The Devil’s Dog nod.

What do you know of conquest? In your modern, ugly world, where do you find it? Are you among the lucky, who think they’re free of it? Because there are no Vikings coming down the river, or hordes sweeping down on you, no tanks rolling in, you think you’re safe from violent conquest. That’s the only kind you fear.

Wherever you are in time, history will have been more violent than now, of this you are certain. After thousands of years of knowing you, I’m still surprised by your self delusion. After centuries of something like education, you know very little, and from current trends you’re looking to lose what you have. Help me understand it.

Or, we can talk about me.

Let go of your traditional ideas of who the devil is. Try to forget every picture of me you have ever seen, especially those by Bosch and the like. God knows I love them, but they look nothing like me. I’m more of a classical vision, in black and white. I like my white skin, it’s beautiful in any lighting. I’m lucky that it doesn’t change since I spend a great deal of time in hot, luscious places, where they know how to appreciate a god.

Remember that whatever the century, my tailor is Italian, my attention to detail legendary, my taste impeccable. Except for the part of me that loves bling. I cringe using the word, but you have yet to come up with a better one for the degree it encompasses, hurry up.

Fortunately, there are fascinating periods where bling is king. Anywhere in ancient Greece for example, where I am today, under a blinding sun, surrounded by perfectly ripened grapes. Can you imagine the scent? The intense quiet, buzzing insects disturbing the perfect peace, the kind of sweet that you breathe in, eyes closed.

I’m here to make sure the harvest proceeds without a hitch, never a sure thing in this violent, primitive land. I’ll be back for the wine, and they know it, everything is in perfect order. I don’t need to tell the birds to leave off, they know too. These men don’t expect anything from me but to leave them alone if the wine is good. They have no idea that if it’s really good, I’ll take the vines too, and those who have handled them. This is the third excellent year for these grapes, they’ve been running true, fighting, breaking rules, growing spirit. Where they’re going, they’ll need exactly what they have here. I’ve been watching, minions have been watching, whatever I can replicate, I will. The personnel are already assembled, off they will go.

To hell, I guess. But it’s nothing like you imagine either, they will think they’ve died and gone to heaven. As I do now, soaking up the sun and the scents, this is one of my favourite places, one of their best times. If you think I didn’t follow Socrates around like a shadow, you don’t know me. Why do you think he drank hemlock so stoically? He knew where he was going, a world without limits for a man like him. He was lucky I let him do it, but there is no outarguing him. Whatever. So long as I end up with him.

As much as I love it here, I do have other business. I sweep my cloak over my shoulder and leave the vineyards. I could ride, drive a chariot, fly, if I wanted to, but I want to feel it all on my feet. I walk, down the side of the hill, through a scrubby wood and out onto a road of sorts. Beaten earth, winding close to the shore and sinking down in washes, wedged through rocky outcrops, it’s both torture and delight. Needless to say, my delicate feet, perfectly shaped and quite uncloven as far as I can tell, aren’t used to such treatment. For a moment I wish they were, but then I wouldn’t feel the lacerations and the sticky blood.

Sand and blood, sharp rocks and glorious spiders, salt sea air in my lungs. I don’t need to feel the sea against my skin, I’ve felt it a million times, I know it with every pore, as I know the way. Man, horse, ox, goat, snake, scorpion, vulture, I have been all of these on this road by the coast. I’ve been both lord and slave, I died and let myself be buried here. I have seen the Mysteries from both sides, they’re still boring. I would as soon stay in a hovel (unthinkable), than a temple. They’re best viewed from the outside. In ignorance.

But when they talk of ancient heroes, well, they do know what they’re talking about. In any life and death society, martial skills will count most, defence is a constant need, aggression a valued trait. Those who defend the poets have songs sung for them, those who share their gold will have their stories told. Let me assure you that they’re all true.

In so much as they reflect the values of an age, its knowledge, its needs. Take a Greek warrior from Agamemnon’s army and drop him in Elizabethan England, an Amish settlement, modern Manhattan, see how long it takes to lose him. He will find himself somewhere, anywhere. Archetypes being what they are.

These are the constants, as such there are many, they bore me. I am here for the otherwise. Actually, I’m always looking for the exceptions, good or bad, they make fine reading. Easy to put the best on my bookshelf, quite literally.

So I keep walking, along this breathtaking road that I wish went forever, almost. Oblivious to the disarray of my person, my hair is long and black and sickeningly tangled at the moment. Not my problem. When the wind dies at sunset, I play with it, make it worse and keep walking. I have a long way to go, and I’m in no rush…

I look like a madman, I imagine, tousled robes and bleeding feet, they’re used to those here. As long as I keep moving most of them ignore me. Sometimes I make eye contact, with something lovely, with an old one, a hissing cat, a laboring donkey. All of them want something from me, but I’m walking past them, leaving them where they don’t want to be. If I had a heart so easily touched, I would be hardly creditable, pity is something I leave to my minions. I am smiling.

I am getting closer now, to the village I want. Dogs run out to welcome me and stop halfway, tails tucked, turn and run. I’m somewhat vexed; everyone knows I love dogs. One stays, scruff and starving, he has nothing to lose. I like him immediately, I’ll let him eat whoever he wants. I ask him if he would like to come with me, he nods, lowercase, and that’s his new name. Come along nod, let’s feed you.

Through the village, stop at the butcher’s, settle for some of his wares. I wait patiently for nod to finish. Something to go, perhaps, some kind of bone, I don’t care so long as the dog is happy. Walk through the square a few times, looking lost and consulting a scroll, nod and bone behind me, I make a spectacle of myself. Plenty of attention, all of it confused except for two prostitutes who will take me on regardless of what I am. “Come over here honey, let me fix your poor feet, and anything else that’s wrong with you.” Lush red lips, oddly slanted eyes, no fear in them, some kind of lust. I am tempted, nod has a bone after all…

What do you think I do? I fuck them both into someplace else entirely, leave them gold and some expensive perfume. Ah, those lovely eyes, a few tattoos where I didn’t expect them, they worked marvellously. Nod waits patiently, (not appreciating the forced capital of his name, already he’s learned to have expectations). He saves his bone for what he senses coming. Good boy nod. My feet are clean, ready to bleed again. I feel sleek and well fed, my hair free of knots somehow, the snake inside me coils itself down into sleep.

We walk until I find the hut I want and crouch outside it, nod looks at me, I nod, he nods, he lays down with a contented sigh and starts to chew his bone. Smart dog. I stay squatting, playing with a stick in the dust beneath my feet. Drawing outcomes, picking my favourites. All of my physical senses drugged by the beauty of twilight, this might be a time and place to catch a devil unaware. I leave security at home sometimes, I’m not afraid of much.

Then it’s dark, a black sky that you have never seen since yours has been polluted. The stars come out in their own time and suddenly you can drown by looking up. I shudder, wishing there was a way to hold it, still it, bring it to a halt and keep it like that forever. No god can do it, I could, but I know better. You can’t keep a living thing from living, nightfall happens whether you will it or no.

I come here for my sky, on a night like tonight.

Light within the hut is snuffed out, there is a long time to wait, but in the dead of night she comes out, as drawn to the sky as I am. Looking up and dreaming, she stands still, both feet planted firmly on the earth. Listening to the sound of a dog crunching on his bone, feeling nod’s eyes on her, feeling mine. She doesn’t flinch, or turn, she keeps as still as she can, doing her best to ignore what my eyes are drawing from her. Her voice the merest whisper, “you again, and you’ve brought company this time. You can leave him, then leave.”

I’m not offended, it takes a great deal to offend me actually, and of the two of us, nod certainly looks the most respectable. The irony is in her blindness, and her persistent disdain for me, who has given her so much. Though every word she has heard from my lips has been sincere and I have nothing but praise for her, she will have nothing to do with me. She won’t accept eternal life from me, can you imagine? Not in any form, even the glorious one I will give her.

Understand that her three cats love me, the trees around her hut love me, the walls of her hut would do anything for me, but she will not. I could wish her young so that I might seduce her properly, but she is long past the idea, a creature of mind and soul only now. And such a mind! Such a way with words, I can’t even begin to use my own to describe hers. I won’t even try. Such understanding, clarity of thought, unique visions that she can create with words, the Devil is humbled, he stands in Awe. As valuable a mortal as I could conceive of. She didn’t complain when I brought her here, she knew immediately that she would stay, trading her words for whatever she would find here. I left her here to make more, I’ve been stealing them for years.

She knows this, it has never mattered, I can’t see why it should. Except that now she’s dying. Of nothing in particular, just that fatal way you mortals have of shuffling off. Thank goodness. Can you imagine if none of you ever died? Ah! I never let myself picture it, utterly horrific, too much even for me.

Death comes, but not for her, I need her words, for them I need her mind, for that she has to be alive. For that she has to come to me willingly, ideally. But not necessarily, naturally. I’m here to deal with a stubborn, but quite remarkable woman who has lived in two different centuries, thousands of years apart. She doesn’t come to harness easily.

I kindle a fire to warm her, she comes and faces me across it, I produce a small seat for her. I remind her that all she’s been able to experience firsthand has been made possible by me. Spartan king, island tyrant, priestess, philosopher, she’s met them. Dusty peasant, flowers on the temple steps, hot sacrificial blood, she has spilled it. Bull riders at Knossos, she’s seen for herself that they’re just as she wrote them, thousands of years later. This is proof of my good intentions, how many other women can say they’ve ridden Bucephalus? None. (I had to bribe that horse, he wanted Alexander, not the Lord of Darkness.) I’ve given her everything she ever wanted; she didn’t want me to stop her coming blindness, she doesn’t want to live forever. She doesn’t want to come with me.

 What’s wrong with her?

She looks at me intently, with her otherworldly eyes.

“Just because you can forget who you are doesn’t mean I can. You’re the one who’s mad, if you think anyone comes with you willingly.”

 Ouch. That’s painful. Actually not true, not even close, but it still hurts to hear it. From her.

“Are you so clean then Mary? So pure that you won’t taint yourself with me? We both know better, tell me why you don’t want to live in my hell, which would be heaven for one like you. I can’t imagine you’re afraid.”

At this point nod moves close to me and touches his nose to my shoulder, I automatically rub behind his ears and scratch his throat. Her sightless eyes watch, she smiles at nod, then scowls at me.

“What did you do to that dog to make him accept you? Threaten him? Where does a devil come by a dog?”

I sigh. Apparently, I’m some sort of monster who can’t love animals. All art and literature aside, perfect propaganda notwithstanding, I’m quite fond of all wild creatures, often preferring them to your species.

Certainly, my new dog nod has far more sense than this woman who I’m beginning to see will need to be taken by force. I would wish it any other way; nod agrees and howls his dismay.

I smile with real regret, knowing she can’t see it. She doesn’t have to know how hard it is for me to capture such a woman, like the crudest hunter. Her useless struggles, her face disappearing in my dark winds, even then I can see her feeling it, tasting it. When she’s gone, the fire wanes slowly, we watch it silently. Three cats materialize and wind themselves around my legs, purring, tails flicking. Perfect little liars. Of course I’ll bring them along, I’ll need them to save me from Mary. When the fire finally dies and the stars can be seen again, I look up, breathing as deeply as I can. Beside me, nod picks up his bone, ready to go.

This story is dedicated to the memory of Mary Renault, and her incredible books of ancient Greece. Whatever Greece you see in my stories is hers, I can never know it any other way.