New Decameron Twenty-Eight: Ysabeau Wilce (Patreon)

Metal More Attractive

By Ysabeau Wilce

Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, and sit by me.

Hamlet. No good mother, here’s metal more attractive.

Hamlet, Act III, Scene II

Prologue: Birthday Girl 

So here we have a small girl in a white nightie skipping down a curving wooden staircase. It is late, very late, and this small girl should be tucked in her monstrously huge bed, fast asleep. But Tiny Doom (as her uncle calls her, not entirely fondly) is not asleep, and she’s not in bed, and she’s being super sneaky because she is about to do something super naughty. Though she's only six years and three hundred and sixty three days old, she's already discovered—by following her uncle’s example—that while goodness requires an audience, it is best to be bad alone.

“That’s it!” Tiny Doom whispers to herself as she descends downward. “When I say that’s it, I mean that’s it!”

Tiny Doom has a Nursie, and this Nursie is supposed to take care of Tiny Doom up in her eyrie of a nursery, so that Grandmamma, and Butler Paimon, and Uncle Bwannie do not have to. But Tiny Doom is Heir to Bilskinir House, and Nursie is just a praterhuman intelligence of the second order. She was good enough for Uncle Bwannie when he was youthful (oh so old now) and good enough for Tiny Doom's mother (oh so dead now), and good enough for Tiny Doom when she was an infant, but she’s a big girl now (seven in mere minutes) and Nursie is no match for Tiny Doom’s clever cunning. 

Viz.: earlier in the evening, after bedtime kisses, bedtime milk, bedtime prayers, Nursie had tucked Tiny Doom into her carved bed, elevated and elaborate, the size of a small shed, sung I’ll Whistle When You’re Dead, My Love, read The Great Wheadle Tragedy, and then left her tiny charge tucked aloft, buffered from nighttime terrors by a palisade of arras made from glittering beetle wings. Side stairs removed to hinder escape. Curled in the belly of the bed like a bug, feeling the comforting creak and sway of the room about her, Doom had feigned sleep with sonorous snoring, a snorgel or two, to put Nursie off her guard. When Nursie, rocking aimlessly, slid into her own snooze, Doom unfurled the rope she’d knotted out of Uncle Bwannie’s stolen stockings—spider silk strong—flung it over the bed’s side and rappelled down to freedom. 

Pittypat, pittypat over to Nursie in her rocker, patting her mob cap, Doom had crooned a little song: “Go to sleep little baby, go to sleep little baby. Sugar is sweet and so are you, ‘cause I’m your ever loving baby.” Nursie sank deeper into slumber. Tiny Doom gently picked up the now gossamer servitor and carried her to the toy chest. Nursie was still sighing and smiling when Doom shut the toy chest lid and locked it tight. 

The coastie was now clear. 

And so now down down down she goes, in a delicious spiral of dizziness. Nestled in the lower branches of the Bilskinir Blaze, the Nursery eyrie is reached by both stairs and elevator. But Doom dare not use the latter for that would instantly alert Paimon that she is truant. Neither Paimon or the Pontifexa take kindly to little girls who don’t stay in bed, and tonight, of all nights, is not a time to test their patience. So it’s the long way down, via the staircase that clings to the exterior of the massive tree trunk. The stairs are rarely used; they are smooth with age, but though they are enclosed from the weather, slippery with moisture, cold on Tiny Doom’s bare feet. (Forgot her slippers!) She keeps one hand pressed against the rough tree bark for balance; the fingers of her free hand crossed for luck. 

Midway down, at a window, she pauses, leaning on the sill, to enjoy the delicious spin in her head. Tonight, the fog hovers like a wall some distance from the shore. The Blaze’s pulsing fire turns the sea, far below, to green froth, like turtle soup; makes her own hands look poisonous, mossy. The distant barking of the sea doggos—seals—floats up over the roaring pound of the water. The staircase bucks and creaks, like an elderly pony. Above her, the Blaze throbs, pulsating like a heart-beat. It is a heart-beat; the eternal thump of the House, of Paimon, of the Haðraaða family power. 

“I’m gonna be the Kid with the Most Cake,” Tiny Doom sings. Her head still spins, but she’s not going to puke, she never pukes, not even when she eats six bricks of Pink Popcorn. Her stomach is like iron, but not so her chemise, easily penetrated by the cold breeze curling off the water, sneaking through the window pane. With a shiver, she resumes her downward spiral, until, at last, breathless and deliciously dizzy, she reaches the bottom. 

Tiny Doom pops out into a hallway gauntleted with high doors, walls papered in a sinuous pattern that resolves, if inspected closely, into intertwined glowing tentacles. Despite the hesitant light, the hallway is gloomy. Bilskinir House is always dim; too much heavy redwood, too many low carved ceilings. Too many low lights. Too many shadows. During daytime, the shadows are somnolent. They lie lazily across the floor or lean against the walls, dreaming of full darkness. Late at night, when Butler Paimon is occupied Elsewhere, the shadows wiggle and tremble, stretch themselves outward and upward, grow eager and energetic. Sometimes they are grabby, which doesn’t signify at all to good girls who are tucked up safely in bed. 

Tiny Doom is not a good girl. She is obstinate obdurate recalcitrant and willful. She is her grandmother's granddaughter, her uncle’s niece, her uncle’s bride-to-be. Most of all she is her mother’s daughter, and though this mother may not have had the chance to teach her to hide mayhem behind a smile, some things are bred in the bone. Tiny Doom is Bad, she is Impatient, and she is Determined. She’s on a quest, an adventure, a mission; her goal dead serious and vitally important. Nothing will stand in her way, no obstacle will dissuade her, not rules, not bedtime, not nursie, not grandmamma, and most assuredly not Paimon. 

She is very very brave. 

She is very very greedy. 

Tonight the shadows are wiggly, and the hallway dauntingly long, each door a possible trap, an aperture out of which Failure might pop suddenly, if Tiny Doom is noisy or stumbles. She must run this gauntlet, avoid those wiggles, as silent as death if she wishes to achieve the proof of success. She takes a deep breath. She can do it. She hikes up her nightgown, freeing her knobby knees for speed. She whispers: “That’s it! I said that was it and that was IT!”

As an extra squirt of courage: “Dare, win or disappear!” 

Away she goes, dodging shadows, jumping from pool of weak light to pool of weak light, past the first doorway: Relais’ room, Uncle Bwannie’s tutor, who gives her sweeties sometimes but also is annoyed when sticky hands grubby up his lace. He smiles but his eyes are angry, and his knuckles crack like gunpowder when he wrings his hands. No light leaks from underneath his doorjamb; Relais is probably asleep. She’s not worried about Relais. 

The next door is shiny red leather embossed with the outline of a mermaid embracing (being devoured?) by a loligo. Uncle Bwannie’s oceanic bedroom, if the ocean’s waters were red as blood. She pulls up short, just in time, avoiding stepping in the puddle of light oozing out from under the door jamb. This light is viscous pink, and just looking at it makes her teeth tingle, her bones buzz. It’s not light, of course, but coldfire, the Magickal Current congealed into visibility. Coldfire is heady stuff, dangerous, and too much of it can make little girls (and bigger boys) upchuck. She hears a low muttering; that's Uncle Bwannie in his Conjuring Closet (No Children Allowed Ever No Matter What Do Not Disturb Me I am Working Paimon Get Her Out of Here) conjuring. Uncle Bwannie--Banastre Haðraaða to give him his official name--is a magician, not the fun kind (bunnies/hats/paper roses/sword swallowing) but the serious kind that does serious things that children should know nothing about. The boring kind. Bunnies are fun. Paper roses are Fun. Sword Swallowing is Fun. Nasty little fish-tailed elementals are not fun. Daemons that smell like poopy diapers are not fun. Turning someone’s blood into oatmeal is not fun. But conjuring will keep Uncle Bwannie busy and out of Tiny Doom's way so tonight she approves.

She edges around the coldfire puddle, which is spreading, careful to keep her toes out of the contamination. There’s one more door she must pass, but it’s the biggest and most important. This door is round as an eye, and is made of redwood heart-wood, darkly purple. There’s no knob, no handle; this door opens to those who have permission to enter, and remains closed to those who do not. It leads to the chambers of the Pontifexa, Tiny Doom’s dear little grandmamma, ruler of Califa, and Head of the House Haðraaða. She crouches on her haunches, and murmurs a little charm. Now when she puts her ear to the smooth surface of the door she can hear every word said inside.  

“Don’t worry about Ban; he’ll do as he’s bid. He knows who butters his bread…”

That's Grandmamma talking to her bestie, Luscious Fyrdraaca, and boring boring boring. Tiny Doom is not interested in dull grown-up conversation, unless it mentions candy, gifties (for her) or Woodward’s Play Fair Gardens, but she is glad to know Grandmamma and Luscious are still sitting where she kissed them goodnighty-night some time earlier, still intent on boring things, and thinking nothing at all about her. She’s not worried about them either; it’s another voice she is listening for, resonant and rumbly, a voice that prickles her tummy and makes her knees tremble-y, a voice of authority, of Absolute No Fun, a voice who could, should it catch her, whisk her off to bed in a whisker’s instance, and keep her there, for a day, a week, forever. Luscious and Grammy are still droning; but if Paimon is with them, he’s still and silent. She holds her breath and presses her ear, straining for a sign, and then hears, like the gentle tap of water dripping down from a leaf, the sound of claws clicking on a tea-pot. 

“Two sugars or three?” She can feel his voice in her bones; she shivers, like a goose walked over her grave.

“One sugar!” says the Pontifexa sharply.

Luscious protests: “What am I, on rations?”

“You’re getting stout.” 

“It’s not sugar that making me stout, Georgie. Three sugars, Paimon…”

“Oh, not again, really truly, not already….”
 Of course, Paimon's a slicky quicky one, and just because he's in Pontifexa’s boudoir now, serving tea, doesn't mean that he will still be in the boudoir in another second, maybe checking on Tiny Doom in the nursery or bringing the laundry in, or cleaning the floors, or any of the other kabillion things that a domicilic denizen does. She should hurry, before Paimon is Somewhere Else, such as behind her, or worse, in front of her, baring the way. She needs to keep moving. She starts to stir, but then the sound of her own name pricks up her ears:

“Cyrenacia will be ruined by the time she returns. He already ruined one of my heirs, I’ll not have him get my other.”

“For the last time, Georgie, there’s no way around it. Seven years for the mother’s family; seven years for the father’s family. That’s the law—“

“What’s the point of being a dictator if you have to follow the law?” The Pontifexa complains.

Luscious laughs. “Don’t give yourself airs, Georgie. You’re an autocrat, not a dictator.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Public opinion, I suppose, and the size of your standing army. Anyway, resolve yourself, darling. I see no way out of this; and he’s her father, he does have rights to her. You offered him money to go away and he did not. She’ll be back when she’s fourteen, and in the meantime, she’ll write. And you’ll have Banastre to console you.”

“That glass-gazing popinjay! He’s beautiful, but an idiot.“ 

A giant lump is growing in Tiny Doom’s throat, and a sensation like writhing eels fills her belly. Is the Pontifexa saying she must go with her daddy, leave Bilskinir House? But she’s the Heir to the House! She’s never spent a day of her life away from it; never spent a night anywhere else. And her daddy, her memories of her daddy are almost as vague as her memories of her dead mother, for she’s seen him maybe twice in her entire life. He’s a magician too, like Uncle Bwannie, but he makes his magick out of music, and he has never had time for little girls. 

A snoofing and a snuffling comes from the other side of the door, and Tiny Doom draws back quickly. The Pontifexa has a passel of corgis that follow her everywhere; nasty nippy little fat-babies, who bark and bark and bark at anyone who doesn’t talk to them in a high pitched yodel. These corgis love the Pontifexa and food, nothing else, and while Tiny Doom is definitely not the Pontifexa, she does smell of porridge and sugar, thanks to her habit of using the front of her chemise as a napkin. The corgis have noses as sharp as knives; they can sniff out a ham sandie though it be buried at the bottom of a trunk, then extract this sandie with the suction of their snoots and swallow it whole. These snoots are now snuffling around the doorjamb, shiv paws scratching, whining starvation. Very very slowly, Doom eases away from the door, holding her breath until she is out of snoofing range. 

“That’s it!” Doom whispers, dashing through a gallery whose walls are entirely glazed in mirrors, reflecting the thin edges of a hundred moons peeking through a hundred sky-lights and a hundred bad little girls in pink nightcaps, hoping not to get caught. She hurries on; she's not so sure about all those other little girls. They look like her, and they hurry like her, but maybe it's a race and one of them might get there first, open all the birthday gifties, eat all the cake. Tiny Doom does not want to share, not even with her ownotherselves. She puts some juice into her trot, trying to outpace her pursuers, still safe in the lead. “That’s it!” 

Now she’s trotting down the Hall of Ancient Ancestors, where are displayed the portraits of lots and lots of Ancient Ancestors, none of whom are actually ancestral to Tiny Doom because the current Pontifexa is the great grand-daughter of a usurper. These Ancestors belong to someone else and are only allowed to remain at their stations because the Haðraaðas are thin on family and an expansive family line is an important signifier of respectability. Uncle Bwannie, annoyed at being associated with a needle nosed, weak chinned lot, even if in fiction, has been lobbying the Pontifexa to replace these portraits, with others, equally as fictitious but far more beauteous. But the paintings are also prisons for the Anima of the Bilskinir family, and the Pontifexa enjoys making them watch her live in their house, so they remain in place, impotent audience to the Pontifexa’s doings. For years the Ancient Ancestors have hung, in their prison-portraits, watching as the Haðraaðas use their stuff, and they are pissed. Powerless, yes, but still able to be tetchy behind Paimon’s back. Tiny Doom’s not afraid of them; she knows their only weapons are cutting remarks and personal insults, but they can be loud, and loudness will definitely attract Paimon’s attention. Still, there’s no going around them, without use of the forbidden Elevator, so she must scoot. If she is going to be sent away, she must make sure that she gets to her gifties first. 

Scoot Tiny Doom does, wool rug burning against her feet. The Ancient Ancestors turn their needle noses and weak chins towards her, and hiss, murmuring threats and rude comments. Some of them gnash their teeth, and one them, dressed in riding togs, snaps its goad at her, while his hunting dogs bray and bell menacingly at Tiny Doom, straining against the skim of the portrait’s surface. Bad bad doggos!

Tiny Doom speeds up her scoot. The Ancestors are causing a clamor which surely will soon attract Paimon, and then they’ll all be in the barrel, but Tiny Doom most of all, thwarted. Just a few more feet, and she’ll be beyond their cat-calls, they’ll be able to make all the noise they want, but if Paimon arrives, she’ll be long gone. Tiny Doom’s side stitches, and her flubby little legs are starting to feel the burn; despite herself she flags, and in that pause, there’s a thud ahead of her, a thump that rattles the walls, and trembles the stuffed gila monsters suspended overhead. 

An Ancestor has stepped down from her frame and now stands barrier between Tiny Doom and safety. This Ancestor is dressed inexplicably as a butterfly, or maybe a moth, with trailing black and gold sleeves, and a hat surmounted by trembling antennae, and she is waving an insect net menacingly. She trills: “Come here, little thief, and let me catch you. I’ll pin you to my board, with silver nails, and drink your honey tears.”

“I am not a thief! They are my presents!” Tiny Doom cries indignantly. 

“This house, you wretch, which you have stolen. I shall pin you to my paper and you shall be my rarest specimen of all.” The Ancient Ancestor grins like a rake, teeth long and pointy. “The last of your kind! Extinction!”

"I don't think so!" Tiny Doom says. "It's my birthday!"

The Ancestor waves its net, hissing like a snake, while the others crowd at their frames, jeering and cheering. “I’ll crack your carapace and suck your soft parts! Your stick-like bones, and sticky blood; you’ll sing for me to stop, but I will suck you empty, into a husk—“

“Console your loss with vice!” Tiny Doom spits. And then: “Pour vinegar on an open wound!” 

Brandishing the net and hissing like a punctured ball, the Ancient Ancestor lunges at Tiny Doom. The Ancient Ancestor looks real, and she feels real, and she even smells real, but Tiny Doom knows, in the pit of her tum, that the Ancient Ancestor is not real: that's why she wants to eat Tiny Doom. If she eats Tiny Doom (not all of her, just the plump juicy energy bits Uncle Bwannie calls Anima) she won't be completely Alive, but she’ll be even more Animate than she is right now. Not animate enough to challenge Paimon, but mangling the Pontifexa’s heir is its own delightfulness, even if the gloat is short-lived. 

"I will be so mad if I die while I’m still a kid!” Doom whispers, scuttling away from that swinging net. Normally she removes obstacles with an ear-piercing shriek, only she can't shriek out loud, because Paimon will hear her and come running, and she can't even shriek inside her own head, cause Paimon might hear that, too. What do the smart children in Nursie’s stories do in situations like this? They run! 

Tiny Doom darts forward like a squirrel, dodging one way, then another, ducking the Ancestor’s sweeping net and whooping cries; Tiny Doom jigs, she jags, as the Ancestor swoops, and then, in a feint, she pivots on her tippy toes, and runs directly at the Ancestor, through her. The Ancient Ancestor howls, and throws her arms around herself in a hug, hoping to trap Tiny Doom inside her embrace. But Doom is too wicked fast; the Ancestor squeezes only her own emptiness.

Ahead lie the Riverine Steps, in full foaming flood; Tiny Doom barrels towards the spill, not waiting for the water to recede and expose the risers. Into this flood Tiny Doom throws herself, tummy first. Away she shoots, like a salmon surfing downstream, her breath gasped by the water’s chill, buoyant with chub, bouncing through the bubbles, eyes closed, the chill fingers of the current snagging at her chemise. But the Ancient Ancestor is right behind her, she can feel the rage singing at the back of her neck, she can feel the Ancestor grasping for her in the churn, but she isn’t caught yet. 

The water plops her into a foamy pool with such force that she plummets towards the bottom; but she’s good a swimmer, and her breath is strong. When she feels the round rocks under her feet, she flexes her knees, shooting upward, lungs burning, little slivers of fish darting out of her way, and surfaces directly into the Ancestor’s net. Screeching a victory cry, the Ancestor, floating above the foam, on the swirls of those ridiculous skirts, scoops up the wiggling and thrashing Tiny Doom, hoists her up and away from the pool.  

A sound rings out, explosive and percussive; a Command spoken in Gramatica, the language of magick, and at this Command, the net dissolves and Tiny Doom tumbles to the mossy ground, flat on her tum; teeth clacking on her tongue, a bright bite of pain. The moss provides a bit of padding, her tum more, but for a moment her flattened lungs are sucking at nothing. She gurgles, then re-inflates, gasping, ears still ringing from the Command. When she rolls over, she sees Uncle Bwannie standing at the top of the Riverine Stairs, arm outstretched. He flips open his fan, and coldfire uncoils into a sinuous lasso that whips down the foaming steps to drop neatly over Ancient Ancestor’s head. The Ancient Ancestor drops the broken net, hands scrabbling at her throat. The water parts, and Uncle Bwannie strides down the Riverine Stairs. He’s wearing a sangyn dressing gown covered with silk embroidered squids and oh he looks so lovely, rumpled, his long hair glittering with coldfire, eddying with static. He dallies the slack of the lasso around his forearm, and the Ancestor choking, is drawn towards him like a fish flapping on a line. 

“What is going on here?” Uncle Bwannie demands. He’s reached the foot of the stairs now. He puts a bare foot onto the surface of the pool; the water hardens under his step. The Ancient Ancestor writhes in a juddering heap; eyes bulging like new potatoes. He put his other foot on the Ancestor’s neck to stop her wiggling. She scrabbles at his foot with starfish hands; he presses harder, and with a crunch she goes limp. 

Tiny Doom scrambles to her feet; chemise sheeting water, gasping. The chilly green scented breeze tells her she has almost reached her goal: the Grove Salon. But if she runs, Uncle Bwannie will catch her. She must be cunning instead. She wipes her bloody mouth upon her sleeve, and turns the cute up as high as it will go, sets the whine to ten: “I bit my lip!” 

"What are you doing out of bed at this time of night?” Uncle Bwannie demands. The Ancient Ancestor is losing definition; flattening into an indistinct blur. He’s sucking all her spark into himself; the whites of his eyes tinging coldfire pink. The Ancient Ancestor is no more than a puddle of pink, and then the puddle is gone. Uncle Bwannie retracts the lash and snaps the fan shut with a flick of his wrist. He looks really pissed. 

"I needed a drink,” Tiny Doom says, wheedling, and then, just as an in case extra: "I had a bad dream, Uncle Bwannie.” 

Uncle Bwannie does not look impressed. “That’s what nursie is for, cold water with ice, and bad dreams. You ruined my Working with all your commotion!”

Tiny Doom lets out a little sob, and flings herself at Uncle Bwannie’s knees. “I’m so cold, Uncle Bwannie!” Shuddering at her clamminess, he tries to push her off, but can’t because she can cling harder than a squid’s suction cups, when she’s a mind to. He smells of magick, a dark sweet smell that reminds her of moldy apples, and oponopax incense, and something salty, musky. The silk of his robe is smooth and warm beneath her cheek, and his leg feels as solid as a tree-trunk. 

“I just wanted a drink of water and that Ancient Ancestor tried to eat me! My lip is all bleedy!” she sobs again, this time much less dramatically. Never before has anything in this House tried to harm her; the relief of the escape is starting to wear off into shock that she should have even been in danger to begin with. “I almost drownded!” 

Uncle Bwannie peels Tiny Doom off his leg and crouches; he’s very tall so it’s a long way down. Doom pouts her lower lip, and he curls his own unblemished lip at the blood. Taking up the damp hem of her chemise he dabs at her face. “You did not almost drownded; you are too good a swimmer for that. And you shouldn’t be out of the Nursery so late at night!”

“I called for Nursie and she didn’t come, and I needed a cold drink with ice!”

Uncle Bwannie was not fooled. Was he born yesterday? Does she think she’s the only kid to sneak out early to peek at her birthday gifts? He says sternly: “You can’t have your gifties until your birthday!”

“It is my birthday! It’s after midnight!”

“It’s not your birthday for true until you go to bed, and wake up again. And even then you must wait until the party to open the gifties!”

“I hate you!” Tiny Doom shouts. She tries to bite his knee but he pushes her off, saying scornfully: “Ha! So bad for me, this hating! I can hardly bear to be hated so! PAIMON!”

With a flair of green coldfire, Paimon pops in, and with his arrival the Grove Salon is illuminated with garlands of faery-lights festooned throughout the glade, netted through the redwood trees, twinkling like fire-flies. In the center of the trees, surrounded by a phalanx of little chairs and tables, the Cake hulks majestically, fully as big as Paimon. Unlike the butler, its lofty terraces are festooned with sugar flowers, and swags of candied fruit, surmounted by a diorama of a marzipan Tiny Doom fighting a giant squid, flanked by seven red candles. And bestest of all, heaped around the Cake’s fundament: gifties, lots and lots of gifties, all shapes, all sizes, resplendently wrapped and bebowed. 

Tiny Doom screams with joy mixed with anger, or perhaps anger mixed with joy, for the spectacle is truly wondrous. When she makes to dart forward, mean mean Uncle Bwannie drops a hammer blow hand on her shoulder, arresting her. Now her screams are definitely of rage. She’s so close! This is so unfair! Paimon looks at her, bedraggled and definitely not in bed, and his tusks dip in displeasure. 

“What are you doing up, madama?” he rumbles.
 "I had a bad dream, and there were monsters, and I want a drink of water! I feel sick! I need a snack! My tummy hurts!”

"You need to be in bed, your grace," says Paimon. The gusts of disapproval coming off of him have already almost completely dried Tiny Doom’s chemise.

Tiny Doom realizes that her mission is about to end in epic failure. Dare, Win or Disappear! She points a small accusing finger at Paimon and says: "An Ancient Ancestor almost ate me. She climbed down from her wall and chased me!” 

Paimon looks astounded. His luxurious brows climb up his forehead, and hover in disbelief just below his fringe, while the tips of his curling mustachio quiver. “That’s impossible!” 

“The brat is telling the truth, Paimon,” Uncle Bwannie says. “I saw it. Had her in a net and was about to swallow her whole. What’s going on here?” Now that he’s stepped out of the fury of having his working ruined, he’s realizing the Ancient Ancestor implications. Nothing in the House should have even have tried to harm Tiny Doom. And could it do so again, and could he, not quite as important, be next? The portraits often wail, pouring out baleful promises of antique revenge, but no Ancient Ancestor has ever actually stepped out of its frame before. 

“Which Ancestor?” Paimon asks. 

Doom snivels: “I dunno. She had a net. She chased me down the steps and Uncle Bwannie saved me.”

“I did,” Uncle Bwannie says. “In the nick of time, one more second and snickety snap, no more Heir to the House Haðraaða. What do you think the Pontifexa would say to that?”

"This is most irregular," says Paimon. His tusks glitter ominously. 

"That’s an understatement," replies Uncle Bwannie. "Are you not the denizen of this House? Do you not control all within it? Is this not your failing that something within this House would threaten the Heir?” He shakes his shoulders and the squids on his dressing gown shiver at the motion. Uncle Bwannie is getting ready to mount what the Pontifexa sometimes refers to as his high horse. He's going to go on for some time as though he knows everything, and everyone else knows nothing, and he is helping them by telling them what to do. He’s forgotten about Tiny Doom, he's puffing up and he's happy in the sound of his own voice. Paimon is listening, as he must, so they are both distracted. But Paimon is blocking her access to the Salon, and the huge pile of gifties. There’s no way around his bulk. But she’s not going back to bed, not way no how, so she very quietly wiggles away from Uncle Bwannie, oh not so as to draw much attention to herself, and slips away. She steals a glance over her shoulder: Uncle Bwannie stands, arms akimbo, fan wagging emphatic points at Paimon. Paimon is still listening courteously. She can see her own reflection in his eyes; she knows that he sees what she’s doing, but he's trapped by Uncle Bwannie's tirade, and can’t find an entry point to interrupt. Paimon's mustachios are still quivering; though his eyebrows have descended back to their normal position. The dim echo of Uncle Bwannie’s remonstrance and Paimon's silent displeasure trail after Tiny Doom as she skedaddles, crying tears of rage that she should be so thwarted from her goal.  

As soon as he can break free of Uncle Bwannie's fit of pique, Paimon will shoot after her, her head start is minor but she's making the most of it, quick as quick. Paimon keeps the House contained but that’s no trouble to Tiny Doom; she’s the heir, she can go anywhere, anytime, and she disappears into the depths of the House. Down wide stairs and narrow stairs, down twisty stairs of iron and twisty stairs of stone. Down rickety wooden stairs and solid marble stairs. Through wide doors and narrow doors, through doors of iron and doors of stone, doors of wood and doors of marble, and other doors, other ways, hollow ways, that are none of your business, until, finally she is running through a redwood grove. 

“That’s it!” Tiny Doom screams, “When I said that it’s it, I mean that’s IT!”

Her scream is muted by the darkness, and the thick foliage high above. 

Unlike the trees in the Salon Glade, these redwoods are feral; they loft upward with shed-sized trunks, the sky overhead blocked out by their snarled crowns. The ground is skeined with green-furred deadfalls, fans of ferns, phosphorescent fungi; Tiny Doom is careful to keep to the path, avoiding the sprawls of poison oak, the tangles of blackberry bushes. High above the wind rubs the tree branches in a low lullaby and moisture hangs in the air like perfume, tangy and resinous. This is the Antechamber of Eternity where the Haðraaða dead are laid to decompose, to feed the House and Paimon, polished bones scattered like pearls among the luminous green. Though no starlight penetrates the tree canopy, the darkness of the glade is not impenetrable; glossy wisps, flashing yellow-green, twist among the trees, and the moss and fungi coating the deadfalls glow green. 

Tiny Doom clambers over the fallen tree trunk blocking the path, using the stubs of broken tree branches as hand-holds. Even on its side the girth of the tree trunk is taller is than she is; heartwood already rotted, exterior wood split and splintered. She ignores the fulsome green gleam spilling from the splits in the bark: her mother has only been dead a year, and natural excarnation takes time. The other side of the trunk is smooth, debarked; she slides down, and hops over a churn of mud. Ahead a cluster of trees dwarf the rest; a faery ring of trunks each spanning a full thirty feet around. 

“I’m the secret that sits in the center and knows!” she hisses to herself. “That’s it! That’s it!”

The loftiest redwood of all, a giant that Tiny Doom has nicknamed Too Tall, has fire-scars around its base, a remnant (though Doom doesn’t know this), of the first Georgiana’s purge of the Bilskinir family so long ago. Decades have smoothed the burn scar into a cozy cavity, walls as soft as silk, a perfect little hidey hole. Here, in the Antechamber of Eternity, Tiny Doom is just another Haðraaða, and easily overlooked. Above her, the House above can heave and roll with shouting, with laughter, with crying, with thunder, with joy, and she can sit, sulking. Paimon can’t find her here. The cavity is chilly, and damp; she’s shivering, her breath is puffy smoke. She excavates an old cookie tin—Madam Twanky’s Lemon Coffee Toffee Crisps—from the cushions, shaking until it wails. When she slowly tips the lid up, a dazed looking fire elemental crawls out. 

Doom pokes at it: “I’m cold.” Her nose is running hard; her eyes feel red, and her throat is wheezy. She’s exhausted with rage. So close! She was so close! It’s her house and her birthday and how dare Paimon get in her way! And how dare Bwannie try to halt her! And how dare that Ancient Ancestor try to eat her! And now she will have to leave without any gifties! 

“I’m hungry!” the elemental whines.

More excavating, to find Uncle Bwannie’s silver trigger case, slipped from his pocket when he wasn’t paying attention. She strikes it, and the elemental tucks the little flame between its paws and knees, nibbles on the phosphorus head. Quickly, the elemental tinges pink, and the hidey hole begins to warm. Here, in the hidey-hole, Tiny Doom keeps her true treasures; all the jigs and jabs of flashy trinkets that she, mag-pie-like, has sneaked and secreted for her own. But tonight those furbelows bring her no joy. She curls up in a pill-bug ball, bawling. 

“A biscuit would make me warm,” she mumbles to herself. Aloft, Paimon is looking for her, she knows. She can feel him flowing through the House just as she can hear the swish of her own blood moving through her veins when she stoppers her ears with her fingers. But somehow he’s never found her here; the Antechamber is suffused with Haðraaða Anima, and her peculiar individuality is lost in the swirl. “A biscuit with honey.” 

A vapor trails underneath fringe of the shawl she’s using as a make-shift door; a sickly yellow vapor which flattens itself into the wavering shape of a man, plumed as a peacock in a leather vest, gloriously belled trousers, slinkster emerald green platform boots. His hair stands razor sharp along the crest of his skull, but his skin is tinged green from the poison that killed him, and his eyes are empty and gray: Albany Bilskinir, Tiny Doom’s long dead great-granddada. 

More vapor fills the hollow, coalescing into four flamboyant fetches: Albany’s murdered spouses. Unlike the Ancient Ancestors, these fetches are harmless; they’ve been in Antechamber of Eternity so long they’ve become vague and tenuous, the memories of their lives faded into an incoherent knot of vague recollections that convey no strong emotion, have become meaningless.  The hollow would be quite crowded if the new-comers had any actual heft, but as it is, they just over-lap with each other, and the cushions; there’s plenty of room. Tiny Doom loves the Spouses; they are so flamboyant, like very fancy chickens, in the tattered remains of their grave-clothes: slinky satin bias-cut gowns, feathered collars, and wild curly hair. Someday she is going to have a bias cut gown and wild curly hair, but she’s going to be canny enough not to allow her spouse to murder her, oh yes, indeed.  

Tiny Doom doesn’t know the spouses’ names (they don’t remember either) so she thinks of them by their most obvious attributes, their death wounds. Cut-Throat hides a gaping wound under her pearl choker. Break-Neck uses the wrap of a scarf to keep her neck straight. Stab-Heart keeps his hand pressed to the hole in his chest. The last spouse has no obvious sign of death, but Albany, whose memory is more intact, had answered Tiny Doom’s question readily: Destroying Angel Mushroom Omelette. Albany holds an empty cigarillo holder to his lips; puffing on nothing; with his other hand he scritches the sea-salt colored dog that winds around his knees. They were buried together, he and Elsa, their bodies tossed into one pile in a tangle of ferns and now they are co-mingled forever. 

“Why are you crying?” Albany asks. 

“It’s my birthday,” Doom snivels. 

This news electrifies the spouses; they flutter and flap, cooing congratulations:

“Happy Birthday!” says Cut-Throat.
 “Joy joy!” says Break-Neck 

“Festive returns!” says Stab-Heart.

“Doom & Gloom!” says Destroying Angel Mushroom Omelette.

“Leave me alone!” Doom cries, and buries her head in a cushion, kicking her feet. The spouses exchange worried glances. Albany says: “Come, come now, why would you cry on your birthday?”

Tiny Doom sits up, still sniffing. “Because an Ancient Ancestor chased me and almost ate me, and then Uncle Bwannie yelled at me, and then I didn’t get a present, and I bit my tongue, and my lip, and now that I am seven I must go and live with my dada.” She clenches her fists and wails. “I don’t even know him!”

The spouses murmur, clutching at each other; eyes wide with shock. They can never leave the Antechamber of Eternity; nor do they want to. And Tiny Doom is the heir; what will the House do without her? How can she leave?

“Leave?” asks Cut-Throat. 

“Scarper?” asks Break-Neck.

“Flee?” asks Stab-Heart

“Escape?” asks Destroying Angel Mushroom Omelette. 

“Seven girls are going to the graveyard and only one of them is coming back,” Albany croons. He does that sometimes; breaks into maudlin songs, or starts stuttering jokes like a low-rent jokester. Since he never makes any sense, Tiny Doom usually ignores him.

“Not for always. By the time I come back, I shall be all grown up and no one will remember me anymore! And I didn’t get any of my gifties!” Tiny Doom breaks down into more sobbing. The spouses pat the air around her and make cooing noises, but their comfort is airless and ineffectual. 

“You can have my ribband!”

“You can have my scarf!”

“You can have my weskit!”

Destroying Angel Mushroom Omelette shakes his head sadly. 

“Oh give it up, chickens, she doesn’t want your rags,” Albany says languidly. “What about your mamma, girlie? Surely she will go with you.”

“Mamma?” Doom says vaguely. Thanks to Paimon’s charms—at the Pontifexa’s instruction—Tiny Doom’s mother, dead for over a year, is a shadow in the child’s memory. “She’s already gone. I don’t want to leave Bwannie, and Nursie, and Granny! And my dollhouse, and my tin army, and my pony! And all my gifties! My dada hates me! He hates me because he says I am a bad bad girl! A spoiled selfish bad girl!”

“Bad girls are the best kind,” Albany says, “And bad boys too. It is oh so tedious to be good.”

“If I stay here in my sneak hole forever,” Tiny Doom says fiercely, “They’ll never find me and they cannot make me go! I’m not going to go! I am the Heir to this House and they can’t make me go!”

“You’ll starve down here, unless you like to gnaw on bones and eat bugs,” Albany says. “So that’s really a no-go. Did you say it was your birthday?”

Tiny Doom nods. 

“Well, if it’s your birthday, then that giftie must be yours.”

Tiny Doom snuffles her nose on her chemise. “What giftie?”

“That one, of course.” Albany points a diaphanous finger at the large box that has appeared, somehow, on the threshold of the hidey-hole, as though someone had crept up, while Tiny Doom was blubbing, placed the box there, and then crept away, on stealthy little coyote feet. (Spoiler: that someone was me.) The giftie is wrapped in the most beautiful silver paper, embossed with frolicking coyotes. A fat shocking pink ribband wraps around the box before erupting into a bow as big as Tiny Doom’s head, bigger maybe even. Stars replace the tears in Tiny Doom’s eyes; she’s never seen a giftie so gorgeously wrapped. There’s no tag, but Doom doesn’t care. One less thank you letter to write.

“What do you think it is?” 

The spouses burst into a chorus of guesses: 

“A bee hive!”

“A chimera egg!”

“A box of tissues!”
 “An M4A3E8 Easy Eight Sherman tank!”

“I don’t want any of those things!” Tiny Doom cries. “I want a sword with an ivory hilt, and a pair of purple dancing shoes! Also, a wheel of cheddar cheese that no one but me is allowed to eat!”

“Then open it, and let us find out!” Albany says, hushing the spouses with a wave of his green tinged hand. “Go on!”

Tiny Doom rips at the paper with gleefully sharp scratches. The hidey hole is filled with a snow of shredded paper; the spouses laugh and bat the pieces, while the elemental snatches at them as they fly, stuffing them into its hungry maw. The box top pops open as soon as its released from the wrapping; she chucks the top aside, impatiently and reaches inside. But her groping grasping greedy fingers feel only crinkly tissue. Wads of this tissue join the litter of shredded silver paper, but it seems endless—she keeps pulling it out and yet there is still more to pull. She’s all the way up to her elbow now, and no sign of the bottom—she leans, shoulder in, precariously unbalanced—

“Don’t fall in!” 

“You could drown!”. 

“You could smother!” 

“There might be snakes!” 

Tiny Doom is now a flannel hinder and two black soled feet balanced on the edge of the box, the rest of her is diving deep into the tissue sea, close to drowning—then her frantic grabby hands graze something oh so oft, oh squishy. She grips and holds on: wobbles back on the box top’s edge, and then flops into a heap, clutching her prize: a plushy pink pig. 

The pig wears a red velvet frock, and strappy black toe shoes and there’s a knowing twinkle in its beady black eyes. It has no mouth: only a long square-ended snout, and its ears flop like pigtails. A red enamel locket inset with a large diamond hangs around its neck on a silver chain. Tiny Doom scratches the locket open; inside is a small portrait of a girl with a wild sulky face and wild sulky hair, holding a baby wrapped like a burrito. 

“It’s my mamma!” Tiny Doom says in surprise. “And me!” She’s not sure how she knows this, but she does. “This piggie must be from my mamma!”

“She is dead and gone, my dear, she is dead and gone. At her feet a pink pink pig and at her head a stone,” Albany croons. The spouses clap appreciatively. 

“I’m gonna name it Pig!” Tiny Doom exclaims, snuggling the plushie in her arms like a little pink baby. 

“It’s lovely!”

“It’s delicious!”

“It’s delightful!”

“It’s hungry!”

“We dance around in a ring and suppose—“

The shawl curtain shivers and the Bilskinirs vanish instantly. Tiny Doom clutches the pig to her bosom, eyes wide with alarm. The fire elemental winks out, as well, leaving her in darkness. The scarf is whisked away and there looms Butler Paimon, silent with accusation. He snatches Tiny Doom up, and she’s borne aloft, howling--for in his hasty grab, she dropped the pig--all the way to the Pontifexa’s boudoir where her anxious grandmamma is waiting. The corgis, for once, do not yap at her entrance, but remain crouched by the fire-place, like anxious little burrs, ears pinned back. Luscious is gone but Uncle Bwannie lolls in an armchair, drinking something smoky from a very large jorum. 

“There you are!” The Pontifexa enfolds the crying child in a feathery embrace, “Oh you naughty girl, you gave us such a fright! What in Califa’s name what were you thinking?”

Tiny Doom is caught, but she’s not punished yet. Stifling a dramatic little sob she says: “An Ancient Ancestor tried to eat me!”

“I know I know, my dove, but I promise you such a thing will never happen again. Come come, no more tears. You are Heir to this House and should not cry over trifles.” 

“Maybe I would feel better if I had a giftie now?”

The Pontifexa laughs. “Nice try, my darling. I think it’s back to bed for you.”

Tiny Doom howls then: “Don’t let him take me, Grammy!” 

The Pontifexa presses Tiny Doom’s face to her neck, which is soft, like powder, and smells of an orange blossoms. “Someone has been listening at doors again, hmmm? Never fear, my darling. I shall never give you up. Never. You will never leave this House. I promise you that.” She plumps down on the sofa, consoles the child on her lap, and Tiny Doom, now exhausted, goes limp in her arms, yawns heavily. “Here, Paimon take her back—“

But before Paimon can take the child, the corgis, by the fire, suddenly puff up; they rise on stumpy legs, growling, fox-faces pointed towards boudoir’s open door. 

“Where the fike did that come from?” Uncle Bwannie asks. “I swear it wasn’t there a minute ago.” 

Tiny Doom raises her head, peers over her grandmother’s shoulder. There in the open doorway, somehow looking cocky, is the plush pink pig. As the corgis burst into braying alarms, but keep their distance, Tiny Doom slithers from the sofa, and rushes to the toy. 

“Hush! Hush up! Mamma’s babies, hush hush!” The Pontifexa shouts the corgis into silence; they slink off behind the settee to sulk. “What in Califa is that?”

“It’s my birthday giftie!” Tiny Doom crows. She holds the pig up and makes it dance. “My birthday giftie from my mamma!’

Behind her, the Pontifexa gasps, and Uncle Bwannie sputters his drink. Paimon’s mustachios gleam and he taps one claw to his nose, speculatively, but, all eyes fixed on the dancing child and pig, no one notices. 

****************************************************

"No food," he says.

"Can we rescue people from stories the way you grab food?" Maya asks. "Because Tiny Doom is only seven, and it seems like things are going to be awful for her."

"I'm not sure we could manage her here, she's quite a destructive force!" he says. "And I certainly couldn't take her back into my book with me. I'm sure she'll come out on top."

"Yes, she seems as if she would," Maya agrees. The cat, still brindled with rainbows, comes over to say hello, and she pets him for a moment before he stalks away. 

"He wants some food," he says.

"You do, you mean!" Maya laughs. "What have we got?"

He picks up a book. "Cunning Men, by Laurie J. Marks. Hmm."

"Is that Laurie Marks who wrote the Elemental Magic series, Air Magic and those? I loved those!"

"I don't know. I don't know anything about her,"

"Well she's great, you'll love it." Maya laughs again. "That's what you usually say to me!"

"Let's give it a go," he says.

And they read.