What were they looking at?
More and more demons crowded in around them—scales and claws, murmurs and whispers—and Bluma grew more and more nervous. Little by little, she began to imagine she could feel something tugging at her hair, and she ran her hand back over its surface to ensure that it was free.
They were all looking at her. Why were they all looking at her?
With every little worry, Bluma gave a gnaw at her lower lip. Slowly, without even realizing, she brought herself to bleed.
And the smell of warm blood has a way of attracting demons.
Soon the fracas began to grow: petty little goblins barking and screaming, hawking their wares at the outskirts of the swarming.
“Come buy!” they squawked. “Come buy!”
Neither Lilith nor the Lileen paused even a moment to listen, but Bluma’s ear could not help but catch on their promises:
“You there! I have the smell of mountain stones after a long summer rain!”
“I have a melody without beginning or end!”
“I have a long night’s sleep!”
“Come buy!”
“Come buy!”
“Come buy!”
Bluma’s feet were slowing, and a chiding gray voice spoke into her ear: one of the Sisters of the Lileen.
“Take no notice,” she said. “They are too stupid to deal plainly. And besides, they rarely have anything real to sell: only memories and lies.”
“Memories?” said Bluma. “How can one sell a memory?”
The gray lady chuckled. “Why, by picking it up when it falls and trading it for something of value. Loose memories are like autumn leaves in the Far Country—the dead shed them easily.”
Bluma found her hands patting nervously at her shoulders and skirts. She had not dropped any, had she?
“And besides,” said another voice of the Lileen, “memories such as those rarely last. By the time they’ve come into goblin hands and made their way to market, they’re overripe and fading fast.”
“Then who would want them?” said Bluma.
“Oh,” said the Lileen. “The demons are desperate for anything that can make them seem more human. The better they can hide their true nature, the more respectable they become—and, eventually, the better able to deal directly with the humans they wish to ensnare.”
Bluma swallowed hard. Ahead of her, she could see Lilith’s bare feet padding pink through the snow.
The crowd was thick now, demons of all stripes surging toward the little Zubinsk graveyard like a rain-flooded river. If Bluma had been alone, she would’ve been subsumed, swallowed in the tide for certain, but traveling with the Sisterhood of the Lileen had its advantages: Lilith was known to all, and feared by those with any sense. The crowd had a way of parting to let her through.
More and more, though, as the blood welled up on her lip, the demons’ eyes began to pass from Lilith back to Bluma.
Before long, the whispering began.
“Lilith! Why, Lady Lilith!” a demon with slick hair called out from a clique of tittering followers, and after a long moment, Lilith turned to see who spoke.
“Let him through.”
The formation of gray cats behind Bluma opened and closed again to admit the smarmy demon.
“What is it, Belial?” said Lilith, without bothering to look at him.
“I must say, Lady Lilith: you cut a very fine figure in this shift of yours. Is it new?”
One of Belial’s attendants giggled and rolled his eyes on the far side of the cordon of cats.
“No, Belial. It is the same as ever. What have you come to say?”
“It’s only that we’re unaccustomed to seeing you attended,” said Belial. “I was under the impression that you didn’t hold with rank and hierarchy. All are equal in the Sisterhood of the Lileen, is it not so?”
Lilith sighed. “What are you talking of, Belial?”
“Why,” said the florid demon, “this little maidservant of yours.”
It seemed to Bluma now that every single eye in the universe was turned upon her.
Her face was burning.
“Bluma? She is not my maidservant.”
“No?” said Belial demonstratively. “A prize, then? Or perhaps one of your projects?”
“She is nothing that you need concern yourself with.”
“Your Bluma is very fragrant, Lilith. If you are entertaining offers for her…”
“That will do, Belial,” said Lilith sharply, and like a flash the Lileen had separated the smarmy demon from her. “She is not for sale.”
“You surprise me, Lady Lilith,” said Belial. “I have always thought you a very reasonable woman—insofar as there is such a thing.”
A gout of pretentious laughter rang out from Belial’s attendants.
“Goodbye, Belial,” said Lilith, but as they made their way forward, Bluma saw him bend to whisper to one of his followers, pointing a long, manicured finger at her face.
Slowly, the word Bluma passed from Belial’s lips and disseminated itself throughout the little clutch of hangers-on. More fingers were pointed, grins suppressed.
There was no mistaking it.
Her name was racing through the swarm.
Bluma began to chew idly on her bleeding lip.
The closer they drew to the Zubinsk cemetery gate, the thicker the scrum became—and the richer and more prominent the demons.
Near the outskirts of the swarm, the goblins and imps were unmistakable—all slavering maws and leathery wings—but here they’d begun to arm themselves with the leavings of human life: pale, flickering memories at first, of shabby dresses and threadbare coats, and then things that were more substantial. Bluma saw a demon with only one expression to her name—a wide smirk—and she wore it, thick and motionless, everywhere she went. Another demon had managed to lay his hands on a grubby toe-holed sock, and he was busy auctioning it off to a fierce crowd of bidders.
But soon the simulacra became more refined. There were demons here that Bluma might very well have mistaken for living people if, every so often, the moonlight hadn’t cut through their skin, showing the ragged, ravenous things beneath.
Before long, the thrumming torrent of demons ran up against a hard barrier: a massive pavilion of crimson and black silk. Inside, an exclusive fete for only the eldest and most powerful demons was being thrown, and burbling chatter could be heard from within. A beguiling, lolloping melody was being played. Demons in the finest apparel went walking back and forth, and a tantalizing aroma floated out on the breeze.
Needless to say, this exclusive reception blocked off entirely the swath of cemetery closest to the Zubinsk gate. No one could hope to approach the town without first finding their way into the pavilion.
There was no more forward progress to be made without passing into the party, and as the riffraff were turned away, the crowd began to roil with a restless, aggrieved turbulence.
Lilith pulled up short, and, herded inward by the Lileen, Bluma drew close.
“Lady Lilith,” said the doorkeeper, a hulking saber-toothed ogre in a neat red-and-black livery. “Lord Azazel would be honored to welcome you into his pavilion.”
“Yes, he would,” said Lilith. “And I have no intention of giving him that honor.”
“Are you sure, my lady?” said the doorkeeper. “Lord Azazel has taken care to procure every delight for this occasion.”
Swiftly, a gray cat came springing up through the crowd, and without even dropping a step, in the blinking of an eye, she was a squat gray lady.
“The girl is bleeding,” she whispered.
Lilith’s cold, still face twitched, and she looked down at Bluma as if she were a rip in an expensive new dress.
“Quite sure,” said Lilith.
The doorkeeper smil
ed falsely. “Very well, my lady. If you would, then, do us the courtesy of clearing the entryway?”
Behind Bluma, one of the Lileen spoke softly. “Put your lip in your mouth, girl.”
Bluma complied, and quickly her mouth flooded with warm, iron blood.
* * *
—
The crypt was ramshackle and shabby, half collapsed in the snow. Under normal circumstances, even the lowest among demons would’ve passed it by in favor of more comfortable shelter, but tonight, with the swarming in full force, a large pack of shadowy imps had to be chased out before the Lileen could be sure of any privacy.
Bluma stood corralled against the fallen rock to the rear, Lilith and her Sisterhood gathered about her in a tight semicircle.
“She cannot stay,” said one of the Lileen.
“No,” said a second.
“I am inclined,” said Lilith, “to agree. But the question remains: What to do with her?”
“Can we not disguise her?”
Lilith shook her head. “There are many eyes here. And little time.”
“What if,” said a glowering cat, “we simply take what we want of her and leave the husk behind?”
Bluma did not like the way she said husk.
“No,” said Lilith, her eyes gleaming oddly. “No, I think not.”
Bluma was beginning to panic. The Sisters of the Lileen were all that stood between her and the mob of hungry demons outside the crypt door.
“The sooner we are rid of her,” said one of the cats, “the sooner we return to our business. Can we not simply leave her?”
“We can,” said another. “But ought we to? A living girl…”
“No,” said Lilith, “I do not think it wise to leave her for the taking. She is pursued by Something Powerful.”
Bluma swallowed hard. It was true.
“What option, then, is left?”
“Nothing. Nothing is left.”
What could she do?
Lilith sighed. “Perhaps it is best to drain her after all.”
This did not, to say the least, seem like a good option to Bluma.
And at just this moment, she remembered:
The spoon.
The hungry spoon.
All of a sudden, she knew what to do.
“I know!” said Bluma.
Slowly, the eyes of the Lileen turned upon her.
“What?” said Lilith.
“I say we drain her,” snapped a thin, ragged cat.
But Lilith was intrigued; Bluma’s hand was in her apron pocket.
“Yes?” said Lilith.
Bluma drew out the spoon.
“Tell me,” said Lilith. “What do you see?”
By now, Bluma knew what to expect. After a moment, her face swam into view, and then the Dark Lady rose behind her, seeping up from among the fallen crypt stones, all thirsty lips and grasping fingers.
But Bluma brought the spoon closer, until all she could see was her own face.
Her face.
She was nervous now, and her eyes darted up to Lilith. “Is there any trick to it?”
“Only confidence,” said Lilith.
And so, with confidence, Bluma took hold of the spoon’s cold handle and, as she had seen Lilith do, turned it all the way around the image of her face that lay in its basin.
And what she saw when the spoon had completed its revolution shocked her.
It was a girl.
Just a girl. No one she knew. And as her eyes slipped away from the reflection in the basin of the spoon, the details of the girl’s face slipped from her mind.
An odd grin had begun to crease Lilith’s face. “Good,” she said. “Very good.”
“Her lip,” said one of the Lileen. “Her lip isn’t bleeding anymore.”
With her free hand, Bluma lifted her fingers to her mouth. Sure enough, her lips were smooth and cool.
But something warm dripped onto her finger, and with a shock, Bluma let the spoon fall into the dirty snow underfoot.
A trickle of warm blood.
Swiftly, Lilith bent and retrieved the spoon. Before Bluma knew it, it was in the pocket of Lilith’s shift.
“Sisters,” she said. “Keep to the plan.”
And with that, Lilith backed through the door of the crypt and, smiling, blew away on the wind.
* * *
—
Instantly, Bluma was through the crypt door.
Lilith was nowhere to be seen. Flakes of white danced through the night, but which had been Lilith and which were ordinary snow was impossible to tell.
Bluma was terribly upset.
Lilith had taken the spoon, and Bluma’s face with it.
Oh, how she hated that spoon and longed for it, needed it and wished it had never been.
Bluma wheeled about to ask where Lilith had gone, but already the Sisters of the Lileen had dispersed, fanning out about the cemetery like the fingers of a fist spread wide.
They had business to attend to.
Bluma swallowed hard. All around her, the crowd of demons barred from Lord Azazel’s fete roiled with restless energy. Before long, squabbles and skirmishes began to break out, and Bluma grew afraid that she might inadvertently be smashed against a gravestone.
No one seemed to notice her.
In fact, none of the demons seemed able to hold her in their minds for more than the few moments they spent looking at her: as soon as their eyes slid away, she seemed to slide from their awareness, as if she had never been there.
And, little by little, Bluma began to wonder how far this new anonymity extended.
Perhaps she no longer needed Lilith’s help to outrun what pursued her.
Perhaps she already had.
Heart pounding, Bluma made her way to the hulking ogre at the entrance of the pavilion. If she was wrong about this, she was taking a terrible risk.
But if she was right…
“I’m afraid this is a closed gathering,” said the doorkeeper.
“Y-yes,” said Bluma. “I know.”
The ogre sucked in slobber from between his great tusks. “Let me be clear,” he said. “It is a closed gathering to which you are not invited.”
“I know,” said Bluma again.
She had to get him to look away from her face.
“But he wasn’t invited either,” she said, pointing at no one. “And you let him in.”
The doorkeeper smiled condescendingly and turned to look over his shoulder. Bluma could almost see the moment in which he forgot her, and without pause, she trotted into the party.
The light in the pavilion was strange, the blue moon filtering oddly through the red-and-black silk. At the far end of the pavilion were the wrought-iron cemetery gates that held the demons back from Zubinsk. Two liveried goblins stood guard before them, ostensibly to keep the reveling demons from inadvertently coming into contact with the cold metal, but in truth to protect Lord Azazel’s privilege: first through when dawn broke in Zubinsk.
Every so often, the voice of the ogre at the tent flap would ring out and someone new would arrive: Lord Uzza the Fallen, sweeping in beneath an impeccably styled powdered wig, each hair of which had been plucked from a different human king or queen; Lady Agrat of the Abyss in a sleek evening gown spangled thick with blinking eyes like rhinestones.
These rich and powerful demons were nothing like their inferiors. Outside, hideous beasts, creepers and crawlers, the slithering and the slimy abounded, but within the pavilion, only if one knew precisely what to watch for would one see the nostrils gaping uncommonly wide, the implausible amount of wrinkles, the ears too large or eyes too far apart.
With a shock, Bluma heard a sharp, familiar peal of laughter stabbing up into the fragrant air.
The smarm
y demon: Belial.
As Bluma made her way across the luxuriant scarlet carpeting laid down between the gravestones, Belial’s voice grew more and more distinct, like an unpleasantly sweet aroma carried in on the wind. “Of course not,” he said to the adoring knot of demons around him. “You don’t imagine Lord Azazel would be so gauche as to arrive on time to his own party.”
“Of course not!” agreed one of his clique. “How absurd.”
“Perhaps,” said Belial, “he is hunting the Bluma, like the rest of the rabble out there. I don’t know whom I pity more tonight—Lilith, or all the poor devils foolish enough to try her.”
At this, the clique gave a shimmering giggle.
“Oh, Lord Belial, Lord Belial!” said a preening young demon, cutting in. “Have you heard the rumor?”
Belial smiled an acrid smile. “I have heard every rumor.”
At this, the knot about him gave a knowing little titter.
“They say,” said the preening young demon, “that Lord Mammon has come to the cemetery.”
Now Belial laughed alone, sharp and small, like the cold point of an icy knife. “If Lord Mammon had chosen to inflict his presence upon us, I assure you, we would know.”
Belial’s clique giggled at this unkindness.
With effort, Bluma pushed her way into the small knot of demons attending Belial, and immediately she thought she had made a terrible mistake. Every single one of them in their turn took special notice of her—her dull, ragged clothing, her wild, untamed hair.
But they were just like the rest of the demons. As soon as their eyes slipped away from her, she might as well have been nothing.
“Besides,” said Belial, “I can’t imagine what Mammon would want here. Lord Azazel has the clear advantage, and Mammon doesn’t tend to play unless he can win.”
“But it’s true, my lord!” said one of Belial’s fawning attendants. “He’s been seen! He arrived in the outskirts not long ago, pushed along in a little wheelchair.”
“Ha!” said Belial. “I don’t doubt that someone saw something that looked like Lord Mammon, but the last time he traveled away from his Treasure House, Mammon went in a carriage the size of a castle, drawn by a team of elephants. He is not, let me tell you, one for subtlety.”
The Way Back Page 11