Prospero in Hell (2 page)

Whatever it was, only eleven days remained in which to stop it.

I strapped my beloved flute back into its holder. My wrist brushed against a firm bulge within the pocket of my white cashmere cloak. I smiled and reached inside to touch the slender leather volume: the
Book of the Sibyl
.

After five hundred years of searching, it was finally mine!

It saddened me that I had not had an opportunity to thank Astreus Stormwind properly. Just after he had handed the book to me, back at Father Christmas’s mansion, an elvish servant had come running to inform us that Mephisto had been found facedown in the snow, as stiff as a board, the butt of some elvish prank. Luckily, a drop of Water of Life had revived him.

Then, while Lady Christmas fed my brother soup in her enormous kitchen with its rows of hanging copper pots, I went in search of Mab, whom I found hanging in a closet next to Father Christmas’s many red and green robes, his trench coat caught on a hook so that he hung by his arms.

When I asked him what had happened, he just colored. “You… you’d rather not know, Ma’am. Just chalk it up to the folly of agreeing to eat dinner with elves.”

By the time we came back to the main hall, the elven High Court had ridden out across the ice, except for Astreus, who had departed through the Uttermost Door, heading back into the Void to carry out whatever terrible task it was that the Elf Queen had bidden him to complete.

Before we were parted, Astreus told me how he found the original scroll in such sad condition that he could not take it away with him. Instead, he had copied it, in its entirety, in his own hand and carried it with him for over three hundred years.

Thinking of this helped drive back the biting cold. I recalled Astreus’s laughing, his changing eyes, and, most of all, our marvelous flight the previous night, as we had soared through the midnight sky on the back of a giant black swan that had flown out of an unknown constellation. More than once, my thoughts returned to the taste of his lips—until I remembered our kiss had only been a dream.

What had motivated him to find the book for me? Had he been human, I might have hazarded an opinion. Human men undertake difficult quests on the behalf of maidens for predictable reasons. But, an elf? Who could begin to guess? They were prey to strange elvish impulses no mortal could comprehend.

“It’s happening again, Ma’am,” Mab said, overly loud. He had reinserted his earplugs. I played another rousing tune. Again, the clouds dispersed.

The moon set, and we rode for a time in darkness. Then, to our left, the fiery fingers of the rising dawn painted the sky with a rosy and golden hue, reminding me strikingly of the ever-dawn of Astreus’s home of Hyperborea. Soon, the snow beneath us glowed with matching colors, so that the dark green spruces and firs seemed to sprout from an ocean of burning cherry and gold.

A snowflake blew cold against my face. I caught another on my tongue.

Snowflakes!

“Something’s not obeying me.” I frowned and began to scan the skies.

“Good for them,” Mab muttered behind me.

Mephisto cried, “Oh, yeah, Mr. Looks-into-Other-People’s-Business-for-a-Living! Before you get all high and mighty about how my sister’s flute jerks you around like a puppet, let me point out that
we’re
the guys who are going to freeze our tushies off if the weather stops obeying the
Staff of Winds!
” Mephisto glanced over his shoulder at the flute. “Can it even do that?”

“The winds and Aerie Ones who have sworn upon the River Styx cannot fail to obey,” I replied. “But we are somewhere above northern Canada.
There are spirits here no Prospero, Inc. agent has ever encountered; creatures we’ve never needed to bind because they seldom run into, much less trouble, human beings, creatures who had only ever been sighted by native peoples. Anything could be out there.”

“Really!” A gleam came into my brother’s eye. He stood up in his stirrups and peered into the night. The
Staff of Summoning,
still handcuffed to his right wrist, swung free as he gestured, nearly smacking me across the cheek. He rubbed his thumb and first two fingers together and made a
tta tta tta
noise and then shouted, “Here, beastie, beastie!”

“Shhh!” Mab reached around me and yanked on my brother’s royal blue surcoat, which he wore over his parka, trying vainly to pull him back onto the saddle. “Put a lid on it, Harebrain.”

“But I want to catch it!” Mephisto held up the six feet of intricately carved figurines, stacked atop one another like totems. The jeweled eyes of the many beasts and mythical creatures glittered in the moonlight. “For my staff!”

“Great,” drawled Mab. “And what if it turns out to be one of the Three Shadowed Ones? I will remind you that our plane crashed because it was
torn apart by demons
.”

“Oh. Good point.” Mephisto sat down again.

A tense moment followed. We peered into the distance, yet could see nothing but snow clouds before us and, elsewhere, morning sky. The winds remained quiet at my command, but the wall of white ahead loomed closer. I held my flute at the ready. Mephisto waited eagerly. Mab examined the sky, his hand gripping his trusty lead pipe.

A great alabaster bird, larger than a condor, flew out of the snowbank. Cawing angrily, it spread its jagged wings ahead of us. As the wings parted, a flurry of snow swirled toward us. Snowflakes brushed against my face like cool feathers; only as they began to melt against my skin did their intense cold reach me.

“A p-son-en!” Mephisto leapt up and balanced gracefully upon the shoulders of the flying horse. “I’ve always wanted one of those!” He threw his arms wide, his staff flailing. “Hi, I’m Mephistopheles Prospero. Don’t you recognize me?”

“A what?” Mab called.

“P-son-en,” Mephisto waved his arms welcomingly. “At least that’s what the Abenaki tribe called these guys. Boy, he’s far from home! I’ve
only ever heard of them being seen in Algonquin territory, far east of here!”

Behind me, Mab put his face in his hand and shook his head.

“At least life with Mephisto is never dull.” I smiled.

“No offense, Ma’am, but I could do with some dull about now,” Mab muttered. “Two hours on a coat rack was more than enough excitement for me.”

I asked him to explain, but he just shook his head and grunted. “You don’t want to know, Ma’am. You don’t want to know.”

The p-son-en brought its wings together, as if it were clapping and then yanked them apart, screaming in fury. Shards of ice flew forth like flying daggers.

Everything happened at once. I raised my flute to call a wind to blow the icicles away from us, but as the cold wood touched my lips, I realized Mab had taken out his earplugs. If I gave the command now, the flute would compel Mab to obey it. He would be forced to leap from the horse and block the attack with his body. While the flute could control his will, it could not grant his fleshy body the power of flight. He would plummet like a stone.

True, he could depart his flesh in an emergency, but the fall would destroy his body. Without Father, I was not certain I could convince my sister Logistilla to make him another one—and, of us, only Logistilla and her
Staff of Transmogrification
had the necessary power and skill.

Lowering my instrument, I threw my arms up to protect my face, letting the incoming spears of ice bounce harmlessly off the shimmering emerald cloth of my enchanted tea dress. Mab swung his lead pipe and parried three sharpened icicles from the air. Puffing up his cheeks, he blew a gust of wind that knocked aside two more. Mephisto raised his staff but an ice shard struck his shoulder. He screamed in pain and pitched forward, arms windmilling. Before either Mab or I could grab him, he fell over the side of the horse, plummeting toward the pines far below.

Seeing his master plunging through the air, Pegasus neighed furiously. He dove, throwing me and Mab forward. As I sailed past the horse’s neck, I grabbed onto the long white mane. Mab fared better, managing to grab onto the saddle.

The winged horse snagged Mephisto’s pants with his teeth; the surcoat had
blown over his head and was out of reach, which was lucky for Mephisto’s neck. The
Staff of Summoning
dangled in its handcuff, safe and sound.

I was not so lucky. As the horse grabbed my brother and jerked upward, I was flung sideways, my feet swinging freely. My body gyrated wildly. Terror seized me as I felt the coarse hairs of the mane slipping between my cold-numbed fingers, which were also trying to hold my flute. My nose bumped hard against the horse’s rib cage, and pungent horse sweat wet my forehead and cheek.

Far below, pines stood like decorated toothpicks, looking so small and dainty. Recalling Astreus’s offer to drop me from a great height and thus speed my way to Heaven, I shuddered. Even the extra vitality I gained from the regular intake of Water of Life would not enable me to survive a fall of such a distance.

As I hung on for dear life, I closed my eyes and prayed to my Lady. A feeling of warmth and calm enveloped me, driving away both fear and cold. I was still dangling thousands of feet above the Arctic north, but I was no longer frightened.

Pegasus banked, and my legs swung dangerously toward his soft wings. I yanked them up, curling my knees to my chest to avoid damaging our flying steed. As Pegasus climbed upward, he, too, brought his legs toward his chest. There was a report like a gunshot as his hoof struck my shin.

I howled with pain. Horsehair slipped through my fingers. My hands clenched reflexively, to grip the mane tighter. My beloved flute, the
Staff of Winds,
slipped from my grip. Horrified, I watched it twirling end over end as it descended toward the sunrise-stained landscape below.

Mab grabbed my wrist and hauled me onto the horse’s back. Then, he leaned over and watched the dwindling flute as it bobbed or dropped depending upon the wind current.

“Not sure what to do, Ma’am. On one hand, I’m delighted to see the last of the accursed instrument that controls the free will of my race. On the other hand, I’d hate to risk it falling into anyone else’s hands, especially the hands of the three demons who are currently out there looking for it.”

“Any suggestions?”

“I could leave my body, Ma’am, and go after it,” he offered reluctantly. “Man, I hate doing that, especially after I just boasted to your brother, Mr. Theophrastus, how I almost never did it.”

“No problem!” Mephisto called from where he dangled upside from the horse’s mouth. “I’ll get it!”

Grabbing the staff that hung from his wrist, he tapped it against his shoe. I began to imagine that a swirl of snow near him was fluttering like a bird. Then, a real swallow fluttered beside him. Mephisto yelled to it, and the swallow dived.

Only the flute was far too big for a swallow to do more than bump. Mephisto tapped his staff again, and I saw the jeweled eyes of the Peregrine falcon figurine glitter. Then, a falcon stooped, talons spread. As it approached the flute, it swerved suddenly to chase the swallow. Yelping, Mephisto tapped his staff twice in rapid succession. Both birds vanished like a dream.

“Great,” said Mab. “Harebrain’s no use, either. Any other bright ideas?”

“No, no! I got it!” Mephisto shouted back. “I just need something bigger.”

He scrutinized his staff. A winged lion of whitest ash wood topped the long slender length. Below it, winged creatures carved from pale woods, such as beech and pine, made up the first two feet. The middle section of mundane creatures was carved from reddish woods, such as apple, cherry, and oak. Dangerous mythical beasts wrought from dark mahogany made up the lower third, and the very bottom was a tentacled monstrosity of ebony.

“Ah-ha!” He tapped the staff against the sole of his shoe.

The swirling wings that sprang so clearly to mind were larger and more powerful. Then, a gryphon screamed, slashing its lion tail. The mythical beast dived, rapidly closing the distance between itself and my precious flute. My heart leapt into my throat. Gryphons had razor-sharp beaks. Would he snap the flute in two when he caught it? If the flute broke, the terms of the servitude of the Aerie Ones who served my family—the eight winds, including Mab, and their many servants including sylphs, zephyrs, and other spirits of the air—would be at an end, freeing them to ravage the earth with tempests, hurricanes, and tornados.

The gryphon reached the flute and snatched it gracefully from the air with its eagle talons. Issuing its victory scream, it turned and began winging its way back up toward us. A second scream, lower in pitch, answered from above us.

The p-son-en burst out of a snowbank, its jagged wings releasing another volley of icy death.

I drew the war fan of Amatsumaru, the Japanese Smith God. Its moon-colored slats shone like a mirror, showing me a striking young woman with emerald eyes and hair so pale as to appear silver, her face framed by a white
fur. In the moment it took me to recognize my own reflection, the spears of jagged ice bounced harmlessly against the far side of the fan. Behind me, I heard Mab’s grunt of pain as one of the ice shards found its mark.

“Oh yeah! Mess with me?” Mephisto cried joyously, and I heard the tap of his staff against his shoe. “You’ll rue the day you didn’t join my team. I offer a dental plan and everything!”

The rain of icicles had stopped; I peered from behind my fan in time to get the distinct impression I could see a whirl of wingspan the length of two football fields. Then, a speckled bird that was longer than a house issued its war cry. The p-son-en turned and fled. The roc sped after it, talons splayed.