The Devil You Know

Summary: You are caught by a devil in the woods. She wants to talk about deals and you have always been a good listener. 

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“Do you want to hear about my deal?”

The woman across the fire hasn’t looked like a regular traveler for a few hours at least. You thought she was at first, but that was back when the sun sat high in the sky and her hat cast a shadow so deep across her eyes it hid the spark of magic in them. She smiles at you, her teeth a shade too sharp, and waits for you to answer.

The clearing rings with silence following her question. Even the crackling fire falls quiet for a moment. The dark from the woods around you presses against your shoulders like a wall. If you run, she’ll catch you sooner or later. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not even before you reach town. But someday, somehow, she’ll catch you.

“Sure,” you say. You lean back into the tree you’d picked to spend the night under. You have the ridiculous impulse to pull your blanket up and over your head like a child hiding from the dark. You return her smile with a lazy one of your own. Too late for hiding. Too late to reach for the tools in your bag that’re supposed to protect you from things like this. “Tell me about your deal.”

“I was a little girl,” she says. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, spirals of dark curls that seem to move under the flickering firelight. She picks up one of those curls and twirls it around her finger. “My town was starving. Not just my family. Not just me. My whole town. A village of the dying doesn’t wail, you know? Wailing happens when there’s someone around to save you. But when you’re all dying, nobody makes a sound.”

Evil things aren’t meant to be spoken this time of night. You look up at the sky anxiously, but the canopy of the pine you’re under blocks too much of your view. When you look back to her, she’s watching the long line of your throat. You swallow. “You lived.”

“I did,” she says. She drags her attention from the hollow of your throat to the harsh line of your jaw, to your eyes. Hers glow like embers when she captures your gaze. “A nice woman like yourself picked me up. Deigned to decide amongst all those damned and dying and doled her deal to dear, darling me.”

There’s a lot to object to, but you hold your tongue. There’s magic in her words, each one falling like the beat of a drum, inviting you to fall into her rhythm. You could…if you were the sort to be swayed by magic. Instead, you say, “You made the deal?”

“I did,” she says. “Devils are supposed to lay the terms, but this one didn’t. She told me I could pick whatever I wanted for one price. She saw me dying and she saw the ruins that had become of my home and she did not tell me she would save me or them. She asked me to choose one thing.” She examines the ends of her hair and then drops the strands with a sigh. “It is a very cruel thing to make a child decide in that sort of situation, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes. A child should be saved, not made to bargain.”

“I agree,” she says. She watches you like you’ve said something interesting. “How would you have saved me?”

That flusters you. Your fingers tangle in your blanket. “I suppose like today. I would have offered you my water and a portion of my rations. I would have lent you my horse to ride if you were injured and taken you to the next town.”

“Even as my family begged for you to save them too?” She leans forward, so close that you know the heat from the fire must be hitting her face. It sends shadows reaching up from under her chin to cross her cheeks and her eyes reflect the flames like mirrors. “Today, it was only me on the road. Then, my family laid behind me in a cluster, preserving the last of the heat with their own bodies. No food for days, no water for most of that too. I had a younger sister, you know, and an older brother.”

You’ve spent too many days on the road to not know what she’s talking about. The famine is an unpredictable beast, bellowing through some towns and slinking through others. You can imagine the smell of the dust and the filth that accumulates in barren areas, can hear the helpless gasps of the dying like dry branches scraping together, can see the vultures circling on high. The road is littered with families like she’s describing, all clutching each other in their last moments. Why, you’ve seen—

Wait.

You frown. “They laid behind you?”

“All in a pile,” she croons, grinning. This close you can see her teeth are too sharp. Her canines come to points just shy of her bottom lip. “Shivering against the encroaching winter and bemoaning the cruel negligence of the land’s lord.”

The land’s lord is always negligent. You wave that away and say, “But why weren’t you in the pile with them? An older brother and a younger sister…Why did you lay between them and the road the devil approached you on?”

The woman pulls back from the flames, retreating into the shadows. She’s back to watching you again, her smile no longer reaching her eyes. “Who knows? It was a long time ago. Perhaps they no longer thought of me as their bodies wasted away. I certainly didn’t think of them when I made my deal.”

Her words are like smoke, so smooth that they feel like a caress. Her eyes burn in the dark. Ask me, they say, ask me about my deal. You have met many evils on this road and she may yet be one of them. But… You have always been too curious and you can feel your caution dissolving in the face of it like smoke into air.

“I would have saved you,” you say. You nod when the words ring true in your chest. “I would have left your family behind. I would have saved you.”

She stills and the world goes still with her. The gentle breeze brushing through the pine quiets and an owl falls silent mid cry. She studies you, brow furrowing when she doesn’t find what she’s looking for. “You would.”

“I would,” you say. “The funny thing about saving people – it’s selfish. There’s a choice in it. Today I could have continued on my way to town. I could have had a full dinner rather than split it with you. But I saved you because I was lonely and wanted the company.” And, you add silently, sometimes I get tired of looking for answers. Saving her had been an answer, in a way.

“What would you have gotten out of it if you’d saved me and not my family?”

“Satisfaction,” you say. And maybe the shadows are just as deep on your side of the campfire as they are on hers because she shudders when you smile. “Die alone or die together. There are only two options in this world. Who am I to stop them from choosing the more comforting of the two? Who are they to stop me from saving a child from the lonelier?”

“Huh,” the woman says. All at once the movement of the world rushes back. The breeze licks at your cheeks, stealing the suffocating warmth that had stolen over them. A bird takes flight from deep within the woods. “If only you had found me on the road then rather than now. We both might have had better fortune.”

The fire pops between you. The woman seems so much less frightening somehow. You can see the shape of her. She met a devil once, a long time ago, and she went down a crossroads. Now, like the researcher you are, you push for more.

“I guess that depends on the outcome of our meeting,” you say. There’s something bright in your chest now, replacing the sick fear that had bloomed as you realized she wasn’t human. She isn’t – the teeth are proof of that – but there is something human about her. You nod to her. “Tell me about your deal.”

“I was a child,” she says. She sounds hypnotized, her voice dreamy and her eyes distant. “I was starving. My family did not want to share the last of our stores with me. I was dying and a woman came up the road. She offered me a deal. Anything I wanted in exchange for my soul…” Her words drift off.

You lean forward, so close that you can feel the flames of the fire against your face. “What did you want?” you breathe.

Her gaze refocuses on you. She inhales sharply at your appearance, but says, “What could a dying girl want? What dreams could she have? Let me ask her and the make the deal quickly.” She drops the affected voice. “That’s what the devil must have been thinking when she offered me such an open-ended deal. She must have laughed while she asked me, so sure I would waste the opportunity.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t,” she says. She comes up onto her knees and shuffles forward, eyes never leaving yours as she approaches the edge of the fire. “I was a hungry thing, I was. I wanted food and water and to live. Those things the devil knew. But I also wanted revenge for being thrown away by the dying things who laid just behind me.”

“Good,” you say. You mean it. You feel elated at the idea, the memory of her knowing too much in the face of a creature trying to take advantage. You croon the word. “Good.”

She flushes. From the heat? From your words? She holds herself still in front of the flames and the wind rushes through the canopy above. “I knew she was a devil and I knew what she would do with my soul. I knew any deal I made needed to be worth it. So I thought quickly in the moments I had. I never wanted to be hungry and I never wanted to be helpless. I never wanted to be dependent again on luck or family or devils.”

You need to see her better. You find yourself on your knees too and, like this, you meet her eye-to-eye across the flames. “You made a deal.”

“I did.” She grins. “I said, you can have my soul. I said, I only want one thing. I said, I want—” here she draws out the word “—to be you.”

A log crumbles into cinder and sparks fly into the air between you. You feel the shadows pressing in from all around, but you can barely feel their chill. She is like you – a traveler on the road. But the road brought darkness to her doorstep, and she did not let it consume her. No, she sat astride it. She controlled it. She tamed it.

“I have been looking for someone like you,” you say. A confession for a confession. You have traveled this road for years looking for answers. And here she is. Your answer. “I have been looking for you.”

The woman isn’t listening. She smiles up at the sky, hands held palm out beside her. “The magic took hold before she knew what I had done. My soul for changing me into a thing that didn’t need one. My soul for power. My soul for freedom.”

“Yes,” you say. She is beautiful. She is transformed. You leap to your feet. “That’s it! That’s it exactly!” You rush around the fire. She jerks up to her feet, eyes widening, but you aren’t attacking her. You fall to your knees beside her and grab her hands. “You—you are perfection. Wonderful, truly!”

She looks down at you with her flaming eyes, mouth slightly agape. “I—what?”

“Thank you,” you say. You mean it. You are so sincere that you kiss the back of her hands. “I have searched for over a decade for my answer.”

She does not pull away, though her expression is unsure. “An answer to what question?”

“What do we mortals do when the world kills us? Why, we die, of course. But what do we do when the world is cruel? When it bites and claws and murders? When dark things crawl from our nightmares to devour us whole?” You look up at her rapturously. “Why, we become you.”

“I’m…not sure what I’m supposed to say here,” she says. She finally does pull her hands from yours, stepping back. There’s a deep wrinkle between her eyebrows. “This whole day is turning upside down. You know I’m a devil, right?”

“But you were human once,” you say. You sit back on your heels, beaming up at her. “You are the first person I’ve ever met who has bridged the gap between human and supernatural. I am a researcher, you know, and I have the authority to say that. You are unique.”

She flushes, the red across her cheeks darker than the red in her eyes. “I am trying to steal your soul,” she says.

Is she pouting? You nod and fold your hands in your lap, so you don’t reach for hers again. “Yes, I know.”

“If you know then you should run—”

“I want you to have it.”

She gapes at you. Closes her mouth. Presses the heel of her hand to her forehead. “Look. Traveler or researcher, whatever you are. I appreciate your sympathy in regard to my deal so I’ll let you go.”

What? No! “No!” you say. You scramble up from the ground and step towards her. You are a tall woman and she is not. You stop short of her to keep from looming. “Please, please, take my soul!”

“I don’t have a deal for people who want their souls to be stolen,” she snaps. She takes a half-step back and then firms. She glares up at you. “Anyone else would be ecstatic at the mercy I’m showing. Not many people escape a devil once they’ve shared a campsite—”

“I don’t want to escape!” You wring your hands together. “I don’t want us to part! I want to hear more about your transformation and your life after your deal. Do you collect souls to survive? Is it an instinct? Is it for fun? There are so many things I need to ask you!”

“You can ask any devil you find—” Her jaw drops again. “Wait, is that why you saved me? You just save people along this road, hoping they’re devils?”

Usually, yes. But tonight you really did just want some company. It can get awfully lonely traveling alone, especially when the merchants you used to travel with refuse to put up with you any longer. Something about losing too many of their people to the supernatural dangers you seek out.

“Saving people is selfish,” you remind her. “I never said I do it altruistically.”

She actually does take a step back this time. “What do you do with the devils you find?”

“Not all of them are devils—”

“What. Do you. Do. To them?”

You glance guiltily at your bag and then back to her. “If they answer my questions, I let them go. Honestly.”

“I don’t know if I believe you,” she says, but she stops backing up. She purses her lips. “If I answer your questions, will you let me go then?”

You hedge. “I don’t know if I can ask them all in one night,” you say. “If you let me stay with you for as long as I have questions, you can have my soul after.”

“You seem like a troublesome soul to collect,” she says. Her eyes narrow. “You didn’t tell me what you do to devils who don’t answer your questions.”

You widen your eyes and bat your lashes, hoping it looks as innocent as it did when you were a little girl. “They all answer my questions.”

Her nose wrinkles. “Liar.” She looks uneasily in the direction of your bag. “You’re a very troublesome soul indeed.”

“You can smell lies?” you ask, delighted. You want to get your notebook, but you’re worried she’s going to run if you take your eyes off her. “Or is it more of a sixth sense? Can you tell partial truths? What about—”

“How about this?” she blurts out, holding out one hand to stop your onslaught of questions. She looks somewhat harried which is ridiculous. You only just met. She runs a hand through her hair. “I’ll answer your questions.”

“I’ve got a lot of them though so it’d be easier if you took—”

“You can travel with me for as long as it takes,” she says. “In exchange, you won’t do to me whatever you did to those other devils. Andyou’ll stop bothering me about taking your soul.”

“But it would really be much easier if you did,” you say in your most reasonable voice. You wave your hands to your bag. “I’ve got years worth of questions. If you take my soul, it’s guaranteed that I’ll have enough time to ask them.”

“You can’t possibly have so many questions that you need an extended life to ask them,” she says, rolling her eyes. When you don’t respond, her eyes widen. “You don’t, do you?”

“Well, I don’t know,” you say. “I’ve never been able to ask them all before the devil tries to run.”

“Tries to run?” she asks.

You go back to smiling at her.

“The deal—the promise,” she corrects herself hastily, “is this: I’ll answer as many questions as you want for one year. During that time, I won’t run and you won’t… do whatever it is you do to devils that try. In exchange, you won’t ask me to take your soul. Good?”

Not good. You consider her, eyes sliding to the trees just beyond her shoulder. It’s the first time selling your soul would be worth it. She’s uniquely positioned to understand the specific differences between a human and a devil. She can answer all of your questions, but will a year be enough time? The one time you want to use your soul productively and she doesn’t want it.

Then again, a year is an awful long time to negotiate…

You grin. “Deal.”

“It’s a promise,” she says, emphasizing the word. She watches you for a moment, lips pressed tightly. “A promise is not a deal. Say it”

“A promise is not a deal,” you echo obediently.

She doesn’t look like she believes you. “This has been a long talk. You can ask your first question tomorrow morning.”

Ugh, that’s hours away. However, compromising is the key to a good relationship on the road. You nod. “Sounds fair. Do you want me to take the first watch, or…”

“I’m a devil,” she says. She shakes her head, finally turning her back on you to go back to her bedroll. “We don’t need a watch.”

You make the appropriate impressed noises as you both settle in for the night. The fire is low, but the night is unseasonably warm. You watch her from your peripherals, your blanket pulled tight to your chin.

She may be comfortable not setting up a watch, but you aren’t. You’ve seen too many devils try to run away when they think you’re asleep.

You grin into the dark. You can’t wait for morning.