His feet had been dangling over the edge, in the water. Behind him stood a man, one hand holding a cowl close around him, shielding Heraclix from the cold, the other hand holding a staff from which dangled a dimly glowing spherical lamp. Only the bottom half of the face was visible under the hood. The chin was wrinkled and covered with a wispy grey beard. Behind the hooded old man a bundle of cloth rustled and yawned.
“You are alive,” the old man said in a voice that squeaked ever so slightly. “You are lucky we found you when we did. You would have drowned, otherwise.”
“Where are we?” Heraclix asked.
“On the Danube,” the old man said, “west of Pest, heading downstream.”
Finally, thought Heraclix, a stroke of good luck.
“And where were you headed, friend?” the old man asked.
“Szentendre.”
“Ah, then you will not be far, once we arrive in Pest.”
“How long until we reach Pest?” Heraclix asked.
“Mere hours, my friend. We should be there for the sunrise.”
“And what compels you to travel to Pest?” Heraclix asked.
“Nothing compels us, friend. That is, in fact, the very reason we were able to stop and pull you from the drink.”
The man waited for a response, a query of some sort, but Heraclix remained silent, so he carried on.
“My grandson and I, we have no home. We have lost the others in our family to the ravages of war and disease. We felt compelled, as you say it, to make a living, at first, to work for the good things in life, establish a home, and so forth. Then we realized that we had the good things, such as each other. And we found that we had a home wherever we were at the moment. So we left all that, sold what we had, and bought this little barge. We travel where we wish when we wish. We trade up and down the river for the things we need, and we are never in want, sometimes fishing, sometimes delivering goods, always in good company with each other. We have no itinerary, else you would be dead and sinking to the bottom. The captains of other boats would have paid you heed only long enough to check your pockets for money. Then they would have rolled you right back into the water. They don’t have much time to meddle in the affairs of a man already dead. After all, a dead man isn’t of much use to those seeking riches, unless his riches are with him.”
Heraclix carefully, secretly, checked his pouch and found that it was soggy, but still full of coin. They hadn’t tried to rob him, though they might have, had they wished to do so.
“A live man, however, might be of more use to those seeking riches,” Heraclix said.
The old man laughed much like a mouse hiccups. “We’ve heard there is a reward out upstream for the capture of a giant,” he said.
The old man removed his hood to show a bald scalp, save for a ring of long wispy hair falling down from above his ears. “We have no desire to turn you in. If we did, we’d be heading to Vienna. Besides, me and Alva here wouldn’t be up to the task. Neither of us is strong enough to take you in, and we don’t have the stomach to sell someone into slavery. No, we enjoy our freedom,” he smiled, “and grant others the same privilege.”
Heraclix felt movement in his cloak.
“I trust them,” Pomp whispered into Heraclix’s ear. “They help you, helped you. They are good.”
Heraclix and Pomp disembarked several miles north and west of Pest. Heraclix slipped up the muddy embankment and waved goodbye as the pair floated downstream. He turned and walked into the woods as the glow of the rising sun creased the horizon.
“It’s tempting,” Heraclix said to Pomp, who had made herself visible to him there in the woods, where no strangers would see her as they traveled, “to live like that: free of worry, no schedule, no obligations, no hurry—”
“No desire,” Pomp interrupted.
“What?”
“No desire. They think they want for nothing, but they want nothing. They fear nothing. They are boring.”
“This is something new to you, isn’t it, Pomp?”
“Being bored?”
“No, having to think about these things.”
She pursed her lips shut, petulant.
“It’s okay to admit that maybe you’ve been thinking too much,” he teased, referring to her frequent jabs at him.
“They think they have everything,” she said, ignoring the comment, though she caught Heraclix’s intent, “so nothing can be rewarding to them. No reward without challenges. No comfort without fear. No happiness without sadness. Everything is flat.”
“You have been thinking . . .” Heraclix stopped in his tracks, listening. “Wait,” he whispered. “What is that?”
Pomp flies up into the topmost branches of a tall yew tree for a better view. She sees four figures spying on Heraclix. They peer out from behind a large clump of sprawling oaks, signaling one to another with a series of gestures and short, sharp grunts.
Two of them, crouched on the verge of the clump of trees, crouch, preparing to spring.
“Heraclix! To your left!” Pomp cries out.
All four look up at her and growl. They resemble boars, with blunted snouts and dangerous-looking tusks curving out like sabers from under their snarling lips. But these pigs, more massive than a man, stand on their rear hoofs, and their fore-legs end in a single sharp claw, like a stiletto. They are covered in rust-colored fur, and their eyes glow like coals in the shadows of the morning light.
Two of them climb the trees, springing up the outstretched tree limbs toward Pomp. Surely, these are demons that followed Heraclix and Pomp from the abyss to retrieve them and drag them back to Hell. She goes invisible, but she thinks the creatures can still see her, as they pursue her all the more doggedly. But Pomp isn’t about to submit to them and go back through Hell. Her mind buzzes with fear at the thought.
Or is it fear? She looks around, then above, and finds the source of the buzzing that she had thought was just in her head.
Just above her, a large wasp nest is crawling with insects. She flies above the structure, much larger than herself, and tears at the paper that holds it to a thin branch. The wasps are confused, then agitated, by their invisible assailant. The nearest swine-demon is almost within arm’s reach of Pomp when the nest falls into its mouth. It bites down hard, destroying the nest and unleashing a small cloud of furious wasps, which sting the pig-thing’s mouth, snout, and head repeatedly. This occupies it long enough for Pomp to break off a dead branch. She drives it into the demon-swine’s left eye, causing her pursuer to fall backward out of the tree. The falling body catches its companion mid-chest, and the two tumble down through crackling branches with cracking of bones onto the hard earth and roots beneath.
They can be hurt, then!
The other two tackled Heraclix, knocking him to the ground with suprising force. One pinned his shoulders to the ground while the other gored him in the side of the chest, thrusting its tusk in where a heart should have been. The pain was intense and real. Self-loathing washed over him, a sense of inadequacy at his past inability to save his daughter and his wife. He thought of the condemned in Hell, of their sufferings, and felt sure that he would be brought to that same place to suffer that same fate, no matter what he did. His utmost desire at that moment was to simply give up and give in. Then he looked up to the trees and saw Pomp repel her opponent. It fell through the trees as if in slow-motion, snapping branches, bouncing until it hit its comrade and sent them both to the ground.
Seeing this caused him a glimmer of concern for her, a ray of tentative hope. He kneed the demon-swine next to him in the jaw, knocking it off of him, then swung his feet up over his head to kick the other one in the snout, freeing himself from the demon’s claws. He tore at the face of the one that had gored him, gouging great pieces of pork from its snout then grabbing a tusk and yanking it from its roots. The pig fell to the ground, then dissipated in a gaseous wisp.
The other had regained its feet by then and was circling Heraclix, looking for an opening to st
rike.
“Tell your master,” Heraclix said, “that he won’t have the pleasure of our presence in Hell today.”
The demon, seeing an opening, leaped at Heraclix.
The golem, having feigned the weakness in the defense, caught the pig-man mid-air, the blue left hand clasping the demon’s throat.
The demon wheezed and rasped until it caught enough breath to speak. Its voice was that of a petulant little girl, a disquieting contrast to the fierce demon’s face. “Do what you will. I’ll see you again in Hell, brother!” The demon tittered until Heraclix crushed the beast’s trachea. The creature disolved into mist, leaving the smell of sulfur on the air.
Heraclix fell to his knees, holding his side where the tusk had penetrated.
“That took everything I had in me. I am so . . . tired.”
Pomp patted him on the head. She made herself visible, but he was staring at the ground, not giving her his full attention.
“You have more in you. If not, you’d stop complaining. Come, Heraclix. We are close to Szentendre. Very close,” she said with a smile, hoping to encourage him. “We must go. We go through Hell, then we go to Szentendre, right? Isn’t that what the fly-devil tells us?”
“And another devil just told me I was its brother.”
“You don’t believe it, do you?” Pomp said.
“I don’t know what I believe any more.”
“You are sad,” Pomp said. “When you are sad, you must hope.”
“For what?”
“To know who you are!” Pomp said. “Besides, this isn’t just about you!”
“No one cares about me,” Heraclix said. “I have no one left. I let them all die: Rhoda, Elsie, even myself.”
“Then you must hope to see them again. Don’t you think they would hope to see you . . . again . . . if you had . . . died?” Pomp looked a bit puzzled, but pleased with the words she spoke.
He looked up to the sky. “I suppose they would.”
“There, you see? They have hope that you can share!”
Heraclix stood, staggered for a moment, then regained his balance. “Yes, Pomp. I think you may be right.”
“Listen to little Pomp! She hopes for you, too.”
The golem looked at her with tired eyes, but the hint of a smile was beginning to show on his face.
“Then let’s go on, Pomp. To Szentendre!”
CHAPTER 13
Heraclix’s senses came back to him as they approached Szentendre. He had no idea how long he had been traveling. Vigor was slowly filtering back into his veins. He felt, as he came closer, a faint sense of familiarity punctuated by powerful impressions of déjà vu. The village was bucolic, a quaint picture of peasant life. The sun shone down, not harshly, and the skies were as blue as he could ever remember them. A gentle breeze brushed his skin.
“This place is beautiful. And I sense that my realm is close here,” Pomp said to Heraclix, who absorbed her words in reverent silence.
They stopped a passing herdsman and inquired where they might find the local church. He hastily directed them to a low, long hill crowned with a semicircle of trees with a trembling finger, then ran off so quickly that his lambs had difficulty keeping pace. In the midst of the opening between the trees sat a conglomeration of five stone buildings. The central, and largest, building was surmounted by a large granite cross. The stone from which it had been hewn must have been hauled from some distance away, judging from its size and the absence of a quarry nearby. Several stone gargoyles hung from the eaves. Pomp, energized by the proximity with Faerie, playfully flew from fanged mouth to fanged mouth while Heraclix knocked at a door in one of the buildings.
“We’re out of bread,” a man with a dullard’s voice declared.
“Not everyone who knocks wants bread,” came another man’s voice, this one much higher-pitched.
The door opened.
“Oh!” said the man with the high-pitched voice in a note of surprise. “You are” the man looked stunned, at a temporary loss for words “. . . rather tall,” he said to Heraclix. This man was dressed in the simple brown robes of a monk. He wore a tonsure above his long, skinny head. “Forgive me,” he said, “but I was surprised by your stature.” He took a deep breath. “How may I help you today, sir?”
“I am looking for the graveyard.”
“The graveyard,” the man looked at him suspiciously, “Yes, it’s by the old church.”
“The old church?” Heraclix asked.
“Yes. This is the new church. The old church is on the other side of this hill.”
“Thank you, sir,” Heraclix said, turning to go.
“Ah, may I interest you in buying some of our fine bread?”
“We hain’t got no more bread!” the dullard shouted from a back room.
“Perhaps tomorrow?” the monk said.
“Perhaps tomorrow,” Heraclix said, then walked on.
“The old church,” the monk called out, “it was burned down by a madman years ago and is not much to look at.”
“Neither is he!” the dullard said.
Heraclix stopped and turned.
The thin monk sputtered out an apology “Oh, I’m very sorry, you see, he is an utter—”
“No, no,” Heraclix reassured him that he had no intent to harm. “The old church, burned down by whom?”
“I don’t know the name. Lost his family, lost his faith, lost his mind. Poor chap. You know the story.”
“I just might,” Heraclix said.
“I think his family’s gravestones are in the cemetery there, but I can never remember which name goes with which story. His grave is the empty one. They put a stone there in case he ever returned.”
“I see. How many years ago did this happen?”
“Oh, two, two hundred-fifty years ago. Lots of people say its haunted, so they avoid it. You’ll be okay, though. You’re such a big boy . . . sorry . . .”
“Apology accepted,” Heraclix said, then set off again.
The other side of the hill and the little valley it overlooked was covered in golden grass as high as Heraclix’s waist. A few small trees with wide black branches sprouted up here and there. At the base of the hillside was a large pile of burnt stone and timbers smoothed with years of wear. He approached the ruins, stooping down to break a small piece of charcoal off of one of the timbers. He crushed the charcoal in his fingers, then sniffed the pungent powder. As he smelled the burnt wood, an inexplicable feeling of guilt washed over him. He thought he saw a vision of flames shooting out of windows, but the phantasm passed almost as soon as it had appeared.
“This must have been the church,” he said, then quickly turned away, shaken. Then a quick gust of wind blew across the hills, drawing his attention away from his thoughts. He focused his efforts on finding the graveyard.
Heraclix and Pomp combed through the tall grass until they found a low mound in the valley where the grass grew higher, greener, and darker. Tall yellow meadow wildflowers grew upon the mound, setting it apart from its surroundings even further. Here Heraclix stubbed his toe on a grave marker, so the pair did their best to mat down the grass and flowers to expose any other gravestones they might find.
Pomp flew from stone to stone, unable to read them but able to infer that the size of the stone meant something either about the interred person’s age or importance in life. Most were set apart singly or in pairs.
One was a trio.
“Heraclix! Is this it?” She made herself visible so that he could see where she was.
He hastened to the spot at which she pointed: a line of three gravestones covered in lichen, each larger than the one to its left. Carefully, he scraped the lichen away to clear the weatherworn grooves that indicated faint lettering. The carving on the smaller two stones was crude, the sloppy shape of the letters suggesting a job hastily done. The third, and largest, bore no inscription at all. There were no dates on the stones. The smallest read RHODA HEILLIGER.
“Rhoda . . . and Els
ie . . . Then my memory wasn’t a fabrication. This,” he held his immense hand to the smallest stone, then the second, “is all that remains of them.” He looked at Pomp, deep pain showing in his red eye. The blue left eye twitched of its own accord, darting around like a chameleon’s eye, frantically looking for . . . something.
“I am very sorry,” Pomp said.
“For what?” Heraclix asked curtly.
“For your feelings.”
“That’s just it, Pomp,” his voice was more aggressive toward her than it had ever been. “I should be devastated, disconsolate, or at least saddened. But I feel nothing, not even the self-loathing I think I ought to feel for not mourning their loss. Perhaps I should be surprised by my lack of reaction, but I’m not even surprised by that. I feel absolutely nothing. This is a day like any other day in a place like any other place. It is no different to me, and I am not different for having been here.”
“My heart hurts for you,” Pomp said. Her tone indicated sympathy and sincerity, but this had no effect on Heraclix.
“Maybe I have inherited the memories of another man,” he said, ignoring her. “Or the old man is truly dead and gone and though I know something of his history—maybe even share a piece of his soul—I am a new man, unconnected with the old.” Heraclix was smiling, almost laughing, but Pomp didn’t think he was really happy. “Perhaps my very existence is moot and my quest to know my history is a buffoon’s folly—running around in chronological circles to no end except a great cosmic joke for whatever power truly controls the universe.”
Pomp isn’t laughing. She is crying with sadness, frustration, anger, fear. “He is a good man,” she whispers to herself. “He should be happy for his goodness. Mowler has caused this unhappiness.” She thinks of how she had met Heraclix, the tortured servant, how he had freed her, saved her life, tended to her, been her companion, patiently tolerated her adjustment to the realization of her own mortality. She thinks of those horrible devil-flies and how, being susceptible to death, she might become one of them: stupid, loathsome, selfish—if she didn’t do some good in the world. She already had the wings, after all. Was she closer to being condemned to Hell than she knew? She might be, if she didn’t set some things straight. She is in no better shape than the Serb who raced against the end of his life to repent for the wrongs he had done. There was only so much time in this world, and Pomp feared that hers might run out if she didn’t do some good, and quickly! Time was short.
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