Perspichor, Freelance Explorer

[lb_lee]

Perspichor, Freelance Explorer
Series: None (yet!)
Summary: Perspichor goes into the desert to find out what happened to Emerald Oasis, and instead finds a mummy and a monster.
Word Count: 9200
Warnings: Sex (including that with monsters) is discussed frankly, but none happens in this story. Reference to past mistreatment, including sexual, and magical controlling of someone.
Notes: I am choosing to upload some of my fiction here again, because I've missed doing it, and also because Patreon is TERRIBLE for story hosting. This was originally posted for my Patreon supporters, and I'm considering creating an account on Archive Of Our Own or SquidgeWorld to take advantage of their superior table of contents, story organizing, and ebook format exporting. (I attempted using Smashwords, but Ao3/Squidge are just as accessible and WAY more forgiving and easy to format for.) If you have an opinion on this, you should let me know.


None of it would’ve happened, if it hadn’t been for that mummy.

Perspichor had crossed the Great Dust before, many times, but not this part of it. The Emerald Oasis was the sole major source of water for the area, and the traders and wayfarers over the years had (ahem) dried up. There were conflicting stories as to why, and finally, Perspichor had been hired to investigate.

Up until then, the journey had been uneventful—an endless dome of sapphire sky, the grayish tan of the dust, and the quiet, soothing peeps of the occasional desert animal, which helped her forage a little along the way. The route was blissfully free of people, until she ran across the mummy.

The Great Dust often swallowed up people, caravans, even whole settlements, and it coughed them up just as irregularly. There was no way to tell how long this one had been here, or much about it: it was still mostly buried in dust, its clothes decayed to colorless tatters, and its head was missing. Perspichor wasn’t educated enough to know whether that was due to murder, wildlife scavengers, or just falling apart over the years.

Though no expert on mummies herself (certainly not enough to try digging it out; it’d surely fall to pieces), Perspichor knew that people were always interested in them, especially the local death societies, so she paused to take notes and sketches in her small traveler’s book. As she circled around to view it from various angles, she caught a flash of color. Mostly hidden by the body and the rags was a small book, much like her own. A fellow traveler?

She reached down and carefully tugged the book free. It was held to the mummy by a rotted thin cord that snapped as she lifted it, and unlike her own, this book had a wraparound sealed cover to keep out the dust. Perspichor revised her guess: a wealthy traveler, self-funded perhaps.

The cover had done its work admirably: while it itself was dried and cracked, the book inside remained pristine. She opened it, admired (and envied) the whisper-thin pages, but the handwriting was scribble and she knew that if she started attempting to decipher it, she would get sucked in for hours. The Great Dust was not a safe place to lose track of time in, so with reluctance, she shoved the little book down her cleavage, adjusted her traveler’s robes, and continued on her journey.

Due to the delay, it took until almost sunset to reach the Emerald Oasis, or what was left of it. The atlas society had described it as a small dust-stone fort maintained by a small crew of trade merchants, and while much of the dust-stone was still standing, the fabric canopies and bits of cactus wood had dry-rotted away. The fort’s doors hung open like a gaping mouth, leading to a dark cenote like a throat.

There were supposed to be caves at Emerald Oasis, the source of the waters, but this cenote didn’t look right. Perspichor felt a chill looking at it. What had happened here?

She stepped forward, only for the chill to deepen. Another step, and her teeth felt like they were quivering in their sockets. Two steps back, and she felt fine.

Her misgivings deepened.

She paced around the fort with her walking stick, drawing in the dust the exact boundary of the horrible dank feeling. It went all the way around, no gaps. She tried to push through, but three steps was the limit, and even that made her feel like she was drowning on air. She had to hastily pull back and recover herself, because that wasn’t all she felt.

Under the horrible dankness, she could swear she felt someone (or something) deeply sad and lonely.

“Hello?” she called. “Is anyone there?”

No answer, and it was getting dark. Soon it would be getting very cold, and with the fort impassable, she’d be spending another night out in the open. Much as she hated it, she’d have to dig herself a camp hole and save the exploring for the morning.

“Serves me right for getting distracted with the mummy,” she grumbled as she set down her gear.

As it turned out, Perspichor didn’t end up exploring that morning. The bandits found her first.

By the time she felt their blood-iron desperation, it was already too late, and besides, there was nowhere to run or hide. She woke to one going through her pack, another standing lookout, and a third with a chipped dagger at her throat.

At first, she thought that they were speaking a language she didn’t know, but then she realized that they just had thick, unusual accents.

“What be she, looter?” asked the one with the dagger.

The one going through her pack held up her traveler’s book. “Traveler, like.”

The lookout spat in disgust without looking up. “Better be worth a proper ransom.”

“Hold, hold! This eyes important, eh?” The searcher pulled out Perspichor’s job papers.

The lookout snatched them. He seemed to be the only one who could read, and not very well. His brow beetled and the other two waited with bated breath as he laboriously sounded out the words, “Wayfarer Router Brotherhood.”

“Who be they, then?”

The lookout was getting frustrated at the thought of having to read more, but the other two mostly seemed desperate, so Perspichor risked clearing her throat. When they looked at her, she said, in as calm and casual a voice as she could, “the Wayfarer Router Brotherhood sent me to learn what happened to the Emerald Oasis.”

The lookout tossed the job papers aside with disdain. “A scout! Worthless.”

“Any one of us can tell you what,” said the one with the dagger. “Cursed, the place be.”

“Cursed?”

“You heard the first. No one can walk in, eh? No one can get the water.” The lookout shook his hands, as though longing to reach out and snatch the springs. Out here, water was worth more than gold.

“But the water’s still there?” Perspichor said.

The lookout threw up his arms. “Who’s to know?”

“Even if you get in,” the searcher said, going back to digging through her pack, “the demon be contending.”

Perspichor remembered that sad, lonely feeling wafting up from the hole like a sigh. “Demon?”

“Aye, demon. Blighted big bastard down there, even if someone throws yourself in.”

Perspichor liked to think that there weren’t demons, only beings in the wrong place at the wrong time, but she wasn’t about to argue with armed bandits who felt so certain, especially ones who’d apparently had the time and inclination to test the limits of the curse by throwing people into the cenote. “Well, you won’t get any decent ransom for me,” she said. “There are plenty of scouts, and anyway, I haven’t found anything worthwhile. You should just toss me in the hole and be done with it.”

They squinted at her suspiciously. “You want going in the cursed demon hole?”

She shrugged. “Maybe I can break the curse and get you the water. What would I do with it? It won’t cost you anything, and dying by curse or demon sounds more interesting than exposure or thirst.” It also might prove more negotiable than these three, who she could tell held no good intentions towards her.

The bandits exchanged glances and shrugged, resigning themselves to the madness of scouts.

“As the lady ask.” And the one with the dagger smashed the hilt down on her head.

Perspichor didn’t fully lose consciousness, so she was blearily aware of being grabbed and dragged, a dank feeling of despair, two pairs of her hands at her armpits and ankles, heaving her off the ground. Then there was darkness, the wind in her hair, down, down—

A series of bruising crashes, a searing stab in her ankle, and then true unconsciousness.
…

“Miss? Miss? How fare you?”

Perspichor groaned. Everything hurt. She moved carefully, felt a terrible throbbing in her right leg, but at least nothing else felt broken, just very battered and sore (and wet). She opened her eyes, but it was too dark to make anything out.

“Could be worse, for sure,” she said, and coughed. It felt like her rescuer might’ve needed to squeeze some water out of her. “Thanks to you.”

“Oh! Well, you be much welcome.” The voice sounded rusty, deep as the darkness she’d fallen into, but not unpleasant. She was absolutely certain it was the source of that sad desolate feeling she’d sensed earlier, but now it only emitted wary, bemused curiosity.

Perspichor sat up, carefully. It hurt, and she felt a terrible lump on her head, but manners were manners. She put out her hand. “I’m Perspichor, freelance explorer, but you can call me Percy. I come from the city-state of Marshland.”

“Marshland! Far from here, to be sure.”

“Don’t be impressed. With coal power, getting to the Great Dust is only a three-day trip now, and mostly uneventful. Are you going to shake my hand?”

“Er.” The voice sounded hesitant. “I’m loath to frighten you.”

“You do have hands, don’t you? You surely caught me with something. Did you do that in the dark? How many carrots do you eat?”

“I’m a monster.”

“Yes, yes, but what’s your name?”

“I… was given none.”

“Oh!” She felt like a heel. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made assumptions.”

The monster chuckled, a tectonic sound, and then something warm, wet, and very much not a hand enveloped hers to shake. She realized what it was when the voice came out slightly distorted: “Be not sorry. You couldn’t know.”

The monster withdrew his tongue, whispered something, and a low glow came from fungus and slimy drops and threads hanging from the ceiling. It wasn’t the best light, but Perspichor didn’t complain. If he was a dark-dweller, she didn’t want his eyes to hurt.

The monster was large and lithe, with four legs, a thick, muscular tail, and a raw skull. The body seemed mostly like that of a big cat, but the tail was all wrong, and Perspichor wasn’t enough of an anatomist to recognize the skull species at all; bear maybe? An apex predator certainly, with those strong jaws and sharp teeth. The eyes, however stark the sockets they rested in, were dark and gentle as a cow’s. He had a mane and was otherwise covered in short, dark fur, the exact color unclear in the dim light. Perspichor resisted the urge to pet him; he was clearly a grown monster, not a pet.

“Oh!” she said instead. “You’re handsome!”

Skulls didn’t leave much room for fine emoting, but the monster nonetheless looked flustered. “Er, thank you? You… direct be.”

Perspichor grinned at him. “I am!”

“That… I mean…” Embarrassment and confusion warred, and the latter won. “Be you not frightened of me?”

“Why should I be?” Then, realizing he might have some monstrous image at stake, “I have my family’s blessing you see. You know of Marshland family blessings?”

She expected him to say no, so it was a pleasant surprise for him to say, with the tone of someone reciting something learned by rote: “A family cultivates its blessings, and those that die pass them to the newly born. Yes?”

“Yes! A lot of the fancy families get obsessed with cultivating elaborate blessings, but I was lucky; my great-grandmother had a good, solid one: I feel the intentions of those around me. You don’t mean me any harm, and you are certainly safer than the bandits, so why should I be frightened?”

Perspichor’s parents had regretted that blessing—not because it wasn’t useful, but because of how it had taken hold in Perspichor. The family had harbored hope of her going into diplomacy like MeeMaw (a good, respectable job for a good, respectable family), but instead of becoming a woman of subtlety and intrigue, Perspichor had instead become the bluntest person in Marshland. Why go through all the fripperies when she could just get an honest emotional response from someone and know where they stood?

The monster, for instance, showed no malice, just surprise, bemusement, and a little secret embarrassed thrill of citrus and basil. Perspichor liked it. She would have to compliment him more.

“If you want me to act frightened, I can,” she said.

“No, no, I protest not!” the monster hastened to say. “I mind not. How fare your leg?”

“Oh, it hurts dreadfully. Do you have a sling?”

“Apologies, no. But I may have something better. Can stand, you?”

“Hm.” Sitting up had been bad enough, and she felt woozy as it was. She made the barest attempt before hastily going back down. “No, no, I’m afraid not. Fainting would make this much worse.”

“It would.” The monster hunkered down to get more on her eye level. “The pool over there, next to the one I fished you out of, has healing properties. It might help.”

“A shame I didn’t fall into it in the first place. Let’s try it. Are you all right carrying me?”

His mind blossomed orange flowers. “Yes.”

His tongue broke all illusion that he was some kind of unusual animal. It would’ve been shocking, had Perspichor not steeled herself not to be surprised. His jaws opened, his throat swelled, and out came an enormous glistening mass of muscle, which narrowed to the dexterous fringed tip that he’d used to shake her hand earlier. For this, more strenuous work, he used the muscular body of it, plus judicious motions with tail and limbs to get her up and over his back—not like a rider, but like a corpse or sack of laundry.

He was careful, but it nevertheless hurt agonizingly, and Perspichor couldn’t entirely hide it, which meant the monster felt bad for her, which fed back through her gift and made the hurt worse. She grit her teeth and tried to be transparent, the way she’d learned as a child so as to withstand the sensory roar of hundreds, thousands of human minds. She tried to make herself like glass, like water, letting the pain wash through her, clean and empty, and finally the agony faded to a more manageable level.

His pelt was indeed soft, short and velvety under her hands, and warm too, which was a boon in the cool dampness. He smelled not much different than the caves they were in, and looking up, she could made out rock walls and steep spiraling stairs, carefully hewn but not something she’d want to try even with a splint. They looked manageable for the monster, though, and she wondered why he hadn’t used them.

“Ready be you?” He asked.

She dug her fingers into the ruff of his mane and screwed her eyes shut. “Yes.”

The pool the monster carried her into had its own eerie, gray-green glow, like jade with the sun shining through. (Emerald Oasis did sound fancier, though, she had to admit.) The water was murky as pea soup, freezing, and then began to prickle. Her leg felt pins and needles, then an icy burn. Perspichor began to mutter tenets under her breath, because it was that or move, which would surely hurt even more.

“Apologies,” the monster told her, all dust and dead flowers.

“It’s fine,” she gritted, “pain is sensation, sensation is information, information is worthy of curiosity and interest—ah!”

The water began to froth. The prickling burn intensified. Despite herself, Perspichor began to claw at the monster’s back, trying to drown out the pain with the textures of him, but he neither flinched nor moved.

“Leave shall we?” the monster asked.

“No!” The thought of being dragged out only to go through this again was unbearable. “I can—ow!”

There was a pop and then the water went flat. Perspichor slumped against the monster’s back, panting, then carefully tried her leg.

It still hurt… but it was a dull aching now, like the rest of her body, not the jagged stab of before, and the swelling had gone down. She could even move her foot some, though it probably wasn’t advisable. She would be thankful, once the nausea passed.

“All well?” the monster asked.

“Give me a moment,” she panted. “That was a challenge.”

The monster went still. His mind became calm water, as though this was his default state, waiting. His heartbeat under her cheek was strong, inhumanly slow. Pleasant. Perspichor resisted the urge to rub her face against his fur. That’d be rude, and while Perspichor was the bluntest woman in Marshland, she tried very hard not to be rude.

“You feel nice,” she said instead.

Citrus basil again. “Er… thank you.”

She squirmed a little, and he moved to let her down. What was chest-deep for him on all fours came up to her navel, and she couldn’t see more than few inches. Under her good foot, she felt smooth pebbles, and when she put her bad one down, it took the (water-lessened) weight. Carefully, she limped her way up to dry ground, her desert robes dragging after. The monster came up after her and moved a polite distance away to shake himself dry, which was so canine to watch that Perspichor had to smother back laughter.

“That was unpleasant but fascinating,” she said as she wrung out her skirts. “Is that safe to drink?”

“I have done so all my life, as did my creatrix, but I know not the effect it’d have on you. I advise keeping to the ordinary ones.” He glanced at her chest and hastily looked away, his mind blossoming orange flowers.

“I think you’re pretty too,” she told him, getting more basil for her trouble.

“How much do you hear, exactly?”

“Well, I don’t hear, precisely,” she said, combing her wet hair with her fingers to get the grit out. “I mostly get feelings, sensation—though if someone’s sick, or especially if they’re hurt, that drowns a lot out. There’s always some interpretation involved, and I’m much better with human people than anyone else. You feel different. Nice, though. I like the way your heart feels.”

Some people, even well-intentioned ones, just felt awful. Perspichor didn’t know why, only that she couldn’t be around them: it felt like being trapped with an awful stench. Her older sister’s best friend was like that, a perfectly nice person but utterly unbearable. People like that were among the reasons she’d had to leave the city, to become a freelance scout.

Explorer scouts were sent to remote places for any number of reasons, depending on who hired them. Perspichor’s jobs had involved taking notes and sketches, gathering unusual seeds and furs and bones, assisting cartographers, carrying mail, and investigating various ruins like Emerald Oasis. Solitude didn’t bother her, because she was never truly alone, what with the gentle hum of plants and animals. She could almost always find water (for where there was water, there was life) and things to eat. She rarely had to fear bandits… unless they snuck up on her in her sleep.

The monster felt somewhere between a human and an animal. Humans were always trumpeting themselves, as though declaring, “Here I am, world! Look at me! Aren’t I grand?” Animals were quieter, stiller, though perhaps that was just an illusion, since Perspichor was human herself and thus more tuned to her fellows. The monster’s heart felt… still, and slow, much like the cave waters that bubbled up from the depths. Yes, if she had to pick one thing, she’d say his heart felt like the jade spring they’d just come out of.

His feelings, though, felt humanly familiar. And attraction always came through quite strongly.

“If you’d rather I pretend I don’t notice, I can,” she said. “I don’t mind, but I know some people do. Unfortunately, since we’re the loudest ones down here, there’s no one to distract me.”

“’Tis not my place to notice such things.” The words felt carefully picked, and the garden of his mind felt like it was rearranging stones, just out of her view.

Perspichor shrugged. “I think I’m lovely. If you like my weak chin and stick-out teeth and rolls as much as I do, why should I mind? And you’re not obtrusive about it. Though I should warn you, I don’t enjoy people having sex with me.”

Intense basil now, almost enough to cover the orange. “I wouldn’t—!”

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just easier to say it at the start, before presumptions can set in. Less misunderstanding.” Her hair was as neat as she could make it. She pulled it over her shoulder and braided it into a sturdy brown cable, so it would at least stay out of the way and not get worse. “So? I am being paid to survey this place, after all, even if I am without my traveler’s book.” Though she harbored hope that she could somehow get it back. At the thought, she remembered the mummy’s book and felt for her breast, but to her disappointment, it seemed to be gone: either the bandits had taken it off her, or it’d fallen out into the spring with her, in which case it was surely ruined. She wilted, but continued, “Show me this place.”

Then she tried to put her weight on her bad foot, without the buoying affect of the water.

“On second thought, rest and a stout stick should come first.”

“I may well have one. I shall fetch it for you in the morning; I understand that humans sleep during the night, which it still is.”

“Pfah,” she complained, settling herself carefully on the ground. “I’m so curious that I hate leaving it til morning.”

“It be just as well,” the monster said, settling on the pebbly ground next to her like a sphinx. She resisted the urge to lean against him: it might be forward. “Once you are well, the stricture will drive you from here. You’ll have to leave. ‘Tis how it always goes.”

“But not you?”

“I’m not human,” came the reply. “The creatrix’s stricture was never meant to apply to me.”

“Who was this creatrix?” Perspichor asked, making herself as comfortable as she could.

According to the monster, the creatrix (whose name was apparently so holy that he was forbidden to utter it) had been a mistress of stricture and a demonolater who had conquered Emerald Oasis with an army of monsters.

“All this be before myself,” the monster explained. “I guard, I serve; I do not wage war.”

He had been down alone in the dark for so long that he had no idea how long it’d been. His mistress had tasked him to wait, maintain, and guard, but he couldn’t say what had become of her.

“She left and never returned,” the monster said. “I know not her fate, but her strictures still hold, so perhaps she lives yet.”

Perspichor had to admit that the creatrix had been clever. The Great Dust was sparsely populated, and a demonolater of middling talent and high ambition could become ruler of their own little fief, if tricky enough. This woman had apparently done just that, controlling the water supply, doling it out at exorbitant prices for her own gain. Being a monster-maker, she never had to pay human employees, or fear insurrection, and so she had become her own little tin god of the desert.

Like previous inhabitants of Emerald Oasis, the creatrix had lived mostly in the caves underground, which stayed the same temperature at all times of day and year. In the morning, when Perspichor could move more, the monster promised to show her the lab and library.

“Sleep,” he said. “I shall return.”

On all fours, he paced off into the dark. Perspichor still ached and burned with curiosity, but she was also exhausted, so she decided to take his advice.

When she opened her eyes again, she was wrapped in blankets, feeling less sore, and a stout stick was nearby, less a cane than a staff, with illegible carvings that nevertheless seemed strangely familiar. Even in the better (though still dim) light filtering down from the surface so far above, she decided the carvings weren’t worth bothering with. She was not a creatrix, and only a fool tampered with such things in ignorance.

As though summoned by her waking, the monster came padding out of the darkness, carrying ingeniously perched on his tongue a platter of cave vegetables and fish (cooked and smelling savory), along with a carafe of water.

“You can cook!” she cried.

He set the platter down without spilling. “I can.” His tone was level, but he felt stung.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose I’m just not used to thinking of people with four legs as being able to cook or carry platters like that.”

“My creatrix made me to fulfill her needs,” he said, with a warm hint of amusement like melting butter. “She does not eat raw meat, nor does she carry platters.”

Perspichor dug in and indeed, it was delicious. “How long have I slept?”

“Not long,” he said, though his sense of time might well be different from hers. “Feel you well?”

Perspichor carefully stretched her ankle, and the pain was better, but she still doubted she’d make it very far. “Blight! I so badly wanted to explore today.” And she hated the idea of the monster carrying her around everywhere. She was not a sack of laundry, and he was not a beast of burden.

From the weak sunlight trickling in, she could make out that the pools (the jade one that could heal, the ordinary one she’d first fallen into) led to a sloping sort of corridor, clearly originally natural and then expanded by people. She could just barely discern some cave openings off of it, but the distance was daunting, except for the nearest one. “I can make it to that one, at least.”

The monster hesitated. “It’s a cave of death.”

“Death does not bother me.”

And so he took her there.

This cave was filled with mummified bodies. Unlike the one she’d seen in the desert, most were clearly unnaturally made to stave off damp decay, and their clothes were intact, though mostly old-fashioned: she recognized Wayfarer robes, and the styles of various nomads and traders. There were a few that even had the same cut as the clothes the bandits had worn, though those newer ones had decayed to skin and bones.

“Most of these be before myself,” the monster said, touching them gently with one claw.

“Most?”

She could feel his hesitation, but then he said, “The humans up there throw others down sometimes. Rare they who survive the fall.”

“And your creatrix just kept them down here?”

The monster truly did not want to tell her. She could feel it, like a lagging child tugging at her sleeve. But he said, “Monsters aren’t made from nothing.”

Perspichor was building a caves-low opinion of the monster’s creatrix. It was just as well it seemed unlikely they would ever meet.

Over time, Perspichor came to explore most of the more accessible caves and learn the patterns of the monster’s days as he performed his chores for nobody. He cleaned, he swept, he dusted, handling the implements with his enormous tongue deftly but in a very different way to humans, leaving her wishing she could sketch it in her book. He tended to the gardens and the compost and cooked meals nobody but he was around to eat—mostly pulled from the gardens, supplemented with cave fish and fungus, the latter of which he’d carefully explored eating with the help of the healing spring. (There had apparently been some accidents, but it was the closest thing to excitement he’d had since his creatrix left.) He tended to the mummies.

The last one could’ve been unsettling, but it wasn’t. He never said so, but Perspichor suspected that this was a task given by himself, not the creatrix. He would brush the dead clean with soft brushes and cloths, going as slowly and carefully as he needed, from head to toe. He was never in a rush, and his heart was always still water as he worked. Sometimes he’d change their clothes, doing their laundry for them. He worked mostly silently, but sometimes he’d speak to the bodies softly, like they were sick or tired children—mostly to apologize for bumping or jarring them. The ones that were only skin and skeletons he was especially delicate with, having no sorcery to hold them together. There was something oddly touching about watching someone so big be so careful and gentle, even with the dead who couldn’t respond or notice.

When Perspichor improved enough to see the library, she was delighted. It was beautiful, filled with books—clearly the creatrix had been a rich woman, because these weren’t the mechanical printings that she was used to, but illuminated by hand. These the monster also tended lovingly.

“They be meant for human eyes, not mine,” he said, “but with my creatrix gone so long, her stricture slackened, and it seemed a shame for them to just sit there.”

Perspichor decided to nest down there, since she refused to sleep in that horrid creatrix’s bed, and she spent a lot of her recovery looking through the books, determined to bring them back with her. Mostly, they were dense philosophical tomes on esoteric subjects that she didn’t understand. (She only looked through those enough to ascertain that they held no clues as to how she could use to release the monster from his strictures.) There were a few on practical matters—cave agriculture, medicine—and even one lonely old bawdy romance that was raunchily illustrated. That one showed signs of being well-read.

“Your favorite?” she asked the monster.

By now, he’d grown less abashed around her. “Yes,” he said. “It gave me something to imagine.”

He would need imagination, Perspichor realized. Even after all these years, the monster was compelled by stricture to never leave the caves, just as humans were bound to never enter them of their own volition. He could not use the stone stairs that she had crashed down, and she was dubious of her own ability to get up them with a battered ankle. She had no desire to experience another fall.

“I’m lucky I bounced off all those stairs and into the spring. I’d’ve never survived otherwise,” she remarked.

The spring apparently predated the creatrix, who was no good at healing, and it was powerful, but not miraculous: it could not resurrect and didn’t bother with minor injuries. The rest of Perspichor’s healing, she had to do herself, and while she could manage basics, building an escape was beyond her. As she recovered, she felt the stricture settle onto her like a small animal perching on her shoulders, breathing down her neck: not unbearable, but unpleasant, forever letting her know it was there. It would’ve become maddening if not for the monster’s company. She liked his stillness, especially as her healing progressed and the oasis stricture became all the more noticeable, making her more and more restless. She kept wanting to pace, even though her ankle wouldn’t allow it.

She’d been healing for two weeks when his heart started to itch.

She didn’t know how else to put it. She’d gotten used to the constant, quiet ebb and flow of him, but now it was getting hot, jittery. He tried to hide it, but there was no hiding from her.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He shifted and felt aggrieved. “It be… embarrassing.”

She waited.

He sighed. “The creatrix made me to want the company of people. To enjoy it.”

Accompanying the words was a deep ache, like a bruise hidden from view, but Perspichor didn’t understand.

“Like the mummies?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Not like the mummies.”

Then, Perspichor understood. He had, after all, referred to the creatrix as a demonolater, and stated that she had created him to serve all her needs… apparently even the intimate ones.

Her horror must’ve been apparent, because the monster said, “Be not sorry. She created me to enjoy this.”

That only made it worse. Even the most degraded, brutalized slave at least had the freedom, in their own heart and mind, to hate the one who’d enslaved them. The monster didn’t even have that. Suddenly, Perspichor was glad that this horrible anonymous creatrix was lost, that nobody seemed to know what had become of her, that she’d just disappeared into the dust one day. It seemed a suitably ignoble end for such a person.

Some of her distress must’ve still showed (unsurprising; Perspichor was singularly bad at subterfuge), because the monster felt obligated to reassure her. “I wouldn’t want you to do this for me. You cannot; my mistress be gone, and she created me to only be satisfied by her.”

Of course she did. Of course she had.

Perspichor tried to pull herself together. He had enough to cope with already without adding her own reaction on top of it. “What should I do?”

“Entertain yourself for a time,” he said, padding into a different cave. “I will return when… when it be ended.”

Perspichor tried to settle into the library and leaf through one of the books, but between the itching of the monster’s heart and the restlessness of the oasis stricture, she couldn’t concentrate. The esoteric texts were too dense, the practical ones uninteresting, and the bawdy romance… no. She found herself desperate for her traveler’s book. If she had it, she could focus on sketching, on taking notes, tuning out others’ feelings the way she’d had to back in the city, but the bandits had taken hers, and she couldn’t bear to deface these ancient illuminated manuscripts, even if they had belonged to a terrible person. It wasn’t their fault who their owner was, and anyway, they would be worth a great deal when she got out of here.

There was nothing she could do, and all the while, she could feel the monster’s heart, pulsing and itching with frustrated want. It peaked and surged and flowed, but couldn’t find satisfaction. It felt like a chemical solution being whipped to a froth, a moth hurling itself at a candle flame. She tried hard not to think about what he might be doing; that wasn’t her business. He had not invited her to witness him, and she was not a snoop.

Perspichor’s gift had been passed to her at birth, and so she had quickly lost many illusions that other children had. She had learned early (some would argue too early) what sex was, and what desire felt like. She had also learned early what pain and frustration and loss were. This was the first time the two were mixed so thoroughly in one person, and she couldn’t get away from it. The caves weren’t big enough, and she was too hurt to leave, and he was—he was—

Perspichor snatched the staff and levered herself upright, despite the pang in her ankle. She headed for the staircase spring she’d first fallen into.

It seemed a foolish thing to do, but she was desperate for a distraction, any distraction, and maybe the oasis stricture would stop breathing on her neck if she tried to appease it. Besides, the bandits had taken her traveler’s book, but the desert mummy’s, she was now sure, had not been taken. (Thank goodness for chivalrous bandits, she supposed.) It had been down her breast-band when they had thrown her in here, and it had been gone after she’d been healed, which meant that it had fallen out along the way. If it wasn’t on the shore, then it had to be on the stone stairs or in the spring. If it was on the stairs, then it’d be fine, and if it was in the spring, well, maybe it would dry and become usable and give her something else to think about.

Getting up the stairs on her ankle was horrible. She nearly fell multiple times, hated every moment, and she was grateful, because only pain could drown out the desperate yearning from the monster’s heart. She had, in her previous explorations, gotten her hands on a lantern, and she used it, to no avail: the mummy’s book wasn’t on the stairs.

Gritting her teeth against her pain and the monster’s, Perspichor hobbled her way down the stairs, feeling the stricture drag at her skirts, cursing the wretched creatrix at every step. Never had she so passionately hated someone she had never met, someone whose face she didn’t even know. In her mind, the woman was tall, imperious, and beautiful, but she might’ve been none of those things.

The moment she made it down to the ground, maddened by stricture and sensation, Perspichor hooked the lantern onto the top of the staff and waded into the spring she’d first fallen into. Even the coldness of the spring couldn’t quench the fire of the monster’s heart; it burned like acid, like unshed tears.

The one saving grace was that this spring wasn’t nearly as murky as the healing one. She could see the bottom, though not well with the wildly swinging shadows, and it didn’t get deeper than her chest. Using her feet and the staff’s bottom end, she carefully swept and prodded, hunting for a book that most certainly wouldn’t be usable even if she found it—

There it was!

Perspichor nearly doused the lantern in her haste to get the wretched thing, then hobbled out onto the pebbly shore where she had spent her first night. She wedged the staff into a crack of stone so as to hold the lantern above her head, sat heavily with a muffled curse, and then started digging through the book.

It was… dry.

It was, once again, pristine.

Perspichor undid the cover, flipped through the pages. This time, she did have the time (and ten times the motivation) to decipher that terrible handwriting… which, as she looked at it, became suddenly familiar.

She looked back at the staff, now a lantern rod. The carvings. They weren’t some mystical tongue at all. They truly were just abominable handwriting.

It was a stupid, petty reason to hate the creatrix for that, after everything else she’d done, but Perspichor was in no mood to be gracious, not with the monster’s heart throbbing in her veins. Never before had she strained and focused so hard in the interest of reading the chicken scratch of someone she didn’t like.

This book seemed to be a comparatively new one. There weren’t too many pages filled in, and they were only dated over the course of a month or so—no year listed. Most of them didn’t require much deciphering to recognize. The first few pages seemed to be everyday information, maps and contacts that the creatrix needed constant reference to, presumably copied from her previous traveler’s book. None of the names were familiar, though most of the places were. In this, the creatrix’s book wasn’t much different from Perspichor’s: she too copied over the most necessary items into each new book as she completed the old. The back held pages of figures: tribute owed, money spent and earned. That too was ordinary: Perspichor also tracked her travel expenses accordingly.

In the middle were the spells.

Like most everyday Marshland people, Perspichor didn’t truck with magic. It was dangerous, far too dangerous for the likes of her. Better to rely on the good, ordinary family blessings, which were no more a surprise than family was. Under normal circumstances, she would’ve left this traveler’s book to the Society of the Study of Foreign Sorceries, but this time, she squinted and swore and scrutinized, because she knew that eventually, her ankle would heal, and the stricture would force her out of Emerald Oasis, and even if she somehow escaped the bandits, the monster would again be left here, alone in the dark, with nothing but the dead, the books, and his bindings for company. The creatrix was responsible for all of this, so surely she had the means to end it, and if it wasn’t in her library, it had to be in here.

And so Perspichor puzzled out the titles of each spell, carefully listed at the top of each page:

To Strict an Object to Service and Desire.

To Strict My Domain to Service and Desire.

To Create a Baby.

To Create a Man. (Subheadings: Servant, Warrior, Lover.)

To Strict a Man to Service and Desire.

To Create an Animal. (Subheadings: Meat, Milk, Hide, Burden, Fearsome Aspect.)

To Strict an Animal to Service and Desire.

To Create a Plant. (Many, many subheadings on that one.)

To Create a Garden. (Also many subheadings.)

To Create a Monster. (Subheadings: Servant, Warrior, Pleasure.)

To Strict a Monster to Service and Desire.

And that was it. That was the final one. Nothing but blank pages until the section of figures.

Perspichor made a furious sound and threw the traveler’s book at the wall.

“What’s wrong, Percy?”

Perspichor jumped. She had been so involved, and then so increasingly angry, that she had failed to notice the monster’s approach. His heart had ebbed to a sluggish, miserable pulse, unpleasant but under control, and he seemed tired and unhappy when he curled up around her on the pebbled shore. She understood. She felt the same way.

She curled up into a miserable ball and put her face on her knees. “I know what happened to your beastly creatrix,” she said.

He raised his bony head.

“She went into the desert, succumbed to bandits, thirst, or exposure, and I found her body, mummified and decapitated, in the dust before I came here.” Without raising her face, she pointed at the book in the corner. “That’s her worthless traveler’s book. It’s a hideous cookbook for all the hideous things she has done here, done to you, and not a single word about how to undo them.” She was so frustrated that she wanted to scream.

The monster pulsed sadness for her, but not a bit of surprise. “A creatrix, mistress of strictures, was she, not a destroyer nor an ender.”

“Surely she had to undo her own work sometimes!” The entry on “to Create a Garden” had enough notes attached that it had surely given the creatrix no end of trouble, and Perspichor refused to believe that this horrid woman had allowed herself to be surrounded by monster-weeds for years. “Surely she made mistakes! That cave garden surely took many tries to come right. What did she do when things went wrong?”

“She would take a trowel, or an axe, or myself, and what she made would be unmade the same way you would unmake it.”

Perspichor made a sound of rage and despair and clutched her wet skirts. “I’m not going to kill you! And I’m not going to leave you down here either! Your creatrix was an abominable, heinous creature, and I refuse to be defeated by her when she isn’t even alive!”

To her mortification, she began crying into her skirts. It wasn’t her tears that infuriated her; it was that she knew that the monster was in far worse a position than she was, and he would surely feel compelled to reassure her, which she didn’t want him to do. She didn’t want him to have to do anything. For once, her own emotions were so loud that she couldn’t feel his.

The monster was silent for a long time. When her inner storm looked to be passing, he bumped his skull gently against her leg. “Perhaps there be something we might do.”

His heart felt like a carefully unfurling flower, which quieted Perspichor right away. That was not false reassurance but real hope. She looked up, wiping her eyes. “What is it? Anything you want, petal.”

“Don’t be saying that so quickly, because you won’t be liking it.” But his heart was determined. She could feel that stones-moving-around sensation again, as though he was preparing his argument.

“There is a great deal about being down here that I haven’t liked,” Perspichor said. “Tell me.”

“It’s true, my mistress made mistakes. And at times, she was not in a position to unmake what she had created—for instance, when she had only the parts for one creature, and she created it well but strictured it poorly. Not being an ender, in such circumstance, she would wait a time, so the stricture would fade, and then lay a new, fresh one over it.”

Perspichor thought it over. “It has been a long time,” she acknowledged, “but I’m not a lady of stricture… or of magic at all, I’d say. Even faded, I’m not sure I could overwrite her work.”

“To create requires great skill and power, but strictures, most people can do, at least a little,” the monster assured her. “Were my mistress alive, I would not wager, but she is not and hasn’t been for some time. If you be careful, and allow my assistance, I think it possible to strict me to your service and desire, rather than hers.”

He was right: she didn’t like that at all. She opened her mouth to shout that no, she wouldn’t, she had no desire to be his new mistress and anyway, it was heinous that he’d been strictured to a mistress in the first place; she wanted him to be not her creature, but his own. Then she felt his heart, steady and calm like slow water, and she took a deep breath in, sucking all those words back behind her teeth.

“Tell me why you want that,” she said instead.

His bony face couldn’t smile, but the flowers in his heart bloomed like little suns. “Because it most assuredly be your desire that I be free to leave. With mindfulness and care have you treated me. You shall treat me well until we find someone to liberate me completely.”

Perspichor hated it. She knew full well that the monster had a limited idea of what mindfulness and care truly were. She didn’t want such power over someone. It was repulsive. The monster had catered to her because he was lonely, but he had at least chosen to do it. If he were strictured to her, what choices would he have?

The monster saw her silence, how her fingers twisted in her skirts, and said gently, “I doubt your stricture will be strong, Percy. Trained for this you are not, and thus I should have leeway. The only other choice be: you leave this place, face the bandits, be making your way home and somehow find funds and assistance to do it all again in reverse, so as to come back. Be that not true? In such circumstance, you will first need to break a much bigger stricture on the whole oasis, because I assure you, even if you find some master of endings willing to be bodily thrown down here, he be unlikely to survive the fall. You have met the others who didn’t. In that circumstance, all I can do is sit, wait, and continue obeying the strictures laid upon me—which be less power and control than I would have bound to you.”

Perspichor didn’t say a lot of things. When she was sure they would stay unsaid, that they wouldn’t come spilling out of her when she opened her mouth, she said, “I only do this because you have asked me to.”

He nuzzled her gently, and a low, comforting rumble emanated from behind the sharp teeth. “And that is why I have asked you.”

They got to work.

Perspichor never could have done it without the monster’s help. Magic made her nervous. However, the monster had been created to fulfill all of his mistress’s needs, including the magical ones, and so he coached her through each bit. He could even read the horrible handwriting.

Fortunately, the stricture didn’t require “parts,” as the monster euphemistically put it. It required a lot of cord from the storeroom, doused in a solution mixed of various ingredients, most of which were in the laboratory. The monster fetched most of those, including the bucket of healing spring water, and Perspichor stirred, mashed, and pressed everything together with her bare feet as directed. Mostly, it was smelly and unpleasant, though treading the nettles stung. Perspichor was glad it hurt. Such a business should feel awful, she was sure.

“My mistress needed not all of this preparation,” the monster said apologetically, “but she had power and training, and you do not. I think it best we do it this way.”

Perspichor was inclined to agree. Besides, all the donkey labor gave her some confidence: surely something this arduous had to do something. The final ingredients for the solution were a special kind of shredded bark (also in the laboratory) and blood. Perspichor insisted on giving her own, which the monster found distasteful enough to argue with her about, something she’d found him otherwise reluctant to do.

“It be me asking this of you, so it should be me what gives the blood,” he insisted.

“The creatrix made you,” Perspichor said, poring over To Strict a Monster to Service and Desire, “so if we use your blood, some of her might come into it. I don’t want to chance that. I want her as far out of this stricture as possible. My blood is good, dull Marshland blood, ordinary as muck, much safer.”

The monster rumbled and paced in a displeased, even grumpy way, but he had no refutation. Her blood it was.

There was a gaudy ritual blade in the laboratory, encrusted with jewels and frippery, but Perspichor hated it on sight. She took a kitchen knife instead: if it was good enough for fish meat, it was good enough for her own.

Unfortunately, it was quite a lot of blood needed. Not enough to be dangerous, but enough that she couldn’t simply prick her finger.

“How should we do this?” She asked.

“Your forehead will do,” the monster said.

“I think I lack the strength of character to stab myself in the face,” Perspichor admitted. “Could you do it?”

He could, and his heart was still and cold as he did, as though he had to gird himself to do it. It didn’t hurt as much as she feared, though it did make quite a lot of blood, more than she expected to see coming from her head, and she said as much, right before she fainted.

When she roused, it was to the monster gently blotting her bloody face with the shredded bark. He was apologetic, but she only took the bark from him, threw it into the mortar and pestle, and once she was able to move around again, she ground it all to sludge to be added to the bucket of all the rest. More mixing, a few hours to set, and it turned a deep bloody red. Finally, that part was ready.

Perspichor doused the cords in the mixture, left them to soak overnight, and after a tense, hurried breakfast, it was time. Her ankle was sore, but the oasis stricture was a grim weight, making her feet itch and her mind buzz; she wouldn’t be allowed to stay for much longer. She needed to get out, and the monster was coming with her.

The monster picked up the bucket of mixture with his tongue and set it on the library floor. Perspichor took out the creatrix’s traveler’s book, turned to the page where she’d copied (in her much better hand) the stricture they were doing, and propped it up with a page-holder so she would have both hands free. She looked at the monster, who lay down on the library rug.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“Do it,” he told her.

She pulled the red, dripping cords from the bucket, and she strictured the monster, chanting the words the traveler’s book said.

She bound the monster’s paws. “I strict your actions to my service and desire.”

She tied his jaws shut. “I strict your words to my service and desire.”

She noosed his neck. “I strict your will to my service and desire.”

She bound his limbs to his body. “I strict your flesh to my service and desire.”

Finally, she bound the pouch between his thighs, saying, “I strict your lust to my will and desire.” This part she hated most of all, but he’d made it clear to her that she strict every part of him that she could, since she was incapable of doing all of them. (Originally, the creatrix had bound cord around his heart, lungs, and liver before putting them between his ribs, so as to bind his life, breath, and mind to her service and desire. Obviously, those parts had to be omitted, and she was glad, even though she knew how badly he wished to no longer be bound by this dead woman.)

At last, he lay completely trussed at her feet, like a bird before roasting. She said, “I strict you, in all that you are, to my service and desire.”

She waited, but nothing seemed to happen. The monster couldn’t speak with his jaws bound, but it was hard to resist asking him if she’d done it right.

Then she felt his heart move.

It was a dizzying, bizarre sensation—like the world scooting just a step to the right, under her feet. The monster sucked in a breath through his teeth, then relaxed with a sigh. She didn’t need to ask; she felt his triumph, and an odd loosening.

“Can I untie you now?” she asked.

He nodded, and she pulled out the kitchen knife to free him. As she did, she saw that the cord dye had stained her hands in watery red stripes, like old wounds. It didn’t seem to be coming off. She shuddered.

When he was free, the monster stretched luxuriously.

“Better,” he said. “Much better. Now, let us gather supplies, and we’ll leave this place together.”

Ankle or no ankle, Perspichor was relieved to move around. Her legs ached to march her out of this horrid place. They loaded him with books, supplies, the precious water (including a flagon of the healing spring), and they left up the stairs, Perspichor riding upon his back. He was not her beast of burden, but she couldn’t stand to be in this vile place any longer, and it was faster on him than on her feet.

Outside, the sun was blazing, so high it scalded her eyes, and for the first time, she could see that the monster was a deep charcoal gray, his eyes the same jade green as the healing spring. They blinked frantically, and she gave him a moment to adjust.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “I know it’s bright.”

He stared out on the wasteland of dust and said, “It’s beautiful.”

She smiled. “Will you be all right in the heat?”

“You need me to be, so I shall,” he replied.

Perspichor could feel the bandits outside the fortress, waiting in ambush. Their surprise felt like little fireworks, but they were determined to make the best of the situation, she could tell. She put a hand on the monster’s shoulder, and he stilled. He was a monster made to wait.

The bandits’ desperation and curiosity eventually got the better of them. The one who’d held the dagger peeked around the corner. He yelped at what he saw.

“Hello,” Perspichor said. “I didn’t free the water, as you can see, but I’ve at least freed a friend. Now give me my traveler’s book, please.”

The bandits gave her no trouble, this time around.