5
"Sugar?" asked the demon.
I came suddenly to attention and nodded without realizing what he was asking. From the time I had taken a seat at the library table, and he had gone through the door to fetch the tea, I was unaware of both my surroundings and the passage of time. In my mind I kept replaying the scene of me throwing the balled up veil at him. The memory of his laughter had left me reeling.
"One lump or two?" he asked, lifting the lid off a silver sugar bowl that was part of the service he had brought in on a lacquered tray.
"Yes," I answered.
He bowed his horned head and reached daintily into the bowl with two of his claws, like pincers, to pull out one cube at a time. Putting two in my cup, he lifted a spoon and stirred five times, his wings rising slightly with each orbit.
"We haven't had lemon for a long time," he said, averting his glance.
I said nothing but continued to stare in disbelief at his cordiality. "A shy beast of prey?" I said to myself. It might even have been easier had I come to my senses and found Greta Sykes chewing my leg. All I could think of was having seen my friend, Bataldo, the Mayor of Anamasobia, attacked by demons in the Beyond.
While preparing his own, he looked up every so often, showing enough fang to make me uncomfortable. He brought the cup to his lips when he was done and tested the mixture. The steam rose from the tea and fogged his spectacles, so he took them off and cleared them against the reddish brown fur of his stomach. His eyes intrigued me with their vertical serpent slits instead of irises, but at the same time they stirred some primal fear in me, and I could not look for long.
"You saved me tonight" I said.
He nodded. "I was out for some air, and I saw you running."
"The werewolves," I said.
"I'm sorry," he told me. "I have no control over them. I'm as frightened of them as you are. If I landed outside the walls and stayed on the ground, they would as soon rip me apart as you."
"Thank you," I said.
"You are welcome, Cley."
"How do you know me?" I asked, lifting my tea.
"My father," he said.
"Who is your father?" I asked.
"Master Below is my father. He showed me you," said Misrix.
"Drachton Below?" I asked.
"He birthed me into the world of men. He gave me language and understanding," he said.
"Is he here, in the ruins of the city?" I asked.
"He is here," said Misrix.
"I've got to speak to him," I said.
"I will take you to him soon."
"How were you birthed into the world of men?" I asked.
"It was like a great wind blowing out a candle in my head. With the brightness of the Beyond extinguished from me, I could concentrate. I began to think as humans do."
"Tell me about it."
"Very well, Cley," he said, and with this reached back into the folds of his leathery wings and brought forth a pack of cigarettes and a small box of matches.
"You smoke?" I asked.
"From what I have read, it is most appropriate that a demon should smoke" he said with a bashful grin. "But you won't tell my father, will you?"
"Not if you give me one," I said.
He reached the pack across to me.
"Where did you get these?" I asked.
"In the ruins. I can find almost anything in the ruins if I look long enough. These spectacles, do you like them?" he asked, leaning his head down and peering over the top of them. "I found them on a dead one. My father says they do not help my sight, but I like them. When I look at myself in the glass, I see 'intelligent.' "
As he lit his cigarette and inhaled, his hooves clicked a rhythm against the stone floor. He passed me the matches and coughed profusely, like the muffled roar of a lion. The smoke wreathed his head, and if not for the spectacles, I saw before me an illustration from the catechism of my childhood. He flapped his wings to clear the air, took another drag, and began.
"I still vaguely remember when I was a beast, gliding through the forest, sniffing at the breeze of the Beyond for a trace of living flesh. Then I was captured and brought to the city. All I remember from that time is rage and fear. I escaped from my captors. Food was easy to find, though, and rarely put up much of a fight. Once I battled a powerful man in the underground, and he cracked off one of my horns. The horn grew back, and I went on to hunt again. Finally, there were explosions everywhere, and I flew up out of the City and circled in the air until they ended. After that, it was difficult to find food. I could not eat the dead even though there were so many. To eat the dead is to die. I lived on stray cats and dogs who survived the end of the City. Sometimes I would swoop down on pigeons, but this was meager food, and I was beginning to starve.
"One day I saw a man, it was my father, before I knew he was my father, standing out in the open. I flew down on him to take his living flesh, but as my claws ripped into him, he was not there. He had vanished like smoke, and what I knew next was a net dropping over me. Then he was there, and he stuck a long sharp thing into my arm. I was awake and dreaming all at once for a very long time. Through that
time I heard his voice always speaking to me. The words seeped into me and twisted around my inside, grew like vines and flowers, blossomed in my skull. It was painful, but the pain was far away.
"Sheer beauty were the first words I came to understand, and I knew they meant the bite of the needle. When I awoke, I no longer desired living flesh. Father fed me plant meat. I no longer knew every moment what I would do in the next moment, but instead sat for long moments thinking. This thinking was a curious thing at first. It was a clock ticking, a music I did not want to hear the end of. Finally, I was released from my waking dream, and I knew before I stood up and took my first step that I was Misrix. I cried to know that I was born then. My father put his arms around me. 'You have much to learn/ he said."
Here the demon motioned for me to return the pack of cigarettes. He took another and this time reached up and struck the match head into flame against his left horn. As he brought the light down, he looked out of the corner of his eye to make sure I had caught his performance.
"So" I said, "Below dragged you into humanity."
"Birthed me," he said. "He showed me many things. Told me many things. And then one day, we discovered that I had a special way of learning. I used to be his assistant in the laboratory. I watched him make his inventions and experiments, as he called them. At the time, he was turning men into the wolf things that surround the ruins. A group of men from somewhere came to the City. They had weapons and were hunting through the debris for treasures. We captured them, he and I and Greta. He told me that he was going to help them to return to their true forms. What they were really searching for was to be turned into wolves. We put them all alive in cages and then one at a time, he would take them out and work on them. Their screams upset me. He told me it was not easy for them to become what they needed to become.
"One day when he was sleeping, I heard one of them screaming in the laboratory. I went in there, although I was not supposed to without him. The man begged me to let him go. I tried telling him he needed to become a wolf, but he cried most pitifully. He told me he would be all right if I would just let him loose to take a walk for a few minutes. I hurt inside for him and undid the straps, letting him up. He ran away. Father was furious with me. He yelled and even struck me in the face. I was told to stand in the corner, and he sent Greta out to find the man. She returned an hour later, but I guess she never found him.