I pursued his weakness.
“You don’t have to go through with this, you know. You have enough power to stop them even now. You can threaten them with damnation and I can threaten them with the law and instead of eating the demon we can bury it and forget it was ever here. What do you say?”
I could see he was tempted. Perhaps it was his pride, though, that made him think about it for too long. I don’t think he could bear to accept that I’d been right from the start and that if he changed his mind now it would look like weakness, while my stance would look like strength. Our final chance at negotiation was interrupted by Cleaver booming at the crowd from the top step of the church where the demon’s neck was exposed and ready for his blade.
“Menfolk and womenfolk of Long Lofting, I proffer we chop the dragon’s head off and keep it as a trophy in memory of this day.”
The crowd cheered. They were starving; they would have said yes to anything at that stage. All they saw when they looked at that demon hanging down the entire front of the church from bell tower to steps was a big fat turkey ready for the oven. I suppose some of them might have been seeing steak or lamb cutlets, but they were all of one mind when it came to the demon’s noggin.
“Chop it off! Chop it off!”
The chant grew louder. Prattle and I stepped back from Cleaver to make some distance.
I glanced into the crowd and saw Velvet had arrived, her face full of amusement and curiosity. I gestured to her to get back to the house but she just smiled at me and waved back.
Cleaver put the blade of a long knife to the demon’s throat and drew it towards himself while pressing against the skin. It opened a deep groove in the creature’s neck but no blood came forth. He proceeded to saw towards the demon’s spine and the rift in its flesh grew wider becoming a second mouth. Inside were the demon’s muscles and vessels for air and food and gore. Though severed in cross section, not a drop of fluid came forth from any part of the wound.
Cleaver’s long bladed knife sawed and sawed until he reached the spinal bones and there he sawed even harder to split his way through two vertebrae. The head was almost free. Cleaver’s sweat sprinkled the stone and evaporated in moments. The crowd’s cheering died down as the work progressed; all had seen slaughter before and all were surprised there was neither blood nor fluid within the demon. With a gristly snick, the knife slipped through the discs and ligaments between the bones and parted the final flap of skin at the back of the demon’s neck.
The head fell.
It hit the top step of the church with a dull, bony knock. It bounced upwards surprisingly high and flipped over. Instead of rolling down the church steps towards the waiting onlookers, the head landed on the stone at Cleaver’s feet. The severed neck hit the granite with a fleshy slap and for a moment or two there was total silence. The crowd, perturbed by the lack of blood, weren’t sure whether to applaud or hiss. Then the demon’s eyes, which had been open but blank ever since it landed on its back in the cabbage field, blinked. A few people at the front of the crowd tried to take step back but found they were hemmed in by those behind them. Even those who weren’t sure what they’d seen sucked in a startled breath.
But when the demon smiled, pulling its thick leathery lips back even farther exposing rank after rank of jaundiced fangs, the gasps came back out as screams and holy petitions. The entire village tried to reverse from the head and many stumbled over with others falling on top of them. Those in the dirt scrambled away on hands and knees. The outer edge of the crowd expanded and broke until everyone felt they’d reached a safe distance. Rickett and Wiggery abandoned their respective wing tips and ran down the steps to join them.
Cleaver, still holding his knife and panting, hadn’t moved. From his angle, he couldn’t see what was scaring the villagers but when the demon’s body began to move he started back, raising his hands up to protect himself and dropping into a half crouch. The great wings of the beast, slack all this time, began to beat against the wall of the church. The wind they made would have been welcome in that heat if it hadn’t signaled life in such a monster. Dust and stone chips flew from the wall where the wing bones made contact. Cleaver must have thought it was the demonic equivalent of a beheaded chicken’s twitches and flutters and that it would settle down. He didn’t move far enough away and one of the wingtips caught him a solid blow on the shoulder. He flew like a straw doll thrown by a spoilt child and landed ten strides away on his face in the dirt. His knife landed harmlessly beside him.
The demon’s body bent in half, it snapped the ropes restraining its arms and its hooked fingers reached for the chain that held its ankles. Its attempts were clumsy and ill-coordinated because it couldn’t see what it was doing. When the hands did take hold of the chain, the talons flicked against the rusted links, cleaving them like twigs. The metallic snap of sheared iron was followed by the sound of the demon’s body collapsing into a headless heap at the front door of the church.
The impact dislodged the head and it bounced down the rest of the steps with a dizzy look on its face until it came to rest on its ear in the dust. The crowd of villagers dispersed still farther, some of them taking shelter in their homes, others peering around the walls of cottages or trading posts. A few froze where they were, caught in the open expanse of dirt that served as the village gathering place and market square.
The body of the demon tried to stand. With a clawed foot standing on one of its wings, it tripped onto its chest, tearing a hole in its flight membrane and rolled into the dirt. The head grimaced with frustration and a hint of embarrassment. Its lips moved but without air from its lungs the vocal chords were useless. The body pushed itself up from the ground again and this time stood swaying in the middle of the square. I’m certain the head would have been turning from one direction to another to assess the situation, had it still been attached. Instead, the headless thing walked carefully a few steps with its arms out in front of it like a shepherd looking for black sheep on a winter’s midnight.
It didn’t find its head. It found Cleaver, still stunned from the impact and in a good deal of pain. It found him because it kicked him as it walked, rolling him over a few times. Then the demon’s body crouched down and waved its flattened palms around until it found him trying to crawl away. I saw the smile come back to the demon’s face as its body stood up and brought Cleaver to the space where the head should have been. I thought the body believed it had found its head because it pushed Cleaver into the space above its shoulders over and over again. That was before I noticed what the head was doing: chomping—the teeth clashing against each other. The demon was trying to eat Cleaver, but luckily for him it was impossible. After some more fruitless chewing, the demon, its head looking truly disgusted with itself and its body looking about as useful as one of Rickett and Wiggery’s cabbages, let Cleaver drop to the ground.
I’d seen enough by that stage. I ran forward towards the bottom of the church steps while everyone else was still either backing or running away. I heard Velvet, the sweet little blossom that she is, screaming my name and begging me to stay away. I darted behind the demon’s body and, careful not to let my fingers get near the mouth, I snatched up the demon’s head, fought my way to Velvet and dragged both of them away. The head was about twice the size of my own and far heavier than I’d expected it to be. After a few yards I was exhausted and sweating cupfuls.
“Here, Velvet, take hold of one of these horns. We’ve got to keep the head hidden from the body and then we’ll all be safe.”
“The things I do for you, Delly Duke, no other woman has ever endured.”
“Carrying a demon’s head must make a nice change then,” said I, panting.
Velvet took hold of that horn like the good woman I’ve always known her to be. She even managed a laugh at the jumble-headedness of what we were doing.
“Where are we going to put it?” asked she.
“I know the perfect place,” said I.
Prattle’s Courtyard
No one was keen to chase after us considering what we were carrying, so we arrived at the priest’s lodge several minutes before anyone else. I suppose most of the village were still watching the demon’s body stagger around in the square. But Velvet and I had the thinking end of the demon and that was dangerous part.
We pushed our way through the iron gate and up the path to the imposing thatched household that was Leopold Prattle’s home. I could never understand what priests did that warranted such grand accommodation.
