For forty days and forty nights
He wade thro red blude to the knee,
And he saw neither sun nor moon,
But heard the roaring of the sea. — "Thomas the Rhymer", Child ballad 37
The sea of blood gave way eventually to a rocky wasteland. Belle rid herself of the residue of that passage with a dozen cleaning spells cast in succession (something Maleficent achieved with a single wave of her staff), gaining in the process a better understanding of magic in this realm. But once it was done, there was nothing to distract her from the sights that surrounded them.
Shades of the dead dotted the landscape, some fixed to fiery hot columns, others being whipped or stabbed by demons. Belle saw shades crawling on the ground with chains hooked into their tongues, dragged about by their demon tormentors. She shuddered at the sight.
The worst moment came when she thought she recognized one of the shades. She slowed, staring, trying to remember why the face seemed familiar. Then the memory came to her — one of the people she had... killed. She swallowed hard, forcing herself not to look away. Was it him? Gaston's man? He looked back at her with such hatred in his eyes, but seemed unable to do more than gasp and scream in pain as he was crushed beneath a column of rock. She couldn't even be sure. She wanted to ask, but didn't dare. She wanted to apologize to him, if it was him, but what was the use?
Then Maleficent was hissing at her to keep moving.
Belle nodded numbly. The truth was, she couldn't remember what the man had looked like, not really. Guilty projection or true memory, it could hardly matter to the one being tortured. Could she help him? "Will the demons attack us?"
"Not unless you meddle in their 'work'. They each have their assignments that they dare not turn away from," Maleficent said. "Those who torment do not hunt spies or escaped souls."
In her shock, Belle was grateful to be ignored. She walked on, leaving the dead man behind, still not knowing if she had been the one to send him here or not, and if she had, was this the fate he deserved? What torture would she be subject to after her death, as a killer (not murder, she told herself, but surely she could have defended herself without killing...)?
All through her childhood, Belle had heard the clerics preaching about "eternal damnation" without taking it too seriously. She preferred to believe her mother, who had faith in the power of love and compassion, attributing those virtues to gods and mortals alike.
Justice may demand punishment, but compassion grants forgiveness to those who repent of their ill deeds and offers a road back to the light...
Now that she was actually traipsing through hell in the company of a dragon who claimed kinship to the gods themselves (insofar as the gods were once Titans), Belle thought that perhaps she and her mother had been deluding themselves with how they wished the world to be, rather than how it actually was. With the screams of the damned echoing in her ears and Maleficent's confirmation that this torment was eternal, Belle's heart rebelled.
"This can't be right. These poor souls. Can't we save them, somehow?" Belle looked around helplessly. She had enough magic, perhaps, to free one or two from their torture, and fight a handful of demons if they tried to stop her. How far did their duty go? Why were they even doing this? Did they enjoy inflicting pain? Did they think this was the right thing to do?
"Focus your efforts on the living," Maleficent advised. She scanned the horizon, then picked a direction for reasons that eluded Belle. Navigation in this realm defied normal geometry, as well as confounding all the location spells she had tried so far. "This way. This is what Tartarus has been since the dawn of Olympus... some of these shades have been there that long. Or even longer. Time moves strangely in the lands of the dead."
"That's... that's awful. That's longer than they were even alive!" Belle's stomach turned at the thought.
"Many times longer," agreed Maleficent.
"Human life is so short. However much evil they did, enough is enough! How can eternal torture be just?" Belle felt her temper boiling and fought it back. Maleficent was right. They couldn't afford to get distracted. "But what about mercy? What about forgiveness? What about becoming a better person? What is the use of all this, all this torture? It doesn't make anything better for anyone! Why would the gods want this...?"
Maleficent sighed. "Child, you think the gods care about the dead? That's not what this is about. Tartarus is a prison for their enemies and a story to frighten the living into piety and obedience."
"But..." Belle's automatic rejection trailed off as she remembered the clerics again. Be good or be damned! Even supposing it did scare people into being 'good', how could that justify all this suffering? "And how can anyone rest even if they get into Olympus, knowing other people — maybe people they loved! — are stuck in eternal suffering?"
"You're hardly the first heretic to ask such questions. You'll find plenty of like-minded company in Tartarus after you're dead, too. Then again, perhaps not. It's better for the gods that dissenters not unite." Maleficent shrugged. "The ones they take to Olympus as servants or companions, well, they breathe the air of divinity and drink ambrosia, which imbues them with happiness and tranquility."
"Servants or companions?" Outrage stirred again.
"And loyal worshippers," Maleficent amended. "Worship is sweet to their ears."
"That's... that's..." Belle didn't know why she had ever expected better. All her mother's stories of 'higher powers' came to this? "So much for 'just deserts'!"
"Well, the gods also allow their mortal kin and a few deserving souls into Elysium, heroes and kings and so on," Maleficent said. "It burnishes their self-image as generous and benevolent deities."
Belle fell silent, remembering her third trial and the other Rumplestiltskin she had met — the one she had helped into a glowing afterlife, where another version of herself awaited him. She hadn't sent them on to serve the gods, had she? The other Belle had looked happy and free. There must be more to the story. She shook her head, having no answers yet.
They settled into a rhythm, trudging through the wasteland that felt as endless as the sea of blood had been. The landscape gradually grew more jagged, rocks turning into hills and then mountains, threaded by narrow canyons and gorges. A wind blew from the peaks, carrying with it an ineffable sense of sorrow. As they clambered deeper into the mountains, they saw fewer and fewer of the condemned shades about.
The bleakness of their plight weighed on her, a weary, heavy feeling that slowed her footsteps more and more. When Maleficent paused to wait for her to catch up, Belle blurted out, "Is that really how it is? We have nothing better to hope for?"
Maleficent pursed her lips. Then, "There's always some hope. Not all the gods are so self-serving as Zeus or Hades. Aphrodite has a soft spot for lovers, and has been known to let them into Elysium. The same with Apollo and musicians and poets... Though none of them approve of the Dark One and his dealings."
"I see." Belle forced herself to trudge on. So even if she found Bae and the others and they all made it alive out of Tartarus, it was only a temporary reprieve. Odds were that their souls would be sent back here eventually after they died. She wondered how the other Belle had escaped that fate. The favor of Avonlea's patron goddess? It wasn't enough to protect them from ogres, clearly, but perhaps it opened a door into a better place after their deaths.
After a while, Maleficent said, "There are other forces in the world besides the gods. The fates. This realm itself. It has its own rules and its own... 'mind' is not strictly accurate, but as close as we can understand it. It has its own mind beyond the ken of the Olympians."
Belle nodded. She remembered Rumple saying that he had invoked the numen of Schlaraffenland, as embodied in the High Archon, to recognize their marriage. The numen had then invoked the three trials. Maybe they could do something similar in Tartarus. "Is there any way to communicate with the spirit of this realm?"
"You'll have to ask Prometheus."
Belle blinked. "What does Prometheus have to do with it?"
"He's in Tartarus trying to persuade it to release the imprisoned Titans," explained Maleficent. "The ones sealed away by the gods at the dawn of time."
"That sounds... dangerous," Belle said carefully.
Maleficent stopped, turning to Belle with a smirk. "Are only human shades deserving of mercy and compassion, then?" When Belle didn't answer immediately, Maleficent nodded and began walking again.
"No, wait." Belle scrambled to catch up. "I didn't mean... it's just that humans are mortal, and so much smaller and weaker..."
"That's a matter of perspective," Maleficent said without slowing her pace. "Prometheus thought mortals had potential. That was why he tried to free them from the domination of Olympus. Gifts of fire and so on. Well, you know how that went for him..."
Belle remembered it clearly. Zeus had bound him in his own personal hell.
"And of course Olympus stopped him because they saw something in mortals, too. Something that needed taming... a fate that boded ill for the gods..." Maleficent's words trailed off as if she wasn't sure how much she should say. "But maybe you know something about that. The real reason you're here, the one you aren't talking about..."
"What? No, no, it's nothing like that." Belle wanted desperately to explain, but the words stuck in her throat, constrained by the commands laid upon her through the dagger. Did Maleficent think she had a secret plan? Was she relying on it? Was that why she was being so cooperative? Finally, Belle mumbled, "Whatever reason you imagine, it's probably far too optimistic. Any plan I had is in shambles. I... I don't even know where we're going right now."
Maleficent seemed taken aback by the confession. "I see."
After that, there was another long stretch of silence as they trudged onwards.
Their path leveled out, becoming a road. Then a structure of piled rocks, a piece of a wall running between the steep sides of the gorge, and an arch passing through: a gate or boundary marker, empty and apparently unguarded. Chiseled and painted (was that dried blood?) on the flat front surface of the keystone was the word "Mulctowne."
"What is this place?" Belle had never come across the name before.
"So it's real," said Maleficent. "I wasn't sure. One hears rumors, but..."
"Rumors?" Belle wondered where Maleficent got her gossip from.
Maleficent continued on through the archway. "I thought perhaps your husband's countrymen might be more inclined to assist us."
Belle stopped. "Wait, what?" Then she looked at the name again. Mulct? As in a fine or penalty paid for a fraud or deception? A price owed? She hurried to follow Maleficent. "This was built by the dead of Schlaraffenland?"
"Like master, like man, or so the saying goes..." Maleficent said over her shoulder.
The road continued along the bottom of the gorge for a while, then began rising upwards along irregular steps cut into the stone. A few dry, thorny bushes clung to the steep slopes, but there was no other sign of 'life' — so far Belle had come across no shades of dead beasts in Tartarus, though that meant little given the malleable nature of this realm. Then their path leveled out again and turned a corner into a wider valley, where drab clusters of houses dotted the sides, coalescing into a town that extended as deep as Belle could see. Set in a hollow in front of the houses, almost like an amphitheater, was a paved plaza, where a strange and gruesome sight met their eyes.
There were the demons, about two dozen of them along with a collection of their ghoulish contraptions, which they applied with practiced efficiency on their victims. Whether it was the sawing of bodies in half, the chopping of fingers, boiling in hot oil, or more tongue-ripping, the shades walked up to each torture as they were called from an orderly queue waiting along one side of the plaza. At the head of the queue sat a demon and a human at a desk, marking off names in a ledger and directing each victim to the assigned station.
Afterwards, the released victim (usually bleeding, whimpering and crying and barely able to walk) was collected by another group of shades who as often as not put them on a stretcher to be carried back to the town. All done as efficiently and matter of factly as the demons had applied their tortures...
A smooth routine disrupted when Belle and Maleficent walked into the valley. Someone in the queue pointed to them and shouted, "Heads up! Looks like we got us a couple of walk-ins..."
Two of the human shades, a man and a woman, broke off from the post-torture squad, jogging to intercept the intruders. "Hey." Two pairs of ghostly eyes looked them up and down. "Huh... that's odd..."
Maleficent regarded them regally. "Watch your words, shade."
Belle smiled uneasily. "Don't worry, we're not here to start a fight..." Then she looked at the plaza again. "What is this? Are you... are you just allowing yourselves to be tortured?"
One of the shades, the woman, frowned. "Hey, don't get the wrong end of the stick. Where in Tartarus are you going to get a better deal? You must be really new..."
"I don't..." Belle broke off, seeing one of the demons now headed their way. The tortures had stopped, too, as everyone (demon and human shade alike) turned to watch.
The demon was a squat, misshapen-looking humanoid, blue-skinned with protruding eyes and horns and flapping ears, clad in only a colorful loin cloth and cloak. His eyes bulged out even further as he examined Belle and Maleficent. "L-living flesh! Walking bones! Breathing skin! What fresh hell is this? You don't smell like demons..."
"No," said Maleficent. "We aren't demons."
"I'm Belle, and this is Maleficent." Belle tried for a friendly smile. She remembered that Lumiere had been considered a 'demon' in Avonlea, and tried to give this one the benefit of the doubt. He didn't seem to be hostile, no matter what horrors he had been wreaking on some poor soul half a minute ago.
He didn't shake Belle's proffered hand, but leaned forward as if to sniff her fingers. "You have magic..."
"She's the Dark One's wife. Of course she has magic," said Maleficent sharply, causing the demon to leap back in alarm. She tapped her staff against the ground, the crystal at the top glowing for a moment. "As do I, in case you were wondering."
The two human shades exchanged an excited, worried look. The man turned an eye — he had only one. An infestation of demonic beetles emerged from the other, empty eye socket and out of the ruin of his nose to crawl across his face — to Belle and cleared his throat. "Ah. We weren't expecting... so, uh, he got married, then? Congratulations?"
"Thank you." Belle said. This wasn't what she had expected, either.
"Welcome to Mulctowne," said the woman. "How did you even get here? No one comes to Tartarus except demons and the souls of the damned."
"Yes, that's a long story." Oddly, the shades and the demon all brightened at that. "Not all of which I am at liberty to tell." Their faces fell. "Sorry." Confused, Belle looked around. "Look, I really don't understand... what's going on here, in this town? Are you all the dead of Schlaraffenland?"
"They're all here somewhere in Tartarus," said the woman. "All of us with our tainted souls. Not everyone makes it to Mulctowne, but we bring in the ones we find."
"Bring them here," Belle said slowly, "to be tortured?"
"That's our lot, ennit?" said the man. Blood oozed from the side of his mouth where tiny mandibles had lacerated his flesh. "But it's better here."
The demon nodded. "They made a deal with us."
"What deal?"
The demon gave Belle an assessing look. "Dark One's wife, she said. Then you should know about deals."
"Hmm. Maybe, but..." Knowing about deals wasn't the same as approving of them!
"Then for my name, a fair hearing and an open mind?" This time the demon did offer a hand.
"Fair enough," Belle conceded, reaching out to shake the hand.
The demon grinned. He pulled Belle close enough to whisper in her ear, "Derghu." Then he released her and skipped away.
"All right, all right. Come with me, the Old Wife can explain it better." The woman gestured at them to follow her into the town.
Belle started after the woman, then glanced back to see that everyone else was following as well. The torturers and their victims had apparently decided to take a break, the demons helping along the humans who had trouble walking.
Well, if they were the first living visitors, Belle could understand why the people would be curious. She was just as curious about them.
The town looked much like any other mountain settlement in the living world, the houses constructed out of available materials, which in this place meant mostly stone, with a smattering of bone and wood. Unlike a living town, the air here smelled of blood rather than dung and smoke. Belle supposed the dead, being dead, didn't need to eat or excrete. She wondered if they needed to sleep. Either way, they had still made homes for themselves.
According to their guide, the Old Wife occupied a place of honor in their town hall.
"Built it around her," the man said. "You'll see..."
The town hall was a grander building than the rest, a clock tower rising up on one side. The front doors opened into an entry area, and past another set of doors was the great hall. The floor and walls were all of stone, with tall narrow windows in the sides to let in air and light. At the end of the hall, an old woman sat in a large wooden chair, set on a dais as if it were a throne.
No, not sat. She was nailed to the chair with twisted, spiral-edged golden spikes. The spikes impaled her through her hands, feet, elbows, thighs, and chest. But her eyes were alert, turning to look at her visitors.
Belle gasped as she realized what she was seeing.
The old woman made a gurgling, questioning noise.
"The Old Wife can't talk," Derghu murmured. "Had her tongue torn out for speaking the Dark One's name back in the day. The gods ordered her punishment specially. We don't get many of those... usually they can't be bothered, but the Skyfather wanted to set an example."
"An example?" Belle echoed blankly.
Another, younger woman stepped into the hall from behind them. "My great-grandmother was the first commoner in Cockayne to make a deal with the Dark One to protect her village." She was dressed more finely than the others here, in a deep red scholar's robe trimmed in gold. Darker-skinned than her great-grandmother, she wore her hair in an elaborate braid down her back. Gold rings pierced her cheek along her jawline, exposing bone and muscle underneath, and her right hand was stripped down to bare bones, that yet were able to gesture in their direction. "Come in, don't block the doorway."
"Oh, sorry." Belle followed her, almost inured by now to such grisly sights. Maleficent had already gone in ahead, and was now studying the Old Wife's plight. "Can't we do anything for her? We have magic..."
The younger woman smiled, a twitch of her mouth that made the rings shiver. It looked like it hurt. "And so have I." She ducked her head in introduction. "I'm called Hyan Luize. When I was alive, I was a teacher at the Winter School in the Dark Castle." She looked over at Maleficent. "She is bound by the deal she made... the gods offered to release her if she would recant the deal."
Maleficent nodded. "Those spikes are forged from Rumplestiltskin's gold thread." She spared a glance for Hyan Luize. "As are the rings you wear. I imagine the gods traded with someone for it."
Belle thought it wouldn't have been difficult. Rumple had paid people often enough with the gold he spun, especially in his early days as the Dark One. It made her angry to see it used this way. How could Hyan Luize be smiling about it? "That's horrible..." Then she remembered, "This deal you have with the demons. They said the Old Wife would explain it to us, but if she can't talk..."
Hyan Luize went to stand next to her great-grandmother, grasping her fingers gently so as not to jostle her arm against the spike. "I can hear her. She bids you welcome, both of you."
"Thank you." But Belle was still troubled. "That... that looks... Hyan, are you somehow easing her pain?" Belle didn't sense any healing magic on the old woman, but surely Hyan wasn't so heartless as to leave someone in agony!
"No. That is part of the deal we have with the demons," said Hyan. "We accept the punishments allotted to us, and they leave us in peace and freedom to order ourselves as we like otherwise."
Belle was appalled. "What kind of peace and freedom is that, if you have to submit to torture every day, or whatever you have instead of days in Tartarus?"
Maleficent, on the other hand, seemed fascinated.
The Old Wife groaned incoherently.
Hyan nodded. "She reminds you that we are the dead. Dead, and long dead."
"And?" Belle wasn't sure what she was getting at. "You still feel pain, or why would they bother torturing you?"
"Why, indeed," murmured Maleficent. "I think they've worked a kind of magic, under the very noses of the gods..."
Belle felt a leap of hope. "Have you?"
Hyan lifted her free hand, the one that was still flesh, turning it palm up. "Yesterday, they drove slivers of stone under my fingernails before ripping them out. Today this hand is whole again. In death, apparently we are immortal..."
Belle frowned. "But doesn't that just make it worse?"
"It was, at first." Hyan gazed down at her own hand, flexing the fingers. She said softly, "But in time I saw through it. Pain is meaningless to the dead. A memory. A passing sensation. In time, it becomes a kind of song."
"A song?" Belle asked incredulously.
The Old Wife grunted unintelligibly.
Hyan nodded. "She bids you remember what you saw outside. Our people and the demons."
Belle shuddered. "Hard to forget..."
"Any actions repeated so regularly, well, it becomes a ritual. And in time, the ritual becomes a dance..." Hyan sighed. "There is a rhythm to it, carried through the pulse of the land. Haven't you heard the music in the wind? It's a wind of sorrow, drawing out our tears, but we dance until we hear it in joy."
Belle had heard the wind. She still heard it intermittently, hissing past the open windows. Now she looked around at the crowd of demons and townsfolk who were all watching them (quieter, it had to be said, than a comparable crowd of the living would have been). Many of them sported dreadful scars and mutilations — engraved upon their souls, Belle suspected, by centuries of torture. "This... is this true? Do you not feel pain? But I saw... people were crying, broken. They had to be carried away!"
"No, you're right, they feel the pain," said Derghu. "We eat the pain, that's what we do... wasn't always like that, but there, that's how we live in the land of the dead."
Humans and demons nodded in affirmation. "Aye, that's so."
One of the human shades said, "It's hard to explain. We feel what we feel, and it hurts like it should, but it's... it's like she said, we're dead. A bit of pain's not going to kill us, is it?"
Chuckles arose from the crowd.
"Not just a bit," protested Belle.
Another of the shades said, "It's like, you know, those trick drawings they have, where you can see two faces or one, depending on how you look, but the lines don't move..."
Belle nodded slowly, knowing the drawings he meant. "Or the one where it could be an old woman or a young girl. So it's... it's a trick of perception?"
"If we feel it as a dance, then it is a dance," affirmed Hyan Luize.
"Mind you, that's not the only kind of 'dancing' they do," Derghu muttered to Belle. He gestured suggestively to make sure she took the point. "It's not always pain with them. Since their tortures run on schedule, they have time for other pursuits..."
Belle blushed. "I never really gave it much thought." Then again, it was obvious now that he mentioned it. "It makes sense, I suppose."
"So this is what you've made of hell." Maleficent looked at the old woman in the chair. "Mortals... dangerous creatures, indeed."
"We're dead. What else are we but a story we tell ourselves?" said Hyan Luize.
Belle looked around. "And this hall? All the buildings? You built yourselves a city?"
"Conjured out of memories, transformed from the mute stones of Tartarus," said Hyan Luize.
Comfort of a sort, Belle imagined. "And what about the demons? Do you have houses, somewhere, too?"
"Our memories ran dry long ago," said Derghu. "No houses for us, only the goblin paths. Why do you think we took this deal? A chance to put down the knife and pass the time with some idle chatter, who'd say no?"
Maleficent chuckled. "The torturer and his victims sitting down under the same roof. Olympus didn't forbid this?"
Derghu shrugged. "An oversight."
The Old Wife gurgled something and rolled her eyes, fingers twitching. Hyan Luize took the fingers, eyes shut in concentration for a moment. Then, "She says, 'I'll tell you a secret... this may be hell, where we suffer the torments decreed by the gods, but the torture of the living world is far worse.'"
"What do you mean?" Belle wondered if these shades had been driven mad after all.
"The dead are dead. They want nothing and want for nothing," said Hyan, and Belle wasn't sure if those were her words or the Old Wife's. "All we have are our memories and our regrets. The living want so much and have so much more to lose. They have people they care about..."
"But being dead doesn't change that, does it?" Belle protested. "You still care. Otherwise..."
Hyan shook her head. "Our lives are over. We have no power to affect the land of the living."
"All right, so say you are released from the cares of the living. That doesn't mean life is torture!"
Hyan sighed. "The living are petty, spiteful, malicious, greedy, hateful, afraid, angry... The harm the living do to each other can be more painful than anything we suffer here. We have nothing to strive for, nothing to hope for."
Belle shuddered. That sounded even worse. Nothing to hope for? Forever? "How... how can you endure it?"
"We have no choice."
Because it never ended. The dead couldn't die. Belle remembered the sights she had seen, the smell of blood but not of decay. Wounds didn't become infected, the dead didn't rot. Only in the living world did new life grow from the old. And is it any better in Elysium? She remembered what Maleficent had said about the 'air of divinity' and the ambrosia... things that numbed those shades to the horror of eternity.
Hyan Luize nodded, a knowing look on her face. "Even so. But there is comfort in knowing that we do not bear it alone."
Belle saw the answering nods and grunts of agreement from the crowd.
"And we are here to welcome our children and their children's children when their time comes, adding their stories to the weave," said one of the shades. "To know that they had the lives we dreamed of and dealt for..."
It was a resilience that made Belle want to cry. She listened as they told her some of their stories. Stories told and retold, filtered through the perspective granted by death. There was wisdom here, fought for and hard-won in hell, but it was buried in darkness for eternity.
Then Hyan Luize asked, "Why are you here?" A groan from the Old Wife. "Is it time to make another deal?"
Belle exchanged a glance with Maleficent. The dragon had suspected her of secret agendas, and now she wished more than ever that it was true. "I... I need to find someone." The question was, did she bring change? Was it even possible? Having seen Tartarus, she couldn't just leave it like this without trying to help them. "But if there's anything I can do for you..."
Maleficent said sharply, "Make no promises blindly." She looked around at the crowd. "And you. Be careful what you ask. Schlaraffenland has long had a Dark One. Now, it seems, it has a hero as well."
"And what are you?" asked Hyan.
"Today? Today I am a mother. But my daughter is not yet one of your tales told among the dead." Maleficent smiled slightly. "Help us, and perhaps we can help you in turn. So, tell us, what do you want?"
The Old Wife sighed, a rattling groan in her throat. Hyan Luize translated, "We want to ask the Dark One a question: is there an end to eternity?"
Author's note: Apparently, I've turned the damned souls of Schlaraffenland into the fluffy OUAT version of the Cenobites from the "Hellraiser" franchise, LMAO.