“Cow-tipper,” Erasmus called back. “As in, tipping cows?”
“Dripping trout?” shouted Gregor.
“Oh, never mind!”
A look of incredulity came over Erasmus. Adjusting his staff, he brought it close to his face, aging himself until he looked like a distinguished professor again. Grinning, he pushed several times upon his nose, which had healed during the aging process. He put his staff back to work, murmuring softly, “Why hadn’t I thought of that before?”
“But what is the kronosaur doing here?” I called. “It’s too old to be something drawn out of the nightmares of the damned.” I turned to Malagigi. “Did you say it came here from earth?”
Malagigi nodded. “It must have swum into the spirit world back in its day, and it is still living here. One swam out a few years back. Not a kronosaur but a similar creature with a thinner neck. Some mortal magician ripped an opening in the spirit world and one of the ancient beasts escaped.”
“Yes, I know who you mean,” I said. “That fellow Theo hated so much, the black sorcerer who lived beside a Scottish loch. That particular plesiosaur works for Mephisto now. He’s got it on his staff. He calls it Nessie.”
“What do they do down here?” Erasmus mused. “What do they eat?”
“Other monsters.” Malagigi shrugged. “Each other. People like you.”
“Can’t be too many of those,” Erasmus replied. “Not really the thing, you know, coming bodily into Hell. As a rule, tourist agencies warn against such excursions.”
I started to comment on Ferdinand’s period of bodily incarceration in Hell but then recalled that had been a hoax. Luckily, I remembered before I spoke. Otherwise, I might have discovered firsthand whether or not it was possible to die of embarrassment.
Malagigi stuck his hands in his voluminous sleeves, reminding me of dozens of monks I had known in my youth. “As to why the creature is here, I know not. Perhaps, it has become part of the punishments inflicted here, or it may not even be aware that Hell had grown up where its old stomping grounds used to be.”
That was an eerie thought! I straightened up. “What was Hell? I mean, before there were men to punish?”
“A jail for fallen angels until Judgment Day,” Gregor replied gruffly.
“But what about this swamp?” I continued. “Was this particular area used to imprison fallen angels? Did it exist previously, and the Seven who rule Hell just built over it? I thought Mephisto said human passions brought this swamp into being?”
“Je ne sais pas.” Malagigi shrugged. “When I next see my master in the Brotherhood of Hope, I will ask him. He has a master of his own, who lives near the top of Mount Purgatory. From time to time, that master is able to question the saints.”
“The Church may be wrong about dinosaurs,” Erasmus called casually, his dark eyes watching Gregor avidly from beneath his lank hair. “The pope admitted the existence of evolution recently.”
“What? Blasphemy!” Gregor cried. Then, his brow furloughed. “So, Teilhard de Chardinon won our bet did he? I owe him a drink … only he’s probably dead now, isn’t he? How sad.”
“The Church was wrong about harrowers, too,” I said. “Apparently, eternal torment is not eternal.”
“I knew the Church was wrong on a great many points, but you think they would have gotten that right,” Erasmus murmured.
“For any who do not repent, it is eternal. For them, the flames will burn eternally, or the swamp will stink.” Malagigi pinched his nostrils shut with his hand. “But would God be just or good if he did not hear men’s prayers, even when uttered in the bowels of Hell? Remember, the Bible promises us, ‘If I make my bed in Hell, behold, thou art there.’”
“So all this time, the Church has been scaring our socks off with tales of Hell, and they haven’t been true?” Erasmus turned to Gregor and shouted over the digestive roar, “When you were pope, Brother, did you ever hear tell of such a thing?”
Gregor nodded. “We knew.”
Erasmus shot up into a sitting position and stared at Gregor, his whirling staff ignored in his hand. His head brushed against the crimson roof. “Come again?”
“We knew.” Gregor assumed his grave and ponderous churchman aspect. “It is recorded in a document called the Apocalypse of Peter.”
“Apocalypse of…” called Mab. “What’s that—the End of Pete?”
“Apocalypse means ‘revelation,’” Gregor explained hoarsely. “In this case, a revelation supposedly witnessed by Simon Bar Jonah, though no one believes Saint Peter wrote it himself.”
“How come no one has ever heard of this document?” Erasmus asked suspiciously.
“Churchmen have,” Gregor replied gravely. “When the Church Fathers put the Bible together, they debated whether the holy script should end with the Revelations of Saint John or the Apocalypse of Peter. Eusebius of Caesarea, the man who drew up the original list for what books should appear in the Bible, was uncertain about Revelations. He preferred the Apocalypse of Peter, but in the end the Church Fathers chose Saint John’s writings to enter the Scripture.”
“Any idea why?” Mab asked, pen poised.
“Partially for reasons of authenticity and partially because in Saint Peter’s book, Our Lord Jesus tells Saint Peter that at the end of time, if those in Heaven pray for those in Hell, God will let all the sufferers out. But, he asks Saint Peter not to tell anyone.” Gregor raised his voice so we could all hear him over the background noise. “The Church Fathers felt any suggestion of a way out of Hell might encourage men not to take virtue seriously. Besides, as it was Our Lord himself who requested the matter be kept secret, they felt his wishes should be honored.”
“So, they knew that if we should ever find ourselves in Hell for real, we should keep praying? That’s sort of an important point, don’t you think!” Erasmus looked shaken. Then, his expression grew more skeptical. “Are you sure you didn’t just make this up?”
“It’s all true. You can look it up, if you like,” Gregor replied stoically. “Or you could, last time I was out and about. I am assuming that the Orbis Suleimani has not altered the records since. If they had not done so in nineteen hundred years, they are unlikely to have done so while I was imprisoned.”
“The Orbis Suleimani!” Malagigi’s eyes had grown round. “Sacrebleu! They are sorcerer-hunting madmen of the worst sort! Their name alone strikes terror into the hearts of every practitioner of the subtle arts!”
“That is because they defend mankind from the menace of magic.” Erasmus leaned forward, grinning wolfishly. “That’s how humans got to be the way they are today, you know … masters of the earth: because of the Orbis Suleimani. Because of us!”
“Enough about the Orbis Suleimani. They give me the creeps,” Mab announced. “Caught a—well, you’d call it a cousin—of mine once, several millennia back, and he’s still in a vial in the Vault under Prospero’s Mansion.” Mab gave me a level look. “If we survive this, Ma’am, I think you should give him back to me. Call it ‘hazard pay.’”
“Very well, Mab. If we get out of here alive, you may have him,” I promised firmly, silencing the objections in my brothers’ faces with a stern glance.
The look of astonishment upon Mab’s face, when he heard he had gotten his way, was priceless.
As we crouched together beneath our makeshift tarp, the silvery light of the tiny star illuminating our faces, I thought of my brother Theophrastus who had left the family for decades, allowing himself to suffer and grow old, due to his fear that continued exposure to magic would damn him.
“Does Theo know all this,” I asked, “about there being hope, even in Hell?”
“I do not know.” Gregor’s long hair rippled over his broad shoulders as he shrugged. “Why?”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. “Someone should tell him.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Some Are Born with Souls …
“Your turn to take the star.” Malagigi extended the silver sp
ark toward Mab, who sat hunched down upon the floor between the seats of the broken gondola, doodling in his notebook.
“I don’t know about this,” Mab muttered. “I’m not like the rest of you … I don’t got one of those soul things.”
“Excuse me?” Malagigi inclined his ear.
“He’s not a human,” Erasmus explained from where he lay on his back now, his arm and staff extended outside our hideout. “He’s an Aerie Spirit, one of the servants of my father, the magician.”
“You mean, like my elementals?” Malagigi’s features lit up. He leaned toward Mab, his face appearing more substantial in the silvery light. “Do you know that God will grant you a soul, if you ask for one in prayer? My master in the Brotherhood of Hope explained this to me. I told my elemental friends and one of them, a sylph, was granted a soul!” He frowned, absentmindedly brushing at the anchor symbol upon his shoulder. “The others would not ask.”
Mab frowned dubiously and pulled his hat lower over his eyes. He turned to me where I sat cramped atop one of the gondola benches, my head ducked to avoid bumping the robes that made up the roof above me. “Is that true, Ma’am? Can a creature without a soul be granted one?”
“It can,” Gregor responded before I could answer. “Father once told me he believed putting Aerie Ones into bodies might make it possible for them to acquire souls.”
“What!” I cried, leaping up. My head pushed upon the robes above us, causing acid that had pooled in the folds of the fabric to stream down on all sides.
“Why would that be?” Erasmus poked his head up. “Elves have bodies, and they do not have souls.”
“It was not the body per se,” Gregor called back, “but the interaction with mankind. It was living among human beings and interacting with us that Father believed would bring about this transformation. Elves do not live like men. Nothing in their society—if you can even call it that—encourages compassion, consideration, love, or good deeds.”
“Really?” I sat down again, hard.
The world seemed to spin around me—or maybe it actually was spinning—as this missing piece fell into the puzzle that was my father’s secret plans. So, Aerie Ones could gain souls! Was that why Mab and Caurus seemed so civil, while Boreas—who dwelt in a body but seldom interacted with men—did not?
Mab had not been civil back in his windy days. The Greeks had considered the Northeast the worst of all winds, and sailors knew to fear the notorious Nor’easter. Could the Aerie Ones who interact with humans on a regular basis be joining the Company of Men, of which Astreus had spoken—a term he had used to refer to a gathering of human beings, the way one might say, a pack of wolves or a herd of deer.
My thoughts returned to the cavern of naked Italians beneath Logistilla’s house—bodies I suspected Father had instructed her to create for the purpose of housing Aerie Ones. Could Father’s plan be to give souls to all the Aerie Ones? Was such a thing possible? Had he hoped they would gain souls before he was required to free them at the end of their thousand years of service?
What of the oreads and the oni? The sylphs and the salamanders? Could they gain souls, too, if they spent time in a body? The possibilities were mind-boggling!
“Mr. Prospero told me this, too.” Mab shrugged. “But I don’t feel any different, so I’ve been figuring it didn’t work. What will happen if I don’t have a soul? Can I still hold the star?”
Malagigi shook his head sadly. “It will either burn you or fall through your hand.”
“Best not to tempt fate,” Gregor said hoarsely. “We cannot risk either wounding you or losing the star.”
Mab nodded glumly and stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Nonsense.” Malagigi went to wave his hand through Mab’s arm and was surprised to find it somewhat substantial to him. He patted Mab’s shoulder, his hand sinking into Mab’s coat. “When else will you get such a chance? And besides, if you don’t have a soul, you needn’t lose hope, it could still come! Here, take it. I’ll snatch it away again, instantly, if you start to burn.”
Malagigi knelt upon the seat of the gondola and pulled Mab’s hand from the pocket of the trench coat. The Frenchman dropped the star just above Mab’s palm, while cupping his other hand under Mab’s, ready to catch the star, should it fall through Mab.
As we sat hunched within our tent and watched the twinkle of silver fall, time seemed to stand still. Gregor, still seated, leaned against his black staff, watching intently. Erasmus had turned off his staff and sat up. Now, he squatted beside Mab, eager for a better view. Mab himself stood rooted in place, his face screwed up. I wondered if he was saying a prayer.
My heart hammered oddly, as if playing a melody against my ribs. Even though there was no reason for my reaction, I felt certain that a great deal rode upon this test. Father had told different stories to various of his children, none of which I knew for certain to be true. If Father’s theory about Aerie Ones receiving souls by inhabiting bodies and interacting with men was true, then maybe other things Father had claimed might be true as well.
Maybe, despite all the evidence otherwise, I was not the child of the witch Sycorax. Maybe Father’s great love for my mother was not a lie. Maybe Father had never enchanted me, or used me cruelly.
Were the star to burn Mab or fall through his hand, it would be the death knell of all my hopes—as if I would then know for certain that Father was a liar, I a slave, and my entire long life a fraud.
The little star reached Mab’s hand. He cried out, gasping, and flinched backward.
My eyes filled with tears. I turned my head away.
“Look!” Malagigi leapt up and danced. He pointed with great excitement. “It’s staying!”
I snapped my head up. It was true! The tiny silver star rested upon Mab’s palm: it did not burn his flesh.
“Feels … sort of weird,” Mab voiced hesitantly. Then, slowly, a smile crept across his stony features until it became a wide, jubilant grin. He held his hand up high. The little star shone upon it. Its silvery light flooded the entire hideout, illuminating the cardinal robes above, the gondola below, and the rim of the huge skull.
Erasmus laughed. Malagigi clapped his hands, and even Gregor allowed himself a slight smile. As for me, I cried tears of joy.
Of course, as there was no evidence to support my intuition—no Lady who could have sent it—Mab’s catching the star was not really proof of anything.
Yet, my heart sang.
* * *
“IT’S definitely getting smaller in here.” Erasmus’s shout jarred me from the waking dream into which I had slipped. He knelt on the edge of the skull with his head sticking back inside our tent. “The ribs have been pushed together, for one thing, with the vertebra all sort of knocked together in a pile. We’d be squished in the mix, too, if it weren’t for this skull. We should begin preparing for the next step.”
I stretched my stiff limbs and tried not to gag as the stench of digestion assailed me anew. The roaring and grinding were nearly deafening now, and the inside of our makeshift tent was sweltering. My face and neck dripped with perspiration. I wondered that I could have slept through this at all.
Gregor looked up from the middle of the gondola, where he and Malagigi had been kneeling together in prayer. “What did you have in mind, Brother?”
“I think, with my expert knowledge of medicine, the steps I have taken should induce the creature to vomit. I doubt the kronosaurs on earth had a regurgitation reflex, but this creature seems to, so I won’t argue with providence.
“Once it throws us up, we’ll need to sail on something when we get out. Or, at the very least, hold on to something. Any idea how to go about this?” Erasmus asked. He lifted the crimson robe that formed our tarp, scooted inside the tent, and then tucked the robe back into place, insulating us somewhat from the violence of the stomach. “I’m assuming we’ll be spit out into the midst of the swamp rather than near land. Of course, we might be spit out into the depths of the ocean of slime, and a
ll asphyxiate before we reach the surface—in which case, we won’t need a boat. Assuming we do need a boat, however, what are we going to do about the gondola?”
We studied our vessel, moving the silver star here and there, to facilitate the examination. I ran my hand along the damaged area, feeling the break in the otherwise smooth wood. “It’s cracked, but not split. The dolfin has broken off the bow, of course, but that will not affect its water-worthiness. If we had some oakum, we could patch it.”
“Didn’t think to bring any,” Mab mumbled apologetically. He looked puzzled when the rest of us laughed.
“How about securing it to the skull?” I suggested. “We already know that the skull can float a bit; maybe the two of them together could stay afloat.”
Erasmus laughed derisively. “Oh, that will work, I’m sure! I can just see us now, floating through Hell in an upside-down skull.” Smiling, he tipped back his head and recited:
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
“If I recall,” Gregor said, humor twinkling in his eyes, “‘they’ returned twenty years later, hale and whole, having ‘been to the Lakes, and the Terrible Zone, And the hills of the Chankly Bore.’”
Mab shuddered. “If this is the Lakes, then I guess we have the Terrible Zone to look forward to. Hope it doesn’t take us twenty years to get back, though. That would be bad for Mr. Prospero. Don’t much like the sound of Chankly Bore, either.”
Erasmus chuckled. “I didn’t know you could quote Edward Lear, Gregor. You never cease to surprise me! Very well, let’s lash our gondola to the sieve and throw our fate in with The Jumblies. May we be as lucky as they, and our sieve float.”
* * *
“UH … people!” Mab peered out from under the robe as we completed the task of binding the gondola to the skull. “That sea monster we killed? I don’t think it’s dead!”
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