Prospero in Hell by L. Jagi Lamplighter

the carving of the River Lethe. I knelt and retrieved it. It read: THIS IS MY BEST FRIEND ASTREUS.
    My heart thumped oddly in my chest. “Wh-where’s this supposed to go, I wonder?”
    Coming to join me, Mab paused before a figure kneeling just to the left of the river. “Hey, shouldn’t he be drinking from a horse’s hoof? I’ve always heard if you want to drink from the Styx or the Lethe, you have to use…” He stopped talking abruptly and leaned closer to the wall. “Well, I’ll be… it’s Lord Astreus.”
    I moved closer, the Post-It in hand. Mab was pointing just beyond the procession of the Tithing of the Elves, to the scene surrounding the River Lethe itself.
    On one side of the river knelt a lone elf. He held an hourglass-shaped goblet near the bank, as if he prepared to scoop up the river’s waters. On the other side of the river, a lone dark
peri
stood with a similar goblet upraised in merriment. The
peri
was vaguely reminiscent of our favorite incubus, Seir of the Shadows. The expressionless features of the stony-faced elvish knight were definitely those of Lord Astreus.
    Mephisto had portrayed the angels and fairies so vividly. Why had he carved Astreus with no expression?
    I bent closer, running my fingers over the smooth rock forming the handsome face. No, not stony-faced; the knight with the elf lord’s face was grief-stricken.
    I drew back, pondering. Grief was not an emotion elves normally experienced; sorrow yes, but not grief or regret. My brother Gregor believed this was because the elves knew if they allowed themselves to regret, they would be so consumed by their memories of Heaven, now lost to them, that grief would incapacitate them. Yet, Mephisto had masterfully portrayed grief as it might come upon an elf: the hollowness of expression, the glitter of unshed tears in the eye. Even as I wondered, I marveled at the mastery of his craftsmanship.
    Had Mephisto portrayed this grief-torn elf with the face of the Lord of the Winds merely to remind himself of Astreus’s features? Or was there some deeper significance to this scene? The repetition of the face of the queens suggested the first interpretation.
    Mab drew a hand through his grizzled hair, muttering, “How… odd.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Ma’am, I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but last night… I happened to overhear a conversation between Lord Astreus and your brother Mephisto. I… I hesitate to repeat it, because I’ve always been a great admirer of Lord Astreus. But, in light of what I see here…”
    A strange cold sensation came over my limbs, but before Mab could say more, Mephisto burst into the room accompanied by a small circus.
    Dinner was reminiscent of the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Our company included two humans, an incarnated Aerie One, a maenad, a harpy, a yeti, a singing hamadryad who hung from the ceiling and swallowed his dinner whole, a centaur, a little leathery
bwca
still clad in his cleaning apron, and a mermaid who flipped about the pool at the center of the room, flashing her girlish bosom as she leapt from the water to catch tidbits Mephisto tossed to her.
    Afterward, I was able to retreat to the library, a dark, quiet chamber on the second floor that bore a faint fragrance of apples. Curling up in a leather armchair just below a will-o-wisp globe, I pulled out the
Book of the Sibyl
.
    My hand caressed the soft black leather. At last, and when I had nearly lost hope, the secrets of the Sibyl were finally mine! The answers I had been searching for all these years could be here, in this little volume. Compared to that, everything else faded into the background.
    Giddy with anticipation, I drew out the little book. It was a short volume, only a handful of pages, but this was only to be expected, considering that it had originally been written on ancient scrolls. I opened the cover, breathing in its leathery scent. The vellum felt smooth and cool beneath my fingers. I spread the pages and read the