Changing Meanings

Seanan McGuire

1: WAINSCOT MOTHS

Since it’s apparently once again my responsibility to write all this crap down for Cait’s precious files, let’s start by getting a few basic things clear. I am a vampire. I always thought that basically meant that I was allergic to sunlight, sort of technically dead, and much cooler than anyone with a pulse. Cait’s dictionary had this to say about the situation:

Vampire. Noun. A reanimated corpse believed to rise from the grave at night to drink the blood of sleeping people.

That doesn’t sound cool to me. I don’t have a grave, and if I did, I doubt I’d visit it, much less sleep there. Even if my awesome vampire superpowers included the ability to move through solid dirt—which they don’t—why would I want to crawl into a little pine box that doesn’t even give me room to roll over when it’s time for a snooze? Thank you, no. I used to have a fairly decent off-campus apartment in downtown Berkeley, until Cait decided she wanted me living a little closer and made that a condition of her eventually reversing my affliction.

Right, background. See, when Cait and I met, I thought she was a snack food. Given that she’s little, blonde, cute, and stacked, I really don’t think I can be blamed, any more than you can blame a six-year-old for salivating at the sight of a pizza delivery truck. I made a try at picking her up, fully expecting to be dumping her body into a vat of lye before morning…

…and learned the hard way that researching your prey is a really good idea. Cait’s a lingomancer—a word-witch. I didn’t know the term before I started hanging around with her, but there you go. I showed her my fangs. She looked at me, utterly bored, and said “Hemophobic,” in a tone of voice that made my teeth ache. I lunged for her, ready to chow down, and screamed.

I screamed, not her. Because Cait has the ability to change the world with words—that’s what “lingomancer” means—and she’d just rewritten my personal reality to leave me with a crippling, unavoidable fear of blood. Any blood. Even nasty cold blood bank blood laced with anticoagulants that go straight to your hips. She had to use another precious word on me, herbivorous, to make it possible for me to live on fruit juice and V-8 before I starved to death.

I’ve been living in her spare room since then, acting as her Girl Friday while she researches ways to give me back my natural feeding patterns. It seems she was ready for a vampire attack when she moved into our territory on an unavoidable errand, but she wasn’t ready to befriend the vampire and wind up needing to undo what she’d done. So she didn’t have a cure on hand, and with lingomancers, there’s no such thing as a “quick fix.”

Some days it just doesn’t pay to crawl out of your crypt. Or out from under the covers of your waterbed. Take your pick.

It was a normal Tuesday afternoon. I was in the library with the shades drawn, catching up on my soaps, when Cait came barreling into the place, all happy smiles and exuberant arm gestures. I reached for the remote and told the TiVO to pause; one thing I’ve learned from a year of living with the woman is that she has no respect for anyone else’s TV time, even though she’s threatened to skin me alive for talking during her linguistics tapes. Whatever.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I think I may have found the answer!”

That got my attention. I sat up straighter, automatically running my tongue over the tips of my fangs before I said, “To my little problem?”

“What—oh, no. Mavra, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Forget it.” I sagged back again, trying not to let my disappointment show. “What’s going on?”

“You know how words wear out after I’ve used them a few times?” When I nodded, she said, “People used to change the meanings of words a lot more often than they do now. They’d shift from region to region. I think that’s why we’re dying out!”
I eyed her. “You just lost me.”

“Okay. Word witching is a matter of intent as much as anything else. I know what ‘blue’ means, and what I think it should do, so when the word was still good for me, I was able to use it to change the colors of things. Are you following me so far?”

“I think so.”

“So what would happen if, after I exhausted blue as a color, I moved to an area where ‘blue’ meant ‘those funny hopping things’?”

“You could use the word to create rabbits?”

“Exactly!” I hadn’t seen her that happy in months. “Lingomancers were migratory, because when they exhausted a word, they’d move to a place where that word still had power for them! They didn’t have to do all this research to find obscure words—they just moved to where the common ones meant something different.”

“What does this mean for you?”

“It means I can look up alternate meanings of words, and use those instead of the more common ones. Look.” She held out her hand, palm facing upward, and said quietly, “Wainscot.”

A large moth with reddish wings edged in gold appeared on her hand. It stayed there for a moment, then launched itself up, vanishing into a dark corner of the library. Cait beamed.

“What the heck was that?” I asked.

“A wainscot moth. They’re common in Northern England. Aren’t they pretty?”

“A wainscot moth. Wow.” I shook my head. “What great and cosmic powers you possess, o noble one.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Mavra, I’m doing this for you. I figure I may have missed a definition for some common word that would give you back both your fondness for blood, and your ability to drink it.”

“Good luck,” I said. I was trying not to let her enthusiasm infect me. So far, Cait’s managed to restore my desire for blood twice, without once making it permanent or accompanying it with the ability to actually drink and digest the stuff.

“Trust me,” she said, still grinning, and turned to exit the room. I watched her go, shaking my head, then hit the pause button again, turning my show back on. Eloise was cheating on Doctor Paul, and Michael and Louise had just learned that their marriage wasn’t legal due to their being paternal twins. Fortunately for them, their son was actually fathered by Marcus, the handsome exotic dancer…

You know you have a problem when soap operas make more sense than the real world, but then, that’s life with Cait. For the one of us with an actual education, she puts an awful lot of faith in abstracts.

2: RELATIVE OBSCURITY

Cait’s research into the alternate meanings of words was going well, if you considered a house full of wainscot moths and the sudden disappearance of half the house to be “going well.” Did you know that “shade” can also mean “relative obscurity”? Neither did I, until Cait’s experimentation with the word caused the kitchen, my bedroom and the master bathroom to disappear. She promised they’d come back. I hoped so, since otherwise, I was going to wind up making an emergency trip to the all-night deli around midnight, when the craving for carrots got to be too bad.

I pushed open the door to her study, looking cautiously inside. “Cait? The moths are multiplying. They’re cute and all, but the hallway’s full of the things. Can I put them out?”

“Not yet, not yet,” she said, without looking up from her dictionary. “I don’t know why they’re still appearing, and until I can figure it out, I don’t want you getting rid of them.”

“They’re getting into everything.”

“So order some Venus flytraps or something. Just don’t turn them loose.”

“Why not?” I asked, suspiciously.

She looked up, brushing a lock of wayward hair out of her eyes as she casually replied, “They might explode or something when the spell ends. I’d rather they did it here.”

I stared at her. “I’m just going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

“Probably for the best. Close the door on your way out, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, slowly, and shut the door as I stepped away from the study. “Exploding moths. Right.” Brushing several wainscot moths off the front of my shirt, I started down the hall. Time to look for the kitchen again.

3: BE NICE AND MERRY

Three hours later, the kitchen was still missing, the sun was finally down, and the moths were continuing to multiply. They’d already forced me to shut all the windows in the house, since Cait didn’t want them getting outside; what’s worse, so many of the little bastards had been sucked into the air conditioner that it had stopped working, making a little choking noise and a somewhat disheartening stream of foul-smelling smoke. The house was rapidly becoming completely stuffy.

I eyed the moths and briefly debated turning myself into a bat and using them for target practice. Unfortunately, past experience has taught me that moths aren’t actually vegetables, no matter how stupid they happen to be, and even if I ate them, I couldn’t digest the damn things. It’s strictly turnips and tomatoes for me, nutritionally, and I don’t relish the taste of moth guts so much that I feel like killing them when I can’t eat them.

I was wandering down the halls trying to figure out where the kitchen door should have been when Cait come out of the study, holding up a notepad. “I think I know why we have so many moths.”

“Why? Amaze me.” I wasn’t in a very good mood by that point; I couldn’t go outside for fear of releasing a squadron of exploding British moths into the neighborhood, and without the kitchen being accessible, Cait’s rubber tree was starting to look annoyingly appealing.

“No one’s used that meaning here in years, if ever. It built up a charge.” Cait beamed, obviously expecting me to be impressed. “I just got a couple hundred years worth of wainscot moths.”

“Swell,” I said, dryly. “Now make them go away.”

“It’s not that easy. Although we can probably let them out if they’re still here in the morning.”

“The morning? Cait, if we don’t get the kitchen back by then, I’m going to start eating your houseplants.”

“Well, they probably won’t poison you.” She looked at her notebook. “I’ve found some pretty nice words. Did you know that ‘flash’ also means the underworld tongue used by thieves and mobsters? That could come in handy.”

“Cait, I’ve been a thief. I promise you, we don’t have a secret language anymore.”

“But you did once. And it could be useful. Just for reference.” She looked down at her notebook. “There are others, too—like ‘merry’ used to mean ‘entertaining,’ and ‘nice’ used to mean ‘wanton,’ which is sort of funny, if you think about it.”

“Nice? You’re kidding,” I said. This was my first mistake of the day: Cait never likes being questioned.

Lips thinning into a hard line, she asked, “What, do you think I made that up?”

I laughed. That was my second mistake of the day.

“Of course,” Cait said, glaring. “Well, let’s have a demonstration. Nice.”

I know Cait. She expected the moths to start mating, or maybe me to have to go and take a cold shower. That’s how her mind works, especially when there are words involved; they get her just a little bit drunk, and they can sometimes screw with her judgment. I flinched, waiting to be turned into an exotic dancer or something, but nothing happened.

“I think you had the meaning wrong,” I said, looking toward her again. Then I froze, hoping she wouldn’t notice me.

She was standing with the sort of devil-may-care disregard for propriety that I’ve seen on hookers and pop stars for as long as I can remember, studying one ragged-nailed hand with casual disinterest. Looking up, she offered me a slow, smoldering smile.

“Hey, gorgeous,” she said.

Help.

4: MEDIAN ZONES

“Hands, Cait, hands—hands in places your hands probably shouldn’t be.” I pushed her away, fully aware that my back was against the wall and blocking me from any real escape. “Take a deep breath. Count to ten. Cold showers are good…”

“I thought you wanted to suck my blood,” she said, pouting. “That was a while ago. I’ve changed diets. No more Atkins for me.” I ducked under her arm and bolted for the study, grabbing her discarded notebook as I went. “You won’t respect me in the morning!”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, and snatched my arm. I wrenched it free, slamming the study door in her face, and ran for the dictionary. I’m not a word-witch: I can shout obscure linguistic phrases until the cows come home, and not get anywhere. If I could get Cait to say the right word, however…

She said something, muffled by the study door, and the lock dissolved. I flinched but kept flipping through the dictionary, scanning its contents as quickly as I could.

“Maaaaavra…” she called, as she stepped into the room. “Don’t you wanna play?”

“Busy now,” I said, trying to hide behind the dictionary. It didn’t help. Cait walked over and dropped to her knees in front of me, trying to unfasten my pants. Sending up a silent thanks to the designers of my sadistically complicated belt, I dodged away and kept scanning.

“Not too busy for me,” she said.

“You have no idea,” I replied. Her continuing attempts to unfasten my pants were presenting an unwelcome distraction—much though I might like the idea, I wanted her to be riding my leg while in her right mind, not because she’d managed to turn herself into a carnival ride with the wrong word. “Normal, normal, I need a really weird word that means normal…”

“Why don’t you forget about that and come down here with me?” Cait said throatily, batting her eyelashes in my direction. I’ve faced down werewolves, Goths and wannabe vampires, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that frightening.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said, pushing her back with my knee, and kept flipping. An entry caught my eye—average. It didn’t have quite the right meaning, but it included “see median.” “M. I need the Ms…”

“Please? I’ll be your best friend.” She sat back, starting to unbutton her shirt. “Don’t you find me attractive?”

I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. “Trust me, Cait, that’s not the problem. You’re a very attractive girl, and I’m sure you’ll make some guy very happy someday, but you’re really straight, when you’re sane, and I don’t think you want to be doing this.” I reached the entry for “median” and scanned the text, letting my breath out in a small expression of relief. “Oh, thank God.” The holy word burned my throat, but it was worth it.

Cait pouted. “What makes you think that? Come on, Mavra, don’t be a scaredy-corpse—”

“I tell you what. I’ll put down the book and come down there,” she brightened, “if you’ll say one little word for me. Say it like you mean it. Okay?”

“What’s the word?”

“Median. It means ‘normal.’ Did you know that?”

“It does?” She looked briefly surprised, then shrugged, saying in that old, firm-voiced manner, “Median.”

There was no flash of light or puff of smoke: Cait was just suddenly staring at me, eyes wide as she took in her current position. “That you?” I asked. She nodded mutely. “Good.” I offered her my hands, and she took them, standing. “You okay?”

“Oh, Mavra, I am so sorry—”

“That’s a ‘yes’, then. It’s okay.” I looked around, and saw that the moths were gone. “I think the house is back to normal.”

“Yeah.” She looked at her hand, and said, more quietly than before, “Wainscot.” A single moth appeared. We both waited, but there were no others. “My power levels are normal.”

“Think that means the kitchen’s back?”

“Probably.”

“Great. Come on. Let’s get you a sandwich, and me some carrot juice.” I smiled. After what felt like a month but was barely a moment, she smiled wanly back. “This isn’t the worst thing you’ve ever done, you know.”

“Just the most embarrassing,” she muttered, and left the room.

The kitchen was back, and back to normal; no moths, no mysterious shadows. I dug in the crisper for a head of lettuce, rinsed it off, and drove my fangs into it, only to pull back spitting and choking. “What the hell—?”

Cait was staring at me, wide-eyed. “Oh, no.”

“Oh no what?”

“There’s some sirloin on the top shelf for my dinner tomorrow. Pull it out and unwrap it.” She sounded anxious.

Eyeing her dubiously, I put the lettuce down and did as I was told. The smell of the beef was mouth-watering, and didn’t make me feel sick in the least. I stared at it, then at her. “Cait…?”

“Congratulations,” she said weakly. “Normal vampires don’t eat lettuce.” There was a silent “just their roommates” in her expression.

Oh.

Dear.

Copyright © 2009 Seanan McGuire

www.seananmcguire.com