A/N: I own neither Robert Frost's "Provide, Provide!" (which can be found on americanpoetry dot com,)nor Bradbury's 'The Exiles', which is in his excellent book 'The Illustrated Man.' I am making no money on this, and use these quotes respectfully, to add richness and depth to this work. I urge my readers to read these for themselves.
"I'm sorry." I said, an hour and a half after the testing began. I had run, or been run through half-a-dozen different spells and incantations, to no avail. All I had managed was perhaps one weak flicker of conjured flame, and that was being charitable.
"That's quite all right." said Doctor Strange. He sounded a bit frazzled. "Do you know what the problem might be?" He did not add the words 'this time', for which I was grateful, but it was implied.
"I think it's the words of the incantation. They sound too much like Longfellow's 'Hiawatha'. I can't stand that poem. Besides being unforgivably long, it's fatuous and demeaning to American Indians."
"As I understand it, they prefer the phrase 'Native Americans'." commented Victor.
"I will remember that." I told him. "At any rate, I may be saying 'By the Omnipotent Oshtur/By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, but I'm thinking 'On the shores of Gitche Gumee/Of the shining Big-Sea-Water'."
Victor chuckled. Stephen Strange groaned, but only slightly. "I see." the sorcerer said. "I think I would like to confer with Victor for a moment. Alone."
"Certainly." I retreated to a corner of the tiny walled garden that was behind the embassy. Picking a sprig of lemon balm from the patch of herbs, I rubbed it over my neck and hands. The spell I had been trying to perform was intended to banish lesser demons. I would rather have been learning a spell to banish mosquitoes. It would have been much more useful.
At the other end of the garden, the two cloaked figures of Victor and Doctor Strange reminded me of a football huddle. This image was reinforced when they straightened and turned, walking back toward me.
"All right!" Strange said, clapping his hands together. "I think it's time we tried a more practical approach. I will call up a lesser fiend, and your task will be to banish it. You will have nothing to worry about—it will be under my control and perfectly safe."
Famous last words, I thought, but I said, "All right."
"Please repeat the spell for me again. Don't attempt to cast it—just run through it." He requested.
"By the omnipotent Oshtur!
By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth!
In the name of the eternal Vishanti!
Be gone! Return to the nothingness
from whence you have come!" I recited dutifully.
"Good." he said, and began summoning. Soon a roiling pillar of smoke, shot through with flashes of infernal light welled up in the center of the garden. An enormous creature with tiny cold grey eyes like a shark's, a beak like a vulture's, and claws like nothing on earth coalesced in it.
"That is not a minor anything, Strange!" Victor growled.
"It's perfectly safe," insisted the Sorcerer Supreme. "I have it under control-oh, no!"
Darkness spread out to fill the garden like a dropperful of ink in a cup of water. The fiend made a hungry noise and lunged for me, raising one massive paw. It was so close, I could feel its foul breath stir the hair at my temple as it grinned horribly.
"It's no use." I said. "The shadows are an illusion, and I can see the two of you standing right there, perfectly calm and composed. Plus, this is exactly what I would do if I were in your situation—put a threat in front of a student and see if that would break her block."
The fiend froze. Victor, amusedly, told Stephen, "I said she would see through it, did I not?"
"You did." The sorcerer sounded positively weary this time. "When and how did you start seeing through the illusion?"
"At dinner. I saw you out of the corner of my eye, and I saw you were in your costume, and that the suit was an illusion. Once I knew that, the illusion thinned out like smoke. Do I have mage sight after all?" I asked.
"Not unless you can see the binding I have on this creature." Doctor Strange made the illusion vanish.
"I can't." I said.
"Then it's your mind not playing tricks on you. All right. Let me get rid of this creature…" This time, the words he spoke were in a language I didn't know.
Instead of simply vanishing, the demon reached out, and grabbed me by my hair.
"OW!" I shouted, as the earth shivered and swallowed us up—the demon and I. Darkness came like a crack of thunder.
The next breath I took seared my lungs as a hot skillet sears meat. Dangling from the fiend's claw as I was, by my hair, I could not open my eyes further than mere slits—and the pain was blinding—but I caught a glimpse of the lurid glow of hellfire, and I could smell sulfur and brimstone. "Lord Mephisto!" cackled the demon, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. "Lord Mephisto, I've got her, I've got her!" It shook me as if I were no more than a doll in the grip of a child.
"Well, bring her here!" a voice reverberated through my head.
Instead of carrying me, the fiend drew his arm back and hurled me toward its master. A sea of demonic faces flashed before my eyes; then I landed on the milling horde of bodies, and, like a body surfer throwing herself into a mosh pit, was passed, prone, by dozens, no, hundreds of hands, some of which were hard, and others doughy, some slimy, some scaly, some sticky. They poked and prodded, pinched and felt at me as I was moved along as if caught in an undertow.
"Carefully, now! I don't want her damaged—not yet, at least!" screeched Mephisto. They set me on my feet, roughly, and then, before I could get my bearings, they assailed me with slaps and shoves, so that I reeled from one side of the small clearing in their fiendish melee to the other. Their intent was to disorient me, to humiliate, not hurt. Their blows stung, but did not injure.
It was unpleasantly reminiscent of middle school. I half expected Steve Moffat to show up next, and beat me up for getting a better grade in algebra than he did.
"Enough!" commanded Mephisto. The teasing ceased abruptly.
Panting, I righted myself, straightened my clothes, and stiffened my back. I summoned all the dignity I could muster, and said to the Lord of Hell, "I would like to apologize for certain remarks that I made during my last visit. They were rude. I did not intend to be rude, but I was dead at the time, and could not censor myself. I would never have said what I did, otherwise."
"What?" asked Mephisto. "Oh, you are an amusing one! As I recall, last time you found my demesnes rather dull. Look about you now! Is this more to your liking?"
Hands grabbed my head from behind, forcing me to look where ever they chose. Hell was a lot scarier looking on this visit—with a start, I recognized a knee-high demon. Not because I had seen it when I was there the last time, though…
It had a bird's head, with an abnormal beak, and it wore a metal funnel for a hat, with a red robe. It was an exact duplicate of the little skating demon in 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony', by Hieronymus Bosch. As I was forced to look around, the horizons of Hell began to waver and melt, reforming into the landscape as seen in the last panel of Bosch's masterpiece, 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'—the panel which depicted Hell.
I remembered some of the things that were going on in that last panel. They weren't very nice.
"If you're imagining that you'll be devoured alive only to be shit out over and over again, or cut into cutlets and fried, you needn't worry about that—yet. You see, this time you're here alive, and while that means we can hurt you in any number of imaginative ways, it also means that you can die. You mortals are so fragile—! Then you would be out of my reach forever. I mean to have my vengeance out on Doom through you. He'll suffer far more this way—such exquisite agonies! I shall begin by seeing just what I can offer you for your soul." Mephisto explained.
I almost laughed in sheer relief. What could he possibly tempt me with? Especially since I knew what it would cost—and that he would cheat. I did not laugh, however. Instead, I asked a question.
"Doctor Strange said Hell reflected a consensus of belief. Why is it changing? Are you doing this specifically for me?"
"It is you who is doing it." replied Mephisto. "One of you mortals, now dead, has said that Hell is other people…"
"Sartre, in his play, 'No Exit'." I identified.
He continued as if I had not spoken. "But I beg to differ. Hell is oneself. It is exactly as bad as you have always imagined, and all punishments are tailor-made to fit the individual customer."
That—might be significant. Mephisto went on. "How would you like to be the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth?"
"How? By disfiguring or killing off all the other women on Earth?" I shot back.
"I see my reputation precedes me. No. I would do it" he shuddered theatrically, "honestly."
"You lie." I said. "You couldn't possibly do that. I can have only one face, one body, one head of hair. The ideal beauty differs too much from place to place for me to fit all of them. How am I to be the most beautiful woman by the standards of Middle America and of the Kalahari Bushmen in Africa at one and the same time? Your offer is meaningless. In any case, I'm not that shallow."
"Are you not?" he asked, meditatively. "Are you not? Yet you yearn for beauty, and what it could bring you."
I surprised myself then, for out of me came words. Not a charm or a spell—nothing of that sort, but a poem. Robert Frost's 'Provide, Provide!'
"The witch that came (the withered hag)/ To wash the steps with pail and rag/Was once the beauty Abishag,
The picture pride of Hollywood./ Too many fall from great and good/ For you to doubt the likelihood.
Die early and avoid the fate. /Or if predestined to die late/Make up your mind to die in state.
Make the whole stock exchange your own/ If need be occupy a throne/Where nobody can call you crone.
Some have relied on what they knew; /Others on simply being true. /What worked for them might work for you.
No memory of having starred /Atones for later disregard/Or keeps the end from being hard.
Better to go down dignified /With boughten friendship at your side/ Than none at all. Provide, provide!"
I paused. It is a hard cold poem, cynical and true. It is about the emptiness and transience of mere physical beauty, and what it could bring. I drew breath.
"What could it bring me?" I asked myself as much as I asked it of him. "What could it bring me that I do not already have? Would it put me on TV, into newspapers and magazines? I have already done more publicity than I wanted to. Would it get me fabulous jewels? I am deeply conflicted about those I already have! Will it win me friends, have men hanging on my every word, fascinated? I prefer it the way it already is, that they should like me for my wit, be fascinated by my intelligence, intrigued by my theories! Will it win me love? I seem to do all right with the face I already have. You need to get with the times. Sufficient money and surgery can replace you, and devour the soul just as thoroughly."
"What spell was that? Who was this Abishag? The witch who wrote it? What did it do, strengthen you?" demanded Mephisto.
"It wasn't a spell. Come on, now, tempt me further! Bring. It. On." It probably wasn't the best way I could have handled that, but I was buoyant with freedom, freedom from insecurity about my looks. It might not last, but at least for now I had reconciled myself to my self, I had worked through it.
"Not beauty, then? What if I were to tell you why Reed Richards believes you shouldn't marry your Victor?"
"Reed Richards sometimes has an odd kick to his gallop, I'm learning. Besides, it would be much more intellectually satisfying to find out on my own."
"Welllllll—what about your mother? The one who carried you under her heart and gave birth to you. What if I were to deliver her to you, weeping and on her knees, penitent. 'Oh, my darling daughter. I'm so sorry for what I did to you! I didn't know! Oh, my only child, my only love, can you forgive me?'" He mimicked her voice amazingly well.
That silenced me for a moment. "No. I don't want that. It would demean her and it would demean me. And I could never trust her. I wouldn't be able to let her put her arms around me—for fear there would be a knife in her hand."
"And if I were to offer—." His red face leered horribly, and a drop of spittle fell from his lip to the ground, where it ate a hole in the rock. "that your lie should become the truth. That you should be Joviana Florescu, born to Galina, that you should have had leukemia, and been cured of it, after having met Doom just as you said you did? That all the bad things that happened to you in your life should never have happened, that you should have never suffered, never lied to your new friends?"
He was good at this. He was very good at it. "Now you begin to convince me you are the Tempter." I said, after a long pause. "That is truly a temptation. To be rid of my past as if it were an uncomfortable coat that I could take off. But no. I am who I am partly because of my past, and partly despite it. Steel becomes strong only after it goes through a lot of hammering. I would give up too much if I were to agree to that. For all the pain I felt, I would not change a single hour."
"Oh, very good! You hold out remarkably well! I would have thought I should have won by now! Then what if I were to give you the sure ability and knowledge to be a good mother?"
That hit me where I lived. "And then I would die in childbirth, or never get to use it for some other reason. I would be infertile." I retorted, but inside—inside I was torn. I hurt like a bag full of broken glass.
"No. No tricks. You would live to be eighty, and die in your own bed, surrounded by your heartbroken family, your children and their children and their grandchildren, after a long, long happy life."
Fifty-five more years of life—surely that would be long enough to regain my soul somehow. And to be able to give life to Victor's children and mine, without the lurking fear that I would hurt them one day, or every single day….
To see the look in Victor's eyes when he held his new baby, and feel no reservations, no lingering doubts about myself…
I needed help. I needed some spell to get me out of there, but none sprang to mind. I was sorely tempted…
I needed magic now, as I had never needed it before.
"No." I whispered, while my heart inside me said, 'Say yes.'
Hell was psychotropic—it changed to fit what people believed. If I could change my mind, I could change this place…
But to be free of my fear of motherhood!
I needed a savior; I needed an angel. I needed something that all the demons in Hell would quake before. What would they fear most?
Not God…Hell was part of God's plan.
Atheism. Disbelief. Because without belief, they would have no form, no substance, no existence.
I didn't know a single spell that could help me, but I did know magic words.
"Mephisto." I said, my voice strong and clear once more. "I would like to tell you a story."
"A story? What story?" he asked, petulant.
"'The Exiles', by Ray Bradbury." It was written, no, engraved on my brain. It was there. Since I was eleven I had read it over and over, who knew how many times? I only had to open the book of memory, and it was there.
"Their eyes were fire, and the breath flamed out the witches' mouths as they bent to probe the cauldron with greasy stick and bony finger…"
It was a tale born of the place where science fiction meets fantasy. In the future, all books, all stories, all festivals that hint of the horrific, the fantastic, the imaginative, are banned, destroyed, forbidden. Halloween is outlawed. Christmas is illegal. All of these things are bad for people. So all the books are burned, and the people in them, the fictional characters and their creators, long since dead—go to Mars.
And then the mundane, sane, healthy, unimaginative people of Earth decide to go there…
"The captain walked to a port. He smelled of menthol and iodine and green soap on his polished and manicured hands…"
The people from the stories, who exist only on Mars, plan a counterattack. They wage a war of nightmares on the astronauts who are coming. They drive some mad; others to suicide, some sicken and die without any reason at all. But on that ship are the last remaining copies of the books from whence they sprang—and when the books are gone, so are the people in them.
I had a rapt audience. Hell offered few such diversions. All the demons and devils, all the fiends and the imps were listening, and their master as well, for I put feeling into my recital. I acted it out, with my voice, with my hands, with the expressions I put on my face.
Around me, the population of Hell began to change…
"Thin fingers clenched into fists, and a witch screamed from her withered mouth:
'Ship, ship, break, fall!
Ship, ship, burn all!
Crack, flake, shake, melt!
Mummy dust, cat pelt!'"
The rocket lands, and while the people of the stories prepare their attack, unperceived by the astronauts, the astronauts gather wood and build a fire.
The interior of the cavern altered. It became the landscape of Bradbury's Mars.
As a symbol of the old, bad past, the captain puts the evil books on the fire. Screams erupt all around them, from unseen throats, as the people of the books burn to death, too.
"'Why', whispered Smith, disappointed. 'There's no one here at all, is there? There's no one here at all.'
"The wind blew sand over his shoes, whining."
The wind blew sand over my own shoes, whining.
I looked around at an unpopulated Hell, empty but for the flimsy souls of the damned.
I walked over to one, tried to take it by the elbow. "Hey!" I said. "Now's the time to sneak on out, before they re-form!"
It paid no attention to me at all.
"It is still locked in the Hell of its own devising." said Stephen Strange, materializing within a protective sphere, along with Victor. "You cannot free them."
"There is no freedom other than what they can win with their own redemption." added Victor. "That was how my mother ultimately went free. She found sufficient goodness within herself."
"Come now—it is time we left here, and let things return to normal." Doctor Strange and Victor Von Doom reached out, and I took a hand of each.
Later, over restorative cups of herbal tea, the two doctors explained what had happened. It had been real—but they had planned it, and were waiting, watching, in case I got into real trouble. Their help hadn't been needed. My own particular ability had come through.
Doctor Strange looked at me. "Keep on with what you are doing. Keep reading, researching, comparing. I suspect you are on the verge of changing the world—at least the world of magic. And be sure you write everything down!"
"I will." I promised. Then he took his leave, and left the two of us alone.
A/N: Well, Chantrea,we all of us have our strengths and weaknesses. Joviana isn't perfect, and she has her goofy side--I can definitly see her coming out of the ladies room with an unnoticed streamer of toilet paper stuck to her shoe and almost dying of embarrasment when someone calls it to her attention. I thank you for your continued devoted readership. And you really will get an email from me today!
Nope, GothikStrawberry, the 'back to hell" was NOT a metaphor, as you will have discovered by this time...
Hi, Madripoor Rose! Yes, the Books of Doom miniseries. I'm really looking foreward to it--but I'm also worried they may have messed it up. I'll be biting my fingernails until it's in my hands.