In the thin atmosphere of the Haunted Mountains, I’d run out of food and was starving. Unfortunately for him, an old man, heading north, leading a donkey with a heavy load, was the first to pass my ambush. I told him I wanted something to eat, but he went for his throwing dagger, and I was forced to shoot him in the face. I freed the donkey of its burden and went through the old man’s wares. I found food, some smoked meat, leg bones of cattle, and pickled plum fish. While I ate, I inspected the rest of the goods, and among them I discovered a small silver box. I held it up, pressed a hidden latch on the bottom, and the top flipped back. A mechanical plinking music, the harmony of Duesgruel’s
I had it in my possession and I felt the spirit move through me. All I wanted was to get back to the church. Taking as much of the booty from the donkey’s pack as I could carry, I travelled to the closest city. There I sold my twice-stolen treasures and was paid well for them. I bought new clothes and took a room in a fine place, the Hotel Lacrimose.
I spent a few days and nights at the amazing hotel, trying to relax before beginning the long journey home. One afternoon, while sitting on the main veranda, watching the clouds twirl, contemplating the glory of Saint Ifritia, I made the acquaintance of an interesting gentleman. Mr. Ironton was his name and he had an incredible memory for historical facts and unusual opinons on the news of the day. Having travelled for years among paupers and thieves, I was unused to speaking with someone so intelligent as Ironton. We had a delightful conversation. Somewhere in his talk, he mentioned that he was travelling to the end of the world. At our parting, he requested that I join him for dinner at the Aquarium that evening.
That night at dinner, I told Ironton our story. I showed him the toe in its small silver case. He lifted the thing to his nose and announced that he smelled wild violets. But then he put the toe on the table between us and said, “This Saint Ifritia, you speak of. It has recently been discovered by the Holy of the Holy See that she is in fact a demon, not a saint. She’s a powerful demon. I propose you allow me to dispose of that toe for you. Every minute you have it with you you’re in terrible danger.” He nodded after speaking.
I told him, “No thank you. I’ll take my chances with it.”
“You’re a brave woman, Ms. North,” he said. “Now what was the message you had for your Father Walter?”
As I told him that I wanted you to know I was on my way, and to write a sermon for me, an enormous violet fish with a human face rose out of the water of the decorative river that ran through the restaurant next to our table. It startled me. Its face was repulsive. I recalled you telling me something about a giant plum fish, Lord Jon, and I spoke the name aloud. “At your service,” the fish said and then dove into the flow. When I managed to overcome my shock at the fish’s voice, I looked back to the table and discovered both Ironton and the toe had vanished.
I had it and I lost it. I felt the grace of Saint Ifritia for a brief few days at the Hotel Lacrimose and then it was stolen away. I’ve wondered all along my journey home if that’s the best life offers.
SISTER NORTH YAWNED and turned on her side. “And what of the foot? Is it safe?” she asked.
He put his arm around her. “No,” he said. “Some seasons back I was robbed at gunpoint. A whole troop of bandits on horses. They took everything. I begged them to leave the foot. I explained it was a holy relic, but they laughed and told me they would cook it and eat it on the beach that night. It’s gone.”
“I’m so tired,” she said. “I could sleep forever.”
Father Walter drew close to her, closed his eyes, and listened to the sand sifting in through the walls.
Lord Dunsany’s Teapot
By Naomi Novik
The accidental harmony of the trenches during the war produced, sometimes, odd acquaintances. It was impossible not to feel a certain kinship with a man having lain huddled and nameless in the dirt beside him for hours, sharing the dubious comfort of a woolen scarf pressed over the mouth and nose while eyes streamed, stinging, and gunpowder bursts from time to time illuminated the crawling smoke in colors: did it have a greenish cast? And between the moments of fireworks, whispering to one another too low and too hoarsely to hear even unconsciously the accents of the barn or the gutter or the halls of the public school.
What became remarkable about Russell, in the trenches, was his smile: or rather that he smiled, with death walking overhead like the tread of heavy boots on a wooden floor above a cellar. Not a wild or wandering smile, reckless and ready to meet the end, or a trembling rictus; an ordinary smile to go with the whispered, “Another one coming, I think,” as if speaking of a cricket ball instead of an incendiary; only friendly, with nothing to remark upon.
The trench had scarcely been dug. Dirt shook loose down upon them, until they might have been part of the earth, and when the all-clear sounded at last out of a long silence, they stood up still equals under a coat of mud, until Russell bent down and picked up the shovel, discarded, and they were again officer and man.
But this came too late: Edward trudged back with him, side by side, to the more populated regions of the labyrinth, still talking, and when they had reached Russell’s bivouac, he looked at Edward and said, “Would you have a cup of tea?”
The taste of the smoke was still thick on Edward’s tongue, in his throat, and the night had curled up like a tiger and gone to sleep around them. They sat on Russell’s cot while the kettle boiled, and he poured the hot water into a fat old teapot made of iron, knobby, over the cheap and bitter tea leaves from the ration. Then he set it on the little camp stool and watched it steep, a thin thread of steam climbing out of the spout and dancing around itself in the cold air.
Yishan Li’s depiction of Lord Dunsany’s Teapot, from the forthcoming Novik-Li graphic novel “Ten Days to Glory: Demon Tea and Lord Dunsany.”
The rest of his company were sleeping, but Edward noticed their cots were placed away, as much as they could be in such a confined space; Russell had a little room around his. He looked at Russell: under the smudges and dirt, weathering; not a young face. The nose was a little crooked and so was the mouth, and the hair brushed over the forehead was sandy brown and wispy in a vicarish way, with several years of thinning gone.
“A kindness to the old-timer, I suppose,” Russell said. “Been here—five years now, or near enough. So they don’t ask me to shift around.”
“They haven’t made you lance-jack,” Edward said, the words coming out before he could consider all the reasons a man might not have received promotion, of which he would not care to speak.
“I couldn’t,” Russell said, apologetic. “Who am I, to be sending off other fellows, and treating them sharp if they don’t?”
“Their corporal, or their sergeant,” Edward said, a little impatient with the objection, “going in with them, not hanging back.”
“O, well,” Russell said, still looking at the teapot. “It’s not the same for me to go.”
He poured out the tea, and offered some shavings off a small, brown block of sugar. Edward drank: strong and bittersweet, somehow better than the usual. The teapot was homely and common. Russell laid a hand on its side as if it were precious, and said it had come to him from an old sailor, coming home at last to rest from traveling.
“Do you ever wonder, are there wars under the sea?” Russell said. His eyes had gone distant. “If all those serpents and the kraken down there, or some other things we haven’t names for, go to battle over the ships that have sunk, and all their treasure?”
“And mermen dive down among them, to be counted brave,” Edward said, softly, not to disturb the image that had built clear in his mind: the great writhing beasts, tangled masses striving against one another in the endless cold, dark depths, over broken ships and golden hoards, spilled upon the sand, trying to catch the faintest
