by Assaph Mehr
After a while of moving between the crib, the mural, and other apartments where atrocities happened, I located the silvery spiderweb of power that led me back towards its centre.
I explored the hall, stumbling occasionally but carrying on. . I ventured down the steps, carefully balancing myself with a hand on the wooden bannister which felt rough, scaly. Down and down, the tread of my feet on the stone steps echoed in the dark hallway, the stone walls closing in on me as I descended.
Stepping through one of the ground floor apartments, my eyes darted from side to side to catch the apparitions hovering at the edge of my vision. The snaking silver webs of power were multiplying, coming from all directions, passing through family shrines to the lares and di penates, and climbing the walls like suffocating vines, to converge on a potted tree in the corner.
Borax was standing at the ready, his pose the relaxed posture of a fighter about to pounce, but his fingers drummed lightly around on the iron cooking pan in his hands. He looked askance at any statue or bas-relief that might suddenly come alive. It says something about my life when the gladiator I employ to guard it prefers a heavy iron skillet as his weapon of choice.
The tree that sprouted from the clay pot was a leafy bay, its roots packed tightly in the knee-high container. I searched the base of the tree, thinking to unearth something from the dirt, but I should have looked at the tree. As my fingers dug into the earth, a branch snapped down with the head of a snake, biting my arm. I jumped back, staring at a tree that was now a coiling mass of snakes, snapping at me, like the head of Medusa the Gorgon.
Without thinking, I grabbed a discarded folding chair and threw it at the branches-snakes, then jumped into the opening and hacked at the snakes with my dagger. Borax joined me with a yell, stabbing at the tree trunk with his sword and swatting the snake-heads away with his pan. The heads made satisfying crunching sounds when he managed to smash them.
After a particularly big swipe with the pan cleared an opening, Borax aimed a mighty kick at the terracotta pot. He managed to tip it over and it cracked on impact, spilling the earth from inside it. Something metallic shone in the dirt and I kicked the object, moving it away from the snakes.
While Borax kicked and stomped with his heavy boots, the snakes appeared less fearsome as their tails remained connected to the fallen tree trunk. I took out another specially prepared leather purse from the sack of supplies and dropped the tabula defixionis into it. This device wasn’t enough to completely block the strong magia of the curse but dampened the enchantment sufficiently to turn the snakes’ scales back to bark. As they slowed, Borax took pleasure smashing them to bits. I tied the cords of the purse in a ritualistic knot, mumbling a few words of power and a supplication to the gods.
***
So, there I was, standing in the courtyard of the insula, as dizzy from the psilocybe as a legionary drunk on a brothel’s cheap wine, and possibly poisoned from a snake bite. My breath heaved from the exertion of the fight and from performing all kinds of incantations that were guaranteed to play havoc with my system the next day, and who should I see standing in a doorway?
Aemilia.
She was dressed in a heavy cloak on a hot summer’s night that didn’t hide the hem of her fine tunic or her expensive sandals, looking every bit as the upper-class-lady-trying-to-masquerade-as-an-anonymous-traveller that she was. Considering she was unescorted by any bodyguard, I was surprised she had managed to make it there without getting mugged, killed, raped, or worse, in any particular order.
“That was quite a show!” she said, her eyes alight with excitement. “I watched you battle those snake-branches and yet I was perfectly safe. You needn’t have worried.”
She smiled, took a step towards me and fell flat on the floor.
With a startled cry, she turned to look behind her, and my gaze followed hers. Around her feet was entwined the biggest snake I had ever seen. It had come from the stairwell, and by the faint light that penetrated there I could see from whence it came — the wooden railing for the stairs was missing. Well, not missing, exactly, just transformed. When I leaned on it coming down it had felt scaly — now it was fully alive.
And angry.
It wrapped its body twice around Aemilia’s legs, with plenty of scaly thorax left to rear up and hiss at us.
We rushed it. Borax swiped at the triangular head with his pan. The snake was too quick — it tilted back, and Borax missed. In one sinuous motion, it brought its tail around and swept Borax’s feet from under him. The big gladiator crashed head first on the pavement, and lay still, sprawled on the floor.
I took the opportunity to circle the snake and jump on its upright back, Aemilia still entangled in its coils. It was thick as a tree trunk, smooth, and rippling like one giant muscle. I hugged it with my left arm and tried to stab it in the belly. My arm was weakened by the tree-snake bite and the giant scales proved too hard. My dagger bounced off. The snake convulsed, and I heard a sickening sound as its body tightened around Aemilia’s legs, crushing them. She was screaming in pain and terror.
I stabbed again, aiming upward to get under the scales but my dagger slipped, and I almost cut my own left arm. The snake crashed its body to the floor, trying to scrape me off. His midsection was still twisted around Aemilia, dragging her with us, and I was wary of his whipping tail.
We thrashed on the ground, and I had to roll off to the side to avoid being crushed. The snake did not hesitate, and as soon as I was off its back it raised its head high then darted towards me, his giant mouth wide, ready to swallow me whole. I stabbed straight at his mouth, in the classic movement that had been drilled into me by my centurion in the legions. Never waste time swinging a sword, just stab, stab, stab in straight lines. My arm met the snake’s head half-way. As I plunged my dagger into its throat slicing its maw, the force of its charge carried it through almost to my shoulder.
It convulsed.
Aemilia screamed.
The snake closed its wide mouth on my upper arm, but there was no power to the bite as its life had ebbed away.
I yanked my arm, covered in the creature’s blood and saliva, out of its gullet, clutching my dagger and ripping what was left of its jaws. I kicked its head away from me in a mix of horror and disgust.
My right arm was numb, yet I worked to free Aemilia. She was whimpering as I fumbled with my left hand to untangle the monster’s massive, muscular body from around her legs. When I put my arms around her waist to pull her away from the creature, she just clutched me and sobbed. We sat there almost on top of the dead snake hugging each other, while Borax’s unconscious body lay a few paces from us. With my heightened senses, I could feel the magia ebb and dissipate around us, but as much as I wanted to relax into Aemilia’s embrace, I feared yet another monster would sneak up on us.
***
Eventually, she released me, so I could check her legs for damage. Her shins were lacerated by the rough scales, her blood an angry crimson against the milky skin. No bones appeared to have been broken, although both her ankles were twisted. There would be bad bruises on her legs, and I doubted she would forget this experience soon. But, with a bit of luck and some expensive unguents, she might escape without a scar.
I managed to revived Borax enough to stagger upright, while Aemilia groaned and leaned on me for more than just stability. I was so dizzy that I felt drunker than the night I was discharged from the legions.
Somehow, we made it to my house.
Limping along and bumping into each other like inebriated comrades, we’d arrived without further misadventures.
I treated Aemilia’s legs with unguents.
I concocted an antidote for my snakebite.
I put a cream on the nasty gash Borax had on his forehead and bandaged it as best I could.
Dascha served us all soup, a portion of which I poured on the ground in the garden, in silent offering to t
he di penates of my house.
By midday on the following day a double litter and a veritable phalanx of bodyguards were sent by Cornelia to take us to her domus.
At their doorstep, Cornelia and Aemilia collapsed in each other’s arms.
I just collapsed.
Chapter XII
They told me I slept for a day, a night, and a day. In fact, Aemelia and her mother thought I had died, for my breathing was so shallow and pulse so faint, they were hardly detectable. Sparing no expense, they called a physician — a real magister carneum — to check on me.
Apparently, in return for Aemilia’s brief and highly censored account of events, the physician concocted a potion to help my body combat the snake venom. Regardless, they could not manage to force it down my throat, for which I was thankful. No telling what the mix of psilocybe, animated-tree-snake venom, my own antidote, and his medicine would have done to me.
So instead, I simply woke ravenous. I joked that nothing would make me miss another dinner prepared by Cornelia’s master cook and we spent the evening talking lightly, avoiding the horrors that had been visited upon us and commenting instead on the snail-stuffed quail.
The lack of vocal arguments told me Cornelia and Aemilia must have decided to spare me so soon on my recovery. I imagined the past day had involved many emphatic assertions by Cornelia that she was right all along, with Aemilia being too afraid and overwrought to argue.
Despite my best efforts at jollity and light-hearted conversation, the atmosphere was strained. Aemilia was limping slightly, and the skin of her legs was raw, with red blood seeping through the bandages. Her slave girl, Na’ama, had a subdued demeanour and remained not more than a step away at all times. I imagine Cornelia lashed out at her for letting her mistress slip away at night.
Dinner was over quickly. As soon as the plates of honeyed egg custard were cleared, Aemilia was escorted to her quarters by Na’ama with a bodyguard trailing them even inside the house. I stood and aimed to follow suit, when Cornelia’s voice, low and seething, echoed in the room. “How could you?”
She was standing, fists clenched, shaking with anger.
“How could you?” she said again with more vehemence.
“She was not meant to come. I didn’t think —”
“Of course you didn’t! Not for one moment! You were too concerned with trying to impress her. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out about the psilocybe?”
“That was a tiny amount, a taste to scare her away from real involvement.”
“Well, it didn’t work! I thought you knew her better. Her curiosity was only piqued, and then she followed you the next night. Followed you almost to her death! You men are all the same. A pretty young face and you can no longer think straight! Or did you tell her your plans in the hope of impressing her into your bed? You mentula! You verpa!”
“Really, there’s no need for —”
She slapped me.
“I’ll let that go,” I said coldly, “but —”
She tried to slap me again, but I caught her hand. Although she growled in frustration, I just drew her close to me, gathering her in my arms.
According to romantic literature, she was supposed to collapse sobbing on my shoulder.
Instead, Cornelia tried to knee me in the groin, saying much about the literature she was reading.
I ignored the attack and held her closer still, in a bear hug tight enough to immobilise her.
She turned to bite me, but that became a harsh kiss, one that drew blood from my lip.
We made love, if one can call it that. It was wild, and heavy, and rough, almost violent. She scratched my chest with her nails and I twisted her arms away. We fought for who would be on top.
We broke one of the dining couches.
Eventually we collapsed next to each other, lying on pillows amidst the broken couch — panting, spent.
When her breathing calmed, she began sobbing. I gathered her to me, hugged her, stroked her hair. Her salty tears stung where they dropped on the scratches she left on my chest.
She pushed herself up to look at me. “I nearly lost her,” she said between sobs. “I found she was not in her bed and all the memories of last time just flooded back.”
My own demons roared to life, the image of the love I lost to atrocious crimes. To her, I said, “No harm was done. Not really. I was there, and now she will have a memento to stick in her memory, to keep her away from such business.”
“You’re an ass, Felix.”
I was about to object, but she kissed me, this time tenderly. We kissed, caressed, and made gentle love for what felt like hours.
When we finished, we tumbled into deep sleep and my last thought was that perhaps she was more fond of me than she was letting on, that my status was no longer that of just a toy — though the cynical voice in my head whispered that I was merely the tool for her relief, nothing more.
***
The third and last insula was almost anticlimactic. Almost.
I had Borax accompany me, for despite his head wound, I trusted him above all. On Cornelia’s insistence, I took one of her private guards as well. She also left bodyguards standing outside Aemilia’s door, giving me some peace of mind I would not be interrupted.
The night was warm even for Sextilis, the streets filled with people too hot to sleep. Yet when we stepped inside the insula’s courtyard, there was a chill in the air. It was as quiet as the dead family of squatters whose remains still occupied the ground floor apartment.
We spent more time in preparations that night. I placed all the requisite paraphernalia within easy reach and set up defences. Borax and Cornelia’s bodyguard stood well-armed and positioned, although the bodyguard scoffed at Borax’s iron skillet, choosing to carry a traditional oval shield.
I was tempted to just dig around, to skip the psilocybe and save myself the nausea and other side effects. But, not using the substance would make us more vulnerable to the curse and keep me from knowing where to dig. Under the influence of the hated mushrooms, I at least had the benefit of heightened awareness to the flow of magia and could sense where the next attack might come from.
So off I went, chanting and cooking my charmed patina and getting myself into a state even the most experienced of incantatores try to avoid. At least I remembered to bring fish sauce to improve the taste.
My senses heightened and mingled, touch coloured by hearing and scent flavoured with sight. Finally, a brownish smell of chimes washed over me and when my skin tingled with a breeze that wasn’t in the air I knew to follow it to the ground floor apartment the family of squatters inhabited briefly. Walls shimmered and rippled like light on the surface of a pool after a stone has been dropped in.
The tramps were the last humans to inhabit the apartment. Since they were persons of no consequence, no one cared to retrieve their bodies — even when the smell became too putrid for the neighbours to bear. The mangled, desiccated remains were exactly as Aemilia and I witnessed, spilt innards plastered on the walls and undisturbed even by rats or crows. But now I could sense another layer to them, one too faint to have seen in the light of day. Four argentine figures huddled in a corner, staring mutely as I approached their translucent shapes, through which glimmered their bloody, very human, corpses.
“Who did this to you?” I asked. Although their blank faces did not change expressions, their eyes stared with flickering emotions that were both human and unfathomable.
“I am here to find out who — or what — has done this and deal with them. Can you tell me anything?”
A pause, then without moving her eyes from mine, one of the figures lifted a translucent arm, unfolded it and extended an index finger, pointing in the direction of a bas-relief image of the insula’s guardian deity. The lar was depicted in the traditional way, as a young child dancing, holding a knife and a libation bowl in his
hands. The shimmering lights that infused my vision gave his face a constantly shifting expression. Like the stories we heard from gossiping neighbours and my experiences at the other buildings, the dead seemed to corroborate the accounts of statues and murals wreaking havoc upon the living, somehow related to the ancestral and household gods that were supposed to be their protectors.
The statue was just plaster and did not threaten movement. I touched it gingerly and felt the atrocities the lar had committed, but with them came an understanding that it was not the numen who wished them or performed them, merely the animated bits of stone and plaster that constituted his image. It was a strange thought, and it appeared in my mind like a woodlouse popping from an unseen hole in a familiar cabinet. It wasn’t mine, yet in some odd way it belonged there.
Before searching for the curse’s source, I did what I could for those poor souls, still huddling in death as they did when life was torn from them, with no one left to care for their shades in the afterlife. Ignoring Borax, who could not divine my reasons nor understand my actions, I set to work. The skillet went upside down on the floor and I popped five dried black beans into my mouth. I spat them at the iron skillet one by one, making five loud clangs of noise, to scare away evil spirits. Some red wine from a wineskin became a libation to Dis Pater when I poured it the ground where the shades lay and mumbled a prayer for purification. I gathered dry leaves that the winds had swept into the corners, heaped them, lighted them, and let the smoke rise as an offering to Iovis Pater. Finally, I handed copper coins to the shades, which one by one they took, placed in their mouths as payment for Charun, and faded into whatever lies beyond the veil of life.
The shades freed from their earthly prison, I stepped back to the courtyard. The night air had taken on the familiar silvery luminescence, the walls glinted in flashes reminiscent of the tails of foxes disappearing in the forest, while colours acquired the vibrancy of leaves in fall. I found the spiderweb of power vibrating all around and traced it to a far corner — to the spider that sat at its centre.