Ink and Steel

An arched eyebrow rose. The Devil tilted his head politely, waiting for Kit to continue.

“My name,” Kit said, and let the bridle fall. It vanished before it could clank on the stones. He wondered if it had ever existed. “I’ll sell you my name, for Will’s freedom.” He swallowed, but the Devil smiled.

“Done.” he answered promptly, leaving Kit to wonder if he had made a bad bargain indeed. “Thou art Christofer Marley nomore. And more, I tell thee it will be a long time indeed before thou art remembered for what thou hast been, and not what thine enemies proclaim thee. Thy trials are not over, in Faerie or the mortal realm.”

“How bad will it be?”

“Bad. But all is illusion and memory. Thee, and me. God, and the world. Faerie and Hell.”

Kit turned and walked to the edge of that vanishing tile of stone, floating in an infinite absence. Where are the damned? he asked, which was not what he had intended to ask at all. The words seemed to surround Kit, floating on the air like the toll of the bell, the fumes of the snuffed candle that should accompany them.

“Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing, in Heaven and on earth, we deprive Christofer Marley himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance, and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.”

“Is that what thou didst expect?” Satan asked. “Eternal fire, and the demons of Hell forking souls into furnaces like so much coke for burning?”

“No. Ridiculous, on the face of it. But…”

“The damned are all around thee.”

“Those creatures on the glassy plain. Lost creatures, aye. But I saw I see no souls in torment, Father of lies.”

“Seest thou not thyself? Seest thou not Satan and his angels, then?”

“Am I damned? I feel no fire upon my skin, or on my soul.”

“Fire cannot kiss thy soul, who was Christofer Marley. Such conceits are for simpler hearts than thine. Thou art in Hell, and have been every day of thy life since thy God abandoned thee in a little room in France. And thou, brave soul, reconstructed Him into a God that could love thee. But thou hast not the power to change God.”

Kit closed his eyes, without turning. He felt the cup of a warm wing against his shoulder, and knew Satan came to stand beside him. “Haven’t I?”

“Perhaps thou art more powerful than I.” Lucifer admitted, and Kit studied his profile. Leander. Adonis. Apollo. His body straight as Circe’s wand. Eyes as blue as Heaven looked on the darkness, unflinching, and then turned to regard Kit from beneath lashes frosted in gold.

“I have not succeeded. Is it not what children wish, a father’s acceptance? His love?”

“Yes,” Kit said, into a hollowness that echoed. “If Hell is not torment,” he asked, knowing the answer, “then what is Hell?” If I fell, would he come after me? On those white, white wings? Or would I fall forever, like…

Kit stepped away from the abyss, retreated to the center. Like him.

“Sweet child.” Lucifer said. And then said what Kit had always known he would. “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Thinkst thou that I that saw the face of God, and tasted the eternal joys of heaven am not tormented with ten thousand hells, In being deprived of everlasting bliss? O Faustus leave these frivolous demands, which strikes a terror to my fainting soul.” Kit’s own words, given into the mouth of a seductive devil. Mephostophilis. And again, the angel smiled. “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place. But where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be. And to be short, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that is not heaven.”

That agony in his chest must be his inability to breathe, Kit thought. The burning in his eyes, the taint of Hell.

“O child.” Lucifer said into Kit’s silence, “how canst thou deny what thou thyself hast written, and known to be Truth as it was revealed to thee?.”

Kit scrubbed his hands on his breeches, as if to remove some rusty stain. He tried to ignore the Devil circling, wings fallen into expansion like a courting hawk’s, but Lucifer caught his wrists and drew him close, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. “Hell,” he said, “is where God is not.”

I am damned.His knees rattled. The Devil’s strength held him up. “Thou art as God made thee.” Wry, startling humor. “As are we all.”