Chapter 31 #2
“That man killed my Ursula. She was…” I choke, for how can mere words ever properly explain all she was, and all she was to me? Better not to try. I take a deep breath and go on. “If she resides not in Heaven but in Hell, I want her returned to me as she was before, when she was still living.”
“I cannot meet the first condition of what you ask. I told you: That information is not mine to give, and you shall not get it, not even by trickery.”
I must gamble then. To rip her out of Heaven would be cruel, yet she may return there once she dies again, surely. And if she is not there, but is burning in Hell, then my deal shall offer reprieve.
I take a shuddering breath, which causes a fiery pain in my ribs, and manage to choke out, “I want her either way. I want her whole, and I want her well. I want the power of resurrection, not necromancy.”
“The power you seek is not mine to give.”
Almost I say, “Then you are weak indeed,” but I want not to make an enemy out of Satan and so must tame my waspish tongue. After all, he came to me when I asked, when God did not. Instead, I ask, “Then what can you give me?”
The snake seems to smile at me, letting me look into its soft pink mouth. “I can return her soul to her body and bind her to it.”
I shake my head, but the movement causes a sharp pain in my neck, like a knife being driven between the bones of my spine.
I cry out and almost vomit. By the time I can speak again, I am covered with a fine sheen of sweat.
“That is what the necromancer did to his wife, but her body was still that of a corpse, so she rotted, and now she’s just bones in the ground, yet she somehow still lives. I don’t want that for my Ursula.”
“I cannot return her body to how it was when she still lived, but I can make it so that her body doesn’t rot. It shall remain as it is now.”
“For how long?”
“For as long it would please you.”
But I am not the necromancer, who played God with his wife. “Can you make it so that it is Ursula herself who decides?”
“Yes,” the snake says, drawing out that s into a pleased hiss.
Say I, “And will you give me the means to kill the necromancer right here and now?”
The snake nods.
I lick my lips. Despite the blood, my mouth and throat feel dry.
“If I kill him, will his wife die also?” I am still angry with her for having crept into my dreams and lured me here, but I also know that she was desperate and knew not what else to do.
From the moment her husband dragged her back from death, she must have lived in hell.
“No. Curses like that endure beyond the grave,” Satan tells me.
“But how is that fair?” I ask, distress making my voice shrill. “It’s not her fault her husband cursed her!”
“Life is unfair, and a good thing it is, or my job would be a lot harder.”
I ball my battered hands into fists. The skin over my left knuckles has split, I know not how, and the movement tugs the flesh wider apart, making it sting. “Then how am I to help her?”
I am not a selfless creature, and I traveled this far mainly because I thought the skull would reward me for it, but I know what it is like to suffer, and I shall be damned if I let this poor creature suffer any more at the hands of a man.
You’ll be damned either way, I think. I snort. It’s strange, what things become funny when all is bleak and awful.
“I am sure you will find a way,” Satan says. He sounds bored now. “Besides, what does it matter? You did not conjure me for her sake.”
“Very well. I shall seek an answer to the skull’s problem elsewhere,” I say.
“Let us discuss the terms of our deal some more. I want the power to bring Ursula back to me, locked in a body that shall not wither, rot, or else change, a body she is free to leave whenever it pleases her. I want to be able to do this to others also, and I want to kill the necromancer. What will you have from me in return? I have not much to give. I have no gold, no land, no maidenhead, but name your price, and I shall do whatever I can to pay it.”
Satan slithers around me, as if appraising me. His scaled body in the sand makes this sweet, silky sound. “Ursula is much beloved, isn’t she?”
Tears leak from my eyes. “She is most precious,” I manage to say.
“So precious that you shall sign over your soul to me? That you shall turn away from God and be forever bereft of His love, all so that she may walk the earth again?”
My throat feels small and tight. “I love Ursula more than God,” I whisper, and though it’s a terrible thing to say, I know it to be true.
Satan laughs, this burbling, watery sound.
“Very well. Sign your name in my book, and I shall make you a necromantic witch.” The snake slithers toward a book that I hadn’t noticed before.
It’s very large and bound in skin. I know not how to read, but even I can see that there are many names in this book, all written in different hands.
“I cannot write,” I say and feel the familiar prick of shame.
“I shall help you,” Satan says. He slithers into my lap and up my arm, and he is heavy as a coil of tarred rope.
Once he reaches my hand, he sinks his fangs into my finger, and I jerk; then I scream.
Unbearable heat rushes into my bloodstream and up, up, up my veins, through my lungs, my heart, and my brain, searing, scalding, scorching.
When it ebbs away, I am sweating, and my throat and mouth feel parched, but I also find that the scratches on my hands have disappeared, as has the swelling in my eye, the wounds on my scalp, and the pain in my neck.
“You made me whole again?” I ask as I marvel at the smoothness of my skin, the supple movements of my joints.
“I may not be able to heal the dead, but I can still heal the living.”
“But why?”
“What use is a sick servant to me?”
“I am not yours, not yet, not unless I sign.”
Satan looks at me with his large eye round and orange as a setting sun. “And would you go back on your word?”
“No. Lying is a sin,” I say without thinking.
Satan laughs, this rumbling chuckle. “Indeed. Now place your finger on the page, and I shall guide your hand.”
I do as I am told and feel as if another has laid their hand on top of mine and is moving it this way and that, using my nail and my blood to write out what I suppose is my name.
I look at the letters forming on the yellow parchment, and I feel sick and strange.
There is no going back now.
I worry not for my own self, but for Ursula.
Mayhap she will hate me like the necromancer’s wife did when she found out he had sold himself into slavery to Satan.
Mayhap she’ll denounce me and flee from me.
But it seems to me that it’s better to live in a world in which she hates and reviles me than in a world in which she feels nothing at all.
And it may not come to that. She is kind, and she is forgiving.
It’s one of the many things I love about her.
When we are done, the book slams shut of its own accord.
“What now?” I ask.
“Now, you are mine. The spell that keeps the necromancer and your beloved’s corpse from moving shall last until midnight.
That gives you more than three hours. Use that time as you will.
This is another one of my gifts to you. Let it never be said that the devil is ungenerous.
” Satan smiles at me, again showing that wet pink mouth with the ribbon tongue, then slithers from my lap and into the darkness.
I come to my feet and saunter over to the necromancer. The knife he used to slay Ursula lies not far from his feet. I pick it up. The heft of it is familiar and comforting. The necromancer still smiles smugly.
I stand on tiptoes and whisper in his ear, “I told you I’d kill you. It’s a pity you didn’t believe me. Now, let’s see how long you can keep up that smile.”
A long time, it turns out.
I should have known.
After all, a skull’s grin is eternal.