Cruel Beauty

We kept flying upward, the landscape shrinking away beneath us. I saw the houses of the village grow tiny, until they were no more than dots on the ground, while the land itself became hazy with distance. We were level with a great bank of clouds to the left, huge white structures that billowed and rolled and sent out translucent tendrils.

And then we were above the clouds. The very surface of the sky loomed close to us, its parchment patterning as huge as if it were stolen from the writing desk of the Titans. And horribly close to us yawned the ragged gaps in the sky through which the Children of Typhon could any moment swarm out and devour—

Pain lanced through my head. I gasped, again dizzy with the fleeting sense of phantom recognition.

“Don’t worry,” said Ignifex. “I’m the demon lord, remember? They cannot seize you against my will.”

“They managed it quite well a few nights ago.”

“Yes, but now you’re in my arms.”

“So already seized by a demon,” I muttered. “Hardly an improvement.” But I still relaxed in his embrace.

Then a shadow fell across my face. I looked up, and caught my breath in wonder. The latticework of the Demon’s Eye loomed overhead, but what I—along with everyone else in Arcadia—had always taken to be a figure painted on the parchment sky was in fact the framework of a vast garden hanging in the air. What from the ground looked like a thin strands of knotwork were actually broad walkways sixty feet across, covered in grass and snowdrops. Marble statues of young women, their face worn half away, stood at the points of the design as if they were caryatids supporting the sky. At the center was a round pool of water with benches beside it, and as we swooped past, I saw great gold-and-silver-splotched carp swimming in lazy circles.

A huge iron chain, its links as thick as a man was tall, hung down from the dome. It seemed to hold up the Eye: but thirty feet above the pool, it faded into thin air, and we flew under it without a whisper of resistance.

Ignifex landed on the far side of the pool and set me down. I took a wobbling step, still a little dizzy; I expected the ground to sway beneath my feet, but it was firm as a rock. If I ignored the vastness on every side and looked at the grass between my toes, I could pretend that I was safely on the ground.

Pretending, though, would have been a waste. I didn’t quite dare to stand on the edge, but I walked as close as I dared, then spun myself in delight, because there was wind on my face and grass beneath my feet, and I had never thought to feel either one again.

When I halted, I saw Ignifex sitting sideways on one of the benches, leaning back on his hands, one knee pulled up. The wind ruffled his hair; he looked faintly amused.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“It’s your reward for not dying,” he said.

I took a step forward, resisting the urge to twist my hands. “Yes. About that. Can I—if I could talk to Shade—”

He growled.

“You don’t understand.” I didn’t understand either, not entirely, but I thought that if I saw Shade again I might remember. “I know what false kindness is like, because I’ve been smiling and lying all my life. Shade isn’t like that. Long ago, he was truly kind. I think some part of him still is, but he knows something that makes him willing to murder five women. If we knew—”

“And if it was that sort of knowledge, perhaps we’d murder each other and save him the trouble.”

“Or perhaps we could find a solution.” I took another step toward him. “I thought you wanted to know your name and the truth about your origins.”

“Maybe I changed my mind.”

“Maybe you’re contradicting me for the fun of it.”

“You do make it fun.”

I nearly yelled at him, but I knew that was not the way to defeat him.

“Almost every day I’ve known you,” I said slowly and clearly, “you’ve told me how you despise the people that come to you, because they won’t admit their sins even to themselves. Are you content to be such a coward yourself?”

He tilted his head back to stare at the sky. “There’s one advantage to being a demon, you know—”

“Besides the power to cause terror and destruction?”

“Besides that and possibly more important. Yes.” He looked at me, his face turned deadly serious. “Demons know alternatives. I have spoken with the Kindly Ones face-to-face. I have handed out their dooms for nine hundred years. I don’t deny what I am, but I know what I could be if I knew too much truth. So yes, I am a coward and a demon. But I am still alive in the sunlight.”

Looking into his eyes, I remembered the Children of Typhon crawling out of the door. He had guarded that door and commanded those monsters for nine hundred years. If I had done the same, maybe I would think as he did.

But I had not, and I crossed my arms over my chest. “The philosopher said that the virtuous man, tortured to death on spikes, is more fortunate than the wicked man, living in a palace.”

“Did he put his theory to the test?” Ignifex was back to smiling.

“No, he died by poison. But he faced that death because he would not give up philosophy, so he was at least in earnest when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Ignifex snorted. “Tell that to Pandora.”

“And if Prometheus had told her what was in the jar, she’d never have been so foolish.”

“Or been more culpable, when she opened it anyway. There’s no wisdom in the world that will stop humans from trying to snatch what they want.”

My head ached. Flame crackled in my ears.

“Sometimes ignorance,” I said, “is the most culpable . . .”

The crackling turned to the rustle of leaves in the wind, and then to laughter. My lips and tongue continued moving, but what came out were little sharp noises like the language of fire. I tried to silence myself but could not, and I stared at Ignifex in helpless terror.

In an instant he was on his feet, and then he seized my face and kissed me. My lips fought him only a moment; when we finally broke the kiss, both breathless, my mouth and my voice were my own again.

“What . . . was that?” I gasped.

“I will kill him,” Ignifex muttered, hugging me to his chest.

I pulled free. “If he’s just your shadow, I can’t see how that’s possible, and you aren’t answering the question. What was that?”

He looked away. “Something I have not heard in a long time.”