WE TWO MAY MEET
Tanya Huff
MAGDELENE was beside herself when she woke that first morning home from Venitcia—which wasn't really surprising as she'd never been much of a morning person. If truth be told, she was more of a midafternoon, heading into cocktail hour kind of a person.
What was surprising was that the self she was beside appeared to be snoring
Mistress?" Kali's red eyes widened as two wizards walked into the kitchen—identical but for the fact that one had her thick chestnut hair pulled back into a tight bun and seemed to be wearing an outfit in which all the items not only complemented each other but covered her from neck to knees. The demon housekeeper turned to the other wizard, whose hair fell in the usual messy cascade and who was wearing a vest and skirt in virulently opposing shades of green. "Mistress, there are two of you."
"No." The first Magdelene crossed the kitchen and pulled a mug embossed with the words The most powerful wizard in the world off the shelf. "There's still only one of me. I just seem to nave gone to pieces."
Kali sighed, but said, as was expected, "Well, pull yourself together."
"Not without a cup of coffee."
'Very funny," the second Magdelene snorted. "But neither Displaced humor nor your unseemly addiction to that beverage is getting us any closer to solving our problem!"
"We've managed to determine that she's my unfun bits," Magdelene-one informed the demon, sinking into a chair and reaching for a muffin.
"I hope you're not having butter on that!"
"Also my nagging, uptight bits."
"Mistress, how did this happen?"
Magdelene-one shrugged, spreading butter liberally on the muffin. "Beats the heck out of me. She was there when I woke up; large as life and twice as tidy."
"And I can't seem to get her to care," growled Magdalene-two through clenched teeth. "We must find out who did this to us and why."
"It's too hot to care." One stuck her foot out into a patch of sunlight and grinned down at the shadow of her bare toes on the tile floor.
"Mistress, if there is a wizard powerful enough to do this . . ."
"What difference does it make? I mean, really? It's been done."
"You see? You see what I've had to put up with?" Two glared down at her double. "Well, fine. I don't need you—I was only including you in the process to be thorough. I can get the answers on my own." Pivoting on one well-shod heel, she stomped out of the room, the door slamming behind her.
"What a bitch," One snorted.
"Mistress, if she is a part of you . . ."
"Then I'm well rid of her."
The door swung open hard enough to crash against the wall. "What have you done to my house!"
Magdelene-one sighed, reaching for another muffin. "What do you mean, your house? Try, my house."
"The tower is missingl"
"Is not."
Shaking her head, Kali went out into the hall. Not only was the tower missing but two of the hall's four doors opened into the garden and the door that should have returned her to the kitchen led sequentially to the sitting room, the bathing room, Joah's old room, and a room the demon didn't recognize although, from the piles of debris, it appeared to be a storeroom of sorts. A halfgrown calico cat meowed indignantly down at her from a stack of crates.
"I have no idea," she said, closing the door again. If the house vvas causing the cats problems, things were even more serious than they appeared.
A fifth attempt finally took her back to the kitchen. Magdelene-one was licking the jam spoon while Magdelene-two made notes on Kali's recipe slate.
"The house," she announced, "is out of control."
"That's just so unlikely," Magdelene-one scoffed stickily.
"Nevertheless, Mistress, it is the case."
Sighing heavily, Magdelene-one heaved herself up out of the chair and sauntered over to the door, Magdelene-two following close behind, arms folded and lips pressed into a thin line. They walked out of the kitchen and stood in a square hall, warmly lit by the large skylight overhead.
"Sitting room, bathroom, stairs to the Netherhells . . ." The doors opened and closed showing the rooms behind them as they were named. ". . . stairs to the tower." Magdelene-one rolled her eyes and headed back to the kitchen. "You guys make such a fuss over nothing."
As the door closed behind her, the house shifted and the green-and-gold lizard who had moments before been sunning himself in the garden stared up at Magdelene-two in shock.
"You're right," she told it. "The situation is completely unacceptable. Fortunately, a reasoned analysis finds a simple solution." Opening a door, she reached into the kitchen, grabbed her other self by the back of the vest and hauled her into the hall. The lizard disappeared, the doors returned. "Clearly, we must stay together in order to maintain the house."
"Clearly," Magdelene-one mocked. "Why?"
"Let me think . . ."
"Oh, you're thinking. I can smell the smoke." Magdelene-two ignored her.
"As you observed previously, there is still only one of us, we have merely been separated into pieces. It's therefore logical to assume that our power has been equally divided between us. Together, we remain the most power-ful wizard in the world. Separate, we are merely powerful—and not powerful enough to mindlessly support old magics."
"That sort of sucks."
"Indeed. We need answers." Clutching her other self's elbow, Magdelene-two threw open a door and marched them both up the steps to the cupola on the top of the tower.
"Stairs; what was I thinking?"
From the outside, the turquoise house on the headland seemed to be only one story tall. From the cupola, the two wizards had an uninterrupted view of the surrounding countryside from fifty feet in the air.
Magdelene-one gazed down at the cove and the fishing village that hugged the shore. "Nothing much happening there. Wait a minute, that's Miguel working on his boat. Would you look at the shoulders on the man. And the ass—you could bounce clams off that ass." Leaning forward, she whispered something as if in Miguel's ear. The fisherman turned and waved. Even at such a distance, they could see his broad smile.
"What did you say to him?" Magdelene-two demanded suspiciously.
One giggled. "I told him that if the kaylie weren't running I knew something else he could spend the morning spearing."
"Have you no concern for your dignity? And if not," she continued, before her double could reply, "have you no concern for mine? We are the most powerful wizard in the world and we have position to maintain!"
"Prude."
"Slut."
Magdelene-one stuck out her tongue, flickered once, and glared across the room. "You stopped me! How dare you stop me!"
Hands on her hips, Two returned the glare. "Have you forgotten why we came up here?" A half turn and a sharp wave toward the large oval mirror in the rosewood stand. "We must discover who did this to us!"
"Why?"
"So that we can undo it."
"Why?" One asked again, dropping down onto the huge pile of multicolored cushions that filled most of the floor space. "Personally, I think I'm better off without you dragging me down."
"Me dragging you down?" the other Magdelene snorted, turning to the mirror. "Oh, that's a laugh."
The mirror—an expensive replacement after a wizard wannabe had broken her original trying to use the demon trapped inside— showed nothing but a reflection of both Magdelenes.
"You've broken it!"
"I haven't done anything."
"Oh, you never do do anything, do you?"
"At least I know how to enjoy myself," Magdelene-one pointed out. She flashed her double a sunny smile and vanished.
"At least I won't end up with sand in unmentionable places," Two sneered to an empty room.
"Where . . . ?"
"The village. She is such an embarrassment, Kali." Lowering herself into a chair, legs crossed at the ankles, Magdelene-two quivered with apprehension. "I shudder just thinking of how she's perceived."
"The villagers have always treated her—you—with respect, Mistress."
"But she's so . . ." Manicured nails beat out a staccato beat against the polished wood of the table as she searched for a description that managed to be both accurate and polite and managed only: ". . . enthusiastically athletic."
"From what I have heard, they respect that as well, and I have received the impression on a number of occasions that some are rather in awe." Kali set a lightly steaming cup of tea on the table by the wizard. "Did you discover who is responsible for this division?"
Magdelene-two took a ladylike sip of tea and sighed. "I'm afraid not. The mirror is nonfunctional and showed only our reflections. Whoever divided us in two must have disabled it in order to cover their tracks."
The demon nodded thoughtfully.
What's this?" Magdelene-one blinked down at the lightly steamed vegetables and the poached fish on her plate.
Kali placed a pitcher of water and a glass on the table. "Lunch, Mistress. High in fiber, low in fat. Your double ordered it."
"Then why isn't my double here eating it?"
"She remains in the workshop, delving in eldritch realms to discover the cause of your affliction."
"Hey, it's nothing a little salve won't cure. Oh, our affliction. Right. Well, she's going to get us into trouble with that whole eldritch realms thing. It's likely to bring on an angry crowd of villagers with torches and pitchforks. And, hang on, I don't have a workshop."
"She has added one on, Mistress."
"And you just let her?"
"I am her housekeeper as much as yours, Mistress. If you are unhappy with her decision, perhaps you should confront her yourself."
"Yeah, probably, but I don't really feel much like doing it now. Maybe later." A lazy flick of a knifepoint teased apart two translucent flakes of white flesh. "Any chance of getting some tartar sauce with this?"
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Magdelene-two demanded. She tossed a cushion onto the ground, dropped to her knees on the cushion, and began inscribing runes in the fresh earth. "I'm laying out protective wards around the house."
"Didn't there used to be cat mint there?"
"Do you want what happened last night to happen again?" Magdelene-two sniffed, ignoring the actual question.
Magdelene-one settled back down in the hammock and scratched at her bare stomach. "Don't see how it can. We're already in two pieces."
"And what would you say to four pieces?"
"Five card draw, monkey's wild, it'll cost you a caravan to open."
...
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