Prospero Regained (10 page)

Mab, Gregor, and I arranged ourselves about the small vessel as best we could, using the hardwood benches as our pillows. We spent a few hours in fitful sleep, tossing and turning and suffering from nightmares. They were so terrifying that waking up to discover I was merely in the stomach of a kronosaurus in the depths of Hell was a relief. Perhaps Gregor’s dreams were similarly nightmarish, for he also gave up on sleeping and, instead, knelt in prayer. Mab and I continued to wrest what repose we could from the occasion. The hard surface and uncomfortable position conspired to make this difficult, but I eventually drifted off with visions of elf lords dancing in my head.

*   *   *

I AWOKE
sore and stiff. Mab woke, too, stretching and grumbling. He muttered something about coffee, to which Erasmus replied with a chuckle. “This is Hell, my man. You need to go to Heaven for good coffee.”

We sat in silence for a time, huddled like children at summer camp—assuming that they had pitched their camp inside the world’s largest living laundry machine during the wash cycle.

Gregor, who was watching the process around us intently, asked, “How did this creature come to be so great? It is far greater than the kronosaurus of Earth. They were only forty-five feet long.”

Erasmus glanced back from where he lay stretched out upon his stomach, his staff extended. “Why do we assume that the biggest ones got stuck in tar pits? Those limits we read about—thirty-five feet, fifty-five feet—that’s the length of the largest specimen we’ve found … Who knows how big the ones we didn’t find were? Can you imagine trying to figure out what humans were like by measuring remains discovered in bogs?”

“That’s a mildly disturbing thought,” murmured Gregor. I doubt the others could hear him over the roar of digestion, but he was seated right beside me.

The air had begun to grow blue around Erasmus, as his staff continued to whirl. He quickly thrust his arm away from himself and toward the kronosaurus, but not before he removed at least ten years from himself. He now looked rather young for a professor.

“Oh, I saw ’em,” Mab reported loudly. “The dinosaurs, I mean. They were big! Bigger than your museums account for … but of course, I was a wind at the time, so it’s hard to give exact measurements. Wasn’t really interested in measuring, in fact, until I got this fleshly body.”

“Why are they called kronosaurus?” asked Malagigi. Somehow, his voice always carried, despite the noise. “Is it because they are so old, it is as if they were the masters of time?”

“No. They were named thus after the Greek Titan who ate his own children. I believe the thought was that this reptile had a mouth so big, it could swallow anything,” Gregor explained.

“Even us,” muttered Mab.

“What?” Gregor leaned forward.

“Even us,” Mab shouted.

“Ah.” Gregor nodded.

“How do you know so much about kronosauruses?” Erasmus called. “An evolution scoffer like you?”

“Ulysses was an admirer of dinosaurs. He took me to see a kronosaurus skull once, back in 1897,” Gregor shouted back, a difficult thing for a man who spoke in a hoarse, raspy voice. “A man had done a painting of what he thought the living creature might have looked like. Not a bad likeness, though he got the shape of the brow ridge wrong.”

I said, “But I thought you didn’t believed in evolution.”

“I don’t,” Gregor replied. “I believed dinosaur bones were a trap to lead men away from the faith, a tool of the devil. Clearly, I was right. The presence of this creature proves my point. Dinosaurs and their relatives come from Hell.”

“That does not necessarily follow—” I began, but Mab interrupted me.

“There was an age when dinosaurs roamed the earth, all right, if that’s what you are arguing about,” he assured us. “Big massive slowpokes that used to stomp around. You had to really get up speed to blow them over, but once you got one of those big ones down, they’d roll around for hours, days sometimes, making their weird, undulating sound. We used to love to … er, never mind.” Mab trailed off.

Erasmus chuckled. “Who would have imagined it? Our Company Detective was a prehistoric cow-tipper!”

“A what?” called Gregor. Malagigi seemed puzzled as well.

“Cow-tipper,” Erasmus called back. “As in, tipping cows?”

“Dripping trout?” shouted Gregor.

“Oh, never mind!”

A look of incredulity came over Erasmus. Adjusting his staff, he brought it close to his face, aging himself until he looked like a distinguished professor again. Grinning, he pushed several times upon his nose, which had healed during the aging process. He put his staff back to work, murmuring softly, “Why hadn’t I thought of that before?”

“But what is the kronosaur doing here?” I called. “It’s too old to be something drawn out of the nightmares of the damned.” I turned to Malagigi. “Did you say it came here from earth?”

Malagigi nodded. “It must have swum into the spirit world back in its day, and it is still living here. One swam out a few years back. Not a kronosaur but a similar creature with a thinner neck. Some mortal magician ripped an opening in the spirit world and one of the ancient beasts escaped.”

“Yes, I know who you mean,” I said. “That fellow Theo hated so much, the black sorcerer who lived beside a Scottish loch. That particular plesiosaur works for Mephisto now. He’s got it on his staff. He calls it Nessie.”

“What do they do down here?” Erasmus mused. “What do they eat?”

“Other monsters.” Malagigi shrugged. “Each other. People like you.”

“Can’t be too many of those,” Erasmus replied. “Not really the thing, you know, coming bodily into Hell. As a rule, tourist agencies warn against such excursions.”

I started to comment on Ferdinand’s period of bodily incarceration in Hell but then recalled that had been a hoax. Luckily, I remembered before I spoke. Otherwise, I might have discovered firsthand whether or not it was possible to die of embarrassment.

Malagigi stuck his hands in his voluminous sleeves, reminding me of dozens of monks I had known in my youth. “As to why the creature is here, I know not. Perhaps, it has become part of the punishments inflicted here, or it may not even be aware that Hell had grown up where its old stomping grounds used to be.”

That was an eerie thought! I straightened up. “What was Hell? I mean, before there were men to punish?”

“A jail for fallen angels until Judgment Day,” Gregor replied gruffly.

“But what about this swamp?” I continued. “Was this particular area used to imprison fallen angels? Did it exist previously, and the Seven who rule Hell just built over it? I thought Mephisto said human passions brought this swamp into being?”

“Je ne sais pas.”
Malagigi shrugged. “When I next see my master in the Brotherhood of Hope, I will ask him. He has a master of his own, who lives near the top of Mount Purgatory. From time to time, that master is able to question the saints.”

“The Church may be wrong about dinosaurs,” Erasmus called casually, his dark eyes watching Gregor avidly from beneath his lank hair. “The pope admitted the existence of evolution recently.”

“
What
? Blasphemy!” Gregor cried. Then, his brow furloughed. “So, Teilhard de Chardinon won our bet did he? I owe him a drink … only he’s probably dead now, isn’t he? How sad.”

“The Church was wrong about harrowers, too,” I said. “Apparently, eternal torment is not eternal.”

“I knew the Church was wrong on a great many points, but you think they would have gotten that right,” Erasmus murmured.

“For any who do not repent, it is eternal. For them, the flames will burn eternally, or the swamp will stink.” Malagigi pinched his nostrils shut with his hand. “But would God be just or good if he did not hear men’s prayers, even when uttered in the bowels of Hell? Remember, the Bible promises us, ‘If I make my bed in Hell, behold, thou art there.’”

“So all this time, the Church has been scaring our socks off with tales of Hell, and they haven’t been true?” Erasmus turned to Gregor and shouted over the digestive roar, “When you were pope, Brother, did you ever hear tell of such a thing?”

Gregor nodded. “We knew.”

Erasmus shot up into a sitting position and stared at Gregor, his whirling staff ignored in his hand. His head brushed against the crimson roof. “Come again?”

“We knew.” Gregor assumed his grave and ponderous churchman aspect. “It is recorded in a document called the
Apocalypse of Peter.
”

“
Apocalypse of…”
called Mab. “What’s that—the End of Pete?”

“
Apocalypse
means ‘revelation,’” Gregor explained hoarsely. “In this case, a revelation supposedly witnessed by Simon Bar Jonah, though no one believes Saint Peter wrote it himself.”

“How come no one has ever heard of this document?” Erasmus asked suspiciously.

“Churchmen have,” Gregor replied gravely. “When the Church Fathers put the Bible together, they debated whether the holy script should end with the
Revelations of Saint John
or the
Apocalypse of Peter.
Eusebius of Caesarea, the man who drew up the original list for what books should appear in the Bible, was uncertain about
Revelations
. He preferred the
Apocalypse of Peter,
but in the end the Church Fathers chose Saint John’s writings to enter the Scripture.”

“Any idea why?” Mab asked, pen poised.

“Partially for reasons of authenticity and partially because in Saint Peter’s book, Our Lord Jesus tells Saint Peter that at the end of time, if those in Heaven pray for those in Hell, God will let all the sufferers out. But, he asks Saint Peter not to tell anyone.” Gregor raised his voice so we could all hear him over the background noise. “The Church Fathers felt any suggestion of a way out of Hell might encourage men not to take virtue seriously. Besides, as it was Our Lord himself who requested the matter be kept secret, they felt his wishes should be honored.”

“So, they knew that if we should ever find ourselves in Hell for real, we should keep praying? That’s sort of an important point, don’t you think!” Erasmus looked shaken. Then, his expression grew more skeptical. “Are you sure you didn’t just make this up?”

“It’s all true. You can look it up, if you like,” Gregor replied stoically. “Or you could, last time I was out and about. I am assuming that the
Orbis Suleimani
has not altered the records since. If they had not done so in nineteen hundred years, they are unlikely to have done so while I was imprisoned.”

“The
Orbis Suleimani!
” Malagigi’s eyes had grown round. “
Sacrebleu!
They are sorcerer-hunting madmen of the worst sort! Their name alone strikes terror into the hearts of every practitioner of the subtle arts!”

“That is because they defend mankind from the menace of magic.” Erasmus leaned forward, grinning wolfishly. “That’s how humans got to be the way they are today, you know … masters of the earth: because of the
Orbis Suleimani.
Because of us!”

“Enough about the
Orbis Suleimani.
They give me the creeps,” Mab announced. “Caught a—well, you’d call it a cousin—of mine once, several millennia back, and he’s still in a vial in the Vault under Prospero’s Mansion.” Mab gave me a level look. “If we survive this, Ma’am, I think you should give him back to me. Call it ‘hazard pay.’”

“Very well, Mab. If we get out of here alive, you may have him,” I promised firmly, silencing the objections in my brothers’ faces with a stern glance.

The look of astonishment upon Mab’s face, when he heard he had gotten his way, was priceless.

As we crouched together beneath our makeshift tarp, the silvery light of the tiny star illuminating our faces, I thought of my brother Theophrastus who had left the family for decades, allowing himself to suffer and grow old, due to his fear that continued exposure to magic would damn him.

“Does Theo know all this,” I asked, “about there being hope, even in Hell?”

“I do not know.” Gregor’s long hair rippled over his broad shoulders as he shrugged. “Why?”

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. “Someone should tell him.”

CHAPTER

FIVE

Some Are Born with Souls …

“Your turn to take the star.” Malagigi extended the silver spark toward Mab, who sat hunched down upon the floor between the seats of the broken gondola, doodling in his notebook.

“I don’t know about this,” Mab muttered. “I’m not like the rest of you … I don’t got one of those soul things.”

“Excuse me?” Malagigi inclined his ear.

“He’s not a human,” Erasmus explained from where he lay on his back now, his arm and staff extended outside our hideout. “He’s an Aerie Spirit, one of the servants of my father, the magician.”

“You mean, like my elementals?” Malagigi’s features lit up. He leaned toward Mab, his face appearing more substantial in the silvery light. “Do you know that God will grant you a soul, if you ask for one in prayer? My master in the Brotherhood of Hope explained this to me. I told my elemental friends and one of them, a sylph, was granted a soul!” He frowned, absentmindedly brushing at the anchor symbol upon his shoulder. “The others would not ask.”

Mab frowned dubiously and pulled his hat lower over his eyes. He turned to me where I sat cramped atop one of the gondola benches, my head ducked to avoid bumping the robes that made up the roof above me. “Is that true, Ma’am? Can a creature without a soul be granted one?”

“It can,” Gregor responded before I could answer. “Father once told me he believed putting Aerie Ones into bodies might make it possible for them to acquire souls.”

“What!” I cried, leaping up. My head pushed upon the robes above us, causing acid that had pooled in the folds of the fabric to stream down on all sides.

“Why would that be?” Erasmus poked his head up. “Elves have bodies, and they do not have souls.”

“It was not the body per se,” Gregor called back, “but the interaction with mankind. It was living among human beings and interacting with us that Father believed would bring about this transformation. Elves do not live like men. Nothing in their society—if you can even call it that—encourages compassion, consideration, love, or good deeds.”