Tithe to Tartarus

by John C. Wright

  “What happened?”

  “The world got old and wicked. Elfs got weary. The ancient privileges diminished, dried up, and died off. The angels stopped coming.”

  Elfine pouted sadly as she skipped along, kicking a pebble down the sidewalk as she went.

  She continued, “The Night People are generally now stuck in one or two shapes or sizes. You see? Leprechauns are shoemakers; fire-breathing efts are fighting-men; banshees are washerwomen and corpse-dressers; and Nibelungs are blacksmiths. The different shapes were once only their work clothes, but now they are stuck in them. And their children take after them. Some of the older ones, like Nimue or Malen or Morgan, can still do the old tricks.”

  Yumiko was puzzled. “Are elfs and fairies the same race or different races?”

  “Same race but different jobs. Different genres. I guess we are different races now, but we did not use to be. Elfs can get tiny, and I can get big like this, and we look a lot alike, but the fairies never agreed to the deal, so we never have to pay the tithe.”

  “Tithe? Is this the same tithe?”

  Elfine nodded energetically but then said, “Same as what?”

  “Tell me about this deal.”

  “Once upon a time, the proud, dread, and darkest Prince of the Fallen Angels, whose name it is dangerous to say, convinced the fairies that the waters of Lethe, the River of Oblivion, would sponge their memories of our old home away, so they could be happy again.

  “Instead, the fairies forget everything, and now they are too happy.

  “But the Queen of Heaven took pity on the fairies and sent guardian angels streaming down from windows in Heaven, with crowns of light and swords of fire. You cannot see them because you would turn to ashes if you did, but sometimes they whisper things to the fairies, things no one knows, which is why fairies sometimes know things for no reason. It is to make up for everything they forgot. So that is the difference. Elfs do not have anyone to watch over them. So they get in trouble.”

  “But what was this deal?”

  “I told you about this before. You don’t remember? Maybe I skipped the details. The first High King of the Elfs, Asagrim son of Aer, was taken to a tall mountain and promised all the fair kingdoms of the Earth spread below if he would bow and worship the Prince of Darkness. As a sign whereof, every seven years, the elfs give over one tenth of their produce and profits and the firstborn of their flocks, and their firstborn sons are made to pass through fire.”

  Yumiko’s face went blank and then went pale. Her steps became slow and mechanical. Elfine, skipping along, wrapped up in the telling of her tale, continued heedlessly:

  “Asagrim, who was childless, agreed at once. But then he fell in love with a daughter of the North Star, and was wed, and had a child, and did not want to give him up, and so he asked if a willing victim could be substituted in the child’s stead: and this was done. Asagrim went to live in Tartarus in his son’s place, and Uther was raised to the throne of the High King. Uther refused to pay the tithe, and the Prince of Darkness cursed him and hurled him from the throne, and no one knows his whereabouts to this day.”

  Yumiko’s steps grew slower. Her eyes had an unfocused look. Elfine, dancing on ahead, continued speaking.

  “The Night world feared the Darkness and did a wicked thing. The son of Uther, when still a babe in swaddling, was placed in a coracle and abandoned to the mercy of the sea. Wave after wave, each mightier than the last, carried him away from the shores of Elfland, until a ninth wave slowly rose and plunged, roaring, and all the wave was flame. At the crest of the ninth wave, seen by the sharp-eyed against the rising sun, the babe arose, stood on his legs, and raised his hand in a sign that he would one day return. And so he was borne away toward mortal lands. The second born was Alberec, who came to the throne of the High King in his stead. You are probably wondering what the name of the firstborn is…?”

  5. The End of All Tales

  Yumiko halted. She swayed. She sat down heavily on the small strip of green grass between the sidewalk and the wall of rough, unhewn stones. She sat with her back to the wall, facing the four noisy lanes of traffic passing by on the boulevard.

  Elfine now looked over her shoulder, eyes wide and mouth quirked to one side. She turned and scampered back and gazed down silently. The raven-tressed girl was seated in her black trench coat, head bowed, arms wrapped about her knees, huddled into a frail, dark shape.

  Elfine pouted, as if annoyed her friend had not been listening to her tale.

  Yumiko spoke in a dull voice. She sounded much like one who has been struck in the head by a mallet and is still numb in the tongue. “The people tithed to Tartarus. You said they are taken alive. They are not simply killed? Sacrificed?”

  Elfine said, “Killing them would allow the baptized people to escape.”

  “You said it had to be a willing victim.” Now she did look up, a terrible, tiny ember of hope in the desolation of her blank eyes.

  Elfine rolled her eyes and cocked her head, staring fretfully at the clouds. “Well, what counts as a sign of willingness is open to interpretation. Proserpine is a girl who was starving and ate some pomegranate seeds, and eating the food of the dead counts as accepting their hospitality. Or signing a contract in blood saying you will serve a familiar spirit for seven days in return for seven years of his service if one of those seven days is the day the familiar spirit is due to go back down below. Or if a damned magician disguises himself as a man’s wife, and the man agrees to go in her place, thinking he is saving her. Or they get him drunk, or enchant him, or tell him it is temporary. It is all very tricky and unfair. Not every legal system is as fair as what they have in Merry Old England.”

  As Elfine spoke, the ember of hope faded and died.

  Elfine squatted down next to her friend, and put her arm around her shoulders, and stroked her hair, and said, “There, there, it will be all right.”

  Yumiko said, “My fiancé is going to be taken alive to Hell. He may have been taken already. How are you so sure it will be all right?”

  Elfine said, “All tales have happy endings.”

  “That is not true. What about Romeo and Juliet?”

  “Only the middle part is sad. Juliet was condemned by Minos to be whirled about on dark winds in the Second Circle for centuries, and Romeo was turned into a bleeding tree in the Seventh Circle. And they forgot how to pray. But the prayers of Laurence and John reached Saint Lucia. The Prince went down to Hell and brought up Adam and Moses and Elias and John the Baptist. When the Prince was weary from fighting demons, he rested in the shade of a tree, and this was the tree where Romeo was, and Romeo asked not for himself to be saved from damnation, but for Juliet. Romeo said it was his suicide that drove Juliet beyond grief, which means her death was his to blame, so that he is a murderer, not she a suicide. And then again, when he was weary from battling demons and devils, the Prince stepped into the blowing winds to cool his brow, and Juliet came whirling down and asked that Romeo be forgiven for his suicide since it was mistake, not malice, which drove him to it.

  “And all the peoples of their families and city who would have died before their time had the feud continued came to the Prince and prayed, saying that the deaths of these two lovers was not suicide, but sacrifice, from which the peace that blessed fair Verona was born.

  “Perhaps for these reasons, or perhaps for a reason known only to him, the Prince had compassion and took the foolish lovers by the hand. Not without travail, he led them up the cornices of Mount Purgatory and gave them the opportunity for salutary repentance. And the angels were amazed with the Prince, for one and all said suicide was unforgivable. But the Prince commanded Heaven and Earth to pray for those who have taken their own lives.

  “As for the lovers, together they entered eternity. Romeo is within the star Castor and Juliet within Alhena, and they dance together in the constellation of the Twins, clothed in brightness, on the azure floor of Heaven.”

  Yumiko scowled. “That is not
part of the story.”

  “Mortals only ever tell a small part of any story because they only see a small part of the world: the part on this hither shore, where evil reigns, time rots, and death rules all. On the thither shore is more to tell and the true end.”

  Yumiko calmed herself and controlled her breathing. She murmured in Japanese, “Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world: a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”

  These were the words of the Enlightened One from the Diamond Sutra. But Yumiko did not want to find the windless peace of Nirvana, the peace of non-self-being, if it meant surrendering her beloved, whose living face she had yet to see.

  Yumiko was confused. It seemed to her then that Joan the Wad, who was willing to defy Heaven or Hell or both at once, whatever the cost, to be with her lost love, was more enlightened than any girl who failed to defy Nirvana to be with hers. She was certainly spunkier.

  Was love merely one more illusion in a world of illusion? It seemed to Yumiko then, at that moment, like the fundamental and infinite truth of all truths was love.

  But then a voice spoke. Don’t listen. Elfine is lying. There is more to all stories, much more. But it is worse, not better. Far worse. Beyond the grave are sorrow, pain, and emptiness without end.

  Yumiko leaped to her feet, and this startled Elfine, who erupted into a conflagration of sparks and shrank to the size of a dragonfly, leaving her poncho on the sidewalk.

  Yumiko shrugged out of her coat so that she could draw her weapons. She stood with a kunai, a heavy throwing knife, in one hand and her kodachi, a shortsword, in the other.

  All tales ending happily? Don’t make me laugh. All songs end in lamentations. All end in endless screams. There is no pleasure, no feast, no wine, no warmth, no light, and nobody forever.

  For this was the voice of Kuckunniwi, the Cheyenne.

  Beyond life is death. Beyond death, pain. Pain, hunger, cold, darkness, loneliness.

  6. Saint Calixtus’s Gate

  The Cheyenne must have seen her at the Cobbler’s Club during the fire and followed her here. She had, after all, taken no steps to shake any pursuit. Yumiko’s eyes darted up, left, right. But where was he? Where was the voice coming from?

  Some children in a station wagon on the boulevard, seeing her in her skintight black suit with knife and shortsword drawn, waved and cheered as their vehicle went by. Yumiko saw that the stone wall had a corner. She ducked around it.

  Here, the wall was interrupted by a tall wrought-iron gate. A long avenue stretched before her, bordered by trees, into green slope after green slope thick with headstones, obelisks, winged statues, monuments, and mausoleums like windowless and miniature palaces. At first, she saw no people. Perhaps visiting hours had not yet begun, for the gate was shut.

  She saw no sign of the Cheyenne, but he must be near. It was difficult at her full weight and with her hands full, but Yumiko lithely jumped, kicked off the gate posts, helped herself with a second kick against the crossbars, and sailed upside down over the top of the gate, her head, shoulders, hips, and thighs clearing the ornamental top spikes by inches. She clenched the knife between her teeth and took a bar in her free hand to slow her fall. She slid and somersaulted to an easy landing on the grass beyond, coming to her feet in a crouch.

  Next to the wall, at an angle which had been invisible from the gate, near a marble statue of a fireman, was an immense red warhorse, wearing barding. A riding horse, slenderer and smaller, was with it. Both were cropping the grass. A third horse, this one laden with burdens, including long lances, stood near. With them was a white donkey. A collie dog with a white vest and a raccoon mask around its eyes was trotting proudly back and forth around the horses, barking loudly.

  Standing between her and the horses, with their backs to her, were two youths among the stones, talking in low tones. One was broad and tall and dressed in white linen with a blue surcoat, and a sword was at his side, hilts glittering with diamonds. The other was thin and long haired, wearing rimless glasses that gave him an owlish look. He was dressed in a white tunic and scapular with a black hood and cloak. It was the Swan Knight’s Son and the Blackfriar’s novice. Gilberec and Matthias Moth.

  Both fell silent in mid-sentence, turned, and looked at her.

  Yumiko looked back, as startled as they.

  For a moment no one spoke. Gilberec eyed the blade in her hand and the knife in her mouth. He made no move to draw his sword. “So are you a ninja? Or a pirate?”

  Chapter Eleven: The House of the Dead

  1. Four Cousins and a Dog

  Yumiko took the knife out from between her teeth. This kunai had a hoop in the pommel, into which she thrust her forefinger, and she began to flick her wrist to spin the knife blade. The motion formed a blurred disk of metal. “We’ve met,” she said.

  Matthias stared at her face. He said in a voice of slow surprise, “Is that you? You are the dancing girl who waited on us in the Cobbler’s Club.”

  Gil said, “That girl was a redhead.”

  Matthias said, “Not the one who brought the caviar. She came in later and brought drinks. The one who stood in the corner and would not sit down.”

  Gil said, “The girl who is not Sorry. The one you saw floating through the mist on Leap Day.” Gil said to her, “The last time we met you stepped on my foot.”

  Yumiko was a little surprised and glanced at the collie dog. “We’ve met since. You did not see me.”

  Matthias said slowly, “Gil. The shadow says this is the Foxmaiden.”

  “What makes him think so?”

  Matthias looked meditative, as if he were listening to an inaudible voice. After a moment, he said, “In life, he was a bouncer at the nightclub where she was a dancer.”

  Gil said to him, “I told you she works for the magician.”

  Matthias said, “And I told you not to judge in haste. His job was to follow her when she went out to report to Winged Vengeance. They had penetrated her disguise.”

  Gil crossed his arms and scowled down at her. “So you really are the Foxmaiden? Now you are showing your face? I did not see you last time we met. Here.” And he stepped over to the pack animal, drew out her two boomerangs, and tossed them into the grass at her feet. “Are these yours?”

  She nodded. “They are mine.”

  Gil said, “I am happy, Miss, to hear whatever explanation you want to give. If you were a boy, I would break you in half.”

  Yumiko said, “I did it to save my friend, Elfine.” Yumiko waved her hand behind her, as if to beckon the other girl to present herself.

  Elfine, from behind her, called out, “Hi there! Wait a minute! I remember how to do this!”

  Yumiko glanced over her shoulder. Elfine, full sized and dressed only in her green bodice and skirt, was pushed up against the gate, one arm through the bars, waving.

  “I am the daughter of Iolanthe daughter of Ellyllon, and Ayre Moth son of sun-bright Pururavas. Ayre is the founder of the Manx branch of the family. He is legally considered a mortal even though he is as long lived as an immortal. Ayre’s mother was Urvashi, who was born in this wise: Indra of the Thunders saw Nara-narayana meditating and sent a curse in the form of two apsara to distract him, lest his meditation unlock the enlightenment Adam lost and regain mastery over nature and the elements! Instead, Nara-narayana struck his thigh, and Urvashi came forth, and danced, and distracted the two of them, and they were put to shame. My name is Elfine.”

  Gilberec said, “I am the son of the Swan Knight and Ygraine of the Riddles. She is the daughter of Pellinore of Listenoise and Danaë of Arcadia. Of the Swan Knight, I can say no more. I am Sir Gilberec, vassal of Arthur.”

  Matthias said, “How do you do? I am the son of Carabosse the Maleficent and Malthus Moth. Malthus is the son of Mabon the Enchanter, son of Parlan, son of Phanes. Mabon is brother to Malagigi. I am Matthias.”

  The two boys looked at Yumiko, expectantly. Gi
l glanced at her sword and spinning knife and crouched stance and sighed in annoyance.

  Matthias said, “If you wish to introduce yourself, please feel free. I don’t know your real name.”

  The collie dog trotted up and sat down between Gil and Matthias and barked happily. This was Ruff, without his hat.

  Gil said, “Is your name really Yummy Cutie?”

  Yumiko frowned terribly at the dog. “Tell him to stop that! My name is Yumiko!”

  Through the bars, Elfine said helpfully, “She is the daughter of Dandrenor the Grail Queen and Danger Moth! Danger Moth is the son of Bold Moth and is the brother of Fearless and Reckless, names they earned while searching for their missing mother, Kasumi-himi no Mikoto, who was struck three times by her husband, once for disobedience, once for weeping at a feast, once for laughing at a funeral. This broke the promise Bold Moth had given her, and so she returned to the hidden world. Reckless descended into Hell and became a necromancer and exorcist; Fearless circumnavigated the globe, slew giants in Patagonia, and earned a fortune in trade; and Danger, in the company of Cyrano Moth, ascended to Heaven in an engine shaped like a locust and impelled by gunpowder. There, he met Dandrenor. By the way, I have been looking for you.”

  The two boys looked thunderstruck and exchanged a glance, a shrug, and a wordless roll of the eyes.

  Gil said to Yumiko, “So you are a cousin of ours? After all this time? You sure do not act it. Moths are supposed to help each other.”

  Matthias said, “I certainly would not have guessed. You are something of a figure of mystery to us.”

  Yumiko was not sure how to answer this, so she turned and said over her shoulder, “Why don’t you shrink down and come through the bars?”

  Elfine said, “I think this is holy ground. I– I am not sure I can come in. I may not be welcome.”

  Yumiko said, “Please, you must! I don’t know what we are looking for!”

  Gil said to Matthias, “Matt, go see to that, please.”