Shirley Murphy - The Catswold Portal

She could see deep down within the flames, dark shapes moving. Swallowing her terror, she choked out a summoning spell.

She waited, then repeated the spell. When after a long time she thought no Lamia would come, she felt weak with relief. But suddenly something dark shifted within the flames and began to rise.

A creature rose up within the licking flames, dragon-tailed and armored with scales, its woman’s face and jutting breasts covered with bright scales that glinted and changed color in the hot, warping air. Its thick tail lashed at the edge of the pit, dislodging stones that fell away into the flames. The hot air warped and shifted, and the Lamia hung before her—half-dragon, half-woman—its woman’s face fine featured but reptilian. Its mouth was red and wet, its black eyes hungry. Its hands darted out toward her: woman’s hands ending in sharp dragon’s claws. Its voice was a burning hiss. “What power have you, girl, to call me from the pit?”

Sarah had backed away, her mouth too dry to speak.

“Why do you call me, human girl? What do you want?”

“I—I call you to answer my questions.”

The beast lunged at her. “If I answer your questions, what do you offer in return?”

She moved farther from the edge. “I offer nothing. You are bound by my spell to answer me.” Her heart pounded too fast, she couldn’t make her voice steady. “My spell allows three questions.”

As the Lamia laughed, its colors changed, flickering into crimson spots and blue and silver bars that flashed across its breasts and thighs. It leaped at her suddenly, its claws pierced her shoulders and it jerked her into the smoke, swinging her out over the pit. She hung in space above the flames, the heat of molten earth and fire searing her, dizzying and sickening her. Below her, a dozen half-seen beasts writhed and reached, waiting for her to fall. She twisted, fighting the Lamia, sick with terror that she would fall, and she saw the hem of her dress burst afire. She grabbed the Lamia’s arm and stared into its scale-lidded eyes, shouting a spell to save herself. The Lamia’s eyes widened; it shifted, nearly dropped her. She screamed the spell again to ward away harm from herself, and suddenly the beast moved toward the bank and tossed her at the solid ground. She leaped from its claws sprawling, grasping at the earth, her heart thundering as she crawled away from the edge.

She crushed out her flaming hem against the earth and rose to face the Lamia, shaken, still so dizzy she dared not look down into the pit. “Do not touch me again. You are bound by the ancient powers to obey me.”

“I am bound only by my own power or one stronger. Your powers cannot equal mine.”

“I had the power to call you here. I had the power to free myself from your obscene hands.”

Its black eyes blazed, then narrowed. “What is your question?”

“Who am I?”

“Melissa,” it said obediently, its mouth widening in a bloody smile.

A surge of rightness filled her, a wave of excitement. The name seemed right, seemed almost familiar. Melissa. I am Melissa. But a name was not enough. She stared into the Lamia’s hate-filled eyes. “I do not want to know only a name. I want to know who. What person? What family and history? What life did I have that I cannot remember?”

“You asked none of that. You are Melissa.”

“But who ? The question means more than a name.”

“I have told what you required.”

She swallowed back her rage. She did not dare to lose control of herself before this beast. “Tell me about my mother.”

“That is not a question.”

“What—what was the lineage of my mother?”

“Is that your second question?”

“It is.” But even as she answered, she thought she had formed this question, too, unwisely. She had a sharp desire to attack the beast, some part of herself wanted to claw and kill the beast.

The Lamia said, “Your mother was wife to the brother of my sister.”

“That is no answer, it’s a riddle.”

“I have told what you required.”

“But she can’t have been…Wife to the brother of your sister? But my mother wasn’t…that is not possible.”

When the Lamia began to fade, Melissa went rigid. “Child of Lillith! By the Ancient Wizards you are bound. You must answer my third question!”

“Then be quick. It’s cold up here.” It licked its red lips, eyeing her hungrily.

“What—what is the entire truth of my past?”

“Too broad a question. I need not answer that.” It rubbed its dragon hands over its scaly breasts and began to grow indistinct, its body mingling with the smoke.

“By the old laws, you must answer me!” Melissa shouted.

“From—from exactly where and whom, and by what power, can I learn the entire truth of my past?”

The Lamia stopped fading. Its colors were muddied now and sullen. Its voice was hollow, but its eyes glowed at her obscenely through the hot, warping air. “You can learn what you wish from the Toad.”

“Give me the rest of the answer, child of Lillith. By the Ancient Wizards, you are bound to do so.”

The Lamia’s black eyes fixed on her throat. Its claws moved as if to tighten around her flesh. “The Toad sleeps in the dungeons of Affandar Palace. It will tell the past if you can wake it. And if it likes you.”

“No toad could be kept in a dungeon, it would slip out through the bars.”

The Lamia’s colors flashed brighter. “I did not say how big a toad.”

“Well? How big?”

“That is four questions.” It shivered and began to vanish.

“You have not completed the third question,” she shouted.

“What power will I use to make the Toad tell me?”

The beast’s voice was nearly bodiless. Flame and smoke warped her vision. “You need no special power,” it hissed. “Use your wits.” It appeared again faintly, its woman’s shape more dragonlike, its face sharpened to a dragon’s face. Then it disappeared in an explosion of licking flames.

When it was gone she turned from the pit quickly and fled up the cliff to the pony. She stood hugging the warm, sweet-scented pony, her arms around his neck, trying to calm herself.

At last she slid on and let him have his head. He leaped away up the cliff at a gallop, pounding upward as if pursued by the entire population of the Hell Pit. He didn’t slow until they were well away from the valley, on the highest ridges.

Riding, clinging to him, she thought, Melissa…I am Melissa …Something of her true self had been given back to her, a tiny core of rightness. Perhaps now that she knew her real name—like knowing the key spell to potent magic—she could unravel her past.

The pony was climbing the last ridge when suddenly fire exploded in their path and a huge tree stood blocking their way where, a second before, there had been only bare stone. Its branches spread over them broad as a cottage. Its left side was consumed by flame, every branch burned, every leaf and limb was eaten by flame. But the right-hand side was green and alive, the leaves as fresh and tender as the first new shoots of spring.

She calmed the rearing pony and made him stand, though he shivered and trembled. This tree, that had burst suddenly into being before her, was the living symbol of the Netherworld: half of natural life, half of the shifting flame of enchantment. It held her powerfully. And it was the symbol of her own life, too: the half that lived with Mag in the cottage was natural and familiar. The other half was hidden within the flames of some inexplicable enchantment. And she knew that the tree, beneath its licking fires, was healthy and alive. Just as, beneath the secrecy of enchantment, her past was alive.

She did not leave the presence of the tree, the tree left her, vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared. She went on, filled with a strange anticipatory excitement. But then coming down the bank to the cottage she saw Mag’s horse rolling in his pen, and she began desperately to invent a lie.