In the House with Chicken Feet (3)

He'd never fainted before in his life.

Aside from having been cursed, which he didn't remember in the first place, nothing all that faint-worthy had ever happened to Hin. He had never bumped his head too hard or accidentally seen anyone naked or come in contact with stray clouds of chloroform. Lapsing into unconsciousness was strictly limited to sleep.

But when the twins had lead him down the hallway to a door covered all over in bits of mirror so that a thousand tiny, distorted versions of his own face had looked back at him, Hin was feeling just the slightest bit woozy. And when the twin in gold had opened up the door and it had given way to a room nearly the size of Hin's entire village, the ceiling disappearing up into darkness and the entire space echoing with battering and clacking and the wisps of thread up one's nose and a million clashing odors, Hin's knees felt a bit weak. And when the twin in red had come forward and suddenly both of the twins no longer looked like themselves, but like girls of thirteen with wide blue eyes and freshly pressed ringlets, their old faces melting away like wax, Hin decided he couldn't take anymore just then. His eyes rolled back into his head, his ankles gave way, and he collapsed rather neatly on the dusty, colorful floor.

He woke an instant later, just outside the mirrored door, which was closed again. The twins were both standing by his head, their toes wiggling right by his nose. He looked up at them. They giggled. He groaned and closed his eyes and they giggled again. He began to wonder if this was all one horrible nightmare and somewhere he was laying feverish in bed after too much of the stolen rice wine he and Jude had hidden in the floorboards. But then a very not-dream foot nudged his cheek.

"Did you die, little thief?" came a voice that certainly wasn't what the twin's monosyllable commands had sounded like.

"'m not a thief," he said, suddenly very tired and wishing that Baba Mayuko would just kill him already.

The voices, two of them now, just giggled again. He hadn't heard much giggling before in his life, but he was becoming inclined to hate it.

"Here," and a bundle, soft and weighty, was dropped on his face.

"Mmmph," was all he could say around the fabric that was suddenly in his mouth.

They giggled again.

He'd never punched anyone before in his life, but he was beginning to see the appeal to the notion.

The bundle turned out to be clothes and the two giggling monsters had led him to another door, this one done all over in graffiti that he couldn't read but that looked menacing.

"This will be your room," the girls said in unison, putting coy fingers to their lips. "Change in here."

And then they were both tall and straight and statuesque, rivaling the baba in beauty, with long blond hair that fell nearly to the floor.

"Make it quick," the one in gold said. Was she Nu or Mo? Their clothes didn't seem to change and swathes of fabric that had been loose and girlish on a tiny slip of a girl were suddenly sleek and formfitting on the women.

"Y-yes ma'am." Hin was sure he was blushing. He was grateful when the one in red slammed the door behind him.

The room was small and bare, but it was clean. No spiders hanging from the rafters or rats gnawing at stale bread in the corners. Just a smooth wooden floor and a window covered with a paper shade. Hin went over and lifted the shade, squinting at the watery light.

He screamed.

He thought that it took the twins a long time to check on him after he made such an unmanly nose. But they did check on him, opening just wide enough to admit two identical heads, Hin pointed a shaking finger at the window, the paper shade torn and hanging crookedly.

"I - I..."

"Yes, you've torn it," the twin in red scoffed, gliding over to gather the abused paper into a roll. "Congratulations, you've managed to put yourself even deeper into the baba's debt."

"Bu- it..."

"It attacked you?" the twin in gold said, coming over to finger the inanimate roll. "Is that why you saw fit to destroy it?"

Nothing. Not a word. They didn't seem to notice that just outside, beyond a window that didn't even have glass, was water. A sheer wall of water, with fish flashing gape-eyed grins as they passed by within it.

"You don't -"

"Do such stupid things? Hardly." This was said so perfectly in unison that their voices blended together without even an echo.

Hin blinked. The twin in gold frowned.

"You're not changed yet?"

And just like that, they were on him, stripping him down to his undergarments and suiting him up before he was able to swat their hands away. They surveyed their work impassively, two identical faces with eyes that went up and down him, before they nodded. The nod was actually out of synch, with one chin going up and the other going down, but the effect was one of perfect harmony.

For the second time in his life, Hin fainted.