‘Did you like it, puss?’
They raped an angel. Through me. They raped an angel in my body. My angel.It wasn’t rage he felt, but a great disbelief and weariness; the rousing of an exhausted, possessive jealousy.
Condummatum est.Lucifer’s gentleness made Kit want to retch. “He wasn’t only talking to me, was he?” ‘Bid you like it, puss?’“It was a promise to–what they put in me. Something to think about.”
«Aye»
“I thought the dark Prometheans thought they were – God’s chosen.”
«They are.» Lucifer answered calmly. «The God they intend to create. And what is bound in thee is part of that creation, a chink in the armor of the Divine. As thy cloak offers thee a symbol of the scrap of protection and grace offered thee by each one who contributes to it–so what is done to thee is done to Mehiel, and that which is done unto Mehiel is done unto God.»
The spaces underfoot and overhead made him dizzy. This is Hell too,he thought. For it is not Heaven.“If this works,” Kit asked, a spark of doubt flaring in his soul as he thought of Will and Ben hard at work over verses and translation, “‑why have you not taken it on yourself to make a God of your own?”
«Sweet Poet.» Mockery, and a warm wing across his shoulders. «Have I not? Why didst think I chose thee, my love? What dost thou think thy Faustuswill create, given history and the acclaim it deserves?»
“I have an angel burned on my skin,” Kit said, wondering. “What happens if I set him free?”
«If thou canst discover how. I do not know that he can be freed without the destruction of the prison that contains him.»
“Me.” Kit sagged, and turned his face to the silk of Satan’s shirt when the angel embraced him once more. The tears were dry on his face, if they had been water and not flames, and he leaned into the embrace and the scent of smoke and forgetfulness that surrounded Lucifer, and the warmth of those wings, and the cold starlight gleaming between his boots and on his hair. God sent an angel to bear my pain. And I have hated God all these years for failing to answer my prayers.
As they said in Faerie, all stories were true. But some stories were more true than others.
‘Did you tike it, puss?’
«Well?» Lucifer asked, some eternity later. «Was Morgan correct, again? Has’t broken thee, this knowing?»
“Yes,” Kit said, and somewhere found a last black scrap of humor, and managed not to shiver as he spoke. “At least for today.”
«Brave Poet.» the Devil said, and held him among the darkness and the stars for a little while longer, until Kit raised his face from the soft white curve of Satan’s wing.
“There’s a shining sort of irony in Lucifer giving God back to a man God doesn’t want.”
«Poetry grows through the broken places, brother.» The wings opened around him; Kit stood under their arch, but they no longer restrained or warmed him.
Within and yet without, and boldly he laid his hand on the feathers again and ruffled them up, stroked them smooth. Whatever moved in Kit was vast and slow, a symphony of emotion that swelled from discord into something complex and bittersweet and whole. “Brother … an we are friends, then. And thou dost value my friendship – ” It wouldn’t come into words, exactly, but he knew perfectly well that Lucifer could read his tangle of emotions and half‑formed thoughts as plainly as a poem. The Devil might claim he could not see in human hearts. But Lucifer was, after all, the Prince of Lies.
And when those lies went cloaked in truth, so much the better.
Lucifer tilted his head, considering, watching Kit’s hand linger among his feathers. «The pain and sickness thou feelst at thy lovers’ touch. And yet not at mine.»
“If we are to be friends–”
«Sir Poet.» When Satan ducked his head and smiled crookedly at Kit, it folded sharp creases from the corners of his long, slightly crooked nose to the corners of his mouth. The blue eyes crinkled in an interested sort of mockery, and Kit felt suddenly as if some bright fluid buoyed him. «‘Tis thine own soul’s wreaking, and a sensible one; ‘tis but that the wall Mehiel and thyself didst build about thy garden of suffering–and his–after Rheims has fallen.»
“… fallen?”
«The angel Mehiel has seen the truth, that hiding thy pain from thee has not made thee strong, but concealed the flaw within. He hath lifted his wings, and thou must needs now tend the blasted heath within. Friend Poet, heal thyself, and thou wilt be whole.»
“The blasted heath? Or the blastedheart?” Kit asked wryly, but he found himself stepping back from the angel and the devastating truth in his words. Something within Kit’s breast stirred with a pain like trapped and beating wings. “How many men does the Devil call friend?”
The broad wings folded with a breeze that savored of lavender. Lucifer too stepped back. “As many as offer him understanding.”
Barely on a breath, a murmur, a whisper–and the sound of Lucifer’s spoken voicestaggered Kit nonetheless. It resonated through the crystal under Kit’s feet, through the chamber of his lungs and heart, striking sparks from his hair and his fingertips. That tolling bell, that falcon’s cry, that shriek of joy and agony that Kit recognized from his dreams hung inside his mind, and he knew it now for the voice of the angel within.
“Oh, my,” Kit whispered, as the Devil reached out and took his forearms in white fingers, and smiled again, and met his gaze. Lucifer’s eyes shone transparent, blue as the sunlit vault of Heaven, and Kit held his breath. Thou art–
«I always suspected that thou didst thy Mephostophilis love, a little.»
Kit laughed and would have broken the eye contact, but the Devil’s smile held him. He shivered and swallowed, and with an act of raw will managed to look down. “Rather I fancied myself a sort of Mephostophilis – ”
«And not Faustus?»
“Who would wish to be Faustus?” Kit said, and stepped forward, and boldly, chastely, kissed Lucifer on the mouth. The Devil permitted the caress, returned it–a gentle, considering tasting as unlike the blinding passion of another time as kiss from kiss could be. Kit did not step back after, but spoke against Lucifer’s smooth‑skinned jaw, feeling the prickles of his beard rasp the angel’s cheek. “Poor damned fool, reaching beyond any sane measure of wisdom for something he could see, but scarcely understand. I would not wish to be him, but aye–I understood and pitied him.”
«And hast thou who wert Christofer Marley not reached all thy life for that which eluded thy grasp?»
“Thou must find somewhat less unwieldy by which to address me,” Kit said, but the Devil would not be diverted.
«If thou art Mephostophilis»–Lucifer spread wide his bright, beckoning wings – зthen I am Faustus. Come and teach me thy pity again.»
Act IV, scene xi
Antonio: A witchcraft drew me hither:
That most ingrateful boy there by your side,
From the rude sea’s enraged and foamy mouth
Did I redeem; a wreck past hope he was:
His life I gave him and did thereto add