by T. A. Pratt
“Mmm. Of course, there were factors that made her into what she is—”
“Yes, fine, point taken.” The Bride looked at her mother’s weeping hell and moved her hands.
The image on the screen changed. A white farmhouse—the barely-remembered home of her grandparents, who’d died when Marla was just a little girl, the house seized to pay back taxes, no inheritance at all, to her mother’s bitter dismay. Gloria turned, and became younger, but didn’t stop in her twenties, this time—she became a little girl again, in the front yard, picking daisies. Her own mother, Marla’s grandmother, stepped out on the porch, and called, “Suppertime, sweetie! Sloppy Joes, and butterscotch ice cream for dessert, your favorite!”
Young Gloria ran up to the porch, unafraid, and full of joy, anticipating a future that would last forever.
The Bride waved her hand again and the screens went black.
“That was very compassionate of —” Death began.
“Oh, shut up,” the Bride said, and returned to contemplating the glowing specks that dotted the infinite blackness of reality, each one casting its meager but indomitable light.
Do Better
This is one of two original stories in the book, and a further demonstration of Marla’s fraught relationship with her divine half.
Marla Mason opened her eyes and saw a large white bird perched on a railing, and beyond that, water under either a late afternoon or early morning sun, and beyond that, a city, and looming farther still, a mountain peak capped with snow. The air was cool and moist and she sat at a redwood picnic table, on a wooden bench. She stood and turned in a slow 360-degree circle, and looked at the buildings and trees, and counted the bridges over the river, and determined that she was in Portland, at the riverside park near the Saturday Market. The water was the Willamette River, and that mountain was Mt. Hood, so she had her directions figured out, which put the sun in perspective, so she knew it was morning rather than afternoon. A family, with a blonde mom and three blond(e) children, sat at a table nearby eating piroshkis, some of them shaped like salmon. “Excuse me,” Marla said. “Do you know today’s date?”
The mom smiled and looked at her phone. “It’s the 22nd.”
Marla nodded slowly. “Thank you.” She’d gotten a look at the phone screen, so she didn’t have to embarrass herself by confirming the month too.
Something was very wrong. Marla was the mortal consort of the god of Death, and they had a deal: she spent a month in the underworld at his side, doing godly things, and a month in the waking world, dealing with her mortal affairs and trying to make the world a better place and herself a better person. But her month wasn’t up. She had another week in the land of the dead. What the hell was she doing back here already? And why in Portland? Last thing she remembered she’d been in Hawaii, stepping through a door to spend a month ruling over a kingdom of souls with her husband.
She walked away from the table, along the river, and plunged into the marketplace itself, closed off streets jammed with tented booths selling tie-dyed everything, oil paintings of wolves, various essential oils, artisanal pickles, driftwood sculptures, and handmade pottery ranging from the competent to the sublime. People, people everywhere. She went farther, onto the edges of the market, beyond a fountain crowded with skater kids and a (shudder) a mime, and steadily away from people, ending up past a row of port-a-potties, in the shadow of the back side of a brick building near trash bins and splintery wooden pallets. A glance around assured her she was being watched by neither people nor cameras.
Then she whipped around in a fast circle and reached out and slapped her palms together, catching the thing she’d sensed following her before her hands. The thing writhed, but her grip was sure, and she stared at it, genuinely shocked. She’d been prepared for something supernatural, but this was ridiculous: a human skull, flickering with green flames, floating at head-height, staying just behind her head until she’d trapped it. The flames didn’t burn her, which meant they were for show, or she was immune to fire. That would be useful to figure out. “Can you talk?” she said.
“Certainly.” The skull’s jaw didn’t move. Its voice was amused and faintly British.
“Better start.” She squeezed harder. The skull didn’t exactly feel fragile, but she wasn’t exactly weak.
“I am a demon, created by the queen of the dead. I was sent as a sort of... reverse psychopomp, to guide you back to the land of the living, and assist you in your work here.”
“I’m the queen of the dead, Skullsworth.”
“Close. My full name is Cholmondeley Twisleton Skullsworth. Though I couldn’t tell you why.”
“I’m not saying all that. Or even remembering it. I’ll give you one syllable: you get to be Chum.”
“As you wish. Regarding your objection, Ms. Mason, you are merely the mortal form of the queen of the dead, which is a bit like being the core of an apple, or perhaps just a pip: you are part of the thing, but not the thing entire.”
Marla nodded. She’d been warned about a certain level of compartmentalization. In her mortal form, she wouldn’t remember her time ruling in Hell, partly because her puny human brain couldn’t process the experiences; when she sat on her throne of onyx or whatever, she was enhanced. She let go of the skull. “Okay, Chum. So my bigger self sent you to guide me. We’ll pretend I believe that for now. Guide away. What am I doing here when my month isn’t even up?”
“Something escaped from Hell,” Chum said. “We tracked it here, to Oregon, but then lost track of it. You’ve been sent to bring it back, or, failing that, to kill it—if something born of the primordial chaos at the bottom of the world can be said to live. I hope it can be said to live. That’s where I was born, too.”
“Why send me? I’m the ruler. Don’t we have, I don’t know, demon-catchers? Or can’t we just make the demon cease to be by thinking at it really hard?”
“Normally,” Chum said. “But this demon was created by the old god of death.”
Marla grunted. She’d met that guy. He was a megalomaniacal dick, even for a god. She preferred her husband, the new god of death, who’d taken over the underworld for a term that would last at least centuries and possibly millennia. Even gods got old and worn out and had to be replaced, but the old god, the Sitting Death as they’d called him, had not gone gently. “So it’s old business, and we don’t have power over it. Great. I still don’t see why it’s my job, personally, to catch it. I got the idea that it was really important for me to be in the underworld, co-ruling.”
“It is,” Chum said. “The demon escaped because your partner Death could not handle watching the entire realm and shepherding all of the souls of the dead to their rewards or punishments or oblivions or reincarnations and tending to the seasons and all your other shared responsibilities by himself, and so containment was broken.”
“You’re saying the demon got away because I insisted on remaining in the mortal world and didn’t fulfill my duties as the bride of death?” Marla said.
“Yes.”
“So you’re saying it’s my fault.”
“Well... that’s what the queen of the underworld thought. I steadfastly have no opinion on the matter.”
Crap. Marla started to cross her arms, then noticed something on the inside of her right wrist: two words, one on top of the other, in blocky black script:
DO
BETTER
“Oh what the hell?” She rubbed at the text, but it wasn’t written in ink: it was indelible, a tattoo. “What’s this supposed to mean?”
“I believe it’s a sort of... motivational aid.” The skull bobbed a little, moving a few inches farther away, as if in fear of being punched (which was not an unreasonable fear).
“It’s a patronizing guilt trip is what it is. I know I wasn’t perfect. I made some mistakes.”
“You broke the underlying structure of the multiverse once, as I understand it,” the skull said. “Various of your friends and allies died at the hands of your e
nemies. You were exiled from the city you were sworn to protect.”
“I saved that city multiple times,” she said.
“I know that, too,” the skull said. “My queen doesn’t think you’re incompetent. It takes tremendous ability to actually damage the multiverse, and even more to help set it right. She thinks you’re strong, clever, ferocious, intrepid, and other fine things, you’re just also... intemperate. She hopes you’ll take the opportunity provided by your mortal months on Earth, and by this mission, to be more thoughtful about your actions.”
“You keep saying she like she’s not an aspect of me.” Marla finished crossing her arms and began scowling.
“She looks rather different to you,” Chum said. “Black eyes, black tongue, skin like snow, teeth like spearheads, a gown of spiderwebs and snow, and a belt of skulls, the latter I gather rather traditional.”
“So in my goddess form I look like my imaginary older sister who got way into Sisters of Mercy and hung out at Goth clubs too much?”
“She looks a bit younger than you, actually—”
“Shut up, Chum.” Marla started stalking back through the Saturday Market, her eyes on the distant prospect of real city streets that weren’t choked by slow-moving herds of pedestrian tourists and bargain-hunters. “Float beside me and tell me what I need to know about this demon.”
“Certainly. In the underworld, under the old god’s rule, it was a guardian of the borders, meant to prevent souls from escaping back to the land of the living, and to keep mortal adventurers and explorers who’d found routes to the world below from entering the realm. He had a fearsome aspect—imagine a great hound, the size of a horse, flesh a spectral gray, with a segmented tail like a scorpion’s, tipped with a thorn trident dripping vile poison from one point, burning acid from another, and a wasting contagion from the third. With a head something like a lamprey, a round mouth as wide as a manhole, full of row upon row of glistening teeth, down a throat of impossible depth. Despite the lack of eyes and mouth, he could smell and see his prey, and track them endlessly.”
“Sounds like your basic chimera manticore mash-up crap,” Marla said. “Does this leech-dog have a name?”
“Gorgo.”
Marla laughed out loud. “Seriously? Gorgo?”
Chum said, rather stiffly, “You certainly are judgmental about names. It’s a diminutive of ‘demogorgon,’ I believe.”
“Gorgo. The world never ceases to astonish. What’s his deal?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was only an occult detective for a minute, but I’ve read enough mysteries to know that it helps to know your target. He got out of Hell. What’s his goal now?”
“The only goal we know of was... escaping Hell. He managed that. But Gorgo was not a nice creature in the underworld—he was known as Gorgo the Tormentor, and his specialty was torturing any humans he caught transgressing, and any souls that tried to flee. He is by far the most powerful demon to walk the Earth in centuries, if not millennia.”
“So no discernible motivations. That’s great. He shouldn’t be hard to find, anyway, horse-sized canines with eel heads probably make the news—”
Chum made a throat-clearing sound, impressive given his lack of a throat. “Like all creatures born of the primordium, Gorgo’s shape is... variable. Demons are normally held firm in the form imparted to them by the gods who create them, but since the god who made Gorgo is dead, he has... gained a certain amount of freedom.”
“He can shapeshift,” Marla said.
“He can shapeshift,” Chum agreed.
“Could be anybody. Could’ve passed him on the street.”
“Not impossible, though I am informed my flame will glow blue in the presence of any creature made of chaos.”
“What’s the range on your Gorgo-sense?”
“Perhaps... six feet?”
“Super useful. Her majesty mega-Marla couldn’t do better than that?”
“If I could shrug, I would be shrugging. I do not know the queen’s capabilities, or her motivations. Perhaps Gorgo is gifted at hiding his nature. Perhaps my queen thought you would enjoy a challenge.”
“Usually I just hate other people. Today I hate myself.” She glared at her tattooed wrist. “She really thinks she’s better than me.”
“She is a goddess, with insight and a scope of vision well beyond mortal—”
“Remember when I said shut up? That was a good time. Let’s go back to then.” Marla thought ferociously as she walked past an unnecessary number of bicycle shops, doughnut shops, and vintage musical instrument emporiums. So. There was a demon, somewhere, that could look like a human or a dog or, who knows, a fish-shaped piroshky. She was in a strange city, and she didn’t know any of the local sorcerers—probably a bunch of blackberry mages and rain wizards and bullshit like that. She could make contact with the local adepts if need be, but sorcerers were all egos and bluster and hidden agendas, so she’d just as soon not. That meant she was on her own. Gorgo was probably immune to normal divination techniques, though she’d give it a try. If Bradley and Rondeau were here she’d use them to summon an oracle, but Marla lacked their talents and sensitivities, and unless there was a really potent supernatural presence around, she wouldn’t even notice them, let alone entice them to notice her. She might as well get started gathering the materials she’d need. Something alive, to power the spell with dissipating life-energy; something old and local, to connect to the depths of time and place; salt. If she got a knife she could go down to the sound and find a fish and a seashell and do the divination right there on the sand—
She patted her pockets. No knife. No money, either. Godsdamn it. All she had was a floating novelty Halloween ornament. She glanced at Chum. “Why are you even here? Her majesty could have sent me with a note in my pocket, and a glowing pendant or something, and fulfilled your entire function. The whole floating skull thing is over the top.”
Chum bobbed in what must have been a nod. “It was decided that you do better when you are not alone. That it benefits you to have someone to bounce ideas off of, to argue with, to disagree with, to be annoyed by—that the interactions sharpen you and make you more effective in the field.”
Marla wanted to object, to say that she liked working alone and did better without people (or hover-skulls) getting in her way, but thinking back, she’d achieved her most impressive feats while running around with friends, apprentices, and allies like Bradley Bowman, Rondeau, and Pelham... even if all of them irritated her to a lesser or greater degree, on a scale from “Bradley to Rondeau.” Sometimes they’d even helped, or at least not hindered her much. “I’ll grant your premise in general,” she said, “but not in this specific, because I don’t know what the point of an invisible skull with a fire that doesn’t even burn even is.”
“I don’t burn you,” Chum said placidly. “And an invisible companion who is capable of interacting with the physical world could be helpful, after all.”
“Like when?”
“Like after you get kidnapped,” Chumley said, just before two figures in black motorcycle helmets seized her, pulled a black pillowcase over her head, and stabbed her in the neck with a syringe.
She didn’t pass out or anything, which was interesting—were they incompetent, or was Marla rocking some impressive protection magic she didn’t know about? She was a little mad at herself for letting herself be taken—she’d been too preoccupied by her mission and being mad at her goddess-self to pay proper attention to her surroundings. Not that she’d had a reason to expect trouble like this: who could possibly know she was in Portland? She considered attempting to beat the information out of them, but they stank of “underling” to her. She was curious to see where this was going, so she went limp and made herself the most awkward dead weight possible as they dragged her away.
Marla was so bored. She bounced around in the back of a pickup truck for hours, in total silence, moving from smooth highways to bumpy back roads, unable to see anyt
hing. She eventually took a nap. She woke up when someone finally spoke above her, a deep male voice, but nervous. “Should we dose her again? Our god said she was dangerous.” He was sitting in the back of the truck with her.
“We gave her enough tranquilizers to drop a Bengal tiger.” Another voice, this one female, but more muffled: the driver, probably, talking to the other kidnapper through the open window at the back of the truck cab. “Anyway, we’re almost there.”
So. These lackeys worked for some god, apparently. Marla had met a few gods. As a rule they were weird and thought too highly of themselves. She couldn’t think of any who’d want to kidnap her.
She considered. They were almost there, wherever there was, and it was possible she’d be dumped into a sacrificial murder pit or something straight away, so maybe she should make a move before that, and creep up on this purported god unawares. The fact that she was very bored made such a plan appealing, too. They hadn’t tied her up, which was really stupid. She could easily—
Are you awake now? Chum’s voice spoke in her mind, an experience she found deeply unsettling. She hated telepathy. Marla didn’t like sharing a plate of French fries. She didn’t like sharing a bathroom. She didn’t like sharing an elevator. Sharing her thoughts was a hundred times worse.
I’m awake, she thought. I was never not awake. You’re telepathic?
Only for you. My queen thought it might be advantageous for us to be able to speak silently.
We could have been chatting all this time? Not that I love talking to you, but it would have beat silence.
I thought you’d been knocked out! You went limp!
I was faking, she thought. You floating spectral flame skulls are so naïve. Thanks for letting me look like a maniac babbling to myself as I walked through the Saturday Market, by the way.
I may have been taking petty revenge for your rudeness, Chum said. Isn’t it fascinating that I’m capable of petty revenge? My queen did such an excellent job creating me. I’m so well-rounded!
Of course you’re rounded. You’re a skull. Are you in the truck?
