A Rosary of Stones and Thorns

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Lady.”

  “You said something about… preparations? Is there something I can do?”

  The demon shook his head once. “I wish. But it’s how you put aside your halo that makes the difference. That can only be done once. Done carefully, you can survive without God. Done badly, and He can no longer reach you.”

  “I’m frightened,” she whispered.

  Mephistopheles and Stephen shared a brief glance before the priest spoke. “Don’t worry, Asrial. We’ll take care of this mess with Michael and Lucifer and get you back to Heaven.”

  “I would be in Choir right now,” she said softly.

  Mephistopheles sat, still holding the censer. “Singing what?”

  “Hymns. Rounds. Canticles to glorify His name…”

  “I have not heard such things in many, many years,” the demon said.

  The longing in his voice startled Asrial into staring at him for longer than she planned. She did turn her face away; his expression somehow seemed too private for the intrusion of her gaze. But very softly, she hummed until she reached the descant where the Choir Director would have directed her section to enter, and then she sang, wordless, the hosanna.

  The music of Heaven was a weaving of hours, and yet time did not seem to exist in the space between the notes. Even without the backing of the choir, Asrial stopped time, and the demon and priest and boy came to her feet as her glorias rose to the firmament where surely Someone heard.

  In the musty darkness, thick with glimmering veils of incense, Gabriel leaned against a column and stared at the barely visible nests of cloth-of-gold and chalcedony. The vaulted ceiling’s stained glass windows had been shuttered; in the intimate darkness before him he could glimpse no movement. Only one sphere, glowing bronze, was in residence.

  “Gabriel?”

  The archangel slowly splayed one shelf of primaries, but could not bring himself to lift the heavy wing. Perhaps if he ignored the voice, it would go away.

  “Gabriel? Are you here?”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Gabriel! Please, I need to talk to you.”

  With a sigh, the archangel turned. “Here, Raphael.”

  The darkness drew back from the shape of the other archangel, walking up the steps to the nursery. The faint light of the lamps glittered in Raphael’s fawn brown eyes. “I had worried about you.”

  “Why? There’s little for me to do. Michael has practically taken over Shamayim. I have plenty of time for repose and comfort.” Gabriel turned back to the nests. “Speaking of the Archangel, how goes his spat?”

  Raphael’s baritone lowered in the presence of the one sphere. “He’s sent a messenger to Hell. It’s starting. Gabriel…I worry about you. And about Michael.”

  “I’m fine,” Gabriel said. “I just refuse to have any part in this farce. There’s been no sign that now is the time for the final conflict between Heaven and Hell. Michael has not bothered to explain any of it to us. Why should we trust him?”

  “Gabriel!”

  “Were we not created equals? What put Michael above us all? Michael’s zeal for conquering the enemies of God! Perhaps the time has come for us to give up war and hatred.”

  Raphael ran a hand through his golden hair. The lamplight was unkind to him, painting dark circles beneath his eyes. “How can we not support him, Gabriel? I will be full of joy on the day I can put aside my healing arts forever. But we must present a facade of solidarity. We are brothers.”

  “He will not listen to us, Raphael. Don’t brothers listen?”

  “But what if it is the right time?”

  Gabriel frowned. “Have you ever seen any evidence that God was interested in suffering? Raphael… when has our God killed, save in anger over injustice? What has Lucifer done to deserve the wrath of God?”

  “Don’t say that name!”

  A crack interrupted Gabriel’s vehement reply, and the heads of both archangels whipped toward the sphere in the only occupied nest. A thin line darkened across its haloed shell.

  “Can it be?” Gabriel darted through the hanging cloak of incense and dropped to his knees beside the sphere. He laid a hand on it, the vibration sending sympathetic aches through the bones of his wrist. “It’s opening!”

  A broad crack developed perpendicular to the first, and the sphere yawed open, revealing an arm slick with golden fluid.

  “Raphael,” Gabriel said, pulling away fragments of the shell.

  “Here,” the other archangel said, joining him. They dipped their hands into the fluid and caught both arms of the new angel inside. “I’ve never seen a sphere still wet. Usually it’s turned to dust by now….”

  Gabriel slid a sticky hand around a chin and drew the face up to the lamp’s low light. A female, hair a warm, light brown and lashes glued to her cheeks. He frowned. “Something seems….”

  Raphael was unfolding one of the wings when four of the primaries came off in his hands. He stared at them. “Gabriel!”

  “She’s not breathing!”

  “Quick, pull her out, I don’t have my bag with me, God, oh God!”

  “It’s not working—”

  “Shut up and clean out her nose!”

  Gabriel opened the angel’s mouth and choked as the fluid slopped over her teeth onto his hands. “Raphael, she’s full up with it!”

  Raphael thrust him out of the way and turned her on her stomach, beating her back as the thick gold fluid puddled around her lips. Gabriel tried to re-arrange her wings and came away with more feathers.

  “Live, curse it all!” Raphael said, pulling her upright.

  “Raphael…!”

  The angel opened her eyes, a blue so pale that her pupils’ lack of reaction to the light stood out in stark relief.

  “Stay with us,” Raphael said.

  She closed her eyes against the entreaty. The ends of her wet locks dripped gold dust and then her entire body was gone, a cloud of glitter falling over the ground, into the puddle of fluid, across Raphael’s thighs and Gabriel’s feet. They stared stunned at the sticky outline her body had created on the warm stone.

  “Gabriel… what did we just witness?” Raphael asked shakily.

  “A stillborn angel.”

  “No, she was living.”

  “A miscarriage.”

  “Angels don't miscarry, Gabriel! Heaven is not some mortal woman's womb!”

  Gabriel scooped up some of the glitter. The sphere was already crumbling. “I don’t know what to tell you, Raphael.”

  Raphael grasped his hair, the lines of taut muscles standing in sharp relief against his forearms. Then he stood, his motions jerky. “Someone must tell Michael.”

  “Good luck,” Gabriel murmured, but the other archangel was already on his way out. The gold dust shone softly in the lamplight. Gabriel smoothed it into the fluid.

  “My liege, there’s a messenger here for you.”

  Lucifer lifted his head, pen pausing over the parchment. The medallion he’d been shaping to hold these delicate equations rested on the table, half-formed gray-clay with a black satin cord. It was very important to get the medallion right, for those it would protect would have no other shield.... “From Mephistopheles?”

  “No, sir. From Michael.”

  Lucifer stared at the guard, then turned and capped his ink pot. He wiped the quill’s nib and slid it into the holder before standing and facing the door. “Let him in, please.”

  An angel strode inside, an angel still in Grace. His white wings were banded in copper and slate blue, and over his head a halo spun, pristine motion reminiscent of the dances of the smallest quarks. He wore white and gold, and his mouth had frozen into a distasteful sneer. His bow when he essayed it was openly contemptuous.

  “I bring a message from the Archangel Michael, Prince of Light and God’s Champion.”

  Lucifer folded his arms. “I’m listening.”

  “The Prince of Light demands the surrender of the Great Betrayer to the might of God, for he means t
o bring war against God’s scourge. He wishes you to know that he is merciful however, and if you submit to him he will spare those whom you forced to follow you out of Heaven and into vile exile. He encourages you to accept these generous terms and spare the souls of the innocent the Champion’s terrible retribution.”

  “The souls of the innocent, is that it?” Lucifer plucked a bottle from his desk and poured himself a glass of wine. “The souls of angels, I presume. Michael would never think of human souls.”

  “The Archangel did not specify,” the angel said stiffly.

  “Of course he didn’t,” Lucifer said. He swirled the wine in his glass. “Tell me the part about the misguided angels again, just so that I am sure I understood you correctly.”

  Torn between indignation and a desire to seem unflappable, the angel said, “Your submission will spare the misguided angels who followed you into exile a terrible fate.”

  “And what will Michael do with me? Or did he not share such details with you?”

  “I would never presume to ask the Prince of Light such things.”

  “Of course,” Lucifer said again and placed his glass on the desk. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I d-d-did not,” the angel said, eyes widening. “I would never give my name to the Great Betrayer!”

  “Well, then, Angel with No Name… take this message back to your master. If he wishes to talk conditions with me, he must tell me what he means to do with the human souls of my demesne… not just the angelic. If he will open his arms and Heaven’s Gate to all the souls of Hell and all the souls to come, then we can speak again of my submission.”

  “You are no one to give conditions to the Archangel,” the angel said, baring his teeth.

  Lucifer waved a hand. “Leave. You have my answer.”

  “You will kneel before Michael in rags before he parleys with you,” the angel said stiffly, and swept out.

  “My liege?” the guard asked, hesitant.

  “See him out. Make sure he gets to the Gate safely.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The door closed with a hollow thump. Lucifer picked the glass up by its thin stem and brought it to his lips, inhaling the bouquet as he stared out the slivered window at the unnatural darkness of the countryside.

  “Come home soon, Mephistopheles,” he murmured.

  Chapter Seven

  “This is the place,” Mephistopheles said, halting in the clearing. He held the token before him and concentrated until he could distinguish its thin voice from among the hundreds pressing for his attention. It sent a tingle up his wrists. “Yes. This is the place. We have only to wait some ten minutes.”

  Brad peered at the clay medallion. “What is that thing?”

  Mephistopheles chuckled, his dark wings blotting out the royal blue of the sky as he tensed and relaxed each shelf of his feathers. “This, my friend, is Lucifer’s handiwork.”

  Stephen glanced up at that. He was standing beside Asrial. The angel had seated herself on a tree stump as soon as the demon had stopped. She’d donned her dry chiton again, and wore the afghan like a bulky cloak against the cold.

  “How does it work?” Brad asked. “Can I touch it?”

  “Surely.” Mephistopheles dropped it into the boy’s hand. “It is… difficult to explain. Think of it as a complicated mathematical equation made concrete.”

  “A what?” Stephen said, startled.

  “Math can be used to describe the universe,” the demon said, one wing turning parallel to the ground, feathers scissoring apart to better catch the cool breeze. “God manipulates the universe in what way, we know not... though His touch on it can be heard as music, in Heaven. The rest of us muddle along with the writing inspired by such melodies. Lucifer is the greatest of us at that, but his solutions are still hammers compared to God’s scalpels.”

  “Lucifer a… mathematician?” Stephen said. He grinned. “Maybe he won’t be so bad a guy after all.”

  “You’re crazy, Father,” Brad said. He handed the token back to Mephistopheles. “So this is an equation stuck in a lump of clay. How does it work?”

  “I’m getting to that part. The equation describes a particular instance in time and space where a portal is possible between… facing realities, I suppose is the best way to put it. It suggests that possibility, and the suggestion makes it so. That’s the closest I can get to a real explanation.”

  “Huh. Maybe math is useful after all,” Brad said, winking at Mephistopheles.

  Stephen rolled his eyes. “You’re not going to learn theoretical physics until you pass trig, kiddo.”

  “Hey, I can dream, can’t I?”

  The token sent another warning up Mephistopheles’s fingers. “Five minutes now.” He walked to Asrial and went to a knee before her, arching his wings into cups on either side of his body. “Lady. We go to a place that is evil by the teachings of Heaven; more importantly, it is cruel to your body. If this place pains you, Hell will be a thousand times worse. You do not need to accompany us.”

  Asrial turned her face from his, her cheeks darkening. One lock of hair fell alongside her eye. “I will go,” she said. “I am in this thing. I must see its end.”

  Mephistopheles nodded once, then stood and said, “Well, let’s gather ‘round, then. I’ll show you wonders you’ve never yet seen.” His smile had a decidedly lopsided air.

  Brad straightened beside the demon, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Stephen did not join them until Asrial had carefully rose and drifted to the boy's side.

  “Three… two… one,” Mephistopheles murmured, then held out the token and broke it with a dull click.

  The grass beneath them tore and the air gaped as if sliced by a knife somewhere behind reality. The dark blue sky and the silhouettes of the trees fell together around the black incision like the folds of a stage curtain.

  “My God,” Stephen said, eyes widening.

  “Last train to Hell,” Mephistopheles said, gesturing toward the undulating rip.

  Boy, priest and angel stared at the results of Lucifer’s token. Brad had frozen, entranced by the waving fringes of reality; Stephen was busy trying to convince himself that it was real.

  Asrial gathered the afghan around her thin body, breathing in the heavy scent of its human musk with the sharp bite of the cold wind. Lifting her chin and folding her wings tightly to her back, she walked forward, pausing only once to look at Mephistopheles before passing into the darkness.

  Brad shrugged and followed her, Stephen reluctantly on his heels.

  Mephistopheles waited until the priest’s back disappeared, then entered the rift. He turned inside the small pocket tunnel; the rip’s folds sucked in on one another as if to equalize a deadly pressure. A pang of regret preoccupied him as the blue-violet of Earth’s sky and all Terra’s singing to God drained away.

  A black missile streaked through the remaining hand’s width hole with a tremendous croak, bringing with it a whorl of cold air and the scent of loam. Missing only a few tail feathers, the grackle swooped to Mephistopheles’s shoulder and eyed him.

  “What—you—crazy bird!”

  It clacked its beak, and the rip closed.

  Mephistopheles had time to turn and utter the first syllable of his warning when the opposite side of the tunnel collapsed beneath their feet, and the fall began—upward this time, against all the rules of perception. Heartbeats later, the fabric broke around them and into an air so heavy Mephistopheles fought against breathing it even as he recognized it… and the ground ten feet down.

  The four smashed to the hill outside the Gate of Hell, and the air smothered them.

  “Oh God, I feel like all the weight of the entire atmosphere is focused right… on… my… back,” Stephen said, lying flat. The stones beneath his chest and navel dug sharply through his sweater like swords. He wondered if he was bleeding.

  “Man,” Brad muttered, staring up at the hole sealing in the black cavern ceiling. “Is this for real?”


  Mephistopheles lifted his head. Both of the humans sounded breathy, winded—they would learn shortly how to speak at a proper volume against such a weight of air. He dragged himself to his feet and stumbled to the shimmer of white and gold.

  “Asrial?”

  Four feathers littered the ground around her body, and Mephistopheles flinched. “Asrial!”

  Her head shook visibly as she raised it. Tears streaked her face in straggled lines that echoed the red-gold curls framing her face. “Mephistopheles,” she whispered. “Everything hurts.”

  “I know,” he said, forcing himself to remain still. “It will get better, I promise. Just… just rest for now. We won’t move for a while.”

  She let her head sink back to the hard ground. Mephistopheles stared at her hair for several minutes, then shook himself and hurried to the others.

  “What’s the deal with the sky?” Brad asked when the demon kneeled beside him. “If Lucifer’s got a hundred doctorates in physics, why can’t he put up real stars?”

  “My liege-lord cannot make things like stars, Brad. That is power beyond even the grasp of God’s most beloved of angels,” Mephistopheles said. “Father Bann?”

  “I’m here. Mostly living. Trying not to feel like Dante.”

  “An interesting man, Dante. His supposed observations were a little sensationalist, though.”

  “Let me guess. He works for your newspaper as a daily columnist,” Stephen said, pushing himself to his knees with a muffled groan.

  “Not quite. But close enough,” Mephistopheles said.

  “Say, what was the flash just before we dropped?” Brad asked, turning onto his stomach and getting onto his hands and knees.

  “Dear God! The bird!”

  “The bird?” Brad repeated.

  Mephistopheles was already hunting. “Where did it go? Crazy creature! I told it to go feather its nest or peck at grubs….”

  “Over here,” Stephen said, looking toward a bundle of black feathers.

  Mephistopheles crouched over it, gently lifted it from the ground and caressed the feathers. “Ho there, old man. You still with us?”