Beneath Ceaseless Skies #133 Read online

  Issue #133 • Oct. 31, 2013

  (Grim monstrous ghostly special issue for Halloween!)

  “Pheth's Aviary,” by Matthew Kressel

  “Not The Worst of Sins,” by Alan Baxter

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  PHETH'S AVIARY

  by Matthew Kressel

  Deep in the bowels of the queen’s palace, the kitchen was aflurry with demons preparing for tonight’s feast, and Pheth hated every minute of it. He averted his eyes as Buldumech chopped off the heads of bleating imps, drained their blood, and sliced their green flesh into edible portions. He cringed as Mardero dropped squirming slugs into a boiling broth of leek and radish. And he nearly lost his gorge when Alath removed a tray of steaming cow eye sweets from the oven.

  Pheth wondered gravely, Am I the only demon in Sheol who sickens at the sight of flesh?

  “Pheth!” Akton screamed. The kitchen governess hopped from hoof to hoof as she scowled at him. “By Sheol’s twin suns, quit your gaping and get to work, or shall I tell the queen herself how lazy you are?”

  Pheth lacked the courage to tell her that it was not laziness but revulsion that stymied him. “No, mistress,” he said as he wiped sweat from his brow.

  “Then get to work!”

  He nodded and fled her presence.

  Behind the kitchen, he descended the dank stair in a fit of despair. How he longed for the old days! Ever since Mashit had taken over the throne, a great many things had changed in the palace of Abbadon. Afraid of enemies lurking behind every stone, she’d banished well-robed courtesans to sweat in the gold mines. And she’d turned soiled stablehands into bedecked astrologers. When well-known demons hadn’t shown for monthly convocations, it was said that Mashit had her magicians teleport a third of the inhabitants of Sheol into the Great Deep, to float forever in the Abyss as punishment for crimes even their victims couldn’t remember.

  For the former king—Mighty Ashmedai—Pheth had painted a thousand colorful frescos across the palace walls. But Mashit had turned Pheth into a slaughterer. And so for the past fifty dreadful days, he had been tasked with the worst possible job in all the myriad dimensions. Worst for him, at least.

  He hung his shoulders as he entered the subterranean corridor of animal pens. Orange torchlight flickered furtively from the walls. The straw floor quivered and quaked, like a shivering beast itself. Years of accumulated dung befouled the air. He staggered past drooling faun and goblin, intelligent beings drugged into stupefaction. He tried to ignore the moans of black giraffe and feathered pig as he swept past their too-small cages.

  The animals didn’t fear him as they feared the others. For a demon, Pheth wasn’t very large or menacing. His back was scaly yet smooth, like a snake’s, and tufts of white fur covered his chest and belly. His face was small and churlish, with a curved beak for a nose and eyes spread too far apart. Even though Pheth could recount his demon ancestry for forty-nine generations, the kitchen staff often joked that Pheth himself was a devolved bird.

  “I wish I were one,” he muttered. “So I could fly away.”

  The coop lay at far end of the corridor, where the light was most feeble. A small flock of birds huddled inside.

  Mashit had requested goose, and so at great magical expense she’d had the creatures portaled down from some realm called Canada. Pheth had never seen their kind before, and he imagined Canada a magical land full of creatures like these, with their graceful necks, charcoal feathers, and delightfully plump bodies. And their lovely webbed feet! He gazed into their eyes as he opened the gate.

  The geese huddled quietly in the far corner and stared oddly at him.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “Your lot is not fair, but what can I do?”

  Then the birds did something curious. They bowed their necks for him to break.

  “What is this?” he said. “You wish to die? What strange birds you are! But why?”

  Yet there was no time to indulge these thoughts, not with Akton’s ever-watchful eyes. So with a heavy heart he snapped each of their necks. And after, when he had stuffed all twenty-five flaccid bodies into his satchel, something tiny shuffled out from behind a bed of straw. A gosling, fuzzy, featherless, waddled into the torchlight.

  “Oh my!” he said, letting slip a giggle. “Look at you! How lovely!” He covered his mouth to quiet himself. “How soft you look,” he whispered. “How gentle.”

  And yet, he realized, he had to kill this creature too. Or did he? He made sure that no one was watching and then slipped the gosling into his apron pocket.

  * * *

  It was not easy keeping the bird hidden while he prepared dinner. From time to time, the gosling poked its head out to glimpse the world. And what a brutal world it must have seen. Its family julienned into strips, their defeathered flesh seasoned with sage, parsley, and rust, soaked in goblin milk and breaded thick. Always, carefully, making sure that no one saw, Pheth gently pressed the gosling back into hiding.

  What a vile monster I must seem to it! he thought as the cleaver fell.

  Their bodies were still warm as he removed organs and viscera. Where did your essence go? he wondered as he stared into one’s lifeless eyes.

  He feared that their ghosts hovered near, waiting for the chance to spill boiling soup on his head or knock a knife off the wall-mounted rack onto his fingers. But when he looked over his shoulder, he saw only the kitchen staff preparing tonight’s feast and Akton’s ever-watchful eyes burning into his.

  He stuffed the geese with apples and tar, potatoes and slime, imp sausage and cuttlefish roe. Then he roasted them in the kitchen’s towering brick oven for an hour, basting them in cetacean butter until their flesh turned a golden brown. Though the savory smell sickened him, he laid the butter as carefully as he once had strokes of paint.

  Hours later, after the meal had been served and cleared, he and the kitchen staff smoked pipes of nightshade out back by the trash heaps, waiting for permission to leave. The black waters of Lake Hali lapped languorously at the shoreline, and a thousand ruddy stars, fat as goose-pimples, smoldered in the night sky.

  Akton waddled into the humid air, clutching a jug of wine, and everyone rose from their stupor to greet her.

  “Word from above,” she said—she grabbed Mardero’s pipe and took a puff—”is that our queen enjoyed her dinner.” A stream of yellow smoke flowed out from her nostrils like a dragon. “Her Highness sends her compliments on another fine meal. If your cleaning duties are done, you may go home.”

  Relieved, Pheth turned to go, but Akton stopped him. “Not you, Birdface. The queen requested you. Personally.”

  A chill ruffled his white fur. “Me? What for?”

  “How in Sheol should I know? The queen’s whims are as predictable as the stars.” And even as she spoke, the ruddy lights trembled in their orbits.

  Did I overspice? he thought. Were the birds undercooked? Did someone choke on a bone?

  “She’s in the Karteek Lounge. Take the servant’s stairs. What are you waiting for, Pheth? Go!”

  She waved him away, and he bounded inside and leaped up the candlelit stairs. But halfway there, he remembered with a start the gosling still in his apron pocket. He couldn’t return it to the coop. Most nights Akton hovered like a bat around the kitchen, sampling the queen’s wine. And he couldn’t enter the queen’s presence with the bird. If it were to pop its head out, she would have both of their heads for dinner.

  He stared up the stony stairwell into the dim heights. “I am bound like Azazel, upside-down beyond the Mountains of Darkness.”

  One of the crevices un
der the stairs looked just large enough to hide a gosling. He pulled the bird out of his pocket. It blinked and awoke. He peered into its black eyes, and the bird cocked his head and peered back.

  How could he leave this helpless creature here, where it might get discovered or fall to its death? “Be still little one,” he said. “For both our sakes, be as still and silent as the Great Deep!” He kissed the bird and returned it to his apron.

  By the time he reached the Karteek Lounge, he was covered in sweat. Why hadn’t he thought to clean himself first? Change his shirt? What an oaf! A toad-faced guard eyed his grease-stained visage disapprovingly, but let him pass with a discourteous grunt.

  Pheth had forgotten how large the Karteek Lounge was. Diaphanous curtains fluttered before giant windows that looked over the black waters of Lake Hali and the distant and madly flickering lights of the city of Alar.

  This must be what a bird feels like, he thought, when it soars above the ramparts.

  He woke from his reverie at the sound of demons laughing.

  Spread about the room on soft purple couches, a curse of demons guffawed at someone’s joke. In the center, Queen Mashit and her lover, Kokabiel, reclined on an enormous bed. The giraffe-shaped Kokabiel, with his spiraling ram’s horns and vicious rat-like face, seemed less menacing now as he draped his hoof-arm around Mashit’s gold-belted waist. And though Mashit took a human form and wore no clothes, Pheth could not glimpse her famous pale flesh under all her scintillating gold.

  Empty-eyed servants waited in the shadows holding bowls of fruit. Bronze censers perfumed the air with the dense smoke of apple peel and locust wing. Pheth sneezed, and the demons’ laughter abruptly stopped.

  “What is this?” Mashit said. Her voice was as smooth as nightshade smoke. As she shifted out of Kokabiel’s grasp, her raven hair flickered azure in the candlelight.

  “Fet, your highness,” the guard said, “from down the kitchens.” His tone implied all the filth that such a station entailed.

  “Actually, it’s Pheth,” he said; then he added with a bow, “Your Highness.”

  Her hazel eyes flashed like a distant thunderstorm. He’d heard never to look directly into them; that those who did became consumed with lust for her and would meet not her wrath but that of her many jealous lovers. It took great effort to turn away, as mesmerizing as she was.

  “Ah!” she said. She smiled and sat up, and Kokabiel grumbled as he was pushed aside. “Are you the cook who has delighted our palates with your avian delights?” Her golden belt shimmered as she gestured to a table, where three-quarters of his geese lay untouched.

  It was much easier to avert his eyes from that atrocity. “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Pheth, I’ve never tasted a roast as succulent as yours. Where did you learn your craft?”

  “From none, Your Highness. I used to be a painter.”

  “A painter of what?”

  He was more than happy to speak of the old days. “On these very walls I painted a mural of Dumah splitting graves with her rod and ferrying souls down to meet their punishment in Gehenna. It was a favorite of King Ashme—” His breath caught. One did not mention the deposed king in Abbadon, especially not to the new queen!

  She paused, and he felt the thread of his life grow thin.

  “Well, Pheth, I dare say you’re a better cook than a painter!”

  The demons’ sycophantic laughter echoed from the walls, and Pheth, shivering with relief, let out a silent but particularly odorous fart. The guard cringed.

  “Your former king had hideous taste,” she said. “How gruesome was Dumah’s face! How crooked her rod! I had these walls repainted with the deep serenity of Earth’s sky. I much prefer it.”

  “So do I, Your Highness,” he said. And it was true.

  A demon snickered but stopped when Mashit eyed him. “Have you been to Earth, Pheth?” she said.

  “No, Your Highness.”

  “Then how do you know the hue of its sky?”

  Blood pumped in his ears, and he knew his fate had not yet been decided. “From stories, Your Highness. And pictures. They say the blue of Earth’s skies can make even the most brutal demon weep.”

  She smiled. “Ah, I see the poet within you.” She stared at him, and in her eyes he felt his desire for her grow until he forced himself to turn away. “Perhaps this explains your uncanny artistry with food,” she said.

  “Pheth, I have a task for you. I desire to taste one of every bird, from every planet, in every dimension, across the entire Cosmos, wherever birds fly, walk, swim, or teleport. And I want you to prepare them for me, in the way only your poetry can. Will you see to it, Pheth?”

  The gosling moved in his hand. He had forgotten it! “An-anything for my queen,” he stuttered as he pressed the bird still.

  The joy departed from her face. “Pheth, why does your hand linger in your pocket? What do you hide there?”

  He removed his hand and showed her his empty palm. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. A rude habit from years hiding painter’s stains. I shan’t do it in your presence again.”

  Please, little bird, he thought, please stay still!

  “Very well, Pheth,” Mashit said as she strode over to the table and picked at a goose leg. “I’ll arrange for the birds to be portaled in. That is all.”

  He bowed and fled the Karteek Lounge. In the dank stairwell, he removed the gosling, hoping he hadn’t smothered it. It lifted its small head, and he sighed.

  “Little one,” he whispered, “to slaughter one of every bird in the whole Cosmos? How many thousands would that be? How many millions?”

  The gosling opened its little mouth and closed it again.

  “It is impossible. I cannot do it.” He hung his head. “If only, little one, we could fly away to Canada. Alas, neither of us have wings. And I don’t even know where Canada is.”

  * * *

  It took Pheth nearly an hour to walk home. His stone cottage sat nestled between mountain and lake. The crimson sands shifted unpredictably each day, and tonight his cottage hovered by the water’s edge. He placed the bird on the sand and scraped off the yellow fungus that grew each day on his walls. He tossed the clumps to the ground, and a school of walking fish crept out of the lake to snatch the fragments with their teeth and slink back into the dark waters. When one approached the gosling, its green teeth glistening, Pheth shouted and kicked all the fish back into the lake.

  Inside he set the bird on a chair and fed it morsels of soaked bread he’d stolen from the kitchen. He ate some too. Out of rags and a bowl, he fashioned the gosling a nest.

  “There!” he said. “As good a bed as mine.”

  A growing wind tumbled down the mountain and carried his pipe smoke out the open door. Fits of sand rattled against the windows, and a glowfly landed on the foot of the bed, perhaps to escape the gusts. It phosphoresced its delicate wings. The gosling opened its eyes and waddled toward the insect.

  Does it recognize a kindred creature? Pheth wondered.

  But before the bird got close, the glowfly darted away.

  Pheth sighed sulphurous smoke. “I’m sorry about your family,” he said. “I had a brother and sister too, once. But the stars have taken them as well.” He closed the door and extinguished the lantern.

  Late in the night, a thunderstorm woke him from fitful dreams. Giant hailstones slammed into the roof, and lightning speared down from the sky to electrify the waters. The mountain glowed like hot coals where lightning had struck, and schools of flying fish buzzed over the lake in ever-tightening circles.

  Something stirred beside him. The gosling had climbed out of its nest and now snuggled in the crook of his arm, fast asleep.

  * * *

  The next day, he arrived at the palace just as the second sun crested the horizon. Fans of fiery light spread over its thousand sculpted terraces. By night, the palace was dark and brooding, but the morning sun rekindled the glory of its vulgar spires and arabesque balustrades.

  He wish
ed he could fly above its ramparts to dive over standard and parapet, peering into its myriad rooms before darting gleefully into the sky.

  He had left the gosling home with food and water behind a locked door, and though he had only just left, he missed it terribly.

  After lunch, the hairy archivist came down to the kitchens and led Pheth through many long and twisting halls into the palace library. The cavernous room overflowed with codices, compendiums, grimoires, lexicons, and ordered shelves of dust.

  “Here we find the spell to fetch your birds,” the archivist said in a voice as moldy as the book he was poring over.

  Pheth glanced up at the towering stacks. They seemed to stretch forever. When he reached for a book entitled The Seven Easily Manipulated States of the Human Heart, the archivist smacked his hand.

  “These are not for amateur eyes! Even a wrong glance could send you spiraling into a distant hell.”

  “But weren’t you Ashmedai’s fruit-bearer before Mashit made you an archivist?” he said.

  “So?”

  “So how much could you have learned in fifty-one days?”

  The archivist frowned, squinting over his wrinkled nose. “Volumes,” he said, snapping the book closed. The dust made Pheth sneeze.

  The archivist fled the library, and Pheth struggled to follow. They weaved through the palace halls, down crooked stairs and across endless hallways. He grew dizzy with all the turns, and he wondered if the archivist was toying with him.

  At last they entered an enormous, empty chamber, its ceiling so high it vanished in shadow. Five warlocks in hooded robes huddled in the corner, murmuring, and the archivist walked over to instruct them on the spell. The warlocks drew sigils and zodiacs on the floor in white ash. They chanted an odd incantation, and Pheth’s chest tingled. Something wonderful was about to happen. And it was here, in vortices of smoke and light, where a door opened to another universe.

  The warlocks reached inside and shook an enormous rattle. And from a fetid swamp, startled birds flew up from behind a tangle of reeds.