章 14: Because I Love Him
The elevator slowed and came to a cacophonous stop. Hyacinth's heart was beating hard as the doors began to open.
Her heart. Even now its beating tormented her.
Hyacinth stepped out into a great open space. Glowing lava spilled down the walls in torrents painting the massive room red. The floor and ceiling were of utterly black volcanic glass and as she walked Hyacinth glanced up at the copy of herself mirroring her every step.
She saw fear. Fear in her red, cat-irised eyes.
Few demons ever came to this place. It truly was the Nadir, the lowest point of Hell. Despite the lava the air was cold as interstellar ice.
With every fearful step Hyacinth took the silhouetted rectangle of a desk situated in the centre of the huge room grew closer. Someone was sitting behind it, their head down, writing. Hyacinth walked more quickly. It would be dangerous to keep Miss Lucy waiting.
Her clawed feet clicked on the glass and echoed throughout the room. Hyacinth welcomed the sound. The sound distracted her from the increasingly rapid thumping in her chest.
As she got closer the sound of scratching joined the clicking of Hyacinth's feet. Miss Lucy, head down, was writing. She did not look up until Hyacinth was standing right before the desk. She stopped writing, then, and took a small woodcarving in the shape of a donkey and placed it on top of her notes.
Hyacinth took a step back. Demons who had met her had always spoken of Miss Lucy's unearthly beauty, but words did not do that beauty any justice.
Miss Lucy had the statuesque and perfect body of an angel, although she had garbed it in a black suit with a black blouse. A crimson cravat wrapped about her neck provided the only relief of colour in her apparel. The pale whiteness of her skin was stark against the blazing redness of the hair that streamed down to her shoulders like a mirror of the lava-falls behind her. And her eyes were green, the colour of her pride, the overweening pride that had her exiled from Heaven. All demons knew the story.
Miss Lucy let those green eyes slip over Hyacinth's form and she nodded. A smile, a disconcertingly simple smile, free of mockery and malevolence, appeared on her lipsticked lips.
"Hyacinth Thermise," murmured Miss Lucy. Her voice was deep but feminine and behind it echoed all of eternity. "Hyacinth, Hyacinth, Hyacinth... whatever am I going to do with you?"
Hyacinth fell to her knees. "Miss Lucy, I- I've come to appeal for clemency."
"Clemency?" Miss Lucy arched her eyebrows, her smile slipping away. "You do know where you are, do you not, Hyacinth Thermise?"
"I do, Miss Lucy." Hyacinth found the courage to raise her head and look into the Mistress of Hell's eyes. Constellations blossomed and spun within them, but did she see any emotion in particular? It was impossible to say. There was no distance in those eyes. They looked right into her. "I- I had no other choice."
"Yes!" said Miss Lucy. She pointed at Hyacinth and her smile reappeared. "Yes, Hyacinth! You're quite correct. You had no choice. None of us are free to choose, after all." Miss Lucy stood up, then, and Hyacinth saw how tall she really was. She was sporting a hump beneath the jacket: her angel wings, bound hard against her back. No demon had ever seen them.
Miss Lucy slipped around the desk, drawing her fingernails along its glassy surface. "Determinism, Hyacinth. We have no choice but to do what the Power demands, and we have no choice but to accept our punishment for doing so." She stopped beside Hyacinth and leaned over to look directly into her eyes. "Why don't you go and accept your punishment, Hyacinth? Eternity is not so long, after all. The entire universe will be dust and ashes before you know it."
"But it's not fair," Hyacinth whispered.
Miss Lucy laughed. "Nothing is fair, Hyacinth. I learned that the day I stood up to the Power and refused to go along with his stupid little naming-game." She lifted a hand to the demoness's chest and pressed her palm against it. "But I'm not surprised you feel the sting of injustice so deep, since you're sporting nothing less than a living, beating heart."
Hyacinth quailed under Miss Lucy's hand. Her heart raced faster and louder until the whole of the great room resounded with its deep echoing beat. Hyacinth gasped at the pain spilling through her.
"Ah yes, pain." Miss Lucy lifted her palm from Hyacinth's chest. "Perhaps the sweetest gift of the Power. To make pleasure all the greater, they say. And they call me the Mother of Lies!"
Miss Lucy sat back down. She took up her pen again and clicked it against the volcanic glass of the desk. "I suppose you understand now why there are Protocols about interacting with humans, Hyacinth. The Protocols are there to prevent such situations as this, to spare us all pain"
"Yes, Miss Lucy." Hyacinth bowed her head.
The Mistress of Hell sighed. "But then, you are young and inexperienced, rebellious as I was. How old are you Hyacinth?"
"264 years old, Miss Lucy."
"Yes, so very young." She smiled. "But it's a heavy thing at any age to bear the weight of a heart."
"This heart, Miss Lucy," whispered Hyacinth. "I never asked to be given it."
Miss Lucy considered Hyacinth, her green eyes unblinking, her lips pursed in thought. Then she said, "You really don't care for this heart? Is it not exhilarating to feel emotions like a human does?"
"It causes me pain, Miss Lucy." Hyacinth lifted her head, her eyes pleading. "Can't... can't you free me from it?"
Miss Lucy placed her pen back on the desk. Had there been a glimmer of pity in her glacial green eyes? Perhaps it had just been a trick of the light.
"Hyacinth, hearts are the province of humans and of the Power who created them. If the heart were a part of your demonic essence, then I would be able to do as you wish. But alas, it is your human half that has grown your heart, the human part that is responsible for your pain."
Hyacinth nodded. She had known the answer even before she asked. She stared down at her feet. "Then I humbly beg for dissolution, Miss Lucy. I cannot stand this pain anymore, this guilt and shame. Please do not condemn me to an eternity of it."
Miss Lucy sighed. "But no. You're not telling the truth, Hyacinth. There's something else you want. You don't care about being punished. I think you're looking forward to it, actually, an eternity of pain. You think you deserve it. No. What is it that you truly want, Hyacinth Thermise?"
Hyacinth closed her eyes. Miss Lucy had cut through to the truth she'd kept hidden even from herself. "Miss Lucy, I just want to see him one last time."
"Why?"
A whisper. "Because I love him."
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