Chương 1: Start Reading

They park by the scaffold and pull Caspar from the trunk. His hands are bound. His scrabbling boots pound out a crinkling paradiddle on the tarpaulin they stretched out to catch the blood and the fibers.

"Get his legs, damn you." This from the driver, and he recognizes the terrified voice. That's Sam, a bricklayer. Caspar fixed his toothache just this past winter.

"His head," someone says.

"Careful."

"What fuckin' difference does it make?"

"It makes a difference." The oldest voice, familiar despite its stony encasement of command.

"Stand him up. Get the hood off him." Caspar's chin jerks against the fabric as they shuck the bag from his head. Air fills his lungs. A string of lonely highway lights poke glowing holes into his concussion. Steady, gloved hands on his shoulders. The ringleader lifts his face by his bloodied chin.

"Caspar Cartwright. I name you warlock. I name you conjuror. And I sentence you to the mercy of the Father's judgment. By His grace, may you find forgiveness." Edgar, that's this man's name. He taught Caspar his letters.

"Get him up."

"Edgar. Please, Ed. I know you. You know—" Caspar's reward for this is a backhand, bony and stinging.

"Shut up." A tremulous note as his executioner stuffs the smiling schoolteacher further back into the cage of his mind. And Caspar knows now, knows from the hearing, that his life is finished. Edgar filled Caspar's brain with words and definitions and places and animals he'll never see. And tonight he's going to turn that brain into an unlit hunk of meat. Tomorrow these men will hold their children and greet their neighbors and be good—better, even, to scrub the stain.

Tonight they make themselves something besides men. Stupid animal instinct lags Caspar's steps, drags his toes uselessly in the dirt and makes an absurdist comedy out of his ascent to the scaffold as his legs fail and fight and his captors curse. A reverberant thud as a pistol butt lands on the back of his head, knocks the world into gray for a moment. A voice full of disgust and blunted fear.

"Let's make it quick. For your sake and ours. We're giving you a long drop. Have some fucking dignity."

"We're sorry, Cas. So sorry." That's Aaron, at the scaffold's foot, tears dropping from his chin.

"It's for the Father. Please. It's not us. The inspectors are coming."

"Shut up, Aaron." Edgar yanks Caspar up another step.

"If you want to help him, find a shovel." They muscle him up to the gallows. He's disappointing himself. He wants to be brave, to face this fearlessly as a servant of the Father. But the feeling of the hemp rope around his neck triggers another helpless, heart-wrenching thrash. They've been doing what they can to avoid his darting gaze. But Edgar puts his gray-templed face in front of Caspar now, ginger to avoid the trapdoor beneath his feet.

"You have any last things to say, to us or to the Father, now you say them." He blinks the perspiration from his eyes. He lets a scrap of kindness out.

"Anyone back at Rogarth you want to send a message to, any goodbyes, we can pass those on." Caspar's search for courage has run its course. Instead, he finds a rich vein of anger at these people he's given his life and light to. He's not the coward. They are.

"I saved your daughter's leg, Ed," he says.

"I set it and cured it. It would have been a chair or a cane all her life." He raises his voice.

"No messages. No repentance. You want to soothe your consciences, you do it yourselves. I've fixed enough of your hurts." Edgar spits onto the splintery boards; the thirsty wood absorbs the mark.

"Fine, then, warlock. Make your apologies to the Father. Go, Sam." This to the guy at the lever, whose knuckles go white on the mechanism.

"Father, forgive," he mumbles, and drops the latch. And that's that. Say this about Caspar's killers: none of these people have hanged someone before, but they've studied hard the way to do it properly. I can tell by how they've tied it, how they cinched it around his trembling neck. They don't want Caspar to suffer. His neck goes as he drops through the trap, clean and tidy, only a few dancing jigs of his boots before they are still. His eyes blink and go wide and round and then see nothing.

And then they see a vaulted roof, its arches carved with repeated organic filigree that reminds him of the spine he just snapped. He died. He felt himself die. Now he feels himself drag along the ground. There's a tether at his neck, like a leash. Someone is tugging him, by the rope that hanged him, across polished stone. He hears the swish, swish of silk rubbing against itself; the click, click of heels on marble. He's plucked into the air by small but powerful arms, deposited on something soft.

A bier, or a bed, or perhaps both, stacked with sweet-scented cushions and braided flowers. Champak, sandalwood. A creaking noise as someone joins him and sits lightly on his legs. He cranes his neck, feels a curious numb lightness where the noose broke it. But he's been re-knit. And now he beholds the one who did it. Which would be me. Hello, dear reader. I'm assuming that you're as human as Cas here, unless you guys have taught dogs to read at this point. It's hard to keep track.

You humans are so into teaching dogs how to do things. My sister Ganea once observed that human civilization has been mostly about inventing new weapons and teaching dogs increasingly complicated tricks. She meant it offensively, I'm sorry to say. She takes a dim view of you. She styles herself as a war deity; I guess that comes with the turf. Me, personally, I think you guys are just fabulous.

"Hi, Caspar," I say.

"Hi," he manages, and he's curious as to his lack of fear. I know because I'm in his head. I see what he sees: a wavering woman-shape, a silhouette of black, smoky tendrils, the faceless void of my head centerpieced by an intricate cyclopean eye of molten gold. I've opted for something simple here, about halfway between human and my true form. Close enough to what he's used to that he'll see my personhood. Weird enough that he knows I'm far from his species.

Just for kicks, I've approximated the cocktail dress and the measurements of the first image he ever felt desire for, a photo of Archbishop Tilliam's buxom young wife smiling radiantly from a rickety shelf of magazines. I've made the dress purple, though. Of all the colors you humans can see, that's my pick every time. If it ain't purple, I ain't wearing it. By all rights, he ought to be losing his mind from fear and confusion, but he isn't. Good old Caspar. Or maybe it's the shock. I'll take it either way.

"Where am I?" Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"You're in my room." I reach behind him and adjust a violet pillow to cushion his raised head.

"Comfy?"

"Who are you?"

"You'd need a few more mouths to pronounce who I am, Cas. Can I call you Cas?"

"Okay."

"Great." I'd smile, but I haven't manifested the face for it.

"And you can call me Irene." And you can, too, sweet reader, since my real name would liquefy your eyes. That's my little favor for you. His mouth hangs in a daze. I'm counting on the shock of his return to cognizance in order to carry us through what might be a tricky conversation.

"Am I dead?"

"That's a less straightforward question than you may have been conditioned to think, Caspar Cartwright." I'm still perched on him, but I cross my legs coquettishly, leaving little photonegative trails in the air. Can you blame me? I don't get a lot of opportunities to have legs.

"The closest answer is yes." His hand shoots to his neck. He feels the hemp still coiled around it.

"You can get all the way dead, if you'd like," I say.

"We could say goodbye here. You might want to do that if you're big into all the Father stuff, since I'd like to get a little heretical with you. But the Father's guys down there did just sever your cervical vertebrae. So I'd like to offer an alternative. Maybe you'll take a little walk with me and give me a chance to explain." I know he will. I know Caspar. I've spent the last few years in his head. I like this guy. He's good, but he's not dumb.

He sees the world for how it is and recognizes the ways he can change it and the ways he can't. I'm interested in expanding those definitions a little. To be honest, I'm also excited to introduce myself and get a good look at him through something other than a mirror. I've ridden enough human minds to know what their desire feels like, what kindles it. Enough to know that those yokels wasted a perfectly good-looking guy when they lynched Cas.

He's got the sort of face that makes you think: oh, this guy is probably stupid. He isn't, to be clear; he's a rather intelligent man in many ways, or I wouldn't be interested. But there's something about the worried cast of his brow, the strength of his jaw, the meaty amplitude of his trained shoulders. He looks nice but dim, like the boy scout hero of a Relic City drama-comic. I guess gormless is the word. Or maybe himbo. That's a compliment, to be clear. I'm unpracticed in giving them. He's looking back at me.

His gaze lingers on my hips, I'm pleased to say, which I've made somewhat wider than the real Mrs. Tilliam's, for my sake. What can I say? I've been working on this body for a while, and I like having a bit of an ass.

"Shall we, Cas?" I hop off the bier and extend a hand.

"This is your dream, my man. Nothing here happens without your allowance."

"I'm dreaming?" He looks around the yawning, gothic chamber I've ensconced us in. We sit in a pool of light that obscures its far reaches. A girl must be allowed her little secrets.

"Sorta. It's the closest comparison." He props himself onto his elbows, then unfolds his legs and carefully plants his big dusty shitkicker boots onto my pristine floor. He shakes more dust out of his patched chore coat. Not that I mind. I can clean myself. By which I mean my self. This is my room, in the same way your stomach is your stomach. Which, yes, if you want to be crude about it, means Caspar is inside me right now. All of this is me.

The bier, the pillows, the hall, the little woman, the light, the dark, the form, the void. I am Irene. I am I. If he knew my true dimensions, if he could comprehend the nature of the being that now lightly takes his hand and leads him down her corridors, if I were to express the depths of my alien mind rather than this speck that I've crammed into an understandable form for you and him, it would snap your human brains like twigs under an elephant's foot.

Perhaps a certain comprehension flickers through him as I lead him through the corridors of Me, shining a light from my eye to guide his way.

"You're the Adversary, aren't you? You're the devil."

"I'm gonna push back on the devil thing. That's so comical. You don't see horns, do ya?" I allow my body a little more definition. Onyx lips, a pair of golden eyes folding open below the cyclopean orb on my forehead.

"I am part of the Adversary, though, yes. A piece. Maybe the best way you'd grasp it is the Adversary is… like a family. Me and my sisters." He examines me. I blink. What a fun sensation that is. My eyes feel so blobby.

"You're not what I expected," he says. My fancy new mouth (so much smaller than I'm used to!) quirks into a smirk.

"You were thinking I'd be taller, maybe?" He releases my hand. He's growing pale.

"I think I ought to pray." Ah, there's the resistance I was expecting.

"To the Father? Cas, I'm afraid He won't hear you. He hasn't heard you since you were very young."

"Heresy. That's heresy." Caspar's forehead has a sheen of sweat on it now as absolute reality crashes back into his skull.

"Yeah, dude." I give an apologetic shrug.

"I warned you."

"The Father—""The Father's servants killed you. The Father's servants run your world. None of them hear His voice. Maybe some of them delude themselves into hearing something else, but it isn't Him. You don't want me to be right, but something's telling you I am. He isn't in front of you. Because He is gone." Caspar is backing away from me now. I follow, swaying with every click of my heels.

"Do you want to know how I know, Caspar?" Caspar's back bumps into a wall that was not there before. His eyes squeeze shut. His hands clasp.

"Father, hear your child. Father, turn to me and cast your shadow from me."

"I know, because my sisters and I ate Him," I say.

"The war that's been preached to you, between Heaven and the Void, it was real. It happened. He lost. We won and then we ate Him." And I don't tell Caspar this, since I don't want him to freak out completely, but just between you and me, that's not a metaphor. We ate Caspar's god. We flensed Him and skinned Him and cracked His bones with our many teeth and sucked the marrow. Nothing was left by the time we were done. His was the first flesh I've ever eaten. The first physical substance I tasted.

I've been alive for millennia without knowing how hungry I'd been. But now I do. I've gotten good at suppressing it, but now I'm hungry all the damn time.

"Father, lead me into your kingdom. Keep the gate and the wall."

"You want to see His kingdom?" I place my palm on the tiled wall by his ear. I'm patient, but I think what Cas needs right now is a shock to the system.

"I'll show you." I close my fist and the wall behind Caspar crumbles. I catch his arm before he falls backward, and haul him onto the ledge which now protrudes from my gargantuan self. And I show him the ruin above which we float, its yellow-ivory horizon stretching in every direction until the cloak of poisonous miasma swallows it. I show him what's left of Heaven. Just for an instant. Just long enough. Then I snatch him back inside, before he can take in enough detail to break his brain.

The slouching human shapes racked in pain, the fractals of bone and masonry intertwined and spiraling into ersatz pillars of decomposition. The indescribable forms of myself and my sisters, our impossible shadows creeping across the smashed sanctums and donjons. A tomb-world, a carrion world. I reform the wall as he collapses and curls up against it, shaking violently. I kneel before him, straightening my little purple dress at my knees." That is your afterlife, Caspar.

That is where everyone you ever loved and lost now dwells. That is the fate that awaits His abandoned children. And it's not because of us. It's been like this for centuries now. You can thank Him for that. He gave up, a long time ago. Why do you think we won?" His eyes are red. Part of that is he's crying, part of it is because the sight burst a few blood vessels in them. His voice is coarse and raw.

"Why did you show me this?"

"Because they need your help," I say." We need your help. I love you, Caspar. I love humanity. You don't deserve this. None of you deserve it, but you, especially, Cas. I want to rebuild your home. I want to live there with you. That's all I've ever wanted." He wants to believe me so badly. I feel the first flickering touch of his faith, like a sweet breath on my neck. Oh, yes. I want more. I need more.

"Do you remember what Edgar called you before he killed you?" I whisper. Caspar's dry lips part.

"Warlock." It comes out as a stripped croak. His head buries between his knees.

"A lie," I say.

"An evil, horrible lie born from fear and hatred. You are a healer, Cas. You're a good man. Dabbling in the eldritch didn't change that. I watched you. That's why I chose you. The spells you knew, that was just folk-magic. Old, old ways. As old as me, and I'm old as fuck." I put a thumb on his forehead and draw his face gently but inexorably up. Tears have cut lines in the pale dust of his cheek. One of the free-floating tendrils that makes up my hair drifts down the furrow.

"The divinity inherent in creation. You use it to make people better. Believe me, Cas. I know what a warlock is. I've employed them. I've granted them different power. Real power." I lay a hand on his dirt-encrusted hair.

"The same power I now offer you," I say.

"I will give it to you and send you back. And you will find the key to Heaven, and open the gate, and let me in."