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Ice, Rosemilk

*

Walter was so often over at Xana and Annie's house that he was mainly welcomed as an extension of the family - a sort of third brother, just another tousled head in the general mayhem that went on the Aristipossos group from day to day. He was no unusual sight throughout the small flat; which was probably a good thing that Leon himself was planning to move away, which would mean a lot more leg room for two children and all their little friends plus the same amount of daemons for each.

Currently, Walter had been given a plate of biscuits; he had previously been playing some kind of game with Annie, who still enjoyed Walter's company very much as a toddler, only Annie had exhausted herself through excitement and was having a quiet nap on the nap-mat. Her thumb was stuck squarely on her mouth, webbing over her lips, and Walter had the privilege of being able to eat her cookies as well as his own. (Wheaten chocolate chip. Cressida was a careful parent.)

Leon was, in fact, the greatest babysitter toddlers could have, because he was awful at it; currently he was sitting on the far side of the room reading a Wall Street Journal and drinking black coffee, and would rise only if there was a really terrible sound - shrieking bloody death and a toddler falling out a window - but otherwise would let them do as they wished. This meant that playtime was excellent.

It probably had never been a good idea in the first place.

Annie dreamed of places. The first thing he saw was a large grey castle by the sea; it was surrounded with odd monoliths, which in turn had unsettling sculptures on them, all below on a precarious path down a sea-cliff to the ocean. The ocean itself was all around - it stretched on to the horizon, and to both sides, with the only thing barring it was an equally unending sea-cliff and a rocky little beach below. The wind was howling and pounding him against the rocks; and on the path, pinned there by a multitude of arrows, were a very many dead bodies. There was also something written in fresh blood, but wasn't recognisable. He couldn't read. Annie couldn't either, considering, past both of their babyhood A For Apple and B For Ball.

The reek of dead things was very real. Suddenly the mountain shifted, changed, and the path crackled out in front of him to stairs that lead down to a little outcrop in front of the beach.

Terror was there; but Terror was larger than he ever could have imagined, as huge as a dump truck with unblinking red eyes. Annie was beside him as he slumbered, walking in and out of the shadows, but she seemed to shift often in front of his eyes; as though she had long, trailing things from her wrists and ankles that weren't quite easy to look at.

And there he was, too, tied to one of the nursery chairs and sitting in the surf, but there was something wrong with his skin. He could see right through it, and underneath was a sort of - mess - the type of thing Annie drew in her pictures, a sort of gobbledygook of red and purple.

Anemone turned and looked out to the sea; large grey stormclouds were starting to gather, and the waves looked unfriendlier than ever. They had gone a dull, grey, leaden colour, and there was a slow sort of roar from far-off. Terror made a noise deep in his massive throat: a sort of gnnnnnng that rattled both their feet.

Dhonas's dholas ort, agus leat-sa, said Terror. Ungl unl... rrlh ... chchch.

The Walter who was tied up squirmed terribly. Some of the purple scribbles fell out into his lap.

Suddenly, the sea started to boil. A great waft of steam rose up from the waters; and then Anemone was beside him, as though she'd suddenly disappeared from the shoreline, and she put one hand over Walter's eyes.

There was the noise and impression of something so big and so large that it parted the sea itself with the heaviness of it. There was the high-pitched squealing of something that sounded a lot like a piglet, and when Anemone removed her hand from Walter's eyes again, it was gone.

His dream-self, who had been sitting in his chair, had lost his top half. He was jagged now, as if he had been a broken piece of a jug or something, and there were moving red and purple splotches everywhere. The sea was still steaming with whatever had been there, and Anemone looked righteously annoyed.

"No!" she said. "Mine!"

"Took you!" Annie shrilled, and he noticed that her teeth were little points. There was a roiling abyss in the sea now, almost unbelievably wide. "Mine! Mine! Is mine!"

More purple and red stuff was boiling out; there were also things that looked a little like white grain cereal, as if they had been mixed with Rice Krispies. "Ate," she said bitterly. "Too slow."

The lightning struck the sea, but to not much effect. Terror's abominably long tongue had slowly curled out and was dabbling delicately at the edge of the sea of purple-and-red, which wasn't sifting into the ocean. It just sat there, in stationary clumps.

"No," Annie said vindictively, sitting down squarely on her thin backside to hug her knees. "Not to Him."

Anemone made one of her terrible whining noises in the back of her throat. When she looked at him, it wasn't quite with the childish adoration and excitement that she usually did, not of before; it was nearly sly, a little calculating, and she stuck out her tongue as Terror had to lick the back of his hand. Then she did it again, even slyer, watching Walter's face all the while. It wasn't an expression a toddler should have; more as though Dora the Explorer had turned mass-murderer.

"Don't look at them," she said diffidently. "Is different. I's got it with fish but not mor-tals."

And that was a big big word for Annie, but she said it sing-song, and touched her tongue to the tip of Walter's ring finger again. Terror's tongue finally latched out around the chair and put the whole thing in his mouth, Walter's bottom half, chair and all. There was a momentary crunching before it was swallowed.

"Terror!" she said. "Don't want that. Stupid. Spit out." (Terror lumbered around and started attempting to vomit, with great racking noises.) "Not got nothything in it."