And vanishing is something I would've much rather done than take the handle of our washroom door and open it, for what I must assume was actually the second time after the departure of Goblinry.
Recall the instability of my memory in time, something taken so for granted before Wanda that I never even thought of it as one of my senses. In happier healthier times her grip was perfectly measured, having little effect beyond providing me a sort of euphoric calm without upsetting the flow of my life. That calm, one of the boundless parts of my love for her, had only the side effect of preventing me from calculating the date, or reading a clock, or writing down the hour. All very minor. Until she fell sick.
Incoherent, agitated, distracted by the effort of turning the tub into a functioning miniature of Quarantown, Wanda was no longer managing my place in time properly. This was the only conclusion I could draw when I turned away from Devorgoil, let myself in, and found that Wanda wasn't alone.
I'm not referring to any of the animals that were still present. It was a different animal showing golden teeth, pretending it was a grin: Doppler Burstyn. Now consider this, Devorgoil had always appeared somewhat spectral to me, and either could not or would not don a perfect disguise. If he had been in there moments before, discussing sensitive matters of primal divinity with a gobsmacked Burstyn standing off to the side, some impact of that would've shown on the man's face.
He looked smugger than ever, not disbelieving, forcing me to rapidly reorient myself in chronology. What I was experiencing was the second of two events nearly identical up to this point, which I believe had occurred in a few other instances. I recalled a handful of times where I ate a midday meal, with Wanda further from me than usual, and wound up eating it twice, leaving the kitchen or dining room only to, with a hiccup in my awareness, circle back and sit down for another serving of something completely different.
There was even one instance of my luncheon not taking until the fifth time, and by then I was worried I was trapped between one end of a loaf of bread and the other. I sat down, to a full steaming bowl of soup and bread I did not remember making, and even as my stomach growled I felt I was about to explode, like I couldn't possibly eat another bite. Indeed I didn't, freeing myself only by leaving the food there to waste, which pained me greatly.
I had to accept that with Wanda sick these events were no longer anomalous. Stuttering. Stumbling. Tripping on a rock in the woods only to splash into the middle of the ocean. Composing myself as quickly as I could, I asked what on Earth the man was doing in there while my wife was stark naked in the bath, as if I was a simple linear man and that was my primary concern.
"Drop the pleasantries old boy!" Doppler said. Nobody but him would call an implied accusation of impropriety 'pleasantries'. "The game's up! I always knew there was something funny about you two; I just thought you were killing people and burying them in your cellar or some such skulduggery. To think, I've had a goddess keeping an eye on me ever since I got here."
I turned to Wanda hurt, angry. Him? The first person to learn her nature in Quarantown was the man in possession of the worst nature in Quarantown! In my study was a stack of lists, possible orders in which she might reveal herself most seamlessly, recruit the best people in the best sequence under the advice of her chief disciple.
Better to tell the mayor of London than to tell him. She'd shown little inclination toward him before, leading me to believe the sickness had driven her that much closer to the edge of reason, but I quickly realized there was another factor when Wanda, through her delirium, managed to read my emotional state.
"This is what happens when you do not follow my orders in a timely fashion," she said, flippant, a most unexpected tone for her to take. How could I be expected to do anything in a timely fashion when I was barely-in-timely!? Think, I reminded myself. I'd been accused of disobedience, which meant I'd already told her not to close the mine shaft and why, just after Devorgoil left and before Burstyn arrived, presumably summoned by her. She had rejected my plea, found the poetry of the cave unconvincing, or perhaps convincing of the urgency of its closure. Yes, that was likely it; she was hostile to whatever entities had a part in my inspiration. We could discuss it further and for the first time, once Doppler was gone.
"Our goddess here tells me that closing my mine was no mere request, but an imperative for our safety," the man said, strolling around behind the tub, touching hanging flowers and moss as if testing wind chimes in a showroom of fragile crystal. "Now that I know I'll have the boys bring in the explosives immediately."
"No you won't," I countered.
"Yes he will," Wanda countered back. "I need to see bubbles bursting Severin." I had already defied her, and I would not have done so without good reason, so I trusted myself to remember that good reason at a later date. It was not hard to trust that forgetful man, not compared to this Wanda, who would choose as her chief disciple instead of me a gorilla that tested to see if every shiny rock was food.
"Don't be like that Severin," Doppler said jovially, making his way around the tub to me, leaning like a careening carriage around a tight curve. He smacked me on the shoulder, which quickly turned into stroking Wanda's furs the wrong way. No, he was not admiring them, was instead imagining what they might look like on his own silhouette. "I assure you I am fully committed. Being involved in something this grand, why it's like making my fortune all over again, but better! Disciples we're called, right my friend? And to think nobody else knows and I'm second in command!"
"That would be the chief disciple and the prophet," I corrected him doubly, "both of which are me." I slunk to the side, dropping his hand off my furs.
"Of course, of course, I meant second in command beside you," he said. "Our Wanda's a goddess, so she's not in command. She's in control. Her orders drop out of the sky as revelation! Bu-hah! I finally have a use for all that brimstone language the nuns used to try and scare me with. I'll let you two lovebirds hammer out the details while I fetch the brimstone proper." With that he finally left and I had what felt like my first moment alone with my wife in ten years.
"You're too concerned with my health," my Venus said from her waters, "and it's distracting you. You can't make me better any faster by reading me poems. Doppler will get the job done. You're still wearing my furs, not him."
"What do you think is in there that frightens you so?" I asked of the cave, cutting to the heart of the issue before my heart felt anymore cut.
"Nothing frightens me Severin. They wouldn't dare raise so much as a speck of foam in my ocean." She surveyed the surface for blemishes, pushed Mergini aside to check underneath him. Clear, but she still eyed the spot suspiciously.
"Who is they?"
"Manipulators lost to time," she said cryptically, "thinking they can still play the game. Perhaps they can still, but only enough to move a piece in amblush when nobody is looking." (It was of no importance then, but she'd just accidentally revealed to me one of the remaining mysteries of that game: how my pieces sometimes wound up where I didn't want them.) "Now that I'm not by your side they're trying to whisper in your ear my Severin, take what they can't even have."
"Do you mean... some kind of spirit lies in there? A ghost of Cain? More than one?"
"I will explain it when I am restored," she growled with narrowed eye before starting a dive that would outlast my patience. "You were to close it and wait for the answer, without question. So now you will have uncertainty."
There was plenty more on my mind, but she had gone deep into the simmering shadows, and refused to come back up until I departed, which I shortly did. What choice did I have, if I was going to stop Burstyn before he burst any further into my life? As I stormed off I was already aware I was about to do something I had hoped to never do in my life: exert authority.
Authority is for those more competent than myself, an act of divine imitation, and no one makes a bigger ass of themselves than the man who pretends at authority. He has less dignity than a ruffled parrot shrieking its mating call, bobbing its brain out of its head in a demented mating dance, all on a most lonesome branch.
It was also the only language Mr. Burstyn would understand. He had just been lifted onto the saddle behind Wanda Blasphemer Pelts, and I knew that experience was like the whole world moving faster under your feet. The man would be angry, fearful if he found himself not following her revelation.
I would tie his hands by putting myself in harm's way. No matter what her orders, he would be smart enough to know they did not include any kind of bodily harm to the man who was at least nominally her husband. In short, he could hold his incontinent fuse if I stood in the blast radius.
Wanda's furs didn't constrict as I left the house, headed once more for the mine, leading me to believe that I had their favor. Little more than instinct was bewitched into them, but instinct and poetic urge are close cousins I think. Its animal life felt the rhythm of my current musicality, and together we made the trip shorter than it had ever been, arriving just in time to keep going, past some young men whose names were utterly inconsequential at that moment (and every other moment where I transcribed Wanda's dictated history) and their blustering boss.
"Severin, don't be daft! We're about to bring the whole place down!" Burstyn shouted at me, lurching into a run to catch up to my lanky imperturbable stride.
"I think it would be rude to shut the door on me," was all I had to say, but it was said with more confidence than ever previously generated by the man Severin Pelts. Doppler didn't dare lay a hand on me in anything other than false friendship, and even then only to directly show Wanda he was playing nice. "You needn't wait around; I'll close it when my business is finished."
The magnate was no slouch when it came to arguments, boisterous volume his preferred rapier, so I calculated my speed to leave him no time at all to use it, not without following me into the shaft, which he might have done if we didn't both catch a chilling wind it threw at us. He ground to a halt at the threshold, almost tipping over, while I continued on into the darkness.
A line of lamps were strung up along the wall, and I hadn't had time to fetch the supplies needed to light them. Yet every single tool was at my disposal, as the real Wanda kept herself obsessively prepared, should she take on any foe or challenge, even those ten times her size. That Wanda was the wellspring of my current confidence, with which I dug deep into the recesses of the furs, looking for pockets I trusted to be there, and found the means of lighting the lamps.
Their light was weak, but enough to guide me back to the one spot I knew within the mountain: the precipice overlooking the cold yet raging waters. Their roar had grown in my ear, and when I looked over the cliff for the first time the sound took on new aggression, curling against the interior of my skull like a large wave finally nearing shore.
Down was water, but just a black void to the eyes. Up was a vertical passage in the rock, wide as the biggest organ I'd ever seen, its pipes former stalagmites that had been reincorporated by an advancing wall of another mineral paler in color. As my eyes adjusted to the dark seven points almost jumped out of that back wall, conical shelves protruding just enough for a large bird, or perhaps a spirit, to alight on.
First they would have to escape the darkness, and perhaps they needed me to hook them up and rip them through the skin of the waters as well. Thad idea struck a chord in me, yes, they did not have the strength of minnows without my help, only the ability to lure me in with the pitter patter of spritely metrical feet.
And could I dredge them up? After a deep breath held I could feel the cave's air moving across my gulf. It was not the silence of nature, but a vacuum only I could fill with the lines climbing my throat. Very well spirits, what is thine summons?
"By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
By thy unfathom'd gulfs of guile,
By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul's hypocrisy;
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By the perfection of thine art
Which pass'd for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others' pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee! and compel
Thyself to be thy proper Hell!"
Demanding echo, reverberating as powerfully as it was spoken, mightiest in my life, journeyed into the river below and broke these beguiling spirits out of whatever prison bars kept them from perception. As I watched, careful not to take even one step back in fear, seven shapes began to take to the rocky roosts.
If ghosts they were such entities were far more colorful than I would've guessed, coming in every stripe of the rainbow, and not faded at all, red as roses, violet as a comet's tail, green as spring under the flowers... I was not permitted much more than color. Their forms were still ambiguous, but I could see motion, and unhelpful as it sounds I can say nothing more revealing than that I spied a head's tilt, but no head, a fist's tightening but no fist.
Lording over me as they tried gave them the presence of squatting men pretending to be frogs, but also of vultures waiting for an overturned cow's last breath. These inklings gave me no clue as to whether they were masculine, feminine, or a mix. Much clearer was the oppressive chill of emotion poured onto me from all seven precipices: cold hungry expectation.
"I am Severin Pelts," I all but barked, adjusting Wanda's furs on my shoulders though they already hung perfectly. "Who are you? And why have you tantalized me with such poetry? It does not feel as if it is wholly mine, and if you stole it we won't be getting along at all." Red spirit spoke first, where I noticed their voice did not echo, so such benefits must be for the living. They needed me to speak for anything they wanted said to last.
"With the azure and vermilion, which is mix'd for my pavilion, though thy quest may be forbidden, on a star-beam I have ridden; to thine adjuration bow'd, mortal— be thy wish avowed!"
Forbidden quest? Did the red spirit mean our meeting? Wanda had forbidden it. My avowed wish... I suppose that was why I was there, but I wasn't sure what I wished with them or what they wished with me. Rather than say anything for the time being I pushed my gaze like a boulder, with eyebrows arced as leverage, onto the orange spirit, and the yellow, willing them to speak one by one.
"Where the slumbering earthquake lies pillow'd on fire, and the lakes of bitumen rise boilingly higher; I have quitted my birth-place, thy bidding to bide— Thy spell hath subdued me, thy will be my guide!"
"I am the rider of the wind, the stirrer of the storm; the hurricane I left behind is yet with lightning warm."
"The monarch of mountains, they crowned him long ago on a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, with a diadem of snow. I am the spirit of the place, could make the mountain bow and quiver to his cavern'd base— and what with me wouldst thou?"
"Like the storm on the surface came the sound of thy spells; o'er my calm hall of coral the deep echo roll'd— to the spirit of ocean thy wishes unfold!"
"My dwelling is the shadow of the night, why doth thy magic torture me with light?"
"The star which rules thy destiny, was ruled, ere Earth began, by me."
Liars. That was what my instincts told me, before I even consulted the instincts that had raised every hair on Wanda's furs. If these seven were to be believed they were spirits of nature, covering everything from the red rivers under volcanoes to the faintest glow of distant stars, and they had all risen and descended to do my bidding.
It was all still vexing though, as I sensed someone's truth in their introductions, just not theirs. I don't think either of us was sure who had called to the other, with my time muddied by Wanda and theirs long gone, and thus no longer mastered. If some of this was true, what could I deduce?
That these were indeed heirs of Cain, dead and kicking, gathered here to scavenge on Wanda's growing power, emboldened by her illness to reach out to her chief disciple. What domains of nature they'd claimed to embody were likely the forces they had invested their accursed magics in when they were alive, as Wanda did her furs and familiars.
"We are here for a reason," I said, rather than admit my consternation. "Because... of poetry. One poem. The one that brought me, that I read from to summon you, and that will end this summit of ours. Before I speak the ending, you must say what you've got to say. I will speak it as soon as it comes to me, so don't you dare delay."
The spirits spoke amongst themselves, and without seeing any heads I saw heads moving. Their hushed tone was inaudible to me, perhaps not to graveyard rats and composting beetles that frequented the same places. Whether they reached any accord or not, it was green, spirit of mountain, who answered me, and without the same skill of verse, adding further evidence to my theory that they'd scavenged it from elsewhere and passed it off as their own profundity.
"Before any ending I wish to offer proof, confirm for you a mending."
"Proof of what?" I asked.
"Proof that we are your friends," said orange-of-earth's-hidden-fires, "that with time we can make amends."
"Time," I muttered before speaking up, "that's what we have in common. I am a prophet. I bring the future to Wanda the blasphemer, so that she might preempt punishment and make blasphemy into gospel. For this I look ahead. Are you bringing me some of those days to come? Are you outside time enough to swim ahead of the stream and gather it?"
"Yes!" shouted indigo-of-shadow. "With us compose a prophecy, so the serpent doesn't see our fated forgery."
"And you." I pointed at green. "You have proof that you know what I do not. And that will convince me your contributions are the missing ingredients in my prophecy?"
"We all have it now," yellow-of-lightning insisted. "Any of us can drop it on your brow." For their outburst they received some jeering and hissing, confirming for me that their alliance with each other was opportunistic, and if it could become one's opportunity they would take it. That was added to my arsenal of weapons against them, but for now I wanted to see this proof. When I asked again violet-of-light-between-stars offered it up, perhaps because green could not concoct a rhyme in time.
"That which was buried escapes! It currently crawls, but soon it will traipse!"
"This anniversary can never be treated as- as cursory!" green sputtered to make sure they were included, which I was glad for, as it was the word anniversary that gave me their meaning. That meaning sent me fleeing from the cave in a full sprint, flapping furs extinguishing the lamps as I went.
If it was what I expected then it was definitive proof that these skulking spirits had a degree of prescience. Wanda knew they were about as soon as she entered the mine, and if they had so much as dared to flit a ghostly tail out in the open air she would've known; there was no way for them to gather what happened inside Quarantown directly.
I thought it doubtful they had been following us since the train, which was the only other way they might track the number of days that had passed exactly: three hundred and sixty-six. That was the number of a very particular beast with the fangs of a bat and the pallor of a corpse. Once I had slain him, and until the spirits spoke of him cryptically all thought of his crypt had slipped from my mind.
He was Ruthven Typhus Andronicus, vampire, heir of Cain, and first sibling of Wanda to compete with her. One sip of my blood and I might have been his instead of hers, enslaved rather than betrothed. Together we had buried him, not far from what would become the mine's entrance, in a spot unmarked but for the refusal of any plants to grow there.
Wanda had warned that Ruthven would not die permanently, and that he would rise again in a year and a day and get back to his tricks before the sun rose on three sixty-seven. I very much wanted to stop, to consider the island my raft in the sea of time had just struck, but he was probably escaping, so I could not.
There was no avoiding thinking on it. If I did find his grave freshly empty it would mean Wanda and I had been together for exactly one year and one day, which would put her pregnancy with Nepenthe just two and a half months into our relationship. I couldn't believe it had been so quick. Never would I have guessed anything less than two full years.
And there were other things that did not get along with that notion. Miss Ulterrine's boys were at that age where they sprouted new inches and new leaves almost daily. To me their growth had far exceeded a year and a day. And yet-
I was unaccustomed to the speed granted me by the furs, so my feet slid a good distance in the dirt as I came to a stop. The barren patch was now so barren as to be free of dirt as well, most of it laying in haphazard heaps nearby. Some of it trailed off, and at the end of that trail I was relieved to find nothing but a mammoth slug that did not yet have the use of its limbs. It groaned when I kicked it over onto its back.
"Hello again Severin," Ruthven said, squinting against the sunlight despite ample cloud cover and being entirely contained in my shadow. I had not tested all of the weaknesses of the vampire from folklore against this foe, having only encountered him on a train in the middle of the night before, but his discomfort suggested an uninhibited sunbeam might burn a hole straight through as if by magnifying glass. "Is Wanda not joining us today?"
"She knows I can handle you." I made sure he was pinned, pressing on his ankle with one foot so assertively that the dirt underneath formed a divot. It was best to feign control with the other heirs, so I trusted Wanda's furs to provide in the case of my shortcoming. I reached a hand into them, concentrating on what I would need to put the ghoul back in the ground: something made of wood and sharp enough to pass for a stake.
I was rewarded with a suitable item, though my mind would've been more at ease with something larger. It was a world serpent token from the game of amblush, brown in color, bared fangs aimed into the sky. I held it upside down to indicate it would momentarily pass through his heart, before he could shake his rigor mortis and fight back.
"You were late this time," he teased. Not again. This time? Had I already visited his grave and stuffed him back in between the train and now? That would give me my two years I felt owed... and hopefully not three! I had to beat back the uncertainty, lest I reveal that Wanda had likely forgotten he was due to rise thanks to her illness.
"I was busy writing my latest prophecy," I boasted, gauging his expression for any fib detection. Previously his eyes had held great hypnotic power, but so long under Wanda's affectionate rule had immunized me against his charms. Now he just looked like a bloated grub dug out of a rotting log, his clothing eaten thin and dirt-caked.
"Oh? Do tell. I get so little news of late; I've been living under a rock." His mouth scrunched, then he grunted with the effort of lifting his head and looking back at the hole, where he saw there was still no grave marker. "No I haven't! Really, you two could get something for me."
"I think I've met some of your kind, but they're dead," I stated as nonchalantly as I could, hoping to get accurate information out of him while Wanda was on the mend. "They say they can assist me, and obviously I don't trust them, but they are full of lovely little poems, and some of that might sound good in a prophecy, don't you think?"
"Poems? I suppose they do rhyme sometimes," the vampire answered, hopefully having resigned himself to another year and day of destiny and resolved to participate in this brief conversation as much as possible. "Not that I've ever been so fortunate as to have a prophet of my very own."
"I'm certain they're hoping to be counted as coauthors," I dismissed, "that's not in question, but might they have anything to offer at all? Where do you think they acquired such lyrical information?"
"They must be relevant to you to be of use. Ghosts mine the past, but it repeats itself, so there are fossils yet to be born." He cackled a little. Being undead it wouldn't surprise me if most of his social connections he couldn't enthrall were phantoms. "A good prophecy uses what would have been to show what can be, like including truth in deception to make it go down easier."
"And what would have been?"
"You should ask yourself what would have been if not for us. The line of Abel does as it was always supposed to. You do not understand death, which is another name for destiny, and thus you are no danger to it. We are. Our line caused the destruction you might use as tinder for foretelling. And it wouldn't have been long ago, seeing as you're just getting started. I'm sure you'll be excellent once you dig deep."
"Not long ago..." I pondered aloud. "It wouldn't be Wanda; she's never destroyed anything that didn't deserve it... but your mother! She killed those people at the Villa Diodati when she was carrying all of you."
"They were poets," Ruthven reminded, flashing his fangs in a chiseled smile. "So many things would've been written if their lives weren't cut short. Those stories and ideas were left to stagnate, splintered and useless."
"So this prophecy is a work never written or never completed," I mulled aloud.
"The truth the author sought to state, which can now only be validated by you."
"Fascinating." Wanda's furs bristled, then my hairs underneath them. Something was amiss, and that internal compass one only detects when it moves was suddenly redirected back toward home. A twitch in my hand reminded me I held the miniature stake. "Thank you for your help brother, but the watch is wound tight today so I must be going."
"Severin, wait, why don't we have a nice-" I dropped on him and used my weight to drive the token into his chest, where there previous perforations had created a target for me. Having not fully reconstituted, his flesh offered almost no resistance, like the paper of an abandoned hornet nest.
His eyes centered and emptied while his mouth closed rather intentionally, probably to keep out beetles and rats and other tongue eaters. Though now deceased he retained the ability of facial expression, and I saw in it his irritation, but also resignation. Perhaps we were on our way to becoming friends.
To maximize that chance I made sure to place him back in his grave gently, and face up. He might've also liked the rest of that amblush set to keep busy down there, which I could've shaken out of the coat, but I recalled the game couldn't be properly played without an opponent, so all I offered was familiar dirt.
Hopefully I could surprise him with a headstone before the next go-round. For now it felt Wanda needed my attention, so I hurried back that way without any concern for the seven spirits awaiting my return. They had time.