Heraclix & Pomp

CHAPTER 1

Heraclix’s view of his own creation as a birth was much more than idle Romanticism, though this was the zeitgeist that had then begun to take hold of Europe. The new Romantics would have exaggerated the pathos of the event, focusing on the dramatic, under-emphasizing the cold facts and looking for a deeper meaning beyond the banal. But even an enlightened observer would have been compelled to acknowledge that the coming forth of Heraclix-qua-Heraclix was indeed a birth.

He remembered nothing of what came before the womb, though he felt intimations from that pre-existent time that he couldn’t quite form into full realizations. As the will to live slowly fused with his nascent consciousness, his heart, brain, and eyes awakened. Immediately, questions led to posits that led to more questions, and his awareness grew: Who am I? I am I. Where am I? I am here. What is here? It is where I am. What is where? And so forth.

Red.

He knew the color, but he didn’t know how or to what use the knowledge should be put, though he felt a need to act.

Liquid.

He floated in a sort of semisuspended animation, feet above the ground, head below the ceiling, but he knew he wasn’t flying. The weight he felt on his bones would not allow him to fly.

Blood.

He knew the word, knew that blood came from bodies, knew it was not a good thing to be surrounded by it on all sides, which he was.

Air.

He needed air.

Now!

He flailed his arms above his head, seeking purchase, and found it. Each hand grasped something hard, something rough, something that he could use to pull himself up. He stretched and pulled himself through the liquid.

At first, he thought he might fly, after all. Then he found that he was falling out of whatever it was that had contained him into the open air and onto a stone floor. It was bitterly cold, and he dripped with blood, shivering like a newborn.

A large apartment full of bookshelves, beakers, small cauldrons, and musty tomes swept into his vision as he lifted his dizzy head. Behind him was a gigantic cauldron, which must have been his womb. Above him, to one side, stood a thin, trembling old man who filled him with revulsion, despite Heraclix’s best efforts to withhold judgment.

Ah, my boy, you are ready. And you live! the geriatric said. I am your father, boy, and your mother. You are my son, and I shall name you Heraclix.

But Heraclix, driven by an insatiable need to know all he could about the man who had named him, learned the old man’s name, in time: Mattatheus Mowler. Heraclix also learned much more about the old man. Much of it he learned while his master was away on errands. Reading came naturally to Heraclix, though, like many things about himself, he could not say whence the ability came. Nevertheless, the many books and frequent correspondences that Mowler received were too rich a temptation to pass up in those nervous moments between the time the door clicked shut behind Mowler and when the door handle rattled to signal the old man’s return. Heraclix was able, from the journals, letters, and ledgers that he read, to piece together a rough map of his master’s life.

Mowler was very, very old. Unnaturally so. But records or notes or even hints between the lines of the man’s childhood simply did not exist.

Heraclix drew his mental map of the old man, gaining finer and finer resolution the more he read and associated one letter with another. Certain themes emerged like topographical features: details of interest, emotion, and experience. Mowler was a touch insecure, but driven. Driven enough, in fact, that his ambitions and their execution were enough to bury those insecurities and mask them as strengths. His overconfidence veiled a lack of confidence. His sharp wit belied a fear of ridicule. His praise of youth obfuscated his fear of death.

It was the last of these that drove him into a study of the arcane arts. He refused to succumb to the inevitability of aging and death. Mowler’s creation of Heraclix—as the golem learned from the magician’s notebooks—was only an experiment in reanimating dead tissue, another insurance against the grave, though Mowler’s notes made it clear that reanimation, with its attendant loss of memory, wouldn’t suffice for the sorcerer. His mind had to be clear in order to successfully maneuver the Byzantine contractual obligations that he had brought on himself through deals with various devils, demons, and necromancers. He couldn’t afford a legal faux pas.

Heraclix read further and discovered that Mowler was well-connected from top to bottom in the material world, as well as the abyss. His list of contacts and those he referred to as clients ranged from a local beggar who provided him with street-level information to those who had access to the secret chambers of the Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II himself. The golem noted that the designation client was clearly a misnomer for the relationship that Mowler kept with others. The sorcerer’s journals were filled with scorn enough for everyone mentioned, while his letters ranged between sarcastic ridicule and outright berating of the unfortunate addressee. There was ample evidence that the old man was manipulating some of his clients, pitting them against each other in a political and social chess game designed to produce one victor: Mowler. The magician’s tendrils reached outward to grasp at any opportunity to seize power. Heraclix could sense in the man’s writings an unquenchable desire for more, ever more.

This obsession with authority showed clearly in Mowler’s maltreatment of his boy. Despite Heraclix’s gargantuan frame, he couldn’t muster the attitude to fight back against his master’s abuses. Whenever he thought he might lash out, a heavy sense of self-loathing held him back. He felt that he deserved the beatings as penance for some un-remembered sin he had committed before he was even aware of himself. Self-deprecation was endemic to his being. Mowler rained cane blows down on Heraclix’s broad back, screamed epithets into his deformed ears, and committed shameful acts to the rest of his gigantic body. Heraclix suffered willingly those things he did not understand, like a child, all in a spirit of meek obedience for what must have been months.

Then the tiny girl came, and the abject humility began to cave into other, more base, more powerful emotions.

She had arrived like some specimen collected from the fields outside of Vienna. Heraclix had, in fact, mistaken her, at first, for an insect. One day, Mowler brought in a large jar containing something unseen—or unseeable—within it, something that weighed more than the mere jar itself. When Mowler stepped out on some errand, Heraclix plodded over to the jar and shook it, listening for what might rattle about inside, what gave it such mass.

Eep! the jar shouted in protest.

Heraclix dropped the jar, then caught it before it hit the ground. The fear of the beating he would have suffered had he broken the jar overcame his shock at the voice.

Hello? he asked.

Nothing.

He shook the jar again.

Ow! it shouted in a little voice.

This was a strange jar.

I hear you, but I don’t see you.

A light began to glow within the jar, brightening enough to reveal a pair of slowly flapping lacey wings.

Are you a lightning bug? I have heard of such things existing far, far away. He could not recall where he had heard this, but he knew it to be true, like many thoughts and feelings that came to him unbidden.

I am Pomp, a tiny voice said as the light grew, illuminating a female figure whose back was, indeed, surmounted with wings. The voice was difficult to hear, but it was confident, even overconfident. And you are going to free me.

The golem, for Heraclix knew he was a golem by the stitches that sutured his flesh and through his study of Mowler’s books, stared down at the little fairy. I am not going to free you, he said in a rattling, graveyard voice. My master will decide your fate.

You will free me! she said.

No, I won’t, he said.

She put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. Her grass-green eyes glowed from beneath her black bob-cut hair.

You should stand up for yourself, she said. Don’t let that old man push you around. Push back!

Oh, I don’t have the heart for that, he said.

You have a heart inside your chest. I can see its place.

Heraclix looked down at his chest where a massive capital X-shaped scar showed, quite clearly, that she was right.

How do you know it wasn’t just removed, that Mowler hasn’t already carved it out of me?

Because of your eyes. I know one of them.

You are an odd creature, he said.

Not odd like your eyes are odd. And one of them unique!

He looked at her quizzically, trying, unsuccessfully, to narrow both eyes. The right cooperated, the left did not. He hoped that she wouldn’t think he was winking at her.

That red right eye, him I do not know. That big blue left eye, him I know.

Heraclix brought his fingers to his face. His left eye, the one Pomp claimed was blue (he couldn’t see it, after all, and had to take her word for it), was obviously an interpolation to this head, stitched to his face by the sorcerer, he guessed. It was gargantuan, out of all proportion to the socket, or what must have been the original orbital. It was nearly twice the size of the red right eye, as evinced by the raised ridge of scar tissue that gave the eye the appearance of a rictus rather than an eyelid. He found that he could not fully close the lid, only scrunch it down into a tighter circle, like a malfunctioning sphincter.

How do you know my eye? Heraclix asked, both intrigued and irritated by her recollection of a part of him that he could not himself recall.

A set of keys jangled outside the door. Heraclix ran to set the jar back into its place, and Pomp faded quickly into invisibility. Heraclix did his best to follow suit, tucking his bulk back into a closet. The look of fear and pleading on Pomp’s little face was burned into his vision, even as he hid.

Mowler shambled into the room. The magician carried several bags of goods, which he emptied onto the floor after clearing away the sparse furniture: a rough-hewn wooden table and chair. From the bags he pulled a jar of chalk, a bag of silver shavings, several small candles in the form of little tentacles, and, most threateningly, a long, very fine, curved dagger like those the Ottoman merchants at the central market wore. Mowler looked over the collection and said aloud Now, my buzzing friend, my buzzing fiend, we will talk. I have learned your true name since last we met. There will be no negotiations. This time, I will dictate the terms of our agreement.

Mowler spread the chalk liberally on the floor, then used a straight razor to painstakingly gather it into carefully cut piles and lines that formed two circles: one smaller, one larger; the former inside the latter, equidistant at all points. Within the ring this created, he arranged a series of occult sigils, signs of power meant to keep harm at bay, physical or otherworldly. Mowler hummed while building the magic circle. His humming was reminiscent of a funeral dirge. The magician was very much not like a maid doing her chores. But the methodological way in which he did his work called to Heraclix’s mind a dim memory of someone, somewhen, making careful preparations for an event far more joyful than what he thought might take place next. But the harder the golem tried to capture the memory, the further it seemed to slip away from him.

Opposite the protective circle, Mowler carved another chalk ring, this one with an equilateral triangle touching the inside edge of the inner circle. Outside the ring, he gathered other eldritch symbols—these vaguely familiar to Heraclix—then sprinkled the whole of the area with the silver shavings he had brought in earlier. He meticulously cleared the shavings out of the triangle, picking the remainders out with a pair of tweezers under a magnifying glass. He then placed a twisted candle at each of the three chalk line junctures of angle and arc and lit the wicks. The pungent odor of burning hair and fat bloomed into the air with thin ropes of black smoke that reached the ceiling. Mowler closed the apartment window’s shutters and tacked black cloth over them. Only the light cast by the candles remained.

The old wizard gathered up the jar containing the fairy. He also took up the stinger-like dagger, and a large black tome encrypted with another magical symbol—this one in silver, composed of superimposed five-pointed stars slightly adrift from one another, each with extra flourishes and interpolations of other seemingly mystical signs, all wrapped up, as one would expect, in a perfect circle. He took these instruments with him into the protective circle where he sat himself down cross-legged on the floor with a pained grunt, jar to his left, dagger to his right, with the silver and black grimoire open on his lap. Heraclix could feel a certain intensity fill the air, as if a fire were beginning to blaze therein, a fire of cold, rather than heat. The room became decidedly more chilly as Mowler began to chant:

Ia! Ia! Sussilient k’klee!

This he repeated many times—so many, in fact, that Heraclix grew bored of counting. Heraclix felt certain that day had turned to night outside as the wizard continued the mantra. A loud snap seized the golem’s attention. This was quickly followed by a crackling sound that filled the room. The temperature in the room plummeted—both Heraclix’s and the old man’s breath became visible, and frost shot through the room, veining the walls, ceiling, and floor with ice, causing some of the glass instruments in the room to crack or shatter. Heraclix’s skin tightened in the cold, causing his stitches to strain against his flesh.

At this the man, with a deftness and speed that Heraclix had not seen before, set down the book, opened the jar, and grabbed the shivering fairy (whose brittle wings showed laced frost despite her natural invisibility), swept up the dagger, and stood to his full height in the circle. Heraclix could not recall ever having seen Mowler stand so tall and confident. It frightened him.

Mowler lifted the dagger in his right hand—the barely-visible fairy in his left—then brought the two together, sliding the fang of the blade into Pomp. Her yelp was not drowned out by the magician’s change of chants.

Kek kek agl agl nathrak, he said in slowly increasing volume as a form took shape from the candle smoke. A memory started to take shape in Heraclix’s mind, passed into the present, then dissipated before he could fully grasp it. Still, he knew that he had seen something like this before. Somewhere. Somewhen.

Mowler removed the dagger and cast Pomp to the floor between the magic circles. A sparkling mist formed in the circle opposite the wizard. Each drop of blood that escaped from Pomp’s body added to the concrescence of the apparition. A bulbous pair of multifaceted eyes appeared beneath a tall golden crown. Heraclix had seen this manifestation before in one of Mowler’s books: Beelzebub, Lord of Flies. Below the neck, it was dressed sharply—all frills and gaudy lace under a dark purple riding coat. Its claws showed from under the sleeves, needle-like and dripping green venom. The insectile demonic eyes confused the onlookers, so that everyone in the room—Heraclix, Pomp, and the sorcerer—thought that the demon was looking his, her, and his way, respectively. The demon’s proboscis, however, pointed directly at the sorcerer.

It spoke, like the buzzing of a thousand flies, in a tongue Heraclix had not before heard, nor could he comprehend it now. Mowler spoke, but his words were equally meaningless to the golem. The only thing that Heraclix understood at this point was that the magician’s sacrifice of this entirely innocent creature had pushed his fear beyond horror, into rage. He did not have the heart to stand up for himself, he admitted, but his heart couldn’t contain the anger that drove him to stand up for the girl. Enough was enough!

He stepped out of the shadows, determined to kill the old man once and for all. His left eye twitched of its own accord, eager to do the deed. One of his hands clenched open, shut, open, shut, curling into a tight fist then relaxing, slack, as if deciding whether to gently caress or to pummel the sorcerer. Mowler was oblivious, preoccupied with his shouted negotiations with the devil, Beelzebub, who was beginning to show signs of acquiescence: a tilt of the golden-crowned head, the wringing of clawed hands, a tone of measured restraint—even respect—in the buzzing voice. The old man seemed emboldened. His greedy eyes widened in triumph. A maniacal smile scarred his face. His eyes focused in condescension for the Lord of Flies.

Heraclix leaped, propelling his powerful frame at the old man’s back with all the brute strength he could muster.

He might as well have tried to jump through a stone pillar.

A lightning aura around the magician’s circle momentarily flashed as Heraclix hit the barrier. He vaulted backwards almost as far as he had lunged, his body shot through with hot pain that forced him, writhing, to the ground.

Mowler turned, only for a moment, to see what had happened, a mixed expression of curiosity and wicked humor on his face.

And in that split second, streams of flies, each accented with tiny licks of flame, poured into the corners of the room through the eight vertices where the walls, floor, and ceiling met. They shot out like burning black tentacles, a flaming insectoid octopus converging on the sorcerer within his circle, feeling their way to their master’s nemesis. Each of the eight swarms struck at the barrier around the circle, and each was immediately repelled. Mowler, agitated by the flies and the lapse in concentration that Heraclix had caused him, turned with renewed energy and focus toward the demon, chanting again in that unknown tongue, which caused Beelzebub to cringe and cower, dropping to one knee with a weight that shook the floor.

Heraclix was surrounded by flies. His body smoked and portions of him smelled like cooked meat. The wracking pain in his body and head subsided, but the insects persisted. He noticed a few of the flaming insects burrowing between the seams of his flesh, having abandoned the wizard for easier game. The golem swatted wildly, killing dozens of the black fiends at a swing, and showers of sparks spattered across the floor. The swarm left him alone long enough for him to sweep the dead carcasses away, in preparation for the next onslaught.

But the next onslaught did not come.

The reason was as simple as this: corruption begets corruption, and nothing is quite so corrupt as a recently deceased demonic fly, especially one bred from the damned larval soul of a lecher whose acts in life were so debased that Beelzebub had made sure that the miscreant became his servant, rather than letting the erstwhile pervert rise through the ranks of the abyss in the service of some other, less disciplined prince of darkness. Astaroth, Belial, and Dispater were, after all, rather untidy with their demonic hordes.

This dead demonic carcass, its soul fled to the deep pits of larva, condemned to grow into another round of hateful and tortured physicality, ad infinitum, tumbled away from Heraclix’s sweeping hand. It rolled right onto the chalked edge of Mowler’s protective circle, breaching the hallowed barrier, corrupting it with a corpse. A rift opened in the magical protective fabric that had, heretofore, assured the sorcerer’s safety. It took less than a second for the black tentacles to withdraw from Heraclix, reform, and writhe in through the opening. Soon the wizard was crawling with thousands of the fiery biting flies. With the wizard kept busy by his minions, Beelzebub knocked down the candles that anchored his temporary prison. The molten wax cascaded over the binding sigils, creating several paths of escape for the demon. Beelzebub dissolved away into a cloud of flies with the hint of a smile, if such a thing were even possible, then exited the room through a crack in the wall.

Seeing the wizard screaming on the floor, Heraclix took the opportunity to follow the demon’s lead. He picked up Pomp, grabbed a pouch of gold coins that he knew the sorcerer kept near the door—along with a hooded cloak—and reached for the door. He looked back, nearly mesmerized by the cloud of flies, which flew in a vortex, carried aloft by the smoke that was quickly filling the room. Flames spread out underneath the tornado of insects, fanned by their wings. The fire spread in arcs across the floor and slashed up the sorcerer’s robes. A table of broken beakers ignited into flame, setting a wall and the curtains ablaze. As he opened the door, Heraclix could feel air rushing into the room, feeding the increasing inferno.

Heraclix threw on the cloak, cradled the semi-conscious Pomp with one arm and walked out into the darkened street between tall buildings that loomed overhead like a murder of ravens. The eyes and mouths of the buildings’ blue facades soon lit up yellow with lantern light at the first cries of fire! Alarm bells emptied the buildings of their residents. People poured out of their dwellings and ran to see the conflagration. The streets were choked with streams of people as thick as the flies in Mowler’s apartment. Heraclix turned, with Pomp, into an empty alleyway to avoid the crowds.

She looked up at him, alive, but breathing shallow little breaths. You are taking me to stay with you. Why?

He hesitated, cradling her in his arm like a child. I don’t quite know why. I suppose I just feel like I should. It doesn’t seem fair that death should take you.

I have heard in my ears of death, she said. Will I die?

No, the morning is coming. You will see another day, he said, not sure if it was true, but feeling that it was the right thing to say. He sat down in the alley with his back against a wall, still holding her close to his chest to shelter her from the cool air.

She drifted off, for the first time in her eternal existence, into sleep. Heraclix wondered what one who has never before slept might dream for the first time. He wondered, also, if he would ever sleep or dream again. Meanwhile, the rising sun illuminated the walls of Mowler’s apartment building to match the glow of the flame-tongues that flickered out of the windows, one fire to cleanse the night, the other to awaken a new day.

CHAPTER 2

Morning comes, like he said it would. The sun shines and she gets up and flies, free. Tall buildings and alleyways can’t hold her, not here. But she isn’t leaving without a little fun. She is a fairy, after all. How else would she leave a human city?

First, the monks. They are out chanting, so early in the morning, all in a line. They must be disturbing people. She flies under the first one’s robes and yanks on his loincloth. At least she thinks it’s his loincloth. She doesn’t have time to check closely; he is yelping like a beaten dog, and the line of monks is collapsing all around her. Time to go.

Next, the city guards, that pair leaning up against the wall. Too lazy! She slides one of the guards’ daggers out of its scabbard and pokes the other in the rear. The stabbed one shouts. The dagger falls to the ground. A fight starts. Now they will be alert!

And what is this? There, a baby! Fussing in a flower-adorned basket. So high up above the dirty streets where the peasants walk. This child is clean, as clean as the shining marble patio beneath the basket.

Pomp peeks into the apartment. Beautiful paintings of beautiful women and men adorn the walls. Silver trays are strewn with fruit and Turkish Delights. A noble lady dressed in rich silks argues with a servant over a broken vase at their feet.

Maybe this is why the baby is beginning to cry.

It looks like the mother has put the child out for some fresh air, or to keep the noise of its bawling out of the house so she can hear herself yell. She won’t mind if the crying stops. Besides, if she can buy such fine things as silver and silk, she can buy another baby. One that cries less, perhaps.

Pomp lifts the basket up into the air and flies away with it. The mother runs out onto the patio, but it’s too late. The baby stops crying. The mother starts.

He’s heavy, and she sinks, but she doesn’t drop the basket. She arcs down and accelerates. Ahead of her, the air is torn like a cloth. It’s always like this when she travels between the land of men and the land of fairies. The cloth is mankind’s world. Through the torn holes is the land of her sisters, Faerie. She chooses a hole and takes the baby through to her homeland.

She takes care of the boy. He grows—such a strange thing—into a man. He is happy until he is a man. They give him everything he wants, the fairy folk do. Then, now that he is a man, he is unhappy. He is, in fact, very angry.

Why does such a sweet boy grow into such an angry old man? This is Pomp’s question.

Why must I grow old and die? is his question. You all keep on living. You don’t change. I don’t want to change! I don’t want to die!

The afterimage of the angry old man fades, overshadowed and replaced by Heraclix’s engulfing frame above her. He is enormous. He blocks out the sun. But the sun has jumped in the sky. It’s moving faster than usual, Pomp notices. Pomp must be moving faster than usual, too. She is here in the alley; she is there in Faerie; she is here in the alley. How can this be? It is almost too much to think about.

You’re back, she says.

I’m back? I was never gone. You were, he says, amused.

Gone where? I am here—she touched her hands to their respective shoulders—I am always here.

He studies her with the red right eye, the one she does not know.

While you’ve been sleeping, he says, I’ve been thinking, and something’s come to me, an intimation, like knowledge out of nowhere, he scrunches his brows together, but from somewhere.

She looks at him, confused.

He stares at her. You’ve never slept before, have you?

What is ‘slept?’

He has so many words in his mouth that her ears do not know.

A smile tears his face. That’s what I thought. What did you dream about?

What is ‘dream?’

His smile sags back into a scar, which puckers and rolls as he thinks, concentrates, looks for the right words.

What did you see, right before you saw me?

The angry old man.

No, I mean just now, before you opened your eyes.

I see blackness when I close my eyes. It is why I don’t like to do it.

But this time you saw something, didn’t you?

Before I open my eyes to see you, I see the angry old man.

That was a dream. You didn’t really see Mowler, you just thought you saw him.

I see the old man, then I see you.

But that can’t be true. Mowler, the wizard, died before you saw him in your dream. It was an illusion. How could he be there, being dead? How can you be sure it was really him?

She pauses