Soul Remains

by Sam Hooker

  There was a round of polite applause, during which Sloot wondered why Lilacs hadn’t introduced himself as King Lilacs before. It seemed like a relevant detail, and an odd one to overlook. He further wondered why the king would be the only fairy not in a fabulous suit.

  Sloot also tried to join in the applause, only to discover that one required hands to make the sound of two hands clapping, to say nothing of the philosophical implications of halving that. He went through the motions anyway, for the appearance of civility.

  “Hail, General Dandelion,” said Lilacs, “if you please. Welcome to our gardens, where you are welcome to stay as long as you like.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” said Dandelion. Like the king, he wore only a loincloth. He was also squat and hairy, possibly more so on both counts than King Lilacs. Using his natural sense of accountancy, Sloot surmised that it would be possible to produce an accurate accounting on that score, the only barrier being the fact that he firmly didn’t want to.

  Given that Sloot couldn’t possibly have gone into bystanding at a fairy public hearing with any expectations, one of the infinite number of things that he hadn’t expected was for King Lilacs and General Dandelion to thrice shake a fist at each other. This resulted in Dandelion holding out two fingers slightly apart, while Lilacs hand lay flat.

  “We have performed the rite of ancient and honorable combat,” said Lilacs, “and General Dandelion has bested me! The floor is yours, General.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. Did you know that I am undefeated in ancient and honorable combat?”

  “Undefeated! Ever?”

  “Never.”

  “Well, that hardly seemed fair, if you please.”

  A murmur of general agreement wafted up from the assembly.

  “I wholeheartedly agree,” said Dandelion. “That’s why I never eat honey.”

  “Never?”

  “Never ever.”

  Lilacs scrunched his face in consideration.

  “I think that about balances out,” said Lilacs. There was a gentle round of applause. “Proceed, please.”

  “Thank you. Good time of day, fairies of the Western Gardens!”

  “Good time of day, General Dandelion!” they echoed in response. The canopy of foliage was so dense that it was hard to tell what time it was, so Sloot assumed this was a generic greeting among the fairies.

  “I’d like to bring you good greetings from the Southern Gardens, if you please.” He paused, and the assembly applauded. “Thank you. Good greetings to all of you. Now then, since I am here at His Majesty’s invitation, I would like to yield the floor, please and thank you.”

  “We return good greetings to you, General Dandelion,” said Lilacs as the polite applause died down. “It is also fair that we should temper this lovely exchange of greetings with some bad news.”

  “Bad news?” asked Dandelion. “Oh well, I suppose that’s fair. What is the bad news, please? Oh, and point of order, did you know that there’s an enormous ghost watching us right now?”

  “Goblins,” said Lilacs. “And yes, thank you. The ghost brought us the news about the goblins.”

  “And you granted him an audience anyway?”

  “To be fair, we granted him an audience before we knew about the goblins thing.”

  “Oh,” said Dandelion. “Bad luck, that.”

  “Quite.”

  “So what about the goblins, please?”

  “Well, in short, they’re coming.”

  “Coming? Here? Are you sure, please?”

  “Not entirely, thank you for asking. Ahem. Hello there, Mr. Ghost!”

  “Er, it’s Peril,” said Sloot. “Sloot Peril. If you please.”

  “Ah, Peril,” said Lilacs. “A fine Carpathian name! Well then, Mr. Peril, what’s the likelihood of the goblins coming to Carpathia, please?”

  “Well,” said Sloot, who hadn’t done a proper a priori forecast or even reviewed the empirical probabilities surrounding the matter like a good accountant would have done, “high.”

  “Hello.” Dandelion waved.

  “Er, yes,” said Sloot, waving back. “Furthermore, there is a high likelihood that the goblins will invade Carpathia.”

  “When, please?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon, please?”

  “I couldn’t say,” said Sloot. “The passage of time isn’t the forte of the dead, I’m afraid.”

  “I see,” said Lilacs. “Well, I assume there’s going to be a war council.”

  It wasn’t a question per se, but Sloot got the distinct impression that he was meant to answer it. Several hundred distinct impressions, actually, as all eyes were now upon him.

  “Er, that sounds like the sort of thing that Vlad would go in for.”

  There was a collective gasp from the assembled fairies at the mention of the Invader.

  “You never mentioned that you were here on her behalf,” said Dandelion with gravity nearly sufficient to pull any nearby stars into him.

  “Didn’t I? I mean, I didn’t. That is to say, I’m not technically—”

  “Well, that’s wonderful news, isn’t it?”

  The round of applause that rippled up coaxed Sloot into silence. He wasn’t an official emissary or anything, and had no idea if he was authorized to convene a war council. Wasn’t that when the leaders of armies met to plan a war? Vlad didn’t have an army! He wouldn’t have thought of a host of intensely fashionable fairies as an army either, but they weren’t much smaller than the goblins. Besides, when it comes to wars, a small army stands a better chance than no army at all, which can only win if the other side gets bored and decides to run off and become a sports team instead.

  “I knew she’d come around eventually,” said Dandelion.

  “Come around?” asked Sloot.

  “Do you think she’ll apologize to both of us at once, or individually?” asked Dandelion.

  Sloot cringed. He’d never known Vlad to apologize to anyone for anything.

  “It’s hard to say,” said Lilacs. “On the one hand, she and I are both rulers of the people.”

  “True,” said Dandelion, “but on the other hand, she and I are both generals of our respective armies.”

  “Only she doesn’t have an army.”

  “I wouldn’t bring that up, if you please.”

  “Oh, you’re right. After all, it was her grandfather that killed Ashkar and brought the curse down on them, wasn’t it?”

  Dandelion gave a solemn nod. Sloot didn’t know whether he should be surprised to learn that the fairies knew about the doom that Vlad the 35th had brought upon the Carpathian army by slaying the old necromancer. As Ashkar burned alive, he spat a curse declaring that not one soldier would join the ranks of the Carpathian army, so long as there was a Defenestratia at the head of it. What the fairies probably didn’t know was that Gregor, who was Mrs. Knife’s right-hand creepy necromancer, was almost certainly Ashkar in a new—albeit rotting and decrepit—form.

  “Indeed,” said Dandelion. “Not very fair to her, was it?”

  “No, I don’t think it was.”

  The deliberations went on for a while after that, interspersed liberally with the further exchange of pleasantries, and including a bunch of unrelated business that Sloot largely failed to understand. But he was too polite to duck out. He felt that the giant ghost looming over the proceedings might be conspicuous if he were suddenly absent.

  It wasn’t an entire waste of his time, though. He learned quite a bit about fairy culture and the intricate compensational model that was the basis of their economy. It wasn’t fair, for example, that Dandelion and Lilacs held exalted titles that no one else could claim; therefore, they eschewed the exquisite raiments made available to the rest of the fairies. He also learned that fairy tailors were unmatched for skill among all the people of the world. It was a good thing that there were a lot of them, because it simply wouldn’t be fair if some of the fairies had a really nice wardrobe while others didn�
��t—Dandelion and Lilacs aside, of course.

  Sloot found himself wishing that he’d known about the complex fairy economical model when he was alive, so he could have studied it; then again, he was fairly certain he’d never have survived the Carpathian flora in the attempt.

  Infernal Bureaucratic Fulfillment

  “And you didn’t think it necessary to ask any further questions?”

  Necessary? Well, that was debatable. Probable, in fact. But Myrtle wasn’t allowing for the fact that it would’ve been up to Sloot to do the asking, and “why should Vlad have to apologize to you?” wasn’t a very Sloot Peril thing to say. “Oh, er, all right,” was as close as he’d gotten.

  “Sorry,” said Sloot. No matter how often he said it, the pained look on his face was the proof that he meant it every time.

  He’d returned to Castle Ulfhaven to find Myrtle, Nicoleta, and Bartleby in one of the undercrofts. They were used for storing weapons, armor, taxidermied beasts, or decorative implements that were not presently on fire in some grander part of the castle. Myrtle and Bartleby were digging through crates.

  “It was probably something that happened a very long time ago,” said Nicoleta. “I don’t think a fairy has talked to one of the Vlads since King Lilacs got drunk with Vlad the Twenty-Eighth.”

  “The same King Lilacs?” asked Sloot. He wasn’t well-versed in Carpathian history, but imagined that the span of nine Vlads the Invader must be quite a long time.

  “I wasn’t around back then,” retorted Nicoleta, “nor was I with you when you spoke to the present King Lilacs.”

  “Oh,” said Sloot, failing to think of anything useful he might have said instead.

  “It could be, though,” Nicoleta continued. “According to what I’ve read, fairies live a really, really long time.”

  “I vas in a bar a long time ago,” said Bartleby. “Three fairies valked in and asked the bartender for a bottle of gin.”

  “That sounds like the setup to a really bad joke,” said Myrtle.

  “Vhy does everybody say that? Anyvay, they vere really nice, and ve vound up drinking gin until the sun came up.”

  “How is that relevant?”

  “I thought ve vere just talking about fairies.” Bartleby rolled his eyes. “Hey, is this it?” He held up a small, blackened iron brazier shaped like a pile of skulls that had been in a very serious argument with a pile of bony hands over a pile of spikes.

  “No,” said Nicoleta, “but I’m pretty sure I packed that one away around the same time. This has to be the right undercroft, I can feel it!”

  “How about this one?” asked Myrtle.

  “Nope, no bat wings.”

  “This vone?”

  “That’s it!”

  Bartleby grinned in a very unsettling way, but not nearly as unsettling as the brazier he was struggling to hold aloft.

  “I’m just not sure how we’re going to get it back up to the tower,” said Nicoleta.

  “A shrinking spell vould probably—”

  “I’m afraid not,” Nicoleta interrupted, “It’s a particularly magic-resistant brazier, has to be in order to do its job. Last time, I had to catapult it through the tower’s retractable roof.”

  “Your tower has a retractable roof?”

  “The contractors said it would be pointless,” Nicoleta sneered, “but I insisted. Shows how much they know about unshrinkable braziers.”

  “Couldn’t you just do the ... whatever it is you do with scary-looking braziers down here?” asked Sloot.

  “Shows how much you know about wizarding,” Nicoleta scoffed. “You can’t honestly think that I became court wizard by summoning the spirit of living fire to obliterate my competitors, just so I could cast my flashiest spells from the undercroft.”

  Not only was Sloot’s original question severely unanswered, it was now part of a tour group that had thousands of other questions about wizarding, not the least of which being “is lunch included in the price of the tour?”

  “Leave it to me,” said Myrtle.

  “How are you going to—”

  “I’m a demon, remember? You said the tower has a retractable roof?”

  Nicoleta nodded.

  “I’ll meet you up there.”

  In response to the blank stares that buzzed around her like flies, Myrtle sighed and a pair of scaly black wings unfurled from her back. She seemed embarrassed about it, regardless of how “vicked” Bartleby assured her they were.

  “Please just go,” said Myrtle, staring at the ground in embarrassment. Nicoleta and Bartleby shuffled off without another word, though Bartleby looked back a couple of times with apparent envy.

  “Should I ...” Sloot jerked a thumb toward the door through which the others had fled. He desperately wanted to follow suit, but got the impression that this might have been one of those moments where boyfriends were expected to stick around, despite what their girlfriends had said.

  “Please,” she said weakly. She continued to stare at the floor, clearly chagrined.

  By the time Sloot made it up to the tower and past the door—which had given him a dressing-down for passing through it without having bought it a drink first, as magically-infused doors are wont to do—Myrtle had flown the brazier in through the roof, and Nicoleta was talking Bartleby through some agitated finger-waggling.

  “No, no,” Nicoleta groused, “it’s three times around and then the wrist flick! What are you trying to do, infest the tower with toads?”

  “You really don’t have to vorry about me this time,” said Bartleby. “Using fiendish implements of fire to scry vith the bones of a blackened soul is right up my alley.”

  “Says the man going straight from three-fingered claw to wrist flick like he’d never studied basic anthracomancy.”

  “I skimmed it.”

  “You don’t skim anthracomancy!”

  “I did.”

  They ultimately got the thing lit, but not without sufficient arguing to make decent use of the classic comparison with old married couples. Sloot wandered off when they started yelling at each other over which codex they should use to interpret a series of runes. As far as he was concerned, there was only one valid interpretation for fiery runes belching forth from the blue-green flames in a nefarious-looking brazier: things were soon to get very, very messy.

  Of all the people in the world who might have enjoyed wandering among the shelves in the wizard’s tower, none of them were Sloot Peril. All of the books—even the ones that weren’t moving of their own accord, or trying to lure him in with sickly-sweet here, ghostie, ghostie calls—were utterly terrifying. Any fool could tell that every one of them was chock full of danger. He was especially mistrustful of the ones that just sat there, pretending to be harmless. They were the worst sort of evil: the patient sort.

  One of the books sighed. No, not a book, Myrtle. She was slumped against a shelf, staring off into space.

  “What are you doing down there?” asked Sloot.

  “Oh, I’m …” she sighed again. “Wallowing, I suppose.”

  “In what?”

  Myrtle failed to suppress a wan smile. Sloot knew that feeling all too well, the one where you really wanted to be depressed for a while, but you couldn’t even get that right.

  “Why did this have to happen to me?”

  “It happens to everybody,” said Sloot. “From time to time.”

  “Everybody doesn’t become a demon when they’re murdered by a necromancer.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that. What did you think I was talking about?”

  “Er, never mind,” said Sloot. Perhaps it was just him who truly understood the simple pleasures of a nice, self-pitying wallow.

  Myrtle drew in a breath. It was more than a life-sustaining reflex, which Sloot suddenly wondered if demons needed to do. It was the prelude to a monologue. A buoy for the soul, a brace for the will, a buttress for the resolve. Her eyes turned up to meet his. She started a sentence with the words “I
just,” when a scream and a crash interrupted her.

  “Vhat do you think you’re doing?” Bartleby shouted. Myrtle wasted no time thinking before charging headlong toward the commotion, which Sloot remarked as incredibly brave. His instinct had been to give the whole thing the old hot soup treatment, and give it a few minutes to cool before having anything to do with it.

  “Put him down!” shouted Myrtle.

  “I warned him,” said Franka, who was holding Bartleby over her head with apparent ease. “No harm shall come to Constantin’s bones, or I’ll visit the same upon you. I believe I was very clear about that.”

  “There’s not a scratch on them!” shouted Nicoleta.

  “He threw them into the fire!”

  “It’s magical fire,” said Nicoleta. “It’s not burning them, I swear it!”

  “Prove it.”

  “I can,” said Bartleby, “if you’ll just put me down!”

  “You can trust them,” said Roman, failing to suppress a chuckle.

  “Vhat’s so funny?” Bartleby demanded. “Put me down, voman!”

  “Fine,” said Franka. She rolled her eyes and dropped Bartleby unceremoniously to the stone floor. Her annoyance turned to shock when, rather than crumpling into a heap of pallid necromancer, Bartleby exploded into a colony of bats, which flew off in all directions.

  “Foolish mortal,” Bartleby’s voice echoed through the tower, “you vill pay for your insolence!” The bats began to coalesce back into a shadowy humanoid form. “You vill feel the wrath of—ow!”

  Franka’s fist shot into the flapping cluster of bats, drawing the illusion abruptly to a close and sending Bartleby sprawling to the floor.

  “By doze!”

  “That’s where you should’ve ended up the first time,” said Franka.

  “Vhat did you do to by doze? Foolish bortal, you—haig odd.”

  Bartleby drew his wand out from within the folds of his robes, pointed it at his face, and gave it a wiggle.

  “Grrrnk!” Bartleby blinked several times and shook his head.

  “That looked like it hurt,” said Nicoleta.

  “You have no idea,” said Bartleby.