“What do you think?” asked the Father.
The Son replied, “What do you think I think?”
The Father humphed. “Michael, you rank incompetent—though I detect a touch of the trickster in you, more than the bumbler you pretend to be—since your usurpation of the divine prerogative got Saint Nicholas into this mess, go thou and do what thou canst to extricate him, drawing on all of thy strength and godly glory. And may my blessings go with thee.”
“Amen,” said the Son.
God raised his hand in benediction, but Michael had already zoomed away, speeding through the Empyrean and earth’s atmosphere, smacking meteor-swift against the crust and penetrating it as if it were an insubstantial custard, passing then through the threefold layers of night and the wall of brass, hurtling down-down-down until he arrived at Santa and Pan locked in their death struggle.
A trick of the light tormented his eyes. At first he mistook it for his reflection in the hazy air. But no, there flew in to challenge him a figure wearing only golden winged sandals and a great round hat, carrying a herald’s staff with white ribbons, intelligent and guileful his gaze. “Not so fast,” said the figure. “I’ll stand side-by-side with my son to fight you.”
No cakewalk this, then.
The speaker was Hermes, his shadow side. This god had he once been, the majestic schemer, a self he had agreed to abandon for the exalted position he now enjoyed in heaven. Busy had he been in the old days with his mercurial flittings about, stealing the cattle of Apollo by wrapping oak bark about their hooves so that they left no tracks, inventing the lyre and winning Apollo’s forgiveness at the touch of plectrum to string, inventing the shepherd’s pipe from reeds, learning to divine the future in a basin of submerged pebbles. He had been a devious little fellow then, though archangel had proven a most worthy alternative, and his regrets had been carefully masked, from himself especially, for ages.
“Strike him, father,” shouted Pan to Hermes.
Michael started to say, “Let us forswear all violence.”
But Hermes swung his staff, which made a loud thunk against the archangel’s skull and sent him tumbling. Pain. How long had it been? No matter. Michael lay sprawled on the cold gray moss, robes entangled, limbs askew, the shades scattering before him like so many dead leaves. He rose up and shook himself.
“Sir,” he protested, “I am an angel of the Lord.”
But Hermes bulleted toward him and butted him (“Oof!”) in the gut, so that his air was expelled and he struggled under the renewed assault of this wily and loose-limbed pagan god, his Hermetic staff abandoned for the nonce.
Time to set sanctity aside, thought Michael, grasping fierce Hermes by the arms and throwing him off. “You’ll not best me,” he said, flying at his opponent, who sidestepped and sent him tumbling, wings over halo.
* * *
Though for a spell, the archangel had the worst of it in battle, Santa took strength from the zeal with which he wrestled. Not that he had much time to observe the new combatants before Pan again dove in to attack him. They grew slippery from the exertion, though Pan had the advantage; Santa’s suit gave his opponent purchase, while Pan’s goatish sweat made him nearly ungraspable. So Santa, hurled away, took a huge breath and blasted his adversary with a gale-force wind, evaporating the moisture from his skin and making it easier to seize him, slam him down, and nearly pin him.
But as he worked toward that end and as millions of shades choked the air about them, he grew frantic with worry. He must triumph soon or it would be up with his stepdaughter. Violence was foreign to her, immortality still fresh, and he was not sure she understood what vast reserves she had to draw on; nor was he sure what would happen to her, did she not draw upon them. Michael, who had descended to give aid, was caught up in a struggle with his own elusive foe. Oddly enough, the archangel had taken on some of Hermes’ characteristics in self-defense.
Had Michael lost his dignity? Not in the least. He had tossed it aside with a vengeance!
Still, he and Hermes appeared equally matched, as did Santa and Pan, no end to the struggle in sight. And each time Santa or Michael tried to turn things verbal instead of physical, their enemies charged them anew.
Pan loomed large, his hands groping everywhere at once. His goat breath blasted hot and fetid against Santa’s face. His hooves hammered bone-crushing blows and tore great rents in Santa’s suit, though the damage was quickly undone.
Absurd. He was Sisyphus, doomed to roll a boulder uphill, watch it thunder down, and roll it up again. Dear God, he prayed (though he had scant room in his thoughts for prayers), help us. Keep Wendy safe until I come.
More shades swept in, above as well as around them now, darkening the air with stares of torment and the hungry-straw pinholes of their mouths.
Pan barked defiance and leaped in, hooves first, to crush Santa’s chest and hold off its healing, breaking his ribs and fighting against their reformation, failing and breaking them again.
* * *
“Faster, girl,” coaxed Rachel, pleading with Galatea as gently as she could. “You can find her, I know you can.”
The young doe galloped soundlessly through the air, guided by the green glow of her nose, her legs pistoning in a milk-white blur. Rachel marveled at Galatea’s boundless energy, despite her visit to countless homes just hours before. When they were done, whether Wendy survived or not...but Rachel put that thought right out of her head.
She turned her mind to Santa...and again rejected what arose in her. There wasn’t time to indulge in an iota of grief or worry. Later. All of that could wait.
Galatea gave a short whinny, almost a snort. Through great gray clouds they passed. And there ahead, swiftly growing in her sight, was an island. It seemed little more than a gash on the dull steel surface of the sea, torn by some gruff god and left, open and oozing, for eons. Trees stippled the slopes that rose from its beaches. And on one of those beaches, Rachel made out figures, tiny dots that soon took on definition.
Chapter 37. The Second Harrowing of Hell
HIE WE NOW TO HEAVEN, THERE TO FIND the Father steaming and the Son calming him as best he can. Everywhere, angels go about their business, used to the Ancient Almighty’s irascibility. He grumbles. He thunders. He broods. At rare moments, he sits on his throne in relative calm, though the beginnings of a scowl are never far from his lips. Being the presumed creator of a failed creation isn’t a hell of a lot of fun, not on earth nor in heaven neither.
But now God’s wrath is raised to fever pitch. And every angel, archangel, and elevated soul pauses in his or her eternal routine to take notice. “Stay calm, Father. Michael’s doing his best. He’ll figure it out eventually.”
The Father broke in. “Look at him. You call that an archangel? I’ve never seen anything so absurd. Where’s dignity? Where’s decorum? More important, where in the name of me is wisdom? Utterly ridiculous, the way he and Saint Nicholas are carrying on.”
“Trust me, Father, it’s easy to judge in heaven. But when you’re in the thick of things—and while earth is bad enough, Tartarus is worse—the right hand often battles the left, forgetful of their common bond. Such battles pretty much define the human predicament.”
“But these aren’t humans. They’re bloody immortals!”
“True.” The Son paused. “But they, like we, are created in the image of humankind. And though you, and I, and the Divine Mother have somehow managed to escape imperfection, the other immortals have not.”
This raised a ruckus in the Father. “Imperfection? There is no imperfection anywhere in my creation. From me came all beings, each fitting precisely into my inscrutable plan—don’t you dare ask me, I’ll not reveal it, not even to you—”
“Yes, Father. Forgive me, I meant no criticism.”
God huffed. “You’d better not have. Oh Christ, look at the silly buffoons. A couple of bumbling dunderheads. You know what I want you to do.”
“Go a-harrowing?”
“Ye
s, yet again. Set our beloved bozos right. Knock them upside the head if you have to. And while you’re there, pick out a few score worthy shades—the dead ones, of course—clean them up, bring them here, and make them angels. I begin to grow a tiny bit deaf, and the angel choirs could use some beefing up. Have Raphael give them harp lessons, Uriel fit them with robes, and Gabriel instruct them in the proper way to worship me.”
“It shall be done.”
The Father looked at him askance. “Of course it shall. Don’t waste words. Just do it. Why do you choke the time with superfluous chatter?”
But the Son had already pulled away, jumping the continuum past the layers of night, hovering then before the brass gates of Tartarus, which unlocked and swung free. Down he descended, spreading glory upon each tormented soul making its hopeless meander along the underworld’s narrowing slopes. Beneath him, then beside him, wrestled the mighty combatants. At his coming, the shades parted.
“Hold,” said he. But before he could say more, a figure sprang out of his bosom fully formed and ready to fight. A young man was he, with much of the feminine about him, but wild, powerful, and impossibly gentle. His physique refused to settle. A barefaced youth, a bearded man, a lion, a horse, a serpent, a bull—he was all of these together and each in turn.
And the Son laughed. For he recalled with perfect clarity his previous incarnation—emerging from Demeter’s womb; being dismembered, roasted, and devoured by the Titans, all but his heart; how Zeus, with the juice squeezed from that heart, had impregnated the mortal Semele; how she overstepped and was incinerated by the revelation of Zeus’s glory; his rescue by the same Hermes who now fought Michael; his implantation in the thigh of Zeus; and his descent into the underworld to rescue Semele and bring her to Mount Olympus where she was made immortal. Oh, how he had reveled then in the wild variety and loin-zest of nature herself; in the drunken orgies and fertility rites that went into mortals’ worship of him; in partaking, sometimes not symbolically, in the flesh and blood of sacrificial beasts.
But the battle stance of Dionysus, because they were comfortably one, was naught but pretense, and the Son said, “Come into my embrace.”
“With pleasure,” spoke the ecstatic one.
He stepped forward and the Son gripped the mad god’s manflesh and drew him in, skin to skin, absorbing and combining, their wrestling far more an act of love than one of conflict or violence. He subsumed him, embracing in pure reenactment the totality of this aspect of himself, regretting that they could not share power, but putting the pagan god gently under nonetheless.
Should he say anything to the four combatants, who had stopped to witness the battle that was no battle? Yes, a few things. But not the exhortation he had planned. “Hermes, you rescued me from the flames at my rebirth. To Olympus you brought this Pan, a monstrous babe who made us laugh so hard, I gave him the name he bears. All of you, all two of you, may heaven’s blessings be upon you.”
And he went out from them, passing swiftly to Elysium to gather the worthy souls the Father had requested of him.
* * *
As the incoming sleigh made its descent toward the island, the Tooth Fairy watched her brood kick up a counterclockwise circle of sand below it. They gaped skyward, all but moping Chuff, at the bitch-brat’s mom, blinking, drooling, beckoning her with their three-fingered hands as they ran. The brat herself sat bound and gagged, her eyes big with terror and dawning hope at seeing her mother come in behind her swift-paced reindeer.
So tight was the cluster of imps on the sleigh’s path that it struck one and then another, canting sharply as it landed. A frantic Rachel gripped its sides to keep from tumbling out. As soon as she skidded to a halt, the imps piled in upon her.
“Get off,” she screamed, grabbing and tossing them away like so much refuse. But there was always one more coming on, and the poor dear made no headway.
“Give her room to breathe,” commanded the Tooth Fairy. Fear flared in her imps' faces. They bumbled off the sleigh at once, backing away and glaring at the child’s would-be rescuer.
Then the woman saw her daughter. “Let her go,” she said, leaping from the sleigh and racing toward her.
“Hold her at bay, boys.” Her offspring blocked the way.
“Please, Wendy has done nothing to you.”
“True,” the Tooth Fairy said, hands on hips, her feet planted like an inverted Y, her nipples ice-tight, her sex bold and open. “Through your enemies’ loved ones shall you strike them. Or him, in my case. I had hoped to lure the goat god turned goody-goody for a tumble full of blood and fire. Until he shows, you’ll do.”
Something unreadable rose in the woman’s face. “You’ve already triumphed,” she said. “Santa has...perished.”
That caught her short. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s so. Reversing your attack on humankind and absorbing the pain of extraction proved too much for him. He lies in state on the commons, mourned by his friends and family.”
The Tooth Fairy turned her head sharply north, peering into the distance. “It’s as she says, boys. His heart beats no more. The king of the satyrs is dead.” Her smile vanished. “But dead immortals have a habit of resurrecting. No, I’m afraid this triumph, sweet as it is, will turn bitter before long. Meanwhile, I’ve got you. You went down smooth as hot chocolate the last time we tussled, your crushed skull between my teeth a prelude to gustatory delight. You’re itching to reclaim your uppity girl and I’m itching to stop you.” She hunched into a defensive stance, her nails ready to rend. “Boys, surround us. But keep your distance. I’ve got lots of pain to inflict and I don’t want you getting in the way.”
“Don’t worry, Wendy,” Rachel called out. “Mommy will save you.”
“Naughty Mommy,” said the Tooth Fairy. “You would steal away our guest? Well do your worst, tasty cakes. It’ll be a pleasure to strike and flay and tear you limb from limb.”
The bitch glared back. Not convincing. She entertained doubts, and that put her one-down. The Tooth Fairy waited. At last Rachel gave a roar and rushed her.
Chapter 38. Free from the Jaws of Hell
AN INSTANT after the Son melded with Dionysus and vanished from their midst, Pan leaped upon Santa, tumbling him down onto the plains of Tartarus, choking him, his grin wide and cruel above Santa’s face. His head sprang forward and he bit into Santa’s nose, the pain sharp, Santa’s cheeks wet with blood.
His first instinct was to resist. But keeping the Savior’s example before him, he yielded, clear in his mind that he was fighting only himself. With every blow, the rage and animosity had risen high in them both, matched like mirror images. And now, unlike an opposing adversary might act, he discovered that remaining in a state of peace drained his foe of hostility in equal measure.
Santa had endured far worse pain than his shade-body now suffered. Don’t resist, he told himself. Surrender to him, observe him, love him as your hidden self, and forgive yourself for being not quite the saint legend proclaims.
In giving no energy to resistance, Santa saw clearly the impulse at the heart of Pan, the hoarder, the grasper, the one who uses others to exalt himself. He was able to suspend judgment of that impulse, to own it, which brought it at once into subservience to his nobler side. Far better admit than deny. His compassion grew greater for the sin-sick mortals he had touched that night. In every case, the one thing they had in common besides their bigotry was a denial of their shameful selves, which grew more powerful and perverse lurking in the shadows.
Though the goat god’s musky sweat overwhelmed him, Santa gripped his hairy flanks, suffered the rutting thrust of his thighs, observed without judgment the ravenous glint in his eyes, and affirmed, “This too am I.” Selfishness melded with generosity. The satyr’s bone and blood mingled with his, the lips in rough kiss coming down and in, mouth to mouth, skull to skull, chest to chest, hip to hip, until they became one and the saint took easy command.
“Father,” he murmured as he watched the
titanic struggle between the archangel and Hermes and felt the bond between the latter and himself.
Then, remembering Wendy, he glanced out into the world and found his trussed-up stepdaughter and Rachel locked in combat with the Tooth Fairy, her imps everywhere goading and jabbing. Up he sprang with renewed strength and sped from the pit, piercing the gates of brass and the three layers of night. Should he make for the North Pole? No time. And restoration into the body was hardly guaranteed. Besides, he sensed he had more power as a shade to defend his loved ones.
So to the island he beelined, through bedrock and crushed layers of geologic time, parting it in his urgency as though it were insubstantial air and he the pure impulse to rescue the imperiled, come what may.
* * *
Michael tried to flee, now that Santa had gone and his mission was accomplished. But Hermes grabbed the hem of his robes and yanked him back into battle.
“Wait,” said Michael, wincing, “you and I are one.”
“The hell we are,” said Hermes.
His robes were always in the way as they fought, his wings highly uncomfortable to land on when Hermes threw him. As they wrestled, he tried to fix upon an idea, but his thoughts were as mercurial as the attacks coming in at him.
“A truce,” he said.
“No truce.”
Michael kneed Hermes in the gut, then flipped him and flew upon him, nearly brushing against the shades that crowded around. I’ll surrender my mind, he thought. I’ll meet his quicksilver instincts with my own.
And so it was.
The fight became a dance, energy shifting this way and that as the combatants huffed, tugged, closed, and clipped. In the midst of this thought-free effort, Michael honored every movement as his own. And the two became one, an archangel in appearance, but inside, with an equal voice now, the god Hermes. The Father had it right, he thought. I wasn’t just a bumbler. I was wilier than that, for having tricked myself so long.
Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes Page 28
