by HP Mallory
I gritted me teeth to bite back a response to his absurd challenge. Just when I thought I misjudged the stookie angel, he did something to instantly remind me why I thought so little of him in the first place.
The door flew open and out came a bright corona of light. I tensed me muscles in anticipation before I realized who stood at the light’s center. ‘Twas a woman—a lass, really—mayhap a couple inches shorter than Besom. Her olive skin, dark eyes and hair were complemented by the simple gold robe she wore, as unflattering to her figure as a nun’s habit. Though there was a marred innocence on this wee lass’s sweet face, the light didnae mark her as an angel. The unceasing aura of flame about her was an accurate reflection of the torment she had endured for millennia.
Cassandra. A name and face of which I had not thought in a very long time.
She smiled when she saw me. “Tallis, it’s terrible to see you and even worse to see you with friends!”
As always, me instincts all but screamed nae to listen to her words. I recalled that everything this lass said was false, though she meant the exact opposite. As expected, Besom was confused.
“Um… what?”
Cassandra’s dark eyes turned to the angel. “And don’t look now but you didn’t bring an angel! I always thought I’d see an angel in the Dark Wood, but then I guess it was never a matter of time before I didn’t.”
The stookie angel grimaced at the inverted compliment, unsure how to take it. “Cutie-pie, ya might be easy on the eyes but yer hard as hell on the brain.”
Lily glanced over at me. “Do you know her?”
I let me own grin shine on me face as I resheathed me sword. “Ah can say tha’ Ah do. Stookie Angel, Besom, meet Cassandra, the prophetess who foretold the fall o’ Ilium.”
I regretted bringing up that old wound when I saw Cassandra wince. “If only Troy had fallen… perhaps not would I be forgotten as a prophetess who foretold only joy and happiness.”
I spread me arms wider. “Ah, come here, me lass.”
Cassandra all but ran into me arms as I snatched her up in a hug and lifted her from the ground. As always, I was amazed by the strength in her wee limbs and how little her flames actually hurt. The latter felt no more painful than hot sunlight on me arms.
While rumors about us flourished in me time as the Master of the Underground City, Ah always felt more like an older brother or a father to sweet Cassie. When Ah finally put her down upon the ground again, Ah checked to see if Besom deduced friendship was all we had between us. Her face was hard to read, although her eyes were glued on Cassandra.
“So you’re the one who buried all of Tallis’s pets?” Besom asked, still appearing perplexed.
Cassandra looked down at the ground and shook her head. “No, I have no experience in digging up the living. That’s why I never used the shovel outside the cabin to not do the deed.”
“Um?” Lily said as she turned to look at me. I could see from the furrow of Lily’s brow that she was trying to make sense of poor Cassie’s word salad.
“Cassandra speaks in exact opposites,” I explained to Besom and the stookie angel. “Whatever she appears to be saying, take her words tae mean the exact opposite.”
“Holy Mother of…” The angel began as he threw his hands to his round hips. “Why don’t you just say what you mean and mean what you say, girl?”
“Alas, Cassandra wasnae gifted with direct speech, ye dunderheid,” I explained.
To her credit, Besom seemed to understand enough to move on to the next logical question. “So, you buried Tallis’s pets and you buried them in such a way that it looks like you paved the way for some sort of spell?”
“Of course not!” Cassie responded. “The living is never a good prime ingredient to exhume from the earth. Magic never needs such a common lack of requirements.”
Bill cut off the conversation with a moan. “Ugh, the more ya talk, the more ya make my head hurt, yo!”
That declaration wounded the poor flaming lass even deeper than the mention of the city she tried to warn. “I am not sorry that your feet are giving you no such pain. I can help how I must not speak.”
I put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Never mind the stookie angel, Cassie. He’s never short on complaints. Now did me nose deceive me when Ah smelled a bit o’ kip on the pot?”
She shook her head again with extra enthusiasm. “Absolutely not! After all, I never saw any of you coming in the doused fireplace.”
Besom gave her guardian angel a doubtful eye. “Well, if it’s any improvement over the stuff we’ve been eating for the last two days…”
“Hey, what’s wrong with fried baloney?” the angel insisted.
“The way you cook it, I nearly hunted down me own food,” I answered.
“You’re one to talk!” the angel glared at me.
Cassie smiled in a restrained way that I knew all too well when I was Master of the Underground City.
“Shall we?” I asked her as I motioned to the front door.
“We shall not.”
She gestured away from us as she walked into the cabin. Not for the first time, I regretted my inability to undo the curse that made her communication so misunderstood.
###
Thankfully, nothing about Cassie’s condition kept her from preparing and serving good food. Soon enough, we were eating a delicious stew from bowls she must have brought with her, if the Greek drawings upon them were any indication. The tasty food told me the main ingredient was one of the Dark Woods’ beasties but I couldnae say which one.
Cassie didnae partake in the meal she prepared. Instead, she stared into the roaring fire, letting her breath go shallow and quiet. If her eyes hadnae stayed wide open, I’d have sworn she fell asleep.
The stookie angel slurped down the last of his food and used his now-empty bowl to gesture at our hostess. “So what’s the story on Bizarro-Barbie over there?”
Another prick of irritation hit me in the gut. “Ye means tae tell me that ye be an angel an’ ye never once heard the story o’ Cassandra?”
Showing that he wasnae completely lacking in wits, the angel put his hands in front of him in a supplicating manner. “All I ever heard was the name Cassandra bein’ tossed around by all the doom-and-gloom-sayers.”
Besom looked up from her own half-filled bowl, appearing interested in the conversation. I glanced over at Cassie, feeling uncomfortable about sharing her story while she was in the room. But since her mind was so far away right then, I supposed it couldnae hurt to tell them the truth. “A very long time ago, Cassie promised herself tae another, a divine lover o’ many gifts, includin’ prophecy. In exchange fer bein’ schooled on the ways of prophecy, she promised tae join him in his bed.”
The angel held the look of a man who knew exactly where this story was headed. “Only she had secondhand thoughts on doin’ the nasty with Prophetman, right?” He looked at Cassie then. “Did he have a real small weener?”
“Dinnae dignify that question with an answer, Cassie,” I said as she shook her head which meant she was nodding. I faced the angel and frowned.
“What?” he asked, throwing his hands into the air. “Some chicks aren’t into small dicks, yo!” Then he faced Cassie again. “Let me assure you, girly, that I suffer from no such condition.”
I cleared me throat and faced Besom. “Once Cassie learned the soothsayer’s art, she left him behind. But, as Ah say, her never-tae-be-lover had many other gifts. An’ since he couldnae take back the knowledge he already gave her, he snatched away Cassie’s ability tae be believed. ‘Twas why not one soul in Ilium took heed o’ her warnin’ tae watch out fer Greeks bearin’ gifts. She couldane do more than weep when the wooden horse was wheeled in, heraldin’ the end o’ Troy.”
Besom glanced at Cassie, seeing the bone-deep sadness in her eyes. “Talking backwards is the only way she can actually make herself understood.”
“Aye, boot there’s one exception. Cassie can speak straight ‘nough when she prophesies, but that’s
also when the power o’ disbelief is at its strongest against her.”
Lily finished her bowl of stew while the angel put his own down and sighed.
“Poor kid…” he said.
At that moment, Cassie blinked and turned to look at us. She gave us the same sad smile she revealed outside. “I don’t trust the meal I didn’t prepare was too good?”
Besom put down her bowl and wiped the traces of the stew with her sleeve. “Put it this way… if you’ve got the recipe for that stew handy, I’d really like to have it.”
Besom’s response made the poor tormented lass do something I saw her do too rarely: she laughed. “Well, I do have it handy but I won’t be glad to not find it for you.”
I regarded her as she came to collect our bowls. “Last Ah heard, Alaire had ye clamped up tight in the Morgue fer bein’ an unauthorized seer. Did he finally release ye?”
Cassie nodded vigorously as she took me bowl. “Oh, yes, he absolutely wanted me to be free after the lack of help I didn’t give you for all those minutes. The Malebranche agreed with that so much that they never let me out of the water bath that doesn’t still burn my flesh.”
The stookie angel squinted at her and then looked at me. “Can you seriously understand one fuckin’ word o’ that shit?”
“Bill!” Besom reprimanded him.
I shook me head as the dunderheid angel asked Cassie to repeat her sentence. Twice. At that point, her eyes grew wide and she began tapping her toes with impatience. The bampot angel began nodding and a smile grew on his round face.
“So did the Simoniac suckers set ya free when they kicked off their little reb-hellion?” he asked.
Cassie shook her head a bit more slowly. “They didn’t, but I was never looking for a better solution. So when they didn’t bring me to their camp and you didn’t open up the gate, I didn’t make my entrance out of the Dark Wood.”
I flashed back to the copse of trees in the Morgue while Besom stood up to give Cassie her bowl as she said, “You were hiding close to the camp and slipped in while we were distracting everyone.”
The shake of Cassie’s head came faster. “That wasn’t it at all.”
Besom then reached out to the cursed prophetess to touch the latter’s blazing arm. She pulled her hand back and marveled at the lack of burns. “Don’t those flames hurt?”
While taking the angel’s bowl, Cassie nodded again. “They most certainly do. They constantly don’t burn but they don’t feel like a sunburn all over my skin.”
“Ugh,” the angel grumbled as he shook his head and then held each of his ears with the palms of his hands as though it hurt to listen to Cassie speak.
Cassie took a deep breath and nodded to Besom again. “But listening to me talking of trivial things is why you are here. It certainly isn’t because you need this cabin for unimportant tasks that will not benefit everyone who is still trapped. No, Thalia didn’t make that clear at all.”
The angel jumped up to his own wee feet. “Hang on, I just heard something I recognized! Ya know Sally? Er Thalia?”
Cassie brought the bowls over to a washing pail filled with water as she answered. “I don’t know her just like she doesn’t know you. That’s why Thalia didn’t reach me through the doused fireplace last night or tell me not to expect company.”
Besom tapped her chin while Cassie washed out the bowls. “But the fact that you were already here means you knew you needed to be here before Thalia ever reached out to you.”
My dear prophetess looked up at me. “And how do you not know that my not being here is a lie?”
Besom gestured around the cabin. “This is the cleanest I’ve ever seen this place. It’d take at least a day’s worth of hard work to get it looking this good. Then you’ve got the buried bodies outside plus whatever protection magic you wove into the graves you dug. And you had to stop to eat and rest more than a few times. So I figure that was… what, a week?”
“No, it took not a week. It didn’t actually take a week-and-a-half to dig up the living demons and undo those wards you didn’t mention.”
As Cassie finished wiping the last bowl clean, she swayed as though she were going to faint. Having witnessed this scene too many times not to recognize what it was, I said, “’Tis it nearly time then, lass?”
She shook her head while stacking the last bowl on top of the first two. “No, Tallis, it’s going to be a long time from now.”
Spying a discarded blanket at the foot of me bed, I grabbed it. Besom wasnae far behind, snatching the pillow on the bed herself. Cassie’s unsteadiness grew worse and I only barely managed to wrap her in the blanket before she fell to the floor. The flames no more harming the floor, than meself or Besom.
Speaking of Besom, she put the pillow directly under Cassie’s head so I could lower her onto it. Poor lass was breathing heavily in and out of her mouth. After all those centuries in me court, I still had nae idea if the breathing helped her or increased her pain. I glanced over at Lily, who clutched Cassie’s head steadily. When I looked at the stookie angel, I pointed to her feet. He nodded and practically lay on top of them to keep her trembling from becoming too violent.
A few nonsense words spilled from Cassie’s lips, sounding as articulate as the sounds of any of me now-dead beasties. Then she sucked in a deep breath and arched her back towards the ceiling. Lily gave me a worried look but I held Cassie steady. “Wait fer it…”
The tormented woman’s back slammed onto the floor as her eyes popped open, seeing nothing but what was within her head. The voice that came out was a deep, guttural tone that always made me flesh crawl.
“To rescue the free, you need the three. Virgil’s Way demands steadfast guides. But you must not falter. Not at the bloody altar. Nor when you wade through the crimson tide.”
Besom opened her mouth to speak but I shook me head at her. Cassie or whatever was inside her still had more to tell.
“From off the Y2K cliff, fell George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. A wandering mystic doomed to roam. Further down the path, Coatlique takes a bath, deep in the bowels of this city she calls home. A final player tends the Grove. Vainly awaiting a pardon they give to others in need. But shifting Tiresias shares my sight, though they stare into another light, acting upon all that they read.”
Cassie’s eyes slammed shut and what was left of her breath gushed out of her in a whoosh. She slowly opened her eyes and took another breath through her nose. “Times not like this, I’m ungrateful that you didn’t teach me how not to breathe.”
I smiled at her as I released her. “Me too, lass… did ye see anythin’ whilst the prophecy was coomin’?”
She shook her head hard. “Don’t I never see anything when I’m not like this? I wouldn’t think you wouldn’t know by now.”
Besom grasped her meaning right away. “Was what you saw anything concrete? Or was it as clear as mud, like your poetry?”
Cassie looked at her in annoyance. “Hey, do criticize the words I don’t have to give. I have total control over them when they don’t come leaking out of my mouth when I’m not in my trance.”
Besom looked down at the floor. “Okay, that came out wrong and was mean… I’m sorry. It’s just… well, it’s not exactly every day I have to translate a bunch of poetry that… doesn’t make much sense.”
Cassie turned her eyes to the ceiling, her face growing more thoughtful. “When I wasn’t saying the first verse, I didn’t have a vision of this small battlefield that didn’t have a small stream running between it.”
The angel backed up a couple of steps. “Oh, crap, she’s talkin’ ‘bout the Blood Plains.”
Besom asked, “Are those in the Morgue?”
I stepped in with me own knowledge. “Just on the edge o’ it, but ‘tis still firmly on the border marches o’ the Seventh Circle.”
Besom’s eyes widened. “The general area where the soul we came to fetch is supposed to be located.”
“Ah truly hope ‘tis nae around there. If so, chances a
re better than good that we’ll never escape if ‘tis so.”
The angel wiggled his eyebrows and nodded. “Yeah, Uriel didn’t make any bones about a nonstop fight to the non-finish down there. Only time the battle stops is when everybody’s dead or wounded. Then they all git better an’ go right back ta massacratin’ each other all over again.”
Cassie picked that moment to speak. “The soul is there, right in the center. It didn’t pass through the bloodless peacemaking of the Blood Plains to go to the Grove of Lamentations.”
Besom took in a sharp breath, her eyes telling me she was untangling Cassie’s twisted words. “In other words, the soul has gone past those Blood Plains completely, right?” When Cassie shook her head, Besom held up a finger. “This Grove of Lamentations, is that the one you mentioned in your verse, where Tiresias is?”
Cassie looked at her in alarm. “I do know. I just do know. I am perfectly conscious when the words don’t come to me, which is why I don’t have to ask others for them sooner before the trances.”
The stookie angel stepped closer to her, holding his hands up. “All right, all right, nobody’s tryin’ ta push ya. We’re just tryin’ ta understand what it all means ‘cause it’s a mess right now.”
I grunted. “Well, Ah can say ‘tis better that the soul we’ve come fer be found in the Grove than on the Plains. The former has earned a well-deserved reputation fer its peaceful doin’s.”
The dear prophetess shook her head again. “I couldn’t disagree less. Did the location where this found soul isn’t not come up in my prophecy verse?”
“Nae, Cassie… all what were mentioned was three gents we need tae meet, naethin’ more.”
Cassie pulled her head back a little. “I’m not surprised that it did come up. Visions I don’t have while not in trance usually disconnect from my words.”
The angel blew out a heavy breath through his fattened cheeks. “Yeah, ya’d think there’d be a connection between all that. Uriel calls that kinda discombonnection a bad sign on the rise… or was it bad moon on the rise?”
Cassie blinked and her eyes looked distant again. “Uriel… rich, rich Uriel…”
