The Scholar and the Sphinx

Chapter 1 She did not raise her eyes to look at him. You’ve come to kill me. You’ve come to kill me. He leaned in close. Yes. You knew this was to be. Indeed, I foresaw this. You would dare do this to your own mother? You are not my mother. Mothers nurture. Mothers love. You merely created me. You are me. You are everything that I am, and more. For centuries, I slaved to give you the most valuable gifts from the most powerful creatures— You me. You are everything that I am, and more. For centuries, I slaved to give you the most valuable gifts from the most powerful creatures— Do you expect me to be grateful? To be compassionate because of your intentions for me? No. But you could allow me to simply fade away, like the rest. You have the one gift I truly want. If I do not take it, it will fade away with you. The gift of prophecy can be a curse. You will foresee terrible things that will befall you. I have seen them. You will have no power to stop them. No, you had no power to change what you prophesied. But I am more powerful than you ever were. I will make sure my future is secure. youSuch foolishness. Such talk is almost…human. Ah, there is the difference. You are from the time of gods when you relied on the faith and reverence of humans to give you strength. Without them, you cannot exist. I, on the other hand…it will be my word that decides whether they—whether all things in this world—continue to exist or not. And even though she had foreseen this moment, even though she had already known of the agony to come, the scream of the ancient goddess Nyx sliced through the endless cosmos as she was torn asunder… The scream sliced through the serenity of the house with the sharpness of broken glass. David’s head snapped up instantly at his wife’s panicked cry. He shot up from his writing desk, his daily journaling forgotten, and pursued the sound of the breathless sobbing and the manic rap-rap-rap of shoes skittering down the staircase. “Florence?” David folded his arms around her as she flung herself at him. “Florence, calm down. What is it?” “S…sn…sn…” Florence gulped in air as she clung to David’s shirt collar. “Snake! Upstairs… horrid, black as sin…” David crinkled his eyebrows. Paris was not exactly a city crawling with reptiles, especially in their neighborhood. How a snake would have gotten all the way to the bedroom, let alone into the house at all, was a mystery. Yet in the eleven months that David had been married to Florence, he had never seen her fly into frenzies over figments of her imagination. She must have truly seen something to be this panicked. “All right, all right. Calm down, I’m sure it’s harmless. I’ll take it outside.” “No, no! Do not go up there!” Florence pushed him towards the front door. “You haven’t seen it. It’s…it’s not normal.” “Not normal? How?” Florence took several deep breaths to steady herself. She tucked a stray strand of her strawberry-auburn hair behind her ear before replying in her crisp, elegant British dialect. “I was in the collection room to dust my tea sets, and it was there, on the bureau. It stared at me. And I swear, this…this thing was smiling. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was smiling and leering at me. It had…” She seemed torn between embarrassment and terror. “Eyes! I mean, eyes like you and me. I swear to you, David! Human eyes!” smilingleeringHuman eyesSuch a story would have at one time made David laugh at its ridiculousness. But he had witnessed events in his life, not so long ago, that made him aware that the impossible and fantastic could, in fact, exist. Most men of eighteen, going on nineteen years, may have dismissed such a story, or at the most felt a twinge of curiosity, but David froze as a ripple of icy anxiety scurried up his spine. “You think I’m mad,” Florence said when he did not respond. David shook his head. “No, Florence. I want you to wait outside while I take care of it. It’s probably a garden snake. Maybe the light in the room made its eyes look different from they really are. But it may come down to me having to make a bit of a mess, so I’d prefer if you wait on the porch.” He took her gently by the elbow and started leading her towards the front door. “What if it’s poisonous? We should go find someone who handles animals, or get a constable—” “I’ll join you in a minute. I won’t go near it. Don’t worry.” With a firm hold, he guided her out the door and onto the stoop. The sounds of Paris rattled around them, business as usual. The day was bright and brisk, hardly the kind of weather that reflected the supposed doom slithering about inside the house. “David, please, be careful,” Florence warned. David smiled at her with reassuring warmth. “I’m going to close the door in case it slips past me and tries to sneak out. I’ll be back shortly.” He gave her a comforting kiss before he stepped back inside and closed the front door. The fact was, he did not want to contain the snake because it might get out and attack someone else. If it had wanted to hurt Florence, it could have already done so. Florence was correct; something was not right about this animal, and David knew this because he could already sense an achingly awful presence in the house. Perhaps it was because of his past encounters with the demonic and deadly, but he had acquired a subconscious siren in his mind that was now screaming even louder than Florence had. This snake—this monster—had come looking for him. Armed with an iron poker from the fireplace, David ascended the stairs with soundless steps. His hand gripped the poker handle tightly enough to cause his knuckles to turn white. He climbed to the top, looking down the hallway towards the collection room. Even from a distance, he could hear a faint rustling from that room. His throat tightened. The collections room had originally been a guest bedroom, which he had converted into his personal “Parlor of Collectibles.” It housed his rarest books and a few special trinkets he had unearthed from oddity shops and traveling salesmen. It also was the room in which he kept one special box—a long, polished wooden case that concealed two irreplaceable gifts from…her. No snake had need of anything in that room. No snake would try to steal anything from that room. Definitely no snake had the means with which to pry open a locked case to steal the sacred gifts held within. No snake could do such things, but this was not a normal snake. David crept down the hall, willing his feet not to sprint lest he alert the animal. The poker in his hand seemed to vibrate with an anticipation to bash in some foul beast’s skull. Just outside the door to the room, David paused and waited for another sound from within. The silence only made the rapid thudding of his heart feel all the heavier and sound all the louder. He noticed the sudden stench. He didn’t realize snakes could have odors, and he couldn’t decide at first if this was a pleasant smell or a bad one. It was a meaty, earthy scent that seared his nostrils—it was potent enough that David covered his nose and mouth with the collar of his shirt. He slowly inched towards the edge of the door, tipping his head forward to look into the room. At first, he couldn’t spot anything out of the ordinary: his bookshelves lining the walls, the glass display case of foreign coins and knickknacks, the polished bureau upon which were Florence’s china tea sets and one of David’s displayed violas, the gothic-style mirror above the bureau, the two plump crimson armchairs placed across from one another, the marble pedestal with the Grecian vase. It was all there, not a thing out of place. There it was again. That rustling noise, a rough surface rubbing against another. It was faint enough that it wasn’t easy to determine where it was coming from—at least, not for anyone who didn’t already know what an intruder such as this would be after. David crept towards the bureau, his eyes locked on the bottom drawer. His forehead wrinkled in intensity as he noticed the drawer had been pulled open, no more than half an inch. Using the curved tip of the poker, he hooked it onto the drawer’s handle, standing away at arm’s length as he slid open the drawer to look in. There was the long wooden case, and a moment of relief washed over David to see it was still in its hiding place. But that little black-green tail wiggling out from between the barely parted lips of the case was new. As the drawer opened wider, a flat head wriggled out from the case and looked up at David. Two glistening, pinhead-sized eyes stared at him, and a bright red tongue flicked out, almost mockingly rather than to taste the scents in the air. David stared at it for a little longer, and then let the hand wielding the poker drop to his side. He smirked. This is what Florence had been so frightened of? This miniscule, bug-eyed, barely six inches long… He paused. He narrowed his eyes at the snake. The reptile stared back at him steadily, as if it had been expecting him. David noticed that its tongue was a bit too bright red, its scales a bit too glossy, its eyes a bit too aware. And indeed, those eyes were not the solid black of other snakes’ eyes, or even the yellow or green variety with slitted pupils. Silvery-white orbs with tiny red irises locked onto him. “Who are you?” David asked. The petite python flicked his tongue at David again. It blinked. The snake—a species that possessed no eyelids—blinked. David’s teeth clenched, and he brought the poker up slowly. “I don’t tolerate thieves in my house.” The snake looked at the wooden case, and then back at David. “Oh, is this yours? I was sure this belonged to someone else.” David was taken aback by the deep voice that came out of the tiny animal. It was a voice that was as dark and sticky as pitch, a tone that could make a tiger cower. “You’re not really a snake, are you?” he asked. The snake curled around so its head was upside down. “And you’re not really who I think you are. You don’t look it, anyway…not right side up, not upside down. Perhaps inside out? Would you shed your skin so I can see? Or I could help you peel it off.” “I’ve faced dragons and demons before,” David informed the snake. “I’m not afraid of you.” The lips of the snake pulled back into an awful, hate-filled smile. “Then you’re a fool.” The snake raised its head higher…and higher…and higher…as its body inflated, its scales elongated, and its head widened and bloated. In a few seconds, it was as tall as David, and its oily coils were spilling out of the drawer. But it was its face that made David reel back, for it was not a serpentine façade glaring at him. The red and silver eyes shrunk back into craggy eye sockets, while the protruding nose flattened into a snout and a pointed chin jutted out. The scales on the face lightened into a grayish-green hue as a wide forehead ballooned from the top. It was a human face, albeit not a handsome or remotely pleasant one.