In a dark slice of Butcher's Alley, a great slumbering beast made its way to the Tower of London. It dragged rusting flanks through the shadows of ladies of the night and down-on-their-luck mill workers, coated in a shadow of forgetting.
The monster paused at the scent of Muscovite perfume on a lady's thigh. It swallowed the whole block of wayward shops and lost souls into its great gullet, then shambled on, made of woebegone dream and gristled bones.
"Abigail MacKay..." the beast growled like a mine exploding.
The dead of the Beast would have no funeral (its accursed, wounded prey.)
A grey fog fell over Butcher's Alley, and the meat spoiled that night in each wife's ice box. A babe died in its sleep, pricked to death by fairies. The mother lost all tears from her eyes and was never able to weep again.
Strange, indeed, this beast. Eerie, it was, and
Hungry.
Annis and I had come to Wolf's Glen, a great expanse between the Sedgewood and Shamayim, the realm of angelic Powers Samael presided over as Archangel of Briah, aka the border between worlds, and we were marveling at the exquisite goblin fruits that grew in his great, misty orchard. He was preparing duck confit for dinner, and the scent of bubbling fat, poultry, and butter wafted from his manor as he spooned the fat over the vittles in a cast iron skillet. Annis held my hand, her lip twitching.
"Godsd- damn Long Lankin. He uttered e – evil, speaking that name," Annis crossed herself, her green eyes suddenly flushing black in fear.
I squeezed her hand, then set to massaging her shoulders. She was in a red tartan, and I was in a blue caftan, my long white hair dangling down the back like a mercy banner. "It is just rumors, my gay Annie. The Hellfire Club, that wicked band of noble rapscallions and mages, disbanded four decades ago when King Edward outlawed them!"
"But things li – linger in shadows, my Abby," Annis sighed, picking a ripe cherry from a golden-brown bough and using her fang to bite in, pitting it and eating the flesh. She offered me one in the gold, freckled shell of her outstretched hands.
"This Wyrm of Balor is more concerning, not some supposed apparition of a long dead black magick society," I said, looking down into the rich dark loam as I dug the heel of my silver boot down, down, into whatever lurked below the Sedgewood. "Do you think Lugh bound it here, long ago, in his fight with his grandfather Balor? The Formorians are long gone, and the high courts of Fey have retreated to the far corners of the Summerlands. I cannot think the Tuatha forthcoming with answers, even if we could find them."
Annis shivered. "There was a rumor in Pitch Castle," she said, "that there was a great beast, the Crom Cruach in Ireland, that ate sinners as tithes to Hell, bound far under the interior of the earth by Lugh. It may have crossed the strait. They say it went missing wh – when Saint Patrick cast it out. Perhaps it settled in Sedgewood! Coul- could that be the Wyrm of Balor? It is said strange things grew fr – from its sleeping flesh: ghosts, ghouls, terrible de- depravities, like cavities of fungus in caves."
We sat down in a swing and wondered. Samael called us in for dinner.
"This is delicious!" I said joyfully, eating the duck confit with steamed shallots and potatoes au gratin, cooked in the duck fat, with scones for dessert. Samael had brewed rosehip tea over the fire, and the manor smelled like a psalm. I ate a scone with clotted cream and blackberry jam – he was a baker to boot, and a fine one at that.
"That is lovely to hear, my bride. Ducks are rather treasured creatures of mine in my Father's menagerie. Always so brave when they pass on to the afterlife – the ducks simply ask, "Must I swim, walk, or fly into Gan Eden?" And I tell them, whatsoever suits their fancy, they will find plentiful mud, and teeming waters with fish."
Annis and I giggled at Samael's tall, outlandish tale of the afterlives of ducks. To think, the things the Angel of Death had seen!
"Ducks are quite proud creatures," Annis said, not stuttering at all. She, when at ultimate ease, minced her words less. It made me beam, though the stutter made her no less a lady!
"Yes, especially the ducks of Oxford. Scholars all, they are, in cap and gown in the canals and lock boats, attending university," I boasted, sipping tea.
Samael winked at me, his cutting blue eye chipping away pieces of my frozen heart. With Death, it felt like my soul was thawing, about to enter a burgeoning spring.
"Samael, I – I would like to share a bed with you, tonight," I told him quietly as we stayed up reading Rabbie Burns to each other by the fire, long after Annis had gone into a fretful sleep. "Do you physically go to Sheol?" I asked, blushing. "Or – or may I expect my husband to share a bed with me each night?"
"The silver Cord of Life connects to my navel, allowing me to go spelunking in the afterlife as my physical form rests in blissful slumber, as in the Tanakh: "Before the silver cord snaps, and the golden fountain is shattered, and the pitcher breaks at the fountain, and the wheel falls shattered into the pit. And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God, Who gave it."" Samael teased, placing a bookmark in Scotland's most fierce poet's tome. "You shall find a sleeping man beside you tonight, cradling you as sweet dew forms on the blades of grass. I do snore, though – fair warning."
"I – I would like that, even the snores. Say, may I ever go with you... to Sheol?"
He pursed his lip, nibbled it bemusedly, then looked at me in amusement, his nostrils flaring. "'Tis up to my gray brothers Abaddon and Dumah, who guard the gates of Sheol. But thou art half-death, and a soul of mine own, so I think they could be persuaded. It would be quite lovely, to show you my holdings in Sheol at the Tree of Life, whose roots I tend, and its leaves and branches in my double kingdom in Briah. What say you, to being my queen? Does it frighten you?" He nuzzled my neck. I shivered as his plush lips skimmed the baby hairs at the nape of my skull.
"You are a solitary man, and humble as American pie. I think it would be no great burden, and I have a judicious mind. Again, I am an old maid. I have never known – known a man, Samael, only one woman, and my mind for these past eight years has been turned to vengeance, regret, remorse, and rebuilding. I would like to rest on my laurels and prosper in the fruits of my labors. I suppose, on our honeymoon, we could abscond to the Summerlands, or whatsoever parts of the afterlife you govern. But of course, first comes dealing with the rogue kelpie, dispelling the bounty on our heads, and resolving this issue with the 'Wyrm of Balor...'"
"Or we could stay in Wolf's Glen Manor and have twelve babes 'tween us, ignoring all our problems" he teased, stroking my back. His touch was like cool fire. "Tell me, dear Abby, at what age did you stop maturing, and did your immortality set in?" he asked in curiousity, his voice soft and gentle.
I paled, then blushed, kneading my knuckles. His breath was hot on my hair as he massaged my shoulders – we had taken turns shooting pheasants earlier, which he had dequilled, salted, and set to the smoking shed with hickory. My back was twisted in knots from lifting the rifle. "Seventeen, when you saved me, and took my soul," I admitted.
He flinched. "I – I did not think of the consequences. Dhamphirs typically mature well into their twenties. 'Tis just, there was no flesh left to salvage – only a gorgeous soul. I had to build your body from the bones up. 'Twas no small feat, even for me. My deepest apologies, my dear."
I turned around in his lap, squeezing his hands. In his glassy eyes, I could almost see my own soul peering back. "Twas no curse, but a blessing, Sam. It meant I would not grow old alone. Perhaps... perhaps I was waiting for you... after I had slain my demons."
He smiled, then pecked me on the cheek. "That is the thing about our demons. They never stop emerging, the more mastery over the soul we have, the fiercer the beasts become."
We cuddled, drinking hot cider, and I fell asleep in his arms, under a wolfskin blanket, as Puck played a melody on his panpipes far away in the Sedgewood.
Samael was warm, solid – a bastion of peace against the wicked night. I had seen too much – hail hell, hail horrors! – in my twenty-five years. But like knitting a bonnet for a grandmother, the friendship Samael and I were forming would bring an ancient comfort to something revered, and fit together like lock and key... he had my heart, more and more of it, each day, and I roused slightly as he carried me to bed, crossed his arms like a guard around my high proud breasts, then whispered in my ear:
"I love you, Abigail MacKay."
I dreamed of the prayer gardens he tended, him pressing oil from flowers. He wreathed me in a crown of gardenia, and Michael gave me a golden candle.
I awoke to the fall of rain, and Samael had his arms locked around me as he slumbered. I smiled quietly.
What a lovely respite, this Wolf's Glen.
What a lovely life I would have.
But great things were awakening along the Watchtower – the rabid kelpie in Pottsmouth, the Wyrm of Balor... and now the Hellfire Club.
I had to guard my loved ones carefully, indeed. Many ceremonial magicks could trap the Angel of Death, rabbi, imam, yogi and priest alike, and folk knew how to ward off a Black Annis or slay a dhampir. One could never be too cautious when they were the Bride of Death. One foot in the grave, one in the River of Life, I was.
Strange, my tale, odd, my fate.
But it was only
The
Beginning, after all...