The Tangled Tree

by S. K Munt

  And then I fell out the other side of the mud and into a pool of ice-cold water. I hit the sandy ground hard on two flat feet and immediately felt tiny waves rising behind me and breaking over me, knocking me to my hands and knees and dissolving against my skin in burst of foam.

  ‘Oh hell… oh…fuck!’ Gasping in greedy mouthfuls of icy air and shivering violently, I crawled and spluttered my way out of the water and directly into the mouth of a cave, going up a steep, muddy hill and wondering what fresh hell waited for me within- but I was surprised to see Satan step out of the darkness beside me, barring my path as she helped me to my feet on hard packed sand. I looked behind me, wondering if I should just swim for it, but though I saw nothing but a sheer rock wall behind me, I could hear the tidal falls pounding into the ocean on the other side of it. Talk about claustrophobia-inducing! I was now stuck in an underground cave, and the only way out of there would be to swim out and pray that the pressure of the falls would drown me once I got out the other side.

  ‘Congratulations, Larkin Whittaker…’ Satan lifted my chin so that I was staring into her inky black eyes. ‘You survived passing through the mouth of Hell. How does it feel?’

  Say what? Huh? Where am I then? I stared at her, astonished, and could do nothing else for a few beats until she lifted her eyebrows inquisitively.

  ‘Sweetheart- that was an actual question.’ She took my hands, inspected them and then squeezed them before lifting one to her lips and kissing it tenderly. ‘Are you all right? I’ve only ever seen one other human being enter Hell alive and come out alive so-’

  ‘What?!’ I demanded, thawing out a little at her words. ‘I’m out? It’s over? But…. how am I not dead? You just drowned me, and set me on fire, crushed me-’ fury overwhelmed me- fury to see her looking at me with concern after what she’d just put me through. I opened my mouth to give her the sharpest, ugliest piece of my mind I had- but she wriggled her fingers and I saw a misty breath escape me and curl up in the palm of her hand. She’d taken my voice again!

  ‘Sorry- it’s really hard to get a word in edgewise with you sometimes, so just breathe while I explain myself, all right?’ Satan smiled while I slitted my eyes at her. ‘I held you accountable for your sins while you were still alive, but nothing happened to your physical being Larkin- it thrashed in the shallows behind you as you were punished inside your mind.’ Satan smiled while I turned to look behind me at the water that was breaking against the sand bank that I was standing on, blinking to see the Tidal fall from the wrong side. Had I truly been there all along? ‘Yes. And before you go off accusing me of deception again, or attempted murder, you must understand that I knew you would survive it, and that I wouldn’t have subjected you to that if I’d thought otherwise.’ She touched her fingers to my lips, drawing my face back. ‘Okay, now you go.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I demanded, looking down at myself and blinking when I saw that I was wearing a corset identical to the one I’d fallen into the sea in, but one that was black and dry and… fine. As was the rest of me! My skirt was gone and had been replaced with form-fitting, black suede pants, and my lower legs were encased in sturdy black leather boots that were sinking into the wet sand but keeping them dry. My hair was still sopping wet, but when I reached around me to wring it out, I felt a familiar rustle, both against my hand and in my ear, and twisted to see that my wings had flared out behind me again, and that they were as lush and full as they had been when they’d first sprouted! They were still black, which hurt something deep inside me, but when I pressed my hand to my chest, I realised that it was the only thing that hurt now; a gentle twinge of regret, and nothing more. Tears filled my eyes- happy ones, and when I looked at Satan, I was stunned to see that her eyes were spilling over too.

  ‘I know,’ she whispered, touching one of the feathers over my shoulder gently and reverently, ‘they’re beautiful, aren’t they? It killed me to put you through all of that, but to see your wings restored….’ she swallowed hard and nodded, cupping my chin. ‘It was worth it. And I hope you feel the same.’

  I couldn’t get a handle on the emotions coursing through me now- excited, happy, content emotions! ‘How?’ was all I could ask, and she smiled, wiping away one of my tears and examining it almost lovingly.

  ‘I told you that you didn’t understand Hell, but you didn’t understand that either and hopefully, this experience has enlightened you a little more.’ She took my hands and squeezed them. ‘It is common knowledge that God accepts everyone into Heaven so long as they love him, and that those that do not come to me by default and are punished for their sins, but what no one alive knows- except a handful of people that I trust- is that atonement is only the first stage of Hell. Souls come to me- battered or merely bruised, guilty, evil, warped- and I cleanse them by putting them through what you just went through, and then I take the power filtered through their wrong-doings back into myself, and that regenerates me without compounding my already blackened soul.’

  I stared at her. ‘You… you filter evil out of power before you take it into you?’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘Surprised, hey? You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.’ She took my hands and looked into my eyes. ‘It is said that I grow from hate as he grows from love and technically that’s the truth… but I was still made in his image and when he cast me out, he didn’t change that, so I am not that much different from the Satan that first walked this earth because I still crave the things that God did before he split himself in two: comfort, happiness, pleasure, creation and success.’ She paused. ‘Even love. Actually no- especially love. I crave that more than I crave anything else… I just don’t have the ability to hope or dream or believe in it anymore.’

  I was beyond confused. ‘Are you telling me that you are not evil?’

  ‘Not in the way you have been taught to believe.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I admit, I get a rush out punishing bad people, and acting lustfully and eating and drinking and cursing and… well, basically everything you got up to this past week.’ She smirked, squeezing my hands to let me know that she was teasing me. ‘But causing bad things to happen to people is not fulfilling at all, so I strive for other things. They’re selfish goals, I’ll admit that, and if I was ever made to go through hell again I probably wouldn’t survive the ‘pride’ part but no, I am not evil- I am merely as afflicted by humanity as all of you are, can only grow from that hate that I am offered and incapable of loving anyone.’

  I digested that. ‘What about liking people?’ Silently I was asking: Do you like me?

  ‘If they make me laugh or impress me or out-wit me or another human I grow fond of watching them and come to like them very much, and if something bad were to happen to them and take their energy from the earth I would be crushed. I just won’t ever be able to put another human before myself or my ambition, and that’s what love is, isn’t it?’ she asked, and I nodded thinking that didn’t seem so evil at all- just limited. She nodded politely and went on: ‘Most people that enter Hell go through a lot worse than what you just did Larkin and it takes them much, much longer to pass through to the afterlife that I built out of his negative energy as I atoned for my own sins... and some lived lives so corrupt that they never make it through before they dissolve- like vapour.’ She smiled sadly. ‘But when they have made it through, what awaits them is… considerably more attractive a prospect than it is made out to be, and not as dissimilar from Heaven as God believes.’ She sighed. ‘Crossing over is an awful thing to experience though, and believe me when I say I know because for what I did to Heaven and Miguel, I writhed in agony as you just did for what felt like centuries and was, in actuality- decades.’ She smiled sadly as I winced in sympathy. ‘But your sins paled in comparison to mine, and I knew you’d be out in minutes, so I sent you there to free you.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I also apologise for how I spoke to you when you were in there, but I cannot help that- punishing people is my responsibility and mine alone, and when it mus
t be done, it takes me over.’

  I wrapped my feathers around myself and hugged them tightly. ‘So… so Hell isn’t a bad place? It’s just getting there that hurts?’

  Satan held a finger to her lips, as she had before, and smiled with sparkling onyx eyes. ‘Let’s not share that around, right? I’m as fond of the earth as I am of Hell, unlike God, and do not desire to see people act wicked upon it in their eagerness to join me after because my ultimate goal is to gain control of the world and if it gets wrecked then God will try and intervene again and then we’ll all have nothing. All you need to know is that you have atoned for your sins, Larkin. That is why you feel so light now, and why you feathers have returned. Most people have to die in order to be cleansed by Hellfire the way you just have, but I made an exception for you, and sent you in with a pulse.’

  I was so confused. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I wasn’t going to save your life, just to have you find some other way to end it,’ Satan said simply. ‘If I’d saved you from Kohl, you would have found a way to feel guilty about accepting my help or any of the other million things that were weighing on your conscience, and you probably would have swallowed poison or jumped off a cliff or Lord knows what else in your haste to be free of all of that hurt and shame and pain that you carry around with you the moment my back was turned- I saw many things occur to you, even while you were making your wishes.’ She shrugged. ‘But now... it’s gone, isn’t it?’ She studied me carefully. ‘When you think of all of the things you have done… you know that you have already been punished for them, and no longer feel like you ought to be...don’t you?’

  I lowered my eyes, not knowing what to think, but to test myself, I thought of Karol and felt…. nothing. I remembered laughing at his jokes, melting under his kisses and screaming as he’d gone out that window- but my heart didn’t clench up as it had before, and so I tentatively thought of Kohén- and felt only a rush of warmth followed by another twinge of… no, not regret… loss maybe? I missed him. I missed the old him a lot- but the desire to throw myself at his feet and apologise for all the ways I’d wronged him was gone, as was the desire to ever see him again. Besides, they were all going to recover anyway, weren’t they? So what did I have to feel guilty for?

  They couldn’t be allowed to escape their guilt so easily though- that I realised when I recalled the ways that they had wronged me! In fact, the memory of the way that Kohén had slipped his fingers inside me while Kohl had held me down made my blood boil and feathers shiver with silent age as I realised the absolute truth:

  I didn’t deserve it, and they will pay for what they did to me! All of them! My wings, they were so white! So lovely! And they stained them! Maybe that was never their intention so they cannot be considered evil, but it was the outcome of their family’s rules, and that is the evil that must be changed! I want equality, and fairness…. and I want my white feathers back!

  ‘I can’t fix that any more than I can reverse the staining of my own,’ Satan said, and I looked up and blushed when I realised that she was reading my mind again. ‘The condition of your feathers is a reflection of how you feel about God, and that’s why killing Karol- even unintentionally- ravaged yours so. Going to Hell washed your sins away, but the colour of your wings… that determines whether you will get into Heaven or not-’

  ‘I don’t want to go to Heaven, I want to live!’ I snapped, heart pounding with enthusiasm for life again- and revenge- and Satan snorted lightly, looking somewhat pleased. ‘God wasn’t there to help me in my hour of need- you were.’ I wrung out my hair. ‘Where is he, anyway? God, I mean?’

  ‘He’s everywhere,’ Satan said simply. ‘He’s in everything good and light in the world as I am in everything dark. But physically…’ she shrugged. ‘He’s not here- thank God,’ she smirked, ‘and he won’t return unless we give him cause to. Which is precisely why I have intervened - not only because I am desperate to see you live and make a change, but because if you’d died- I know that God would have felt your loss and returned.’

  ‘My- my loss?’ I repeated, confounded. ‘Why would a God that has never answered my prayers feel my loss?’

  ‘He’s answered more of your prayers than you think, Larkin- just not as many as I have. And he certainly would have felt your loss- being that you’re an angel.’

  ‘A Nephilim,’ I corrected her, thinking of what Martya had told me about Julieta. She had died, and the earth had rolled on without God’s interference, and that had only happened thirty-odd years after he’d turned his back! ‘One that doesn’t love him, remember?’

  ‘A Nephilim refers to a being that is created via breeding with an angel, or another Nephilim- and a human,’ Satan said, taking my hair and wringing it out for me. ‘You’re… more than that.’

  I frowned at her. ‘But Sapphire Whittaker wasn’t a Nephilim- even though I know that my father was-’

  ‘Sapphire Whittaker wasn’t your mother, Larkin,’ Satan said sadly, and I felt my heart sink. ‘I lied about that… somewhat. I had to, for risk of provoking your flames while you were still their ward. Don’t get me wrong, Sapphire was a formidable woman, but your true mother was a lot more powerful than she was-’

  ‘Somewhat?’ I hissed, jerking her hands out of my hair and stepping back, hanging onto it for dear life and whimpering when I felt that it was dry. ‘How can you somewhat lie about such a thing? She either gave birth to me, or she didn’t!’

  ‘She gave birth to you, that part I was honest about!’ Satan said, wringing her own hands together now and looking… nervous. And that worried me- how could it not? If something made the devil nervous then how on earth was I going to deal with it? ‘But she was just a womb, the purest one I could find at the time, the most beautiful…’ she bit her lip. ‘And the most likely to do as the law commanded- and hand you over to the crown like I needed you to be, before you could return to your real mother- the Nephilim that Bastien impregnated.’

  ‘The most likely to not care about me, you mean?’ I asked roughly.

  ‘The most likely to love God more than she loved her own child,’ Satan admitted, and my heart twisted. ‘I felt bad for using her like that, and subjecting you to such a cold home… but it had to be that way, Larkin. I couldn’t risk that anyone- your mother, your father, your master would notice how special you were, which is why I cloaked your beauty for as long as I did too.’

  I frowned. ‘Cloaked my beauty? Is that what you called it?’

  She smiled, touching my hair again but I recoiled and she sighed. ‘You would have been the most dazzling little thing on the planet if I hadn’t taken pains to hide your genetics, so I enchanted you to stay as plain, scrawny and unappealing as possible to protect you. Not just from men’s eyes, but from vanity and arrogance and everything Kelia developed that you escaped.’

  I leaned back and held up my hands. ‘Whoa! Was Kelia a dark nephilim too?’

  ‘No, she was a fucking twat and the world is better off without her,’ Satan said, making a face, and my corrupted soul loosed a giggle. ‘Anyway, I know that giving you such a plain face to wear was difficult for you and potentially detrimental to your self-esteem, but after what happened with Heaven Barachiel back in the beginning…’ she sighed. ‘A woman has no business being beautiful if she is not also clever, cunning and kind. Not that it did you much good. Your first kiss was to be won with your inner beauty and break the enchantment once you were shielded from a boy’s lust by love, but that happened much earlier than I’d hoped because you agreed to do Kohén that favour and give him his first kiss so…’ she gestured to me. ‘Here you are! Five foot-six inches of Barachiel bait.’

  I put my hands on my hips and glowered at her. ‘So I wasn’t supposed to be bait all along? Martya sure inferred otherwise! And who was my mother if it wasn’t Sapphire? Siria? Lindy? If Lindy had the means to save her own ass all along then I’m going to-’

  ‘No! she cried. ‘It wasn’t Lindy and you were never supposed to risk yourself l
ike that! That was your father’s influence on your soul, not mine. I… Your father and I… we…’ she glanced behind her and sighed, stepping aside so that I could see a tall, golden silhouette unfurl from beside the fire. ‘Shep… you’re the articulate one.’ She swallowed hard, looking back at me and beckoning the golden man forward while I stumbled back. ‘Do you think you could come explain all of this and who her mother is to your daughter before she hurls a fireball at me?’

  I’ll hurl fireballs at everyone if I don’t get answers soon! If I’m half angel, half Nephilim, then who was I conceived with? Siria? Gabby? CHERRY?

  ‘I wouldn’t blame her if she did, and don’t call me Shep- you know I hate it,’ the man said, approaching me as tentatively as one would a Salt and Pepper bear. ‘But I’ll gladly take over- hello Larkin,’ he said, smiling softly, ‘I’d say its lovely to finally meet you… but I don’t know if that’s going to be the case yet, do I? Not until it is the past tense and not just wishful thinking on my part?’

  ‘You’re a Shep?!’ I squeaked, glancing at Satan. ‘My father is a Shep and a Nephilim?’

  ‘The purest soul I’ve ever known,’ Satan said. ‘His wings have stayed white for a millennia.’

  It was like being beaten over the back of a head. ‘A millennia?!’ I gasped, gaping at Shep. ‘You’re…?’