The artefact came to me when I was a girl, in a brown parcel left on Mum’s doorstep. But the doorstep wasn’t Mum’s anymore, was it? She’d left two months ago. Neighbours whispered, saying she’d never return.
I rarely opened the door anymore, except for the milk delivery. But the milk deliveries had stopped last week when the bill came due, unpaid. The pantry was almost empty.
Up and down the manure-strewn street, carts and horses lumbered past and delicate ladies swished by in thick wool petticoats. No one watched the orphan girl. I’d become invisible. I snatched up the parcel and brought it inside, unwrapping it by the empty fireplace. I’d run out of wood, too.
I ripped open the paper and withdrew a simple wooden instrument, turning it over in my gloved hands. Holes lined the length of it, with one larger opening at the top. A flute. Hadn’t Mum played the flute? When she was a girl? Or had it been the harp? Funny, for all the days we had spent together, she hardly spoke of herself.
I turned the brown paper over, but there was nothing written on it anywhere. Not even an address. Just the flute.
The wood was strangely cool against my lips. I didn’t know how to play, and yet… I breathed, and a delighted sound trilled from the instrument. I pulled back. Had I done that? I tried again. I experimented with the little holes, dipping my fingers over each one and bending the notes to entirely new ones, though they all emerged from one breath.
I let my breath drop – and the earth shook.
A shimmering black figure appeared from nothing, stacking from the ground up, into a bare resemblance of a physical human form. It bowed, and its face reshaped into the grin of a – was it a man?
“Daughter of the Song,” he said in a deep, ringing voice like one might hear at an opera house. “The bargain has been set. I’ve come to answer your Call. Name your deepest desire, and you shall have it.”
I dropped the flute on the stone floor. I thought I heard it shatter, but when the demon went to retrieve it, the instrument was whole. He sprang lightly to his feet as though earth’s gravity had yet to take any dominion over him, and held it out to me.
I took it, too stunned to do anything else.
“Erm,” I managed.
“Your Mother sent me,” the demon grinned. Indeed, demon seemed the right nomenclature, for I now saw two curling horns set amidst a mess of curly black hair. Under the deep purplish skin and black eyes, he was, I couldn’t help but note, rather cute. In fact, the more I looked at him, I thought his face might’ve changed – his jawline narrowing and his cheeks growing more plump. And did he get a little shorter to match my height?
“But you’re just a boy,” I managed.
He gave another flourishing bow. “At your service, my Lady.”
“My Mother was a Lady. I’m just a girl.”
“Nobody’s just one of anything, surely,” he said, that grin still plastering his face.
I narrowed my eyes. “What do you want?”
He splayed his hands as if it were an absurd thing for one to ask why a demon had just appeared in their lounge in the middle of a cold winter’s day. The same day an unmarked package appeared with a – yes, I had to admit it – a magical flute inside. “As I said, my Lady, I’m your servant, through and through. Your Mother struck a bargain with my Master, and now I’m here. To serve you.”
“Serve me what? Cake?”
He snorted a laugh, then straightened a little in surprise, as if no one had made him laugh before. “I guess I could serve you cake if you asked.”
“Go on, then.”
This really had the young demon taken aback. “Er, all right, then. I suppose…” He raised his arms and cast me an uncertain glance. “What flavour?”
I smirked, feeling I had the upper hand. “Surprise me.”
He blinked. “With…”
“You do know what flavours of cake there are, don’t you?” I inched a step back on my heel, waited to see his reaction and, when none came, took another minuscule scoot away. I clutched the flute in my hand because, as it so happened, anything shaped like a wooden baton would do well as a weapon in a pinch.
“Of course I know the flavours of cake! I know the origin of cake! I know who it was to first speak the word cake into existence. I…” His arms dropped. “I have no idea about cake.”
It was my turn to snort. “It’s a spongy dessert.”
His sudden look of chagrin had me pause in my thoughts of flight. “You said my Mum sent you.”
“Yes.”
“Take me to her.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “I can’t.”
“You said you would do anything I asked,” I said quickly.
“Anything but that.”
“That’s not what you said.”
He winced.
“Ah hah! You were supposed to read me some set of rules, weren’t you?”
“I…”
I stood a little straighter. “Take me to her. Take me to my Mum.”
His shoulders sagged. “Master Azztredaulious won’t like this.”
“Your boss’s name is Master… Azz? Forget it, I don’t care. You said you’d do anything for me. So do it.”
He rubbed his elbows, looking nothing like the terrifying dark visage that had first appeared to me. “We’d have to travel to the sixth deepest layer of hell.”
“Great. So I should pack lightly, then?”
The demon boy heaved a sigh heavy enough to split a puddling parasol and held out a hand. I tucked the flute into my skirt and grabbed it.
We spun on the spot and my familiar world vanished.
