“Oh, I was for a while,” he said. Even his voice was pleasant; just deep enough to be masculine, formed by a smiling mouth. “He was so incredibly lucky to have me! I shone in his bed like a star in the night sky! Not that I’ve seen the night sky in many ages. But I do remember it,” he added wistfully. He pulled his own tunic off over his head and doffed his trousers in a second graceful gesture. “Do you notice how lovely my ass is? Is not my cock perfect? And my legs-so straight, so well formed.”
The guards hardly gave the prisoner a glance as they exited. Presumably they’d seen the show before. Batanya was pleased to see that Clovache was regarding the young man with interest. He rotated slowly so that both newcomers could get a comprehensive look at his assets.
“Yes, very nice,” Batanya said, which was not nearly enough for the youth.
“You can’t have seen anything like me before,” he said to Clovache, coaxingly.
“That’s for damn sure,” she agreed, cocking an eyebrow.
“Yes, one of kind,” he said proudly. He couldn’t seem to speak of himself any other way. “It’s simply inexplicable that Lucifer could prefer anyone else to me. Though some of the things he liked to do hurt me and bruised my fair flesh,” he added, looking a little sad. “However,” he said, brightening, “the blue tint did look fascinating against my normal skin tone.”
The two Britlingens tried hard not to look at each other.
“You can put your clothes back on,” Batanya said. “You’re certainly very attractive, but we have more urgent things to think of. What is your name, handsome?”
“Narcissus,” he said. “Isn’t that beautiful?”
“Yes,” Clovache said, with every appearance of sincerity. “We’ve heard of you.” She turned to Batanya and winked. Batanya was relieved her junior was feeling well enough to react to the young man.
“Oh, my fame has spread even to… wherever it is you come from?” This idea made him very cheerful. He picked up a small mirror and began examining his own face in it.
“I guess the guards let him have a mirror so he’d shut up,” Batanya muttered. Narcissus, totally involved in his reflection, didn’t seem to notice his fellow prisoners anymore.
“Excuse me,” called the woman across from Clovache.
The two Britlingens went to the front of their cells. “Can I help you?” Clovache asked. It was a ridiculous question, but it would start the conversational ball rolling.
“Can you tell me what year it is?” the woman asked.
“That depends on what dimension you inhabit,” Batanya said. “And what planet you live on.”
The woman sighed. She appeared to be in her forties. She had short brownish hair, straight white teeth with a marked gap in front, and a pleasant face. “I hear things like that here all the time, and I’m not sure what to make of it,” she said. She was wearing tailored pants and a blouse with funny dots down the front. Batanya realized, after a moment’s study, that these round objects were the means of holding the shirt closed. Buttons, that was what they were called. There was a heavy jacket with big lapels and a hat and goggles hanging on a peg on the wall, the only place in the cell to hang possessions.
“You’re not wearing the prison outfit,” Clovache said. “Why is that?”
“I don’t know. I landed on an island in the Pacific, after the longest flight I’ve ever had.” The handsome woman looked momentarily confused. “I don’t know exactly where we were when our plane began to falter. And my navigator didn’t survive the landing.” She was silent for a long moment. “When I got out of the plane, I was stumbling around, and I went between two palm trees, and suddenly I was here. I was caught right away by some of those spidery things, and they brought me down to show me to the handsome gentleman. Is his name really Lucifer? Have I gone to Hell?”
“You landed on Hell. Now we’re below the surface, of course. What country are you from?” There was something oddly out of place about this woman.
“I’m from the United States of America,” she said. “I’m an aviatrix.”
Clovache looked over at Batanya, who shrugged. “I don’t know what that is,” she said.
“I fly airplanes,” the woman said with simple pride.
“I’m afraid you’re not on Earth any longer,” Batanya said. “At least… you’re not in the same dimension as Earth. We were just there a few weeks ago.”
“I figured that I couldn’t be back home. And I am surely not in the Pacific.” The woman sat on the cot, as if her knees had simply given out. “I don’t know how long… What year is it? I left in 1937.”
“The year here wouldn’t be the same as the year it was when you left,” Clovache said. “We are Britlingens.”
The woman’s face stayed blank.
Batanya said, “You seem to have been caught up in some event, or some magic, unknown to us.”
The woman took a deep, shuddering breath. “What year was it when you were last on Earth?” she asked, as if not quite certain she wanted to know the answer.
“Ah… well past your time,” Clovache said. She glanced across Narcissus’s cell to Batanya. “After 2000, anyway, though I’m not sure I ever noticed what year it was.” She shrugged. “We knew we weren’t going to be there long.”
“It was in the 2000s,” Batanya agreed.
“I can’t understand this,” the woman said quietly. “I must be insane.”
“What’s your name?” Batanya asked. Maybe a change of topic would break the woman’s black mood.
“Amelia Earhart.” She glanced from Batanya to Clovache as if, despite everything, she thought they might recognize her name. She and Narcissus had that in common, anyway.
When Amelia saw that the two Britlingens hadn’t heard of her, she shrugged. Then her whole posture stiffened as the prisoners all heard a sound approaching the big door that was supposed to seal off the cells, though the guards had left it open. It was a sort of scratchy, snuffly sound. “Ah, the dogs,” Amelia said. “It must be almost dinnertime.”
“Dogs?” Batanya said hoarsely, at almost the same moment that Clovache said, “What kind of dogs?”
“They’re large,” Narcissus said. He was taking a break from staring at his reflection. He was polishing his mirror with the hem of his tunic.
“Large!” Amelia laughed, the first normal sound they’d heard in this place. “They’re giants!”
Two huge black hounds came through the doorway and began sniffing down the corridor. They had short, shining fur, pointed ears, and long, thin tails. Their mouths were open and their long pink tongues were lolling out, providing a sharp color contrast to their sharp white fangs and their glowing red eyes.
Batanya pressed herself as far back in her cell as she could go, unless she could gouge a niche in the stone wall. She managed to say, “Do they let the dogs come into the cells?” Dogs! It would be dogs! Why couldn’t the prison level be guarded by hydras, or gargoyles? Anything besides dogs.
“No,” Narcissus said. The dogs swung their heads toward him and took a tentative step closer to the bars of his cell. With a complete disregard for the long, sharp teeth and the demonic eyes, Narcissus moved to the front of the cell and stretched his hand between the bars. The fearsome beasts took a big sniff, and the one nearer Narcissus let the young man scratch his head.
The three women stared at this, and Narcissus smiled. “Even dogs are attracted to me,” he said happily. “But you know, I love them, too.”
Batanya shuddered when she thought of some of the things she’d seen in her travels. She hoped the bars remained in place, for Narcissus’s sake. “Attracted” could translate in many ways.
After a moment, the hounds seemed to lose interest in Narcissus and resumed their prowl down the corridor. The red eyes fixed on each prisoner in turn, and a growl began rumbling through their chests as they came to Batanya’s cell. Her face was set in the clenched expression of someone completely determined not to show what she was feeling, but she was pale and sweating.