Prospero Regained (2 page)

“Why shouldn’t He heed ours?” I countered. “We are not damned. We’re still alive.”

“Gregor may not be damned,” Erasmus granted, “but sisters who betray their family are another issue.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Surely you don’t expect me to believe you summoned up the Hellwinds by mistake? I will remind you that Abaddon warned us there was a traitor in our family.”

“Careful, Professor Prospero!” Mab jerked his head, trying to push back the brim of his fedora, which was now falling across his eyes. “It does not pay to listen to demons!”

“That’s what you told us,” Erasmus replied mildly, “right before your Miss Miranda, here, scattered our family to the four quarters of Hell. Or perhaps I should say, to the Nine Circles of Hell.”

“It’s not like she did it on purpose,” Mab countered.

“I fear, Spirit Detective, my dear sister has deceived you as to her nature and intent. Either that, or you plotted with her.” Erasmus turned his head and regarded our other brother through his lank dark hair. “Really, Gregor. Out of our whole family, the only other person you managed to save was Miranda? Couldn’t you have given her a push and rescued someone worthwhile?”

The terrible regret that had tormented me ever since I accidentally summoned up the Hellwinds, which caused us to lose six of my siblings—seven if one counted Caliban—gave way to wrath. Anger rushed through me like a tidal wave beating against an unprotected shore.

Surely, there was no one in all the world as horrible as Erasmus! It seemed a cruel irony that Theophrastus, whom I loved so dearly, had been ripped from my grasp and carried away, while Erasmus, of all people, had been saved.

Erasmus clearly felt the same way about me.

“I saved whomever I could,” Gregor replied gravelly. He nodded toward Mab and me, his silky black hair spilling over his crimson-clad shoulders. “Clearly the hand of Providence was upon us. Without Miranda, we would be lost. She is the only one who can see through the illusionary pleasure garden that lies over this Circle of Hell. It befuddles us whenever we are not touching her, leading us astray. Without her, we would have lost our way an hour ago.”

“I like the pleasure garden,” Erasmus grumbled. He released Mab’s hand and gazed around at the alternate landscape. Mab quickly took the opportunity to use his free hand to adjust his hat and to wipe his face with a monogrammed handkerchief.

Erasmus smiled and drew a deep breath, as if inhaling fresh garden air. “It’s pleasant, with cool fountains and dancing girls wearing veils and harem outfits. The air smells like…”—he sniffed again—“cherry petals.”

I sighed, wishing that I, too, could experience that false utopia. I disliked the idea of volunteering to be fooled, but I was bone-weary and soul-tired. A few breaths of something that did not smell noxious—even if it
was
actually noxious—would have been a welcome relief.

But, it was not to be. I could not see the infernal illusions. I was not sure why, but I suspected that it had something to do with the two wings of emerald light—like impressionistic brushstrokes—that stretched from the shoulders of my enchanted tea gown. Perhaps, if I stripped off my emerald dress and donned a garment not steeped in protective enchantments, I, too, could have fallen prey to the deceits of Hell. But I was not about to pull off my gown in the midst of the prison for the torment of the overly lustful.

Besides, it was not in my nature to deliberately fool myself. I had not served Eurynome, the White Lady of Spiral Wisdom, for five hundred years, just to throw away all the wisdom I had learned for a few moments of relief.

The memories of my years as a Handmaiden to the Unicorn and of the reason for my having been demoted from those honored ranks returned to me. A tear trickled down my cheek, but I could not free my hand to wipe it away.

Erasmus grabbed Mab again, smiling regretfully. “The real picture is far less rosy, of course. What appears to be a fountain is actually oozing sewage. The dancing girl is a giant, bloated spider dripping with poison.” He pointed at another island where a creature such as he described hung upon a gigantic web. “As to the smell…”—he started to sniff the real air and coughed, nearly gagging—“I will not even begin to elaborate.”

“By Titania! Why a pleasure garden?” Mab scratched his eternal five o’clock shadow with the hand that clasped Erasmus’s. “It makes no sense!”

“Wish I knew,” Erasmus responded wistfully.

“Ma’am.” Mab pointed my hand at the horizon. “What’s that?”

In the distance, a single point of light shone above the swamp waters. Unlike the steely gray bands amidst the lurid reds of the sky, it was pure and silvery, like starlight. A spark of hope stirred within me, as if I beheld some fragile and heavenly thing that gave wings to my heart.

“Beware,” Mab growled. “Could be a trick.”

“It is no trick,” Gregor replied. “It is holy.”

“How could there be something holy in Hell?” Erasmus scoffed, peering into the gloom. “It’s a will-o’-the-wisp, sent to lead us to our doom.”

“We’re already in Hell; how much more doomed could we be?” muttered Mab.

“There are worse places than this one.” Erasmus kicked the water. It splashed thickly, clinging to his shoe like gelatin.

“It is a holy light,” Gregor repeated, and he began to walk.

“How do you know?” asked Erasmus, as we waded back into the swamp, all still holding hands.

Gregor gave him a grave, contemplative look. “What worries me is how you could not know.”

*   *   *

WARILY,
we approached the tiny silver star, sometimes walking along narrow islets, sometimes wading through mud, sometimes swimming in the awful goop itself. The silvery light proved to be farther away than it had first looked. After a time, it winked out.

“Told you,” Erasmus murmured, faintly amused. Gregor merely continued walking in the same direction.

The longer we walked, the heavier my heart became, until it seemed that my flagging spirits were physically dragging me deeper into the mire. I hated the putrid smell, the eerie green fires burning above the marshes, the gray light cast by the bands of steely luminescent clouds streaked across the ruddy skies, the acts of crudity taking place around us, all of which seemed to involve violence rather than pleasure. I, who so hated rapists—who had been robbed of all that was dearest to me by that violent crime—was trapped in the country of eternal rape. I felt like a claustrophobe whose path to salvation lay through a narrow closet the length of the Grand Canyon. I tried to avert my gaze, to look only at faces and not see what the bodies were doing, but it was a futile effort. Each time I failed, it was as if I came face-to-face again with the monster Osae and all that he had taken from me.

My fists clenched, making Mab and Gregor, whose hands I was holding, grunt in surprise. How it galled me to know that my attacker, this same Osae the Red, currently lay with his head resting upon the knee of Lilith, the demon Queen of Air and Darkness. She fed him dainty morsels from her own hand as a reward for his treatment of me—for having successfully robbed the Prospero Family of my Lady’s counsel.

Without my Lady’s help, how were we ever going to find Mephisto in this vast place?

But even that was easier to face than the question that truly worried me: what had happen to the others? Erasmus spoke the truth when he said that there were far worse places in Hell than this swamp. Where was Theo, and what awful torture was he suffering? And what condition would he be in when we found him?

To keep from dwelling on such painful matters, I let my mind roam, leaping from subject to subject. I considered briefly a dozen topics: the fate of my father, what was happening back on earth, how Prospero, Inc., was doing back home; et cetera. Eventually, all my thoughts drifted to the elf lord, Astreus Stormwind.

I pictured Astreus: his joyful triumphant laugh when I accepted the
Book of the Sibyl
from his hand; the outrage I had felt when he asked me to kill him and then would not explain himself; and the way his irises had burned with a golden fire when he admitted that, before the Fall, he had been an angel, and not just any angel but of the Eighth Choir of Cherubim. How eerie his gaze had been—that wild yet calculating fierceness—when we flew above his palace in Hyperboria, and he offered to drop me from a great height, so that, when my brains were dashed upon the ground, my soul might be sped upon its way to Heaven. Most of all, I recalled his parting words, as I stood before the storm playing my flute.

Because I would have my last memory be of the two things I most loved.

Surely, he did not mean me?

He was an elf. I was merely a mortal maid. Such a pairing was, in his own words, as likely as a hawk wedding a dove. He loathed me for being a slave owner because I would not break my magic flute and set free the Aerie Ones, Mab’s race. He despised me so much for this—even though setting the Aerie Ones free would mean the death of millions of human beings—that he decided I was not worthy to slay him.

He could not have meant me.

If he did not, then to which two things did he refer: the sky and my flute? The sky and music?

The mere thought that he might have intended the words to include me caused my cheeks to burn. How foolish could I be? For five hundred years, I had remained distant, pure, and virginal. Osae the Red had seen to it that I was no longer the latter but that did not excuse a flurry of foolish girlish emotions. That I might allow myself to become enamored again, so soon after my humiliation at the hands of the fake Ferdinand—which led to Osea’s attack, to the loss of my Lady’s patronage and of the Water of Life that keeps my family immortal, and, ultimately, to the destruction of the Family Prospero and all that we stand for—was shameful.

Of course, the fake Ferdinand had actually been Astreus, too, but in his demonic guise.

My only consolation was that, since I would never see Astreus again, this foolishness would soon pass. Surely, the image of the smiling elf, currently constantly reoccurring in my thoughts, must have been caused by the influence of this swamp. As soon as we departed from this horrible place of torture for the lustful, my mind would grow calm again.

And yet, as I remembered the tone of his voice when he had spoken those parting words, an odd and glorious tingle spread through me that reminded me strangely of joy. It did much to drive back the gloom.

*   *   *

AHEAD
stretched one last narrow island and then an expanse of oily murk dotted here and there by large rocks occupied by fat spiders or ugly lizards. A series of hummocks formed a bridge between our current location and this last isle. To cross them, we had to let go of each other and leap from one to another in single file.

My heart dropped at the thought that at the end of this next island, we would have to climb back into the swamp. I shivered at the memory of that awful slime oozing along my skin. Muttering darkly under my breath, I leapt onto a hummock that stood between me and the island, cursing when I slipped and landed hard on my knee. As my other leg dropped into the slimy mire, something snaked out of the water and grabbed it, dragging me backward into the mire.

Greasy ooze slid over my face and skin. Grasping hands reached underneath my gown, groping at my thighs and tugging at my underclothes. I twisted angrily, my motions made awkward by the viscous liquid, and kicked free.

Through the semitransparent murk, I faced three leering dead men. The damned souls grabbed at me hungrily. Something ugly burned in their dead eyes. Behind them, a fat, grinning demon floated naked in the filth. I averted my eyes at once, but the brief horrifying glimpse remained burned in my mind, causing me to squirm and retch.

The demon wielded a cat-o’-nine-tails, with which he scoured the men. Whenever they approached me, the demon trembled with pleasure. Whenever the men lost their grip on me, he hissed, dismayed. When he cracked his whip, the men convulsed, crying out with pain and greater hunger. This, too, caused the demon convulsions of pleasure.

They came at me from three sides, seeking to crush me between their naked bodies. I kicked and punched, struck at them with my four-foot-long pinewood flute—the same instrument that had so recently betrayed me by accidentally summoning the Hellwinds. I grabbed for my fighting fan, but the gunk around me kept drawing my shoulder bag away from my grasp, and I could not reach the weapon.

My attackers were weak, but my blows merely passed through them. Wherever the cloth of my enchanted emerald tea gown brushed them, however, they were repelled, making my elbows and knees better weapons than my fist or foot. As I turned, the mysterious winglike brushstrokes of emerald light coming from the shoulders of my dress touched the spirit-flesh of one of my attackers, causing him to reel back, screaming in pain.

I had a new weapon!

I spun about. The three men recoiled, their arms and faces burnt where my wings had caught them. Eagerly, I sought to take advantage of my momentary freedom and rise. My meager supply of air was nearly depleted. When I swam in the direction I thought was up, I found only more water and more copulating pairs, one or two of whom caught sight of my struggle and left their ravaged partners to pursue me.

Desperate for air, I circled in the murky slime, hoping for some glimpse of the lurid red of the sky. Spinning kept the damned souls at bay, for they quickly learned to fear the wings of emerald light, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw the demon itself approaching.

It floated forward, leering lasciviously. A twelve-foot tongue protruded from its wide mouth and snaked through the water. Slipping beneath my gown, the black tongue slithered up my stomach with its forked tip. I jerked backward, resisting the urge to cry out.

I turned to my Lady for help … but of course, She was no longer there.

The urge to scream grew stronger, but I dared not open my mouth. The memory of the taste—like fat drippings mixed with rotting corpses and feces—still filled me with horror.

Desperate, my heart pounding, I struck out. I struggled and swirled, badgering the crude horror with my wings. The glowing emerald light seared its skin as it had the dead men’s, but this merely excited the demon. Again and again, it lashed out with its terrible whip, causing the dead souls to twitch and dance. Despite the pain my wings had caused them, they clawed at the slime to get back to where I swam, as if only by doing so could they sate some terrible inner hunger that tormented them.