“Please be advised that weather forecasts call for torrents of blood, but otherwise clear skies. If you begin to see blood-fall, please move inside for your own safety. Some of the blood may come in a form that could crush you. Thank you, forest citizens, for your kind attention in this matter.”
—Decree from Crowley, written on a piece of paper and attached with a ribbon to a nectar deer, set free outside the war elephant (never formally issued)
If moving about ponderous in a war elephant had been claustrophobic and, if Crowley were honest, deeply boring, then becoming stationary while having a moat built around one’s home ranked high on the ennui scale as well. He hadn’t been this out of sorts since losing his body for the first time. The circling presence of the batlike other Wretches, high above, did nothing to help his mood.
Crowley had little control over Wretch, but none over these party-crashers. Wretch acolytes? Were they somehow part of Wretch? So hard to tell what was going on, especially since the Wretch-mob seemed to have arrived to keep an eye on Fort Elephant while Wretch went off on another of his seemingly endless missions.
Where he went, Crowley still had no clue. Lately, Wretch had been much better about keeping him in the dark, even going over military plans with Charlie Mange without Crowley, which meant Crowley had to stand there in front of the demi-mages and pretend that he already knew the strategy. Not that it seemed they were much closer to attacking.
“A week,” Wretch kept saying. “A week to ten days. Let Ruth Less do her reconnaissance. Let my spies do their work. Let the Wretches steep and deepen.”
Steep and Deepen sounded like a particularly terrible magician duo. Applied to the Wretches, Crowley didn’t know what it meant. Although he would sometimes wake of a morning, go to the lookout spot (perhaps he was still a little nostalgic for the halcyon days with Napoleon), and hear the shrieks of sheep and cattle high in the air, for the Wretches kept up their strength by stealing livestock and devouring it whilst hovering in the heavens.
Which meant the land beneath was often subject to a rain of blood and viscera. He had received several complaints from the locals about the stench, those hardy souls still living in the forest. But he had to admit, he didn’t much care for this development, either. Nor had he been impressed by Wretch’s attempt to mimic the mysterious Stimply for the damned elusive young Lambshead’s benefit. Perhaps Wretch should have taken some acting lessons first, for clearly the ruse did not work. Even if Wretch claimed that wasn’t the point.
Worst of all, however, was the situation in Paris. It was one thing to resign himself to the impossibility of returning and liberating the city, quite another to bloody well have to endure the day-by-day negativity of ET and Latrine’s reports. It put a snarl in his jawline, clenched teeth and bad thoughts.
That very morning, with Wretch gone, Crowley and Charlie Mange had stared into the All-Seeing Puddle to find staring back only ET, no Latrine. Against a dark backdrop that could in no way be the ceiling of the cathedral.
Even as Crowley flinched from time to time, as he caught a glimpse in his peripheral vision of Charlie Mange. Because Wretch, citing expediency, namely that old Charlie was falling apart from moth damage, had given the terrible Mange a full-on brown-and-gray moth body, complete with giant wings, and then just plopped CM’s awful head on top. The result a kind of velvety horror show, a glam glossy faux-fur ick-ness.
“But he is more stable now,” Wretch had explained.
“He’s more hideous and … soft … now.” But, in truth, Crowley was a little envious. Especially of those silent wings. Wretch had already taken Charlie Mange along on an exploratory flight. Without the wingless Crowley, of course.
But Crowley must shake off this latest change in “the situation,” as he had dubbed his servitude to Wretch, for Eiffel Tower awaited.
“My Lord Emperor!” she said.
“Where are you, ET?”
“In the catacombs, my Lord Emperor! All is lost!”
“Well, not all, ET—you’re still reporting in, not dead with your head on a pike.”
“I don’t really have a head,” ET said.
“Higher levels, then.”
Crowley was in an oddly philosophical mood, having seen from the lookout platform half of a whole cow plummet into the empty moat from the Wretch flock circling above. It had smashed No-Name into bits as he inspected the moat work. There but for the grace of the devil went Crowley. These were the times he lived in. That he might one day be grateful to be nothing but a head.
“Rimbaud has captured Notre Dame. The animal army now controls the entire eastern half of Paris.”
“Where is Latrine?”
“He took what he could from the factories and some demi-mages and hopes to bring them to you, my lord.”
“Good, good.” Initiative. He hated initiative, but they could use more supplies. Some rabid animals to shove into war machines would definitely help.
“What are we to do?”
For a scale-model animated version of the Eiffel Tower, ET gave a credible impression of fear across the tiers of what could not be considered a real face. The tensile strength of the magical steel, the rabidity of the chipmunks within, must be remarkable.
“I release thee to pillage,” Crowley replied.
“What, Lord Emperor?”
“Get you down to the underground factories and have them remove the growth inhibitor spell and fill you full of more rabid chipmunks.” While there were still rabid chipmunks to be had.
“Sir, the factories are on fire now, just after Latrine left. The marmots … oh, Emperor, the marmots, the terrible, terrible marmots. All of that is gone. We have just the catacombs and some parts of the old city.”
“Well, then, um, I release you to rampage at your existing size with the existing number of rabid chipmunks.”
“Lord Emperor, it is not in my temperament.”
“Well, it certainly is in the temperament of the rabid chipmunks that animate you, ET! So figure it out! And don’t report back again!” The snarling rage had come from nowhere, but he knew it was linked to the claustrophobia and general lack of control.
So. Paris was likely lost. But that still left Germany, Spain, and outposts in various other countries, which he supposed might soon come under attack. For now, he still ruled them. He’d started to build additional war factories in Spain, but they weren’t operational yet. Perhaps they could be speeded up somehow.
With a mere All-Seeing Puddle and the forces he’d sent with Verne lost, Crowley couldn’t muster much of a counteroffensive. Only hope to hold on to what remained: Prague and the Golden Sphere.
“Nothing to say, Charlie Mange?” Crowley asked, for the wight just slouched there.
“I molt-eth,” Charlie Mange managed, in a blurred mumble.
“What, old boot?”
“Molt-eth. Moth-est. Moth-est.”
Crowley looked closer. Indeed, Charlie Mange’s leaves had all become cocoons or a flutter of brownish wings.
Ah, bloody wonderful. He’d at least hoped for some guidance from the rickety general-emperor.
Well, perhaps his old friend from Earth, this version, would be of more use. A farm in a clearing in the forest. A little cottage. Animal pens. Cheery smoke from a brick chimney. Chickens clucking. Cows mooing. Pigs squealing. He could see it clear as day, had visited with his father a few times on Earth. How different could it be on Aurora.
The Wretches were still busy littering the landscape with animal parts. They’d hardly miss him.
“Hold down the fort, Charlie Mange,” Crowley said.
“Mmmmph,” Charlie Mange replied, sinking to his knees under the weight of the soft wings of hundreds of moths.
The farmhouse of his friend Mediocre lay a bit closer to Prague than made Crowley comfortable, but still deep in the forest. He had retained a fondness for this patch of woods, with its mighty oaks, lichen, moss, and muffled areas of open meadow with wildflowers. He felt a thrill of excitement as he approached—after all, what if it hadn’t been there, here on Aurora? But it was, and this link to his past warmed his heart.
He couldn’t greet his farmer friend as “Mediocre,” of course—that had just been his father’s nickname for the farmer. Or, farmer-philosopher, as Crowley remembered from age twelve. The farmer had had a huge library of books on the occult and had dabbled in spells himself. His wife Belladimma (father’s name for her) had been a self-proclaimed witch who healed the locals’ ills with mushrooms, magic, and otherwise, along with ointments from crushed roots and leaves.
Once, Crowley had been playing with Mediocre’s daughter Shrill-bane (again, his father’s moniker) and rolled into some poisonous vine. Mediocre had taken him to Belladimma and she had stripped him half-naked and lathered him up with one of her lotions, which had spread a special glow across his body and perked him right up after several sessions.
The farmhouse with its huge troughs for the pigs, which roamed half-wild beyond the clearing, was just as he remembered it. And out front was Mediocre himself, chopping wood with an old rusty ax! Although he saw no sign of Belladimma—and Shrill would be all grown-up by now.
“Friend!” Crowley shouted out to Mediocre as he stepped out of the tree cover. “Well met!”
Mediocre stopped chopping wood, looked Crowley up and down, spit to the side, resumed chopping wood.
“Surely you remember me? Young Crowley? Aleister Crowley?” Mediocre had called him, alternatively, “Fresh Meat” or “Buttlehead,” for some reason. Shrill had called him “Pork Face.” Belladimma had called him “Hither.” But none of these seemed appropriate ways to remind the farmer.
Mediocre sighed, laid down his ax, put his hands on his hips, looked at Crowley, and said, “Naw, sir. I don’t recall.” Was it English with a thick Germanic accent or a kind of debased German? Hard for Crowley to tell.
“Summers? Staying here? With my father? Tall man. Brought you books on the occult. Swore a lot. Didn’t like mosquitoes. Hated small talk.” Was recently torn asunder so he wouldn’t thwart my plans.
“Can’t say it rangs a proverb ball, sir,” Mediocre said.
Crowley almost said “What?” but decided to move on.
“What about Shrill-bane?”
“Shrill? Bane?”
“Your daughter.”
“Never ’ad a daughter, sir. Had a pig named Shrill once. Let ’er eat from the dinner table, didn’t I? But then ’ad to kill an’ eat ’er.”
“That wouldn’t be the one.”
“Well, sir, imp pass.”
“What?”
“Imp pass. Means somethin’ you can’t cross. Ironic-like.”
“I know what impasse means!”
“And call off yer wart beasties there. If they a’come tramplin’ my clearin’ upsetting the chickens an’ they don’ lay, I lose breakfast.”
“Wart beasties?”
“The beasties you use to wage wart, ain’t they?”
“Oh, those,” Crowley said.
It was true. Although he’d wanted to go off on his own, the demi-mages had protested, and rather than directly face his wrath at their disobedience in not letting him be alone, they had sent five or six war crocodiles behind him at a respectful distance, with Emissaries and demi-mages at their sides. And it was true they’d not only made a dreadful racket, but had ruined quite a bit of forest.
Crowley looked back at them and waved them off. “Farther back, damn you! Farther back!”
They stayed where they were, but came no nearer. The mecha-crocodiles had expressions like sorrowful befanged dogs. They were perhaps the most loyal, being stuffed full at this point, of pieces of deceased demi-mages, having run out of animals. But that fact made them no less off-putting to Mediocre.
Muttering to himself, Mediocre had stepped away from the ax and the firewood and moved closer to the farmhouse, sitting on a stool next to the troughs and using a huge pestle to crush some substance into a pail. Beside him at the troughs stood a ruminating cow and next to the cow, hidden at first by its bulk, a man in a cow suit.
“Hallo,” said the man in the cow suit.
“Hello,” said Crowley, flummoxed. “Who are you?”
“Tourist from Prague. Farm life, you know!”
“Go away or I shall feed you to my mecha-crocs,” waving behind him. Out of consideration for Mediocre, or he would’ve just killed him with a spell.
The man stood and fled into the forest. For some time, Crowley could see the bipedal white cow moving back and forth into the distance as he threaded his way between the trees. The suit seemed too big, as if at one point there had been two people inhabiting it. The cow man fell often, got up, fell again. Became a white dot.
“Why’d yew go an’ do that?” Mediocre asked, staring after the cow man. “Payin’ guest. Good milker, too. Milked good.” He continued with his pestle and pail.
“Making saltpeter for experiments?” Crowley asked hopefully, and to change the subject.
“Naw—shit from crops.”
“You’re making … shit … for crops?”
“Fert’lizer. Myself.”
“Ah,” Crowley said, and moved a little away from the farmer.
At which point a number of satanic-looking potatoes popped out of the ground, the expressions on their faces enraged, and attacked Crowley. They were everywhere, like cockroaches, except they were potatoes.
He cast a small fire smell and crisped them alive, their tiny shrieks soon fading and their forms writhing and then still on the ground they had popped out of. Potatoes hated him, and he had no idea why.
Mediocre the farmer had risen from his seat and was staring in alarm at Crowley.
“Oi! Yer upsettin’ me crop. Crop I’m makin’ the shit for!”
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Mediocre,” Crowley said, and he was. This reunion wasn’t at all what he’d hoped for. It was, in fact, becoming more stressful by the moment.
“What did ye call me?”
“Nothing,” Crowley said quickly, sadly. “Nothing at all.”
The farmer stared at him a moment, tossed the mortar into the bucket, scowled, and said, “Now, ye listen here to me, strange for-iner. Ahv no recollect of yew. Ahv no recollect at-awl. And yew’ve not got the right top half or mayhap the wrong bottom half. I’ve no dear, no wont no dear. Did yew scramble with ’nother gent bottom of yonder hill? Mayhap yew shewd go hence, collect up yer right parts? For yer mind is cut loose.”
Crowley was spared a response to whatever Mediocre had said by the heaving of mighty wings, and Wretch plummeted to his side, in a concentrated hawklike form black as night, with but a single huge eye and mighty talons. The sudden physicality of it, that weight at his shoulder, made Crowley recoil and shriek. The smell was the worst thing: seafood chowder gone bad, drowned in castor oil and then set aflame with petrol.
But the farmer was made of sterner stuff, or, at least, must have seen many odd things in the forest.
“What matter of infernal bat be ye?” Mediocre asked, indignant, as if this were the last straw and he needed every bit of hay for the winter.
Wretch opened a mouth that kept growing, roared at the man, “Not the forgiving kind!”
It was clear he meant to swallow Mediocre whole, as the man fell to the ground from the onslaught, and began gibbering and sidling crablike back toward the safety of the farmhouse.
“No, Wretch, no! Don’t! He’s … he’s just a … badger … isn’t that right, Mediocre?” Concentrating all the power of his gaze upon the frightened man. “You’re a badger. No threat at all. Badger badger badger.”
A new light and certainty entered Mediocre’s eyes, and he stopped sidling like a crab. Instead, he began digging. Just like a badger. Pathetic. How had his father ever counted this man as his friend?
Then the cow exploded at the trough, covering Crowley and the farmer-badger in offal. Icky, small, rough bits.
When he’d regained his feet, he saw Ruth Less at the trough, which was full of rather disorganized cow parts. The smell would have been life-altering, if Crowley’s life hadn’t been so altered already.
Ruth Less had slaughtered the cow in a very idiosyncratic way, via explosion, so quickly it had hardly had a chance to moo, the better to eat it, and now was gorging on the body, mouth-parts filthy with blood. Slobber and drool ruined the schoolmarm illusion, as did the opening up of the head to reveal the mouth-parts, tentacles gathering up cow pieces and shoveling them in.
Worst still, Wretch, back to his normal size, joined Ruth Less at the trough-buffet, head over the side, chewing, while behind Crowley heard the unwieldly tread of the mecha-crocodiles approaching.
What a mess.
“Did she have to kill the cow?” Crowley asked the air.
Wretch looked up from his feast long enough to say, “Ruth Less needs to keep up her strength. She almost captured the Golden Sphere. Really, we are so very close. Now she has their scent!”
Wretch, after being almost gloomy the past week, had a kind of maniacal, bright gleam in his eye. Almost gleeful.
“Wot trees ’av come ta dark wood, then yew shall be undone by ’uge monster an’ mystery howz.” Mediocre muttering at Crowley, looking at him like he was a war criminal. Muttering prophecies?
“There are trees here now, Mediocre.”
“Axley m’point.”
Wretch nodded at Mediocre. “Did you get the nostalgia over and done with?”
“He doesn’t really know me.”
“Ahm standin’ right ’ere.”
“Of course he didn’t,” Wretch said. “Only I know you. Do you understand now?”
“Understand what?”
Wretch laughed cruelly. “You can’t go home again. No one can. No one really wants to.”
Ruth Less was sniffing the air with violence, spreading red gore-snot everywhere.
“Sensing something, Ruth Less?” Wretch said in an elevated tone, as if talking to a dog who wanted to play fetch. “Go get it, Ruth Less! Go get it!”
“Jonathan. Danny. Rack.”
“Yes, Ruth Less! Good girl! Go go go!”
Crowley had never seen Wretch so maniacally happy. He was even tittering and giggling a bit, which was odd.
Ruth Less went bounding off into the mist.
As if the mist required an equal and opposite reaction to Ruth Less’s vast mass smashing into it, the mist disgorged in that moment twelve or fourteen onrushing bears. Along with an odd horse and cart, and a number of other random dangers. Monsters galore. Nothing Crowley hadn’t seen before in his mind’s eye of a Sunday.
Which was Crowley’s sign, spur of the moment, that he wasn’t yet done with his wandering, and used the resulting confusion to flee into the mist again, euphoric to escape Wretch’s wretched euphoria.
If only for a little while.