Prophecies, Libels & Dreams

by Ysabeau S. Wilce

  Before the kid can blow again, the Gimlet grins, in her best granny way, flour feathering about her, and says, “Well, now, chickiedee, well now indeed. I’ve no desire to be rushed, but you are late and the candy is—”

  She recoils, but not in time, from another spurt of flour. When she wipes away the flour, she is careful not to wipe away her welcoming grin. “But I have more here in the kitchen. Come in, tiny pirate, out of the cold, and we shall fill your sack full.”

  “Huh,” says the child, already her husband’s Doom and about to become the Roaring Gimlet’s, as well. “GIVE ME THE CANDY—”

  Patience is a virtue that the Roaring Gimlet is well off without. She peers beyond the kid, down the street. There are people about, but they are: drunken people, or burning people, or screaming people, or carousing people, or running people. None of them appear to be observant people, and that’s perfecto. The Gimlet reaches and grabs.

  “Hey!” says the Kid. The Pig does not protest.

  Tiny Doom is stout, and she can dig her heels in, but the Gimlet is stouter and the Gimlet has two hands free where Tiny Doom has one, and the Pig is too flabby to help. Before Tiny Doom can shoot off her next round of flour, she’s yanked and the door is slammed shut behind her, bang!

  V. Bad Housekeeping

  Here is Hardhands striding down the darkened streets like a colossus, dodging fire, flood, and fighting. He is not upset, oh no indeedy. He’s cool and cold and so angry that if he touched tinder it would burst into flames, if he tipped tobacco it would explode cherry red. And there’s more than enough ire to go around, which is happy because the list of Hardhands’ blame is quite long.

  Firstly: the Pontifexa for making him take Cyrenacia with him. What good is it to be her darling grandson when he’s constantly on doodie-detail? Being the only male Haðraaða should be good for: power, mystery, free booze, noli me tangere, first and foremost, the biggest slice of cake. Now being the only male Haðraaða is good for: marrying small torments, kissing the Pontifexa’s ass, and being bossed into wife-sitting. He almost got Grandmamma once; perhaps the decision should be revisited.

  Secondly: Tiny Doom for not standing still. When he gets her, he’s going to paddle her, see if he doesn’t. She’s got it coming, a long time coming and perhaps a hot hinder will make her think twice about, well, think twice about everything. Didn’t he do enough for her already? He married her, to keep her in the family, to keep her out of the hands of her nasty daddy, who otherwise would have the prior claim. Ungrateful kidlet. Perhaps she deserves whatever she gets.

  Thirdly: Relais for being such an utter jackass that he can’t keep track of a five-year-old. Hardhands has recently come across a receipt for an ointment that allows the wearer to walk through walls. For which, this sigil requires three pounds of human tallow. He’s got a few walls he wouldn’t mind flitting right through, and at last Relais will be useful.

  Fourthly: Paimon. What need has a domicilic denizen for a night off anyway? He’s chained to the physical confines of the House Bilskinir by a sigil stronger than life. He should be taking care of the Heir to the House Bilskinir, not doing whatever the hell he is doing on his night off which he shouldn’t be doing anyway because he shouldn’t be having a night off and when Hardhands is in charge, he won’t, no sieur.

  Fifthly: Pig. Ayah, so, well, Pig is a stuffy pink plush toy, and can hardly be blamed for anything, but what the hell, why not? Climb on up, Pig, there’s always room for one more!

  And ire over all: his ruined invocation, for which he had been purging starving dancing and flogging for the last two weeks, all in preparation for what would surely be the most stupendous summoning in the history of summoning. It’s been a stellar group of daemons that Hardhands has been able to force from the Aeyther before, but this time he had been going for the highest of the high, the loudest of the loud, and the show would have been sure to go down in the annals of musickology, and his name, already famous, would become gigantic in its height. Even the Pontifexa was sure to be impressed. And now . . .

  The streets are full of distraction, but neither Hardhands nor Alfonso is distracted. Tiny Doom’s footprints pitty-patter before them, glowing in the gloam like little blue flowers, and they follow, avoiding burning brands, dead horses, drunken warblers, slithering servitors, gushing water pipes, and an impromptu cravat party, and, because of their glowering concentration, they are avoided by all the aforementioned in turn. The pretty blue footprints dance, and leap, from here to there, and there to here, over cobblestone and curb, around corpse and copse, by Cobweb’s Palace and Pete’s Clown Diner, by Ginger’s Gin Goint and Guerrero’s Helado, and other blind tigers so blind they are nameless also, dives so low that just walking by will get your knickers wet. The pretty prints don’t waver, don’t dilly-dally, and then suddenly they turn towards a door, broad and barred, and they stop.

  At the door, Hardhands doesn’t bother knocking, and neither does Alfonso, but their methods of entry differ. Alfonso zips through the wooden obstruction as though it is neither wooden nor obstructive. Hardhands places palm down on wood and, via a particularly loud Gramatica exhortation, blows the door right off its hinges. His entry is briefly hesitated by the necessity to chase after his chapeau, having blown off also in the breeze of Gramatica, but once it is firmly stabbed back on his handsome head, onward he goes, young Hardhands, hoping very much that something else will get in his path, because he can’t deny it: exploding things is fun.

  The interior of the house is dark and dull, not that Hardhands is there to critique the décor. Alfonso has zipped ahead of him, coldfire frothing in his wake. Hardhands follows the bubbly pink vapor, down a narrow hallway, past peeling paneling and dusty doorways. He careens down creaky stairs, bending head to avoid braining on low ceiling, and into a horrible little kitchen.

  He wrinkles his nose. Our young hero is used to a praeterhuman amount of cleanliness, and here there is neither. At Bilskinir House even the light looks as though it’s been washed, dried, and pressed before hung in the air. In contrast, this pokey little hole looks like the back end of a back-end bar after a particularly festive game of Chew the Ear. Smashed crockery and blue willow china crunches under boot, and the furniture is bonfire ready. A faint glow limns the wreckage, the after-reflection of some mighty big magick. The heavy sour smell of blackberries wrinkles in his nose. Coldfire dribbles from the ceiling, whose plaster cherubs and grapes look charred and withered.

  Hardhands pokes at a soggy wad of clothes lying in a heap on the disgusting floor. For one testicle-shriveling moment he thought that he saw black velvet amongst the sog; he does, but it’s a torn shirt, not a puffy hat.

  All magickal acts leave a resonance behind, unless the magician takes great pains to hide: Hardhands knows every archon, hierophant, sorceress, bibliomatic, and avatar in the City, but he don’t recognize the author of this Working. He catches a drip of coldfire on one long finger and holds it up his lips: salt-sweet-smoky-oddly familiar but not enough to identify.

  “Pigface pogo!” says our hero. He has put his foot down in slide and almost gone facedown in a smear of glass and black goo—mashy blackberry jam, the source of the sweet stench. Flailing unheroically he regains his balance, but in doing so grabs at the edge of an overturned settle. The settle has settled backwards, cockeyed on its back feet, but Hardhands’ leverage rocks it forward again, and, hello, here’s the Gimlet—well, parts of her anyway. She is stuck to the bench by a flood of dried blood, and the expression on her face is doleful and a little bit surprised.

  “Pogo pigface on a pigpogopiss! Who the hell is that?”

  Alfonso yanks the answer from the Aethyr. “The Roaring Gimlet, petty roller and barn stamper. You see her picture sometimes in the post office.”

  “She don’t look too roaring to me. What the hell happened to her?”

  Alfonso zips closer while Hardhands holds his sleeve to his sensitive nose. The stench of metallic blood is warring with the sickening sweet smell of the
crushed blackberries, and together a pleasuring perfume they do not make.

  “Me, I think she was chewed,” Alfonso announces after close inspection. “By something hungry and mad.”

  “What kind of something?”

  Alfonso shrugs. “Nobody I know. Sorry, boss.”

  As long as Doom is not chewed, Hardhands cares naught for the chewy-ness of others. He uneasily illuminates the fetid shadows with a vivid Gramatica phrase, but thankfully no rag-like wife does he see, tossed aside like a discarded tea-towel, nor red wet stuffy Pig-toy, only bloody jam and magick-bespattered walls. He’d never admit it, particularly not to a yappy servitor, but there’s a warm feeling of relief in his toes that Cyrenacia and Pig were not snacked upon. But if they were not snacked upon, where the hell are they, oh irritation.

  There, in the light of his sigil—sign: two dainty feet stepped in jammy blood, hopped in disgust, and then headed up the back stairs, the shimmer of Bilskinir blue shining faintly through the rusty red. Whatever got the Gimlet did not get his wife and Pig, that for sure, that’s all he cares about, all he needs to know, and the footprints are fading, too: onward.

  At the foot of the stairs, Hardhands poises. A low distant noise drifts out of the floor below, like a bad smell, a rumbly agonized sound that makes his tummy wiggle.

  “What is that?”

  A wink of Alfonso’s tails and top hat and here’s his answer: “There’s some guy locked in the cellar, and he’s—he’s in a bad way, and I think he needs our help—”

  Hardhands is not interested in guys locked in cellars, nor in their bad ways. The footprints are fading, and the Current is still rising, he can feel it jiggling in his veins. Badness is on the loose—is not the Gimlet proof of that?—and Goddess Califa knows what else, and Tiny Doom is alone.

  VI: Sugar Sweet

  Here is Hardhands, hot on the heels of the pretty blue footsteps skipping along through the riotous streets. Hippy-hop, pitty-pat. The trail takes a turning into a narrow alley and Hardhands turns with it, leaving the sputtering street lamps behind. Before, the night was merely dark: now it’s darkdarkdark. He flicks a bit of coldfire from his fingertips, blossoming a ball of luminescence that weirdly lights up the crooked little street, broken cobbles and black narrow walls. The coldfire ball bounces onward, and Hardhands follows. The footprints are almost gone: in a few more moments they will be gone; for a lesser magician they would be gone already.

  And then, a drift of song:

  “Hot corn, hot corn! Buy my hot corn!

  Lovely and sweet, Lovely and Warm!”

  Out of the shadow comes a buttery smell, hot and wafting, the jingling of bells, friendly and beckoning: a Hot Corn Dolly, out on the prowl. The perfume is delightful and luscious and it reminds Hardhands that dinner was long since off. But Hardhands does not eat corn (while not fasting, he’s on an all meat diet, for to clean his system clear of sugar and other poisons), and when the Hot Corn Dolly wiggles her tray at him, her green ribbon braids dancing, he refuses.

  The Corn Dolly is not alone; her sisters stand behind her, and their wide trays, and the echoing wide width of their farthingale skirts, flounced with patchwork, jingling with little bells, form a barricade that Hardhands, the young gentleman, cannot push through. The Corn Dolly skirts are wall-to-wall and their ranks are solid and only rudeness will make a breach.

  “I cry your pardon, ladies,” he says, in feu de joie, ever courteous, for is not the true mark of a gentleman his kindness towards others, particularly his inferiors? “I care not for corn, and I would pass.”

  “Buy my hot corn, deliciously sweet,

  Gives joy to the sorrowful and strength to the weak.”

  The Dolly’s voice is luscious, ripe with sweetness. In one small hand she holds an ear of corn, dripping with butter, fragrant with the sharp smell of chile and lime, bursting up from its peeling of husk like a flower, and this she proffers towards him. Hardhands feels a southerly rumble, and suddenly his mouth is full of anticipatory liquid. Dinner was a long long time ago, and he has always loved hot corn, and how can one little ear of corn hurt him? And anyway, don’t he deserve some solace? He fumbles in his pocket, but no divas does he slap; he’s the Pontifexa’s grandson, and not in the habit of paying for his treats.

  The Dolly sees his gesture and smiles. Her lips are glistening golden, as yellow as her silky hair, and her teeth, against the glittering, are like little nuggets of white corn.

  “A kiss for the corn, and corn for a kiss,

  One sweet with flavor, the other with bliss” she sings, and the other Dollies join in her harmony, the bells on their square skirts jingling. The hot corn glistens like gold, steamy and savory, dripping with yum. A kiss is a small price to pay to sink his teeth into savory. He’s paid more for less, and he leans forward, puckering.

  The Dollies press in, wiggling their oily fingers and humming their oily song, enfolding him in the husk of their skirts, their hands, their licking tongues. His southerly rumble is now a wee bit more southerly, and it’s not a rumble, it’s an avalanche. The corn rubs against his lips, slickery and sweet, spicy and sour. The chili burns his lips, the butter soothes them, he kisses, and then he licks, and then he bites into a bliss of crunch, the squirt of sweetness cutting the heat and the sour. Never has he tasted anything better, and he bites again, eagerly, butter oozing down his chin, dripping onto his shirt. Eager fingers stroke his skin, he’s engorged with the sugar-sweetness, so long denied, and now he can’t get enough, each niblet exploding bright heat in his mouth, his tongue, his head, he’s drowning in the sweetness of it all.

  And like a thunder from the Past, he hears ringing in his head the Pontifexa’s admonition, oft repeated to a whiny child begging for hot corn, spun sugar, spicy taco, or fruit cup sold on the street in marvelous array but always denied because: you never know where it’s been. An Admonition drummed into his head with painful frequency; all the other kidlets snacked from the street vendors with reckless abandon, but not the Pontifexa’s grandson, whose tum was deemed too delicate for common food and the common bugs it might contain.

  Drummed well and hard it would seem, to suddenly recall now, with memorable force, better late than never. Hardhands snaps open eyes and sputters kernels. Suddenly he sees true what the Corn Dollies’ powerful glamour has disguised under a patina of butter and spice: musky kernels and musky skin. A fuzz of little black flies encircles them. The silky hair, the silky husks are slick with mold. The little white corn teeth grin mottled blue and green, and corn worms spill in a white wiggly waterfall from gaping mouths.

  “Arrgg,” says our hero, managing to keep the urp down, heroically. He yanks and flutters, pulls and yanks, but the knobby fingers have him firm, stalk to stalk. He heaves, twisting his shoulders, spinning and ducking: now they have his shirt, but he is free.

  “Απελιγαζε!” he bellows at the top of his magickal lungs. The word explodes from his head with an agonizing aural thud. The Corn Dollies sizzle and shriek, but he doesn’t wait around to revel in their popping. Now he’s a fleet-footed fancy boy, skedaddling as fast as skirts will allow; to hell with heroics, there’s no audience about, just get the hell out. He leaves the shrieking behind him, fast on booted heels, and it’s a long heaving pause later, when the smell of burned corn no longer lingers on the air, that he stops to catch breath and bearings. His heart, booming with Gramatica exertion, is starting to slow, but his head, still thundering with a sugary rush, feels as though it might implode right there on his shoulders, dwindle down to a pinprick of pressure, diamond hard. The sugar pounds in his head, beating his brain into a ploughshare of pain sharp enough to cut a furrow in his skull.

  He leans on a scaly wall and sticks a practiced finger down his gullet. Up heaves corn, and bile, and blackened gunk, and more gunk. The yummy sour-lime-butter taste doesn’t have quite the same delicious savor coming up as it did going down, nor is his shuddering now quite so delightful. He spits and heaves, and heaves and spits, and when his insid
e is empty of everything, including probably most of his internal organs, he feels a wee bit better. Not much, but some. His ears are cold. He puts a quivery hand to his head; his hat is gone.

  The chapeau is not the only thing to disappear. Tiny Doom’s tiny footprints, too, have faded. Oh for a drink to drive the rest of the stale taste of rotting corn from his tonsils. Oh for a super duper purge to scour the rest of the stale speed of sugar from his system. Oh for a bath, and bed, and deep sweet sleep. He’s had a thin escape, and he knows it: the Corn Sirens could have drained him completely, sucked him as a dry as a desert sunset, and Punto Finale for the Pontifexa’s grandson. Now it’s going to take him weeks of purifications, salt-baths, and soda enemas to get back into whack. Irritating. He’s also irked at the loss of his shirt; it was brand-new, he’d only worn it once, and the lace on its sleeves had cost him fifty-eight divas in gold. And his hat, bristling with angel feathers, its brim bigger than an apple pancake. He’s annoyed at himself, sloppy-sloppy-sloppy.

  The coldfire track has sputtered, and no amount of Gramatica kindling can spark it alight; it’s too late, too gone, too long. Alfonso, too, is absent of summoning, and when Hardhands closes his eyes and clenches his fists to his chest, sucks in deep lungs of air, until the Current bubbles in his veins like the most sparkling of red wines, he knows why: the Current has flowed so high now that even the lowliest servitors can ride it without assistance, is strong enough to avoid constraint and ignore demand. He’d better find the kid soon. With the Current this high, only snackers will now be out; anyone without skill or protection—the snackees—will have long since gone home, or been eaten. Funtime for humans is over, and funtime for Others just begun.