Chapter Seven
The Black Bog of the Sullen and Slothful
“Operate that oversized marble, would you, Harebrain?” Mab asked as I climbed shakily into the skull-boat. “We can’t go any farther until we know where the rest of your family is. Luckily, the Sphere shows us the real version instead of the primrose version. Or unluckily, depending on how horrible the truth is.” He cocked his head and regarded me from beneath the brim of his fedora. “There wasn’t any other member of your family whose sin was lust, was there, ma’am?”
I shook my head. “We were each quite different.”
“Okay.” Mephisto pulled out the crystal ball that had once belonged to the Elizabethan magician John Dee. He rolled the delicate sphere up and down his arm, which he undulated like a hula dancer. Mab and Erasmus flinched as they imagined the precious object rolling off his arm and sinking into the swamp. “Who do you want me to look for first?”
“We could head for whomever is closest,” suggested Gregor.
“We should go to whomever is most in need,” Erasmus countered.
“Hey, Ball-io.” Mephisto caught the glass globe in his hand and looked into it. “Show me the member of my family who needs our help the most.”
Mist swirled in the depth of the crystal ball, clearing to reveal a bank of hardened lava. Two burnt hulks of flesh were visible in the crystal. One lay on the ground, a breastplate and helmet of shining white Urim burnt into his black and bubbling flesh, the Staff of Devastation on the ground beside him. The second stood over him, brandishing a club, the wood of which was, surprisingly, untouched. Soot rained down upon them, sticking to their open blisters.
The world swayed before my vision.
Someone was screaming. The shrill, horror-filled voice was very close to my ear. It was only when my throat began to ache that I realized the voice yelling my brother’s name over and over was mine.
“Theo! Theo! Theo!”
Gregor’s strong hands gripped my shoulders. He peered into my face. When he saw that my eyes focused on him, he pulled me roughly against his chest in an embrace that was meant to be comforting, but did not leave much room to breathe. Perhaps, he had intended that because without air in my lungs, I could not scream anymore.
Where was my life? The one I left a month ago? Where was the mother that Father had so loved? Where was my soul? Where was the brother who, above all the others, had made my life worth living?
Where was my Lady?
How could all these things have been taken away so quickly?
The shock of Malagigi’s revelation had been bad. Once his parting words had sunk in, however, I had actually felt buoyed up. The possibility of having a mermaid or maybe even an Aerie One for a mother was preferable to being the daughter of the witch Sycorax. And while the information that something was not right with my soul terrified me, it also gave me hope. If I was not human, maybe Father was justified in enchanting me. Maybe I could earn a complete soul, as Mab had. Though if I had not earned one yet—after over five hundred years of living among men—I was not sure what else I could do to merit one.
Discovering one’s soul was imperiled, however, was nothing compared to the horror of seeing the person one held most dear unrecognizably burnt and writhing in pain! At least, I was assuming the blackened hulk was Theo—from the breastplate, helmet, and staff. If this was someone else with Theo’s gear, and the real Theophrastus were around the corner, I could not have told the difference, so damaged was his body.
As I pulled away from Gregor and looked at the ball again, all concern for myself left my mind; my only thoughts were of how to reach Theo.
“Courage, sister. He still lives.” Gregor squeezed my shoulder; his face was as pale as the mist rising over the swamp.
“Dear God!” Erasmus’s voice wavered, as if the ghosts of memories haunted him. He shivered unconsciously. “Burns … Those are horrible wounds.”
“Ball, show us how to get there from here!” cried Mephisto. His hands were shaking so that he nearly dropped the crystal globe.
Mist swirled in its depth, followed by images of the swamp, the Bridge Across the Styx, and the Wall of Flame.
Panicked, I shook off Gregor and grabbed Mephisto’s shoulder. “If you turn back into your big form, you could fly us!”
“No good, ma’am.” Mab shook his head reluctantly. “I’m as eager to save Mr. Theophrastus as anyone—him being such a decent guy—but summoning up Lilith won’t help us. We’d just waste time fighting her again.”
“But, Theo! He’s dying!”
“He will not die today,” Gregor replied firmly. “Not a mere day or two after he took the Water of Life. He is suffering, surely, but I can see him moving. If he is alive now, and he receives no additional wounds, he will endure another day. Besides, it looks as if Caliban is with him.”
“‘And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them,’” Erasmus quoted softly. He stood, his gaze unfocused, his hands chafing his own arms, as if he was cold.
“Er, thanks, Professor Prospero.” Mab gave Erasmus a worried look. “I’m sure that is supposed to make us all feel better.”
“But you must be able to do something?” I cried. My voice sounded unnaturally shrill. I could not understand how the others could be sitting so still. “We’ve got to do something! Gregor! Pole faster!”
“I am moving us as quickly as I can, sister, but I must know where to go.” Gregor spoke calmly, but his hoarse voice had a slight tremor to it.
He poled our little craft forward quickly as he could push. No one spoke. I clutched the edge of the gondola and stared ahead, as if by dint of effort I could see straight through to where Theo lay. Simple objects loomed large in my sight. The dilapidated fig tree to our left had mottled peachy swirls amidst the gray of its bark. The rope tying the gondola to the skull had frayed in places, so that tiny beige hairs stood out from it, as if it had goose bumps. Beyond that, to me, nothing more existed.
Eventually, Mephisto’s voice broke the spell. “I’m not afraid of old Lilly-poo, not when Theo’s at stake! And I can call up some of my friends to help!” he declared bravely. Then his proud shoulders slumped. “Only flying wouldn’t help. The Wall of Flame has no top. I couldn’t fly you over it. Do you all think you can get through it?”
“What was the Wall again?” asked Mab.
“A towering inferno of passions. You walk into it and get buffeted by all sorts of emotions: rage, lust, overeagerness. You have to be able to will yourself to be calm to pass through.” Mephisto squinted and scrunched up his face, as if to demonstrate the effort of will involved.
Gregor and I insisted we could make it through, but Mab and Erasmus did not seem so confident.
Erasmus glanced back at the Swamp of Uncleanness and said haltingly, “Perhaps, you had better go on without me.”
“Don’t know what I can do now that I got this soul,” Mab muttered. He held his fedora in his hands, twisting the brim. “Could be I can. Could be I can’t.”
“Come to think of it,” Mephisto piped up suddenly, “I’m not sure I can go through without … well, you know: whatever it is that I do that I don’t remember that you were just talking about that calls you-know-who.”
“Is there another way?” asked Erasmus.
“The Staff of Silence can stop the raging passions and part the flames,” Mephisto replied.
“In that case,” Gregor said gruffly, “let us all pray that Titus and his staff are still on this side of the Wall.”
* * *
The crystal ball, thank goodness, showed Titus to be on our side of the Wall of Flame. He lay asleep among the bogs on the far bank of the Styx. Luckily for us, he was not actually underneath the peat. Erasmus wanted to call up Mephisto’s winged beasts and fly directly to Titus, but Mephisto insisted we pass over the Bridge across the River Styx on foot. Crossing the Styx might rob some of his friends of flight, he explained, and we would not want to find this out halfway.
We rapidly poled our way to the nearest solid island. Once there, Mephisto tapped his staff, and I began to imagine we were surrounded by great winged beasts. Then they were among us: the handsome winged steed, Pegasus; a golden lion with shining mane and downy wings; a gryphon; and the gigantic, magnificent roc. Mephisto leapt atop the winged lion. Gregor and I clambered onto Pegasus. Erasmus claimed the gryphon, leaving Mab to sit upon the giant talon of the enormous roc.
Mounted on these creatures, we flew across the swamp. Normally, the joy of flight was my primary delight. Today, however, even the exhilaration of winging along on the back of Pegasus—the terrible swamp passing harmlessly below—eluded me. It could not drive away the image of my charred and scalded brother.
No matter how hard I urged Pegasus on, he did not go fast enough.
Reaching the bridge, we landed and dismounted. Then, we all held hands and ran, Mephisto’s friends padding noisily behind us. Gregor was on the right, his staff ready should the Hellwinds return. With my flute silent, however, all was still. We gained the far side without losing anything more than our breath.
As my feet stepped onto the packed earth, I paused for a single instant to glance back at the bridge.
Had it been only a day ago that we had tried to cross the first time? It seemed like another lifetime.
How exuberant we had been after our victory over Abaddon. We had been laughing, singing even. It had been our first truly happy moment together since the Christmas of 1666.
What could we have been thinking, trespassing upon the Inferno with lighthearted cheer? If only we had not been so hubristic! If we had shown proper respect for our surroundings, we might have succeeded. By now, we might have found Father and been safely back home.
* * *
Once on the far side of the Styx, we mounted our supernatural steeds again and flew over the marshy earth. We used John Dee’s crystal ball as our guide. No illusions dazzled the others here. The view I saw and what showed in the ball was the same view the others beheld.
Each foot, each yard that flashed beneath us, I wished was a thousand more. We flew with the speed of eagles, but it was not fast enough to satisfy my sisterly heart.
“These are the Black Bogs of the Styx,” Mephisto called to us from the back of the winged lion. “If you look down long enough, you’ll catch a glimpse of the bodies asleep beneath the surface.”
“How can you see anything?” Mab shaded his eyes as he attempted to peer over the roc’s foot and into the water. “The water is black as pitch!”
“They’re there, even if we can’t see ’em,” Mephisto called back. “Though wouldn’t it be eerier if we could? I’ve always thought sleeping beneath the water was eerie. What about you, Miranda?”
“Please, Mephisto,” Erasmus objected, yawning. He was slipping slightly to the one side atop the gryphon. “This place is terrible enough without you telling ghost stories to make it creepier.”
“It’s not a ghost story,” Mephisto insisted. He yawned as well, giving a big wide stretch. “They are actually down there.”
“All the more reason not to dramatize it,” Erasmus called back.
I had been nodding tiredly, my thoughts caught up in fearing for Theo, when suddenly a feeling of free-fall in the pit of my stomach made me look up. The flying horse had lowered its head. Its eyes were closed, and it had stopped beating its wings.
We were plummeting.
“Pegasus!” I screamed, yanking on his mane.
The winged steed pulled up and began flapping again, but he careened to the left. I felt as if I was flying on a drunken horse.
Around me, the other winged beasts struggled as well. The roc listed sideways. The winged lion yawned. The gryphon had fallen behind.
“Mephisto,” I cried, “your friends are falling asleep!”
Mephisto craned his head to see. “We have to land! I’ve got to send them away!”
“You mean we have to walk through the bog?” Erasmus cried, aghast. “Don’t you have anything that can help us? I mean this is Theophrastus we’re talking about! The Old Man needs us!”
“And Titus as well,” murmured Gregor.
Mephisto shook his head sadly. “My friends are animals. They don’t have the kind of souls you need to resist the ravages of Hell!”
“What about the angel?” Mab called. “Didn’t you brag about having one that would act like a valet?”
“Angel in Hell … bad idea!” Mephisto squeaked back. “Let’s just say things would get worse, not better.”
A frisson of fear went through me as I thought about Mephisto’s reasoning. I thought about Malagigi’s words: They have not what is needed to resist the hazards that will face them. If Mephisto’s creatures could not survive here, what of me? Would I be able to stay awake?
Soul or no soul, I vowed silently, I would not fail Theo!
* * *
We landed and dismounted, and Mephisto sent his friends home. The ground here was boggy and smelled of peat. Except for the boiling clouds of inky soot overhead and the weird multicolored flames, which ignited intermittently above the bogs before quickly burning out, this could almost be a place on Earth. My brothers and Mab did not report any troubling illusions here, so we no longer needed to hold hands.
We ran, our feet sinking into the spongy earth with each step. It was slow going, and time after time, one of us stumbled. Here and there, pools dotted the landscape with bodies visible in the black water. Some floated face down; others stared at us open-eyed. One or two began to reach out toward us imploringly. Before they could sit up, however, their eyelids sank down, and they returned to sleep.
“Who are they?” Mab panted. He reached for his notebook, but did not pull it out, as he was running.
“The Sullen and Slothful,” offered Mephisto. “People who didn’t do enough with their lives … you know, the kind of guys who go on welfare and drink beer and watch TV all day, never even lifting a finger to brush a fly from their nose? Guys who waste their lives, never doing any good for anyone but never really hurting anybody, either.”
“The Angel said Titus’s sin was sloth,” I commented wearily, hardly aware that I was speaking. The wonderful effect that recalling the angel had had upon my spirits had faded. In the same way that I had not been able to think of fear when she was present, I now could no longer remember the lightness of spirit that had accompanied her. I recalled that it had been present, but I could not remember what it had been like.
“Explains why Titus is here,” Gregor’s gravelly voice growled as he ran. Despite his serene expression, his face was red from the exertion. It was unlikely he had gotten much exercise while living in his Martian prison.
“Has anyone explained to Gregor about the demons in our staffs?” I gasped, pressing my hands against the stitch in my side. My legs felt like they were made of waterlogged wood, stiff and sluggish.
“The what in our staffs?” Gregor stopped short and gazed at the length of black ebony carved with blood red runes in his hand. While my mind cried out indignantly against the delay, I felt gratified to learn I was not the only one in the family who had been in the dark.
“Our staffs are powered by demons that Solomon stole from Hell,” Erasmus said. He, too, was panting. Taking advantage of Gregor’s pause, he leaned over and rested, his hands resting on his thighs. “Prolonged exposure to demons warps the human soul. Titus’s makes him slothful.”
“Why did Father give us these accursed things?” Gregor raised his arm as if to throw his from him. Erasmus lunged and grabbed the staff just as it left Gregor’s hand.
“Because someone had to keep them safe—as in: out of the hands of the Rulers of Hell!” Erasmus shouted. He shoved the length of ebony back at Gregor. “Have you gone crazy? Or would you like me to give this back to the Three Shadowed Ones for you?”
Gregor glared at Erasmus, his face red, his nostrils flared. For a moment, I feared he would strike him. Instead, he closed his eyes. Perhaps he was praying. When he opened them again, his face was calm, though still flushed. He retrieved his staff from Erasmus’s hand.
“Which demons?” he panted.
“Powerful entities,” Erasmus replied. “Princes and Dukes of the Pit, lords of their respective realms. Their loss was a heavy blow to the Inferno, and many a man has been saved due to their absence.”
“Indeed? I wish Father had told me.” Gregor’s husky voice was curt. He shook his head hard, as if to clear it, causing his shoulder-length hair to spread about him like a silky black mane. Continuing forward, he moved at a rapid walk. “Am I the only one he left in ignorance?”
I shook my head, taking big steps to keep up with him. “I only just found out myself.”
Erasmus smirked. “Father reserved many of his secrets for those of us who joined the Orbis Suleimani.”
The landscape grew more boggy, and it became impossible to run. Our feet disappeared into the springy mat of the rusty sphagnum moss. Hundreds of lakes and ponds covered the countryside, peat floating on the black water, thick and dark. Here and there, a hand or a knee protruded through the brown mat of dead vegetation. Where the ground grew firmer, we had to push our way through thorny brambles.
Insects swarmed thick above the surface of the bog. My dress repelled them, but they passed through my face and hands, which I found disconcerting. Their immateriality did not protect us from their unpleasant, high-pitched, buzzing drone. Erasmus tried to swat a few, annoyed by their noise. Irritated, he found he was able to catch one. He squished it between his fingers with a satisfied sigh.
Immediately, he was mobbed by swarms of mosquito-like creatures, all of which were able to draw his blood. Swearing, he activated his staff. The insects about him vanished. He swung his staff near the rest of us, and the irritating buzz ceased, leaving only the soft whir of the Staff of Decay.
Erasmus’s staff was not the only thing preying upon the insects. The landscape was dotted by lank-leaved butterworts and sundews fringed with hundreds of slender tendrils, each tipped with a blood-red dot. Each was spotted with gnats, mosquitoes, and dragonflies, still writhing and alive but unable to escape the sticky grasp of the carnivorous plants. I shivered.
So tired …
My limbs felt heavy. My eyes were closing. If only I could rest and do this later, rest even the littlest bit …
With a hiss of determination, I threw off the suggestion of fatigue. I was not a person inclined to sloth. I could not have been CEO of Prospero, Inc. had I not been willing to drive myself above and beyond what the next person would do. Certainly, I might be drowsy, but there was work to be done, siblings to be saved.
Around me, my traveling companions fought their own battles with fatigue. Gregor grimly strode forward, but Mab and Erasmus stumbled, and Mephisto walked with his eyes shut, his hands stretched out in front of him like a blind man. I remembered that Erasmus had not slept in the kronosaur.
“Help! Please, I beg you, help me!” A middle-aged man struggled to free himself from the bog, pushing against the spongy peat. He waved his arms imploringly. “You there! Please, I beg you!”
“Well … what do we do now?” Mab asked uneasily. He rubbed his eyes and the back of his neck, blinking tiredly.
“We keep going!” I snapped.
“Probably a trick anyway,” Mephisto replied airily. He yawned again and stretched. “Anyone up for nap? All that debauchery back on the island tired me out.”
“Fool!” Mab spat. “It’s this place! You told us yourself about the bodies sleeping beneath these waters. If you fall asleep here, you’ll never wake!” He glanced worriedly at the man struggling toward us. The stranger waved more frantically, but he was sinking. “I think he can see us. Shouldn’t we try to help him? What if he’s like those people Malagigi was able to rescue?”
“What if he’s an evil scum?” Mephisto countered.
“He does seem able to see us.” Erasmus took advantage of the conversation to pause. He leaned heavily upon his staff.
“I’m going after him,” Mab declared.
“Wait!” I cried. “Mab! We can’t afford to stop and help him! Besides, it could be a trick!”
“Ma’am, it’s a chance I’ll have to take. Until I caught that star, I didn’t know about my soul, so I was free to act as I pleased. But now I know. A soul is a big responsibility, ma’am! What happens if I sully it?” Mab glanced at the dreary landscape around us and shuddered. “I can’t allow that to happen, ma’am, so I’ve got to do the right thing, whatever presents itself. Leaving a helpless man to flounder in the black marshes of doom can’t be the right thing.”
“Oh, what the heck,” Erasmus muttered. “I’ll go.”
Erasmus strode forward. He moved quickly around the pool to where the man thrashed about, and offered his hand. The stranger in the bog reached out and caught it. To Erasmus’s surprise, he was able to grasp it. He pulled, and the man began to come free of the peat.
The sod around Erasmus and the stranger yawned open, revealing a pool beneath. From beneath the waters rose a gigantic sundew, its shiny yellowish petals speckled with thousands of slender tendrils, each glistening with what looked like a drop of blood. The stranger yanked back, catapulting Erasmus directly into the clutches of the flesh-eating plant.
The tendrils reached blindly toward Erasmus, sticking to his body. As he yelped and struggled, tearing the tendrils from his hands and clothes, the long petal itself rolled up like a yellowish tongue. Erasmus was now caught in the plant’s embrace, wrapped up like a living hors d’oeuvre.
“Told you it was a trick,” Mephisto’s tired yet cheerful voice sang out as he tapped his staff, calling up reinforcements.
It flashed through my mind what a great relief it would be never to be teased by Erasmus again. We had to save Theo. We could not pause to rescue another family member who had gone astray.
Immediately, I rejected such nonsense, but not before Erasmus caught sight of my expression. As he disappeared beneath the black waters, a sneer of ironic amusement came over his features.
Shaking myself, I leapt into action. Mab was already creeping along the peat toward Erasmus’s last known position, reaching blindly under the surface with his lead pipe. Gregor strode along the spongy stuff and slapped the shade that had tricked Erasmus with the Seal of Solomon. The stranger screamed and shivered. Then, his eyes closed, and he fell down and began to sink into the bog. As I ran forward, I imagined that a long, sinuous hamadryad slid along the peat beside me.
“Here, follow Kaa and Soupy! They’ll take you to him!” Mephisto cried, indicating the two snakes, now slinking their way across the brown peat, the great hooded hamadryad and the slender, green, grass snake I had last seen wrapped around the waist of the Queen of the Maenads.
I grabbed the tail of the slender, green Soupy, who happened to be closer, and dived in, pushing through the peat and letting the snake be my guide. Beside me, Gregor pulled off his heavy crimson robes and grabbed hold of the king cobra, diving in as well.
The black water looked ominous, but after the Swamp of Uncleanness, it seemed almost wholesome. It was thicker than normal water and black. If I had not been holding on to the snake, I would have been utterly lost. Soupy seemed to know where he was going, however, so I gripped his smooth, scaly, length tightly and pressed on.
Following the snake through the thick black water was nerve-wracking. First, I feared I would run out of air before I found Erasmus. Then, I became afraid that this black liquid was actually water from the Styx. If so, it was not something into which I should have immersed my whole body. Achilles’s mother was careful to keep his ankle out so that his skin would have a place to breathe. It would be sad to live through my encounter with the impurities of the Swamp of Uncleanness only to perish in the Styx.
Before I could fret further, however, my hand encountered Erasmus’s leg. At least, I was pretty sure it was Erasmus’s leg. At least, I hoped …
Opening my war fan, I slid it forward until it rested on the pulpy stem of the sundew petal. Very carefully, so as not to harm my brother, I slit the stem, freeing him from the plant. I could feel the sundew tremble and recoil.
Grabbing his leg, I swam upward. Only Erasmus’s leg suddenly pulled off to the left. I yanked back. His foot moved toward me then away again. Somehow, I had lost my hold on Soupy, so I dared not let go of Erasmus. Desperate for air now, I moved in the direction Erasmus was being dragged and swam upward.
I broke the surface of the water beneath the peat. The soft spongy stuff sat on my head like a hat the size of a rug. In the darkness, something splashed and sputtered. I heard a hoarse indrawn breath.
“Gregor?” I cried hopefully.
“Quick, help me!” he gasped. “I have Erasmus by the arm. The plant must still have a hold on him, though, because every time I pull him toward me, he snaps back.”
“That was me!” I exclaimed. “I’ve got his leg. I thought something was trying to take him away from me!”
“Jesu! If it’s not one thing, it’s another!” he exclaimed. Then he burst into laughter. Despite the horrific images still dancing in my mind, I could not help but join him.
Laughing, we drew the unconscious Erasmus out of the water, so that his face was in the small air pocket we made by pushing the peat up with our heads. Luckily, his staff was still in his hand. Gregor split the peat above our heads, and after many false starts and much splashing about, we managed to drag our brother out of the bog and onto a bramble-covered island. I snagged Gregor’s robes from Mephisto, who lay sleeping (some guard he turned out to be), and spread it over the thorny thicket to make a place to stretch out Erasmus. Gregor, meanwhile, worked on getting the water out of our brother’s lungs.
Finally, after numerous attempts to rouse him, Gregor declared, “I am not the physician Erasmus is, but I believe he is asleep … rather than unconscious or in a coma.”
“Mephisto is sleeping, too.” I glanced across the miles of brown fens with their eerie will-o’-the-wisps glowing here and there. There was no sign of the snakes, either. I hoped they would be okay. “What do we do now? Mab?”
Mab, who had managed to remain awake while we were below, crawled slowly to our position, head drooping.
“No good, ma’am,” he slurred sleepily. “Sloth isn’t much of a threat to a wind, but this fleshly body isn’t fully under my control …” He began to slump over. “I could leave it, if you want me to, abandon the body, but …” His eyes closed and his head fell forward. He began to snore.
Gregor, lean and taut in his wet black garments, with his hair slicked back, glanced toward where we believed Titus lay, and then down at our sleeping companions.
“There is no point in waking the sleepers just to drag them farther into this bog,” he said. “The effect will only grow stronger as we continue, and they will succumb again. One of us will have to go take Mephisto’s ball and go after Titus. The other one will have to stay here and guard the sleepers.”
“We’ve got to hurry!” I cried. “Theo!”
“Perhaps I should go. You may have trouble moving Titus.”
I looked around me. Erasmus lay asleep on the crimson cardinal’s robes, Mab sat slumped over, snoring gently, and Mephisto lay sprawled out with his mouth open; staffs and gear were scattered around him.
“No. You stay here. You can protect them should the Hellwinds come,” I declared. “I’ll find some way to rouse Titus.”