Cruel Beauty(34)
Author: Rosamund Hodge

14

That’s all I could see at first: brilliant white-gold light that dazzled my eyes so I had to squint and blink back tears. Then my eyes adjusted, and I caught my breath in wonder. We stood in a field of grass and yellow flowers that stretched out to the horizon, where it met not the parchment sky I had always known but pure, bright blue.

I looked up. Only for a moment, before the absolute light stabbed my eyes and forced me to look down again, purple and green blobs swimming in my vision, but it was enough. I had seen the sun.

I had seen the sun.

But that was impossible. The sun was gone, lost beyond whatever infinities separated Arcadia from the rest of the world. I could not be seeing it, could not be feeling its warmth prickle down my nose like the heat from a fireplace.

I could not, and yet I was.

“Are we . . .” I began softly.

Ignifex set me down. “No,” he said. “It’s another room. An illusion.” He sat down and flung himself back on the grass. “But it looks almost the same.” He sounded wistful.

I turned around slowly. Behind me stood a narrow wooden doorframe, through which I could see the library, but otherwise the illusion was perfect. A breeze ruffled the flowers and whispered against my neck; it had the same delicate immensity as the breezes I had felt running through the fields around the village, and it smelled of summer, warm grass, and wide-open spaces.

Yet despite the sameness of the air, despite my knowing it was a room, it still seemed vaster than the open hills of Arcadia. At first I wasn’t sure why; I thought it simply might be the blue sky or the brilliant sunlight, but then I realized it was the shadows. In Arcadia, the sun cast soft, diffuse shadows that were like a murmur of darkness. Here the shadows were sharp and crisp as those cast by a Hermetic lamp without its shade—but the light here was infinitely brighter, clearer, and more alive. It felt as if I had lived all my life inside a flat painting and only now had I stepped into the real world.

I couldn’t help myself. I spun around, gulping great breaths of the sunlit air, until I suddenly realized that I must look like a foolish child. I stopped and glanced down at Ignifex. He lay on his back, gazing up with eyes slitted against the sun. The wind rustled his damp hair; his face looked more relaxed and human than I had ever seen it.

He had told me the truth: he had brought me to someplace warm, a peaceful, golden place with a sky untorn by shadows. He had rewarded me, though last night I had tried to let the darkness eat him.

I sat down beside him. “You remember the world from before,” I said.

He didn’t move. “That’s a safe bet, since I’m the demon who tore you from it.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You didn’t ask a question.”

“So you don’t remember.”

“. . . I remember the night,” he said softly. “Do your lore books mention stars?”

I’ve held the nearest thing we have left between my hands, I thought, but there was no chance I would ever tell him how much I knew about Shade. Instead I laced my fingers together and said calmly, “‘The candles of the night.’ Yes.”

It was a line from one of Hesiod’s minor lyrics; I had pored over the page a hundred times, mouthing the words and trying to imagine flames in the night sky.

He snorted. “Your lore is stupider than I thought. They weren’t like candles. They were . . . Have you seen lamplight shine through dusty air, setting the dust motes on fire?” He waved a hand. “Imagine that, spread across the night sky—but ten thousand motes and ten thousand times brighter, glittering like the eyes of all the gods.”

His hand dropped to the grass. I realized I had stopped breathing as his words danced through my head, sparking visions.

“If you loved the true sky so much,” I said, “why did you seal yourself in here with us?”

“No doubt malice aforethought.”

“You don’t remember,” I said slowly. “You’ve lost your memories.”

“Well, I don’t remember springing from the womb of Tartarus.”

“Do you remember your name?”

His mouth thinned.

“I suppose it makes sense that you want your wives to guess,” I went on. “What happens to you if someone gets it right?”

“Then I don’t have masters anymore.” He rolled onto his side and smiled at me. “Want to save me, lovely princess?”

“I’m not a princess.”

“Then I shall continue to languish.” He lay back, waving a hand lethargically. “Alas.”

“You don’t sound too worried.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learnt as the Lord of Bargains, it’s that knowing the truth is not always a kindness.”

“That’s a convenient philosophy for a demon that lives by lies.”

He snorted. “I tell almost nothing but the truth. And how many truths have ever comforted you?”

I remembered Father telling me, “Our house owes a debt and you will pay it back.” I remembered Aunt Telomache saying, “Your duty is to redeem your mother’s death.” I’d heard those truths, in deeds if not in words, every day of my life.

I remembered my last words to Astraia, and the look on her face when she learnt the truth about me and the Rhyme.

“None,” I said. “But at least I’ve never learnt that I lived a lie.”

He sat up. “Let me tell you a story about what happens when mortals learn the truth. Once upon a time, Zeus killed his father, Kronos—but since he was a god, nobody seems to blame him for it.”

“I have read the Theogony,” I said with dignity. “I know how the gods came to be.”

“Then you know that the demon Typhon was one of the monsters that fought to avenge Kronos.”

I shivered, my throat closing up. Last night, he had called the shadow-demons Children of Typhon. They were still waiting behind that door, behind the ragged sky, ready to drag me back—one is one and all alone—

Ignifex was watching me as closely as a cat stalking a mouse. “Yes,” he said quietly, reading the fear off my face. “Typhon started a family.”

I forced myself to meet his gaze. “I already knew that,” I gritted out. “The Theogony calls him ‘Father of Monsters.’ And Zeus threw all the monsters into Tartarus. How did these ones get into your house?”

“Well, that’s a funny story. When Zeus finally forced the Children of Typhon into the abyss of Tartarus, he begged his mother, Gaia, to prevent them from ever wreaking havoc on the earth again.” His voice softened, losing its mocking edge, and slid like a silken ribbon across my skin. “So Gaia enclosed all of Tartarus within a great tower; and she put the tower into a house, and the house into a chest, and the chest into a conch, and the conch into a nut, and the nut into a pearl, and the pearl she put into a beautiful enameled jar that she sealed up with a cork and wax.”