The Very Best of Tad Williams (31 page)

Gabriel sighed. “Go fix him back up, will you, Metatron? I admit it would be nice if he’d quit doing things like that.”

“I’ve got a better idea.” The girl hurried over, and before Gabriel or Metatron could stop her, she had lifted up the curve of shining bone that had popped out of Adam when he hit the ground. She examined it thoughtfully, then set it back on the ground. After a momentary shimmer of light, the rib was gone and in its place lay another fully formed Adam creature. This one, though, had subtle differences.

“What is that supposed to be?” Gabriel demanded. “It’s lumpy. And it hasn’t got a nozzle!”

“It’s a more sophisticated design,” said the girl. “You won’t see this one always tripping and hitting himself in the plums like the old one. In fact, I don’t even want to call it ‘him.’ It’s named ‘Eve,’ and it’s a ‘her.’

Gabriel was considering an immediate transfer. Somebody must be mortaring up the walls of Hell, and that suddenly sounded like a very comfortable, safe job compared to his current occupation.

“I don’t get it,” said Metatron. “Why do we need a second one? Won’t they fight?”

Sophia stuck her tongue out at him. “You’re just grumpy ’cause mine
is
better
. They’ll get along fine. They can make babies together, like the animals do.”

“We already took care of that! He’s full of eggs!”

“Eeewww!” Sophia shook her head in disgust. “No. Do something different. They can make babies some other way.”

“But what...?”

“I don’t care. Just take care of it.” She looked around in satisfaction, but when she turned her eyes to the sky, reddened now with light of the setting sun, her expression soured. “I just thought of one more thing that’s really dumb that I have to fix.”

Gabriel fought down panic. God was going to have a screaming fit about the lumpy new Adam. What now? “Honestly, Sophia— Miss—it’s getting late. I mean, it’s going to be dark soon, so maybe you should...”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Watch.” She pointed to the sky.

“I don’t see anything.” Gabriel turned helplessly to Metatron. “Do you see anything?”

“Sssshhh. Just watch.” She waited as the sun disappeared behind the west end of the Garden.

“I forgot to tell you,” Metatron whispered. “She got rid of one of the directions...”

“What? You mean there’s only
four
now?” Gabriel gasped. “We’re going to have to redo all the winds and everything...!”

“Now look,” said Sophia. “Don’t you see?”

Gabriel looked up at the sky. With the disappearance of the sun, the stars sparkled against the dark sky like jewels. “See what? It’s lovely. Your father said that was some of our best work...”

“It’s boring. And it’s really
dumb,
too. I mean, you’ve got the sun up there all day long when everything’s already perfectly bright, but as soon as it gets dark and you really need it, boom, the sun goes away! How stupid is that?”

“But...but that was always your father’s plan...”

“No, see, what you need is a nice bright sun for the nighttime, too.” She clearly was not going to accept disagreement. “I’m going to make one.”

“No!” As soon as he saw Sophia’s expression, Gabriel immediately realized he should have spoken more courteously—after all, what if God’s daughter decided the universe didn’t need archangels, either? “I mean, yes! Grand idea! But if it’s sunny all the time...”—he cast about for an excuse—“then...then the cute, furry, iddy-widdy bunnies and kitties won’t get any sleep. Yes. Because the light will keep them awake.”

“Kitties will sleep in the daytime,” she said, scowling.

“Okay, but bunnies! They
love
to sleep! And just think of all the fish up in the trees getting sunburned...”

Metatron leaned toward him. “They’re in the water now, sir, remember?” said the junior angel,
sotto voce
.

“...I mean the birds, yes, the birds, high up in the trees. If the sun’s out all day, the cute colorful little birdie-wirdies will all get sunburned and they’ll be so sad!”

Sophia gave him a withering look. “‘Birdie-wirdies’? My dad must really like you, to let you keep this job.” She shook her head. “Okay, then not a regular sun. Just a little one that doesn’t shine so bright.”

And before Gabriel could invent another excuse, she raised her hands and suddenly a vast, ivory disk hung in the night sky. As Sophia stood admiring it, several unsuspecting birds and even a butterfly or two banged into it, leaving pockmarks on the pearly surface.

“Stupid birds,” she said. “Guess I’ll have to put it up higher,”

The first day of the new week had already come once before, but this time it had a name—Monday. The Lord God showed up in the morning with His coffee in a travel-cup, looking relaxed and fit.

“Good to be back, good to be back,” He said. “Ready to get to work, boys. Still have to figure out how Adam is going to lay those eggs—I mean, anyway that we do it, it’s going to look funny...”

“Uh, now that you mention it, Lord,” said Gabriel, “we wanted to talk to You about that and...and some other things. See, a few changes got made yesterday, while You were gone. Your daughter came and rearranged a few things.”

“My who?”

“Your daughter, sir. Your daughter Sophia.”

God lifted one of His great, bushy brows. “Daughter. Sophia. Mine, you say? But I don’t have a daughter.”

Gabriel was suddenly grateful that God had not seen fit to give the archangel a nozzle like Adam’s, because Gabriel felt certain he would have wet himself. “You...you don’t? But she said she was Your daughter.”

“Impossible. I mean, really, Gabriel, where would I come up with a kid? Just...I don’t know, impregnate a virgin human or something?” He frowned. “Which would mean Adam, since he’s the only one, and he’s not really my idea of...” The Lord God trailed off, staring at the Garden. “What’s going on down there? Why are there two Adams?”

Gabriel swallowed. “I’ll go get Metatron. He was in charge of the whole thing.”

His master was barely listening. “And what’s with the trees? Why is it so Me-blessed
green
?”

When Metatron arrived he quickly realized that Gabriel was planning to throw him under the celestial chariot. To his credit, he did not attempt to return the favor. “But Lord, she was
here
,” he said. “She told us she was Your daughter and that her name was Sophia. Why would we make that up?”

God frowned. “Well, in a few billion years Sophia is going to mean ‘wisdom’—so maybe you’re telling the truth at that.”

“We are, Lord. We really are,” said Metatron.

“I don’t understand,” Gabriel said. “What do you mean, her name’s going to mean ‘wisdom’?”

“Simple. I was sleeping most of the day yesterday—all that parting the darkness from the face of the waters and whatnot turns out to be surprisingly tiring—and suddenly she just...shows up here. Holy Wisdom. I suspect she was a part of
Me
.”

“Wow.” Gabriel had heard his boss say some weird things, but this was right up there. “That’s deep, Lord. Part of you? You really think so?”

“Maybe.” God set His coffee down. “Can’t be positive, of course—My ways are mysterious, right?”

“They sure are, Lord,” said Metatron.

“They sure are.” God laughed and clapped the junior angel on the back, which set a few feathers flying. “So let’s forget about all this for now and get back to work, guys—maybe see if we can get that whole ozone-layer thing cracked before we break for lunch. What do you say?”

“You’re the boss,” said Gabriel.

“Yes, for My sins, I am.” God laughed.

Gabriel hoped He’d still be in a good mood after He saw His first platypus.

“M
am! Mam!” squeed Alexandrax from the damps of his straw-stooned nesty. “Us can’t sleep! Tail us a tell of Ye Elder Days!” “Child, stop that howlering or you’ll be the deaf of me,” scowled his scaly forebearer. “Count sheeps and go to sleep!”

“Been counting shepherds instead, have us,” her eggling rejoined. “But too too toothsome they each look. Us are hungry, Mam.”

“Hungry? Told you not to swallow that farm tot so swift. A soiled and feisity little thing it was, but would you stop to chew carefulish? Oh, no, no. You’re not hungry, child, you’ve simpledy gobbled too fast and dazzled your eatpipes. Be grateful that you’ve only got one head to sleepify, unbelike some of your knobful ancestors, and go back and shove yourself snorewise.”

“But us
can’t
sleep, Mam. Us feels all grizzled in the gut and wiggly in the wings. Preach us some storying, pleases—something sightful but sleepable. Back from the days when there were long dark knights!”

“Knights, knights—you’ll scare yourself sleepless with such! No knights there are anymore—just wicked little winglings who will not wooze when they should.”

“Just one short storying, Mam! Tale us somewhat of Great-Grandpap, the one that were named Alexandrax just like us! He were alive in the bad old days of bad old knights.”

“Yes, that he was, but far too sensible and caveproud to go truckling with such clanking mostrositors—although, hist, my dragonlet, my eggling, it’s true there
was
one time...”

“Tell! Tell!”

His Mam sighed a sparking sigh. “Right, then, but curl yourself tight and orouborate that tail, my lad—that’ll keep you quelled and quiet whilst I storify.

“Well, as often I’ve told with pride, your Great-Grandpap were known far-flown and wide-spanned for his good sense. Not for him the errors of others, especkledy not the promiscuous plucking of princesses, since your Great-Grandy reckoned full well how likely that was to draw some clumbering, lanking knight in a shiny suit with a fist filled of sharp steel wormsbane.

“Oh, those were frightsome days, with knights lurking beneath every scone and round every bent, ready to spring out and spear some mother’s son for scarce no cause at all! So did your wisdominical Great-Grandpap confine himself to plowhards and peasant girls and the plumpcasional parish priest tumbled down drunk in the churchyard of a Sunday evening, shagged out from ’cessive sermonizing. Princesses and such got noticed, do you see, but the primate proletariat were held cheap in those days—a dozen or so could be harvested in one area before a dragon had to wing on to pastors new. And your Grand-Greatpap, he knew that. Made no mistakes, did he—could tell an overdressed merchant missus from a true damager duchess even by the shallowest starlight, plucked the former but shunned the latter every time. Still, like all of us he wondered what it was that made a human princess so very tasty and tractive. Why did they need to be so punishingly, paladinishly protected? Was it the creaminess of their savor or the crispiness of their crunch? Perhaps they bore the ‘bookwet,’ as those fancy French wyverns has it, of flowery flavors to which no peat-smoked peasant could ever respire? Or were it something entire different, he pondered, inexplicable except by the truthiest dint of personal mastication?

“Still, even in these moments of weakness your Grandpap’s Pap knew that he were happily protected from his own greeding nature by the scarcity of princessly portions, owing to their all being firmly pantried in castles and other stony such. He was free to specklate, because foolish, droolish chance would never come to a cautious fellow like him.

“Ah, but he should have quashed all that quandering, my little lizarding, ’stead of letting it simmer in his brain-boiler, because there came a day when Luck and Lust met and bred and brooded a litter named Lamentable.

“That is to say, your Pap’s Grandpap stumbled on an unsupervised princess.

“This royal hairless was a bony and brainless thing, it goes without saying, and overfond of her clear complexion, which was her downfalling (although the actual was more of an uplifting, as you’ll see). It was her witless wont at night to sneak out of her bed betimes and wiggle her skinny shanks out the window, then ascend to the roof of the castle to moonbathe, which this princess was convinced was the secret of smoothering skin. (Which it may well have been, but who in the name of Clawed Almighty wants smoothered skin? No wonder that humans have grown so scarce these days—they wanted wit.)

“In any case, on this particularly odd even she had just stretched herself out there in her nightgown to indulge this lunar tic when your Great-Grandpap happened to flap by overhead, on his way back from a failed attempt at tavernkeeper tartare in a nearby town. He took one look at this princess stretched out like the toothsomest treat on a butcher’s table and his better sense deskirted him. He swooped scoopishly down and snatched her up, then wung his way back toward his cavern home, already menu-rizing a stuffing of baker’s crumbs and coddle of toddler as side dish when the princess suddenfully managed to get a leg free and, in the midst of her struggling and unladylike cursing, kicked your Great-Grandpap directedly in the vent as hard as she could, causing him unhappiness (and almost unhemipenes). Yes, dragons had such things even way back then, foolish fledgling. No, your Great-Grandpap’s wasn’t pranged for permanent—where do you think your Grandpap came from?

“In any case, so shocked and hemipained was he by this attack on his ventral sanctity that he dropped the foolish princess most sudden and vertical—one hundred sky-fathoms or more, into a grove of pine trees, which left her rather careworn. Also fairly conclusively dead.

“Still, even cold princess seemed toothsome to your Great-Grandpap, though, so he gathered her up and went on home to his cavern. He was lone and batchelorn in those days—your Great-Grandmammy still in his distinct future—so there was none to greet him there and none to share with, which was how he liked it, selfish old mizard that he was even in those dewy-clawed days. He had just settled in, ’ceedingly slobberful at the teeth and tongue and about to have his first princesstual bite ever, when your Grandpap’s Pap heard a most fearsomeful clatternacious clanking and baying outside his door. Then someone called the following in a rumbling voice that made your G-G’s already bruised ventrality try to shrink up further into his interior.

“‘Ho, vile beast! Stealer of maiden princesses, despoiler of virgins, curse of the kingdom—come ye out! Come ye out and face Sir Libogran the Undeflectable!’

“It were a knight. It were a big one.

“Well, when he heard this hewing cry your Great-Grandpap flished cold as a snowdrake’s bottom all over. See, even your cautious Great-Grandy had heard tell of this Libogran, a terrible, stark and wormy knight—perhaps the greatest dragonsbane of his age and a dreadsome bore on top of it.

“‘Yes, it is I, Libogran,’ the knight bellows on while your G’s G got more and more trembful: ‘Slayer of Alasalax the iron-scaled and bat-winged Beerbung, destroyer of the infamous Black Worm of Flimpsey Meadow and scuttler of all the noisome plans of Fubarg the Flameful...’

“On and on he went, declaiming such a drawed-out dracologue of death that your Great-Grandpap was pulled almost equal by impatience as terror. But what could he do to make it stop? A sudden idea crept upon him then, catching him quite by surprise. (He was a young dragon, after all, and unused to thinking, which in those days were held dangerous for the inexperienced.) He snicked quietly into the back of his cave and fetched the princess, who was a bit worse for wear but still respectable enough for a dead human, and took her to the front of the cavern, himself hidebound in shadows as he held her out in the light and dangled her puppetwise where the knight could see.

“‘Princess!’ cried Libogran. ‘Your father has sent me to save you from this irksome worm! Has he harmed you?’

“‘Oh, no!’ shrilled your Great-Grandpap in his most high-pitchful, princessly voice. ‘Not at all! This noble dragon has been naught but gentlemanifold, and I am come of my own freed will. I live here now, do you see? So you may go home without killing anything and tell my papa that I am as happy as a well-burrowed scale mite.’

“The knight, who had a face as broad and untroubled by subtle as a porky haunch, stared at her. ‘Are you truly certain you are well, Princess?’ quoth he. ‘Because you look a bit battered and dirtsome, as if you had perhaps fallen through several branches of several pine trees.’

“‘How nosy and nonsensical you are, Sir Silly Knight!’ piped your Great-Grandpap a bit nervous-like. ‘I was climbing in the tops of a few trees, yes, as I love to do. That is how I met my friend this courtinuous dragon—we were both birdnesting in the same tree, la and ha ha! And then he kindly unvited me to his home toward whence I incompulsedly came, and where I am so happily visiting...!’

“Things went on in this conversational vain for some little time as your Great-Grandpap labored to satisfy the questioning of the dreaded dragonslayer. He might even have eventually empacted that bold knight’s withdrawal, except that in a moment of particularly violent puppeteering your great-grandsire, having let invention get the best of him while describing the joyful plans of the putative princess, managed to dislodge her head.

“She had not been the most manageable marionette to begin with, and now your Great-Grandpap was particular difficulted trying to get her to pick up and re-neck her lost knob with her own hands while still disguising his clawed handiwork at the back, controlling the action.

“‘Oops and girlish giggle!’ he cried in his best mock-princessable tones, scrabbling panicked after her rolling tiara-stand, ‘silly me, I always said it would fall off if it weren’t attached to me and now look at this, hopped right off its stem! Oh, la, I suppose I should be a bit more rigormortous about my grooming and attaching.’

“Sir Libogran the Undeflectable stared at what must clearful have been a somewhat extraordinate sight. ‘Highness,’ quoth he, ‘I cannot help feeling that someone here is not being entirely honest with me.’

“‘What?’ lied your Great-Grandpap most quickly and dragon-fully. ‘Can a princess not lose her head in a minor way occasional without being held up left and right to odiumfoundment and remonstrance?’

“‘This, I see now,’ rumbled Sir Libogran in the tone of one who has been cut to his quink, ‘is not the living article I came to deliver at all, but rather an ex-princess in expressly poor condition. I shall enter immediately, exterminate the responsible worm, and remove the carcasework for respectful burial.’

“Your Great-Grandpap, realizing that this particular deceptivation had run its curse, dropped the bony remnants on the stony stoop and raised his voice in high-pitched and apparently remorsive and ruthful squizzling: ‘Oh, good sir knight, don’t harm us! It’s true, your princess is a wee bit dead, but through no fault of us! It was a terrible diseasement that termilated her, of which dragon caves are highlishly prone. She caught the sickness and was rendered lifeless and near decapitate by it within tragical moments. I attempted to convenience you otherwise only to prevent a fine felon like you from suckling at the same deadly treat.’

“After the knight had puddled out your grandsire’s sire’s words with his poor primate thinker, he said, ‘I do not believe there are diseases which render a princess headless and also cover her with sap and pine needles. It is my counter-suggestion, dragon, that you thrashed her to death with an evergreen of some sort and now seek to confuse me with fear for my own person. But your downfall, dragon, is that even ’twere so, I cannot do less than march into the mouth of death to honor my quest and the memory of this poor pine-battered morsel. So regardless of personal danger, I come forthwith to execute you, scaly sirrah. Prepare yourself to meet my blameless blade...’ And sewed on.

“
Clawed the Flyest
, thought your Great-Grandpap,
but he is deedly a noisome bore for true.
Still, he dubited not that Sir Libogran, for all his slathering self-regard, would quickly carry through on his executive intent. Thus, to protect his own beloved and familiar hide for a few moments languorous, your Pap’s Pap’s Pap proceeded to confect another tongue-forker on the spot.

“‘All right, thou hast me dart to tripes,’ he told the knight. ‘The realio trulio reason I cannot permit you into my cavernous cavern is that so caught, I must perforcemeat give up to you three wishes of immense valuable. For I am that rare and amnesial creature, a Magical Wishing Dragon. Indeed, it was in attempting to claw her way toward my presence and demand wishes from me that your princess gained the preponderosa of these pine-burns, for it was with suchlike furniture of ever-greenwood that I attempted pitifullaciously to block my door, and through which she cranched and smushed her way with fearsome strength. Her head was damaged when, after I told her I was fluttered out after long flight and too weary for wish-wafting, she yanked off her crown and tried to beat me indispensable with it. She was a pittance too rough, though—a girl whose strength belied her scrawnymous looks—and detached her headbone from its neckly couchment in the crown-detaching process, leading to this lamentable lifelessness.

“‘However,’ went on your Great-Grandpap, warming now to his self-sufficed subject, ‘although I resisted the wish-besieging princess for the honor of all my wormishly magical brethren, since you have caught me fairy and scary, Sir Libogran, larded me in my barren, as it were, I will grant the foremansioned troika of wishes to
you
. But the magic necessitudes that after you tell them unto my ear you must go quickly askance as far as possible—another country would be idealistic—and trouble me no more so that I can perforce the slow magics of their granting (which sometimes takes years betwixt wishing and true-coming.)’