Prospero Regained (47 page)

Mephisto put Theo’s goggles on again and squinted at them. “Nephilim. You know, from the Bible.”

“‘There were giants in the earth in those days … mighty men of renown,’” Gregor quoted from the Book of Genesis. “During the Flood, all the monsters and abominations were swept from the earth. This must be where God imprisoned them.”

“Or someone imprisoned them, anyway.” Erasmus took a turn with the goggles and then regarded me thoughtfully. “After our uncle’s revelations, I hate to be the one to point this out, but I can’t help noticing these abominations have something in common with our dear sister. Here, take a look.”

He handed me the goggles. I held them to my eyes and, no longer fearing the thorny bars of their cages, peered more closely at the tormented giants, though these were merely some ten or fifteen feet tall, not nearly so big as the three-hundred-foot-tall creature who pounded the ice a little ways back. With a strange sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, I saw what Erasmus had meant.

Wings, much like mine, spread from their shoulders. Like mine, they were mere impressions, as if dashed off quickly by an impatient artist. Only, these wings were made of palpable darkness, rather than light.

I handed Theo back his goggles and turned away, recalling the insults the King of Fire had spat at me.
Vile half-breed! Accursed Nephilim!
At the time, I had thought he was talking to Caurus, but he had been looking right at me.

I turned to Mephisto. “What exactly is a nephilim? I know they’re supposed to be half-supernatural creatures, but what specifically are they?”

It was Gregor who answered. “The full quotation from Genesis 6:4 reads thus: ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’ The word translated as ‘giant’ in the King James version is
nephilim
.”

“So they are the children of men and angels?” I asked. They were half-breeds—children of men and fallen angels—and they had wings like mine.

“That’s one tradition,” Erasmus said. “Another tradition claims all those antediluvian monsters—nephilim,
lilim,
gibborim, and the like—were the children of Lilith and Cain.” He chuckled, though his heart did not seem to be in it. “Looks like that voice of yours in Dis told the truth about your mother after all.”

*   *   *

WE
walked on, passing more thorn cages and leaving the nephilim behind. As I climbed up the side of a moraine, I got a pebble in my boot. The others moved ahead while I pulled off my shoe, shook it out, and put it back on again.

As I caught up with the others again, a hand touched my shoulder. Turning, I found myself looking into blood-red eyes set in a sable face. Seir of the Shadows stood just behind me, only inches from both Theo and Mab. My heart hammered like a drumroll, but my brother had turned to speak to Titus, and Mab was paging through his notebook; though why I wanted to preserve this demon from Theo’s wrath, I hardly knew.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered, clutching my flute close to my chest.

“I could not stay away,” Seir whispered back. He dropped a kiss on the spot where my neck met my shoulder. “Know that I am jealous of my other self. I intend to win you for my own.”

“He is dead,” I mouthed.

“Not as dead as I might wish.” He touched his hand to his sable lips and blew me a kiss.

Then, like a shadow before the rising sun, he was gone.

The encounter left me shaken—until I recalled that the purpose of demons was to deceive. How transparent I must be if Seir could trick me again with the same ploy of pretending to be my dead, lost love. But then, he was an incubus, and incubi had only one trick. Obviously, I would not give in to his blandishments. So, his only choice was to lure me into believing Astreus was not dead.

A clever ploy. Only now I had caught on, so I was wary.

Still, I was impressed by his daring. Had he been a real lover and not a false seeming, the act of risking his life and limb to come and see me while my brothers walked just beside me would have impressed me, very much so. How sad that the very signs of love could be so easily imitated by one whose heart was bent upon treachery and deception.

*   *   *

THE
blisters on my feet had begun to ache. I wished I could put something cool and soothing on the wounds, or at the very least, lick them. Yes, lick them and drink the clear blood-sweet goo within; that would be pleasant. I pictured myself sipping from my foot …

Horrified, I shook my head as if the motion could clear away the unpleasant image. Glancing around, I noticed that Mephisto was trying to eat a rock, Logistilla cooed like a mother bird while attempting to feed Titus a carrot she had prechewed for him, and Ulysses was gnawing on his own elbow.

“Stop! Wake up!” I cried. “Pay attention to what you are doing!” Everyone stopped and quite a few of them looked suddenly startled or guilty. “It’s the influence of the Tower of Thorns, I think. Strange appetites to which men should not be prey emanate from there. We must resist them!”

“That explains a lot.” Titus wiped carrot off his cheek. “I was suffering from the weirdest desire to piss on the sun.”

“Er, sorry, Gregor, Old Boy, I seemed to have chewed a hole in your turtleneck.” Ulysses pulled sheepishly at the unraveling threads at the elbow of his shirt.

“What is this horrible place?” Theo’s face had gone rather pale.

“This part of Hell isn’t meant for people,” Mephisto chimed in. “Some people are kept here, but it’s really for punishing other creatures: elves, Titans, giants, primordial beings from before the birth of stars. The things they desire, such as to defile the sun, don’t make much sense to human beings, so we interpret them in weird ways. Yuck!” He tossed aside the rock he had bitten and rubbed his teeth.

“Ma’am, this is downright unpleasant.” Mab grimaced in disgust. “Bad enough to be stuck with all these body-related desires, without getting socked with a group of new ones as well. Anyone else suffering from the desire to meld with noodles? No?” He pushed the brim of his hat down over his eyes. “Sorry I brought it up.”

“Guess it’s back to you, Gregor.” Erasmus was looking off into the distance, a expression of faint distaste on his face.

“Please,” Cornelius begged while he walked guided by Erasmus’s arm, “not the silence again. I beg of you!”

Gregor said, “Then, I will put it up briefly every ten minutes, to help wake us up, should we fall prey to something unpleasant. Otherwise, it’s up to each of us to resist.”

*   *   *

GREGOR
was as good as his word, but, in my opinion, the silences did not come often enough. Despite my best attempts at vigilance, I wasted time dwelling on the pleasures of being ground into paste and eaten by ants. Or how good I would feel if only I could impale my stinger in Erasmus and pump poison into his bloodstream—the promised gratification of poison pumping was particularly enticing. I longed to emit sparks that would drink in the essence of my surroundings, consuming the virtue of what they touched and conveying it to me, leaving behind empty and sullied husks.

The fact that I was incapable of doing these last two things did not diminish my desire for them one iota. Nor were my brethren better off. I could not tell what went on in their minds, but from their mingled expressions of longing and disgust, they, too, struggled in the battle against senseless unnatural emotions.

I could defend myself, I discovered, by indulging in some powerful negative emotion. If I concentrated upon a desire for revenge against Erasmus, and how I wanted to torment him with the appendages I did have, that helped keep the alien desires at bay. Yet, I did not particularly care to indulge my hatred. Nor, as I pictured myself strangling Erasmus while simultaneously kneeing him in the groin, his purple face contorted with outrage and pain, could I entirely escape that desire to pump him full of poison. It would make such a fitting end to all his arrogance and abuse.

*   *   *

TO
distract myself, I let my thoughts wander to a subject I had been deliberately skirting: Astreus and Seir.

Why would the incubus risk his life to pop in and visit me? To taunt me? To kiss my neck? Was he spying on us? What could he have possibly learned?

Or was this just the way of incubi, that they acted like outrageous lovers, imitating actions they thought might impress their victims. After all, he had succeeded in hoodwinking me with Ferdinand. Did he think, after my trusting Ferdinand led to my losing everything, that I would turn around and trust him again, if he only made a show of having maintained Astreus’s attentiveness?

It was all nonsense. Astreus never had been as fascinated with me as the incubus pretended. Seir was just saying these things in an attempt to beguile me.

The words Astreus had spoken by the hearth, while in the guise of Ferdinand, echoed in my thoughts.
You must excuse me, Miranda. When you have lived above and now must dwell below, and your only crime was the chaste love of a virtuous woman, the affections of that woman take on immense significance
.

I had felt in my soul—or what I took at the time for my soul—that he had been sincere. And, as I had just admitted to myself, it was because of my faith in this speech—because of the way it had touched me and stirred something within me—that I had trusted Ferdinand, trusted Seir, and, to my eternal shame, trusted the Ferdinand that turned out to be Osae the Red.

Were these words true, regardless? Had Astreus loved me, too? Or was I merely easily misled?

Of course, I had also believed Astreus’s protestations about hawks and doves. But then, of course I would. The incompatibility of elves and men had been drummed into me since infancy. But did Astreus believe the two were incompatible? Apparently not, if he had a reputation for seducing mortal maids, a fact which suggested he did not love me but had been merely dallying.

Only he had not attempted to press his advantage, which also suggested that he did not love me. Except that he had kissed me—while we were falling from the black swan to his towers in Hyperborea. No, wait, I blushed, embarrassed yet again. That had been my imagination.

Or, had it?

I had no ability to dream waking dreams. Why had I believed his suggestion that I was the one responsible for imagining our kiss? Astreus had kissed me!

I pressed my fingers against my lips and then moved them to wipe away the tear that ran down my cheek. Finally, I admitted the truth to myself. He had kissed me, and he had been speaking of me when he spoke of the “two things he most loved”—those two things had been myself and the sky.

The Elf Lord had loved me!

One kiss. It was not much to hold on to, to carry me forward for the rest of my life, as I slowly grew mortal, old, and weak.

But it was better than no kiss at all.

*   *   *

MORE
than once, Caliban’s club called out a warning, and we hid beneath a cloud of darkness until the sentinel imp flew away. Once, when the darkness cleared, we found Mephisto had pulled up his shirt and surcoat and was, with careful concentration, pushing the tip of a carrot into his belly button. Seeing us watching, he quickly stood, letting his garments fall. “I’ve had the oddest craving to eat things the original way … the way we did in the womb. Do you think if this went in my belly button, it could be digested directly into my bloodstream?”

Erasmus snatched the carrot from his hand. “Adults can’t do that.”

“Oh. Right,” Mephisto said cheerfully, but I caught him eyeing the bag of carrots slyly.

*   *   *

OF
course, I told myself as we continued, Astreus might be alive. After all, what evidence did I have that he would be gone, except his own word? And who could trust the word of an elf?

How did death by sorrow work, anyway? Did losing hope kill an elf instantly? Might not the habit of hope keep him alive a few days? A week? A year? If I had not lost the crown, could I have revived him? What if I tapped on the figurine and asked to borrow Mephisto’s hat?

I reached for the little wooden figure of Astreus, which was still in my bag. That was when my heart broke. Because it did not matter anymore.

Astreus could be alive; he could be within Seir, striving against him right now; he could come walking over the snow and announce that he had defeated Seir and had come to declare his undying love, but it was of no account, because I—who could not tell when my father was lying or whether Ferdinand was a fake—could never afford to believe him … because what looked like Astreus might actually be Seir.

No matter how sincere he seemed; no matter how truthful he sounded; no matter how my heart ached, I could never again trust that any form of Astreus who approached me was not another Ferdinand, a false face put on by Seir in order to deal my family another blow.

True, the worst damage had already been done, but that did not mean there were not still secrets to be wheedled out of us, or staffs to be stolen, or praise to claim from Lilith for delivering me, hog-tied, to be handed over to the Torturers.

The mere thought of my brief stay in the Tower caused spasms of fear to pass through my body. What would become of me were I one of its inhabitants, I dared not surmise! The Elf Lord, and with him any chance I might have had at love, was lost to me forever.

Slowly, my heart as heavy as an anvil, I took the little wooden figurine that my brother Mephisto had made for me so long ago and threw it into the snow.

*   *   *

AS
we drew closer to the Tower of Thorns itself, the unnatural desires grew greater and more disturbing. Nothing outside of us seemed threatening, but the danger that we might be driven to harm ourselves increased. Fear of the approaching tower made me jumpy, which caused me to slip on the ice more than once. One time, I tumbled down an ogive, striking my elbow hard on a protruding rock. It throbbed uncomfortably for about an hour, making my mood even bleaker.