ONE
The ground opened up as though it was going to bring forth some fantastic spring: red shoots, as fine as needles, appeared in their tens of thousands, pierced the ground. A V-shaped crack, each side perhaps twenty feet in length, then erupted into the burgeoning ground, the apex no more than a yard from the spot where had goat-boy’s crate sat.
The steady reverberation of immense machinery increased, and it now became apparent what purpose this machine had, for an opening appeared in the earth, resembling the upper part of some vast reptilian snout. The red needles continued to grow, both in size and number, especially around the lip; and at a certain point, when they were perhaps a foot tall, or taller, they produced hosts of tiny purple-black flowers, which gave off a scent no one in the vicinity (except, of course, Qwaftzefoni) was familiar with. It was pungent, like a spice, but there was nothing about it which would ever have persuaded a cook to use it: the smell, and thus presumably the taste, was so powerful that it would have overwhelmed even the most robust dish. It made everyone feel faintly nauseated by its forcefulness. Eppstadt, who had the weakest stomach, actually threw up.
By the time he’d done with his retching the extraordinary growth-cycle of the plant had carried it past its peak, however. The small black blossoms were in sudden decay, their petals losing their colour. And now, in its autumnal mode, the odor of the plant changed. What had been an almost unbearable stench a minute before became transformed by the process of corruption, its foulness entirely evaporated.
What remained was a scent that somehow conspired with the souls of everyone present to put them in mind of some sweet memory: something lost; something sacrificed; something taken by time or circumstance. Nor, though their bodies were held in the embrace of these feelings, could they have named them. The scent was too subtle in its workings to be pinned to any one memory. All that mattered was the state of utter vulnerability in which it left everyone. By the time the Hell’s Mouth had opened, and Lilith herself had stepped out of its long, sharp shadows, her flora had enraptured the souls of everyone who stood before her. Whatever they saw from now on, whatever they said and did, was colored by the way the scent of her strange garden had touched them.
Was she beautiful? Well, perhaps. The scent was beautiful, so it seemed she — who was shaped by the scent, as if her body were carved from perfumed smoke — was surely beautiful too, though a more logical assessment might have pointed out how curiously made her face was, close in colour and texture to the blossoms in their corrupted phase.
Her voice, that same less dreamy assessor might have said, was unmusical, and her dress, despite its great size and elaboration (tiny, incomprehensible motifs hand-sewn in neat rows, millions of times) more proof of obsession, even of madness, than of beauty.
Even allowing that there can be not one good and reliable report of Lilith, the Devil’s wife, some things may still be clearly said of her. She was happy, for one. She laughed with almost indecent glee at the sight of her caged child, though she plainly saw that he was missing a hand. And her manner, when dealing with the Duke, was nothing short of exquisite.
“You’ve suffered much for your crime against my household,” she said, speaking in cultured English, which — by some little miracle of her making — he understood. “Do you have any idea how many years have passed since you first began to hunt for that idiot child of mine?” She stabbed a finger at the creature in the crate, who started to moan and complain, until she shushed him by slapping the bars.
The Duke replied that no, he did not know.
“Well, perhaps it’s best you don’t,” Lilith told him. “But what you should know, because it will shape what happens when I have taken this imp of mine back, is that your natural life-span-your three score years and ten-was over centuries ago.”