The Demon’s Cantos
Part 12
Byron stared upwards, disbelieving, his face cast into shadow along with the rest of Ocracoke island. Fear roiled his guts.
Far above him, a larger than life figure towered high into the sky. Its body was pure, featureless shadow and its legs rose and fell in slow, gigantic steps. The ground shook beneath its footfalls, and sent small tsunamis crashing into Ocracoke’s shores as the giant creature moved.
Byron gaped as the thing came to a stop and turned directly towards him. The giant stood up straight until its mountain-sized head totally eclipsed the noontime sun. A searing corona of solar radiation shone at the edges of the featureless black shape and Byron averted his eyes.
Meanwhile, the residents of Ocracoke walked around normally, as though a giant being was not presently looming over them all, threatening destruction. Byron frantically tried to get someone’s attention, anyone’s attention. He opened his mouth to scream a warning, but no sound came out. He made to run towards the car to drive out to the ferry, but Byron’s feet could not get purchase on the ground and he inched forward at a painfully slow pace.
High above the shadow began moving again. The figure leaned forward, growing in Byron’s sight. As it got closer Byron could make out something in the giant’s left hand.
Byron thinned his eyes and peered into the distance.
He gasped.
A magnifying glass.
Byron tried to scream with a renewed desperation, but once again he had no voice. All he could manage was a muffled whimper. Byron heard his own desperate pleading as though the person speaking were trapped beneath a pile of hay bales, slowly suffocating.
The giant approached, its terrible feet and legs smashing through civilization. Homes exploded into burning flotsam. Trucks shot into the air, mangled and broken, and flew for miles trailing glistening comet’s tails of metal debris. People were crushed into bloody pulps beneath the giant’s pitch black soles.
Do something Byron, Nan’s voice, a desperate whisper, do something!
Byron saw the Cantos floating not even a meter away from him, its pages glowing hopefully. He reached out a hand toward it, but his legs moved so slowly they seemed to stand still. Byron wanted to scream a string of curses but still could barely hear his strangled voice.
Finally, the gargantuan creature arrived. One foot came to a rest one hundred feet to Byron’s left, crushing two large homes into fiery waste, the other doing the same one hundred feet to Byron’s right.
Byron slowly panned his eyes up from the right foot, until Byron’s entire vision was filled with nothing but the creature’s massive, abject darkness.
The giant’s left hand rose into the air, bringing the magnifying glass up with it. As Byron tried desperately to move, the giant found the sun’s beam in the magnifying glass. With meticulous care, the giant shifted the glass up and down, left and right, until the light condensed into a sharp, laser hot cascade.
The sunbeam broiled Byron’s pale face instantaneously, like the flash of a hydrogen bomb. Byron’s skin began to bubble and brown as the fat beneath melted through torn pores. Byron’s hair fizzed into smoke, and his clothes became molten and fused onto his torso. Searing pain racked his very being.
Byron shut his eyes tight, but the thin skin of Byron’s eyelids vaporized before the barrage of light. For a brief moment, Byron could not help but see his assailant’s giant face, the features now broadly visible.
Combed blond hair, handsome high cheekbones, a nose which might as well have been carved from marble and glistening blue eyes. A giant man with a perfect face wearing a smile as broad as the heavens, as eager as a child, and as malevolent as the devil himself.
Byron jolted awake, sitting up straight in bed. His heart raced fit to beat out of his chest and he was covered in a cold sweat.
He found himself in a preternaturally bright room, though the light did not hurt Byron’s eyes. It shone through glass windows that were at least three stories tall. Warm sunlight reflected through those windows onto the floor, walls, and ceiling. Every interior surface was totally – impossibly – white. Beyond those windows a blue-skied paradise flourished, palm trees loaded with ripe coconuts on a white sand beach which ended at calm, shocking blue water, as far as the eye could see.
Byron blinked, but his heart didn’t stop racing. Two simultaneous realizations rolled over him in opposite direction. First, he was not being burned alive beneath a giant magnifying glass. And second, that beach out there was not Ocracoke island. Ocracoke island didn’t have any palm trees.
He shut his eyes and forced himself to take a few deep breaths. Byron felt his nervous ticks tugging anxiously at the muscles in his neck and arms. A twitch ran up and caused him to jerk his head quickly to the left.
Before the movements took over, Byron forced himself to think of Nan. He touched his thumb and pinky fingers together, beginning the calming sequence. With each finger that he touched together with his thumb, Byron felt his anxiety diminish until at last the pad of the thumb touched the pad of his pinky once again.
Ready, calmed, Byron took a slow breath in, a slow breath out, and opened his eyes.
A giant spider’s stared up at Byron from the side of the bed. The reflection of the sun gleamed brilliantly in each of the spider’s glossy black eyes. The half-spheres were arranged in two rows of four, peaking out beneath a carpet’s worth of thick black hair.
Byron yelled, recoiling in renewed terror and toppling off the side of the bed in a pile of white sheets. Wearing someone else’s perfectly white silk pajamas, Byron kicked along the all-white floor, struggling to get his feet free from inside the wad of linens.
Meanwhile, the spider carefully lowered itself to the ground from off the side of the bed. It’s four front legs hit the floor. The chitinous tips at their ends began click-clacking across the room in Byron’s direction.
Byron looked for something to toss at the giant monster, but aside from the single large bed in its center, the room was completely empty. Byron heaved himself in a panic, scuttling backward until his back was flat against one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. As the spider crossed the bright room toward him, Byron raised his hand up threateningly. The spider froze in place and Byron stared it down. For the first time, Byron noticed the spider was wearing some kind of strange, thin metal hat.
Another figure burst into the room. She came in through an open door that was the same undifferentiated white as every other surface. She was wearing a slightly too large red, blue, and purple Hawaiian shirt and a pair of comfortable looking, bright green linen pants. In her hand, she carried a small sloshing glass of orange juice.
“Faustus! I told you to wait until I poured —” Tilda stopped mid-sentence as she saw Byron on the floor by the window. “Oh, you’re awake!”
Byron’s wide eyes flicked anxiously toward Tilda, his hand following soon thereafter.
Tilda raised her hands up in front of her, displaying one empty palm and one glass of orange juice. “Whoa, whoa, OK. It’s OK. Don’t worry.” With an annoyed look, she sucked her front teeth at the giant spider. “Faustus, I told you to wait. He’s been through a lot and you can be . . .” she considered her words carefully, rolling her eyes, “. . . well, also a lot.”
There was a brief moment of silence during which Tilda seemed to react so some unheard comment.
“I didn’t say that. I said ‘a lot’, that’s all. ‘A lot’,” Tilda repeated, and then added in a conciliatory way, “and only at first.”
Byron’s attention jumped back and forth between the small woman and the giant spider, as did the palm of his ready hand. With a slight panic, Byron realized he had forgotten the exact phrasing for water manipulation, yet again. Still, he kept his hand firmly raised, as it seemed to be having its desired effect.
Tilda looked back at Byron and smiled her most disarming smile. “Byron. I know you’re scared – I get why you’re scared – but you don’t have to worry. We’re friends.” She gestured toward the giant spider, “both of us.”
Byron stole a glimpse at the spider, which raised its bulbous head up and down in several small motions. Was the thing nodding at him?
Tilda raised the glass of orange juice a little higher. “We were just making you breakfast. Faustus just jumped the gun a little bit. He feels terrible about before.”
The spider took a couple of careful steps forward and lowered itself down until its belly was just barely hovering over the ground. This afforded Byron a better view of the spider’s strange “hat.”
It was a large, sterling silver food tray. The kind that a butler might carry tea on. The tray was affixed to the spider’s terrifying head with two wide elastic straps. On the tray were an empty saucer and coffee cup, a freshly brewed silver pot of coffee, a tall glass of ice water, a small carafe of amber maple syrup, and a large white plate stacked with still steaming hot, golden brown pancakes. The top pancake was decorated. Two well-fried eggs were laid out like eyes, a large pat of partially melted butter was the nose, and four strips of crisp bacon beneath it completed the edible smiley face.
The spider approached a few more steps, stopping gently right in front of Byron’s still extended palm. It lowered its head as if the food were an offering.
Byron blinked.
“You can go ahead and take the tray,” Tilda said, “he won’t bite.” Then she looked up, remembering, and added gingerly, “again.”
Completely thrown for a loop – but just about used to being thrown for loops – Byron carefully reached out for the silver tray. Byron’s eyes were glued to the spider’s horrendous mandibles which, even in a calm state were quite horrifying. He pulled up on the tray, met with some resistance, and pulled harder until he heard the characteristic tear of velcro separating from velcro.
No sooner had the tray cleared its head than the spider sped back across the room, away from Byron, and out the door through which Tilda had just entered.
Tilda bent back and looked after the spider through the open door. “He really feels just awful about before,” Tilda said with remorse. Then she looked back down at Byron, “as do I.”
In truth, Byron couldn’t entirely remember what had happened before – or even how long ago before was. But Byron knew it involved that giant spider and a hell of a lot of pain.
And maybe Korbius was there. Floating?
Tilda visibly relaxed. She started making her way across the large room, taking small, peppy steps. She smiled and the sun glowed in her wide cheeks like a cherub in some renaissance painting. She walked and talked, placing the orange juice on the breakfast tray, which Byron still held in a state of astonishment, and then picking up the sheets Byron had dragged onto the ground.
“Faustus is almost never like that, really. He’s an incredibly intelligent creature, and hardly ever aggressive. Here, freshly squeezed. But he has become very wary of strangers in the last few years, and unfortunately, so have I. Let me get these, this is supposed to be breakfast in bed. Anyway, neither of us was sure about you, to be honest. You’re not the first, after all, and after last time —”
Tilda paused mid-sentence and mid-step, momentarily lost in thought. Her smile faded and she sighed once. Then she started up again, making the bed, picking up the pillow off the floor and fluffing it up with two hands.
“Long and short of it, we’ve been tricked once already. And trust me, they knew what they were talking about. Story sounded almost as convincing as yours did.” She paused and thought for a second before continuing to make the bed. “Actually, their story was much more convincing than yours. But, then again, I think that’s part of why I ended up believing you.”
Tilda turned toward Byron and smiled, the bed made tidily behind her. Byron was still sitting with his back to the window, hands on the sides of the silver tray which itself also sat on the incredibly white floor.
“I mean,” Tilda continued, “who would ever send a dirty, blue-stained kid with a cookbook and a pet octopus to save the world?” Tilda chuckled to herself, raising her eyebrows. “I doubt the Unmaker could even think of something so stupid.” Then she shrugged, walked over to Byron and bent down to pick up the silver tray. “Stranger than fiction, huh?”
Byron sat there with his legs stretched out straight before him, lips making a tiny “o” of confusion. He stared up at Tilda who stood there holding the large tray. She looked around the room and frowned.
“He forgot the stand. Faustus – bring the —”
Byron raised a hand and cut her off. “No!” He said, over-loud. Then he took a breath and repeated himself, calmer. “No. That’s OK. Just, leave it on the bed. Please.”
Tilda turned to Byron. “It’s no big deal, it’ll only be a —”
“Please! Just, I need a few minutes to myself.” Byron rubbed at his face with the palm of his left hand, pressing at his eyes. “Without any . . . giant spiders.”
As Byron’s eyes were covered, Faustus, the giant spider, eagerly reentered the room, the leg of a large folded stand held in its mandibles. Tilda saw the spider enter and quickly gestured for it to leave with a silent flick of her hand. A little sullen, the spider’s head drooped and it turned around.
The spider had just finished sulking its way out of the room, and Tilda had just turned back to face him, when Byron finished rubbing at his eyes and opened them again.
He gave Tilda a quiet, pleading look.
Tilda shot him back a tight smile and nodded. “Of course. You’ve been through a lot these last few days.” Tilda went over to the bed and placed the tray onto the white sheets. Then she turned back toward Byron, hands clasped behind her back. “You’re going to have a lot of questions, I know. I’ve got some answers. Take your time, and, whenever you’re ready, I’m right outside that door.”
With one last earnest smile, Tilda turned to go. Byron was watching her walk across the room when suddenly another image popped into his mind. A really weird one.
Tilda, her eyes and hands glowing brightly with a white light.
Right before Tilda reached the door, Byron called out to her.
“Hey. Are you. . . the Preceptor?”
Hand on the door, Tilda spun around and gave a little nod of her head.
“At your service, Cantor.”
Then, with the fake tip of a hat she was not wearing, Tilda walked out and shut the door behind her.
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