Work Text:
Text by: MoanDiary
Art by: DTaina
hloe opened her eyes, and for a panicked instant she thought she’d gone blind. After a few moments blinking up at the blackness, however, the void above her resolved into twinkling stars, spilled out over the firmament like diamonds. Beneath her, she felt something smooth and springy. Many somethings. Once her eyes adjusted, she looked around to find she was lying in a field of massive blades of grass. Or perhaps she was simply much smaller than she ought to be. The horrible thought came to her as she made out the shapes of hulking tree trunks and mammoth shrubs in the distance. She appraised a nearby oak leaf and decided she couldn’t be more than seven or eight inches tall.
She climbed gingerly to her feet and found it surprisingly easy balance on the blades of grass beneath her. She looked down at her bare feet and was startled to notice that her skin emitted a faint blue, incandescent glow.
Not the strangest thing that’s happened to me today, she thought wryly.
What was the strangest thing, however, was the fact that when Chloe stepped forward, there was a bone-vibrating flutter at her back that lifted her off her feet. She lurched forward into the air and stumbled, landing inelegantly on another blade of grass nearby. She craned her neck around to try and see what had happened, and was horrified to see two huge, iridescent, insect-like wings protruding from her back.
She watched as they flexed and shimmered in the dim starlight, oddly beautiful.
“I’m a fairy,” Chloe breathed in awe.
She stepped forward again, off the edge of the blade of grass, and her wings hummed automatically to life again, carrying her forward into the air. With a thought, she changed direction, gaining altitude and speed until she was flitting quickly through the forest, alighting briefly on branches and boughs before launching herself into the air yet again. She laughed with the sheer joy of it, keenly aware of the life and growth around her, attuned to the humming magic of nature.
Suddenly, through the trees, she spotted a yellow glow. As she made her way towards it, she realized it was the light streaming from the windows of a small cottage perched at the edge of the woods.
Beside the door to the cottage was a cleverly engraved and intricately-painted wooden sign that read “Gepetto, Fine Woodworking and Carpentry.” Within, she could hear the sound of a man humming absently. She flitted curiously around the corner and landed on a window sill, cupping her tiny hands against the wavy glass to peer inside.
An older man sat at a workbench, dressed in humble, comfortable clothing and a leather apron. His hair was gray and curly, and his brown skin wrinkled with the evidence of many years of worry. But he smiled faintly as he painted what look to be the final details on an elaborate marionette. The puppet was roughly the size of a man, and had long, elegant, articulated limbs, dark lacquered hair, and a prominent nose. Most striking, however, were the two white wings, cleverly made of wood and goose feathers, that slotted into the puppet’s back through the angelic white robe it wore. Its dark eyes stared blankly at its maker as he painted the last inky black line of the puppet’s mouth with a flourish.
The carpenter leaned back to admire his work and beamed. “My dear Samael! You look like a proper young man!” Gepetto cried.
He swept the marionette off the workbench and took it by the strings, making it caper and dance with evident talent. The angel-puppet genuflected elaborately to the carpenter and Gepetto bowed back. The old man walked with his puppet across the room to a teapot, where the puppet pantomimed pouring him a cup of tea.
Chloe couldn’t help but notice, as she watched this strange show, that the marionette’s dark eyebrows were canted downwards all the while in an expression of what almost seemed like growing annoyance.
Eventually the old man tired, and he sat the puppet in an armchair beside the fire and took the opposite one himself.
“Ah, Samael!” he lamented. “If only you were a real son who could comfort and care for a father in his old age.” The woodworker regarded his creation sadly for a while before the evening’s exertions got the better of him, and he soon fell asleep, chin dipping to his chest.
Through the uneven glass, Chloe thought there was something familiar about the face of the marionette now slumped lifelessly in the chair opposite its maker. She flitted curiously around the cottage, looking for a way in, and eventually found another window cracked open to let in the evening breeze. The gap was just wide enough for her to slip through.
She floated cautiously across the room, careful not to disturb the slumbering old man, and alighted on the arm of the chair holding the puppet. She peered upwards at its downturned face and gasped.
“Lucifer!” she whispered, the name coming to her instinctively. His face, despite being wooden and slightly stylized, was acutely familiar. His oaken wooden mouth hung slightly open and his cleverly articulated eyelids drooped at half-mast. He seemed…dead. The thought made Chloe’s heart lurch painfully. She reached out unconsciously to touch his wooden hand, wishing keenly that he were here to help her make sense of this strange dream, and the moment she did, there was a blinding flash of light. She felt something almost electric pass between them and jumped back in shock. The marionette jerked violently and tumbled out of the chair. When Chloe’s sight returned, the puppet was flailing around awkwardly on the floor, tangled in his own strings.
“What in the—bollocks to this!” he exclaimed, grabbing a fistful of strings and giving them a mighty yank, snapping them.
“Lucifer一” Chloe hissed, casting an anxious glance at the old man still dozing a few feet away.
The puppet looked up at her in surprise, momentarily distracted from the task of freeing himself. “Hm? Oh, hello there!” His voice dropped into a familiar seductive purr. “Always nice to wake up to a pretty face. Although I can’t for the life of me ever remember having woken up before…”
His wooden brows furrowed and he thought for a moment before shrugging and climbing to his feet, dusting himself off and plucking off the last few strings attached to his limbs like errant pieces of lint.
Chloe gaped at him. A wooden marionette moving and walking and talking like a living thing was uncanny, to say the least, much less one that distinctly looked, sounded, and acted like…like someone who seemed so familiar but whom she couldn’t quite remember.
“Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?” he asked with a genteel formality belied by the salacious grin on his face as he appraised her. Chloe looked down at herself and realized she was dressed in a vanishingly short blue tulle skirt that left almost all of her legs bare. She sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Chloe. I’m a fairy,” she added lamely, as if that weren’t apparent.
“Pleased to meet you, Lady Fairy. I’m—” he stopped abruptly, his brows pulling together again. “What was it you called me just now?”
“Lucifer.”
“Lucifer. Yes. I quite like the sound of that!” He looked down at himself, seeming to notice his white robes for the first time. “I don’t like this hideous…dress, though. Look how finely made I am! It’s a crime to deprive the world of the sight of me!” He yanked the robe off over his head, leaving him as nude as a wooden marionette could reasonably be said to be. His body was indeed beautiful, crafted of golden lacquered wood, jointed and hinged here and there to allow him excellent freedom of movement, and buffed to a brilliant shine. “See?”
Chloe flushed. She did see. In fact, it was hard to look away from the smooth, elegant planes of his arms and chest. It felt odd to admire the physique of a puppet, though. Inappropriate, somehow. Her gaze drifted downwards to the conspicuous featureless smoothness between his legs, jarring given how incongruous it was with the rest of his body. Lucifer caught her gaze again and waggled his eyebrows.
“You’re very well-made,” Chloe agreed, composing herself. “It’s a shame you’re not a real man.”
Lucifer’s expression soured. “That’s rather discriminatory, don’t you think?”
Chloe put a hand on his cool wooden arm. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“No, no, I understand,” he replied, waving a hand dismissively. “A lovely woman such as yourself would have no use for a talking chunk of wood.”
“I’m sure if you—maybe if you wished on a star hard enough—or…experienced true love’s kiss?” Chloe thought back desperately to vague memories of fairytales that felt harder and harder to grasp the longer she spent living them herself.
“Sounds like a load of bollocks to me,” Lucifer sniffed. “I am what he made me.”
He gave a pointed look to the sleeping old man, and behind his back, the white goosefeather wings flapped morosely. One of them bumped against a ceramic pitcher on the table behind him, sending it tumbling to the floor, where it shattered with a crash.
The carpenter started awake, and Chloe flitted out of sight in a panic, ducking behind the bookshelf.
“What the—Samael, you’re…you’re alive!” the carpenter cried.
Lucifer looked around. “Who?”
“You! Finally, a son to comfort and care for me in my old age!”
Lucifer gave him a polite smile that seemed a bit like a grimace, then turned away, looking about the room. “I’d prefer to be called Lucifer, sir. Say, you didn’t happen to see a fairy, did you? About yea tall? She was here just a moment ago…”
“No, I didn’t see any fairy. And your name is Samael. I’m your father, and that’s what I named you.” The old man climbed to his feet, expression hardening.
Lucifer turned back, ready for a confrontation. “Well, I don’t care for it. Just as I don’t care for being danced around like a puppet!”
“You are a puppet!” the old man cried.
“I clearly am no such thing!” Lucifer raised his stringless hands.
“Where have your strings gone?”
“I tore them out. They were getting in my way.”
“You’ll get into trouble without me to guide you. Look what you did to my pitcher!”
“Well, what do you expect would happen when you leave pottery teetering around on the edges of tables?”
Feeling awkward spying on what was clearly a family affair, Chloe slipped back out of the open window, unnoticed by both father and strange son. The sound of their argument followed her through the woods long after the cabin was out of sight.
She spent the rest of the night perched on a tree branch, thinking about what she had seen and the magical abilities she’d been endowed with. Her touch was what had brought Lucifer to life. She knew it, deep in her bones. But after several attempts to make sticks and fallen leaves stand up and walk around, she concluded that it must have been a one-off thing.
When the morning dawned, Chloe returned to the window sill outside of the carpenter’s cabin. She frowned when she looked inside and saw only old Gepetto, hunched over his workbench and carving away with violent, abrupt movements at a block of wood. Chloe could just hear the sound of him muttering angrily underneath his breath. She craned her neck this way and that, looking for Lucifer, but the marionette was nowhere to be found. She flew to the next window over to see if she could get a better perspective, and that’s when she saw them.
Stuffed haphazardly into the far corner of the room, feathers broken and askew, were two disembodied white goose feather wings.
Lucifer was not difficult to find.
Chloe must not have missed the argument that sent him away from his creator by more than a half hour, given Lucifer’s proximity to the cabin and speed as he strode defiantly down the main road, flames of anger still blazing in his eyes.
“Finally free from his nagging, at least!” he exclaimed to himself. ”Make me a pot of tea, Samael! Fetch me a blanket, Samael! Chop some firewood, Samael!” he mimicked in an exaggerated old man’s voice. “Who is he to kick me out, anyway? Doesn’t a father have a responsibility to his son, too? Did he make me just to be a slave?”
The puppet let out an angry huff and kicked a pebble, sending it pinging off a tree trunk.
“Anyway,” Lucifer continued, brightening. “There’s a whole wide world out there for me to see! Maybe I’ll end up teaching him a lesson about holding me back.”
By the time he made it to the outskirts of town, his mood had improved significantly, and he whistled as he wandered the bustling streets, stopping liberally to examine shop windows and the figures of several of the more attractive townsfolk. Some of them looked at him askance as he sauntered past, but most seemed unfazed by the presence of an animate life-size marionette on the street.
As they drew closer to the town square, Lucifer’s attention was caught by the sounds of pipes and drums in the distance. A smile spread across his face as the music grew louder. He soon found himself in a large square full of people standing in front of a little wooden building painted in brilliant colors. At the top of the building in bold letters were painted the words: GREAT MARIONETTE THEATER.
“When does the show start?” Lucifer asked a boy standing near the entrance.
“It’s just about to.”
“And how much does one pay to get in?”
“Four pennies.”
Lucifer rooted in his pockets and pulled out a small handful of copper coins. “Just enough!” he crowed.
Chloe rolled her eyes and darted into the theater after him.
Inside the theater, the performance had just started. The audience roared with laughter as Harlequin and Pulcinella capered on stage, cracking jokes and threatening each other with sticks. Lucifer found a seat, and Chloe flew, unnoticed, up into the rafters. At first she was concerned that the blue light she radiated would draw someone’s attention, but it seemed like merely wishing not to be seen had the effect of making her invisible. Pretty handy, she thought.
Lucifer was instantly delighted by the show, laughing and applauding with enthusiasm along with the rest of the theatergoers. The play continued for a few minutes, and then suddenly, without any warning, Harlequin stopped talking and turned to the audience. He pointed to the rear of the orchestra and yelled, “Is that Lucifer I see?”
“Yes, yes! It is him!” Pulcinella screamed. “It’s our brother, Lucifer!”
More marionettes streamed from backstage, all pointing excitedly and yelling. Lucifer looked around, incredulous, but smiling in obvious pleasure at being the center of attention.
“Come and join us, Lucifer!” the marionettes cried.
“Well, if you insist!” Lucifer replied with entirely false modesty. Chloe found herself automatically rolling her eyes. He climbed onto the stage, and once he straightened, the lights focused on him instantly. He struck an elegant pose and then broke into song, perfectly replicating one that Pulcinella had squawked earlier in the show, but with a thousand times more skill and finesse.
Chloe couldn’t resist the smile that crept over her face as he danced back and forth across the stage to the adulation of the crowd and the other marionettes, free and fully unencumbered by strings.
He had just started in on the last chorus of the song, clearly winding up for a grand finale, when a fearsome red-faced man with a bushy beard burst out from backstage. “What the hell is going on here?” he roared.
The musicians faltered to a halt, and Lucifer’s wooden mouth shut with an audible click. Harlequin and Pulcinella trembled in fear.
“W-we—” Pulcinella began.
“The spirit of the show moved me and I simply had to join in,” Lucifer cut in smoothly. The other puppets cast him a grateful look. “Forgive me. I don’t believe we’ve met. The name’s Lucifer.” Lucifer extended a hand to shake. The man squinted at its lack of evident strings suspiciously and did not respond in kind.
“I’m the director of this show, and I don’t tolerate strange puppets hijacking it for their own amusement. You troublemakers come with me! I have a fire in need of some impudent kindling.” With a mighty sweep of an arm, he took Lucifer and the other puppets by their necks and dragged them backstage.
Chloe scrambled to follow them, but the director slammed the door to his office just before she could dart inside, just a hair away from squashing her like a bug. She reared back in terror, heart beating rapidly at the thought of such an ignominious end.
She pressed her ear against the door and could barely make out the smooth tones of Lucifer’s voice, counterpointed with the roaring rumble of the director’s. The longer Lucifer spoke, however, the quieter and calmer the director became. Until finally the door opened, and the director ushered Lucifer out, wiping a fond tear from one eye, his meaty arm slung affectionately around the puppet’s shoulders.
“Thank you, my boy!” the director said. “I don’t know how I can repay you, but at least take this.” He pressed five gold coins into the marionette’s hand. Lucifer beamed.
“It was my pleasure, really! Take care now!”
The two parted like longtime friends and Lucifer left the theater and set off strolling down the street, humming merrily. Dumbfounded, Chloe raced after him.
“How did you do that?” she asked, alighting on his shoulder.
Lucifer turned at the sound of her voice, face breaking into a brilliant smile once he saw her. “Hello again, Lady Fairy! I was wondering where you disappeared to! And do what?”
“Charm that terrifying man! Convince him to give you his money!”
“Oh, it was nothing,” Lucifer said with an offhanded shrug of one shoulder. “I just asked him what he desired. Not sure why. It just…felt right at the time.”
Chloe let out a startled chortle. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Lucifer was Lucifer, no matter what the form. Lucifer seemed pleased at her mirth.
“Barely a half a day in town and already I’m making my fortune,” he stated proudly. “My father will see how utterly wrong he was and beg me for forgiveness for kicking me out.”
Chloe wasn’t so sure about this, but she merely hummed noncommittally in reply.
“Anyway, what were we talking about last?” Lucifer asked. “Something about what I’d need to do to become a flesh and blood man?”
“Yes,” Chloe said, uncertain. “It might be possible.”
“I hope so. I just wish I knew how,” Lucifer looked morosely down at his lacquered hands. “To be my own person rather than just a thing for someone else to control. To be able to really feel and touch.” He cast her a sly look. “And taste.”
Chloe smiled despite herself, her cheeks heating.
“Is there a spell you could cast? Or if you can’t do it, some wizard I could find? Maybe some kind of mystical orb, perhaps?”
Chloe laughed as they made their way out of town and back onto the dusty lane that led to the carpenter’s house. No sooner had they made it out of sight of the city walls than they passed a lame fox and a blind cat who were loitering together on the side of the road.
“Afternoon!” called the fox, grinning. Chloe distrusted her instantly. There was a distinctly menacing air about her.
“Good afternoon!” Lucifer replied.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” asked the blind cat, cracking one eye open to regard him.
“Well, obviously he’s heading home from school, Dan,” the fox sighed, rolling her eyes.
“I am not!” Lucifer huffed. “I’ve become a rich man today using only the wits I was born with, proving that school would be a waste of my time and considerable talents, regardless of what my father says.”
Both laughed at that until Lucifer took out the five gold pieces with a flourish and presented them proudly. At the sight, the fox leapt up onto her feet eagerly and Dan the blind cat opened both eyes wide, before remembering himself and closing them quickly.
“Five gold pieces,” the fox mused. “And what are you going to do with them?”
“Take them home to Father and save them for a rainy day, I suppose,” Lucifer replied.
“Foolish, isn’t he, Mazikeen?” Dan said.
“Very foolish,” the fox replied.
Lucifer’s brows contracted. “Why do you say that?”
“Everyone knows that when you have money you should invest it rather than squirrel it away,” Dan said smoothly.
“You want it to collect interest, not dust,” Mazikeen continued. “We know a place where you can double your money, easily. Your pathetic five coins could be a hundred, a thousand, two thousand, even!”
“Lucifer, this is too good to be true,” Chloe muttered in his ear. Lucifer swatted her away distractedly.
“You have my attention,” he said eagerly. “How do I do this?”
“Simple. Instead of returning home, come with us,” the fox said.
“Come with us,” the cat repeated.
“Where?”
“To the city by the sea. Outside its gates, there’s a blessed field called the Field of Wonders. In this field you dig a hole, and in that hole you bury a gold piece. You cover it up well, sprinkle some water and some salt on it, and go to bed. During the night, the piece sprouts, grows, and blossoms, and in the morning you have a tree full of gold pieces.”
Lucifer’s eyes widened at the prospect. “So how many pieces do you suppose would grow from my five?”
“It’s simple math.” Mazikeen smirked. “Each piece of gold makes five hundred, which means your five would grow twenty-five hundred.”
“Twenty-five hundred gold pieces,” Lucifer crowed. “Now that’s a fortune!”
Chloe, watching unnoticed from a nearby branch, rolled her eyes in exasperation.
“Sure is!” Dan cackled.
“And what do you want in exchange for taking me to this field?” Lucifer asked, a hint of wariness entering his voice.
“Oh, not a penny!” Mazikeen said solemnly. “We work only to enrich others.”
“To enrich others!” repeated the cat.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Lucifer grinned, rubbing his hands together, and the three set off away from the woodcarver’s house, with Chloe trailing reluctantly behind.
The travelers walked for a few hours until night began to fall, at which point they stopped along the road at a place called the Inn of the Red Lobster.
Lucifer and his two new companions were an enormous hit in the quiet inn. Within minutes of their arrival, the music was struck up, sleepy patrons either got to their feet to dance or were instantly drawn into conversation by either the marionette or the seductive fox, and the ale flowed like water.
Chloe, small as she was, found that a few crumbs of bread and globules of stew from Lucifer’s plate were more than enough to sustain her, and she sipped on a droplet of ale, the alcohol making her feel pleasantly numb and heavy, as she watched him chat animatedly with a young barmaid. The woman was red-haired and almost ridiculously buxom, and Chloe felt a curiously familiar surge of jealousy pass through her.
When Lucifer’s wooden hand began to inch up the giggling barmaid’s skirt, Chloe drunkenly decided she’d had enough and wandered outside. The cool night air cleared her muddled, spinning head, and she found a comfortable hollow in an oak tree to pass the night in. Far better to have some peace and quiet out here than to have to hear Lucifer’s latest conquest, she thought. Immediately afterward, she was confused as to where the thought had come from. Had he had previous conquests? Last night, he was nothing more than a marionette, right?
Her inebriated brain spun in confusion, and she decided it was better to just sleep and worry about things in the morning.
The morning dawned cool and bright. Chloe yawned and splashed her face with a droplet of dew, regretting how much she’d drunk the night before, then decided to go see whether Lucifer and his companions were awake yet.
She found Lucifer easily enough, sleeping like the dead in his room above the inn, bracketed by the naked bodies of the barmaid from the night before and a young man who Chloe vaguely recalled had been accompanying the drinking songs on a battered fiddle.
“What did they even…you know what? I’m not even going to ask,” Chloe muttered to herself.
The fox and the cat, however, were nowhere to be found. She checked every room and even the stable, and found no sign of them. With a rising wave of anxiety in her stomach, Chloe returned to Lucifer’s room, landed on his forehead, and rapped on his nose. “Lucifer, wake up,”
“Mrrff,” he grumbled, cracking open one eye to regard her. “Whazzit?”
“Dan and Mazikeen are gone,” she hissed.
Both eyes opened with a snap. “Gone where?”
“I have no idea.”
Lucifer sprang out of bed to the sleepy protests of his two bedmates and went to retrieve his trousers from the floor, rooting around in his pockets and pulling out only four gold pieces. He stared down at them in consternation.
“You didn’t spend one, did you?” Chloe asked, knowing the answer.
“No,” Lucifer replied, hurt flickering in his eyes. He pulled his clothes on and headed downstairs, uncharacteristically quiet.
“Your companions?” the innkeeper replied when questioned about their whereabouts. “They left just before dawn. Unfortunately the cat received a telegram which said that his first-born was suffering from chilblains and was on the point of death. He could not even wait to say goodbye to you.”
“Did they pay the bill?”
The innkeeper rubbed his hands obsequiously and smiled. “They told me you would not mind covering it, since you’re soon to come into possession of a great fortune.”
“Oh,” Lucifer sighed, clearly relieved. Chloe didn’t feel the same. “They just had personal business to attend to. That makes sense. Can’t expect them to waste their time on me out of the kindness of their hearts.”
“Have you considered they may simply be planning to steal the rest of your money, too?” Chloe asked wryly.
“They’ve shown me nothing but kindness so far,” Lucifer protested. “It’d be pretty unfair of me not to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
“They’ve done nothing but lie to you!” Chloe cried. “Dan’s not even blind! I saw him reading the menu last night.”
“Don’t you have anything to do other than follow me around all the time?” Lucifer snapped peevishly.
Chloe recoiled. Truth be told, it hadn’t occurred to her to do anything but stay with him. As the one who brought him to life, she felt somehow responsible for him. But perhaps he was right. If she was going to be stuck in this world, she might as well find some kind of life for herself.
“I can take a hint,” Chloe said with a sad smile. Lucifer’s cross expression flickered, annoyance quickly being replaced by regret.
“Wait, I didn’t mean一”
“No, you’re right. It’s your choice what you want to do with your money and your life. I’ll see you around, Lucifer.” She floated towards the door.
“Lady Fairy,” Lucifer began. Chloe turned back to look at him. He seemed about to say something, but then he straightened, chest puffed out with pride. “Thank you for waking me up.”
“You’re welcome.”
She looked at him one last time, tall and elegant and like no one else in the world, and then headed out into the woods to follow her own fate.
The forest in this strange land was like nothing Chloe had experienced before, or maybe something about her magical nature made its inherent wonder easier to see. It hummed with life. Trees whispered and swayed at the wind’s playful provocation. Mosses and mushrooms glowed with pulses of fluorescent blue and green light. Insects chattered and sang and gossiped with each other. Birds stopped her as she passed to talk about philosophy and physics and political theory. The sun and moon and stars danced across the sky again and again.
Chloe lost track of time. Either a day passed or a hundred. She felt a profound peace living this way. She was merely one piece in a great living tapestry, attuned to the world’s natural magic. After a time, she even stopped thinking about Lucifer, the strange puppet who’d stood up on his own and walked and talked at her request.
That is, until one day there was a disturbance in the woods near the tree where she’d made her home. The trees themselves were whispering to each other anxiously, upset and uneasy. Chloe pressed an ear to the bark of a great oak to figure out what all the fuss was about, and it told her to visit its cousin halfway up the valley, who was very upset by some violence happening in its branches.
Curious, Chloe made her way up the valley until she heard the sound of two agitated, and unfortunately familiar, voices.
“Open your mouth and we’ll let you down!” the fox named Mazikeen called up into the canopy.
“Yeah, open up!” Dan the cat echoed.
The two were dressed in dark cloaks with the hoods drawn away from their faces. Dan looked morosely at a dagger in his paw bent nearly in half.
“It’s no use,” the fox mused after several minutes. “He’s dead now.”
The cat scuffed a toe in the leaves and nodded in disappointment. Then the two turned and left the clearing. Chloe flew over to where they had been standing and looked around, puzzled. Then she heard the creaking sound of something suspended from a rope swaying in the breeze above her, and with a rising sense of dread, looked up.
There in the tree above her, hanging limp from a rope tied around his neck, was Lucifer. Chloe made an involuntary noise, one hand coming to her mouth. She felt suddenly cold all over.
She flew up to get a closer look at him, apprehension lying heavy in her gut. His face was slack and lifeless. Her dread quickly became a sense of panic. She needed to get him down, now. She went to the rope at his neck and after a few moments futilely tugging at the knot with her tiny hands, she had a vision of him crashing twenty feet to the forest floor beneath them, his joints snapping and splitting. She sped down instead to where the two assassins had tied the other end of the rope to a nearby tree.
If only she could figure out a way to lower him down safely! If only she were a normal-sized woman! If only一
There was a blinding flash of blue light, and when her vision returned, she was looking down at the rope tied to a trunk near her knee. A rope that she could simply bend down and untie. She spared a single, harried glance around to verify that she was now the size of a normal human, then hastened to untie the rope. She braced herself as she bore Lucifer’s dead weight slowly down to the ground. As soon as his body came to rest on the forest floor, she ran to him (her wings seeming to have gone) and loosened the noose from around his neck.
“Lucifer,” she whispered, cradling him in her arms and stroking his cool wooden cheek. “Can you hear me?”
He groaned raggedly, and his head lolled unconsciously to one side. His mouth fell open, and a single golden coin tumbled out.
If only I had somewhere safe and warm to take him, she thought. She cast about, looking through the surrounding trees, and suddenly noticed the shape of a cabin no more than a few dozen yards away.
Lucifer’s limp body was heavy, but not quite as heavy as a human body would have been, thankfully. With an enormous effort, she managed to drag him to the door of the cottage and inside. The little house was clearly abandoned but well-appointed. Mice watched her curiously from cobwebbed corners as she settled Lucifer atop the creaky bed.
“Do you know any doctors?” she asked the mice, who appeared startled at being addressed.
“The owl has an M.D., I think,” one mouse mused.
“Only a Ph.D, surely,” the other replied.
“Could you bring this owl here?”
“Oh, we could ask, but she’s very busy.”
“Very.”
“Exclusive clientele.”
Chloe sighed in frustration. “Just get her, would you?”
The mice tittered and skittered out the door.
Chloe pulled a creaky rocking chair up to the side of the bed and settled back into it, exhausted from the day’s exertions. She fell into a light doze, only to be awakened by the sound of the door opening some time later.
She looked up to find a barn owl wearing a smart red suit walking into the cottage.
“Oh, so the mice found you!” Chloe exclaimed.
The owl burped politely and licked her beak. “They did! My name is Dr. Linda. Pleased to meet you.”
Chloe shook the owl’s wing solemnly. “I was hoping you could help my…my friend.” She cast her eyes towards where Lucifer laid motionless in the bed.
“Ah yes,” the owl said nervously. “The patient.”
Linda pressed her ear to Lucifer’s chest, then peered into his mouth, then bent his arms and legs this way and that, then stood back and folded her wings contemplatively.
“Well, in my professional medical opinion, he is alive. But if by some evil chance, he were not, then he is dead.”
Chloe blinked at her for a long moment.
“I bloody well am not,” croaked Lucifer from the bed.
Chloe gasped and leaned over the marionette, wanting to touch him and see the life in his eyes.
“I quite like waking up to the sight of your face,” Lucifer said hoarsely.
Chloe laughed wetly, wiping away tears that had found their way onto her cheeks. “You got yourself into some real trouble since I saw you last.”
“I think maybe you were right about those two murderous blackguards,” Lucifer said.
“Oh, really?” Chloe laughed.
Lucifer looked from her to the owl perched smugly at the foot of his bed. “Are you much larger than you used to be, or have I shrunk?”
Linda gave Chloe a testy look. “I hope you’re not expecting me to cure you of your gigantism. Because that’s not the kind of service I provide. That is, unless you have more of those mice around.” She peered around the cottage with interest.
“I’m afraid not, but thank you for your help,” Chloe replied, ushering the owl out the door and closing it firmly behind her.
Chloe made him a hot soup of nettles and mushrooms and willow bark to soothe his damaged throat that he ate eagerly. When the sun set and she began to nod off again in her rocking chair, Lucifer wordlessly pulled back the covers on the little bed.
“No funny business,” he vowed. “Unless you’d like some.”
Chloe’s mouth twitched in a smile and she crawled under the covers beside him. His wooden body did nothing to warm the bed, but his very solid presence beside her was comforting.
“If you feel something hard in the night, it could literally be any part of me,” he murmured against the crown of her head.
“Very funny,” Chloe murmured.
“Thank you.”
She slept very soundly, and woke to the sound of Lucifer moving about the cottage. She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes blearily.
“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Lucifer sang with a grin, turning with a flourish and revealing a wooden plate with three fried eggs on it that he brought to place gently on her lap, a tattered linen napkin slung over his arm.
“Wow, breakfast in bed!” Chloe exclaimed. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve had that.”
“You clearly haven’t spent enough nights with me.”
“Clearly,” she replied, not sure what to do with the spark of excitement that flirting with him ignited in her.
“Most nights with me involve much more than sleeping,” Lucifer clarified unnecessarily.
“Oh, I got that,” Chloe laughed. “It’s just…I’ve seen you without clothes on. And it’s, you know,” she gestured to his pelvis. “Smooth down there.”
Lucifer’s expression darkened. “I hope you’re not suggesting I’d leave a lover unsatisfied. I am more than equipped to give anyone the night of their life.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Chloe thought back to the pair from the inn, dead asleep beside him. “But what about you?”
“Me?” Lucifer echoed, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him. “I suppose…well, I enjoy pleasing others.”
Chloe found the fact that he’d never experienced the same pleasure he gave to others profoundly sad, and ducked her head to focus on her eggs so he didn’t see her expression. It was unfair to taunt him with what he couldn’t have, she thought. Especially considering she knew how much he wished he could be a living man. She decided to change the subject.
“So what happened to you since we parted ways?”
Lucifer settled into the rocking chair, propped his feet up on the bed, and launched into a long, convoluted tale that included jail time, adventures in the City of Simple Simons, and even a short stint spent as a farmer’s guard dog. He was a great storyteller, and she found herself hanging on his every word, gasping at the twists and turns, and laughing with him as he described the clever ways he escaped danger.
When he finished telling his tale, Chloe did the same, describing her little home in the forest, the friends she’d made among the plants and animals, the peace she’d found communing with the life all around her.
“But what will you do now?” he asked, gesturing at her body. “You’re far too large to go back to your home in the trunk of a tree.”
Chloe contemplated this. He was right, but she felt equally at peace here with him. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” she said simply.
Lucifer’s lips parted and he looked at her with naked longing on his face for a brief moment before his expression shuttered. “Well, I have business with a certain fox and cat, as you might expect,” he said abruptly.
Chloe scoffed in disbelief. “Really? Your money is long gone by now.”
“It’s not just that, it’s about revenge for what they tried to do to me.”
“But you’re fine, Lucifer. We’re both fine. You even still have a gold piece left.” Chloe dug in her pocket for the piece that had fallen out of Lucifer’s mouth yesterday and showed it to him. “Maybe you could even send it back to your father to try and make amends.”
She instantly realized this was the wrong thing to say. Lucifer swung his legs off of the bed and leapt to his feet, fists clenching at his side. “I’ll do nothing of the sort. He kicked me out. I owe him nothing!”
Chloe held her hands up placatingly. “I’m sorry, it was only an idea. I just think you could spend your time with the people who—who care for you rather than the ones who hurt you. Everyone needs someone to support them.”
“I don’t need anyone,” Lucifer insisted hotly. At this, his already considerable nose grew several inches.
Chloe clapped her hands over her mouth, stifling a shocked laugh.
Lucifer’s mouth snapped shut and his eyes crossed as he examined his own nose. “What the—bloody hell,” he exclaimed, reaching up to touch it.
Chloe broke into hysterical giggles.
“Is this your doing, too, fairy?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” she choked out.
“Please undo it,” he begged. “I don’t have much going for me at the moment other than my face.”
“I’m not sure I know how,” she said, climbing to her feet to examine it, and ducking as he turned his head and nearly hit her with his gargantuan beak.
“You know, maybe this has its uses,” he mused as her fingers traced the bridge of his nose. “Would you be interested in taking it for a spin?”
“Quiet. I think maybe you should avoid lying if you don’t want it to get any longer,” Chloe suggested.
Lucifer shot her an affronted look. “I’ve never lied in my life!”
With that, his nose grew several more inches. Chloe sighed as Lucifer squawked in indignation.
“Let me try something.” She focused on what his face looked like normally, a face she loved dearly in some deep part of her that went beyond the few brief days they’d spent in each other’s company since she brought him to life. After a long moment, several woodpeckers flew in through the open window and perched on his nose, immediately setting to pecking.
In a few minutes, his nose was back to its normal proportions.
“Thank the stars,” he said, stroking his restored schnozz.
“So, what are you planning to do?” Chloe asked.
“Why should my plans have changed? I’m going to go punish those two murderous creatures and get my hard-earned money back.”
“You’ll leave me again,” Chloe said.
Uncertainty flickered across Lucifer’s face. “You’re welcome to join me,” he said hesitantly.
“I refuse to see you hurt again for the sake of greed and revenge,” Chloe said. “If you died, I think it might kill me too.”
“I won’t die,” Lucifer replied eagerly. “I know their game now.”
Chloe shook her head sadly and looked away, refusing to speak about it any more. He had made his decision and could not be convinced otherwise.
The cottage was filled with a tense silence as he packed a satchel of supplies and she tended the fire.
“Well, I suppose I must go,” he said eventually, his pack slung over one shoulder. “If I wait any longer, their trail will have gone cold.”
Chloe merely inclined her head in acknowledgement, unable to look at him. Lucifer shifted awkwardly from one foot to another, dithering.
“What will you do?” he asked eventually.
She cocked her head thoughtfully. “I think I’ll cross the sea to the west,” she said after a moment. “I’ve heard tell that the land on the other side is full of new and wondrous things. Maybe I can make a new life for myself there.”
Lucifer scuffed his boots on the threshold. “Perhaps I’ll join you there one day.”
Chloe hummed noncommittally.
Lucifer stood there for another long moment before Chloe heard him step out and the door close gently behind him.
The ship Chloe managed to barter for passage on was said to be seaworthy, but she had her doubts. At the very least, both it and its crusty old captain had seen better days. Its hull and deck were weatherbeaten, and the paint that once announced its name was peeling so badly that it was illegible.
Regardless, she shouldered her meager possessions and boarded along with dozens of other people down on their luck, hoping for another life in the land across the sea. She stood at the railing and watched the slender green line of the land retreat towards the horizon as they sailed out to sea, thinking about Lucifer alone and in danger somewhere there, growing further and further away.
Just then, she heard a crack of thunder and looked up with a start. The day, which had seemed bright and pleasant when they set sail, was rapidly darkening with storm clouds. And in no time at all, the wind had whipped the waves up into mighty swells that sent the ship swaying alarmingly as rain lashed the decks. Chloe clung to a nearby rope and watched as the land that had gotten so small and distant grew larger again.
“We’re going to run aground!” a sailor near her cried.
Chloe didn’t quite know what that meant, until there was a great lurch and an awful crunching noise. The ship almost immediately began to list, and both the sailors and passengers ran about in a panic on the deck.
“We’re sinking!” cried an old woman. “Heaven help us!”
Chloe tried to calm the rising terror inside her. She knew how to swim, but had never been in the open sea in the middle of a storm before. The ship began tilting sharply to port, and soon waves were smashing onto the deck, washing people and objects into the sea. Chloe clung to her rope as long as she could, until finally a mighty wave swept her away into the churning water.
She flailed in the chaos beneath the waves, surrounded by thrashing bodies and barrels and bits of wood, unable to figure out which direction she needed to swim in to get to the surface for several long, terrifying moments. Then finally she got hold of a crate that bobbed upwards, pulling her up with it towards the air. She took several grateful gasps, looking around to figure out what direction the shore was in, and then kicking her legs with all her might to get away from the sinking wreck nearby threatening to pull her down with it.
Chloe tried to swim as hard as she could, but it was no use. The old ship sank beneath the waves with one final groan and dragged her beneath the surface once again. She thrashed desperately to swim upwards again, and just when she thought the surface was growing brighter above her, something massive loomed before her. A huge, dark beast that opened its maw and swallowed her whole.
It was terrible inside the belly of a whale. The space was roomy enough, but the thought of there being no way out, of knowing that outside there was nothing but the unspeakable crush of the ocean, brought to the forefront of her mind a previously unknown claustrophobia. Luckily, the whale had also swallowed one of the deck lanterns, so she wasn’t in pitch black, but the relentless movement, the floor tilting backwards every time the whale surfaced and downwards as it descended, made her feel sick. She sat miserably on a fragment of a barrel the whale had swallowed along with her and contemplated the prospect of being digested.
What was either a short while or an eternity later, the whale swallowed once again, and a fresh wave of seawater swept inside, bringing along with it a familiar figure that cursed imaginatively.
“Lucifer!” Chloe cried, leaping to her feet.
The marionette looked at his slimy clothing with disgust. “Ugh,” he groaned. “Remind me never to do that again.”
Chloe flung her arms around his neck. “I’m so glad to see you,” she murmured into his neck. One wooden hand came up to rub her back. Then she pulled back to look at him. “But how are you here? I thought you were off seeking your revenge.”
Lucifer looked down ruefully. “I…may have had second thoughts after I left. I didn’t like the way we parted ways. I didn’t like that we parted ways at all. I went to the harbor to try to catch you before you left, but your ship was already pulling away from the docks when I arrived. I saw the storm blow in, and then the ship began to sink—” Here Lucifer shuddered, some strong emotion passing over his wooden face. “I swam out to rescue you, and saw the whale...”
“But all you’ve done is doom yourself too,” Chloe said sadly. “We’re both trapped in here.”
Lucifer smiled grimly. “Well, better to die together.”
She embraced him again. “I love you,” she mumbled into his wet shirt collar.
He sucked in a sharp breath, his grip on her tightening briefly. “Let’s survive,” he said abruptly.
Chloe pulled back to look at him quizzically. “What?”
He climbed to his feet, swaying slightly as he struggled to find his balance on the soft, pitching floor of the whale’s stomach. “We both got in here, so we must be able to get out.”
The two began to examine the other contents of the whale’s stomach, looking for anything that could help them. Lucifer held the lantern high above his head to cast as much as possible while Chloe sorted through debris.
“Hold the light over here,” Chloe instructed as she examined the contents of a crate near the opening to the whale’s throat. Lucifer swung the sputtering, smoking lantern, and abruptly the flesh around them gave a convulsive heave. Both of them froze, looking around warily.
“What was that?”
“I’m not sure,” Lucifer replied. “But I have a theory.” He brought the lantern closer to the whale’s throat, and sure enough, the convulsion happened again. Almost like a suppressed sneeze. Lucifer turned to Chloe with a grin. “I think we may have our way out. Come here.”
He gestured for her to take hold of him around the waist and wrapped his free arm around her tightly. Then he opened the door of the lantern and brought the smoky flame up to the opening of the whale’s throat. The muscles around them gave a great heave, then another, and then the whale was sneezing, or maybe vomiting, sending them and the other contents of its stomach out into the sea in a great rush.
Chloe did her best to cling to Lucifer as they tumbled out wildly into the water, but she lost him for a few brief, terrifying moments, before his arms looped around her again and his wooden buoyancy brought them both to the surface. Chloe took great, grateful gulps of the fresh sea air. It was still storming, and they were much further from the shore than they had been when the ship sank. Even with Lucifer’s natural tendency to float, both of them could only keep their heads above the churning water with great effort as they swam for their lives towards the rocky coast.
While they were still some ways away from the shore, Chloe’s strength began to fail. Her head slipped below the waves once, and then again, and then she rose again only when Lucifer dragged her upwards.
“I have you,” he gasped. “Come on, Chloe, stay with me! Not that much further!”
“I’m—” Chloe gasped, coughing as she got a mouthful of water. “I’m not sure I can. Lucifer, I’ll only drag you down with me. You can—can make it—”
Lucifer didn’t reply, but she felt him kicking with renewed determination. After what seemed like an eternity of swimming and struggling and barely managing to take each breath, Chloe felt herself being heaved up onto a great, barnacle-coated rock. She coughed up the water in her lungs and, feeling weak as a newborn kitten, rolled onto her stomach to look for Lucifer when he didn’t climb up beside her.
He was hanging desperately on the face of the rock by his fingertips, exhausted.
“Lucifer, come on!” she called hoarsely, extending an arm. He stared up at her, fear and tenderness in his eyes, and reached for her hand. She caught his slippery fingers and clasped them as tightly as she could, but just then his foothold gave way and he slipped downwards off the rock with an alarmed cry, fingers sliding out of her grasp. Chloe watched in horror as the waves tore him away from the shore and brought him back toward the rocks with violence. There was a sickening shattering and snapping of wood against the rock. Chloe screamed in horror as he washed along the shore away from her, battered against the cliffs again and again. She scrambled over the slippery coast after him, until eventually he washed up on a tiny patch of pebbled beach.
“Lucifer!” she cried, running to him, and picking up his battered body. His finely-carved limbs were splintered and dented. His joints were split and twisted. His beautifully-crafted figure had been irreparably damaged. And worst of all, his eyes didn’t even flicker when she called his name. They stared blankly ahead. Dead, like the eyes of a marionette whose strings had been cut.
“No,” she whispered. “No.” Images of Lucifer ran through her mind—memories, perhaps, although she had no idea what they were of. Lucifer smiling and laughing, his brown eyes real and alive and twinkling. The sensation of his hand in hers, warm and comforting. The sight of his tanned, freckled chest. The affection that warmed her chest on the rare occasion that a wayward lock of his dark hair fell across his forehead. “Don’t leave me.”
She leaned down and pressed her lips to his cool, wooden mouth. It was motionless against her for a moment, and then with a flash of blue light that she saw even through her closed eyes, it suddenly softened, and his lips moved. They were wet and chilled with sea water, but they were alive. Not a puppet’s lips, but a man’s, framed by stubble and concealing teeth and a tongue that quickly made its presence very known.
A large hand came up to cup her cheek. She pulled back and looked into a face she knew as well as she knew her own. Lucifer smiled at her fondly. “I told you we’d survive, didn’t I?”
Chloe laughed through her tears, clasping his hand in hers and holding it up in front of him. “Lucifer, look!”
He stared at his hand in perplexity. “Well, would you look at that…” he said wonderingly. “You did it!”
She kissed him again, and he melted against her, then wrapped an arm around her waist and laid her out on the beach beside him.
“We did it,” she corrected him as she caught her breath.
“We will do it, that’s for certain,” he murmured with a smirk, rubbing up against her thigh suggestively. He swallowed her laughter in a kiss.
On the horizon, the sun finally broke through the storm clouds, bathing the beach in warm, golden afternoon light. A woman who was once a fairy and a man who was once a marionette embraced, and for a moment at least, the world was at peace. And those two, at least, lived happily ever after.
Please join us for Chloe’s next adventure!