One might think I did as well! Another shuffling of my activity occurred, putting me in a house, but not the right one. I'd barged right into the residence of Godwin Hammerstein, our playwright who hadn't yet staged anything in Quarantown. Not that that mattered! I could see any play of his I wished regardless of whether or not he'd written it yet; all I had to do was show up on the exactly right wrong night.

If I went there I must have had some reason, so I backtracked through my likely thought process. The poem. Of course I was there to ask him his thoughts on the prophetic poem, written by Byron, Shelley, or Wollstonecraft sometime in a future they never reached. Hammerstein wasn't a poet, but we didn't have one of those in Quarantown (channeling a dead one hardly makes me count). He was the closest.

Glossing over my disheveled appearance and heavy breathing, I hastily asked him what he thought of the sections I had memorized. To my surprise he guessed they were from a dramatic work, one perhaps meant for the stage, given that it read to him more like a speech, delivered from one character to another, than a poem expounding on a subject dispassionately.

This notion had me feeling like nothing more than a player, so I sought to preempt my stage directions by quickly thanking him for his expertise and excusing myself. The furs had not settled; if anything the garment had contracted about me, from the tension of prolonged cringing rather than fear.

Luckily the next door found was the one sought. The familiar scent of home, of downy duck feathers and sharpened silverware, soothed me some while leaving the furs distressed. Together we practically flew to the washroom and passed through the door.

Wanda was as well as could be expected given her condition, resting idly in the copper tub, though she'd switched sides in order to look across the room at her new guest, who had taken a chair from elsewhere (one that really shouldn't have been exposed to the warm damp of that air for very long) and sat herself down like she belonged.

In her lap was our tiny daughter Nepenthe, sat on a knee, eyes wheeling about the ceiling and watching the various moths there, searching for purchase in the creeping vines that had emerged from Wanda's swampy tub and climbed the wall. When one of them flew down and across the doorway she recognized me with a smile and a laugh that I could not return.

"Severin, is it closed?" Wanda asked without explaining the situation. My patience was gone, as if it had left for the Trojan War.

"No. I'm drawing a prophecy out of it first. Who is this?" My wife could have been furious with me for further disobedience, I fully expected it, but she was pretending to be unbothered in the process of projecting strength with the other party. Once I recognized Wanda wouldn't be shouting or lifting her head my eyes returned to our unwelcome guest. All at once I understood who I was looking at.

A face in its fifties, a spirit much older. Wearing burgundy with a tan under-layer where patterns of black ivy clung, like what you find when you peel a living blanket off an untended garden wall to learn what had lived there first. Her hair was down. A long face. A nutcracker mouth. She was a stiff presence, like a door that opened then refused to close. Wanda didn't need to identify her, but she gave all three of this heir of Cain's names.

"This is my mother, Excoria Vainglory Diatribe."

"I've been hearing so much about you Mr. Molochi," the woman said, smiling with the very teeth once stained with my prophetic poet's blood. There was none there now. She almost smelled of it, like dewy rusting iron. Her grin was nothing like my Wanda's, or little Nepenthe's, and not just because heirs never bore family resemblance.

"Pelts actually," I corrected, staking the early claim that I could willfully correct an heir. "Quarantown serves a higher law than that of man. Legal or not, my name is Pelts." Wanda hummed a chuckle.

"That's right my love. You see mother? That's what a real man looks like, be he Abel or Cain."

"What, furry?" the older woman joked. Wanda's furs were all standing on end, puffing me up like a cornered cat, which likely looked absurd.

"We weren't expecting you Lady Diatribe," I said as plainly as possible.

"Please Severin, call me mother, or," her eyes rolled up for a flash, "Mum even! If your name is Pelts then that's what I am. This was a surprise visit, but more for me than for you, seeing as it's the first time you two have left the gate open."

"You smelled my illness a country away," Wanda grumbled. Her head went back to gliding in circles around the tub, like a dollop of oil. "Came scampering just to bother us at the worst possible time."

"Is Nepenthe comfortable?" I asked my Venus tumbled off her half shell and into the waters.

"Do you not think our child can handle her feeble old grandmother?" Wanda asked in turn. "She wouldn't dare pluck a hair from her precious head. Her throat would be torn out before it hit the tile."

"It is lovely tile," Excoria commented as she bounced my child on her knee. Given the lack of resemblance I had to remind myself she was her granddaughter. This was the family I'd deliberately taken up with, something I should never forget, given that I murdered Wanda's brother on our first night out, and had then made a habit of it.

"Before I forget," I said, turning back to Wanda, who only eyed me briefly as she drifted across the tub, "I took care of our little mosquito problem while I was out. We won't have to worry about those little bloodsuckers anymore." It was impossible to know what affection Excoria had for any of her children, so it seemed prudent not to tell her one of her sons was buried nearby in an unmarked grave. Through the delirium Wanda managed to catch my meaning. A slight hiccup in her swim confirmed that she had forgotten about Ruthven entirely.

"Excellent," was all she said in response. "Mum was just about to tell me what she wants, now that she has met her first grandchild."

"Hopefully not my last!" Excoria burbled as baby talk in Nepenthe's ear, which disturbed me greatly despite my child's oblivious delight. Here was a woman who had abandoned all of her children to the wilderness as soon as they dropped, and technically it wasn't clear if Wanda had ever come face to face with her before now. They spoke like they had, but heirs made many assumptions, including with familiarity. "An heir can have many at a time Severin," she lightly scolded me. "You'll have to put more effort into it."

"Nepenthe requires my full attention."

"I suppose she would. It's a lot to ask of someone such as yourself."

"Do not insult my husband again," Wanda snarled, surging forward so that her arms hung limply out of the tub and water splashed between her and her mother. The already dark tile became a glossy abyss between them. "I shall treat it the same as plucking a hair from my daughter's head."

"I only meant on top of his regular duties." She threw up her hands and leaned back; my chair creaked. The wood really shouldn't get that moist. "I'm here watching the baby because he was out prophesying," she looked my way, "as you should be Severin. That's what you're good for. Be it seed," she gripped Nepenthe's waist and shook playfully, "or scrying, a man gives you something to invest in. Then he disappears, because when the dust settles and you get back into the work of the everyday he can only be an obstruction."

"Severin prepares my every meal," Wanda contradicted smugly. "He mends my clothes, throws me parties, dotes on our darling child whom we love very much." In her sloppy bragging her heavy-lidded eyes slid over me and I felt some of her healthier lust. My skittering heart pined for a near future I hadn't seen, but knew was coming. Soon those red scores would fade and vanish. "He is an everyday worker, and the only reason I let him out of the moment to dabble in the future is so that he can fetch me a prophecy from the market."

"You said you were just out getting one, didn't you?" Excoria asked pointedly, and I confirmed it with a squeak and a nod. "And you hardly look flustered. Some oracles I've known have to go to the brink of death to really catch that last part, which I'm sure you know is the most important. Sometimes the last word changes the entire meaning. But not a drop of sweat on you, so it must not be a very long prophecy. Is it for tomorrow? What you'll be making us for breakfast perhaps?"

"It's unfinished," I said. Her insults could not harm me; only Wanda had that power. "I was drawn away by concern, but Wanda has everything under control here, same as always."

"Only half a prophecy, that explains it," Excoria said with enough sugar to turn coffee into sand. Wanda rose halfway out of the tub, supported by nothing but rage, her naked body only barely cloaked in the vegetation she'd imported for the beleaguered toads and fish. Throng's slashes pulsed fierce red down her sides.

"I warned you!"

"No, I've come to warn you!" Excoria fired back. She too stood, and in the process threw our child across the chamber, care only shown in the direction. I lunged and flung Wanda's furs forward so they could shape into a cradle and gently catch Nepenthe. Once she was swaddled against my chest I backed away, relieved to see nothing but more giggling on her face, even as Excoria Vainglory launched into her diatribe.

"What business do you think you have in founding this place!? Two hundred years since another heir even tried to build a stationary house of worship, and it's only become exponentially more difficult with all these machines and newspapers! If it were an intelligent thing to do I would've tried myself!

Do you know how many other families have shown up to berate me for not stopping you? Quarantown, Quarantown, Quarantown, it's all I hear these days. You'll draw so much Abel-bodied attention that we'll all get hunted out of the brush. And with that much scrutiny about your damn father will never drop his guard, which means I'll never find that bastard and give him what he so richly deserves!

As your mother I order you to destroy this place. Burn it down. Take your oracle over there and drown him!"

"Mother!" I blurted haughtily, pretending to be offended. Wanda cackled.

"And as your daughter I say never! It's a good thing you didn't raised me; you would've ruined perfection." Toads leapt out of the tub in shocking numbers and bounced across the tile like a fountain of disembodied warts. "You missed it, passed it like a gallstone, but my people will know it! My husband will know it, my child will know it, the whole rotten world will return to ripe when they know me: Wanda Blasphemer Pelts!"

"You'll drown in that tub first!" Excoria shrieked. Both of these creatures jerked forward, prepared to battle to the death in the washroom, but I intervened.

"Excuse me!" Both faces were hateful when they turned. "Do we not want to hear the prophecy before we do anything else?" It was the Lady Diatribe who pulled away first, straightening her hair with raking fingers and circling around behind the tub. Wanda sank back down, hooking her arms over the side to watcher her mother.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"He's right," the elder heir admitted without looking at me. "It could be an ill omen, which you might listen to since it's not the wisdom of your creator." Silence settled like dust, except for the slapping of toad bellies on smooth stone.

"Go and finish your work my love," Wanda ordered me. "Return as soon as it's done." I stood to leave. "Ah! Give me Nepenthe." She reached out, rather like a child herself, awaiting a promised gift.

"I'd rather-"

"Give me my baby! Don't worry, she already knows how to swim. I think it best I have her for the rest of mother's visit." That was difficult to argue with, so I took her over to the lip and handed her off, trying not to care that her little dress was not the best material to wet either. I'd probably be picking live toads out of the folds of her clothes for the next what-felt-like-a-month as well.

Wanda took her and held her close in a way she didn't often, as heir infants can subsist on solid foods immediately after birth. Seeing my goddess so, flushed with many different heats, able to bring grace even to fever, sharing her golden skin with the vulnerable being we had created was... more than enough to shore me up. No spirits could keep that prophecy from me if they tried. As I pulled away Wanda ran her hand across the furs I trailed.

"They look so good on you," she complimented.

"Thank you love. I'll be back with a basket stuffed with good tidings." Confirming the skepticism on Lady Diatribe's face was utterly unnecessary, so I just continued out with as much force in each footfall as could be mustered, and I didn't stop with the stomping until I was well out of earshot, but as I had taken into consideration the exaggerated range of the heir senses, that was barely outside the mine's entrance.

I told myself the slain author had been waiting many years to complete this work; I'd better hop to it if I did not wish to poison the well that might provide all my future prophecies with disrespect. In I charged, after savoring the only moment between bouts of unnatural domineering confidence.

"Let us get right to the finale!" I bellowed before even reaching the precipice with waters below. The spirits would hear, and they would assemble. This was their first chance in a long while, presumably, to send anything out into the light of the world, and if they did not play their cards right with me I would see to it they didn't get another chance until the mammoths walked this planet once more.

As hoped they were there when I approached, each glowing in their distinct color, occupying the same points of stone jutting from the wall. Since they hadn't switched places I assumed they hadn't even moved, and further that it might be difficult for them to do so after taking near-shape. Their perches might have been their greatest connection to the material world, what was left of the heir ability to invest strength in objects and concepts.

"I don't want to hear a single rhyme out of any of you unless it's a line from my prophecy," I warned them with jabbing finger. Something cold and metal brushed my wrist, underneath the furs. Whatever it was I hadn't summoned it, so likely a suggestion from the garment itself.

"First we must discuss credit, what the key was, and who said it," the yellow one tested me, and I passed with flying colors, or should I say color, it being yellow. Out shot my palm, and from around it an animal trap with iron teeth on jangling chain. Wanda had used the weapon to disassemble an ornery skeleton, one half of one sibling, the worse half, and I saw no reason it couldn't be used on another sort of visitor from the grave.

Aiming for an amorphous blob merely of human body language felt futile, so I aimed instead for the tip of their perch, the rock exploding when the trap snapped shut around it. Yellow rained along with the rubble down into the dark currents, shouting lamentations all the way.

"As to the topic of credit that has just randomly occurred to me," I stressed, "the prophet in question is none other than Severin Pelts, and the author is the dead person you dredged up and brought to me, like a cat proud of a beheaded sparrow.

We will pool our powers, and in so doing learn the whole of the prophecy. You will reveal to me the author's name, and only then, only written under it, will be mentioned any colorful spirits of nature, order to be determined at a later date, and also randomly. These are the terms. Now begin before the others beat you to it! I'm not afraid to claim I saw a rainbow of a solitary hue!"

I clapped my hands to add to the urgency, with the side effect of the animal trap's chain swiftly retracting back into my sleeve. How I avoided losing a finger in the process is a mystery. Luckily the six remaining spirits were too afraid of falling behind each other to take note. Almost as one they leapt from their stony purchase, across the gap, and to me, clinging to Wanda's furs like squirrels in a windstorm. Now I was their connection, I felt it, and it would be all too easy to shake them off and consign them back to the caverns of the dead.

Together we recited the first half of the prophecy, what had led me into the cave in the first place, while I made every effort to open myself to the universe, to a colossal serpent that might have swam the black skies overhead, and to a future firmly embraced in the loving guiding furs of Wanda Blasphemer Pelts. What followed was only what could. The end.

"Though thy slumber may be deep,

Yet thy spirit shall not sleep,

There are shades which will not vanish,

There are thoughts thou canst not banish;

By a power to thee unknown,

Thou canst never be alone;

Thou art wrapped as with a shroud,

Thou art gathered in a cloud;

And for ever shall thou dwell

In the spirit of this spell.

From thy false tears I did distill

An essence which hath strength to kill;

From thy own heart I then did wring

The black blood in its blackest spring;

From thy own smile I snatch'd the snake,

For there it coil'd as in a brake;

From thy own lip I drew the charm

Which gave all these their chiefest harm;

In proving every poison known,

I found the strongest was thine own.

And on thy head I pour the vial

Which doth devote thee to this trial;

Nor to slumber, nor to die,

Shall be in thy destiny;

Though thy death shall still seem near

To thy wish, but as a fear;

Lo! the spell now works around thee,

And the clankless chain hath bound thee;

O'er thy heart and brain together

Hath the word been pass'd—now wither!"

Their work complete, the six spirits took the withering word as an order. One by one they released their grip on me, and I felt lighter each time despite their complete lack of substance. Once loosed they drifted out over the chasm, faded, and sank out of sight and mind. In a flash of panic I feared I wouldn't be able to properly credit the slain author or the couriers that brought his work to me, as I'd written nothing down, but the entire prophecy was just sitting in my mind, like furniture bolted to the wall, and I was reassured that it wasn't a matter of memory at all, but of conduction, the same way lighting passes through rods; it would remain within me until it was conducted elsewhere.

Suddenly weary, thin as an old sheet, my chest deflated. Being Wanda's proxy was terribly draining, and the situation was not helped by having to fulfill my chief disciple duties at the same time.

On my way out of the cave, into sun that did little to invigorate me, I recognized that the goal of prophecy was achieved, but wasn't necessarily any sort of salvation. All it consisted of was arcane prediction, one possible outcome encoded into the denied verse of a dead man. What role I played in its form and content was terribly muddy to me.

Were there others I could have drawn out, or different spirits to aid me? Had I successfully set us on the path to a better future than the one we would have found without my interference? All of the language sounded rather negative, like the casting of a curse. Could Wanda be harmed by hearing these words? Nepenthe? Was it now my sole duty to never repeat this dark future, denying it the ability to come to pass by letting it rot my insides until I fell over dead as its eternal imprisoning tomb?

Hopefully not. That was all I had the strength to think as I staggered my way back to my goddess. The stairs up to the washroom were most taxing, but I couldn't lean against a wall once I had presented myself, refusing as I did to show Excoria any weakness I did not need to.

Both of them stared at me expectantly, so I quickly divulged the entirety of the prophecy, unable to lend my voice any gravitas, for it would have caused me to cough or retch I think. Once it was complete it didn't bear so much weight in my soul, but the impression was still there, and perhaps would be for the rest of my days. Even if my experience should slip backward in time it would stay, which opened new pathways to making more predictions earlier... assuming we survived the consequences of this first one.

"Byron. Dreadful," Excoria said, but she was grinning. She gathered herself up and headed for the door, patting Nepenthe on the head on the way. "It seems my coming wasn't necessary after all. This Quarantown will sort itself out. Goodbye daughter, Severin." We let her pass without comment, and I felt when she was gone from our town like peace on the ear after a rooster's incessant crowing.

Her interpretation worried me. Only after she was gone from sight did I realize she had given me the author's name, not the spirits, though they had likely foreseen it. Lord Byron wrote those words, or would have if Excoria had not opened him up and let them spill into the world. Energies meant for that work had instead gone into her, into her brood, into Wanda, and thus into changing the trajectory of my very life.

Goriana, the consuming youngest sister, had access to all her victims' thoughts and memories. Excoria likely did as well. Somewhere in her lurked the entirety of Lord Byron and the other unfortunates of Diodati. Did that not grant her the greatest insight into the meaning of the words? Could she not taste their very essence whenever she pleased?

"What did she mean?" I asked, weary. Have I doomed us?"

"No Severin," Wanda assured me as she leaned over the side of the tub to free Nepenthe, who crawled toward the door herself. She was escorted by our eldest Mergini, who waddled out from behind the tub. There was no need to worry while she was a ward of his. "Mother reads into it what she wants, as do I, but it is we who will be in position to make it so. You have done well.

I... made the correct decision in revealing myself to Doppler... but it was done too hastily. The delirium it was, dearest, and it will not happen again. While I understand your decisions these past few days, and am proud of how you've fared, I do expect obedience as your default state of being. It is the only proof of your love that an heir can feel.

However, if you feel compelled to act similarly in the future, I know it will be with good reason, for I have honed you to your task perfectly, and to not trust you is to not trust myself. There will be no anger between us, only trust, and that is an order."

"You're welcome," I said brazenly, but with finality, letting her know it was a transition, the end to my frustrations with this whole tub-heated affair. I slipped off her furs, and to my surprise the rest of my clothes went with them. When I looked at Wanda she was beckoning me closer with a curling finger, one that tickled my soles.

"For now I will assume any cheek in your rebellion was purely a means to tantalize me," she growled, some of the old electricity flashing in her green eyes. Her freckles smoldered as a mask of coals, as if her mind had been struck by a meteor of carnal yearning. "My head is swimming Severin, come and swim with it."

Wonderful it was not to feel even a twig of resistance once more. I threw myself to her, let her pull me in like a crocodile sinking its prey. Locked together we tumbled deeper than the tub could have been, and in her passion I felt that she was finally on the mend.

We made love without surfacing, without drawing breath, sunk in her dark fires. I would never question how. All scrutiny was best saved for the poison of prophecy, to be carefully consumed at a later date. As late as I could make it, for there was nothing better than the now of unrelenting love.

The End

Wanda and Severin will return in

Heirs of Cain

Venus in Peril