Valkyrie of Desire

39. The Jabberwaki

Stroke my djinn bottle and sing requests

Elemental of dreams and unrest

I'm not a wraith nor a ghost, dare test

Beware smoky truths and do confess

Deny me and embrace harsh regret

Losing profound logic in your death

—Slip, a djinn of the Pyrrhonist School

Tears well at the corners of Hildr's eyes, and her breath catches on her tongue. The man has her father's face. Proud chin, kind eyes, even the white hairs salting his thin blond mustache—his face as it was a lifetime ago. She narrows her eyes. The same face from her dreams and recovered memories.

Drawing her knife, she points the tip at the black-robed doppelganger. "Who are you?

"Interesting," says the man. "Why would you think your father would be down here?"

A rumble of stone grinds, and Orcs grunt. The giantess and her smaller brothers struggle to hold the weight of a river at bay.

"Are you Jerry?" Hildr lifts her bronze lantern closer to his face.

The man crosses his arms, and shadowy doubles of his limbs trail behind. "I am in the middle of a very delicate ritual. Didn't the wall and the wraith make it clear I was not to be disturbed?" He squints. "Is that Pam and the boys?"

Ruse floats over to Hildr and waves. "I am here also, Nameless Jerry."

Hildr growls. "Explain why Jerry wears my father's face, or, by Phoenix's passion, I will expel you under the noon sun."

The beebo spirit tilts his frog-like head. "He wears a mystic item which creates a face from the expectations of the first person to see him. You do look a lot like your father, more than humans usually do. Was your mother his sister?"

Hildr slashes through Ruse's blue-glowing arm, her blade passing without resistance. Stupid beebo logic.

The robed man clears his throat. "May I get a turn for answers?"

"Okay, Jerry." Hildr sheaths her knife. "You've been down here long enough. Eeffae City needs you."

He frowns. " 'Long enough?' A few days is hardly—"

"Months. Seasons." She motions to her floating companion. "Right, Ruse?"

"Yes. It has been eighty-one days—"

"Impossible." The man huffs. "Unless ..."

He narrows amber eyes, the same tint as her father's and her own. An insane temptation grows to ask this stranger questions only her father could answer. Why? Why did he fail to protect her from Mother?

"Ruse?" He wags his finger at the glowing beebo. "You were Russo Minark? I helped you split. ... Yes, I remember. Gloriana, she taught us how. Though, if I've been here for nearly a season, it was a trick. Where—where is that duplicitous wraith?"

A shadowy silhouette pulls away from the man. Faceless, it copies his movements as he paces within the large chamber lit only by the light of her lantern. What madness infects this man after being trapped alone in such darkness for so long?

Hildr rubs her chin scar. "Is he possessed?"

Ruse floats to the edge of the doorway. "Yes."

Eyes wide, she tilts her lantern to expose the engraved ward on the bottom. "Why didn't you say so?" The light flickers, and she rights it to steady the flame. "Is it the titaness?"