Cycle One: Pluto’s Allegory of the Grave

Book One: The Hell Jar

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I grow tired both of feigning faith and of this Council. Leave me to my studies in Mystra, and I will be well. Had I not laid murder and sorcery at their feet, maybe we would now be on our way. Every representative is homesick and frustrated with these debates over minutiae in which neither side will bend.

Instead, I gave the Council proof of a hell beyond any Christian theology, and I could curse myself for it. Their arguments run in circles with more concern over ecclesiastical law than truth, and meanwhile, the public is kept ignorant both of the proof and the danger. The Council has forbidden me from saying anything beyond its walls. Something unholy walks these streets, and the people of Florence are left to go about their lives in ignorance.

The Council left Ferrara to avoid the plague. May the gods save us from what faces us here.

Alessandra mourned the horrid, little man. She mourned the city and all its mothers, but if the goddess appeared to her now—in this tiny, foul cell—and offered her the opportunity for repentance, she’d find no room to turn. The gods had promised the return of her son.

For that, the world could burn.

As she hoped for sleep, the cell reminded her of another place and time, far away from present impossibilities. She was a child again, lying on her cot in a tiny room and could almost hear the breathing of her nurse nearby. Her brother had outgrown the sopraletti with its screened window into her mother’s room below, and so she was both surrounded and alone.

But those who surrounded her were not her nurse. They were not her mother.

From where she lay, she could not see out the high, courtyard-facing window, only the night glow that breathed space into her confined darkness. It spoke to her of broad horizons and great heights, a mockery of these close walls, the latest of many unfair fortunes.

If she had played a hand in an unfairness upon others, thousands, a city—the city first played its hand against her. Its politics had crushed her father’s fortunes. Its laws had stripped away her child.

From down the hall (perhaps) and through the door came a sound like her nurse’s breaths, soft and steady.

“I did what you commanded,” Alessandra whispered. “I accepted the pact and kept my side.”

The soft sound whispered back in words too distant to comprehend.

“Our scriptures say God is a debtor to no one,” she continued, but inwardly she understood. No verses she’d ever read applied to the gods she now served.

She breathed and the cell breathed with her.

“If you delay, they’ll hurt me.”

The gods had made no promises against her suffering. She squeezed her eyes tight and felt her heart beating. To have her son again, she’d endure anything. Let the torturer come.

A tear ran along the edge of her nose.

She thought of the creature’s head in Daphnis’s hand. Had he killed the beast? No, not Daphnis. He was only a coward who ate at her father’s table, pretending an interest in her hand. Men such as that took advantage of the trust and goodness in others. They took for themselves and gave nothing back and claimed glory in the reflection of greater men—men like Plethon.

Plethon was older than her father, but he had a vigor she wouldn’t have expected. In him, there was no pretense of interest, nor any offered by her, but she had seen in him the kindness and respect that rarely came from others. When his countenance toward her changed in the infirmary, when all she saw saw was contempt and fear, she knew how far she had fallen. His face was a mirror, true and pure.

The hall breathed with the murmurings of unheard threats.

The Council sent the old man to collect their prisoner, and a part of Firat resented the philosopher’s presence in his inquisition. When he saw him approaching, some of that resentment faded. Plethon didn’t want to be here. Firat could see it in the shoulders weighed forward with guilt and the face that showed its many years. Firat threw wide his arms and welcomed him as would an old friend.

Plethon roused himself and embraced him. “Has she said anything?”

“Nothing that makes sense.”

They stood outside the windowless walls of le Stinche and its moat. The great box-like building had only one door, above which were carved the words: it requires charity. Firat unlocked the door and ushered Plethon inside.

“She’s unharmed?” Plethon asked.

“As the Council requested.”

Plethon offered a heavy smile that seemed to apologize for the need to ask the question. “I’m still uncertain how to carry the reality of what we’ve seen. I laid the creature’s corpse before them, and they act like it’s an invention of my imagination. Whatever they might think, and as much as the city will never know...”

When Plethon’s thought trailed off into a choked silence, Firat completed it for him. “We fought the beast, witnessed the deaths, and shared in the loss. That truth belongs to us.”

Even as Firat spoke, his thoughts tripped over the idea of truth. He’d grown up with tales of the demonic ifrit, trapped in a jar marked by the Seal of Solomon, but these were only bedside stories told by his father—ones he thought he’d soon get to tell his own children. Their attraction relied on the deep divide between their horrors and this life. When that divide no longer existed and the stories became real, what was truth?

He escorted Plethon to the largest of the prison’s courtyards and had officers bring Alessandra to them. She walked down the stairs with a composure better expected of a bride at her wedding than a prisoner at her inquisition. She wore the same clothes from the night of horrors, stained brown with blood; her hair clung lifelessly to her scalp and neck, but she held her chin high, her shoulders square, her hands clasped together lightly beneath her bosom.

“The surviving monks are cooperating,” Plethon said. “When you answer the Council, you’ll find no benefit in lying.”

“Daphnis was jealous of you, but his respect for you wasn’t feigned,” she said. “Whatever judgment the monks unleashed upon this city, I hope you’ll survive it.”

“You talk like you played no part,” he said. “That won’t work with the Council.”

“The truth is that after you left my father’s house, the monster was there to take me. From there, I did what I had to.”

Firat could not stay silent. “You consorted with demons.”

“Demons?”

“We saw the creature you released from the jar,” Plethon said.

“Have you tried speaking to the urn?” she asked. “Touched it, even? The Council can make their guesses and accusations, or they can ask. It’s their choice.”

“No one with respect for his soul would touch that object,” Plethon said.

Firat nodded to the officers, and they held back, allowing Alessandra to approach, almost like a free woman.

“You know I’ve touched it. Use me. Let it speak through me.”

“How could they know anything it said was true?” Firat asked.

She smiled. “Plethon’s the smart one. He’ll think of something.”

Firat saw nothing sinister in her smile, nor did she betray any fear. It would have been easier, either way, whether she’d stood against them as some personification of evil or cowered before them and the methods at their disposal. Instead, they entered the carriage and rode together through the streets of Florence, as if setting out for an afternoon in the countryside.

“We’re not meeting the Council at Santa Maria Nuvella,” Plethon said. “The patriarch of Constantinople grows weak from his illness. The council waits for us in the palace given to him and his retinue. They won’t have the jar with them.”

“They can get it,” she said. “They will, if they want answers.”

“You’re entertaining a few false ideas, and I think it’s best to dispel them before we arrive,” Firat said. “The Council’s orders protected you at le Stinche because they intend to witness your inquisition firsthand.”

A solemn recognition revealed itself in Alessandra’s face. “They intend to torture me. So be it. Just secure the urn. I can’t tell them what I don’t know.”

“You’re brave; I’ll give you that,” Plethon said, “but bravery often becomes foolishness. For Daphnis’s sake, I’ll give you this warning. Be careful. Be humble, and speak nothing but what is true. Either way, you’ll suffer, but he wouldn’t want that prolonged. I saw his love for you. Had he lived, I imagine, even now, some of that affection would have remained. Perhaps, his death was the greater mercy.”

Alessandra’s solemnity became something else, something darker with edges of pain and hatred. Firat knew this moment, this breaking of the facade, had been unavoidable, but he regretted the change. For a moment, he’d allowed himself to believe this time would be different, that Alessandra represented a deeper, more virtuous truth which he could not yet understand, a truth that might have offered some meaning to the crime and his final inquisition.

As with the other regents, the podesta only served for six months and brought with him his own judges and officers. Firat and the rest of the podesta’s men had begun their service in January, arriving in the city only days before the Council straggled in from their journeys from Ferrara. Some had taken circuitous routes to avoid threats from their enemies. Some arrived in obscurity and others in pomp and glory. Now, six months later, it was Firat’s turn to leave in obscurity and either return to Venice or continue on to wherever his newfound wealth would take him.

None of the city-states on the peninsula felt particularly welcoming. The greater their fear of the Ottomans grew, the more precarious his life became. He needed direction, and somehow, when Alessandra had stood before them, unbothered by the threat she faced, he imagined she possessed an answer to life’s mysteries. Her bravery had seemed a compass.

If only it had been so.

The carriage stopped, and Plethon and the prison officer escorted Alessandra out of the carriage. Strangely familiar walls loomed over her, immediate to the street and running from one corner to the next. Her childhood memories were filled by such scope and grandeur in their lost palace in Montevarchi, and the similarity interrupted her fears. She had withstood the threats of torture, only so thoughts of her mother could make her cry.

The men allowed her a moment as she stared up the height of the building, past the small ground floor windows to the narrow and high ones of the first and second floors. Her eyes lingered on the windows of rooms similar to those where her mother had died. Her lips pulled into a delicate smile, and that smile surprised her.

She breathed deep and stepped into a hall so tall and wide, her present house could have fit within its empty space and still left room for the grand, sweeping staircase. The marble beneath her was hard and unforgiving, but the art on the walls spoke of the Christian principles of redemption from judgment. These were not images one might find in church paintings, but she recognized them all the same. Any child in Italy would. The paintings illustrated scenes from Paradisio by Dante, culminating in three women before the white rose of heaven: Mary, Lucia, and Beatrice.

The officer urged her forward by she resisted.

“Wait,” she said. “Allow me to prepare my soul.”

He removed his hand. Alessandra focused on the painting. If there remained any hope of salvation, she would find its promise there.

Beatrice was Dante’s idealized woman, love personified, whom he had first met when they were both nine years old, and here she had been captured in the innocence of youth. It was Beatrice who led Dante through paradise.

Next was Saint Lucia who was martyred at twenty-one for her prophesies against the Roman Emperor. In the painting, she appeared as she might have in those final days.

Mary had been in her late forties when her son was crucified, and though no one knew how long she lived upon the earth, here she was depicted in old age. The white rose of paradise behind them, which had been said to represent so many things—including the very meaning of the universe—seemed to Alessandra symbolic, too, of Mary’s assumption into heaven.

Artistic understanding came in the memory of her vision of hell. The very air had opened like a black rose.

With that understanding, she prayed. Remember, most gracious Virgin Mary, never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession, was left unaided.

Plethon placed his hand upon her shoulder. “It’s time.”

The silent prayer became vocal. “I fly to you, my Mother. To you I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy, hear and answer me.”

Plethon’s hand held still and patient, and she felt in his touch the gift of this moment of prayer. She closed her eyes.

Men of faith sought judgment. I seek only my son.

No other words came. She stood with silent head bowed and heard her own plea. She’d asked for mercy but made no offer of repentance.

Plethon drew her closer against him and, whispering, continued her prayed. “Protect us. Lead us, as in everything, by thine illustrious children. You entrusted them with our destinies, fulfilled as just they ought to be.”

For too brief a moment, no one moved, and then Plethon escorted her out of the hall.

A crowd had gathered in the loggia off the main courtyard. Here she would stand and be judged. One of two possibilities awaited her. She would lose her life, or—if the voice of the urn proved true—she would have the meaning of life restored. She wiped her face and reconciled herself to either future. If the urn had lied and the Council condemned her, she would regret adding to her father’s sorrow, but better this than becoming a stranger to her child.

The men turned to watch her entrance, and Plethon positioned her in the center of the courtyard, beneath the open sky. She looked up into a still, blue pool. If she were to allow herself, she’d fall upward into its waters.

Plethon cleared his throat, and the Council fell silent. He introduced certain members, and she thought he meant to introduce them all until he skipped an elderly man, thin and frail. She realized this had to be Joseph II, the patriarch of Constantinople, to whom the Ferrantini family had surrendered their home. She recognized something in him, something she had experienced the night Daphnis and the others died but could not then appreciate. She had no word for it, perhaps a disassociation of the body from the spirit, something anyone who had visited the dead would understand. She saw it in Daphnis’s fall and confirmed it in his death, and now she saw it here, in Joseph and in the space he inhabited. It spoke something to her, not a secret, no; it was not the message that startled her but the messenger. Joseph would not leave this house alive.

“On behalf of the Greek church,” Plethon said, “I give you Mark Eugenicus, Metropolitan of Ephesus, and Cardinal Bessarion of Nicaea. Representing the Latin church, I give you Cardinal Cessianus and John of Montenero. Others may question you as well, but these are your lead inquisitors.”

The formality served as a mask, a humane facade hiding the terror beneath. She who had called down damnation stood to be judged by men who had dedicated their lives to God, but none of those gathered and none left behind at Maria Nuvella had ever met the God they worshiped and in whose name they governed and taught.

Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.

They served blind, but she had seen. She’d peered into the heart of hell and pulled forth a goddess.

At Plethon’s command, men dragged the corpse of the half-decapitated empusa out of the garden and into the courtyard. They laid both body and severed head before the gathered crowd.

“This creature is the killer you enlisted us to find,” Plethon said over the roar of startled murmurs. “The monks who died in San Marco had called this creature out of hell with the intent of bringing judgment upon the city. They did so using the jar I brought to you at Maria Nuvella.”

The Council fell silent.

“One of our number was lost in this inquisition,” Plethon continued. “Daphnis Lamonidis, a secretary to the emperor, was assigned to work by my side, and I first met Alessandra through him. She warned us of what she’d seen, but we would not believe a woman’s word. We left her to face this creature alone, and that fault falls on my shoulders. What then should we require of her? I adjure the Council to tread carefully and not make my sin your own.”

Voices rose again, in anger rather than fear, but Mark of Ephesus, a thin man with a narrow, graying beard, silenced them and stepped forward to begin the questioning. He walked her through the events at the house, on the road, and at the monastery.

“And you attest to the veracity of your statements, in their whole and without reservation?” he asked.

“I do,” Alessandra said.

The men whispered among themselves and pulled first Plethon aside and then the prison officer, until it seemed they had forgotten her.

Then Cardinal Cessianus turned his full and shaven face toward her, his eyes dark and hooded beneath a red cap. He wore a short cape that buttoned in the front, also in the Pope’s color. The cardinals wore red as a signifier; they were bound to the papal body and acted as an extension of his authority. Cessianus’s repressive posture declared the meaning of his clothing better than most. No mere pomp, his was a blood-red expression of power.

“How do you explain your reaction upon meeting the devil?” Cessianus asked.

“I—”

“A Christian soul would have cried out to God and man for salvation,” Cessianus said.

“My father—”

“You received the devil like a friend.”

“I—”

“Have you consorted with demons in the past?”

“Never.”

“Don’t lie to me. No woman could have withstood such a presence unless she’d already deadened her virtue at the damnable altar.”

“I have withstood much in life, more grief and sorrow than I thought my soul could bear, but when the creature first presented herself to me, I saw only a woman, silent and strange. When I realized she was something other, the shock had passed, and I thought of my father. I considered myself dead and sought to see him spared.”

“And with that same nobility of spirit, you participated in the murder of a half-dozen men of God,” Cessianus said.

“They sought only to participate in the will of the Lord and the advancement of His kingdom,” she said. “By their self sacrifice they sought to usher in the wrath of God. Perhaps, they have. Perhaps what they unleashed that night was His angel of death.”

“Angels are not women,” Cessianus said.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I would,” Cessianus said.

Above, gathering clouds burned red against the lapis sky.

Mark stepped forward. “Tell us about the jar.”

She tried to tell what little she knew, what little she had experienced, but it proved more than they were willing to hear.

“The God of glory doesn’t ask for human sacrifice,” Cessianus said. “Nor will He forgive a suicide.”

“According to the urn,” she said, “sacrifice is not destruction but the foundation stone of what is to come.”

“Why would we care what that infernal thing says?” Cessianus asked.

“Because,” Alessandra said, “you asked.”

The officer whispered, “Be careful.”

“Lies and the father of lies,” Cessianus said. “Every minute her words are not tested is a minute wasted. Take her to the garden.”

Mark held up a hand. “Not yet.”

No one moved.

“The voice called both itself and you the tools of a god, used for her own purposes,” Mark said.

Alessandra nodded.

“What god?” he asked.

“She never said. A goddess. The creature guarded me; I could not run, but the jar made me a promise. If I did as the goddess required, my life would be spared and my son returned to me.”

Cessianus smiled. “Did you believe her?”

“I wanted to,” she said. “I begged her to promise that such might be true.”

“And how did she answer?” Mark asked.

“She said she’d spoken, and that meant more than any man’s promise.”

The assembly murmured among themselves. Here and there men of the Council cried out, denouncing her in the name of God.

Cessianus shouted, “Enough!”

A sudden silence focused on Cessianus , but then Joseph, patriarch of Constantinople, lifted a frail hand.

“If you mean to harm this woman, I will play no part in it,” Joseph said. “Take me to my rooms.”

Attendants led him out, and when he was gone, Mark spoke. “Nor can I condone what your hearts intend. My role in this matter is ended.”

Mark followed Joseph, and others followed after, Latin and Greek, alike. When they were gone, she remained before her accusers. Although half their number had left in protest, none had moved to save her.

Until now.

Plethon stepped into the center of the courtyard. “I first must have my turn. If you would ply the rope to her arms after I’ve spoken, that is upon your heads, but you will listen.”

Again, the Council murmured, but no one spoke against him.

“We have been called by God to this city for other purposes, not this. Leave her to the city’s judgment, as the ecclesiastical crime was instigated not by Alessandra but by those who died.”

“And how do you suppose the city would handle the matter?” Cessianus asked.

“I will testify before them as I testify here, she is a survivor of and witness to a tragedy. I saw the woman the monks unleashed upon this world, and with Alessandra’s help, we might yet avert the promised destruction of Florence.”

“Her words must be tested,” Cessianus said.

“Must mine?” Plethon asked. “Must yours? You condemn her because her testimony was not foretold in scripture, but that same scripture speaks less about what is found beyond than what is expected of us here. Not even a Cardinal should be surprised if eternity offers more than his finite theology. As for what is clear and what is known, the Lord has spoken; be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Cessianus spoke into the ensuing silence. “Maleficos non patieris vivere.”

The remaining members of the Council rose, their cries of outrage united and strong. Men in Florence were tutored in Latin; Alessandra was not. Whatever the pronouncement that sealed her fate, she could not answer, not even if they’d been ready to listen.

They marched her into the garden. Over the grass, trees, and flowers, a tall monstrosity of wood loomed, supporting a rope suspended over a pulley.

Brilliant clouds turned gray, like ashes left by a dying flame.

The prison officer pushed away the men who held her. “Where are the operators we sent you? There are laws, and as men of the book you’re bound to abide by those laws. Blood may not be shed, and no permanent harm may come to her. If you try to operate the strappado on your own, you’re likely to kill her. This is an inquisition, not an execution.”

Cessianus circled him like an animal hungry for blood. “Then you’ll operate it. Torturing women is in your nature.”

Alessandra saw a bristling anger in the officer’s eyes, but he held his tongue. Despite his claims, these were the most powerful people in the Christian world. Whatever they did here, the city would excuse it all.

“As for the men you sent, what we deal with today is not for the world to see,” Cessianus continued. “You’re the only outside witness the Council has approved, and even so, no righteous ear would accept your testimony over ours.”

Plethon broke free of the settling crowd. “I fought alongside Firat, your eminence. His hand slayed the creature and saved my life. He deserves respect.”

Cessianus stood still. “He is here before us. What greater honor is there?” His gaze settled on the officer. “Bind her.”

The officer secured Alessandra’s arms behind her back and the rope around her arms. “You’ll be lifted off the ground and dropped. The device will seize the rope before you hit the ground and dislocate your shoulders.”

Alessandra breathed in rapid, shallow bursts. She looked from one face to another, seeking a savior but finding none.

In her soul, she felt the dark clouds above grow heavy.

The crowd parted and gave a wide berth to men carrying the empusa. Its wings dragged across paths and grass and over hedge rows, until body and head lay at her feet. She stared at the torn flesh of what remained of its mouth, the tongueless floor, and the cascading rows of devil’s teeth.

“What is this beast?” Cessianus asked, and at his words, the officer drew the rope taught.

Alessandra’s arms pulled back, away from her body. She gulped for air and fought to form words. “The urn. Bring me the urn. I’ve told you all I know, but she knows this creature. She knows its world. Ask and she’ll speak through me, but the urn must be in my hands.”

“What is this creature?” Cessianus repeated.

The rope pulled her arms again. Bent forward, she danced upon the tips of her toes. “The urn called her an empusa. Her empusa. It served the woman.”

“Who was the woman?”

Her arms pulled higher. The muscles in her shoulders stretched taught. Her toes tickled the grass but not the ground beneath it. “I saw her at the edge of a marsh lit by fire. I heard a name. Persephone.”

“What else?”

Alessandra’s feet kicked helplessly at the air. “Another name. I heard another name.” She rose higher. “Please, in the confusion of her coming, I heard another name. Herophile of Cumae.”

Murmuring rose from the crowd like the sound of distant thunder.

“What of Herophile?” Cessianus asked.

With a jerk, she rose higher, and pain wracked her shoulders, back, and chest. “Just the name. Only the name.” She stared down into Cessianus’s uplifted face. “I’ve never heard it before. It means nothing to me.”

Cessianus turned to the crowd. “Fetch the jar.”

“Please,” she begged, her voice strangled. “Mercy.”

Cessianus signaled, but the officer refused to move.

“If you won’t do it,” Cessianus howled, “I’ll drop her myself.”

Plethon stepped between them. “If the jar is coming from Santa Maria, then give the woman rest. Let it speak through her as you intend. This isn’t necessary.”

Cessianus pushed past Plethon and held the officer by the collar. “When her lies are stripped away, then we’ll have no need of pain. We have not yet reached the truth.”

Alessandra cried out.

The officer spoke. “Of what lie do you suspect her?”

Cessianus drew the officer’s sword. “Herophile.”

Wet winds blew with the threat of a coming storm.

“It is only a name,” the officer said.

Cessianus traced the blade from Alessandra’s bosom to her chin, as gentle as a husband’s touch. It stirred her at the edge of consciousness. Thoughts twinkled like fireflies at the borders of her vision and were gone, forgotten, lost, with only vacant space to remind her something had once existed there. She was no more indelible than those lost thoughts. She waited, and only that one idea remained, burning cold and blue in the gathering night of her mind.

“There is but one pagan oracle the church has received as its own,” Cessianus said. “To the sibyl of Cumae, God gave prophecies of the coming Christ. Of the names attributed to her, first and foremost is Herophile.”

Alessandra muttered, “Only a name.” The storm pressed into her chest and closed her throat. The darkness grew behind her eyes.

Below, Plethon spoke. “The sibyl aged but could not die, and according to a line by Petronius, she shriveled away until her acolytes left her hanging in a bottle.”

Cessianus pulled back the sword, eager for the killing blow. “If you don’t drop her, I will.”

Lighting ran white through black clouds, and Alessandra felt its crackle within her heart.

“Hold!” the officer cried and let loose the rope.

Thunder echoed along the streets, and rain and Alessandra fell.

—Thaddeus Thomas

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Cycle One: Pluto’s Allegory of the Grave

Book One: The Hell Jar

Subscribe now

The ride outlasted their attempts at a conversation, and Daphnis let himself follow every stream of thought until those, too, ran dry.

The woman on fire meant nothing. It meant everything. Plethon was a genius. Plethon was a fool. And Alessandra? Was she a fool? No, not Alessandra. She was a woman but not a fool. She’d shared her logic, the cunning with which she’d face her predicament, and it was sound. He could not answer the many questions such an admission posed about the nature of her vision, but nor could he question the soundness of her mind.

The carriage jostled, and the cushion felt flatter now, having succumbed to the rigors of the journey. His posterior ached. It buzzed and bit, as if he were perched upon an anthill.

Plethon stared resolutely forward, his brow furrowed, and the droop of his great beard suggested a frown.

Daphnis wanted to say something, to challenge Plethon and see him rise to the occasion, but if he were as great as his reputation, then his thoughts were already chasing their own lines of inquiry. Daphnis’s attempts would only distract him. If he were not the man Daphnis believed him to be, then his thoughts were of no greater value than his own. Any other time, he would have considered that idea welcome. Not now.

One of the equi, Marco, came into view, and Daphnis was thankful for him, especially as the last light of evening faded into night.

Without turning to look his way, Marco spoke. “We should be there soon, sir.”

“Be on alert,” Plethon said. “I fear we’re in greater danger than we realized.”

Marco flashed a genuine smile. “Have no worries. We’re ready for whatever comes.”

Plethon’s answer came in a whisper. “None of us are ready, not in the least.”

Marco prodded his mount and rode forward, out of earshot.

“You have concerns?” Daphnis asked.

“I’m a fool, a greater fool than you, for I knew better and still failed to turn this carriage around and question your Miss Lodovico. The very angel of death could be unleashed upon us, and we’d have no idea.”

“The angel of death?”

“Figuratively speaking,” Plethon said. “Whatever awaits us, I don’t expect it’s come from our scriptures.”

“Then God is still with us.”

“Pray if it suits you, but do it quickly,” Plethon said. “The moment is at hand, my friend, and we’re ill prepared.”

Daphnis bowed his head.

“Pray for a hundred men,” Plethon said. “A thousand. Or maybe that one of us would develop wisdom enough to see us through the night. So far, we’ve shown ourselves simple and bloated with pride. An absolute evil stalks our streets, and my intellect fails me. If I die, tonight, I do so deservingly. May God be merciful upon my soul if I’ve taken you with me.”

Daphnis realized he wasn’t praying, only listening.

Firat’s voice reached them, sounding through tension’s mental fog. They had come to a crossroads.

“We’re here,” Plethon said.

Firat called out, again. The monastery lay just beyond. The horses whinnied, and the carriage shook.

Tomasso backed his mount in unwieldy bursts. “They’re spooked. We’ll have to go on foot from here.”

Daphnis exited into a darkness punctuated with hoof beats. He ran for the open gatehouse, and Plethon and their driver followed close behind. Firat, Tomasso, and Marco fought to secure the horses, failed, and fell back into the gatehouse, like men under attack. At the other end of the gatehouse tunnel, the scene changed little. Horses ran wild upon the monastery grounds.

“Stay together,” Firat said. “Horses so frightened won’t want anything to do with us.”

“Are we running for the church?” Marco asked.

“The dormitory,” Plethon said. “There’s no flicker of light in the church windows.”

“What’s got the horses in such a state?” Daphnis asked.

“They’re worked up on both sides of the wall,” Tomasso said. “It has to be something they smell.”

“I smell it, too,” said the driver.

“You’re imagining things,” Firat said and led the way out into the open.

Daphnis followed. The odor hit him like a dagger between the eyes. “It’s rotten and burns my sinuses.”

They ran, and the horses snorted but kept their distance, running in circles.

“Brimstone,” Plethon said.

Above them, beating wings sounded low and loud. A large bird, seen only in silhouette against the lesser black of the sky, roosted atop the narthex.

Firat beat against the dormitory door, but no light shone. No voice responded to their call.

The winged shadow took flight and disappeared, obscured by the high walls of the monastery buildings.

Tomasso spoke for the others. “Where are the monks?”

“I was naive to assume the monk escaped the slaughter unscathed,” Plethon said. “They may have him in the infirmary. It will be farther back, separate from the other buildings.”

A horse approached within fifty paces and struck the ground as if killing a snake. The men watched, unwilling to move until it turned and sprinted away into the darkness.

Firat drew his blade, and the officers followed his example. “Same as before. Move together. Move fast.”

The buildings grew around them, stretching out farther with every step they took. The dormitory became the cloister which became other buildings, the nature of which Daphnis couldn’t identify in the dark, and behind them the horses persisted in their protest until one unsettling idea settled upon him. The horses were warning them off. Go no farther. Turn around. Evil lies ahead.

Memories of skeletons plucked clean overcame every coherent thought. His legs kept moving only because his fear of shame still overshadowed the growing fear of the unknown, and then the walls stopped. Only empty space lay between them and a lonely, long building in the distance, a tiny chapel tucked against its side.

Everyone stopped, lingering on the edge as if watching for an invading army, and Daphnis knew then that his imaginings were not his alone. Everyone sensed the unknowable, unnameable something. The pause continued a heartbeat--two--and when he could take it no longer, Daphnis spoke.

“What’s out there?”

His voice broke whatever spell held them. Firat rose from his frozen crouch and stepped out into the open grass.

“Nothing but gloom and gloam,” he said.

No one else moved, but as Firat continued and the night itself to didn’t reach out to grab him, the others stirred and followed, first Plethon and then the officers. The driver and Daphnis moved last of all.

The absence of stone beside him felt like the loss of a mother, leaving him to wander though vulnerable space, a physical lack-of-presence where the air itself reminded him that nothing stood at his back, nothing held him, and nothing cared.

When the buildings ahead stood as far away as the buildings behind, death moved.

A brushing blow struck Daphnis across the chest. Heat singed his face. A sudden burst of light blinded him and then was gone, and in their stumbling and confusion and swinging of blades, Daphnis saw a horrible, empty space where Marco had stood.

The men shouted into the night and at each other. The driver turned and ran back the way they had come. Plethon grabbed Daphnis’s sleeve, as if Daphnis would have run, too, and maybe he would have. Tomasso slashed at the darkness as if upon a manifested legion; three times Firat shouted his orders before Tomasso heard and obeyed, reigning in both his sword and fear.

With Firat at the head, and Tomaso behind, they hurried forward. The infirmary beckoned to them with the promise of safety and respite. They had halved again the distance when something solid dropped out of the heavens and bounced once upon the grassy soil with splayed limps and gangling, flesh-torn neck. Marco’s half-severed head stared out at them; his shriveled, bloodless lips drawn into an endless grimace; his clothes and hair burned; his entrails spilling out of his tunic.

Daphnis held a shriek at the back of his throat, unable to give it voice. Tomaso screamed, and it felt like Daphnis’s own release, until he saw the shadow of wings and the black eyes within a head on fire. The creature struck. Tomaso’s sword spun loose from his grip--his feet, from the ground. The beast swept through them, a shadow peaked by a point of fire at Tomaso’s throat.

The three stood alone again in the quiet and the dark.

Plethon sounded far away. “She spoke the truth, and we wouldn’t receive her witness.”

Firat’s voice rumbled. “What damnable truth is this?”

Tomaso’s sword lay in the grass. Daphnis searched the skies for a sign of the creature and then ran for the weapon. An inhuman screech pierced his ears. Fire fell. Daphnis stumbled, his fingers mere inches from the blade. Grass burst from the shadows as light flared around him. He rolled onto his back, screaming, his eyes wide to behold his doom.

Firat slid along beside him, his sword cutting the air, as if slicing through Daphnis’s scream and into the wing-born beast. Head, torso, and wings tumbled through the grass. The creature rolled to a stop, and the body of a black-winged woman lay crumpled on the ground, her head severed at the jaw.

Daphnis pulled himself to his knees. Firat stood blood-splattered, half-singed, and bathed in the stench of brimstone. The whole world narrowed to the stretch of earth between them and the body.

Oddly jointed wings, leathery and black grew from pale, unblemished skin. From the severed jaws rose multiple rows of serrated teeth, folding forward from a tongueless floor.

Firat mumbled a prayer. Plethon cursed, and Daphnis vomited. The fullness of its contents emptied, his stomach continued its contractions, suffocating him, drowning him in an airless void.

Plethon grabbed him. “Move, while we still can.”

But Daphnis didn’t move. He couldn’t. Plethon pulled harder. Daphnis half rose and stumbled back to his knees.

“Leave him!” Firat yelled.

Plethon hesitated a moment more, pleading, but something broken within Daphnis would not be so quickly put together again. He stared up at Plethon, unthinking, seeing as if through a fog.

Plethon turned away and, together with Firat, stumbled out of the open field, through the embrace of the infirmary doors, and into the dimly lit space beyond. The doors closed, and Daphnis was alone.

He looked again to the creature’s body. Its limbs twitched.

The abbot, the prior, and the monks listened with respect as Alessandra explained what little she understood. The hearts of men were beyond her control. The goddess couldn’t hold her responsible for anything more.

“What crosses now is not like what crossed before,” she said. “When the courage of the others failed, one monk gave his life to create the opening, but the judgment you seek requires more. With that one life given, only her empusa could enter.”

“Her empusa?” asked the prior, and his question seemed to stress the gender of the goddess rather than the nature of the beast.

Candles dimly lit the long hall against the night. One monk, Conrad da Osimo, lay on his death bed, and she sat at his side, the urn clutched in her lap. The others gathered in rapt attention.

“I helped him hold the jar,” Conrad said, and they strained to hear his weak voice. “Our brother plunged the knife into his own throat, setting the example we should follow, and I was holding the jar when he died. I was obedient, but we were afraid and full of doubt. For that disbelief, our lives were forfeit as were our rewards. Arm me now, for I’m ready and won’t hesitate. I will not fail.”

When Conrad drifted into silence, the abbot turned to Alessandra. “We have pledged ourselves to God’s mercy while it lasts and His judgment when it comes. If the end of the age is upon us, we are ready to a man to rise up in obedience—or to fall as the case may be. We are men of faith but also of sound theology, right and true. What I hear now is heterodox at best and blasphemous at worst. The Lord is God, and there is no other.”

Two phrases stuck in Alessandra’s ear, delaying her response. To a man. We are men. An unintended reminder that she was something else and a revelation, perhaps, of his insecurity surrendering leadership to a woman, especially at such a moment. She had come to demand they slice their own throats. Presumably, they understood as much, but his fear was not for his throat but for his balls.

The prior answered for her and waved off the idea, as if a lesser man than the abbot had spoken. “We cannot expect orthodoxy from devils, even when they’re used according to God’s purpose.”

Instead of rebuking the prior, the abbot nodded and looked again to Alessandra for explanation.

She gripped the urn tight and her own fragile composure tighter, and she wished the voice of the urn would speak again, that the winged woman would burst through the door, showing herself solid and true. If these things were real, so were the promises and the hope. Her soul ached for hope.

“With a monster like the empusa, either she’s here or she’s not,” Alessandra said. “The goddess is different. She is both here already and requires the greater sacrifice if she is to physically cross the divide. The empusa may bring death to some, but the goddess will rain down vengeance upon Florence, and her judgment will begin in the house of God.”

“Judgment will begin in the house of God,” echoed the abbot.

The other men murmured in approval.

Alessandra breathed and felt the spark of that breath surge through her. Something she’d said, something she’d been given to say, spoke truth to these men. Though she spoke of the realities of hell, they heard from her some hint of heaven, and maybe she could still believe God was in this. Maybe, she spoke according to His will and not against it. Either way, whatever her sin or righteousness, this tiny piece of the church was ready to listen. They could just as easily have condemned and strangled her and burned her body, rendering it unusable by God and alienated from the hope of resurrection.

“To whom much is given, much is expected,” said the prior. “God forgive us all.”

She watched him, uncertain of his meaning. Part of her silently screamed for them all to run. Death had come to their door.

The distant hand of her son held shut her mouth. Marsilio was growing up without her; soon he would be seven. He still smiled, certainly, but he no longer smiled for her. He ran, but he longer ran to her. He would grow into someone she didn’t know, forever a child in her memories—his memories of her, thin and ghostly.

“He who stayed the hand of Abraham does not call His children to human sacrifice,” said the abbot.

“He who stayed Abraham’s heart first called him to ascend the mountain,” Alessandra said, even as she questioned the judgment she meant to bring upon the world. How many mothers would lose how many sons? How many sons, their mothers?

“He called Abraham to build the altar and bind his son,” the abbot said, continuing the thought.

“And only as he brought down the raised knife did God hold back his hand,” said the prior. “This was the son of promise, and in faith, Abraham counted God able to raise him, even from the dead.”

Again, the monks murmured in agreement.

“The manuscript sent eight men to San Marco,” the abbot said. “No more than that should be required now. Bernardo, take those uncertain in this calling and lock yourselves in the chapel to pray, that the rest of us should be resolute in our duty.”

“I let others go in my place once before, I won’t do it again,” said the prior. “We raise the knife in faith or we live to see God’s judgment. If those are our choices, I know my duty and will not shun it.”

Again, the murmurs rose.

“Do we have weapons to arm us all?” asked the abbot.

The rector gave a nod, and the men behind him distributed the weapons among the monks, including Conrad in his bed. “It is enough.”

“And the coins?” Alessandra asked.

Another monk held up a jingling sack and disbursed its contents among the brethren.

Their focus returned to Alessandra, their dying brother, and the urn. Alessandra hid her trembling with a redoubled grip. The men had set firm their will. Whether she doubted or believed no longer mattered. Death had come.

The hall’s distant door burst open and a soldier stumbled in, sword drawn, followed by Plethon, Daphnis’s friend from the Council. Plethon stood at the door. He held it half-closed and tight to him like a shield and peered out into the night, his free hand moving in anxious circles.

“Get up,” he called. “Please, get up!”

Alessandra rose to her feet. “Plethon?”

Plethon didn’t turn to face her, and the soldier returned to his side, ready to fight whatever waited for them in the night.

The abbot stepped forward. “Who are you? What is this?”

Still holding the urn, Alessandra stood alongside the abbot and the rector. “They’re representatives from the Council in Florence.”

“They know,” the rector whispered. “We must act now, before it’s too late.”

“But the Council…” the abbot began.

The rector reached for the urn. “They’d defy God and hide behind a dozen inquisitions.”

Alessandra pulled back. In the rector’s other hand, the knife glinted in the candlelight. Alessandra screamed.

“Plethon!”

The rector grabbed at the urn, and in that moment, the voice of the urn broke her silence. “Enough!”

The rector pulled back. The abbot approached Plethon and the soldier, and several of the monks moved with him. The rector, his eyes wide, remained focused on Alessandra and the urn. He reached out again, but hesitated, watching Alessandra as if for permission, the knife still in hand, but forgotten, unimportant.

In this moment, she saw finality. She might turn back now but never again. If she repented, the city could be spared. Her son would grow up without her, but he’d have a chance at a good and normal life.

Normal. Why should a life stripped from the one who loved him most ever be considered normal? She’d be a fool to sacrifice herself for a society designed to crush and discard her.

Alessandra nodded to the rector, and he lay his fingers upon the urn’s surface.

“You’ve chosen your path?” asked the voice.

Inwardly, Alessandra answered. I have.

The rector nodded. “We will obey.”

“How many remain with us?” asked the voice.

Alessandra looked, but before she could count them out, the voice answered.

“Five. Seven including Conrad and yourself. It is enough. Alessandra will hold the jar but is to be unharmed, and this time, none can falter in their duty.”

At the far end of the hall, the soldier reached past Plethon and closed the door. The abbot had halved the distance between them.

“We will not fail,” said the rector.

“Alessandra,” the voice said, “take your place beside the bed. Every man’s hand must be upon me.”

Trembling, Alessandra stepped back. Conrad’s pale wrist rest against her arm. His hand gripped the urn. At the rector’s orders, the monks did the same. Each man’s arm raised, each knife’s blade pointed at its owner.

Alessandra wanted to cling to the memory of her son’s face, but the image wouldn’t come. She saw only the streets of Florence stained with blood, its buildings burning.

The dry heaves stopped, and Daphnis knelt in the grass, cold and drenched in sweat. The wind swept over the hill and brushed against stone walls and summer-thick trees. No cricket chirped, and no bird called in the night. The whole world waited, asking if it was safe to challenge the dark.

He’d come close to death, had felt it upon his flesh, and he wondered who’d mourn at the news of his passing. Perhaps someone would hear that a secretary of the emperor had died and would assume him to be an important sort of secretary, a secretary of this or of that, and think to themselves, What as shame.

Nannoccio would think himself bereft of a suitor. Perhaps, Alessandra would mourn, truly mourn. For all her plans, she might still hold some hope that he’d propose and take her awake to Constantinople, as if anything or anyone awaited them there. The city itself was doomed, it’s empire long ago cut off and consumed. Nothing remained but what its walls could hold.

He should have told her. Her family’s ruin mirrored Constantinople’s and his own, where the loss of empire meant the loss of family and lands. Only a lucky few reached refuge within the golden horn. Her sorrow was akin to his. She’d have felt herself knitted to his grief, knowing too well the loss of spouse and child.

He could have been honest with her.

He lifted his face, and the creature stared back at him, eyes fixed and dull, strands of hair blurring with congealed flows of blood. Somehow, in looking into those eyes, he found his strength to stand. He snatched up the head by the hair and studied the fringe of pointed teeth. The killer was dead. Whatever horror birthed the monster, they had killed her. The morning’s impossible crime had become the night’s impossible culprit. Head in hand, he marched to the infirmary and threw open the door.

Plethon and Firat stood in animated discussion with a group of monks and one who, by his dress, appeared to be their abbot. At the back of the room, another crowd gathered around the bed, tending to their injured friend.

He lifted high the head. “This is the demon! This is your killer!”

All talk stopped. Everyone turned to see. At the back of the room, the cluster broke, and at its center, a woman sat, bedside, clutching a pot.

Alessandra.

Her lips moved, and though he could not hear her, he knew their form: No.

Even in such a moment as this, she feared more for him than for herself, and he knew that of all his sins, failing her had been his most egregious. On that alone, he deserved the bowels of hell, kindled hot in anticipation of his flesh, but God had delivered him in this moment to be her savior. He’d rescue her, redeem himself, and return to the city to claim both her and it as his own. The emperor would release him to the people who clamored for him as their hero and not condemn him for abandoning Constantinople to its fate. In gratitude, Nannoccio would give him the inheritance once reserved for his son, and he and Alessandra would retire to the garden to drink wine in its shade, a paradise bursting with the growth of spring ripened into these first days of June.

The monks moved, closing in around Alessandra, their hands raised; in each, a knife.

Daphnis ran, pushing through the nearest cluster of monks who grabbed at him and held him back. He fought with the only weapon he had, the monster’s head. Her dreadful teeth shredded robes, and men shrieked and tumbled out of his way.

His eyes met Alessandra’s, full of muddied emotion. He felt in his gut what he saw in her eyes and surged forward as if driven by the wings of the murdered beast.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the knife drawn from the monk’s cloak. He saw the arc it cut as it drove down into his side and sliced between his ribs. He took another step before the pain ripped through him, another before his legs buckled, and one more before he fell.

From the floor, he could no longer see Alessandra, only the monks and the face of the monster staring back. A red stream pooled, ran out to where the monster’s teeth pierced the floor, and trickled between the gaps.

Daphnis fell.

The monks drove their blades through their own throats. Their blood traced red arches through the air. It ran down Alessandra’s face and dripped from her arms as if it were her own. She turned away and met Conrad’s glazed, lifeless eyes. A knife lay in his open palm. His throat remained intact. He had tried to hold on for the others, to live long enough to die for their shared cause, but his wounds had won.

The monks’ hands slipped away from the urn, leaving only hers and Conrad’s.

Daphnis lay in a pool of his own blood. Plethon knelt beside him, screaming. The foreign soldier held back the others, but all that was needful was done, the sacrifice, complete.

But Conrad? Natural death opened the path one way; violent death, another. The urn remained silent.

Plethon pulled Daphnis into his lap, held his head to his chest.

The room spun and blurred. Its edges smeared and the space around her opened like the blossoming of a black rose. For an instant, she thought she’d faint. Instead, she floated over a dark land cut through by rivers as if they described a whirlpool, and one of those rivers ran with flame.

She was falling, and as she fell, a dark swamp rose up below her, a ghost forest sprinkled with the memory of trees. On the bank of the swamp, a woman stood, pale and regal. The woman looked up, revealing impossible beauty, her eyes and hair as dark as night and skin as white as bone.

The woman spoke, her voice, a chorus.

A rush, a wind, a name lost within the roar.

Alessandra sat again upon the bed in the long, dim hall of the infirmary, her arms wrapped around the urn. The woman stood beside her; the faintest smile crossed her perfect lips, and her gaze moved to the fallen monks. Her beauty shifted with the movement of the muscles of her smile. It became something less human, more than human, and the room shrank away in its presence.

The others—the living—fell still and silent. They watched as the woman glided toward them and plucked the empusa’s head from the floor. She gazed into its eyes and then walked through the crowd of men and out the door; the moment the night embraced her, she vanished, as if she’d never been.

The empusa’s head rolled lazily in the grass. The infirmary walls drew up straight and near.

Still carrying the urn, Alessandra knelt beside Daphnis, but Plethon pulled him away from her. His eyes fixed on the crumpled and bloodied bodies of the monks.

Daphnis blinked. His eyes focused on her, and his mouth wrought itself into a wretched smile. “I should have believed you.”

Light and focus left his eyes, and he slumped in Plethon’s arms. Outside the open door, a new wind howled. Alessandra looked to the abbot. “Place your coin in his mouth.”

Plethon hissed. “You’ll do no such thing.”

“It’s the only favor I’ll ask of you,” she said. “His journey into death must be paid.”

She didn’t expect him to understand. She hardly understood, herself, but with a nod, he allowed the abbot to place a coin upon Daphnis’s tongue.

“What was that woman?” Plethon asked.

“A minister,” she said, and it was all she knew to say. Any greater truth was locked within the urn, and the urn was silent.

—Thaddeus Thomas

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I suppose this telling of history’s-troubled-dream serves as a double mythology, but whatever truth it appears to obscure, may it also illuminate.

Plethon came to Florence as part of the ecumenical council attempting to unite Rome with the Roman Empire (the Latin church with the Greek) prior to the fall of Constantinople. Plethon, whose birth name was Georgios Gemistos, was at least seventy-nine, and he had come at the request of the emperor to be his advisor. He was a respected philosopher, but after his death, writings were discovered that were interpreted as a rejection of Christianity and an embrace of a pagan spirituality inspired by classical Greek mythology. It seems accurate to say his writing interpreted the facets of the Divine and categorized those facets using the names of the classical Hellenistic gods. The truth is elusive, though, as the bulk of that writing was deemed heretical and destroyed.

The Latin church of the time was very much beholden to Aristotle, but Plethon helped re-introduce the west to Plato (after whom he’d styled his own name). It is said that his profound effect upon Cosimo de’ Medici inspired the creation of the Platonic Academy which Marsilio Ficino led, but that is history, which isn’t the same as saying it’s true. Plethon’s influence on Medici has been questioned as has the role and nature of the Platonic Academy.

We too easily think ourselves above believing in mythology, which we pretend is limited to pagan gods and magical creatures, but modern mythology is a re-imagined past told to hide unpleasant truths. We create mythologies about our nations, our institutions, and our past, like children who tell themselves bedtime stories so they can sleep at night.

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The Sibyliad

Cycle One: Pluto’s Allegory of the Grave

Book One: The Hell Jar

Eliot was not one to give translations of his foreign language quotes. Instead, he championed a view of literature which was obscure and exclusionary; he wrote for academia. I don’t mean this as a criticism, simply as a context for why he is beloved by academia while others are not. Their brilliance does not require a lecture hall. Eliot’s does. It’s hard to imagine, but once there was no long tradition of studying a canon of English literature. The classics were by the Greeks and Romans, and those who sought to legitimize English departments in universities needed theories of literary criticism that would require their existence. They needed poetry and fiction that were not accessible to the masses but, rather, obscure and heavily referential. Eliot provided everything academia required.

Alessandra’s father retired to bed, but she lingered in the garden. In the faint moonlight, she saw hints of the city, a wall beyond her own and rooftops in the distance. In the night, the flowers and vines of the garden were muted, almost gray, the house dark and drenched with shadow.

She sat alone at the little table and let her heart’s wounds bleed. When she had the strength, she ate berries from the vine and stood in the doorway of the house peering inside at furniture formed in silhouette, a kitchen on one side, a table on the other. The bedrooms were hidden behind a closed door or up the simple staircase.

She imagined her son beside her. This place was so very close to being everything she needed, and yet her heart could find no joy and no contentment. Without her son, it was a shadow of the world she’d wanted and nothing she’d wanted at all.

Weary and forlorn, she climbed the stairs and crawled into bed. She tried to sleep but only stared into utter darkness. This was hell.

In fitful moments of sleep, the opening of blossoms in the supple light of dawn filled her dreams. Her son’s laughter drifted across the garden; hints of musk, sandalwood, and myrrh lingered in the air. She sat up, awake in a space defined by the lack of all these things, a molted shell of discarded promise.

In the night, a shadow moved. Alessandra rose from her bed and peered out the high window to the city and its gate, a memory of a shriek lingering in her mind, perhaps a fragment remembered from a nightmare.

A figure stood in firelight, and when it moved, she screamed.

#

She tried to tell her father what she’d seen, but the feeble languages of man couldn’t carrying the weight. She felt the dishonesty of her words despite their truth. When neighbors stole her father’s attention with rumors of gruesome killings, she gave up trying.

She was washing the dishes when she heard the horrid little man’s voice at the gate.

“I need to ask a few questions about last night.”

“You’re investigating the deaths at San Marco?” her father asked.

“Under orders from the emperor.”

That piqued her interest. She gathered the wine and met them in the garden.

“I’m working with Plethon,” Daphnis was saying.

Alessandra looked at him from beneath her brow. She had known better than to trust his first boast, but this she believed.

“He’ll be here soon,” he continued. “We’re heading into the country. To the north. There’s a chance a survivor passed this way.”

“Last night, you say? Maybe so. Maybe there was something.” Nannoccio looked up at her. “You saw a light at the gate, didn’t you? A fire?”

Alessandra didn’t move.

“Tell me?” Daphnis asked.

Alessandra wanted to be heard, but this was not the man to hear. “I don’t know what I saw, really.”

“Please,” he said.

Alessandra straightened her shoulders. “I saw a woman on fire, and then...”

Daphnis waited.

“The fire flew away.”

“Maybe your survivor was carrying a torch.” Her father said, and she saw the apology in his eyes, not to her but to Daphnis Lamonidis.

Daphnis kept his focus on Alessandra. “Thank you.”

Plethon arrived with the carriage, escorted by a unit of soldiers with a foreigner at their lead. Daphnis thanked the family for their hospitality and promised to return when he could.

“Perhaps the two of you would eat before you go?” Nannoccio suggested, his attention on Plethon.

Alessandra instinctively looked to Daphnis, wondering if he sensed the change in her father’s demeanor. Plethon must have been in his eighties, too old to be considered a suitor, but he held her father’s respect in a way Daphnis never could. Alessandra savored the difference.

If Daphnis noticed, he hid it well, or maybe it didn’t matter. Anyone’s attention would be pulled to the celebrated philosopher, and Daphnis was the sort to bathe in the overflow of glory, congratulating himself on being the reason the great Plethon had come to their home.

Plethon offered his regrets at being unable to accept the invitation, and her father watched the carriage go. Alessandra watched something else, something ethereal that weighed heavy upon her. An angel had appeared in the night, and that had to mean something beyond the strange deaths of a few monks. It had to mean something for her.

“Too bad he’s foreign,” her father said. “He could have made something for himself in Florence.”

She pulled away. “Do you want to eat in the garden?”

“I’ll be inside momentarily.”

Against all the grief and loss that welled up within her, Alessandra told herself it would have been no different if her mother still lived. The world moved according to the dictates of men, and God bless those unfortunate enough to be born a woman. All she wanted was her son and a place to raise him, but no one asked. No one cared.

She entered the gloom of the tiny house, and she’d shut the door behind her before she realized she wasn’t alone.

A woman stood at her table. Alessandra recognized her; she’d seen her the night before, at the gate. The woman smiled at her. The hair that fell to her shoulders was auburn, so red as to be mistaken for fire. One bare leg shone, reflecting the light as if forged from brass.

The woman stretched. Great, black wings, like those of a bat, spread from one end of the room to the other. Alessandra froze except for the trembling of her hand upon the door. She wanted to scream and perhaps to find both refuge in that release from its dreadful attention. The vision before her could be nothing more than that, a vision, a trick played by a mind no stronger than men believed. A release of her bottled terror might break the spell, but a scream would draw her father’s attention. It would introduce him to the danger that was now only hers to bear. That she would not do. If this creature was to be her end, it would be her end alone.

“I saw you,” she said at last.

The creature nodded.

Behind Alessandra, the door opened, and the harsh glare of the day swept across the room.

“Papa, wait,” she said. “I’m washing up.”

The door closed slightly. “Let’s eat in the garden, after all.”

“Very good, Papa.”

Her father’s footsteps retreated, and the creature closed the distance between them. She smelled like ash. A warm hand touched Alessandra’s shoulder. The door opened wide, and the light of the day enveloped them. On great, black wings, the creature flew, and Alessandra dangled in her grasp. Tree tops tickled the bottom of her feet. The air whipped at her like a winter’s gale, and they left the house behind them and Daphnis’s carriage below.

The creature’s grip was careful and secure. Almost gentle.

Daphnis tried to assure himself that no blame could be placed for failing to solve such ungodly crimes in the span of a day, that neither the outcome of the Council nor the fate of Constantinople rested upon their shoulders. In this, he didn’t succeed.

If all else failed, when they returned to their normal lives in the morning, Daphnis needed to have done at least one true act. So, he spoke.

“I haven’t told you the truth.”

“No?” Plethon asked.

“The woman, Alessandra, saw something last night, but the nature of it seems incredible; I couldn’t bear it if you were to belittle her word in this matter.”

“I understand,” Plethon said.

“She saw a woman on fire, and the fire...”

“Go on.”

“It flew away.”

“Did the fire, itself, fly, or was it the burning woman?”

“I asked you not to ridicule.”

“I’m not,” Plethon said. “These are serious questions.”

“It was the fire. I think.”

“Is she certain on this point?”

“I don’t know,” Daphnis said. “I didn’t ask.”

“What did you ask?”

“Well, nothing.”

“Our one witness, and you posed no questions?”

Daphnis began to defend himself but realized that in so doing, he’d commit the very act he’d begged Plethon to avoid.

Plethon peered out the carriage window, past the soldiers on horseback, apparently considering making the trek back to pose his questions.

“Does the burning woman mean something to you?” Daphnis asked.

“Not now, no, but this world often poses its answer before the question. Although this could be the fascination of an intellect without reason, it’s no lie, of that I’m certain. Has she been accused of bedevilment?”

“No, never.”

“You’ve found her respectable and reasonable in other matters, to the limits of her education?”

“Thoroughly.”

“Until given reason to do otherwise, I’ll take her at her word,” Plethon said. “I cannot surmise what she saw, but perhaps before long, the question will present itself.”

Daphnis had known Plethon’s reputation and witnessed his powers of reason and debate, but for the first time, he felt inspired by him. Beyond anything else, he was grateful. Plethon knew nothing of Alessandra, and yet he had shown her the respect he’d failed to give.

Their time might be limited, but perhaps there was hope.

He said none of this but only, “It’s getting late.”

“I expect we’ll arrive after nightfall.”

Daphnis peered out at the dark blue sky and thought of Alessandra. This small confession had done little to assuage his greater guilt, a guilt that wine could never again wash away. Plethon’s respect had unveiled his own selfishness, cowardice, and cruelty.

He prayed for forgiveness and what came to mind was scripture, a fragment from the proverbs: Men don’t despise a thief who steals bread when he is starving; but if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house.

Daphnis had stolen Alessandra’s trust, coming to their garden in the guise of a suitor, knowing she would never leave her son and he would never stay in Florence. How could a theft like this be restored even once, let alone seven times over?

Some things could never be restored.

She’ll not rest content, though you give many gifts, the scriptures whispered. Neither will she regard any ransom.

Daphnis’s head remained bowed, but neither prayer nor answer came, only silence.

The creature dropped Alessandra at a bend in the road and pointed to the woods. In the underbrush, just beyond the grassy shoulder, lay a ceramic urn, two feet tall, not including the lid, and a skilled artist had long ago molded intricate figures into its sides.

Alessandra crept forward, dropped to her knees, and pulled the urn to her.

“Careful,” said a woman’s voice.

Alessandra held still, waiting, the sound of her own heartbeat amplified.

“The creature is still hungry from her journey,” continued the voice within her head. “It’s too late to run. It was too late from the moment she chose you. The men who came to visit you, did you find the courage to tell them what you saw? Be careful to tell the truth.”

“He didn’t believe me,” Alessandra said, and she heard the plea in her voice.

“What is a woman’s word? What is her life, in a world run by men? I understand this better than you know.”

“Who are you?” Alessandra asked.

“I’m not the one who should concern you,” said the voice. “You and I are merely tools, used by a god for her own purposes.”

Alessandra glanced back at the creature. “A god?”

“It’s all the same, one side of the grave or the other. That is, unless you have the power to stand up for yourself and take what’s yours.”

Keeping one hand upon the urn, Alessandra clutched the fabric at her bosom.

“Do you know what manner of creature it is that brought you here?”

Alessandra shook her head.

“She’s a herald of power. The goddess she serves will restore to you everything men have taken. Has your god made any such claim?”

“No,” Alessandra whispered.

“My mistress does,” said the voice, “but she needs something from you. She requires entrance into this world, and few means remain. I am one of those mechanisms, but the creature can do nothing with me. That takes the living.”

Alessandra’s hands trembled, and she felt the creature’s presence, behind her, watching, waiting. Refusal would mean her death. She could feel it. Still, perhaps she could welcome death, if it meant not giving in to this damnable beast.

The creature stepped into view.

“You have a child,” said the voice.

The creature transformed, shrinking and folding away its wings until what stood before her was not a monster but her son. Beneath curly locks, elegant eyes pleaded with her. Pouting lips strained against unheard humor, threatening to plump already cherubic cheeks into a smile.

Alessandra’s breath caught in wet, ugly sobs. She’d wither away. She felt it, the rot that grew inside, without hope or direction.

“Don’t,” she pleaded.

The creature took pity on her and became itself once more.

“Men underestimate what a mother will do for her child,” the voice said. “They always have; they always will. You’ve been thrown away, your very soul stolen from you. What you’ve lacked and what you need is power. The goddess will restore your son.”

The presence of the demon faded from Alessandra’s mind. She felt only her son and the distance between them. “What must I do?”

“We’ll do anything the goddess says, and you’ll have your son.”

Alessandra pressed her forehead to the urn’s cool surface. “You promise?”

“I’ve spoken,” said the voice, “and that means more than any man’s promise.”

Alessandra sat upright squared her shoulders. “Tell me what to do.”

After hundreds of years, poverty had hit as hard as neglect. The monastery once depended upon the generosity of local villages, but long ago, the growth of Florence had lured people out of the countryside with the promise of wealth and protection. They abandoned God’s work for the promise of man’s leisure.

So be it, thought Bernardo, Prior of the monastery.

They’d never escape the end, nor would their walls hold back the overflow of God’s wrath. When the sky rolled up like a scroll, all mankind would see and understand. They might shake their fists at heaven and pray from the mountains to fall upon them, but they’d know the truth. Generation upon generation, Bernardo’s order had dedicated their lives to that truth: the world’s end had come.

The side door creaked and a face in a brown hood squinted out into the evening light, blinding as midday against the gloom of the infirmary’s interior. When the monk’s eyes focused, he didn’t look at Bernardo nor at the remnants of the village below, but the graveyard. The prior could almost see him question whether they’d bury another brother in the morning.

“How is he?” Bernardo asked.

“The abbot’s with him,” the monk said. “He’s asking for his jar.”

“Then give it to him, whatever he wants. He’s done all God asked of him and given all he had to give. It’s the least we can do.”

“There is no jar. He didn’t have it with him when he was found.”

Bernardo studied the cold, dark wall of the infirmary and then the woods to the south. “Faithfulness must be rewarded. Have the search party meet me at the stables. If our brother dies tonight, he’ll have what he needs to strengthen his faith in the blessings to come.”

The monk retreated back inside, but Bernardo skirted the building and crossed the open field that separated the dead and dying from Christ’s living church, the dormitory, the cloister, and last of all, the stables. He mounted a horse and, with two of his brethren, followed the road in the direction of Florence.

Silently, he thanked God that neither man asked why he placed so much importance on retrieving the dying man’s jar. They had committed themselves to a life without possessions. Clinging to one now would be foolish.

The last time he’d journeyed this far, patches of snow still clung to the shadowed earth between the trees. Now, the vitality of spring was giving way to a heat that lingered, even after sunset.

“We saw nothing with him,” said one. “Our only concern was in getting him home.”

“I don’t know how he made it as far as he did,” said the other. “You’ve seen his wounds.”

Bernardo had.

The man continued his thought, but over the rhythm of hoof beats on the hard-packed dirt, the words were barely audible. “...like the devil himself had a hold of him.”

The powers of hell had enjoyed their time on earth, but the horrors the coming months would bring, they were straight from the throne of God. Even so, he didn’t rebuke the young monk. No matter how correct one’s theology, the heart always assigned such things to Satan, as if nothing unpleasant, inconvenient, or uncomfortable could ever be the Lord’s good purpose. The world would learn soon enough. Judgment hurt.

He knew the men had other questions. Among them, they’d want to know why God’s wrath had struck against the very men who acted in faith and obedience.

“The death of His people is precious in the eyes of the Lord,” Bernardo said. He intended to say more, but his voice choked; his vision blurred, and he fell silent. Some questions could not be answered with truth. What they needed was peace.

“We’re almost where we found him,” said the elder monk. “He’d fallen from his horse and lay in the road, just around the bend. It was by God’s hand alone we didn’t trample him.”

They pulled back on the reigns, as if still expecting to find him there, and when they rounded the bend a woman stood in the road, her brown hair disheveled but her dress, worn and frayed, suggested the memory of wealth. She stood as if waiting for them, one hand behind her back, the other, trembling, clutched at her bosom. At her feet sat an earthen jar.

Bernardo pulled his horse to a stop, and the others brought up their mounts behind him. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head.

“You’re traveling to the village?” Bernardo asked. “Alone?”

“Anywhere there’s shelter.”

All three dismounted. Bernardo stepped closer. “You’ve been crying.”

“I was alone.”

“A woman shouldn’t travel unaccompanied. It isn’t safe. It isn’t decent.”

She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Again, he stepped closer.

“You came for the urn,” she whispered. “Take it.”

She shook harder now, and he averted his eyes, shamed by her fear and pain. “I’m the prior of San Giovanni. Our hospitium has not had a visitor for nearly a year. You can shelter there, and I’ll have food brought to you.”

She thanked him, but his focus was on the jar. It waited for him at her feet. Larger than he had imagined, it looked old, ancient even, and the figures were not Christian.

He knelt beside it. “You can take my horse. I’ll ride with the others.”

He reached for the jar. Her hand swung out from behind her back, and in it, she held a broad strip of cloth, as if torn from a tunic.

“You wouldn’t want to damage it,” she said.

In the moment before he realized what she had offered, and just as his fingers grazed the surface of the jar, he had the feeling someone was calling out to him. There had been no sound, only a voice, as if crying from within his own soul.

He wrapped the jar and signaled for the others to help.

He’d have to talk to the abbot about the voice. After years spent praying into the silence, the silence had spoken back.

The sky burned at its edge and died in a trail of sparks and ash. At the crossroads, a dog barked at the riders, and then the monastery wall and gate rose up to bar their way. Outside the gatehouse, the hospitium sat quiet and dark. The prior called out for the absent gatekeeper. Alessandra peered around the monk in front of her and then craned to see past the prior who rode at her side. She saw no one. They waited for some reply. None came.

The forward-most monk dismounted and approached a gatehouse perched upon stone legs, between which stood wooden doors. He called out a questioning greeting, his voice pitched and strained. The stone wall swallowed his voice without echo.

By the size and state of the gatehouse, Alessandra assumed the grounds of the monetary to be magnificent and to have fallen into disrepair, with too much work for too few men. She wondered if, with those who died in San Marco, the complex would fall into utter ruin unless Rome chose to save it.

The monk called out again and put his hand to the broad, wooden door. It creaked and shifted under his weight. He pushed harder, revealing a featureless dark that stretched back into immeasurable space, perhaps a foot, perhaps forever.

“Open the other side,” the prior called. To Alessandra, he said. “This is irregular. It may be some time before we get you settled.”

The monk pushed the outer doors to their limits and paused, as if the night were waiting to be invited inside. Alessandra saw the outlines of walls, but nothing more. The monk probed forward with his hands and feet until he reached the far doors. They, too, moved at his touch, and he pulled them open, revealing the sweep of the monastery grounds.

They rode through, and horses stomped and snorted uneasily in unseen stables. The prior carried the urn, wrapped in a piece of her own tunic. They crossed the forbury and dismounted outside the westernmost edge of the church.

“Stay on your horse,” the prior said. “The others will get you situated in the hospitium.”

Alessandra dismounted and stood facing him. “I watched over the urn until your return.”

The prior’s face was a prelude to rebuke, but she was first to speak, cutting him off. Her words were simple and honest, but she heard the emotion that welled up within them. For all her candor, she hid a deep well of fear and swelling need. She could not be sent back. The man she was meant to see lay upon his death bed, and though his death meant nothing, the monks were gathering to him--the same monks who sent their ill-fated brethren to Florence. They shared the same desire to see the judgment of God poured forth upon a world that had forgotten them, but without her, they’d fail. The voice of the urn had promised her this. They lacked her determination, and where they’d fallen short before, they’d fall short again, unless she spoke to them on behalf of the urn and the voice they feared to hear.

“I pulled it out of its hiding place,” she said.

“You weren’t protecting the jar for us,” he said, “and if you want to make some claim of ownership--”

“I want to pay my respects and visit your dying friend.”

He turned away from her. “That’s impossible. We’re providing you shelter and food, as is our Christian duty. No one owes you this.”

“Touch the urn.”

He stopped. The other monks moved their horses closer.

“Put your hand upon the urn,” she said.

He hesitated, and even in the darkness, she saw him tremble.

“You’ve touched it already, haven’t you?” she asked.

“What was that I heard? Have you heard it, too?”

“Take me to your friend,” she said.

He looked at her differently now, with desperation and respect, and she knew these were symptoms of a newly kindled hope. He nodded, and she followed as he left the church and continued on to another set of buildings farther back, at the moonlit edge of darkness.

—Thaddeus Thomas

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I began this work in 2020. It predates my study of prose, but most everything I’ve shared here does. The primary exception is Such Was the Epiphany of Theodore Beasley.

The titles of this series are based on the assumption that I have a sense of humor. I’ve kept the “pseudologue,” which I probably would have cut if I were publishing this outside of Substack. The greater sin is that I didn’t understand the need to start a book with a focus on the main character, which I get to after an introduction by Plethon and a short prelude focusing on a monk.

The chapters are grouped thematically in small clusters. There are four in The Hell Jar, and I’ll finish that “incanto” and pause a bit before beginning the next.

I remember almost giving up calling them incantos when Disney announced they were making the movie Encanto, which I ended up loving, by the way. The sections of Dante’s Divine Comedy were divided into songs or cantos. An incanto (Italian) is a spell or enchantment. It seemed clever at the time.

The story is Renaissance Europe discovers the Greek(ish) underworld.

—Thaddeus Thomas

P.S.: I missed publishing this week’s chapter of The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh because of a difficult week at work. It will pick up again next week.

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The Sibyliad

Cycle One: Pluto’s Allegory of the Grave

Book One: The Hell Jar

My dear Daphnis, you think yourself ready to die. Most do, secure in the one belief that’s meant to ease their passage from this world to the next. I could teach them all to fear, if they were ready for anything but comfort and grace.

Stand in the grass outside the Basilica of the Holy Cross or idle curiously along the road; hear me teach; see the thinkers of Florence discover greater illumination outside the church than in. Too bold a claim? Before today, you’d have thought that idea a grave danger, but now, we present Florence the skeletons of freshly dead monks, stripped of skin and muscle, immaculate in their bloodless display.

My words are not the threat.

He secreted himself through the night’s narrow streets and between cramped buildings. The open squares offered breathing room and bedless refuge, each watched over by a church, the hallowed home of every fair soul’s hope, but the monk found little relief. It would’ve been easier to approach San Marco from the north. Once he’d passed through Porta San Gallo at the north-most corner, there would’ve been little between him and the ruins of the church Cosimo de’ Medici was rebuilding to his own glory.

Within those unfinished wall, the city’s judgment waited.

Instead, he’d started as far south as he could without ferrying across the Arno. The parchment had instructed them to cross the city from every direction, bearing witness to the damned. As he drew closer to the piazza, the other monks fell in behind him.

He stopped at the center of the square outside San Marco, a low building bolstered by a false front, a high façade presenting itself as a place of holy refuge but enriched not by God but the power and money of the Florentine elite. The faces that gathered round him were pale and red eyed, heartbroken over the task for which God had called them, and he blessed them for their sorrow and mercy.

“Hidden inside that church is the bowl of God’s wrath, prepared for this moment.” He spoke softly for fear the city would wake. “We are God’s instruments, chosen for this hour.”

They responded with bowed heads and whispered prayers, and the monk turned to face the half-built facade. The light of the moon reflected dimly off its stone, deepening the shadows within.

“Have faith,” he continued, as if speaking to his men and not himself.

New construction and demolished ruin blended into one another amid the shadows and long fingers of moonlight. Beside the church, a monastery boarded the courtyard on three sides. Broad arches opened to a walkway that attached to the cells where Sylverstrine monks once lived.

He ran to the last cell, and the others followed. He felt them standing at the door, watching as he pried out the loose stone. From the cavity beneath, he pulled forth an ancient jar decorated with figures, a frieze depicting mythical tales from long ago.

“What do we do now?” they asked.

“We wait for a visitation.” He carried the vase into the ruined garden. The others followed, watching, waiting for proof. If no angel came, they’d followed the writing of a false prophet, and he’d led them in their folly. If the angel came, if the angel spoke, then the age of man was at an end, and every earthly thing they’d ever known would burn.

He sat with the jar in his lap, his palms pressed against the figures formed on the ceramic surface. He felt the gaze of the men and heard their growing whispers.

“In 1231, Sylvester Gozzolini built his first convent on Montefano near Fabriano.” Again, he kept his voice low but, this time, to silence his men and quieten their doubt. “Gozzolini first destroyed the remains of the pagan temple, a holy act committed without hesitation, but, as Achan coveted the treasures of Jericho, so one of Gozzolini’s followers coveted an old Roman jar--this jar--found among the ruins.”

Their whispering rose and fell again, each man entranced, certainly, not only by the story but by the promise of what was to come.

“Thirty-six years later, Gozzolini’s followers took over the church where we now gather, and that same, disobedient monk took the jar with him. In moving the vessel, his flesh touched its surface for the first time, and an angel spoke. She revealed the purpose of the jar, a passageway into hell. If while holding it, he were to die in peace, it would open the way for him to enter.”

The men stirred, and the monk understood their unrest. No dying man needed passage into hell. Without God’s saving grace, he was guaranteed it.

“If while holding it, he died violently, then the passage would open the other way, out of hell’s depths and into the earth. It was then he understood what the angel was telling him. He held in his hands the bowl of God’s wrath.”

In the cold of the night, a bead of sweat ran down the monk’s nose.

“Where’s the angel?” they asked.

The monk turned upon his challengers. “As you lack faith, so did the men of his order. It was not enough for him to die alone. One death would open a passage through which a man might pass, but to unleash God upon this place, eight would have to make that sacrifice.”

“Why would God need to be unleashed from hell?” they asked.

The monk removed his gloves and touched the relief, tracing the curves with his fingertip. “We’ll know better when it speaks.”

“I hope so. I’ll not act on your word alone.”

The monk beckoned them forward. “Come. Touch. Hear.”

They hesitated. Some backed away. He saw fear in their eyes and knew their faith would fail. He would have to show them, to lead the way for others to follow. God had called them to this moment. Judgment would come.

Dark-haired and clean-shaven, Daphnis Lamonidis inched through the crowd. Outside the Basilica of the Holy Cross, Plethon taught a knowledge lost to the west, but that day several of his most prominent attendees had not come. Gossip swelled in the voids left behind. Tragedy had fallen upon San Marco, something dark and godless.

Daphnis had run the distance from the palace of Rudolfo Peruzzi, and his face was pink from the effort. He sensed the mood of the audience had turned. They looked to Plethon for answers, even though he would know only rumors, same as they. The people of Florence saw Plethon as a foreign font of wisdom, come from the east as counsel to the emperor; and though Plethon was laity, he addressed the Council often, where he focused on logic, knowing his arguments of theology would not be heard. With that gray hair and beard and a robust figure that belied his many years, Daphnis understood why the people, beset by an unknown evil, turned to him for hope.

Daphnis had heard his lectures before, both here and in Constantinople. Early in Plato’s career, he had said evil was a lack of information, a cogent thought for the present. Plethon’s audience, however, would want more.

As if he’d read Daphnis’s thoughts, Plethon spoke. “Plato said that evil was to be out of alignment with the moral order and thus with God. Both politically and personally, evil is a tyrant, and that tyranny strikes first against the tyrant, himself. He is a man out of order with his own creation.”

At last Daphnis stood before the man, leaving a wake of murmurs behind him. He whispered the emperor's command, and Plethon made his apologies to the crowd. As they walked to the palace, many joined them, still eager to hear Plethon’s wisdom.

“Why does God allow evil to exist?” asked one.

“It is society that allows evil, not god,” Plethon said. “If a society is not in revolt against its own nature, neither will be its people.”

Daphnis joined in. “But surely God could make it all go away, if He so chose.”

“As for what the Lord can and cannot do, I will leave that for theologians, but if man can solve the problem of evil, yet chooses not to, why should we expect God to intervene?”

As they approached the palace’s grand roadside entrance, the crowd fell away. Daphnis and Plethon passed alone into the ornate entrance hall and up the stairs into the annex outside the rooms where the emperor held his audiences.

They waited in the annex until attendants bade them enter. They then stood alone in the lusciously colored sitting room, not daring to seat before their emperor had entered through the ornate double doors, received his due honors, and then, having first taken a chair for himself, asked them to join him. If he were to make such an offer at all. With a matter so urgent and time so dire, he would make their audience short and keep them standing. Daphnis was sure of it.

The doors opened, and Emperor John VIII Palaiologos entered, briefly accompanied by two pages who were only there long enough to close the doors behind him. He hurried to Plethon like he were an old friend or, perhaps, even a grandfather of sorts. He was Plethon’s junior by nearly forty years, still a handsome man and made to look rugged and sharp in his portraits.

“Your excellency,” Plethon said, his eyes and smile kind.

In his presence, the nervous emperor viably relaxed. “We were close to reconciliation. You’ve seen it; I’ve heard you comment as much at Maria Nuvella. Then Joseph’s illness took a worrying turn, and now this.”

“And now this,” Plethon said.

“If it’s as horrible as I’ve heard, people will see in it the hand of God or the devil, and either one will dissuade them from their course. I wanted you with me to protect us from the mad reasoning of the clergy, and you’ll never have a better moment than this.”

“And what could be so horrible to impersonate both God and the devil?”

“Monks were murdered at San Marco,” the emperor said.

“I see.”

“I can’t leave this to the Podesta. There’s too much at stake. The Signoria knows of my interest, and the Podesta has agreed for his chief man to meet you at San Marco.” The emperor’s brooding darkened.

“What is it?”

“This man, this soldier in charge of the inquisition, he’s a foreigner. A Muslim, they say. The Latins here aren’t as close to the threat as we. They won’t see it, but he may jeopardize our cause.”

“Whoever the inquisitor, it’s likely the Florentines will keep their discoveries to themselves. When we arrive, whatever evidence they discovered will be gone, but I doubt it will be for the reasons you fear.”

For a moment, Daphnis forgot his place and spoke. “If that’s so, you’ll have no hope of helping, unless the Latin investigators are blindfolded and drunk.”

“Such things are possible, but never probable,” Plethon said.

The emperor waved away the notion. “Perhaps they’ll cooperate, when you remind them how much Medici likes you.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Plethon said.

For a brief moment, the emperor turned his attention to Daphnis. “You’ve heard the bishops argue. One would think the only thing at stake is the wording of our creeds. In the end, it’s come to one word over which we squabble to save or condemn Constantinople.”

Plethon bowed his head, seemingly aware of a closure Daphnis could not see. Daphnis followed his example, and the emperor left the room, unseen pages opening the doors without command.

“The empire needs a better relationship with the west,” Plethon said. “Let’s see if we can keep this murder from getting in the way.”

A carriage awaited them outside, and they endured the ride to San Marco in an uneasy silence. When the carriage lurched to a stop, soldiers escorted them through the church to the courtyard beyond. There, in grass stained black with blood, a monk lay dead, a knife buried in his throat. Skeletons lay nearby, scattered about the courtyard, their bones wet and stringy with connective tissue and tiny clumps of torn flesh, hardly a drop of blood in sight.

Nearby, intestines, livers, and kidneys were gathered in a single pile, along with eyes, fingers, toes, and the occasional penis.

Daphnis turned back to the church, and his stomach regurgitated its contents. “Animals?” he asked, when he regained himself. “They picked the bones clean?”

Plethon looked from one end of the cloister to the other. “A proposal with more problems than solutions.”

Daphnis followed his gaze and attempted to follow his thoughts. He considered his position in the cloister, bordered by the church on one side and the cells on three, all in various stages of destruction and rebirth. In the northern corridor, two doors allowed access to the monastery without passing through the church.

Three of the equi stood nearby, watching and nearly succeeding in holding back their laughter. “You ever see animals clean a body like this, Tommaso?” asked one of the others.

“My dog back home does the same thing. Stacks the leftover bits in a tidy little pile.”

“These are the big brains they sent from the Council,” said the third. “Listen up and learn from their genius.”

“We’re listening,” said Tommaso. “What particular beast do you think is guilty of these murders?”

“The animals came after,” Daphnis said. ‘The killer is human.”

Plethon walked to the exterior doors, which he studied for several moments before opening first one and then the other and peering out to the road, which led directly to Porta San Gallo and the countryside beyond. “They’re right. Your theory doesn’t account for the pyramid of rejected body parts.”

“Maybe it’s like you said,” Daphnis said. “Someone’s destroyed the evidence.”

“Should I bring in my horse for questioning?” asked Tommaso.

Plethon stepped into the road, his gaze focused at his feet. He called back. “Do we know to which monastery the victims belonged?”

Dhanis looked back at the equi.

Tommaso had just opened his grinning mouth to speak when the self-satisfied smile vanished. He and the others stood upright and squared their shoulders.

Out of the church walked Firat, the Black captain of the court assigned over the San Marco inquisition, who stood a little shorter than some but whose arms and shoulders looked like he was carved from stone.

“It’s a small order to the north,” Firat said. “This massacre must have cut their numbers by a third.”

It took Daphnis an uncertain moment to understand what his eyes were seeing. Firat was foreign, which was the way of justice in Florence. The highest offices of the court were all hired from outside the Republic and kept for too short a period to allow for corruption, but Firat was something more. His being Black was unusual in itself, but Daphnis recognized aspects of his speech.

Then he remembered what the emperor had said. This was the man.

“Judging by the robe fragments, they’re not Dominican or Sylverstrian,” Plethon said. “How are they connected to San Marco?”

“They’re not,” Firat said.

Daphnis drew closer, forgetting to hide his critical investigation of the inquisitor. Firat’s statuesque features fit well among the Florentines but was still clearly beyond, not just beyond Florence but beyond the peninsula. He was Ottoman Turk or maybe Egyptian. The war for Constantinople had followed them here.

If Plethon had noticed, he seemed not to care. “We need last night’s records of people coming and going from the city. Pay close attention to San Gallo. The survivor left in that direction.”

“Survivor?” Firat asked.

Daphnis tagged along as Plethon led Firat back into the courtyard and the one body still in possession of its flesh. “The survivor was kneeling here, by the victim’s head, and his robes will have the blood stains to show it. You can see traces of it left behind at the door.”

“Could just as well be our killer,” Firat said.

“Perhaps,” Plethon said. “The killing raises many questions. To find answers, we need to talk to the one man who lived through it.”

“I still say animals got to the bodies,” Daphnis said. “It’s the only logical explanation.”

“Wouldn’t explain the lack of blood,” Firat said.

Daphnis wondered if perhaps Firat had ordered the area cleaned before their arrival. He couldn’t make so bold an accusation, not yet. Instead, he asked, “What would explain it?”

Firat bent down beside one of the skeletons. “I’ve no idea, unless the six were murdered elsewhere and carried here, but that’s too absurd for consideration.”

“If it explains the facts before us,” Daphnis said, “any seeming absurdity shouldn’t matter.”

Plethon looked away from the bodies to the repairs and construction begun on the church and cloister. “If our explanations for the facts lack logic, then we don’t have all the facts.”

The ground where they stood was once, and would soon be again, a formal garden, and Medici had hired his personal architect to design the buildings. It seemed an odd contrast, the wealth of the building and the monks’ vow of poverty.

As Daphnis considered these things, an officer approached and whispered to Firat. Unable to make out their conversation, Daphnis turned back to Plethon. “In the end, it’ll be animals. Wait and see.”

“There are more bodies,” said Plethon.

Daphnis fell silent and looked back to Firat. Plethon’s aged ears couldn’t have heard their conversation. It was impossible.

“You suggested we check the gates,” Firat said. “It was one of the first things I ordered, and the night watch at San Gallo was missing.”

“And what of the bodies?” whispered Daphnis.

“Apparently,” whispered Plethon, “the night watch is no longer missing.”

“Eight monks entered the city; one left,” Firat said. “His departure is the last recorded entry at San Gallo. You still think our missing monk was merely a survivor?”

Plethon looked as if he might laugh. “More so now.”

“More so?” Firat asked.

“Do you have the monk’s name?” Plethon asked.

“Conrad da Osimo.”

“If Conrad killed your men, it was not to cover his departure. Have you sent someone to fetch him?”

“I was just now set to do so.”

“Let’s see the new-found bodies before you proceed,” Plethon said. “Some light might yet be shed that will illuminate your path.”

Firat gave orders to secure the church. “After you’ve seen the bodies, you can make your report to the Council, leaving me to my duty. Assure the emperor and the Medici, both, I’ll soon have the man responsible for these crimes.”

Instead of turning toward the gate, as Daphnis expected, they headed south, into the city. Mk

Daphnis walked close to Plethon, and his mind sought refuge in thoughts of home. Florence grew along both banks of the river Arno, but Constantinople occupied the coasts of three land masses where the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus flowed into the Sea of Mormora. Once home to a million people, its numbers had dwindled in recent centuries, more so as fear of the Ottomans grew, until now its people were little greater in size than Florence. At times, Florence felt bigger, all those people squeezed into a city a fifth the size of Constantinople.

There was less green space within Florence’s walls, and at times it felt like nothing but narrow streets lined by buildings and their red-tiled roofs. They walked down one such street and entered a white-faced building much like so many others. They climbed the stairs, not to the first floor or even the third, but all the way to the roof.

“Residents found the bodies,” Firat said. “The story will be all over the city by now.”

The bright sun of an early afternoon stood in contrast to the dark scene. High atop the vaulted red roof, two bodies hanged, impaled, one of them missing large chunks of flesh.

Plethon broke the silence. “You were more right than I would have imagined, Daphnis.”

“I was?”

“It’s animal-like behavior, or, at least, reminiscent of animals stashing a kill for later.”

Firat looked skeptical. “You think someone is eating these men?”

Plethon examined the roof tiles, as if considering a climb up for a better look. “I think it’s worth keeping men here overnight, armed and watchful. It seems rational to say this alters how you’ll approach Conrad, the monk.”

“How so?”

“He fled through San Gallo. Two bodies were hanged from rooftops deep within the city. One would seem to have little to do with the other.”

“He must be questioned,” Firat said.

“Leave him to us for today,” Plethon said. “Daphnis and I will make the journey, accompanied by a unit of your men, and if our results aren’t satisfactory, we’ll bring him to you in the morning.”

Daphnis hated to take Firat’s side in the matter, but he had no choice. “Surely, he’ll run.”

“He’s in the only place in the world where he feels safe, and that’s where we need to talk to him. It may be our only hope of getting any real insight.”

Firat considered them a moment and then nodded. “You may question him, but I’ll lead the unit.”

Daphnis looked again to the bodies, limp and pale. The tiled roof spread about around them like a river of blood, and he wondered if these bodies, too, had been drained.

#

In the short time Daphnis had lived in Florence, he’d witnessed change, an ebb and flow between a focus on the desires of man and the dictates of the church. Just that year, they had passed a law limiting embroidery and lace to sleeves alone. Among the Council, it was seen as a victory for propriety. Daphnis never said aloud that those same men would be the last to be accused of modesty.

The monks were different, as were nuns--women who became cloistered for God when being cloistered for their family took an undesirable turn. Maybe that wasn’t always the motivations for a woman’s vows, but it would soon be for one he knew. While Plethon reported to the emperor, Daphnis visited the woman and her father in their villa just beyond Porta San Gallo. An elegant little home, it would have spoken of wealth and power, if it were not their only remaining property.

The old man, Nannoccio di Lodovico, was the last scion of a failed banking family; his fortunes had fallen as Medici’s rose, but he welcomed Daphnis’s interest. For a man down on his luck, a visit from the emperor’s secretary was as good as a visit from royalty.

They sat in the garden, and Nannoccio’s daughter, Alessandra, brought the wine. Her eyes were intelligent and fierce. Her dark hair and sun-kissed skin had some time ago been robbed of their radiance, but he saw in her a beauty that had lost the softness of childhood only to find the harsh grief of a stolen motherhood.

She stayed at her father’s side.

The pair lived closer to the northernmost gate than anyone, and while the chances of them having seen anything were slim, Daphnis needed no answers, only a pretext. Women weren’t allowed to live on their own, and when Alessandra’s husband died, her in-laws took her son and sent her away to her father, who now sought to marry her off one last time.

If Alessandra’s threats of becoming a nun were to be taken literally, Daphnis thought it a shame, an awful waste of a fair countenance.

Until that moment came, he intended to spend as much time in her company--and in her father’s garden--as he could. Now more than ever, haunted by the memory of those bloodless bodies, Daphnis needed a little wine and a little beauty, and Alessandra seemed wise enough to understand what her father did not. Daphnis had no intention of marrying a Florentine.

Whatever pang of guilt that truth pricked within his conscience, the wine soon washed away.

We deserve no such god such as Christ represents, and for over a thousand years our actions and inactions have proven it so. There was a time in Greece when we knew better and worshiped gods whose temperaments and failures reflected our own. They possessed every human emotion and insecurity, the power to act on any whim, and the arrogance to believe themselves forever justified. There are few noble stories among the gods, and those that begin well become twisted parodies of their promise.

So it is with us.

The horrid little man had returned. Alessandra barely tolerated his presence most days, but now she had no patience at all, not after what she’d seen.

She’d been witness to an angel.

On fire.

—Thaddeus Thomas

This story is part of Literary Salon issue #2.

The Sibyliad

The Pseudologue

A rock streaked with molten fissures lit the circle of land on which he-who-had-been-secretary-to-the-emperor stood. On that tiny island with just that rock and a dead tree, they were alone, Daphnis and Herophile, and Daphnis felt small next to her broad back and shoulders.

His voice broke the silence. “How long have we been here?”

Herophile gave no answer.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“The beginning,” she said. “When I lost the last of my humanity, this is what I found.”

Having run out of questions, he offered what comfort he could. Such was the comfort of company, whether or not one knew what one was talking about. He cleared his throat, announcing the profundity to come. “We’ll regain our strength soon enough.”

“Soon is a matter of perspective,” she said.

She’d brushed off his efforts, and that was more discomforting than he cared to admit. “Is there anything we can do?”

“Nothing to be done.” She stood close to the heat and light of the rock.

He redirected his gaze to where the red light reflected off black waters. “What’s out there?”

“The dark.”

“I can see that.”

“Then you didn’t need to ask.”

He pinched his nose. “My head hurts. If I have no body, why do I feel pain?”

“You’ve seen too much to ask such questions.”

He sat beneath the tree, as if seeking shade from a non-existent sun. “If you didn’t make this place, maybe this is real.”

“What reality would you suppose?” she asked.

“It’s not bad enough to be Tartarus.”

“The gods help us if this is Paradise,” she said.

“How so?”

“If this is the best there is,” she said, “may the gods have mercy on us all.”

“If this were Paradise, there would be hope.”

“With this? What hope do you see with this?” she asked.

“That something better is coming.”

“And if this is Tartarus?” she asked.

“Fear of something worse,” he said.

“And if it’s Hades? Should we be content?”

“Content?” he asked. “With this?”

“If nothing better is coming and nothing worse, how else should we feel?” she asked.

“Absolutely hopeless, maudlin, and forlorn.” He squinted into the dark, as if he might see the lights of cities upon a distant and mediocre shore. “Maybe this is Hades.”

“We’ll regain our strength soon enough,” she said.

“Didn’t I say that? I thought I’d said that. We must have been here longer than I imagined.”

“That’s always a possibility.”

“Nothing seems possible here. That’s the point, that there is no point. Everything is. Nothing changes.”

“Things were different once.”

“How long have we been here? Is there time in this place?”

“Time is change,” she said.

“There is no time here.”

“We’ve changed,” she said. “We’ve moved. We’ve spoken. Heat has radiated off the rock. Shadows have danced upon the tree.”

“Maybe it has a little time, less than usual, the dregs of a sundial beneath a moonbeam.”

“That makes sense,” she said.

“How much longer do you think we’ll be?”

“A little time more.”

“That could be forever,” he said.

“Maybe it has been. Maybe it will be.”

Silence filled the empty space.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“No. You?”

“No.”

“That’s something,” she said.

“Is it? What is it?”

“Something,” she said.

“I could eat, though,” he said.

“I honestly don’t remember how.”

“No capacity. No need,” he said.

“Any desire?”

“Not so much,” he said.

“Me, neither.”

“We won’t starve?” he asked.

She stared past him. “Something strikes me odd about the tree.”

“What? Now? Why? The tree hasn’t changed,” he said.

“In form, perhaps, but in my understanding, it has transformed.”

“How so? It’s grown no taller nor grown any leaves. It is as it has always been.”

“It’s not a tree,” she said.

“Not a tree? It’s neither a bush nor a house. It’s neither a dog nor a man. It’s not snow, and it’s not rain. We can run through the list of all things it’s not, and all that would remain is a tree.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“So you admit it’s a tree?”

She shook her head.

“We have determined that all things that describe that-which-is-not-a-tree don’t describe the object in question,” he said. “It is the nature of a name to exclude all things something is not. That’s its function. This is a tree.”

“Look again,” she said. “These are the roots of a tree.”

“The roots?”

“The roots.”

“Then where is the tree?”

She pointed below them.

“Underground?” he asked.

“Perhaps the tree to which these roots belong is bathing in the light of the Florentine sun.”

“And if we dig around its base, we’ll find the surface?”

“Perhaps,” she said.

He looked at the tree, his feet, and then back again. “And we’re hanging like bats?”

“Must be.”

He pushed himself into a crouch and leaped into the air. His feet lifted several inches and then fell back again. “There. That’s disproved.”

“You’ve disproved nothing.”

“If these were roots dangling from some cavern ceiling, we’d fall to the floor.” He pointed above his head. “That way.”

“You know where to find Florence on a globe?”

“I do.”

“It’s all sideways. Every Florentine should slide until he hits a mountain. Up and down mean nothing except to say ‘to the ground’ and ‘away from the ground’.” She pointed down. “That’s to the ground.”

“Not to the ground, to the center of the earth.”

“Maybe the tree grows at the very center of the earth,” she said, “and here its roots extend as a connection between us and the underworld.”

“So if we dig at its base, we’ll find our way to Hades?”

“Perhaps,” she said.

He sat against the tree and closed his eyes. “Either way, doesn’t matter. I don’t possess the energy.”

#

The space around them remained dark, with the exception of the molten light the reflected on the surface of the dark water. Daphnis had lost himself in its patterns when Herophile’s words roused him from his thoughtless trance.

“Do you love Alessandra?” she asked.

He blinked and stirred, and for a moment he recognized that words had been spoken. Seconds later, still, his mind calculated their meaning.

Before he could answer, she continued. “Don’t answer. That would be meaningless. Let me begin again.”

“Agreed,” he said.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She shut her mouth again, frowned, and said, “This is difficult.”

“You wish to ask questions which polite society does not permit.”

“Centuries have passed since I was a member of polite society,” she said.

“Habits,” he said. “Perhaps, I can help?”

“I would be grateful.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He shut his mouth again, and then laughed.

“You see?” she asked.

“Clearly,” he said.

“Did you love the circumstances of her life?” she asked.

“Poorly. Maybe not even that. I wouldn’t dare call it love.”

“I see things in people, and then there’s us,” she said. “I think I’ve seen you very clearly.”

He shrugged.

“You don’t think so?” she asked.

“The answer is that I failed her. I was selfish.”

She gave a little grunt of approval.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“It’s a much more interesting answer than insisting you loved her. For a few moments, we walked the streets of Florence, you and I. That’s something I thought I’d never experience again, and I rather hated the idea of losing it because you were in love.”

“Selfishness is a better reason?”

“There is no good reason,” she said, “but guilt is workable. There are reparations to be made and obligations to be fulfilled.”

“Obligations to be fulfilled.” He tapped the black water with his foot, expecting ripples that would change the patterns of the light. It changed nothing.

“Perhaps, in time, you’ll move on,” she continued, and he felt the sorrow in her voice, felt it as if it were his own. “Until then, there’s no need to hurry things.”

“Perhaps,” he said.

She nodded, once, as if the matter had been settled, and he said nothing to correct her.

#

The patterns of fluctuating brightness within the magma never changed. Even as the thought occurred to Daphnis, it seemed impossible, and he sat through three, long repetitions before he finally admitted it was true. Nothing here ever changed.

“Maybe the end has already come,” he said, “and we’ve missed it.”

“I doubt that’s even possible. Remember the strength of that one man’s death? Imagine thousands. We’d have felt it. We’d have ridden out of here on waves of power.”

“Is that how it’s always been for you?”

She shook her head.

He asked, “Are we sitting here waiting for people to die?”

“I suppose we are, but people die.”

Then, as if in answer, the taste of death rippled through him. He felt is as a resurrection within his bloodstream, which was nonsense. He had no blood, but he felt it nonetheless. It excited him in a way that shamed him, but as with other forbidden pleasures, the shame only heightened the excitement, giving it an ice-cold edge.

He turned to Herophile and saw his experience mirrored in her face. They stood and looked up into the darkness above the waters, eager for death’s call to show them a direction and give them wings. When they orientated themselves to the pattern of the waves, however, it came not from above, nor from the waters below. It came from the black earth at their feet and, in particular, from the earth at the base of the tree.

Waves of power rose up from the ground like a muted voice. Herophile’s wry smile told him she’d been right. He saw the humor and the knowledge expressed in the curve of the those lips and longed to become one with her once again, to be more than himself, to expand the boundaries of self until they encompassed her as well. Laughter bubbled out of him with a spontaneous innocence he hadn’t even known in youth, and with a dread hunger, they threw themselves to the ground and dug.

The ground came away in shattered chunks. The roots were part of a dead tree, and beyond the tree was darkness, a magmatic glow, and hints of stone. Through the hole, the power surged in unabated crests. Daphnis took Herophile’s hand and crawled through.

They stood at the base of the dead tree, at the base of stone cliffs, laced with veins of magma. Their island was larger on this side than below, but, instead of being surrounded by black water, here there was only darkness. Above them, the dim glow of the magma revealed writing in an unknown language.

The call of death became more emphatic, but they hesitated, startled by a familiarity, as if they knew the power pulsing through them. They rose up like a storm and on black winds raged through a cave in the cliff’s face. The cave turned upward into a cavern that opened to green valley, and they roared out into the valley, the bottom of a caldera, a steep bowl overflowing with life.

They turned skyward as a green-winged angel flew off in the distance, fire trailing from his sword. The caldera dwindled below them and a great peninsula stretched out toward a sea of islands on one side and a fog-banked coast on the other.

The source of power rested near, but for a moment, the flatland held their attention. They knew this place. A confusing wash of desire swept over them, but the pull of death won, and they dropped down to the grass beside a body that felt horribly familiar. They turned her over, and Alessandra’s blank stare gazed through them.

It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t right.

They trembled beneath the waves emanating from her. With a distant howl, a hellmouth sounded, and when it did so again, it was close and loud. They knelt by Alessandra’s side, unable to think or reason, feeling the call of her death above everything else and knowing that if they refused to drink from it, another would be there soon and would take her into its embrace.

They lifted their face to the sky and screamed until their body shuddered, and then, at last, they fell atop her and drank her in. A tunnel opened within them, stretching back through an endless black, but it followed a path they’d not expected. It pierced the skies above Florence and twisted its way through through the palace and deposited Alessandra onto the polished wood of a bedroom floor.

The tunnel collapsed, and they sat alone in the grass atop a hill overlooking paradise. Their thoughts went to Alessandra and the tunnel that took her home. Their thoughts went also to the underworld around them. Memories flickered past. They longed to stay, but they’d learned better. The energy of death dissipated quickly after a soul had made its journey.

They rose to their feet and trudged back into the caldera, climbing down rock faces and green slopes to the black mouth of the cavern. They walked silently through the cave and out onto the little strip of land at the base of the cliff and stood at the edge of the hole they’d dug at the base of the tree.

A tempest of sorrow rained in their chest. “We have energy remaining,” they said. “We could stay a little longer.”

Instead, they jumped into the hole, and Herophile and Daphnis tumbled out the other side, up from the ground at the base of the roots. They sat, side by side, staring at the magma-marbled boulder and the glow it cast upon the waters.

Daphnis wanted to say something encouraging, but there was nothing encouraging to say.

Herophile opened her mouth but then shut it again without speaking.

“I know,” Daphnis said.

“It’s so close,” Herophile said.

The darkness around them continued as before, unchanged.

#

Daphnis stared into the water, listened, and wondered if this was the truth of eternity, not logic and morality but the poetry of circumstance. He shut his eyes but found little difference in the view.

“We have a little strength left,” he said. “Can you show me Delphi?”

“It won’t last long. So we wait.”

She didn’t say what they were waiting for, but he understood. The next death in Florence would bring them out of their liquid state, and perhaps then, they could get a little closer to their jar.

Their jar. It seemed such a natural thought.

Then it came. Death. It rang like a church bell.

“Don’t lose control,” she said. “Remember our purpose.”

He stared at her without blinking. “Another hellmouth will get there first.”

“The jar matters more.”

“Without that power...”

“Feel the call surge through you,” she said.

“I can feel nothing else.”

“There’s power in the call,” she said. “We ride it back to the jar, and if another reaches the soul first, so be it.”

A starvation gnawed at his center, a hunger only death could fill, but her words made sense. He took a breath, steadied himself, and held onto a truth beyond desire. “So be it. First, the jar.”

She took his hand, and together, they dove into the water and emerged through the other side.

— Thaddeus Thomas

Coming in a few weeks:

The Sibyliad

Cycle One: Pluto’s Allegory of the Grave

Book One: The Hell Jar