Prospero Regained

by L. Jagi Lamplighter

  “Just realized I never got to ask Caliban what his task was.” Mab flipped open his notebook to his Family Duties and wrote “Caliban” beneath his list of other names. “What do you do, Bully Boy? Other than run errands for the Hare … er, Mr. Mephisto?”

  “I talk to the Staff of Wisdom,” Caliban said. “That’s my job. I talk to it, and I make sure no one else talks to it.”

  “Whatever do you talk about?” asked Logistilla.

  “Art, poetry, literature, the ballet.” Caliban gave the club a fond smile. “He’s not such a bad companion really. I’ve learned a great deal. Sometimes, I bring home questions my students have asked me, and we chat about them, so I have an answer for the students in the morning. Isn’t that right, Club?”

  “Indeed,” replied the voice of King Vinae. “Incidentally,” added the demon, “not that anyone asked me, but I do so love to impart wisdom. If Caliban instructs me to give warning should something approach or overhear you, you will be relatively safe and free to talk.”

  “Thank you, and I instruct you to do that,” Caliban replied, “but you should not volunteer information. You know that.”

  “Just trying to help.”

  Gregor leaned forward, clearly puzzled. “Your students?”

  Caliban said, “I am a professor at NYU.” At Gregor’s blank look, he elaborated, “New York University? In the city?” When Gregor nodded, he continued, “I teach poetry, English literature, and, occasionally, Italian.”

  Caliban cleared his throat and addressed the club, announcing solemnly, “Please warn us of any dangers, if anyone is listening, or if anything is approaching our position.”

  “I understand and shall obey.”

  Logistilla leaned forward. “Why isn’t he supposed to volunteer information?”

  “He gets uppity.” Caliban tucked the club under his arm.

  “I was just thinking how useful it would be to have a staff that talks,” murmured Cornelius.

  “Really?” Erasmus gave a low chuckle. “I was just thinking how pleasant it was that mine did not. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy questioning Vinae, mind you, but talking back, all the time?”

  “I heard that,” murmured the club.

  * * *

  THE hatred frozen within the landscape began to affect the mammoth. It trumpeted and stomped around, tossing its great tusks. Mephisto nearly fell off. He ended up dangling beside the creature’s head, hanging on to its ears. He had to kick off the tusk and do a flip to get back up again. Titus and Logistilla were not so lucky. During a particularly violent stamp, they slid off the rump. Titus grabbed the beast’s tail, and Logistilla grabbed Titus about the waist. She then bounced against Titus as her feet were dragged along the ice.

  “Sorry, folks, that’s the end of the mammoth line,” Mephisto called out. He had some trouble getting the creature to kneel. Theo leapt off and, coming around the woolly beast, caught me as I slid from its back. Only he lost his balance and we both fell onto the snow. We stayed there—laughing—until Mab came tumbling down on top of us.

  Mephisto sent the mammoth home, and we began walking. The glacier here was foliated, with layers of ice and rock creating striations, so that we seemed to be traveling over a gigantic box of vanilla fudge swirl topped with little cages of rock crystal sugar. It was beautiful but creepy.

  I fell in step beside Caliban. Mab walked beside me, the collar of his trench coat turned up against the chill.

  “Caliban?” I kept my voice low. “Did Father forbid me from asking questions of the Staff of Wisdom?”

  “You, Miss Miranda?” Caliban scratched his head. “No. Not that I recall.”

  “May I address it?” I asked. Beside me, Mab quickly pulled out his Space Pen and waterproof notebook.

  “Certainly!” Caliban inclined his head toward his club. “Psst. Keep your voice down. No need to broadcast your answers to the entire landscape!”

  I leaned toward the club, speaking softly. “Seir implied there is a power stronger than Lilith, and that you know what it is.”

  A low but deep chuckling came from the wood. “You of all people, Servant of She Whom We Cannot Name, need to ask this of me?”

  “Ex-servant,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Oh? Do you serve Her no longer?”

  My face burned. “I have had my station ripped from me.”

  “So you have lost your rank. Have you turned your back upon your Mistress, as well?”

  “No…”

  “Then, you are still her servant, are you not?”

  “Ah … yes?” I said, taken aback. It had not occurred to me I might continue to serve my Lady’s purposes, even if I could not hear Her.

  “Surely, then, you know what you have Above that we lack here Below,” continued the voice from the club. “In the dark, a candle is very bright, a fire more so, and a bonfire draws all attention. Compared to sunlight, however, they are puny.

  “Living in darkness, we fallen angels have grown much impressed by the Seven Rulers of Hell: Satan, Lucifer, Asmodeus, Lilith, Beelzebub, Belphegor, and Abaddon. We believe them great and terrible, able to rip down the pillars of Heaven and plunge all the universe into night.

  “What fools, we!” The voice laughed contemptuously. “And I was among the most foolish of them. How puffed up with myself I was, how fooled by the very lies I doled out to others! Even my imprisonment by Solomon did not enlighten me. It took my great nemesis to rip the blinders from my eyes and show me the truth.” Softly, almost as if to himself, he added, “For what else could have enticed him, to whom I had offered all, except the one thing no demon could offer?

  “Far from being torn down and dismantled,” the voice continued, “as the Great Seven claim, Heaven has not been even so much as touched by our rebellion. We have accomplished nothing except to make our own lives miserable. We are kings of emptiness.

  “In my ignorance and vanity, I was like one who, having lived always in the shadow of Mount Everest, believed that mountain the greatest thing in the universe. From its base, it may so appear. However, should one compare it with a mountain range, a continent, a planet, the solar system, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and so on, it is as nothing! And all these true wonders are held together by that one power of which we in Hell know not.”

  “And that power is?” I asked.

  “Come, Little Servant of the Most High … What did the man from the Brotherhood of Hope teach those whom he rescued? What did they need in order to escape Hell?”

  “How do you know about that?” I asked. “You weren’t there?”

  The staff made a sound much like a snort. “Some Demon of Wisdom I would be if my knowledge was restricted to what happened near this club! What did Malagigi tell them they needed if they wished to be free?”

  “To be nice to each other?”

  “Precisely!” the voice speaking from the club agreed. “To be free they must practice Charity.”

  I replayed in my mind the conversation between Mephistopheles and Seir but could make no sense of how Seir might defeat the Queen of Air and Darkness with charity. He hardly seemed the charitable sort. I wondered if Seir had referred to something else, some other secret Vinae knew. I questioned him some more, but he offered no other explanation.

  “One last question,” I asked. “You mentioned ‘your great nemesis.’ Who is that?”

  “She from whom I learned the depth of my own foolishness.” The voice chuckled again. “The Angel of Bitter Wisdom.”

  There was an angel of Bitter Wisdom? Was this the same Bitter Wisdom who was the Handmaiden of Eurynome?

  Startled, I failed to match Caliban’s long steps and dropped behind him. Mab fell into step beside me, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  Such Stuff as Nightmares Are Made Of

  As the tower grew closer, the cages of ice were replaced by thorny prisons, too terrible to gaze upon. A quick glance out of the corner of one’s eye caused
little pain, however, so we could catch brief glimpses of the inhabitants.

  A few cages held cruel haggard men, twisted from unnatural appetites. One had gouged out his eyes upon the thorns, reminding me, in the sickening way that one recalls a passion the morning after an indulgence, of a similar desire that had taken hold of me during my dream of the tower. Two others were so terribly twisted, contorted into some kind of knot like yogis, with arms and legs protruding where they should not be, that I could not find their heads and wondered if they were human at all. Yet another writhed and moaned, foaming at the mouth as if in the grip of a fit.

  Most of the inmates were not human. We passed a minotaur, a three-headed ogre, two harpies, three tattered-winged entities, and a giant who was sunk in the ice to his waist. He reached for us, banging upon the glacier in an attempt to collapse a fissure beneath us when we proved to be out of his reach.

  Those were the more decent sort of prisoners. Many others were more dreadful and less recognizable, with membranes, tentacles, or additional appendages, the uses of which I could not discern. Some were repulsive to the eye or offensive to some unknown sense of moral rightness. One vulgar monstrosity puffed its ugly membranes, spewing a thick syrupy fluid across the snow, staining it a disturbing reddish pink. The gesture, while meaningless to humans, was clearly intended to be rebellious or perhaps lewd.

  In the next cage, a blond man with wild bloodshot eyes and scars along his stomach and chest—perhaps he had been gouging himself with his own overgrown fingernails—hyperventilated. He laughed maniacally and spit furiously, as if trying to imitate the excesses of his horrendous neighbor. This I found more horrible than these alien creatures.

  To our right, a series of big cages dripped with icicles. Imprisoned within them were extremely tall men with symmetrical faces. These creatures would have been handsome, possibly even beautiful, had their faces held even a hint of kindness or virtue. Instead, anger, hatred, lust, greed, and other destructive emotions warred upon their faces, making them cruel and disturbing to behold.

  Erasmus turned to Ulysses. “Rather undercuts your theory about there being no divine punishment, doesn’t it?”

  “Not at all,” Ulysses replied. “I’m not sure about the cages of ice, but this place looks like demons punishing demons.”

  “Yep,” Mephisto agreed. “This is where the demons punish their enemies: fallen angels, other monsters, Orbis Suleimani agents who foolishly didn’t keep their souls clean.”

  “So, Father’s nearby?” I cried hopefully.

  Mephisto nodded. Donning Theo’s goggles, which were apparently on a setting that protected his eyes from the pain of the thorns, he peered into the crystal ball. “Shouldn’t be long now. Maybe an hour.”

  “Club, how long until midnight?” Caliban asked.

  “Seven hours.”

  “Great!” Mephisto smiled. “We have loads of time!”

  Theo looked around nervously and then said in a hushed voice, “I wouldn’t be too cocky, Mephisto. Who knows what we will need to face when we get there … if Father is even still sane.”

  That was a frightening thought! I began to walk faster.

  “What are those … things?” Logistilla stared, clearly both attracted and repulsed.

  Mephisto put Theo’s goggles on again and squinted at them. “Nephilim. You know, from the Bible.”

  “‘There were giants in the earth in those days … mighty men of renown,’” Gregor quoted from the Book of Genesis. “During the Flood, all the monsters and abominations were swept from the earth. This must be where God imprisoned them.”

  “Or someone imprisoned them, anyway.” Erasmus took a turn with the goggles and then regarded me thoughtfully. “After our uncle’s revelations, I hate to be the one to point this out, but I can’t help noticing these abominations have something in common with our dear sister. Here, take a look.”

  He handed me the goggles. I held them to my eyes and, no longer fearing the thorny bars of their cages, peered more closely at the tormented giants, though these were merely some ten or fifteen feet tall, not nearly so big as the three-hundred-foot-tall creature who pounded the ice a little ways back. With a strange sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, I saw what Erasmus had meant.

  Wings, much like mine, spread from their shoulders. Like mine, they were mere impressions, as if dashed off quickly by an impatient artist. Only, these wings were made of palpable darkness, rather than light.

  I handed Theo back his goggles and turned away, recalling the insults the King of Fire had spat at me. Vile half-breed! Accursed Nephilim! At the time, I had thought he was talking to Caurus, but he had been looking right at me.

  I turned to Mephisto. “What exactly is a nephilim? I know they’re supposed to be half-supernatural creatures, but what specifically are they?”

  It was Gregor who answered. “The full quotation from Genesis 6:4 reads thus: ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’ The word translated as ‘giant’ in the King James version is nephilim.”

  “So they are the children of men and angels?” I asked. They were half-breeds—children of men and fallen angels—and they had wings like mine.

  “That’s one tradition,” Erasmus said. “Another tradition claims all those antediluvian monsters—nephilim, lilim, gibborim, and the like—were the children of Lilith and Cain.” He chuckled, though his heart did not seem to be in it. “Looks like that voice of yours in Dis told the truth about your mother after all.”

  * * *

  WE walked on, passing more thorn cages and leaving the nephilim behind. As I climbed up the side of a moraine, I got a pebble in my boot. The others moved ahead while I pulled off my shoe, shook it out, and put it back on again.

  As I caught up with the others again, a hand touched my shoulder. Turning, I found myself looking into blood-red eyes set in a sable face. Seir of the Shadows stood just behind me, only inches from both Theo and Mab. My heart hammered like a drumroll, but my brother had turned to speak to Titus, and Mab was paging through his notebook; though why I wanted to preserve this demon from Theo’s wrath, I hardly knew.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered, clutching my flute close to my chest.

  “I could not stay away,” Seir whispered back. He dropped a kiss on the spot where my neck met my shoulder. “Know that I am jealous of my other self. I intend to win you for my own.”

  “He is dead,” I mouthed.

  “Not as dead as I might wish.” He touched his hand to his sable lips and blew me a kiss.

  Then, like a shadow before the rising sun, he was gone.

  The encounter left me shaken—until I recalled that the purpose of demons was to deceive. How transparent I must be if Seir could trick me again with the same ploy of pretending to be my dead, lost love. But then, he was an incubus, and incubi had only one trick. Obviously, I would not give in to his blandishments. So, his only choice was to lure me into believing Astreus was not dead.

  A clever ploy. Only now I had caught on, so I was wary.

  Still, I was impressed by his daring. Had he been a real lover and not a false seeming, the act of risking his life and limb to come and see me while my brothers walked just beside me would have impressed me, very much so. How sad that the very signs of love could be so easily imitated by one whose heart was bent upon treachery and deception.

  * * *

  THE blisters on my feet had begun to ache. I wished I could put something cool and soothing on the wounds, or at the very least, lick them. Yes, lick them and drink the clear blood-sweet goo within; that would be pleasant. I pictured myself sipping from my foot …

  Horrified, I shook my head as if the motion could clear away the unpleasant image. Glancing around, I noticed that Mephisto was trying to eat a rock, Logistilla cooed like a mother bird while attempting to feed Titus a c
arrot she had prechewed for him, and Ulysses was gnawing on his own elbow.

  “Stop! Wake up!” I cried. “Pay attention to what you are doing!” Everyone stopped and quite a few of them looked suddenly startled or guilty. “It’s the influence of the Tower of Thorns, I think. Strange appetites to which men should not be prey emanate from there. We must resist them!”

  “That explains a lot.” Titus wiped carrot off his cheek. “I was suffering from the weirdest desire to piss on the sun.”

  “Er, sorry, Gregor, Old Boy, I seemed to have chewed a hole in your turtleneck.” Ulysses pulled sheepishly at the unraveling threads at the elbow of his shirt.

  “What is this horrible place?” Theo’s face had gone rather pale.

  “This part of Hell isn’t meant for people,” Mephisto chimed in. “Some people are kept here, but it’s really for punishing other creatures: elves, Titans, giants, primordial beings from before the birth of stars. The things they desire, such as to defile the sun, don’t make much sense to human beings, so we interpret them in weird ways. Yuck!” He tossed aside the rock he had bitten and rubbed his teeth.

  “Ma’am, this is downright unpleasant.” Mab grimaced in disgust. “Bad enough to be stuck with all these body-related desires, without getting socked with a group of new ones as well. Anyone else suffering from the desire to meld with noodles? No?” He pushed the brim of his hat down over his eyes. “Sorry I brought it up.”

  “Guess it’s back to you, Gregor.” Erasmus was looking off into the distance, a expression of faint distaste on his face.

  “Please,” Cornelius begged while he walked guided by Erasmus’s arm, “not the silence again. I beg of you!”