Cruel Beauty

by Rosamund Hodge

  I realized I was staring so closely at the books, my nose almost touched their spines. I pushed aside some ivy, grabbed a book off the shelf, and flipped it open, hoping I looked as if I had been searching for it all along.

  “Aren’t you going to threaten me with some terrible punishment again?” I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the book. It was a history of Arcadia, so old it was not printed but handwritten with beautiful calligraphy. I only meant to pretend to read it, but then I found that I could read every word on the page. Whatever power had shoved my eyes aside last time was gone.

  But I had opened to a damaged page. Little holes were burnt through the paper, just big enough to destroy one or two words, but there were eight or ten holes on each page. I turned the page. More holes.

  “Would you find that exciting?”

  “Predictable, more like.” I dared a glance. No longer curled in on himself, Ignifex leaned against the bookcase, staring into the air.

  “You know, only two of my wives ever thought to steal my keys.”

  “That doesn’t say much for your taste in women.”

  “I can’t help it if most people that bargain with me have stupid daughters.”

  I turned a page. Still more holes. “And those stupid daughters, what happened to them?”

  “You met them last night. And then you met their fate. I think you can imagine.”

  I shivered, remembering the burning shadows and their childlike, gleeful chanting. One is one and all alone.

  “I grew up watching my father try to help the people your demons attacked,” I said. “I’ve always known what that fate meant.”

  The whole book was damaged. I pushed it back onto the shelf and pulled out another.

  “Trouble reading?”

  “You should take better care of your books,” I said. “Look, this one’s burnt too.” In a moment he would surely be leaning over my shoulder and grinning; I shoved the book at him. He took it and flipped the pages—why had I never noticed how gracefully his hands moved?

  “Did you go playing in the library with a set of candles?” I asked. “They do seem to be your favorite thing.” Then I clamped my jaw shut, because that was getting too close to last night and all the things that I did not want to discuss or remember, though they curdled the air between us.

  He shut the book with a small but definite thump. “No. In fact, the holes in the books might be the only thing in the world that’s not my fault.” A drop of water slid down his throat to his collarbone.

  I crossed my arms. “How is anything in this castle not your fault? There weren’t any holes last time.”

  “You couldn’t see them before today. And the books are not my fault because it was my masters who censored them.”

  “Masters?” I echoed.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t I mention them?”

  “Of course not.” I meant to snap the words but they came out sounding hollow.

  “Who do you think made all those rules for my wife?” he asked. “Not me, or you’d have to give me a goodnight kiss.”

  I felt as if the ground were melting beneath my feet. The Gentle Lord was the most evil creature besides Typhon, and the most powerful after the gods. Everyone knew it.

  Everyone was wrong.

  What kind of creature was powerful and vicious enough to command the prince of demons?

  “But never mind that. There’s another thing you couldn’t see before today. Come look.” He beckoned me to the window.

  I looked out, and the air stopped in my throat. The green, rolling hills were just as I remembered them—but the parchment sky above was pocked with ragged holes, burnt-brown at the edges, through which I could see nothing but darkness. Shadow.

  “They look a lot like the holes in the books, don’t they? But unlike the books, I suppose you could say they are my fault. My masters only made them because they find it more amusing when I have a challenge.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a boy driven mad in your own village, wasn’t there? Even though your father paid all the tithes correctly? Sometimes the Children of Typhon escape against my will, and I have to hunt them down.”

  I stared at the holes in the sky, their burnt edges, and couldn’t look away. It felt like I had swallowed an entire black pudding, heavy and cold and made of blood.

  “The holes in the sky are how they enter,” he said. “You can see them now because you looked on the Children of Typhon and survived.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I whispered.

  “You looked at them and they looked at you. Do you think that gaze will ever really end?”

  The holes were like eyes. Like windows. Like that black infinity of a doorway I had faced, and I hugged myself as I remembered the shadows weeping out of my eyes, bubbling out of my skin—if Ignifex hadn’t found me, maybe I would have become a parchment shell burnt full of holes, darkness dribbling out my ragged mouth—

  Ignifex leaned in front of me. “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m not!”

  In one motion he scooped me up into his arms. “You look cold.” He strode toward the door. “I’m taking you somewhere warmer.”

  “What—” I thrashed, but his grip was too strong . . . and the warmth of it was not unpleasant.

  “Don’t worry, it’s somewhere nice.”

  “Why would you do anything nice for me?” I meant the words to sound angry, but they came out a little too wavering.

  “I’m the Lord of Bargains. I can reward you if I want.”

  I rocked with the swing of his footsteps and it felt like being swept down a river.

  “You don’t have to carry me,” I said. “I can walk.”

  “I’m your lord husband. It’s in my arms or over my shoulder.”

  “Over the shoulder.”

  “You want me holding you by the thighs? Not that I would mind.”

  I glowered, but he only laughed and dropped a kiss on my forehead. I supposed that if this was his revenge for last night, it wasn’t too bad.

  He carried me through five more rooms of the library, then kicked open a green door I had never seen before and strode out into light.

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  14

  That’s all I could see at first: brilliant white-gold light that dazzled my eyes so I had to squint and blink back tears. Then my eyes adjusted, and I caught my breath in wonder. We stood in a field of grass and yellow flowers that stretched out to the horizon, where it met not the parchment sky I had always known but pure, bright blue.

  I looked up. Only for a moment, before the absolute light stabbed my eyes and forced me to look down again, purple and green blobs swimming in my vision, but it was enough. I had seen the sun.

  I had seen the sun.

  But that was impossible. The sun was gone, lost beyond whatever infinities separated Arcadia from the rest of the world. I could not be seeing it, could not be feeling its warmth prickle down my nose like the heat from a fireplace.

  I could not, and yet I was.

  “Are we . . .” I began softly.

  Ignifex set me down. “No,” he said. “It’s another room. An illusion.” He sat down and flung himself back on the grass. “But it looks almost the same.” He sounded wistful.

  I turned around slowly. Behind me stood a narrow wooden doorframe, through which I could see the library, but otherwise the illusion was perfect. A breeze ruffled the flowers and whispered against my neck; it had the same delicate immensity as the breezes I had felt running through the fields around the village, and it smelled of summer, warm grass, and wide-open spaces.

  Yet despite the sameness of the air, despite my knowing it was a room, it still seemed vaster than the open hills of Arcadia. At first I wasn’t sure why; I thought it simply might be the blue sky or the brilliant sunlight, but then I realized it was th
e shadows. In Arcadia, the sun cast soft, diffuse shadows that were like a murmur of darkness. Here the shadows were sharp and crisp as those cast by a Hermetic lamp without its shade—but the light here was infinitely brighter, clearer, and more alive. It felt as if I had lived all my life inside a flat painting and only now had I stepped into the real world.

  I couldn’t help myself. I spun around, gulping great breaths of the sunlit air, until I suddenly realized that I must look like a foolish child. I stopped and glanced down at Ignifex. He lay on his back, gazing up with eyes slitted against the sun. The wind rustled his damp hair; his face looked more relaxed and human than I had ever seen it.

  He had told me the truth: he had brought me to someplace warm, a peaceful, golden place with a sky untorn by shadows. He had rewarded me, though last night I had tried to let the darkness eat him.

  I sat down beside him. “You remember the world from before,” I said.

  He didn’t move. “That’s a safe bet, since I’m the demon who tore you from it.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “You didn’t ask a question.”

  “So you don’t remember.”

  “. . . I remember the night,” he said softly. “Do your lore books mention stars?”

  I’ve held the nearest thing we have left between my hands, I thought, but there was no chance I would ever tell him how much I knew about Shade. Instead I laced my fingers together and said calmly, “‘The candles of the night.’ Yes.”

  It was a line from one of Hesiod’s minor lyrics; I had pored over the page a hundred times, mouthing the words and trying to imagine flames in the night sky.

  He snorted. “Your lore is stupider than I thought. They weren’t like candles. They were . . . Have you seen lamplight shine through dusty air, setting the dust motes on fire?” He waved a hand. “Imagine that, spread across the night sky—but ten thousand motes and ten thousand times brighter, glittering like the eyes of all the gods.”

  His hand dropped to the grass. I realized I had stopped breathing as his words danced through my head, sparking visions.

  “If you loved the true sky so much,” I said, “why did you seal yourself in here with us?”

  “No doubt malice aforethought.”

  “You don’t remember,” I said slowly. “You’ve lost your memories.”

  “Well, I don’t remember springing from the womb of Tartarus.”

  “Do you remember your name?”

  His mouth thinned.

  “I suppose it makes sense that you want your wives to guess,” I went on. “What happens to you if someone gets it right?”

  “Then I don’t have masters anymore.” He rolled onto his side and smiled at me. “Want to save me, lovely princess?”

  “I’m not a princess.”

  “Then I shall continue to languish.” He lay back, waving a hand lethargically. “Alas.”

  “You don’t sound too worried.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learnt as the Lord of Bargains, it’s that knowing the truth is not always a kindness.”

  “That’s a convenient philosophy for a demon that lives by lies.”

  He snorted. “I tell almost nothing but the truth. And how many truths have ever comforted you?”

  I remembered Father telling me, “Our house owes a debt and you will pay it back.” I remembered Aunt Telomache saying, “Your duty is to redeem your mother’s death.” I’d heard those truths, in deeds if not in words, every day of my life.

  I remembered my last words to Astraia, and the look on her face when she learnt the truth about me and the Rhyme.

  “None,” I said. “But at least I’ve never learnt that I lived a lie.”

  He sat up. “Let me tell you a story about what happens when mortals learn the truth. Once upon a time, Zeus killed his father, Kronos—but since he was a god, nobody seems to blame him for it.”

  “I have read the Theogony,” I said with dignity. “I know how the gods came to be.”

  “Then you know that the demon Typhon was one of the monsters that fought to avenge Kronos.”

  I shivered, my throat closing up. Last night, he had called the shadow-demons Children of Typhon. They were still waiting behind that door, behind the ragged sky, ready to drag me back—one is one and all alone—

  Ignifex was watching me as closely as a cat stalking a mouse. “Yes,” he said quietly, reading the fear off my face. “Typhon started a family.”

  I forced myself to meet his gaze. “I already knew that,” I gritted out. “The Theogony calls him ‘Father of Monsters.’ And Zeus threw all the monsters into Tartarus. How did these ones get into your house?”

  “Well, that’s a funny story. When Zeus finally forced the Children of Typhon into the abyss of Tartarus, he begged his mother, Gaia, to prevent them from ever wreaking havoc on the earth again.” His voice softened, losing its mocking edge, and slid like a silken ribbon across my skin. “So Gaia enclosed all of Tartarus within a great tower; and she put the tower into a house, and the house into a chest, and the chest into a conch, and the conch into a nut, and the nut into a pearl, and the pearl she put into a beautiful enameled jar that she sealed up with a cork and wax.”

  A gust of wind set the grass shivering around us. I blinked, then crossed my arms. The voice of my enemy should not be comforting.

  —the shadow bubbled out of my skin and it looked up at me as it dripped down my arms—

  My nails dug into my arms. “Then how did they get out?” I demanded.

  “Well, you see, Prometheus loved the race of men and gave them fire against the will of Zeus.”

  “And Zeus chained him to the rock and set an eagle to eat his liver every day.” I knew the story well; there had been a book with a garish picture that made Astraia squeal in horror.

  “What has that got to do with the Children of Typhon?” I managed to get the name out without a quaver.

  “Oh, have the Resurgandi forgotten that bit? Zeus didn’t punish him for the fire. He didn’t dare risk another war between the gods. Instead he set a trap. There were not yet any mortal women, and Zeus refused to make any, saying that future generations might rebel against the gods. He knew that Prometheus, who loved mankind more than reason, could not stand by while the race died out. And indeed, Prometheus offered to make a bet. Zeus would create a mortal woman and let her bear children, but he would also set her a test of obedience. If she failed, mankind would be cursed with misfortune and Prometheus would be chained for the eagle, but if she passed, mankind would live in blessedness forever.”

  “That was a stupid bet,” I muttered.

  Ignifex plucked a daisy and twirled it between his fingers. “I suppose gods as well as men become stupid when they have a chance to get everything they want.” He crushed the flower, his face for a moment ferocious.

  Then he smiled easily at me. “So Zeus created Pandora, the first mortal woman, and for a dowry he gave her the jar of shadows, with the strict injunction that she must never open it. She married a mortal man and bore him children and you would think they all lived happily ever after. But Zeus had made Pandora’s face as lovely as the dawn and her soul as wandering as the wind, so it was not long before Prometheus fell in love with her and she with him. Pandora begged him to take her away from her husband, but he refused: for she would die soon in any case, and he thought it better to let her live out her days with another mortal.”

  I knew what was coming and I clenched my hands, not wanting to hear the words, not wanting to show my fear.

  “Pandora went lamenting her fate in the silent woods, and then out of the woods came a whisper. Perhaps it was my masters, perhaps something else equally mischievous. It said: ‘Open your jar. If you have the courage to face every evil thing that emerges, at the bottom of it you will find this hope: that you will never die, but become like Prometheus for all eternity.’ So she opened the jar—”

  “Because you should always trust bodiless voices in the woods,” I muttered, nail
s biting into my palms as I tried not to imagine the pop of the stopper, the first whisper of song echoing from the jar’s mouth.

  “—and all the Children of Typhon rushed out and began to ravage the world, inflicting sickness and death and madness on the race of men.”

  I remembered the shadows bubbling out of my skin, the people screaming in Father’s study, and if that were done to the whole world at once—

  “But because they had looked into Pandora’s eyes as they emerged, they were bound to her. They could be locked up again only if Pandora were cast into the jar, and as she begged for mercy, this is what Prometheus did. Then, having lost the bet, he turned himself over to Zeus, who chained him for the eagle.

  “So Zeus got what he wanted: Prometheus was locked away, while the damage done by the Children of Typhon guaranteed that mankind could never flourish enough to threaten the gods. Prometheus got what he wanted: Pandora’s daughters remained behind and the race of men continued. And Pandora got what she wanted: she never died, but became exactly like Prometheus, for they were both trapped in eternal torment.”

  He finished and raised his eyebrows at me, as if waiting for a reaction.

  I glared back at him. My skin still twitched with leftover horror, but I was not going to give him any sort of show.

  “I don’t see how that story proves your point,” I said stiffly. “If Pandora had known all the truth, she would never have opened the jar.”

  And if she hadn’t been so stupid, she would never have imagined she could make her impossible wish come true. But I wasn’t about to admit that at this moment, I understood every ounce of Ignifex’s contempt for his victims.

  He leaned toward me, for once with no laughter in his eyes. “She was exactly like you. She was brave enough to risk anything for what she wanted, and she knew a little too much of the truth.”

  On the last words his voice grew soft and bitter. Before today, I had never seen him this serious, and it made me feel like the ground was wavering beneath me.

  I leaned forward, showing my teeth. “Do you fancy yourself Prometheus, then? Will you throw me in a jar to save the world?”