by Debi Gliori
In between gasps, Ffup pointed out that the Sleeper didn’t wear breeks, and if he was so inconsiderate as to keech in the middle of her nice clean dungeon, then he’d have to clear it up—but by then she was hardly able to speak for pain, so her domestic tirade lost something of its passion, and in fact was practically indistinguishable from her wails and sobs of agony.
“OW. Not this again. Oh heck. NOOOOOO. I thought second time round was s’posed to be EASY. A cakewalk, Mrs. McLachlan said. The lying toad. Ahhhhowwww.”
The Sleeper dropped Nestor’s storybook and was by Ffup’s side in an instant. “Fit’sa matter, hen?”
“GOD! How many TIMES?” Ffup squeaked. “I’m not a bloody chicken, I’m aaaaaAAARGH, a DRAaaaaarghon.” Effortfully, she hauled herself into a squatting position and, realizing that they were not alone, glared at the wolves. “Do you lot have to stare at me like that? If I don’t die in dragonbirth, then I’ll undoubtedly die of embarrassment with all of you staring at me. Shoo—go awayyy—give me some PEEEEEEace. OWwwwww. HELLLLLLLLP.”
The Sleeper looked poleaxed, eyes round, mouth agape, the remains of his dinner still flecking his vast teeth with decaying greenery. Nestor had wisely turned his back on his mother’s hysterics and was attempting to press a wolf into service as a pillow while persuading two more to drape themselves on top of him like hairy duvets. Then, as if he suddenly understood what was required of him, the Sleeper came out of his trance and rose to the occasion magnificently.
“Whit can ah dae to help? D’youse want a wee drinka water? Or d’youse want me tae rub yer back…?”
Ffup lurched forward and clung to the Sleeper with her forepaws, her talons digging painfully into the gaps between his scales.
“No!” she squeaked. “Just…be…ready…tocatchthebaby.” Then all further conversation was curtailed as she concentrated on the task at hand. “Nnnngh, rrURGHH.”
Catch the baby? The Sleeper was somewhat surprised by this. Was she going to fling the bairn at him? He hoped not.
“Ow, ow, ow, AUGHHHH nnngh.”
Problem wis, he wis totally useless at catching things. Ham-fisted tae the max. Hand-tae-ee’n coordination never being his thing. An’ he wis never picked for the football team, eh no? Whit…whit if he drapped it?
“PUFF, puff, PUFF, puffpuffpuff FFUP, ffup.”
Wid it smash? Wid she ever forgive him? Widn’t wee Nestor be traumatized for life at the sight of yon newborn bairn trickling across the flair? The Sleeper risked a peek at his firstborn, but the little dragon’s eyes were squinched shut, his body snug under its twin-wolf duvet, one little paw clutching the ears of his hairy pillow.
“OHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Ffup gasped, and there, with a squelch and a pop, miraculously, on the straw beneath her vent lay a beautiful speckled blush-pink egg.
The Sleeper was enchanted. “Ma wee BAIRN,” he whispered, looking from the egg to its mother in amazement. “Och, pet, you’re jist a wee star, so youse are. Ah’m that proud, ah could burst.”
Ffup toppled sideways, her legs giving way as she collapsed onto the straw with an exhausted groan. She lay still for a moment, then stretched blissfully, able to roll onto her deflated belly for the first time in ages, luxuriating in the knowledge that she wouldn’t have to do that again…at least, not for a while.
“Kin ah get youse anything, ma wee pet?” The Sleeper towered over her, his expression that of someone who has only just, by a completely happy accident, managed to successfully disarm an atom bomb. Expressions of relief, awe, gratitude, guilt, and stunned disbelief flickered across his face like shadows, and his paws were clasped together as if he were praying that Ffup would set him a task, send him on an errand, ask him to do anything that might not involve too much in the way of mopping up after dragonbirth. Ffup grinned from ear to ear. Rolling the egg toward herself, she gave a tremulous, girly sigh and sank back into the straw.
“Ohhhh,” she breathed, her voice so faint that the Sleeper feared for one ghastly moment that she might expire in front of him like a snuffed candle. “That would be just sooo terribly kind of you,” she whispered, deciding that a little nibble might be in order. “Let’s see…. Well, I’d love a cup—no, a pot—of Lapsang Souchong tea, then…um…a round of toast—that’s six slices—in fact, better make it two rounds, then, with butter and honey. That’ll do for starters, but then I’d be ready for some bacon sandwiches—BLTs would be perfect, if those feckless humans have remembered to buy any L and T, not to mention the B…. Some cake too. A muffin or twelve: banana, vanilla, and white chocolate are my all-time favorites…. Er, perhaps more tea to wash that lot down, and then I think I’d be almost strong enough to move on to the champagne and smoked salmon, don’t you?”
The Sleeper’s mouth fell open in stunned disbelief. For a beast who’d appeared to be on Death’s doorstep a scant ten seconds previously, Ffup had made an astounding recovery. And her appetite? This was perhaps not the best of times to remind his fiancée of her vow to squeeze into her size double-D wedding gown, a goal that required her to eat like a sparrow instead of a tyrannosaurus…. Wisely, the Sleeper clamped his lips shut, dropped a kiss on Ffup’s head, blew another to the new egg, and undulated off upstairs to see what he could rustle up.
Also preoccupied with the subject of food, the Strega-Borgia children huddled round the little island campfire like refugees, cold, hungry, frightened, and trying to keep the darkness at bay by telling stories. Damp clung to Pandora, and the new baby peered out from inside Titus’s sweatshirt, his navy eyes wide as his big brother rolled a driftwood log into the flames and jumped back when a shower of sparks was launched into the night sky.
“When we get back,” Titus said, for what had to be about the six-millionth time, “I’m going to put in a request for Mrs. McLachlan to bake a batch of her raspberry muffins—” He paused, suddenly struck by a happy thought. “Pan, Pan!” His voice leapt an octave with excitement. “Allrrrrright! Remember the Multiplimuffin? If there were any crumbs from it in my pockets, would they be magical like it too?”
Pandora puzzled over this, uncertain what the answer would be. The Multiplimuffin, as its name implied, was an automatically multiplying, self-regenerating cake; thus, each bite taken from it was magically replaced, so that it was impossible to consume it in its entirety. Unknown to Pandora, Titus had once decided to find out what would happen if he swallowed the whole cake in one big gulp. This was most emphatically not an experiment he ever cared to repeat, but it had taught him an unforgettable lesson about the dangers of greed. Now Pandora watched him as he dug through his pockets, frantically turning each one inside out in an attempt to unearth even a single, solitary crumb of magical muffin. As he sifted through his pockets, he remembered the broken teapot spout he’d tucked into his waistband some hours before. Pretty amazing that it hadn’t smashed, he thought, extracting it from his jeans and wondering what on earth had possessed him to put it there in the first place. After all, he reasoned, it was a totally worthless bit of china, and he was on the point of flinging it into the sea when it spoke.
“Don’t even think about doing that, dear boy,” it had said.
Well…perhaps not it, exactly, he realized, stifling a scream of terror as a clutch of furry legs blossomed from one end of the spout, closely followed by the equally hairy abdomen of the Strega-Borgias’ very own teapot-teleporting tarantula, Tarantella, spider extraordinaire. Emerging unscathed from the remains of her teapot portal, she peered around with the jaded air of a frequent flier forced to make an unscheduled landing at an airport in the back of beyond.
“This place,” she groaned. “Lordy. Not again. Whatever possessed you to pitch up here?” She scampered along Titus’s arm and scuttled onto his shoulder, vaulting onto his earlobe and hence onto the crown of his head, giving him the temporary appearance of a person wearing an animated topknot.
“Shame you’re all such giants,” she said, her many eyes measuring the children as if calculating exactly how many limbs t
hey would have to shed before they conformed to her criteria. “If you were a tad smaller, we could all have squeezed into my teapot spout and traveled to somewhere less…watery.”
Mention of Tarantella’s teapot reminded Pandora of home: of the kitchen at StregaSchloss and the comfort of family rituals like dinner. Pandora’s stomach growled, a long serenade to wish fulfillment, an audible tribute to her dad’s authentic Italian cooking—his wine-rich pasta sauces, his saffron risottos, and his divinely garlicky rosemary-studded arista alla fiorentina. Then, to counterbalance this dad-based reminiscence, came a blissful memory of her mum’s perfect picnics—Baci was, by tacit agreement, a dreadful cook, but she was a marvelous assembler of feasts to pack in a wicker basket…. Pandora could practically see the picnic basket now, so hungry was she. It had leather straps securing its lid, and there was always a distinctive protesting creak of wicker as she lifted the lid, the smell of picnics past rising up like ghosts from within. It was such an evocative memory that Pandora could have sworn she could hear the creaking of wicker coming from nearby, but that…
That wasn’t possible…
…was it?
She looked up then, because Damp was wriggling and struggling to escape from her arms, calling out excitedly, and Titus was actually running flat out across the pebbly shore, his arms upstretched to grab the long rope that dangled, impossibly…
…gloriously from the rim of the huge wicker gondola of a hot-air balloon that dropped out of the sky, down toward them, its silk panels illuminated in the darkness as Latch squeezed the bellows and fanned air across the charcoal burner that kept the balloon aloft.
Deep Chill
“Must be my lucky day,” the duty demon muttered, stomping across the dirty snow between the admissions block and the portakabin to which he and his fellow demons adjourned for their morning vitriol break. Dawn was breaking in Hades, the temperature was seventy degrees below zero, and a blizzard had just blown in from the east.
“Shut the DOOR!” shrieked the off-duty demons, all of them huddled round a brazier that, judging by the stench, was burning a heady mix of old Frenchfry fat, rendered trolls, and briquettes of the dried byproduct of the Hadean sewage works. Despite the rank odors swirling round the portakabin, the demons had already unpacked their breakfast pails and were devouring the contents with every evidence of enjoyment.
The duty demon reached for the kettle suspended over the brazier and poured himself a steaming goblet of hot vitriol, tipping this caustic brew down his throat before attempting to speak.
“Hey, compadres, guess who’s back in town?”
The off-duty demons unanimously ignored this, their entire attention focused on what really mattered: namely, the consumption of enough calories to stay alive at seventy degrees below zero.
The duty demon wasn’t put off. Draining his vitriol goblet, he continued, “Whoo-eee, we sure do live in interesting times. I tell you, brothers and sisters, when the Executive find out who I have a-waiting in my little shed, the fur’s really going to hit the fan….”
No takers. The off-duty demons stolidly munched on, paying their colleague as much attention as if he were a strip of wallpaper.
“Fine. Suit yo’selves. When y’all can’t get a ringside seat at the Public Cringe and Mortification Trial, don’t come running to me. Y’all heard it here first. Or, as the case may be, y’all stopped up yo’ ears and plain refused to hear it here first.” And flinging open the door onto a shrieking swirl of snowflakes, the demon returned to his duties.
In the joy of their reunion with all four missing children, neither Latch nor Mrs. McLachlan had thought to stand guard over the balloon. Crawling out of the sea and across the pebbly shore, the demon Isagoth couldn’t at first believe his good fortune. Never one to miss an opportunity, even if it was Heaven-sent, the demon seized this chance to escape. Before anyone realized what was going on, he had cast off the ropes tying the balloon to a tree and was aloft, soaring out over the water without so much as a backward glance or even a parting gloat. The first to notice what had happened, Titus dug deep into his cache of forbidden oaths for extreme circumstances, but even as they left his mouth, he knew he was wasting his breath. Isagoth wasn’t going to come back, and without the hot-air balloon they were all marooned.
Mrs. McLachlan swaddled the new baby in her cardigan and Latch piled wood upon the fire, but it was obvious they couldn’t stay outside in the cold for much longer. Titus wasn’t sure, but he was beginning to suspect that immersion in the sea followed by hours inside his soaking-wet sweatshirt had been very bad for the health of the geriatric clones. He didn’t want to look—he’d seen quite enough death for one day—but the complete absence of movement inside his shirt tended to indicate that the clones had perished. Soon, if they didn’t find shelter, this would also become their fate. Pandora had fallen silent, as had Damp. Orynx and Vesper were nowhere to be seen, and even Tarantella was remarkably quiet.
Mrs. McLachlan broke the silence with a loud and heartfelt tsssssk.
“Oh, very well, then, dear,” she said, shaking her head as if she were reluctantly giving permission for some as-yet-indefinable act.
Damp’s face lit up.
“My wee pet,” Mrs. McLachlan said. “Much as it goes against the grain to ask you to do this, I have no alternative. We need to return home by whatever means possible. Now, I know you’ve been itching to cast a big spell for ages, so this is your chance.”
By now, Damp was practically glowing with anticipation. Inwardly ticking off spells she’d already done—Sleeping Boaty, did that; Thumbleener, did that too; Cindreller; Snoke Ween, not wantit that one—she looked up for inspiration just as a single snowflake drifted down from the darkness above like a white feather.
Damp stretched out her arms, took a deep breath, and spun her best and brightest enchantment ever.
There were three new admissions in Hades that morning: a human colander, a fat guy, and a big mean-looking bloke who radiated ill will. Predictably, all three were loudly demanding special treatment, as befitted their exalted status. Groaning, the duty demon stabbed at a key on his computer and invited the new admissions to step forward one at a time. It was always the same, he thought, gloomily avoiding eye contact with the three men, who were jockeying for first place in the queue and pleading ignorance of Hadean protocol. Always the same old same old. Every time. Claiming that if they’d only known Hell was going to be this bad, they’d’ve mended their ways.
Yeah, right.
The duty demon rolled his eyes in disgust and began to log them into his computer. “Name?” he yawned into the face of the human colander.
“Don Lucifer di S’Embowelli Borgia, but there’s been some kinda mistake—”
“Nope. No mistake, bud. You did the crime, now you have to do the time.”
“But, but…I’m a very important guy. I’m a made man. I got connections all over could put you inna hospital if they heard about this. You gotta show me some respect—”
“Y’all finished yet?” The duty demon raked Don Lucifer with a withering glance. “See,” he continued, his brown and stumpy teeth bared in a hideous smirk, “I’ve heard it all before, me. None of it cuts any ice here in the Big Freezy. Y’all got an unbreakable appointment with the barbecue pit, and me, I’ve got more important things to do. NEEEEEEEXT.”
“Oh puhlease, don’t pretend you don’t recognize me.” The fat man sighed. “Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?”
The duty demon made no attempt to hide his contempt. “Which name are y’all using now? S’tan? The Boss? Or”—he sniggered—“or perhaps you’d prefer to be known as our long-lost First Minestrone, the Earl of Yellow-Belly and Prince of Dorkness?”
“Yeah, yeah.” The fat man shook his head sadly. “So…things didn’t exactly work out for me, huh? But I tell you what, I’ve got a sensational recipe for rowan jelly….”
“Manual Sewage Removal Operative for you, pal.” The duty demon smiled nastily. “NEE
EEEXT?”
“I THINK YOU KNOW WHO I AM.” Isagoth’s voice sounded as if it was being broadcast straight out of the Abyss; it was a sound to inspire the deepest of deep fear in all who heard it, a sound that caused Don Lucifer’s ears to bleed and S’tan’s bowels to turn to water.
The duty demon didn’t dare hesitate. Pressing the red panic button beneath his desk, he flung himself onto the floor at Isagoth’s cloven feet, prostrated himself in front of Hades’ onetime Defense Minister and now Prince-Apparent of Deepest Darkness. “Maaarsturrr,” the demon breathed. “Y’all welcome home, hear?”
The Deepest Fear
Afraid to allow themselves to fall asleep, Baci and Luciano spent the whole of that terrible night awake, staring into the fire, as if the answers they sought lay with the silent tongues of flame flickering in the hearth. In its basket near the fireplace, the changeling slept soundly, its breath as mechanical as the ticking clock marking the hours on the mantelpiece. First Minty and then Ludo fell asleep in the fire’s warm glow, too tired to keep vigil with the grieving Strega-Borgias. As the first gray light appeared in the sky, Baci and Luciano stood, stretched, and quietly left the room, tiptoeing downstairs to shroud themselves in coats and scarves before slipping outside into the cold dawn.
As they crossed the frosted meadow, Baci’s hand sought Luciano’s, and hot tears began to spill down her face. Still, they did not speak, neither of them wishing to frame the terrible words to confirm all that they had lost. Their breath hung in white clouds in front of their mouths as they picked their way down the bramble-lined path to the jetty. Everywhere lay beauty: diamonds of frost studding the carpet of autumn leaves; frozen tears of rainwater beading the bare twigs of the oaks; and all around, the air so cold and sweet that each inhalation brought a reminder that they were still very much alive.