“Julia! You are hurting me!”
My eyes closed in agony and when they opened, I saw the face of a bear. Its mighty arms crushed me against its chest so that breathing became my only concern. I heard a loud crack and moments later another. The bear released me and laughed.
I rolled on the ground in despair.
Both my arms are broken!
“I have won this time!” came a voice from the trees. It was Lilith. I couldn’t see her but I imagined her naked form, laughing at me. Even in my pain, I desired her again. It is true that I have a cruel streak in me and cruelty admires greater cruelty.
I have been a fool! I thought I had learned to trick Lilith but while I have been learning, she has discerned all my secrets and tricked me as easily as a magician would a child! Now I will have to give up!
It took me some effort to stand and even greater will to find the door back to the chamber.
When I reached the plinth, I collapsed against it and passed out.
***
I woke in agony. My arms hung limp by my side. I yelled for help but none came. I managed to stand and walk to the secret door but there seemed no way for me to open it.
Then I remembered Aisha and wondered if she could help. By hard as I pushed, I could not even push that door open. It seemed as if I could pass through each door only once.
Aisha healed me so perhaps someone else will this time.
I had only to push the door for it to open but I needed the axe. Try as I might, I could not remove it from the rack; pain in my arms when I tried to move my fingers threatened to make me faint again. In desperation, I sat against the plinth and used my legs to manoeuvre my right hand close to the break in the other arm. With my fingers I could feel the break and knew it to be a fairly straight one. I had only to stretch the arm for the bone halves to snap back into place. Remember that I felt desperate. If I had not been, I could not have done what followed:
By trial and error, I managed to get one wrist wedged between the axe handle and the weapon rack. Bracing my legs against the base of the stone plinth, I began to pull. I had to stop at first because the pain seemed too great to endure.
There is no alternative. I have to do this!
Bracing my legs again, I tried one strong, sustained pull and felt the bone fragments slide apart. The pain made my bite a great part of my lip away and sweat poured down my face but I kept pulling until I knew the two fragments were divided by a small gap. Then I slowly relaxed.
The pain when the fractured bone halves met again felt indescribable. I did pass out, I am sure, for I woke on the floor again. But this time I could move my left arm a few inches without fainting. Repeating the manoeuvre, I felt for the fracture in the right forearm, just above the wrist. It seemed more complicated and I did not feel I could get the bones back in place on my own. I just managed to bind the fracture of the left arm with some rag, using my teeth and my ‘good’ hand before sitting down to rest again. Only then did I notice a fresh set of armour, lying on the plinth. I felt sure it hadn’t been there before.
“Henry! Help! Henry!”
No answer came.
I staggered to the secret door and fumbled painfully with the handle. I quickly proved that it remained locked.
“Henry!” I yelled one last time, in anguish!
I needed help and where else to find but in Hades!
“Of course!” I laughed, almost hysterically.
The situation seemed so ludicrous to me that I couldn’t stop laughing until my tears became those of sadness. Nobody had come to help me, only to replace the armour. Did Henry want me to die? Had he deliberately given me the wrong weapon for one door?
Casting my doubts from my mind, I managed to put on the new armour, pick the axe up from the rack and drop it to the floor. From there, I kicked it to the door and kicked the portal open.
With one last kick of the axe, I was through.
I found myself on the side of a dune in a desert of red sand.
Great! This is the ideal place to get help! What is more, I can’t even move my axe!
I refused to give up, however and lay down next to the axe. After a great deal of effort, I managed to fumble it securely into my belt.
When I had regained my breath, I staggered to my feet and began to walk as straight as I could at ninety degrees of a circle to the sun. In this way I hoped to make the most of shade at the beginning and end of each day for the dunes were tall.
On the second day, I could go no further. I found myself with my cheek on the hot sand and my lips invoking the incantation from the poem:
If torture my spirit, you’ll not feign to do … .
I knew I had become delirious at times but I no longer cared. Without water, everything had become pain.
“Ah! I found you at last!”
Were those words in my head?
“I hardly expected to find an infidel in the desert and alone! Good thing for you that I speak French!”
Something seemed to be pushing me; trying to roll me over.
“Drink this!” the merry voice said.
Truth to tell, I would have drank anything at that moment. I managed to part my thick lips and a cool elixir dripped down my throat.
“Not too much,” the voice said, “or you will be sick.”
More water fell upon my eyes, whose lids had become fixed closed. Soon I managed to open them and looked upon a brown-faced man with a red and white turban.
I tried to say, “Thank you,” but no words could I speak yet.
After a while, he lifted me on to an already heavily laden ass and I managed to hold myself upright.
“On we go then!” the man said, half singing to himself.
But then he truly did sing. I could not understand his song but I knew what sort of man he was.
“You’re a Saracen!” I finally managed to yell.
“Yes, and you are an infidel, but I won’t hold that against you. What are you doing here? That is what I want to know.”
I had to look at the black sky to assure myself that I travelled in Hades.
Is this spirit insane?
“My arms! My arms are broken!” I added. “Can you help me?”
“Yes! Yes! All in good time! I am looking for something.”
While he cast his eyes frequently to the right, occasionally he would look high up into the sky though I knew not what for!
Suddenly a black speck began to grow and an eagle swooped in to land on the Saracen’s arm. It carried something limp in its claws.
The Saracen said something in Arabic and then turned to the right. My ass followed the marks of the leader’s horse without any instruction from me.
Just before sunset, I thought I spied some trees on the horizon and about an hour later, we reached an oasis.
“Ah! Here at last. I knew it couldn’t be far, once Ain returned with supper!”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“You can call me Muhammad,” he replied, helping me down. The eagle screeched once and flew on to the trees. “She is afraid of you. Silly girl! Here, I will attempt to heal your arms. What is your name?”
“John.”
I breathed a huge sigh of relief now we had found an oasis but even after Muhammad had helped me down and laid me by a fire, I felt that he could do little for my arms.
“First you must eat to gain strength,” he told me. “I presume you can suffer yourself to eat rabbit?”
“Indeed! It will be fine.”
After he we had supped, he boiled more water and placed linen in it. He came over to me and examined my arms.
“Who set the left one?” he asked.
“I had to do it. I couldn’t bind it.”
“Well, you were very lucky. You were also brave; I have never heard of a man setting his own arm! Anyway, it is healing, miraculously. I will bind it but the fracture is such that it has held together and started to mend. Have you used the arm since?”
“No. I have simply
been walking.”
“That has saved it. Now, for the other.”
After pressing the swelling around my wrist for some time, frequently making me cry out in pain, he sat back and looked into my eyes, before saying:
“This is a complex break and I fear I will have to cut your wrist open to work out what to do. I simply cannot tell what to do through this swelling. Are you able to endure this? I can give you wine but little else to help.”
“Do it now!”
“Very well.”
I cannot recall what happened in the next few hours. I writhed in agony, but always trying to keep my wrist still. I proved a poor patient and Muhammad had to bind my wrist to a log so that he could continue. I fainted many times and when I could see clearly, I would not like to tell you what I saw; the operation was gruesome. At last, Muhammad seemed satisfied and stitched together my wrist.
“Only time will tell if it will heal. It wasn’t as bad as I expected!”
His words encouraged me and I fell immediately into a deep sleep.
I half thought the eagle came to me and told me to, “Get well,” while I slept.
***
“We need to stock up on food before we leave here!” Muhammad said in the morning. “Your thrashing about scared any animal worth eating away from the oasis. They will not be back until we leave, unless Ain and I can find them first. You rest here. We will be back before nightfall. Don’t go anywhere!”
I laughed at his poor joke.
At about midday, I had just drank for a leather flask of water by my side when I noticed a black dot, sweeping low across the sky. After circling twice, it descended in a long spiral and landed beside me.
“Feeling better?” it asked.
“Ain?”
“Yes. Who else. I get bored of hunting sometimes. I thought I would take a rest and talk to you. Muhammad won’t notice. He is hardly aware that I am a demon. He was damned along with his wife so he is almost happy in Hades!”
The eagle transformed into the shape of a veiled Saracen woman. She had almost the beauty of Aisha but I could not say quite. She came over to me and drank from the flask.
“I am glad you are healed. I didn’t want to seduce a wounded man. Rather, I didn’t want to try, I know the limits of my beauty.”
She removed the veil from her face and smiled at me. Her face looked astoundingly beautiful.
I felt my hardness waking up rather earlier than my intention with respect to desire. I also felt that I detected some kindness and curiosity in Ain.
“Why didn’t you heal me? Couldn’t you do it?” I asked.
“I could but that would anger the Great Witch. I don’t want that. I want an easy life. But I am curious about a man that can have both arms broken and come back to Hades. Is your true love here? We haven’t had scandal like that since Orpheus!”
“No, I came here because I had nowhere else to go for help!” I laughed at the absurdity of my predicament and Ain joined in. She moved closer and lowered her cloak from her cleavage.
I saw that Ain had high, pert breasts. Her waist looked so narrow that I think I could have encircled it with my hands. She leaned in and I felt her breath on my face.
“I don’t think I can hold you but I want to,” I moaned.
“I am as light as a feather. May I perch, sorry, sit on you?”
“Certainly. What if Muhammad sees you?”
“He will be angry perhaps that I neglected my duties. Would you be happier if I told you he would be jealous?”
“Actually, yes!”
“Ha! I see you are a rascal; isn’t that the word?”
She had already straddled me and begun to slide my mail shirt up to my stomach. I didn’t dare move my arms.
“How do I find Lilith in this God-forsaken … . Sorry, I mean this desert?”
“First you have to keep your head, and I will try to take it! But not until we have had a little fun!”
She dragged down my under breeches and lifted her skirt before sitting squarely on the post. Not able to assist, I could only watch as she proved her riding skill equalled that of her hunting one. I felt my juices replenishing the thirst of her lips twice before she let me go.
“I will come and talk again in two days. You should have use of your limbs by then.”
***
I didn’t feel so confident about her prediction but it proved correct. Within two days, I felt able to ride and Muhammad led us away from the oasis.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Back to my home and my wife! Ha!”
“You are not a soldier then?”
“I was once but I became a merchant. Now, if you must know. I enjoy wandering whenever the wife has her mother to stay!”
“She is damned as well? Your family is truly cursed!”
“Or foolish!”
Muhammad looked at me suspiciously for some days after this. On the twentieth day, it became obvious that our journey had almost come to an end. We had travelled from watering hole to watering hole and now I could see a city’s jagged outline on the horizon.
Ain came to me that night and told me that she would leave the next day.
“If you want to find the Great Witch, you must come with me.”
Why is every deal in Hades a double-edged sword!
At noon, she left Muhammad’s hand and flew back into the desert. He deemed it strange but kept on riding whereas I, after some thought, told him I would wait a day or two before entering the city.
I dismounted and we said our farewells.
“I can never thank you enough!” I told him.
“If I didn’t know you were a vampyr, I would ask you to put in a good word for me and my wife, but not my mother-in-law! Ha!”
I followed Ain. I followed her right into a sandstorm!
“What a fool I am!” I told myself again as the sand piled over my head.
A day passed with the sand rising higher. I had to keep wriggling to stay afloat and I kept my face under me to create a pocket of air. On the third day, I grew too exhausted to move.
But a growl drew me to life. I stood up only a moment before a panther leaped upon me and bore me to the ground. I drew my axe with my weak hand, my left, and hefted it toward the beast’s neck. It came at me as if it were possessed and after I suffered many bites and scratches, I took off its head.
“Right appendage, wrong body!” Ain mocked.
She flew away and circled high above. I saw that she did not fly alone. A cloud of black shapes whirled around and gradually descended toward me.
“Oh no!” I yelled.
A whole gang of vultures landed on me and commenced hacking apart my body. They concentrated mostly on my neck and I thought it unfair that Ain used another animal to do her work for her.
“This is breaking the rules of Hades!” I cried.
“Rules in Hades don’t exist!”
Ain could not help but draw closer to watch my end. Through the blood in my eyes and the fluttering of a thousand frenzied wings, I saw that she perched on a rock, not ten feet from me. I waited until she reached a distance of only six feet and then I dived.
With one desperate effort, I launched the axe and saw it slice off her head.
Her body seemed surprised for a moment, before toppling over.
Enough of the vultures lay dead around me to convince them that a dead eagle would be less painful to eat. They left me and devoured Ain, who gradually changed into a woman in death.
I ran from the scene and waited for the scavengers to leave. Sated at last, they flew into the sunset and I retrieved my axe, in the nick of time!
“How do you feel my darling?” I heard Lilith coo. I turned to face an eagle that could easily have picked up Muhammad’s horse. “I have become fond of you,” Lilith added.
I supposed she lied but I could not be sure.
“One last fight?” I asked.
“Must we? I made something for you.”
She pointed t
o a bundle on the sand with her beak and I walked over to it. I unwrapped a huge axe of pure gold.
“If you take that back, wrapped in cloth, Henry will not know you have found some treasure. He will take nothing from you.”
“What makes you so sure he would take it?”
“He has taken your mistress! Already, she is in his bed. He told her you had betrayed her.”
“You’re lying!”
“Can you be sure? If it were true, wouldn’t it be in my interest to tell you?”
Lilith had finally planted the seed of greatest doubt in my mind. Like a nervous schoolboy, I hopped from foot to foot, not knowing what to do next. I made the stupid mistake of turning away from Lilith for a moment and she pounced.
She tore at my neck and I had to pull apart each half of her beak to remove my head in one piece. In doing so, I had dropped my axe and had to dive for it.
Now, I am known as a fair swordsman but few know that I had a friend when we were boys in ancient Persia who so loved the axe that I became greatly experience with it. An axe is great for slicing but can also be used as a club and a throwing weapon. I knew that this eagle’s neck would prove too thick to cut through with once slice so throwing made no sense.
Instead, I picked up the weapon, spun round and brought the blade down on the beast’s foot, taking off two of its talons. The eagle screamed in agony and I smashed the flat of the blade into the other leg, toppling the beast.
Wasting no time, I leaped onto its back and began hewing its neck. I felt great distaste at the task but after three or four strokes, the head came off and Lilith once more stood before me.
“You seem more like an Angel each time darling!” I told her. Always she appeared at death.
“Let us join dear, for you did well today. I had no idea you were so skilled. I could even leave Beelzebub for you, if it were possible.”
She looked coyly at me and I discerned some truth in her words. But truth in the mouth of a Demon can be a lie as well. I would try a lie too, for it is said that a liar cannot detect a lie while they are themselves lying.
“I love you Lilith. It is true!”
And so I hoped to set the seed of doubt in her heart too. We joined and copulation seemed greater than all other truths. I have loved a Demon and I know God will not forget it!
“But now I must go and rescue my wife from Henry!” I declared.
“Oh you lying fiend! You take what you want and go! All men are the same!”
With that, I set off into the desert. I had marked where the oases each lay and steered by the stars. Eventually I found my original tracks and so came to the door and the round chamber.