraged. “Suffer the fate you would visit upon me!” She narrowed her eyes in a glare.
Big Ears twisted around, a sudden pain in its belly. “How dare you, impertinent woman?” it gasped. “Learn now what pain is!” It gathered itself to pounce.
“Nay!” Quicksilver cried, and her horse darted between them. “She is ours and not for you!”
Allouette stared, suddenly limp with amazement.
“She is ours indeed, and who seeks to touch her does so at great peril!” Cordelia sent her horse galloping in, then reared, hooves poised to strike at the monster.
Big Ears yowled and leaped, claws flashing out to rake across the horse’s belly. It screamed and fell, flailing. Cordelia struggled to rise, but her leg was pinned beneath the animal’s weight.
“I shall dine on you at leisure,” the monster sneered, and turned to Quicksilver. “First I shall snap up this one, who thinks herself tough but is only a tender morsel.”
“This morsel shall stick in your craw!” Quicksilver shouted, and stabbed. “Taste Cold Iron, O Greedy One!”
The sword lanced the creature’s tongue and it shrieked, leaping away. “Cold Iron! For that you shall die most miserably!”
“She shall die not at all!” Cordelia glared at the monster.
Big Ears howled with pain. “What . . . what is this?” it panted, and turned toward the pinned woman, eyes wide with confusion. “You cannot! How can so slight a one as you cause me pain?”
“Suffice it that I can!” Cordelia shouted, pointing a finger.
Big Ears caterwauled again, then shot through the air, a blurred arc descending on the woman, screaming, “Die, and my pain dies with you!”
“Nay, it lives as long as I do!” Allouette shook herself out of her trance and hit the monster with every jot of the welter of emotions that boiled within her—guilt, shame, amazement, confusion, and the sudden fierce urge to protect the women she had thought were her enemies.
Big Ears twisted in midair, screaming with sudden pain. Its back slammed down on the dead horse and Cordelia cried out in pain.
The sound seemed to pierce Allouette from side to side. She glared at the creature, thinking of tearing, of ripping, of giant crab claws slashing and shredding within. Big Ears howled in agony, curling around its pain, and Quicksilver stabbed again and again, crying, “Leave this carrion to me! Cordelia and I shall hold it while you banish it! Speak to the people, lady! Lead!”
Allouette stared in surprise a moment, then turned away with determination. Surely a bandit chieftain knew what she spoke of when it came to leading a mob. “People of mine own kind!” Allouette spread her hands towards the crowd, crying, “It is for you to undo what you have done! What you have brought here, you can send away! The door you have opened, you can close again!”
The cringing people froze in amazement.
“Think of your anger and pain!” Allouette exhorted them. “Think of your anger at this creature’s betrayal! Do you want it and its kind here among you?”
“No!” “No, no, of course not!” “Send it away, lady, send it away!”
“It is for you to send it away, for it is you who brought it in!” Allouette scolded. “What, would you have me clean up your mess for you? Well, then, I shall!” She spun to glare at the fallen feline, caterwauling and lashing out at Quicksilver, who was somehow never where its claws struck, but whose sword found its hide again and again. Pinned beneath it and the horse, Cordelia nonetheless jabbed her fingers deep into its fur to touch its flesh, pouring all her own pain into it.
Allouette held up her hands, palms out, fingers spread, and called out, “Get thee hence! Flee, creature, fly! Get thee back to thine own place and never come nigh!” She turned back to the people, gesturing for their voices. “Get thee hence!”
They stared at this outlandish Fury, amazed. One or two of them mumbled, “Get thee hence!”
“Louder!” Allouette cried. “All of you!”
“Get thee hence!” more people cried.
“Louder yet! I can scarcely hear you!”
“Get thee hence!” they all called.
“Louder and stronger!” Allouette demanded. “So much louder that this fell cat’s master Zonploka shall hear you in his own realm!”
“Nay, dare not to call out!” Big Ears screamed, galvanized by the name of its master. “I shall rend you, I shall tear you, I shall terrorize you like—”
Quicksilver rammed her point into its neck and the monster broke off to howl as its whole body convulsed in agony from Cordelia’s channeled pain.
“It cannot equal two weak maidens in power!” Allouette cried, stretching the truth a little. “Fear it not! Send it home!” She turned to face the monster again, calling, “Get thee hence!”
“Get thee hence!” the people shouted.
“Flee and fly!”
“Flee and fly!”
“Get thee gone to thine own place!”
“Get thee gone to thine own place!”
“And never come nigh!”
“And never come nigh!”
“Get thee hence!” Allouette called, beginning the chant once more, and the people echoed her. Line by line, chanting more and more loudly, shouting, bellowing, they followed her, advancing step by step on the very monster they had summoned then feared, and before whom they had cowered. Their shouts were almost loud enough to cover Big Ears’ howls of agony as, little by little, it began to become translucent again, fading to fogginess, then only an outline of itself, before finally fading completely from sight.