

The Little Demon Who Couldn't

by

Odelia Floris

Copyright © 2015 Odelia Floris

All rights reserved.

'His eyes were radiant orbs of brilliant sapphire blue, with depths that seemed as though they reached far back into infinity and touched the very first ray of light at the dawn of Creation...'

'SO, Murmur my son, what did you do today?'

'Ahmm...' faltered the little demon, cowering and trembling beneath his father's stern face and glowing red eyes.

'What?' The big demon put his clawed, sinewy fingers to his hips and leaned forward until his hook-nosed, pointy-chined face was level with the little demon's. 'Did you do nothing again?'

'I...I...made a bucket of milk go off and—and caused the mayor to sneeze halfway into his speech...' Murmur hung his horned head in shame and clutched his baby-clawed hands together behind his back.

With his tail twitching and flicking like an angry snake, the big demon snapped upright and began clip-clopping back and forth across the room in a rage. Noise enough for a hundred stampeding goats filled the air. Meanwhile, little Murmur shivered and shook so fearfully that his hairy hocks knocked together. As he stormed up and down, the big demon's short scarlet cloak flew out behind him, and he stroked his black goatee beard manically as smoke and steam spewed from his sharply pointed leathery ears.

Then the big demon suddenly halted before his cowering, cringing son with a screech and a clatter. 'Never, in all my three thousand years, have I been so shamed!' he screamed in his hoarse, bellowing voice.

The little demon's cloven hooves jumped several inches off the floor in sheer terror. 'Yes, O revered father, O greatest, mightiest devil!' he whimpered, bowing and scraping desperately.

'What,' continued his father, stabbing a long, clawed finger at Murmur, 'will the neighbours think, eh?'

'Sorry, O most evil one, so sorry!' squeaked the little demon, feeling like the furiously pointing finger was boring right into him. 'I will try harder to be evil, harder, O vilest one!' he gibbered, bowing and scraping so low his head almost touched the floor.

'You are nearly three hundred years old; it's about time you started acting your age!'

'Yes, vile one, yes,' whimpered the little demon.

'You are a disgrace to your mother and I! After all the trouble we have taken over raising you, and you turn out like this!' Smoke was now pouring from the big demon's nose too. Little Murmur could barely see his own hooves through the thick haze.

The big demon, whose name was Mammon, turned from his son in fury. 'Sometimes your mother and I really do question whether we are bad parents!'

Fidgeting desperately with the end of his tail, the little demon cringed pitifully. 'Pardon, father, pardon—'

But Mammon furiously turned to his son before he could finish. 'You—you—' He threw his long, scrawny hands up as he searched for the right put-down. 'You little angel!'

Murmur whimpered and cowered and cringed beneath this terrible insult. He was so fearful and shaken that he could not speak.

Muttering savagely under his steaming breath, the big demon clattered over to the pitchfork stand near the front door and seized his red-hot pitchfork.

'Oh human!' he swore as he pricked his finger. 'Look what you've made me do, Murmur, you idiot-saint!' screamed the big demon, a tongue of flame spurting from his mouth.

The little demon prostrated himself on the floor. 'Pardon, O hellish one! Sorry, so sorry!' he gibbered, his teeth knocking together violently.

'I don't give a sunlight!' And with that final obscenity ringing in his son's pointy little ears, Mammon disappeared in a puff of smoke. Only the delicious (to demons) stench of sulphur remained where the big demon had been standing a moment before.

When Murmur finally dared to get up again, he heard a sneering chortle. The little demon spun around with a speed that almost took his hooves out from under him. Standing by the hallway coat stand were his two older brothers, Beball and Behemoth.

Behemoth leaned casually against the parlour door as he sharpened the points of his pitchfork. 'Ha! So father caught you, did he?'

'Being evil is a lot of work,' said Murmur, squirming and fidgeting nervously with the end of his tail. 'Sometimes I just can't be bothered.'

Beball, who sat on a bench, looked up from polishing his hooves. 'When are you going to start acting like a real demon, small-ears? Laziness is something we demons inflict those stupid humans with, not something we do ourselves. It's shameful having a demon as thick as you in the family.'

Behemoth put away his sharpening stone, then got out a file and began sharpening his talons. 'What are you loitering about here for anyway, short-nose?'

'Stop calling me mean names!' squeaked Murmur, stomping his little cloven hoof.

Behemoth hardly bothered to glance up from his filing. 'Start behaving like a respectable demon, angel-face.'

Murmur was all for stomping off upstairs in a sulk, but he didn't. Behemoth and Beball were dressed in their best going-out clothes. The red and black silk doublets they wore were in the Elizabethan style; full, puffy sleeves slashed to reveal the contrasting fabric beneath, and worn with matching puffy, slashed breeches and a big white ruff about the neck. Murmur thought his brothers looked very sharp, but he did pause to ponder why the Elizabethan style remained so popular with demons even though it was now 1876. Humans had moved onto frock coats and trousers and cravats. Mind you, human didn't have tails. Tails didn't really work with frock coats.

The little demon wore his most pleading and hopeful look as he stood before his older brothers. 'Let me come out with you. I will be bad, I promise!'

Beball let out a snort of derision. 'You come with us? I don't think so!'

'Right, having an idiot baby brother like you tagging along would make us a laughing stock,' Behemoth added with a sneer. 'And you'd never keep up with us anyway.'

'Yes I would!' squeaked Murmur, looking pitifully up at his big brothers.

He was desperate to be four hundred. Then he would be able to go to senior school with Beball, Behemoth and all the other bigger, smarter, more evil demons. In the meantime, he hoped that by trailing around town with Beball and Behemoth he would get into more mischief. When he went out alone mischief never came his way. If anything, it seemed to run in the opposite direction if it saw him.

Behemoth threaded his horns through the holes in his black velvet cap and cast a superior glance at Murmur. 'Don't talk such purity. An innocent-eyed little imp like you would never get into the vile, evil pranks we big boys do. We are not about to let you ruin our weekend.'

'Quite,' said Beball, preening the fluffy black feather decorating his red velvet cap. 'Last Saturday we lured a gambler into betting everything he owned on one shake of the dice. Then we talked a miserable student into throwing himself off the church bell tower.'

'Ha ha ha!' chortled Behemoth. 'If the foolish wretch had waited another day, the scholarship he so mourned not receiving would have arrived in the post!'

'It was well done, Behemoth, well done!' Beball screeched, slapping his brother on the back.

'I'm fizzing to see how that ruined gambler is getting along!' cackled Behemoth, rubbing his sinewy hands together gleefully.

Beball's round, red little eyes shone with excitement. 'Me too. If all goes well tonight we should succeed in talking him into murdering his uncle to get his inheritance, or at the very least selling one of his own children.'

'Go and knock a chicken off its perch, or whatever else you spend the night not doing, Murmur!' cried Behemoth, seizing his gleaming, razor-sharp pitchfork.

Beball grabbed his pitchfork too. 'Yes, kitten-tail, we are off. We wish you bad night.'

Murmur sighed wistfully. 'Bad night then, see you in the morning.'

Brandishing their pitchforks gleefully, Beball and Behemoth let out a shriek of fiendish laughter and passed through the door without opening it.

Murmur moped about the empty hallway despondently for a little while. Then he picked up his pitchfork, which he had dropped when his father shouted at him, and clip-clopped towards the door. His two little hooves sounded like a baby goat as he passed across the floorboards, and the prongs of his pitchfork bumped after him as he dragged it carelessly along the floor.

'Abracadabra!' he called, and thought hard the thoughts Professor Classyalabolas had told him to use for passing through solid doors and walls.

A second later his face hit the hard door. Then he bounced off the door and landed flat on his back.

'Yow!' he yelped, hardly knowing whether to clutch his smarting front half or stinging back half first.

But he was philosophical about this failure. Failure was to be expected if you did not do your homework. Being a slothful little demon, Murmur reckoned that it was a waste of time mastering the art of passing through walls. It was easier to simply wait until next century and senior school, where they taught teleportation. Who needed to pass through a solid wall or door when you could just say 'abracadabra' and find yourself in the place you wished to be in an instant? The fact that, as even his big brothers had yet to master teleportation, he himself might fail at it did not occur to Murmur.

Still rubbing his squashed nose with one hand, Murmur got to his feet and picked his little pitchfork up off the floor yet again. He did not have a second go at passing through the solid door. He rarely had a second go at anything that did not work the first time.

After passing through the front door in the fail-safe, universal open-door-walk-through-close-door manner, the little demon trotted down the wet, mossy front path. Dead leaves that had fallen from the ancient oak and elm trees standing in the overgrown garden clung to the ground, and cowered amongst the stalky brown grass.

When Murmur reached the garden gate, he stopped and turned to look back at the house. The house had been abandoned by its last human occupants many, many years ago. Its steeply gabled roof was missing many tiles, its wooden sides housed more woodworm than ever the house had humans, and its sinking, rotting piles gave the whole house a contorted, twisted appearance. The wind whistled and moaned through the many broken windowpanes and idly, fretfully, swung back and forth the windows that had come unlatched at some point during time's eternal march. Other less resilient window frames had fallen before weather and woodworm's slow but unceasing assault, and plunged into what was once the garden but was now a graveyard where old implements went to die.

To look back on a home that was so forlorn and decaying would have depressed even the sunniest human soul. But Murmur was positively cheered by this decrepit sight, for he was a demon. To a demon, this residence was a highly desirable piece of real estate. Being immortal spirits, demons did not feel the cold. The winds that wailed through the cracks and broken windows merely provided a soothing background noise, especially on dark winter days when the north wind cut his biting way across the land. As for the darkness, the dampness and the decay, demons love nothing better than these things. Destruction and rot are held in the same esteem by demons as sweet-faced babies and spring daffodils are by humans. In addition to these musty charms, this house was also most well located. Although in a quiet cul-de-sac, all local amenities were within easy walking distance: the graveyard, the town centre, the vice-dens, the gates of Hell. All nearby.

'Very handy indeed,' Murmur commented aloud, for he was rather in the habit of talking to himself.

Then he swung open the creaking gate, which hung by only one rusty hinge, and set off down the deserted street. The dark, wet cobbles shone slickly in the light cast by the tall gas lamps standing sentry-like beside the road. It was barely five O'clock in the evening, but already dusky twilight had descended on the town. This was why the demons like winter best of all. The sun sets early and rises late, giving the demons many hours of darkness to roam abroad in search of mischief. They cannot abide sunlight; it burns and stings their beady little eyes.

Murmur gave the tall iron gas lamps a wide berth as he trit-trotted down the sidewalk, keeping close to the neglected, unkempt trees and hedges leaning out over the garden fences like cows looking for greener pastures. The way in which the silently drifting fog and coal smoke created fuzzy halos of soft light around the street lamps made the little demon especially jumpy. He did not like being out so early. It was not properly dark. Ordinary humans could not see demons, even in broad daylight. Most demons, that is. If a demon became very weak he could become visible to humans. Like the time Murmur had got so lazy and fed up with trying to be bad all the time that he had been spotted by the vicar's wife whilst loitering about in the churchyard on a brightly moonlit night last decade. She had screamed and screeched like nothing he had ever heard, but luckily the vicar did not believe in demons. He had just told his wife to calm her fevered imagination, and quietly made a mental note to start looking for a suitable lunatic asylum in case she worsened.

By the time Murmur had made his slow, furtive way down to the end of the street, the winter darkness had taken a firmer hold. It was greatly aided in this by reinforcements of ghostly white fog that had crept stealthily over the mile of marshland that lay between the city and the sea to join its kindred.

The little demon stopped at the crossroads. 'Left to the slums where the poor live, or right to the glittering clubs, shops and restaurants where the rich swan about?' he pondered aloud. He looked down the street going left. 'The poor are already pushed halfway to Hell by deprivation, but then again...' Murmur gave a shiver as he remembered the din of squabbling beggars, rowdy drunks and shouting fishwives that filled the muddy, narrow alleys and overcrowded hovels inhabited by the poor.

He looked down the street going to the right. 'The rich are already pushed halfway to Hell by the corruption, greed and pride that are wealth's bedfellows, but then again...' He pulled his little cloak more tightly about himself as he remembered that the wealthy quarters of town were always light up like a Christmas tree until the early hours of the morning. What if someone saw him...?

If someone had observed this little scene, they may have been impressed by Murmur's knowledge of human weakness and evil. But if they had, they would be sadly mistaken. The little demon knew these things not from practical experience, but from his schoolbook, under the heading what makes humans susceptible to falling into evil? Murmur had had to ask his teacher what 'susceptible' meant too. He still trembled slightly at the memory of the bellows of 'you stupid little runt!' which had greeted his tiny, innocent little question.

He let out a sigh that was surprisingly large for such a small demon. Then, with head hanging tiredly and pitchfork dragged bumperty-bump down the street behind him, he reluctantly clip-clopped off down the road that was neither the left nor the right, but straight ahead instead. This street led to the part of town between the rich and the poor ends. The folk there were generally the least sin-inclined of all the town's inhabitants, but the mingling of richer and poorer did create some opportunities for demons. It was better than giving up and going home, at any rate. Little Murmur was desperate. He just had to get into some trouble and be bad this night, or his father would be angry.

Suddenly, Murmur slid to a stop. He lifted his only-slightly-hooked nose and sniffed the damp night air. 'Yes, seems it might be...' he muttered to himself, then took another big sniff. 'Yes, definitely fear.'

He turned to face the large townhouse he stood in front of. Then 'slireeech!' went his little hooves on the pavement as he saw a Rottweiler staring grimly back at him from behind the iron gate.

'Don't be a silly saint, Murmur,' said the little demon to himself, silencing his jittering nerves and looking around furtively, afraid that some other demon might have seen this shameful reaction. 'Demons can't be bitten by dogs. We are immortal spirits. Yessss, evil spectres of the darkness...' he said, in the best evil hiss he could manage.

It was far too squeaky and high-pitched to be a good evil hiss, but it was enough for the huge dog. The slivering, wolf-toothed beast let out a yelp and fled back into his kennel, from whence he did not emerge until daybreak.

'Ah yes,' murmured Murmur, feeling very self-satisfied. 'Yes indeed. Evil we are, very eeevil...'

Then, smirking smugly, he slipped through the gate and clip-clopped up the path as stealthily and sinisterly as one who sounds like a baby goat can. The townhouse sat silently amid the darkened lawn. All of its windows were dark save one.

'There he is, there is the mean miser...' muttered Murmur, and attempted to draw his short cloak about him with a swashbuckling, cloak-and-dagger sweep.

But his cloak got tangled in his tail, and then his tail got tangled in his legs, and then he almost fell flat on his face.

Cursing his ambition, little Murmur flapped his cloak out of the way with a heated swipe that was neither sinister nor evil, but merely flustered. Abandoning the stealthy creep, he continued across towards the window at a plain, basic old walk.

The dim light shining from within the room came from a single thin candle, tallow not beeswax, stuck in an old wine bottle sitting on a table. It was the very cheapest lighting sold by the general store on the corner (and the bottle came free). By its poor, feeble light a hunch-shouldered, hollow-faced man sat at the table on a stool with one of its legs missing.

The task of balancing the broken seat on its two remaining legs was a hard one. But although his stool wobbled and jittered beneath him, not for even a single moment was the miser's attention removed from the gold coins lying in two heaps upon the table before him. The gold glinted dimly in the feeble flame, and the gold's glint glittered in the miser's hard, greedy eyes.

'Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three...' counted the miser, moving a coin from one pile to the other each time he counted.

Forlorn sat the hearth. In spite of the cold of the bleak winter's evening, the fireplace was filled only with grey ash and dead black ambers. No fire had blazed there for many long years. Not since the price of coal had gone up.

Murmur crept up through the weed-choked garden beneath the window and pressed his face to the cold glass. The dead twigs of the roses that once had bloomed in the garden crunched under the demon's little hooves. Not since the gardener increased his rates had the roses been tended.

Sitting in the cheerless room hunched over his gold, the miser did not see the pair of beady little red eyes pairing in, nor the curly mop of black hair with the two little horns sticking out of it. But Murmur did. In the shady, dusty-faced mirror hanging above the fireplace, he caught his reflection looking back at him. He jumped clean off the ground in shock. Demons ought to be invisible to human eyes, and that meant their reflections should not show in mirrors.

When the little demon landed, a thorn from a dry, dead rose branch still unclaimed by decomposition bit into the tender space between the halves of one of his cloven hooves. Gasping and gibbering to himself, Murmur grabbed his smarting hoof with both hands and began hopping around in circles on the lank-grassed lawn. But the miser did not notice the cursing demon floundering around on his lawn. He was too intent on his gold. His eyes, hard and cold as the metal, saw nothing but the coins in front of him.

The stinging pain between Murmur's toes receded to an insistent ache, so he stopped his hopping and his tail stopped its whipping and its snapping. Then the little demon looked furtively about him. But no other demon had seen his ridiculous dance. Letting out a little sigh of relief, Murmur straightened his eschew ruff collar, smoothed his crumpled satin doublet, and walked back up to the window. This time, he did not creep.

Within the cold, bleak room, the miser still sat hunched on his wobbling stool counting his coins. 'Ninety-seven, ninety-eight...' he muttered, letting two coins drop one after the other onto the pile. His hard, gold-lusting eyes lit up with delight at the 'chink, chink,' of the falling coins. Then the miser counted 'Ninety-nine—' And his counting stopped. There were no more coins on the pile. 'Where is it, where is it?' he cried wildly, his lean fingers scrabbling franticly around the table in search of the missing coin.

Outside in the winter darkness, the little demon chortled fiendishly to himself. It was not a very fiendish chortle, but it was chilling enough.

'My coin, my coin! I must find it!' came the miser's cries from within, and he tossed the broken stool aside and begun groping about the floor on his hands and knees.

In his wild frenzy, the miser knocked against the table and sent the bottle holding the candle toppling over. In an instant, the dim light was extinguished and the room plunged into murky blackness.

Thumps and thuds and knocks joined the miser's frenzied cries and the panicked scrabbling of his hands. The gleeful chortles of the watching demon grew louder and louder. So intent on his search was the miser that he would not stop to relight the candle. So he searched on in the darkness, and his cries grew louder and louder.

Fear filled the damp, cold air, and the little demon breathed deeply of it. He felt his strength and power expand as the miser's fear filled him and fed him. Murmur pressed his only-slightly-hooked nose to the cold glass and looked once again into the dusty-faced mirror. This time, no little demon looked back at him.

Murmur cackled aloud, a great 'Mwa-ha-ha-ha!' and he swung his cloak about himself with devilish ease.

Still chortling like a mad monkey, the little demon trit-trotted back down the path. Behind him came the despairing shrieks and cries of the miser. 'Where is it, where is my coin? Oh my treasure, where is it? Where, where? Ahhh!' A crazed scream rent the murky, mouldy-breathed darkness, and crash after crash followed it as the miser began tearing apart the house in his desperate search.

LITTLE Murmur's feet frisked like a spring lamb as he stepped out onto the pavement. 'Delightful, so very delightful!' he chuckled to himself, rubbing his baby-clawed hands together gleefully at the thought of the miser he had pranked moments before.

The demon travelled boldly down the street, right down its very middle. The gas lamps he passed under without a care. No shadow followed him, and no longer did he cower and creep. Human fear is like a meal of chicken soup and thickly buttered bread to a demon. It feeds and sustains him as physical food feeds and sustains humans, for demons do not eat physical food. Instead, they feed on human fear and evil. A well-fed demon is an invisible demon.

'Skipper-skipper-hop,' went the little demon's tiny hooves on the pavement, 'skipper-skipper-hop-hop-hop'. He chortled mockingly at the streetlights as he passed shadowless beneath them.

But the lamps seemed above such things. They just stood tall, straight and silent, their serene, shining tops smiling a golden smile amid a rainbow halo of shimmering mist.

When the little demon turned the corner, he found himself in a street lined with a cluster of quaint little shops. Their windows glowed with golden lamplight and their eves sheltered many warmly wrapped folk from the light drizzle that had begun to fall. Some of the people bustled about busily doing their shopping, while others loitered or gazed wide-eyed at the enticing displays filling the shop windows. A pretty young lady of sixteen stood staring into the brightly lit window of Lovelace & Sons, a little haberdasher's store.

Now, even the smallest, laziest demon has a fine nose for human weakness, and the fair-faced young lady caught little Murmur's nose right away. There was something about the way she dithered uncertainly, and there was something about the way her eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the pair of lady's boots taking pride of place in the window display.

The little demon made his way over. Confident in his invisibility to human eyes, he passed boldly through the throng. If any of the people felt something brush against them, they dismissed it as a twitch of their own nerves, and if any fancied they heard a faint 'clip-clop, clip-clop,' they dismissed it as the sound of a loose screw in their own heads.

The only human to give Murmur worry was a little boy who looked up with wide, startled eyes when a ghostly satin cloak swooshed over his head. The child's frightened eyes followed Murmur as the demon passed away. But the little demon's unease was soon relieved.

'Stop gawping at thin air like a half-wit, Timmy!' screeched the child's mother, pulling him after her. The open-mouthed little boy was swallowed by the crowd.

Murmur sidled up to the young lady.

'How well those boots will look on my fine little feet,' she was thinking to herself. 'Their rosy red will go so delightfully well with my rosy cheeks, and just think: all the other girls will be so very envious when I wear them! And Harry Siddle...' She drew in closer to the shop window, so close that her warm breath misted the cool glass. 'Harry Siddle will look at me for once, rather than making eyes at that Lucy Love-Hart...'

She put her woolly mitten-encased little hands on the window, and an even more dreamy look came into her eyes. 'Yes, Harry will come up to me and doff that smart cap he wears over his dark curls, and say "Oh Miss Katie, those boots really are topping. Would you care to accompany me to the tearooms at the wintergardens on Saturday?" And I shall reply, "Oh Harry, (she cocked her head to one side) I really am not sure if my friends can spare me on Saturday. They will be ever so grieved if I do not come to the park with them." And he shall say "But Miss Katie, I do insist that you come, for you are the very fairest belle hereabouts, and I will be seen at the tearooms with no other." "Very well, as you will be so wretched if I do not come, I shall come to the tearooms with you," I will say gracefully, giving a little nod...'

Murmur chortled and chuckled to himself, for he had heard every one of her thoughts. Demons can hear all human thoughts—unless the human was Saint Kriztofer. The little demon's chortle turned into a choke at this thought. He quickly stuffed the thought down. No demon enjoyed thinking about Saint Kriztofer. 'If you don't do what I say, Saint Kriztofer will come and take you away' was a threat used by big demons when little ones were uncooperative.

Little Murmur resumed his wicked chortling. If it was rather forced, one can hardly blame him.

The young lady sighed. 'Oh, those boots are so very fine...'

Murmur's chuckles grew louder.

'But I came here to buy Johnny the wooden hobbyhorse he so wanted,' thought the girl, frowning to herself. 'I have been saving my pocket money for months so I could buy it for his birthday.'

The little demon's fiendish chortling stopped with an abrupt splutter. He sidled in a little closer to the girl. 'But he is used to not getting very much for his birthday,' he whispered in her ear. 'It is more important for a young lady to have a generous purse. She blooms but briefly, and if no one notices the rose, it blooms in vain.'

Young Katie was not startled by these demon whispers. Humans took such murmurings in their ears to be their own self speaking, for the voice was heard by none but the one in whose ear the demon breathed its poison words. All humans except Saint Kriztofer, that is. Saint Kriztofer was never fooled by demon voices. He never mistook them for his own voice.

The girl's frown deepened, and her hands pushed harder against the window of the shop. 'Yes,' she replied in thought, 'if neither Harry nor any other boy notices me, I shall fade and wither and drop to the ground, there to rot into nothingness. My beauty shall have been for nothing.'

'It will not have been for nothing,' came a soft, sweet whisper. 'It will not have been in vain, for the angels will have seen it and rejoiced.'

With a clutter and a screech, the little demon turned to see who had spoken. Standing at the girl's opposite shoulder was a little angel. He was dressed in a robe of flowing white finer than even the most precious earthly silk, and the little golden halo hovering just above his pale blond curls glowed with shimmering light. The round, pink angelic face radiated a soft light of its own, and his large eyes were a clear lilac not seen in any human eyes.

Little Murmur yelped with fright and horror. A bit of smoke even came from his pointy little ears. 'An angel, argh!' he gibbered to himself, fidgeting with the end of his tail. 'Horrible, horrible, oh horrible! I hate them, I hate them! Pure, white, sweet, saintly; hate them, hate them...'

But the little angel took no notice of Murmur. He unfurled his white-feathered wings, rose lightly into the air and leaned in towards the girl's ear.

'Selfishness and vanity make beauty wither faster than ever Father Time does,' whispered the little angel, and his breath was a stream of shimmering golden light that sparkled with all the colours of the rainbow.

Murmur stuffed his baby-clawed fingers into his mouth to still his chattering teeth and gibbering tongue. He reminded himself that he was evil, he reminded himself that he had scared the miser's dog and willed the miser's coin off the table and through the crack in the worn old floorboards.

'Yes, evil we are, very eeevil...' he muttered savagely, slowly inching back up to the girl. 'It is only a little, tiny baby angel. Yes indeed, still wet behind its saintly little round ears...' And he moved in quickly before the thought that he himself was only a little, tiny baby demon could suggest itself.

'What old maid's nonsense,' whispered the little demon. 'No one really cares about beauty of the soul. No boy has ever come up to a girl and said 'you have a very beautiful soul, miss. Would you like to step out with me?' Men care only for a pretty face and shapely form.'

'Yes, quite right,' thought the girl. 'I do not want to end my days as a lonely old maid, pitied and pitiful.'

'But you will never be alone while you have your little brother,' whispered the little angel. 'Johnny is a good boy. He loves his sister no matter what she wears on her feet.'

'Yes, true,' thought the girl.

'But Harry Siddle does care what a girl wears on her feet,' whispered the little demon. 'He will never step out with a girl dressed in such poor, worn boots as you are.'

'Think how happy Johnny will be when he opens his present and finds the wooden hobbyhorse he has wanted ever since he walked past here last summer and saw it,' whispered the little angel. 'Surely his beaming face will be a better thing than the shallow attentions of Harry Siddle and the petty envy of Lucy Love-Hart.'

'But I want the boots!' replied bewildered Katie.

'Get the hobbyhorse for his next birthday,' murmured Murmur. 'He does not wish for much and is happy with the little he gets. You, on the other hand, are a young lady of refined taste. The joy you will get from the boots will be greater than the joy he will get from the toy.'

'Yes, that is a good idea,' thought the girl.

'You will need new school books next year,' whispered the little angel. 'Your allowance will not stretch to the toy—'

'Think only of how fine you will look in the boots!' hissed the little demon.

'Yes, and Johnny need not go without,' thought the girl. 'I could get him that little toy soldier there—'

'Yes, he will be just as happy with that...' murmured Murmur.

'You know he does not like toy soldiers,' whispered the angel. 'He wants to deliver the fast post on his galloping steed when he grows up, not hurt people.'

'Oh, what shall I do!' thought the girl, resting her aching head on the cool glass.

'All little boys want to be soldiers when they grow up!' hissed Murmur. 'Buy the boots! Buy the boots and you will be happy!'

'No, think of how happy Johnny will be as he gallops along the lanes on his hobbyhorse pretending to be a post rider!' whispered the little angel.

'Oh woe!' sighed the girl.

'Yes, buy the boots and be happy!' hissed Murmur.

'No, please think of Johnny!' cried the little angel.

'The boots, the boots!' hissed the little demon.

'Think of Johnny!' begged the little angel.

'The boots!' hissed the little demon

The girl suddenly stood up straight. A new look of decision glimmered in her eyes. Both the little demon and the little angel stepped back.

'I will buy the boots and get the toy soldier for Johnny,' the girl thought firmly.

'Yes,' murmured Murmur, 'yes. You will be so happy, so fine, when you wear your new boots.'

'Alas,' sighed the little angel, hanging his angelic head. 'Alas...' And he shed a tear as the girl entered Lovelace and Sons.

'Tapper-tapper-clop-clip-clop,' went the little demon's cloven hooves as he danced a victory jig on the cobbles, 'tapper-tapper-clop-clip-clop.' And he swirled his cape about himself and chattered like a mad monkey with glee, singing 'Angel bright, angel bright, where is your might? Did it take fright? Did it take fright? Did it fall from a great hight-hight-hight?'

The little angel just looked out on this rudeness with sad, solemn eyes.

When the little demon had grown tired of taunting and capering, the little angel floated silently up to him. The soft radiance shining from the angel made Murmur's beady little eyes water and sting, and the scent of violets surrounding the angel made him gag. He felt sick, and the gentle breeze created by the wafting of the little angel's wings made it worse.

'Argh, you stink!' said Murmur, holding his only-slightly-hooked nose. 'Get away from me!' Truth be told, he was beginning to feel afraid.

'The angels will triumph over you yet, Murmur,' said the little angel, and his voice was like the call of the cuckoo echoing from deep within the forest, or the blackbird's song drifting across the snow-covered fields on a winter's morning.

'Hah!' said Murmur, with more confidence than he felt. 'Hah! You angels are such weaklings; good is just another name for weak!'

But the little angel just smiled, and his smile was like the first golden rays of the morning sun.

The little demon yelped and put his baby-clawed hand over his eyes to shield them from the painful light.

The little angel laughed, and his laugh was like the distant ringing of church bells on a snowy, starlit night. 'Your soul will be ours one day.' And with that, he fluttered up into the air and was gone.

Murmur was determined not to believe this, so he chortled loudly to show his contempt and swaggered off down the street. He had not gone far when he was overtaken by a light, hurrying footstep—swaggering, after all, is not a very fast way of travelling. The little demon looked, and saw that it was the girl who had dithered before the window of Lovelace and Sons.

She had two brown paper packages tucked under her arm. One was large and oblong, the other small, long and round. As she hurried down the street, young Katie kept her head down and her eyes fixed on the slick cobbles before her feet. But every now and then she cast a darting look above herself. It almost seemed as though she was expecting a thunderbolt to flash forth from the heavens and strike her down.

Little Murmur chortled loudly to himself. 'Her soul is going to be ours, yes, ours! Mwa-ha-ha!'

The girl started with such violence that the packages almost fell from her hold. Her frightened eyes darted hither and thither about the cold, damp, dusk-enshrouded street.

Then she broke into a run.

The little demon's chuckles grew louder, and he skipped with fiendish glee. 'Evil we are, eeevil!'

Poor Katie desperately covered one of her fur earmuffs with her free hand and ran as fast as her legs would carry her. She did not look behind herself even once.

When her rapidly fleeing footsteps had at last faded into the winter darkness, little Murmur rubbed his baby-clawed hands together. 'What shall we do next, eh? What eeevil mischief shall we cause those silly humans next...?'

But Murmur did not have to ponder this vexing problem for long. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of franticly galloping hooves coming clattering along the street. The little demon had only just turned to look when a young demon sprinted into view. His black cape was flying out behind him, his goat-legs were going so fast they were a blur, and his beady red eyes were wild with terror.

'What's up, Agrat?' called Murmur, recognising one of Beball and Behemoth's classmates.

But Agrat did not stop, reply or even look. He just sprinted by in a blur of flailing legs and flapping black satin.

The little demon was slightly puzzled by this strange behaviour, but only slightly. It was not unusual for the demons in the higher classes to ignore baby demons in the lower classes. It did not occur to Murmur that perhaps he ought to be running too.

So little Murmur swaggered on. But he had not gone far when once again a pair of franticly clattering hooves came sprinting down the street. This time, it was a slightly younger demon. His torn cape was hanging off him by a thread, and his beady little red eyes were fixed in a stare of mad panic. As this demon ran, he darted from side to side like a fleeing rabbit.

'Hey, Sabnock, what's the hurry?' called Murmur.

But Sabnock was so panicked that he did not even know where he was. He certainly did not notice some saint-faced runt standing gawping on the pavement.

Little Murmur became slightly worried. 'Sabnock, what's up there?' he called again.

At that precise moment, Sabnock collided with a tall, round, iron post-box. The frenetic clattering stopped with an abrupt splat. The fleeing demon bounced off the post-box and landed in a sprawl several metres away. But in a split second Sabnockwas back up on his little hooves and flying down the street. He vanished around the corner before Murmur even had a chance to close his gaping mouth.

The little demon was really quite worried now. He stopped swaggering and started walking faster. He cast many a nervous backward glance behind himself as he went along. When the sound of fleeing demon hooves reached his only-slightly-pointed ears yet again, Murmur started fidgeting with his tail and almost broke into a trot.

The young demon that came sprinting down the street this time was Paimonia, the prefect of Hell's Gate School for Demons. But in spite of this, he looked only slightly less panicked than Agrat and Sabnock had been. His cape flew out behind him too, and his beady eyes were wide with terror.

'Why are you running, Paimonia?' cried Murmur.

'Run!' shouted Paimonia, neither turning his head nor slowing the flailing of his goat-legs. 'Run! It's Saint Kriztofer; run for your evil!'

'Saint Kriztofer?' shrieked Murmur.

Then the little demon bolted down the street as fast as his little goat-legs could carry him. He only narrowly avoided splattering himself onto the same post-box that had been Sabnock's undoing, and the dull echo of his speeding cloven hooves leapt about the damp, dark street in duet with Paimonia's heavier clatter. But after only a few moments, Murmur's high, light clatter was the only one filling the street as the older demon turned the corner and vanished into the night. Now all alone with the threat of the impending presence of the dreaded Saint Kriztofer, little Murmur began darting from side to side like a fleeing rabbit.

'Where to hide, where to hide?' he gibbered breathlessly to himself.

His mind was completely filled with panic. There was no room for anything else, such as logical thought. So he fled down the street in a blind terror. When he reached the crossroad, first his hooves skidded left, then they skidded right.

Then he looked back. This was a mistake. Down the very centre of the street strode a tall figure clad in a billowing pale grey cape. In his hand he carried a lantern, and above his head hovered a golden halo. The light shining forth from the lantern pierced through the murky winter darkness, casting a shimmering aura of glowing purple and gold about its bearer.

Little Murmur shrieked with terror, and the dusky trees above shivered as this demon scream rent the misty air. Then, with a sudden screech of cloven hoof on cobble, the little demon darted forwards.

'The churchyard,' he gibbered to himself, 'the old churchyard!'

Through the soothingly black park he sped, zigzagging his way amongst the silent trees. Now and then a drooping, soggy branch slapped against his face. And every time one did, the little demon let out a squeak of fright.

'The trees are after you, Murmur after you!' he gibbered to himself. 'Saint Kriztofer loves them, and they loves him!'

The trees suddenly creaked a loud, booming creak. Some might have said it was only the wind passing through the treetops, but Murmur knew better.

'The trees laugh at you, Murmur, laugh at you!' he gibbered, running faster than ever.

When he sped into the last and thickest thicket of trees before the old churchyard, the branches, ghostly in the dark shadow of the night, seemed to loom out like arms to bar the little demon's way. He gibbered with terror and franticly tried to thrust the wet, clutching branches aside. The trees took from him his satin cape and his white lace ruff, and tore a good many holes in his little red and black doublet. But at last he emerged from the terrible hall of the trees.

All was silent in the old churchyard. The scattered bricks were silent. The drunkenly leaning gravestones were silent. The old, rotting trees were silent. And silent were the dead beneath their coverlets of turf. The ruined remains of the old abbey's proud arch reared into the black sky, a haunting relic of a building that once had soared heavenwards bearing the devotions of the faithful to their god. Now, the decrepit abbey's only congregation were mice seeking shelter from the winter, swallows seeking shelter for their nests, and a lazy, fearful little demon seeking shelter from the burden of being evil all the time and from terrifying Saint Kriztofer.

Little Murmur carefully picked his way through the overgrown graveyard. He had hurt his hoof once already that night, and he did not want to hurt it a second time by treading on a sharp stone. There were many of these lying concealed amongst the long brown grass and tatty weeds. No human foot had trodden in this graveyard for many a long year. The graves stood sadly in the murky darkness, their inscriptions erased by moss and their tombstones smothered by lank vegetation. Like sentries that have grown weary, the stones leaned heavily or lay sleeping among the grass.

Only one gravestone still kept watch. A marble angel stood resting his noble head on a cross of stone. Although the angel rested his eyes on the letters inscribed upon the cross, little Murmur took care to give him a very wide berth. Demons hate and fear angels above all things—and that is saying a lot, for demons hate many, many things.

All of the other crosses that once had stood over graves now were toppled and broken, and their power broken with it. Little Murmur stepped carelessly amongst these shattered ruins, but out of the corners of his beady little eyes, he watched the stone angel warily. As though protected by some secret, hidden force, the cross it leaned on still stood tall and proud, and Murmur was afraid of it.

He was still afraid of Saint Kriztofer too. When he reached the tallest, grandest tomb in the shadowy churchyard, he leapt up onto its top. Carefully he scanned the darkness with his gleaming little red eyes, and carefully he listened to the sounds of the night with his only-slightly-pointed ears. Demons have much sharper sight and hearing than humans, so when nothing but the faint sighing of the wind and the rustle of scurrying mice reached them, he was satisfied that Saint Kriztofer had not followed.

'Ahh...' he sighed. 'Ahhh yes, Murmur, now you can rest away from those awful humans...' And he began tapping out a little dance on the tomb top. 'Tapper-tapper-tapperty-tap' went his little hooves on the hard stone. 'Tapper-tapper-tapperty-tap.'

'Dead old mayor, dead old mayor,' he sang, 'look at you now, look at you now! When you were living, everyone bowed, but now that you're dead, demons dance on your grave!'

Although the ditty did not rhyme at all, Murmur still thought himself very witty. When he had grown tired of this, he skipped down from the mayor's tomb and wondered over to the churchyard's far corner.

A clutch of squat, shadowy trees huddled in this corner. Their heavy evergreen branches let no sunlight fall to the ground beneath them, their chokingly thick showers of dead needles suffocated any seed unlucky enough to alight there, and their dry, dead twigs reached malevolently for the hair and clothing of anyone foolish enough to pass beneath them, stretching forth groping twiggy fingers towards their eyes. Everyone but Murmur, that is. For some reason, he could loiter unscratched in their dank shades.

Humming a rude ditty to himself, the little demon picked up one of the many brittle twigs scattered about. With it, he poked about in the leaf mould and whipped the nettles that, alone of all plants, had conquered a patch of earth at the sullen trees' feet.

Murmur was very familiar with the old churchyard. It was his favourite spot, after all. It was where he loitered when he ought to have been out spreading evil and harassing humans. No one came here, not even demons. But that did not mean that there was no one in the old churchyard.

With his little stick, Murmur lifted a rotting log lying in the wet grass a little further on from the trees. He chortled gleefully at the sight of the black beetles scurrying unhappily about, suddenly without a home. When all but one especially confused beetle had left in search of new shelter, the little demon grew bored and turned away. He wandered through the dark graveyard swinging his little stick absent-mindedly from side to side at the tall weeds. After only a short while, he grew bored with this too. So he sat down on the old mayor's tomb and stared up at the sky. The fog had cleared, revealing a roof of distantly twinkling stars above.

Although he would not admit it to anyone, including himself, stargazing was one of Murmur's favourite things to do. Many a lazy night he had whiled away lying flat on his back on the pleasantly cold stone of the lid of the mayor's tomb. He knew the position and name of every star and all the figures of the zodiac, and delighted in following their nightly course. But most of all he liked to count shooting stars. One night he had counted thirty.

A twinkling star shot across the night sky. Murmur chortled with delight. Then he stopped himself. Demons were not supposed to delight in anything except evil, suffering and destruction.

'But I wish to be more evil every time I see a shooting star,' Murmur justified himself. 'A thing wished on a shooting star is bound to come true.'

Deep down, all he really wished for was to be left in peace to loiter and laze. But this wish was not proper for a demon, so he did not wish it. With a little sigh, Murmur sat up and looked about the dark churchyard.

A sudden crack echoed across the cold darkness. The little demon jumped clean off his rear. Then he looked fearfully about the shadowy graveyard.

'Ah, it's you, Jack Frost!' he called, and his voice was still slightly squeaky from fright.

'Yes, it is I,' responded a high, thin voice from somewhere, Murmur did not know where.

'Come to nip the night watchman's fingers and whiten the gardens, have you?'

'Yes, and to breathe silver across the millpond,' came the high, crackly voice, this time from up in the trees on the opposite side of the churchyard.

'It is cold tonight; you shall have to work hard,' the little demon called in the direction of the trees.

'Yes, harder than you are.'

The little demon jumped up with a yelp. 'Get away, you young rascal!' he shouted at Jack Frost, who stood grinning on the tomb lid Murmur had been cooling only moments before. 'It's devilishly rude breathing your icy air into folks' ears!'

Jack Frost shook out his mop of white, ice crystal-flicked hair and laughed a hollow, ringing laugh. 'Devilishly, eh?' The jaunty youth reached out a long, lean arm and snubbed the little demon's nose with fingers that looked and felt like icicles. 'If you are a devil, and 'devilishly' means in the manner of a devil, I ought to be going around squashing beetles to be deserving of the insult!'

'Get your icicles off my nose!' yelped Murmur, backing away from Jack Frost's impishly grinning, sharp-nosed face.

Jack Frost tossed his white mane again, unleashing a coldly glittering shower of ice crystals that floated on the breathlessly still air. 'Or what? You'll come and melt me down to a puddle with a red-hot pitchfork?' The icy-white youth threw back his head and laughed.

Silently and with his tail twitching, the little demon glared back at the tall, lean figure of ice. He had nothing else to say. Because the truth was that he had been thinking it was about time he did something a bit evil to end the night on a high note. Something evil like lifting a rotting log up and squashing the beetles living under it.

With his wild hair already thick with a fresh new dusting of silver ice crystals, Jack Frost sprung down from the old mayor's tomb. Little Murmur winced in readiness for another pinch to his only-slightly-hooked nose. But the frosty nip did not come. Jack Frost was already leaping about the churchyard scattering glittering ice and breathing silver-white frost over the leaning stones.

Little Murmur sat back down with a 'harrumph,' his tail twitching and flicking with annoyance. Pretending to be above petty bickering, he turned his only-slightly-hooked nose up and drummed his baby-clawed fingers on the stone.

Laughing gleefully, Jack Frost leapt down from the topmost branches of the sullenly huddled evergreens and alighted beside the stone angel leaning against the crucifix headstone. With one long breath, the icy-silver youth covered both angel and cross in a mantle of pure, glistening white frost. Then he tossed back his ice-glimmering head and laughed his bright, piercing laugh one last time before leaping off into the trees of the neighbouring park.

The little demon's tail twitched and jumped like a poked snake. That boy really ought to be put in his place. It was demons, not elemental sprites, who ruled the darkness.

'Yes, I'll get him,' muttered Murmur. 'I'll get the horrid rascal,' he hissed to himself, and the drumming of his little claws grew louder.

But mere drumming did not suffice in the aftermath of such impish impudence. Murmur seized the dead twig resting nearby and leapt up. Muttering black curses against frost sprites beneath his steaming breath, the little demon jumped up onto a fallen column. From there he sprang across to a stone-lidded tomb.

But the icy breath of Jack Frost had rendered it treacherously slick, and the moment Murmur's little cloven hooves touched down he began to skid. Before he was even halfway through a vile curse on the frosty rascal, the little demon was lying face down in a patch of frost-encrusted stinging nettles.

'Wretched golden, sweet-faced, saintly little—little,' muttered the little demon savagely, getting to his hooves. 'Little—little ratty imp—thing!'

Then he gave up trying to curse Jack Frost. He simply couldn't think of any curses that seemed bad enough.

As he hopped gingerly from bare patch to bare patch among the stinging nettles, the little demon wished he had not spent the 'curses' class dozing in the back row.

'Yes, should've listened,' he muttered, readying himself for a big leap over the last patch of nettles barring his way. 'Should've listened...'

He cleared the clump with only one more sting to his tail. But when face, hands and tail have already received a dozen stings, one more is too many more. The little demon's tail began whipping and twitching. With the stick he had remained clutching throughout this ordeal, Murmur started whipping the weeds and plants growing in this corner of the churchyard.

Although this was a rich-earthed corner, only a few plants were bold enough to brave the winter cold, and what ones were brave enough fell easily before little Murmur's twirling stick. When he had wrought his little trail of destruction all the way up to the feet of the tall oak tree standing sentry-like at the churchyard's boundary, the little demon grew tired of his annoyance. After all, petty evil is a rather boring business.

After breaking his stick by smacking the trunk of the kingly oak, Murmur wondered back over to the old mayor's tombstone and sat back down. He scanned about for saints and elemental spirits and then went back to stargazing.

The stars glittered and sparkled in the cold clearness above. It was a good night for seeing shooting stars, so little Murmur looked hard with his beady red eyes. A sudden trail of shining white light streaked across the sky. Mortal eyes would not have seen it, but demon eyes are sharper.

'I wish to be as evil as Behemoth and Beball!' squeaked a delighted Murmur. 'Yes, as evil as they—'

But an angry little voice suddenly interrupted him. 'Look what you have done to my flowers!'

The little demon snapped his small, beady eyes left and he snapped them right, but there was no one to be seen. Scolding himself for a fool, Murmur was just about to go back to his stargazing when the voice piped up again.

'Have you got any idea how much trouble it takes me to get these flowers to bloom at midwinter?' cried the high, reedy little voice. 'These flowers take a great deal of petting and coaxing before they'll get up out of the earth, let me tell you!'

Realising at last that the voice was coming from down low, Murmur finally turned his beady red eyes down. And there, standing before Murmur with his hands on his hips, was a little fellow not more than a half-foot high. He was dressed in a tunic and breeches of dark green leaves sewn together with the neatest little stitches, and a hat made of speckled pink flower petals. He wore an angry frown on his face, and in his tiny hand he clutched a ragged, bruised and broken flower hanging forlornly off a shredded stem by a mere thread.

'Just look at the mess you made of my beautiful flowers!' demanded the little man, furiously shaking the poor broken flower at the demon.

An angry fairy. The little demon let out a 'harrumph' of annoyance. It really was turning into a rather difficult night.

'Well, what have you got to say for yourself, boy?' the little voice squeaked shrilly.

'Us demons have got more important things to be doing than crawling around trying to avoid treading on every weed-flower,' little Murmur replied as carelessly as he could, and swung his cloven-hoofed feet back and forth in an effort to demonstrate just how cold-bloodedly callous he was.

'Weed-flower?' shrieked the livid fairy, and whipped Murmur's foot with the broken flower. 'You dare to call my Christmas roses weed-flowers?'

'Oi, watch yourself, pixie!' growled the little demon, fixing his best threatening glare on the fairy. 'We demons don't care if we break things beneath our hooves.'

'You didn't tread on my Christmas roses, you hit them with your horrible great stick!'

The little demon swung his cloven hooves harder. 'Breaking things is what we demons are all about, yes sir!'

'But what about my poor, injured flowers? I worked all year to get them flowers up!' And the little fairy let out a sob.

Seeing the poor fellow standing so despondently with his wilting, broken flower made Murmur feel a few pangs of guilt, even though he tried hard not to. 'Well, I warrant that there's nothing worse than wasting a great deal of energy for nothing. Ahem—' He looked around to see that no one else was about. 'Next time I'll give your flowers under the old oak tree a wide berth.'

The little flower fairy's face lit up with relief. 'That is mighty good of you, young Murmur. If ever you are passing by on a Sunday, do please come in and see me at my home in the roots of the old oak for an acorn cup of nectar!'

The little demon did not like the sound of drinking as vile a thing as nectar, and very much suspected he would not fit into the fairy-fellow's tree root home, but he nodded anyway. 'Oh thank you, friend.'

'It is me who must thank you for your promise!' cried the little fairy, and then he spread his gauzy wings and was gone.

The little demon stared down at his cloven hooves in silence for a good while after that. He had just done a kind thing. No one must ever know about it, least of all his father. How angry father would be if he ever found out. Little Murmur's hairy hocks began to knock together at the mere thought of it. If only he had gone home after that triumph outside Lovelace and Sons!

'Always quit while you are ahead, Murmur, always,' muttered the little demon to himself, and he kicked his hooves against the tombstone. 'Curse the honey-faced Jack Frost!'

Having Jack Frost to blame some of the disaster on gave the little demon some comfort, but the weight of this terrible failure still rested heavily on him. Seeing that a faint flush of light was brightening the eastern sky, Murmur decided to call it a night.

With his head hanging and his little pitchfork dragged bumperty-bump behind him, the young demon despondently made his way homeward.

IT WAS only a short journey to reach home; across the abandoned churchyard, over the tumbledown stonewall that enclosed it, and up through the overgrown tangle of shrubs and roses filling the back garden of the demons' mouldering old pile. A path snaked through the dead weeds and high grass, twisting carefully between the lowest gap in the wall and thoughtfully making its way through the shrubs and brambles. That the path took the very shortest way between house and churchyard was a testament to its creator's laziness. This creator was of course little Murmur himself; the tatty scraps of black and red satin hanging from the brambles were proof of this.

When the little demon reached the back door of his home, he walked right in without stopping to turn any handle or lift any latch. This sounds mighty clever of him, but it was not. The door did not need opening because it was already open. In fact, it had been open since autumn 1847, when a group of local boys had decided they didn't believe no sissy, foolish tales about the old house being haunted and weren't afraid of no ghosts or ghouls. So in bold daylight they had forced the back door in (and it didn't take much forcing, for rust and woodworm had done much work there already), and entered. Much annoyance they had caused the demon family with their hooting and their hollering, and their running up the old staircase and sliding down the banister. At least when the banister had broken off mid-slide the noise had reduced—once the initial laughter the boys directed at the plight of their unfortunate friend had faded.

But the game of indoor tennis which the boys had then started in the upstairs hallway had been the beginning of the end of the fun. The ball had bounced up into the open trapdoor leading to the attic, and the boys had climbed up the conveniently placed stepladder in search of it. Unfortunately for both the little demon and the boys, the demon had bolted up the ladder himself earlier, before the boys entered. Little Murmur had jumped behind an old dresser left forgotten up there many years before. There he cowered, praying to the Great Demon that the ball would soon be found.

And found it soon was. With a cry of triumph, the youngest boy had spotted it in the corner and swooped to snatch it up. Quite why the ball had then bounced from his eager hand and landed in the little demon's lap was unclear. With a yelp and a screech of cloven hoof on floorboard, Murmur had leapt up and over the dresser, galloped across to the trapdoor and jumped through it. He heard the boys' screams of horror and surprise, but not one glimpse of them did he ever see again.

While Murmur's demon family smoked and steamed and fumed at his foolishness, and his mother began thinking about whether all of the family's things would fit in two suitcases, the screech of the attic window being forced open reached the only-slightly-pointed little ears of the fearfully listening Murmur below. The boys' urgent, frightened voices had quickly faded as the sound of them squeezing out the tiny opening and into the kind, steady arms of the great elm tree had ceased.

Throwing himself down on a sofa whose stuffing bulged forth from threadbare, faded fabric, the little demon felt glad he and his kin had not been forced to flee from this home. The front parlour he lazed in was grand and high-ceilinged, or at least it had once been grand. Now the dark red damask wallpaper hung off in strips that muttered nervously in the wind, which whistled in through a broken windowpane. These tall windows looked solemnly towards the street, framed by purple and gold curtains darkened further by black mildew. The chandelier gracing the centre of the fine white plaster ceiling hung at a teetering angle that did not invite one to linger beneath it. Fine shards of glass glinted sharply on the threadbare, dust-smothered Persian carpet, the crystals broken by crashing against the ceiling. From where he lay flat on his back, the little demon began counting the crystals dangling from the chandelier. There were many of them, although not nearly so many as there were glinting stars in the night sky Murmur had been staring up at earlier.

Little Murmur had only reached thirteen when his counting was cut short by a shriek and a crash coming from the entrance hall. The little demon had barely finished shooting bolt upright when another shriek and crash identical to the first rung out.

'Loving heaven!' came the furious scream of Beball, followed by a series of violent bangs.

The uttering of this dreadful four-letter word, which Murmur preferred to simply think of as 'the L word', made him cringe.

'That loving saint, it makes me feel healthy just thinking about it!' was the livid response that reached Murmur's only-slightly-pointed ears.

Then Beball and Behemoth stormed into the parlour where Murmur sat anxiously fiddling with his tail. Steam and smoke poured from the angry pairs' eyes, ears and nostrils, and very soon the room was a foggy haze.

'That Saint Kriztofer, the exalted angel, coming and beating us to it like that!' screeched Behemoth, clattering up and down the room at a speed so fast he was but a mere blur in the haze.

Beball showered an already battered stool with kicks. 'Yes, cheated us of our fun, he did! Loving cheated us!'

The little demon could barely see past his own baby-clawed hands by now, as the steam and smoke had grown so thick.

'Did you succeed in making that ruined gambler turn to evil sin?' Murmur asked in a tiny squeak, directing his beady, smoke-stinging red eyes at a hazy shape he presumed to be Behemoth.

'Don't you mock us, rabbit-tail!' came Behemoth's furious shriek, right into little Murmur's ear. 'Do we look like we triumphed in our wicked plot tonight, you quarter-witted sunbeam!'

Without turning his head, Murmur swivelled his little red eyes sideways. A long hooked nose hovered there with smoke curling up from its flared nostrils.

'Oh, that really is a shame,' Murmur replied in a squeak so high-pitched that, other than demons, only cats and mice could have heard it.

'A shame?' Beball spread his long, sinewy hand over the stool's seat, and then drew his fingers together so that their talons cut deep into cover and stuffing. 'A blessed saintly action is not a shame; it is a failure which every demon should kick himself for. It is a loving catastrophe!'

With one jerk of a scrawny, iron-hard arm, Beball sent the battered stool flying across the room. It knocked a vase off a table as it passed, then flew straight through the window. The weary stool had barely settled to rest amongst the dead leaves and lank grass when a gust of wind entered through the hole the stool had exited through. The heavy velvet curtains billowed out, and the door banged shut.

The violence of these sudden sounds made little Murmur's eyes water in a way that was rather shameful for a demon, but he was glad that the room had been cleared of its smoky haze. When older brothers armed with insults were about, he preferred to have his vision sharp.

Now that they had let out some of their rage, Beball and Behemoth sat down. They sprawled on their chairs, Beball with his hooves resting on the neighbouring chair and Behemoth with his on a table. The thin wisps of steam still curling forth from the recently arrived demons' ears were testament to the rage still boiling within, but they nevertheless got out their books and set about studying them.

'Now, where is that chapter on turning men to acts of evil desperation...' muttered Beball, thumbing through the crinkled yellow leaves of an ancient leather-bound tome.

When the cover fell wider open, little Murmur caught a glimpse of the label stamped inside: HELL'S GATE SCHOOL LIBRARY – FOR ISSUE TO SENIOR STUDENTS ONLY.

He let out a huff. It really was unfair. All the grownup demons demanding that he be mighty evil and then not even letting him read the books that told you how. That he had not yet read all the introductory books he was supposed to did not occur to the little demon. After all, why bother learning how to conjure up a rat infestation when you could just learn how to create an invisible flock of evil fiends that can swarm about a man's head and torment him night and day?

'Here Doctor Mortimus says one ought to spin around thrice on entering the dwelling of the prey,' said Behemoth, reading from the half-foot thick book he held. 'Then he advises that the Number of the Beast should be traced upon the floor and the sign of the Sun Demon scratched on top of it. This helps to erase your scent from the threshold, so that saints and angels will not know a demon has passed it.'

Beball tossed aside his tome and took the book from Beball, who was holding it out to him. 'Hmmm...sounds like that was where we went wrong...'

'Where you went wrong,' shrieked Behemoth. 'I said we should spin thrice and you said we should spin twice and spit once!'

'But you didn't remember about the Number of the Beast; it wouldn't have worked anyway, you stupid dove!' screeched his brother, tossing the book aside.

Beball violently wagged his talon-tipped finger in Behemoth's face. 'Don't you call me names, angel-eyes! You are the oldest; if anyone ought to know this honey, it's you!'

The room was beginning to fill with steam and smoke again. Little Murmur could already barely see down to his hooves through the murk. He let out a sigh. A whole, tiring night of evil and still they had the energy to carry on like this (Beball and Behemoth were now rolling around on the floor shrieking insults whilst trying to strangle each other).

The little demon sighed again, and started nodding off to sleep.

'Get your hooves on the furniture!'

Little Murmur woke with such a start that his rear lifted several inches off the chair. 'So sorry, great Mammon!' he gibbered, fearfully looking up the form of his father towering up through the smog before him.

'Do it—now!' bellowed the great demon, pointing his long, long talon at his son's little hooves, which rested neatly together on the floor.

With his hocks knocking together in fear, the little demon obeyed. He quickly swung his hooves up onto the sofa and sprawled as best he could (which was not very well at all).

'Don't you feel proud when you see our two boys like this?' Mammon said to Murmur's mother, who had just come up beside him.

She looked fondly down at Beball and Behemoth, who were still rolling around on the floor trying to choke each other. 'Yes, quite. It makes those tiresome early years all worthwhile when you see them doing so well.'

'What did Professor Classilabolas say—you did talk to him about Murmur at the parent-teacher evening, did you not?' Mammon said to his mate, scowling down at the little demon.

'Yes,' she replied, joining him in frowning down at her youngest. 'He thought I ought to take him to see Dr Azazel.'

'I think you should, vilest. Look at the boy; if he were any smaller and rounder one could almost mistake him for a human child on a dark night!'

Murmur gibbered and whimpered beneath this terrible pronouncement. He wished his parents would not say such hurtful things in his hearing.

His mother nodded. 'I'll come to the school tomorrow and take him to the doctor. Perhaps he's just a bit late in his development, but it is wise to be sure there is nothing wrong with him.'

Mammon responded with a 'harrumph' that suggested he suspected the latter. But he said nothing and turned away from his son with a face that was unimpressed.

'KICK harder, Murmur!'

'Yes Ma,' muttered Murmur, reluctantly beginning to swing his little hooves more vigorously against the bench.

The cavern the little demon and his mother sat in was small and dark, lit only by a torch blazing in one corner. One end of the cavern was boarded off, and in this wall was a rough and rickety door. From time to time, Murmur looked up from fiddling with his fingers and glanced nervously at this door. He did not want to be here, and he could not be bothered kicking anymore.

'Ma, can't we go home?' squeaked the little demon (his voice always went squeaky when he was nervous).

'No—and stop sitting there like a little angel!'

'I don't like it here, Ma...'

'Nobody likes a doctor's waiting room,' snapped his mother. 'Now start kicking that seat! This silence of yours is really getting on my nerves.'

'Murmur son of Mammon?'

The little demon looked to see who had spoken. A tall, skinny, wizened fellow stood in the now open doorway, peering over the round, wire-framed spectacles perched on the end of his long, hooked nose.

'Ma, Ma, I want to go home!' gibbered little Murmur, tugging desperately at his mother's sleeve.

She swatted his hand away. 'Yes, doctor, this is he.'

The wizened fellow, whose hunched back made him look even more like a praying mentis than skinniness alone would have, motioned them forward. 'Enter, if you please.'

The doctor's harsh, cutting voice ought to have been sweet music to demon ears, but little Murmur's slightly-pointy ears twitched at its sting. 'Ma, I don't need to see the doctor. There's nothing wrong with me; I promise to never do anything good again!'

She seized her son's baby-clawed hand and hauled him forward. 'Doctor Azazel, I apologise for my son's behaviour. He's not been doing very well lately.'

'Sit,' the doctor ordered little Murmur, pointing at a table with one of the longest, sharpest fingers the little demon had ever seen.

Doctor Azazel's face was so lean and long, and his chin so sharp and pointed, that the little demon could barely prevent himself from gibbering and muttering aloud.

He quickly hopped up onto the iron table and began swinging his furry legs and furiously fiddling with the stiffly starched black sheet. The cavern's rock walls were bare and dusty, and its contents sinister. Age-blackened iron chests occupied much of the space, and sitting on top of many of them were white bones and stuffed animals. The musty raven sitting staring at him from on a shelf directly opposite was especially disturbing to Murmur. Its dead, black, beady eyes seemed to stare and stare.

'Ma, I want to go home!' squawked the little demon. 'I promise I'll be bad!'

Murmur's mother shrugged helplessly at Doctor Azazel. 'You see what he's like. His father and I really worry about him. And look at this!' she added, tweaking his nose. 'It's so small and—and straight; he's just so ugly! I know it's a horrible thing to think, but I can't help it!'

The doctor's mouth, which had never once been turned up into a smile in all his five thousand years, grew tighter and harder. 'Hmm,' he muttered. 'Hmm...'

He reached for a tape measure and held it against Murmur's cringing nose. 'Hmmm...' Then he measured the length of Murmur's fingernails. The 'hmmm' that followed was condemning. 'He certainly is very late in his development... Was he born small and rounded?'

Murmur's mother nodded. 'Yes, he was such a small, ugly child—to have created such a son; you always blame yourself, you know, always wonder what you did to deserve such a thing!' wailed she, almost sobbing.

'Madam,' rasped the doctor, 'blaming yourself is no use.'

Holding her long-clawed hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs, she nodded.

'What I am prescribing for your son is this: he should complete Belphegor's Idiot Management Course.'

'Belphegor's—Belphegor's...Belphegor's Idiot Management Course!' squeaked the little demon, almost struck dumb with terror.

* * * *

Belphegor rapped his sharply pointed nail on the blackboard. 'And so you see, children, that we demons can sow discord among men by seducing them with riches. Now,' he continued in his earache inducingly-hoarse voice, 'who can tell me a good way in which we might do this?'

The dozen or so young demons sitting in a semi-circle on the floor at his feet looked nervously up at him. Some even had baby-clawed hands pressed to mouths that would gibber, and more than a few were fiddling with their tails. But none were fiddling quite as nervously as our little demon. His fingers were a blur, and his teeth could still be heard chattering even through his hand.

A demon at the back raised his hand.

'Yes, Abaddon?'

'We...we might whisper to them that if they get rich, they could give more to the poor.'

'What!' shrieked the monstrous Belphegor, giving his own beard a violent tug. 'You foolish runt! You imbecile! Go and stand facing that wall!'

Poor Abaddon's hocks could be heard knocking together as he fearfully crept over to the wall. 'Keep your trap shut, Abaddon, shut!' he gibbered to himself.

Little Murmur was now so afraid of saying anything that he promptly stuffed his fingers into his mouth.

With smoke and steam pouring from his ears, Belphegor pointed at a demon in the front row. 'What about you, Bifrons?'

'We might suggest an invention to them,' he squeaked fearfully.

'Good. What sort of invention might it be?'

Little Murmur had let out a sigh of relief at hearing someone answer correctly. But Belphegor suddenly turned his flickering green eyes squarely onto Murmur as he asked this latest question.

'Ahrm...ahrm...eh...' stammered the little demon. 'Perhaps one that...that does demons' work for them?'

'What!' shrieked the monstrous Belphegor a second time. 'You slothful runt! You imbecile! You angel-faced, lazy, useless dove! Only humans are lazy, fool! How many times do we teachers need to tell you?'

Cringing and shaking so violently that his teeth could be heard knocking together, the little demon could only nod. He kept his baby-clawed hand pressed over his mouth so no big demon-inciting words could escape.

But the monstrous Belphegor's flaming green eyes remained fixed on his thickest pupil, and the smoke pouring forth from his ears pointed to a burning fuse that might reach its end any moment. 'Well?' he bellowed, in a voice akin to the roar of a hundred raging bulls. 'Answer the question, runt!'

Now with his fingers stuffed back into his mouth, the juddering Murmur went 'mm ma o ah' and looked sidewise at the young demon beside him.

The heinous Belphegor let out a snort so violent that its wind blasted little Murmur's curly black hair backwards. 'You think to pass the question over to him, do you?'

Sucking on his fingers, the little demon nodded eagerly and elbowed his nearest neighbour in the ribs.

The horrific Belphegor inhaled a great gust of air in readiness for outrage. But before it could be unleashed upon the head of the trembling Murmur, the elbowed demon spoke up. 'What if—if we helped man invent a—a machine that made them rich without d-doing any work...'

The drafty trap clanged shut. The glowing, viperous eyes blinked slowly twice, then Belphegor turned them upon the young demon. 'Igna, that is well said.' The deep, growling voice sounded stunned at hearing a somewhat intelligent suggestion.

'The—the machine would make the man who has it a lot of money, but produce nothing useful for humankind,' added the young demon, in an uncertain whimper.

Nodding thoughtfully to himself, the monstrous Belphegor stomped back to the blackboard, all the while stroking his long beard. 'Very good, Igna... Such things are indeed a demonic way to make men greedy and lazy... Now,' he bellowed, suddenly turning to face the nervous class, 'why are the rest of you runts not trying as hard as him, eh? Why are you all so stupid and lazy?'

Without exception, the seated demon class started in fright. 'Silence, Murmur, silence...' gibbered the little demon to himself, cringing under the glowing green eyes burning down at him and his fellows.

'I think it is time I gave you weaklings a little real work!' bellowed Belphegor, bringing his cane down on a nearby desk with such force that it broke in two. 'There will be no more of this airy-fairy, softy-wafty junior school nonsense here! No; here we turn useless runts into proper mean, God-mocking demons!'

Having always thought the junior grades at Hell's Gate School an unendurable labour camp of a place, this announcement was not exactly music to Murmur's only-slightly-pointy ears. He could hardly comprehend how more work could be demanded than that already expected.

'You runts are going to harden up and stop being a gaggle of useless angels!' continued Belphegor, throwing the two pieces of broken cane over his shoulder. 'It's time to grow a decent pair of ears!'

Murmur held up a shaking little hand. 'I...I don't think we—we w-will be able to grow one in t-two weeks, O great Belphegor,' faltered the little demon. 'A demon ear grows awfully slowly...'

'What!' shrieked the monstrous demon. 'Don't you question me, angel-ears!'

Murmur did not believe the great Belphegor. But before he could say anything, he stuffed his fingers into his mouth.

'Come here, runt!'

There could be little hope that Belphegor's great finger was pointing at any other demon besides Murmur, but he still refused to believe it.

'Here, now!'

The great finger pointed directly at the ground before the big blackboard.

Never had a demon got to his hooves more slowly and reluctantly than little Murmur did now. A Prince of Hell could have transported himself to Timbuktu and back in the time it took Murmur. And in the time it took him to walk to the spot the great finger pointed at, that Prince could have circled the earth ten times.

The finger lifted to point squarely at the little demon. 'You, Murmur, are going to become a conjurable demon.'

'A...a conjurable demon?' gasped the little demon, gaping up at his teacher in open-mouthed horror.

* * * *

'Get back!' squeaked Murmur, prodding a young demon with his pitchfork.

The prodded demon shuffled sideways, then let out a sudden squeak as his little cloven hooves lost traction in the muddy street. He quickly snatched hold of Murmur's pitchfork to prevent himself falling.

Unfortunately, our little demon's hooves gripped the wet, mud-slicked cobbles no better than his companion's. With a shriek he fell forwards onto the other demon, whose name was Gribon.

Both demons hit the ground hard, and the dark, narrow, empty street echoed with shrieks, squeaks and hisses as they attempted to disentangle themselves and get back up.

'Don't you go near me again, freak!' gibbered Murmur, jerking his pitchfork at Gribon, who still floundered in the muck.

'Don't you call me that, rabbit-tail!' Gribon hissed back, finally dragging himself upright by seizing a post. 'I'm not the one with a face so round and a nose so short that it could belong to a human!'

Murmur opened his mouth to toss back a retort, but then silently closed it again. He simply could not think of anything clever to say. Eyeing Gribon with beady little eyes, Murmur instead settled for sulking in a dark corner against the tall old houses lining the narrow alley.

But all the while, his tail whipped and twitched. Why did that monstrous Belphegor have to go and partner him with Gribon? Gribon the fair. Gribon the pale. Gribon the odd. Gribon the painful-to-look-at. Little Murmur had never wanted to go home more. Even older demons crossed the street to avoid Gribon. He was a freak, an abomination. A demon with flaxen hair and pale grey eyes was just not right.

The little demon's eyes watered with the sting of looking at his partner in crime. To give them a rest, he glanced down at his fingers, which fiddled with the end of his tail.

Now leaning against a pillar in what he clearly intended to be a callous, swaggering fashion, Gribon drummed his taloned fingers on his pitchfork. 'I say, Murmur, do you still remember what we are supposed to be doing?'

The little demon stopped his fiddling abruptly. 'I thought you knew what we are meant to do?'

'No, you were meant to know!'

'But you are two years older; you should be the one to remember!'

Gribon raised his respectably-clawed hand. 'Alright! Let's stop squabbling like a pair of gutter-rats and think.'

'You started it!'

'You'll have to face Belphegor too if we fail, Murmur!' screeched Gribon, jabbing the little demon in the chest with a sharp finger.

'I want to go home!'

'Don't be a baby. Now think, Murmur, think.'

'Alright,' Murmur muttered reluctantly, 'think.'

As he casually twirled the end of his tail around, the pale-haired demon stared thoughtfully ahead. 'So, we were supposed to wait around...'

'Yes, we wait around,' Murmur echoed, nodding vigorously.

'There was more than that, fool.'

'If you think I am the fool and you are not, then don't talk to me!'

Keeping with his callous leaning, Gribon sniffed contemptuously. 'But you were the one Belphegor ordered to write this sunlight down so as not to forget, not me.'

Murmur shrunk further into his corner. 'Well I forgot to write it down so I wouldn't forget, didn't I.'

Gribon cast a withering look at Murmur. 'I'm not bothering trying to remember what we're supposed to do. Not when you are the one at fault here.'

The little demon let out a sulky huff. 'Alright! So...in order to be conjured we...we...'

The drumming of Gribon's talons grew louder with impatience. This did not help Murmur remember. 'We...we—I know, we draw a circle in the soil and stand in it!'

The drumming paused. 'And?'

'And we...just stand in it.'

Frowning, Gribon pushed his cap back and scratched his head. 'I'm sure there was more to do...'

'Let's just try it. If nothing happens, we can tell Belphegor that nothing happened.'

'We? You.'

Arguing was only likely to prolong the time spent in this horrible alley, so the little demon just picked up a stick lying nearby (reluctantly, for it was muddy), and drew a circle around himself and Gribon. Then he crossed his arms and waited. After five minutes, nothing had happened.

'I said this wasn't going to work!' squeaked Murmur, with a relief unbecoming to a demon.

'Think harder about what Belphegor said to do!' screeched the fair-haired demon, stomping his hoof.

Murmur screwed up his beady little eyes and did as Gribon suggested. 'Eh...there was something about...about the—the Cross of Darkness?'

'See, you do know! You're just too lazy to think.' Gribon pointed to the ground. 'Scratch the sign.'

'But I'll get my finger all dirty if I touch the street. And besides, I can't properly remember what the Cross of Darkness is...'

'Get out the way then!' hissed Gribon, shoving little Murmur aside. 'I'll do it.'

The little demon was almost flung to the muddy cobbles a second time, only saving himself by thrusting his pitchfork out. But while his tail did whip and flick, he kept quiet.

When Gribon had done the deed, both demons stood expectantly and waited. At first, nothing happened. Then, just as Murmur was about to suggest giving up again, a noise reached through the foggy darkness.

'Come to me...' said a faint, faraway voice. 'Come to me, your master!' The invisible voice was growing louder now. 'Come to me, spirits of the darkness! Come and do my bidding!'

As little Murmur quaked in terror and clutched his pitchfork tightly, a roaring wind suddenly descended. It whirled and howled through the dark street, then suddenly formed into a whirlwind around the two young demons.

The voice seemed to live within the wind. Its extorting whispers wrapped themselves about Murmur, who found himself being lifted into the air. If the little demon had not been so surprised at the success of his dabbling in the dark arts, he would have thought to be more afraid. In no time at all he and Gribon were flying high above the town, whose faint lights twinkled far down in the darkness below.

Then he was lifted higher still. Mist engulfed him, but almost as suddenly, it was gone. Now Murmur and Gribon were alone with the glowing silver moon and the wistful-faced stars shining down on the night. The fog blanket below was snow-like and pure, and the air whistling all around cold.

For a moment the little demon almost forgot he was a conjurable demon as the moon's beauteous, serene face loomed close and large. The wonder of this celestial disc, which glowed like silver lit from within as it floated through the cosmos, transfixed him.

But as Murmur's round, red little eyes stared in awe, a black shape moved across the face of the moon. Then a flash of shimmering white light haloed by gold and purple moved towards the black. The two collided, then locked together in struggle.

Murmur flew towards it, and the voices within the wind grew a little fainter. Now the black shape showed itself as a bat-winged black demon who fought with an angel. Their struggle was desperate. The black great demon writhed and twisted as he grappled with the angel, trying to avoid the angel's blows and deliver his own. Every time the terrible black demon's long-taloned, sinewy hand found its target, a flash of red fire and sparks burst forth. When it was the angel that delivered a strike, a blinding golden light flashed into the darkness, causing little Murmur's beady red eyes to water and sting.

As the two spirits wheeled and grappled in combat, their wings tangled together. The angel's great white-feathered wings became intertwined by the black demon's powerful leathery, sinewy wings, and he seemed unable to free them. Seeing that victory was within his reach, the black demon shrieked in fiendish glee and struck the angel a fierce blow on the side of the head. The noble-faced angel reeled. Uttering more cackling shrieks, the black demon smote the angel about the head several more times and kicked him with a long, clawed foot.

The angel cried out in pain and clutched his hands to his head. The black demon saw his chance to smite his enemy down. He struck a terrible blow upon the angel's wing.

The angel's cry of agony rung out through the cosmic night. Then he reeled back and began to plummet downwards. As he fell, his long, shimmering robe of white silk billowed about him, and his feathered white wings streamed uselessly behind him. Down, down he plunged, falling headlong towards Earth.

As he watched, the little demon felt awe and a touch of fear. But less becomingly, he also felt a little pity. The tall, noble angel with his shimmering glow and beautiful swan-like wings was a magnificent thing. It was sad to see him fall. Murmur's little red eyes followed the angel's fall until he had disappeared into the white blanket of mist far down below.

Then Murmur looked once more at the great black demon. The terrible fiend had his bony, hook-nosed head thrown back, and from his open mouth shrieks and howls of demonic laughter erupted.

'Murmur, come on!'

The little demon turned his eyes to find Gribon tugging urgently at his coat.

'Stop gawping like a new-born!' shrieked he of the unnatural hair.

The little demon allowed his companion to draw him along, but still his eyes lingered upon the spot where the angel had vanished down into the fog.

Through the night flew the two demons. Then, with a thud and a clatter, little Murmur suddenly found himself sprawled on a floor.

'What!' screamed a loud voice. 'I conjure a demon and this is what I get—and late too!'

The dazed demon blinked his beady little eyes uncertainly up at the man standing furiously over him. He had jet-black hair, a long, proud face and a hawk-like hooked nose. When Murmur also noticed that the man was dressed in Arabian garb, he blinked some more.

But before the little demon could inform the conjurer that he was ungrateful, and remind him that demons were evil spirits who ruled the darkness, Gribon thudded down beside him.

The conjurer's eyes bulged even wider. 'What is this—this thing?' he screamed, pointing a long and furiously shaking finger at Gribon.

The fair-haired demon had hastily scrambled up the instant he arrived, and now he removed his cap and bowed low. 'Gribon at your service. You called, master; what is your command?'

The conjurer stared at Gribon for a moment, and then turned his horrified, disbelieving eyes to a dusty, musty tome lying open on the table beside him.

'Turn your coat inside out, tap the skull twice...' he muttered to himself, stroking his goatee beard with a shaking hand. 'Then chalk the sign of the Great Behemoth upon the floor...and a dark demon evil and ready to do your bidding shall appear...' He shook his head and blinked as though doubting his own eyes, then ran his eyes over the passage once more. 'Chalk sign of Great Behemoth...a dark demon evil and ready to do your bidding...'

He looked again at Gribon and Murmur, who still sat on the floor where he had thudded down. The conjurer's wide eyes were those of a man who doubted both the soundness of his eyes and sanity of his mind.

Gribon seemed oblivious to the conjurer's unflattering reaction. He bowed a second time. 'Master, what is your bidding?'

'What is the matter down in Hell these days, eh?' shouted the conjurer, getting back to his earlier indignant rage. 'Are they so short-staffed that they now send a freak and a runt when the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai calls?'

The little demon clattered and jittered before the fierce finger the conjurer pointed at him. But his partner in conjuring was not so cowed. Gribon swept his cloak about himself with haughty disdain and strutted over to where the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai stood.

'Look here, do you want us or not?' he demanded carelessly. 'We demons haven't got all night to waste hanging about chit-chatting. There are plenty of worse things we two could be getting up to right now.'

'What, like poking a chicken off its perch or causing a bucket of milk to go sour?' scoffed the conjurer.

'That's it!' screeched Gribon. 'Murmur, we are leaving!'

The little demon stood up carefully, keeping a wary eye on the conjurer as he did so. 'Good idea, Gribon. Let's get out of here.'

He of the disturbing hair nodded. 'Come on then.'

'I'm ready,' said Murmur. 'Recite the spell.'

Gribon's beady grey eyes were fixed ahead, but his lip betrayed him with a slight tremor. 'What spell? Belphegor didn't tell us about a spell!'

A clatter and a screech rang out as Murmur's little cloven hooves scrabbled for grip. 'W-what? You mean you don't know how to get b-back?' His mouth fell open in horror.

Gribon nudged little Murmur in the ribs. 'What do we do now?' he hissed, keeping his stare fixed on the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai.

'Don't know, don't know!' gibbered the little demon, fidgeting desperately with the end of his tail.

'Not so smart and fine now, are we?' cried the conjurer, his eyes shining with glee.

Gribon tried to keep his stare callous, but defeat shone through it. When the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai walked right up to him and stood over him with his hands on his hips, the pale demon blinked, and his stare wavered.

'Your honour, you wouldn't happen to...know the spell, would you?' he faltered, fiddling with the end of his tail.

'I do indeed know it!' Looking mighty pleased with himself, the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai turned away and strutted over to the window. 'I, the great conjurer, know everything! There is no man alive who knows more than I do—' He suddenly spun around to face the demon pair. 'And do you know why?'

They shook their heads uncertainly.

'Because I do not let any foolish scruples get in my way! You see, unlike Saint Kriztofer, that fool down in the murky, cold swamp of a town in the west you call home, I am not afraid to converse with the Devil! Fools who wish only to be good will not talk with him, and therefore do they remain fools, because the Devil, the Great Satan, knows all that there is to know about the things that are on the earth and beneath it.'

'Just tell us the spell!' screeched Gribon. 'If you don't, I'll tell my father about you!'

The great Hernando threw back his head and laughed a terrible, mocking laugh. 'Your father and I have had many good conversations in this very room. He always is telling me how ashamed he is to have sired a freak like you!' snarled the great one.

Gribon caught Murmur's eye. In it, the little demon read defeat and a total absence of plans.

'Your honour, just let us go!' he squeaked.

Rubbing his hands together, the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai grinned maniacally down at the young demons. 'Not until you two have moved that pile in the courtyard from the east side to the west side.'

Sniffling nervously, the little demon clip-clopped over to the window and looked out. Far down below the ivory tower he stood in was a courtyard. And in the courtyard sat a huge pile of rocks.

'Come on, Gribon,' muttered Murmur. 'We'd better get started or we'll not get home until the horrid yellow disc is high in the sky.'

* * * *

A faint pink glow on the eastern sky heralded the dawn as the little demon trotted along wearily. He picked his way between the fallen stones littering the churchyard, dusting himself down as he went.

The white dust that had covered the conjurer's boulders now covered Murmur. In all his three hundred years he had never done such a hard night's work. His hands were bruised and bleeding, and for once he was glad not to have long talons.

Gribon had broken every one of his talons moving the rocks, and made well sure the fact did not go unnoticed by Murmur. The little demon's only-slightly-pointy ears almost ached from the stream of complaints, howls, hisses and shrieks Gribon had seen fit to unleash upon his partner in conjuring. If the fair one had steamed and smoked anymore, little Murmur would have been in danger of conceding with the angels in that hardship ought to be borne with fortitude and acceptance, and without blaming everyone but oneself. And having Gribon land right on top of him when they finally arrived back had been the last straw. Being forced to look at him was bad enough. Murmur almost felt dirty from having come into unwelcome contact so often with Gribon.

The little demon had never been gladder to see the tumbledown wall ahead of him. Very soon he would be safely home. He let out a sigh of relief.

'Horrid humans,' he muttered to himself. 'Nasssty creatures...so ungrateful, they are...'

Then suddenly he stopped. A strange noise had sounded from somewhere, he did not know where. Holding his breath, he listened. And there it was again. A cry, faint and muffled.

Parting the hazel and leafless dogroses growing beside the path, he pushed through and made for the place the cry seemed to have sounded from. A faint light glowed through the thicket, and a sweet scent hung in the still, cold dawn air.

As Murmur came nearer to the light, the smell grew stronger. It was a scent akin to that of wild roses, but the demon knew it could not come from any flower. Held in winter's cold grip, all of the flowers now dwelt within the earth as mere promises of life and beauty to come.

Passing between a final thicket, the little demon now could see the glow emerging from the ground. The old well. He knew the place better than he would have liked. One summer night last decade he had inadvertently stumbled upon it, and thanks to a concealing shawl of morning glory, had almost plunged down it.

The reek of roses was now so strong that the little demon almost retched. Demons detest the scent of flowers, for it fills them with revulsion. Putting his baby-clawed fingers over his barely-hooked nose, he cautiously sidled closer. The glowing light made Murmur's beady little eyes water and sting, but although he winced, he kept advancing slowly.

When he got near enough, he peered fearfully down the brightly shining well. An angel looked back at Murmur. His eyes were radiant orbs of brilliant sapphire blue, with depths that seemed as though they reached far back into infinity and touched the very first ray of light at the dawn of Creation. And with his onwards gaze, it seemed as though he saw through Time itself, right to the end of earthly days. The face the angel turned upwards was as the bright rising harvest moon that rests above golden cornfields, and the translucent pink flush glowing upon it the first light of dawn. The angel's countenance possessed a beauty beyond any human face, and greater even than any ever created by the painter or sculptor's hand.

It was a face little Murmur recognised. He was the angel who had fallen through the mist. Rather than being folded as they ought to have been, his wings were hanging and painfully twisted.

'Oh Murmur, help me!' cried the angel, in a voice that was pure, heavenly music.

Staring down with eyes that were wide with fear and surprise, the little demon shuffled to the well's edge. 'Why should I?' he growled, trying his best to look callous.

'I have fallen and my wings are broken,' replied the angel. 'Help me, please!'

Murmur sniffed loudly, and tried not to look afraid. 'Serves you right for tangling with a demon. When will you angels and saints learn; it is us demons who rule the darkness!'

'Just bring me a tear from the eye of the fair Sophia, and I may be healed!' cried the angel.

The demon sniffed again. He knew he should not be talking thus with an angel, but he was a curious imp. 'Who's the fair Sophia?' he asked, forgetting altogether to sound rough and cutting.

'She is a wise and virtuous maiden whose soul is stainless and heart brimming with love. There is no pain she can witness without feeling as keenly as if it were being inflicted upon her own person.'

'Never heard of her,' said Murmur, as though that meant she was of no importance.

'There is many a thing in Heaven, Hell and Earth you have not heard of, Murmur.'

The little demon's hooves clattered and slithered as belated surprise struck him. 'How do you know my name?' he screeched.

'Oh Murmur, we angels know many, many things.'

'I don't like you; I'm not talking with you anymore!' squeaked the demon. 'I'm going away!'

And with that, he turned on his heels and galloped for home as fast as his hairy little goat-legs would carry him.

LITTLE Murmur stuck his head out the door and sniffed the air. 'Smells like snow, yes it does...' he muttered to himself.

The skies above were filled with low, dark clouds that had hastened the fast-gathering winter twilight. They hovered heavily, as though weighted down and rendered indolent by their load.

Still frowning, the little demon passed out into the overgrown back garden of his home. He did not like snow. Snow reflected the light. Snow made everything pure and white. Angel-white. This thought brought into his mind something he had been trying not to think about all day. The angel in the churchyard—in his churchyard.

As he fiddled with the end of his tail, he scowled fearfully down the path. He dithered, kicking absently at the winter-browned grass. All the teachers at Hell's Gate had told him a real demon spends all his time making mischief and planning mischief. But that was hard work. And you did not even get compensated if the demon-work was done in your own time. Today was Saturday, so there was certainly going to be none of that.

'Lying on the old mayor's tomb-slab, that is how we shall spend our night...' murmured Murmur, creeping onwards along the path.

Murmur always hoped that any problem would fix itself, and in this, he was no different. With the optimism of the lazy, he had succeeded in convincing himself that the angel was more than likely to have gone by now. Surely one of his own kind would have found him and rescued him, wouldn't they...?

Creeping through the gap in the tumbledown wall, he fearfully peered around the corner. A light glowed in the murky darkness.

Uttering a squeak of annoyance, Murmur balled his baby-clawed hands into fists and stomped his cloven hooves. 'Still there, it is, still there!' he hissed. 'The horrid, horrid sunlight, the sweet—'

His words ended in a shriek as a large, white snowflake alighted on his cheek like a wet kiss. Turning his beady little eyes upwards, he saw more of the pristine flakes fluttering down from heaven.

'They are after you, Murmur, after you!' he gibbered, leaping and dodging in an effort to avoid the icy snowflakes. 'The white ice butterflies loves the angels, and the angels loves them!'

Then the snowflakes stopped falling. The silence of the winter night was deep. No sound stirred in the darkness. The little demon scuttled over to the protective shelter of the sullenly huddled evergreens in the churchyard corner. The glow emanating from the well was still visible through the tangle of bare branches and dead weeds, and a waft of sweet perfume reached Murmur's barely-hooked nose on the damp, icy cold air. No longer was the churchyard a peaceful retreat. Not while that thing was there. There was nothing for it. The angel had to go.

Little Murmur began clip-clopping up and down under the dark trees. Smoke and steam such as would have made Mammon proud curled forth from his ears and nose. Mammon would have been less proud if he had heard his son's musings.

'Maybe if I get the tear from the eye of the fair Sophia the angel will be able to fly away and leave my churchyard,' he muttered to himself. 'But it would mean getting close to the little sunlight again...' He paused with a thoughtful little finger to his lips. 'I'll have to smell him, see him...how my eyes will water and sting...'

He resumed his pacing. 'Then again, if the sweet sunlight stays, I'll forever be looking at that sickening glow and smelling that choking, sweet stink. Argh, so sweet it is, so stinking!' He put his fingers on his nose to peg it shut. Already he felt sick.

'What about telling one of the big demons about the angel? But then he'll know you skulk about down here all the time, you fool! He'll see your tracks, your scratchings upon the stones... No, I must get rid of the angel.'

Bold with his resolution, the little demon trotted back along the path. Once he had parted the leafless dogroses and hazel boughs, he passed through to stand before the well.

Although his little red eyes still watered and stung, the light shining from the well did not seem quite so bright as it had the first time. Holding his nose firmly together, he sidled up to the well's edge. The angel sat huddled at the bottom, hugging his drawn-up knees and seeming to shiver. His feathered white wings were a twisted tangle behind him.

'Hey, angel!' Murmur shouted roughly.

The startling sapphire eyes were upon him in an instant. 'Oh help me, please!' cried the angel, staggering slightly as he got to his feet.

The little demon saw that the angel's shimmering silk robe was smudged with the mud at the well's bottom, and that his wings and pale golden hair were wet and bedraggled. But he tried hard not to feel pity.

'So then, where might I find this fair Sophia you were yabbering on about last night?' he asked carelessly, striking his best callous pose.

The angel's face lit up with joy. 'She dwells in the town, in the large house built of white limestone!'

Murmur staggered before the brilliance of this golden smile. As his eyes watered and stung, he shielded them with his hand. 'Don't be so reticent!' he squeaked. 'What house? I've never seen no large white limestone house!'

The hope lighting the angel's face did not dim beneath these rude words. 'It faces the park in front of this ruined church, and you will know it for the flowers. Tended by the beautiful maiden, they grow in its garden even in winter. There is no more beauteous or sacred dwelling in all of Briarwood. You will know when you see it, Murmur, you will!'

The little demon sniffed loudly. He was not entirely convinced. But that would have to do. 'Alright, angel, I'll try to get one of her tears. Don't want you littering my churchyard any longer than necessary!' But without meaning to, his tone had softened a little.

'Oh thank you, thank you!' cried the angel, his eyes growing even brighter and more radiant—a thing Murmur had not thought possible. 'The angels will not forget this, Murmur, never!'

The little demon replied to this with a disquieted grunt, and turned to go.

'My name is Sengriel,' the angel voice called after Murmur, 'and I will be indebted to you forever, dear friend!'

The little demon's hairy goat legs sped up. He did not like what he was hearing. Although he was careful not to step on any sharp stones, Murmur trotted quickly through the churchyard. Picking his way between the tall trees, from which little scraps of demon-cloth still hung, he kept darting fearful eyes left and right, up and down. But on this night, the trees stood still and silent. With his cape intact and his ruff still straight, he emerged out into the open with a surge of relief. The sweeping expanse of muddy grass now lying before him was empty.

Once he had swivelled his beady eyes all around and seen nothing but silent trees and darkness, Murmur gingerly stepped out. With many a backwards glance over his shoulder, the little demon then scuttled across the open ground.

Upon reaching the opposite side of the lawn, he was confronted by a small lake. He almost had begun to panic about having to skirt all the way around it, when his eye alighted upon a little bridge that arched over the lake's narrow middle.

'Just what we need!' he gibbered to himself, making for the path leading to the bridge.

With nervous, hurrying hoof-beats, the little demon trit-trotted quickly onto the wooden bridge.

But when he reached the middle, a voice cried, 'Who dares to cross my bridge?'

It was a cutting feminine voice, and it had come from under the bridge. The little demon uttered a shriek of fright and leapt clean up off the boards. When his cloven hooves clattered back down again, he scrabbled for grip as one hoof went forward and the other sideways.

'What sprite dares to cross my bridge!' cried the voice a second time.

'Who—who is t-there?' Murmur gibbered fearfully, then quickly stuffed his little fingers into his mouth to still his chattering teeth.

There was a watery splash from below, and a pale, white hand appeared on the railing right beside Murmur. As the demon watched in terror, a pale-faced young woman looked up at him, pulling herself partly out of the water. Her long, dark brown hair streamed down over her slim white shoulders and chest, wet, dripping and tangled with riverweed.

'Stay away, river nymph!' hissed the demon, although his shaking and scrabbling rather spoiled the effect.

'Oh Murmur, don't you want to come and play with us?' she whispered, gazing up at him with large eyes of liquid blue.

'No I don't!' he squeaked, shrinking back from her pale, wet hand. 'You water sprites know we demons can't live in water!'

'But no one crosses my bridge without paying their duty,' she replied, and her almond eyes narrowed a little.

'It is us demon who rule the darkness!' shrieked Murmur. 'We go anywhere it pleases us to, water sprite or no water sprite!'

'Kiss my hand and I shall let you pass, Murmur,' said she, her voice cool as the clear, icy water she lived in.

'Argh, I'm not touching you! You're all wet!'

'Then you shall not pass.'

'I shall so; just watch me!'

And with that, the demon galloped forwards. Water rained down upon him instantly, getting heavier with each onward bound. Laughing and mocking, a score of water nymphs just as pale and wanly beautiful as their sister splashed the water up with their hands. The little demon skidded to a stop.

'Wait till the great Satan hears about this!' he shrieked, wagging what he hoped was a warning finger at the teasing hoard.

They merely laughed louder, their clear voices echoing off the water like bubbling fountains. This posse knew as well as Murmur that lowly demons did not have the ear of the great Satan, and that demons had no power over the elemental spirits.

The first water nymph emerged once more from the glassy water beside the demon and put her pale, blue-tinged hand once more on the rail. She smiled a seductive smile that was chilling in its depths.

'Kiss my hand and you shall cross, Murmur,' whispered the dark-haired nymph.

The little demon let out a huff of annoyance. Then he carefully scanned the night-shrouded park. All was quiet. There was no one there but the expectantly waiting naiads.

'Alright!' he muttered sulkily.

He had had enough. The sooner he got the tear from the eye of the fair Sophia, the sooner he could clear that angel out. Then he would have his peaceful churchyard back. Then he would never spend time anywhere else unless he was forced to...

Wrinkling his barely-hooked nose distastefully and standing as far back from her as possible, the little demon bent forward and quickly pecked the river nymph's hand. It was every bit as cold and wet as he had expected—though the watery smell was a surprise.

'Argh, you smell like a fish!' he screeched.

With the speed of a darting minnow, the water nymph seized Murmur by his lacy white ruff. 'You should not have said that, demon. Now I will have to make you pay.' Her lake-blue eyes had ice in their depths.

He stared at her in horror, paralysed with fear and surprise. She looked emotionlessly back at him, and in these glassy eyes, Murmur's reflection stared back at him. She reared slowly out of the water.

As the ice-cold hand locked around his ruff tightened its grip, Murmur took a step back. The water spirit climbed over the rail, lake water streaming from her as she advanced.

Letting out a strangled squeak of terror, the little demon took another step back, then another. Then his back felt resistance as it met the opposite rail. The river nymph pushed her demon-clutching hand forward.

And suddenly Murmur was plunged into frigid water. When he bobbed to the surface, spluttering and cursing, he floundered to the bank and hauled himself out. The bank was slick and slimy, so the little demon had to stake his pitchfork into the ground for grip.

Once safely away from the water, the little demon looked back. The dozen or so river nymphs all were watching him and laughing, the sound of their mirth bouncing off the lake like a high waterfall falling into its pool.

After shaking his pitchfork at the water sprites (which only increased their mirth), he let out a 'harrumph' of annoyance and walked onwards. Water dripped from his cloak and his doublet, from his wet curls and his drooping, askew ruff. It did not, however, drip from his cap. That is because it had fallen off and was now being used as a plaything by the laughing naiads, who tossed it amongst themselves as though it were a ball.

Little Murmur barely even considered what he would say to his mother about the loss of yet another cap. He thought only about getting the tear and then getting the angel out. In no time he had crossed the garden bed and the pavement and was crossing the street.

In this leafy suburb there were many fine houses, but only one house Murmur was interested in. He trotted quickly along the sidewalk. Houses of brick and of wood he passed, houses with lawns and with bare garden beds. Then a front garden filled with a profusion of colourful blooms appeared before his beady eyes. He clattered to a stop and looked up at the house graced by this vision. It was a square, two-storey building of white limestone.

The little demon turned and trotted all the way up its paved path, stopping before the door. Then he rapped upon it with his little pitchfork. At first there was only silence, but then the sound of shuffling footsteps came from inside. The door swung open, and an elderly manservant looked out. His age-lined face was further furrowed by a frown, and his lips made even thinner by a slight annoyance. His watery eyes squinted right over the demon's head.

While the man was puzzling out at the dark, empty garden, little Murmur ducked quickly under the arm with which he held the door open and darted inside. He arrived in a hallway where soft gaslight glowed against ruby-red wallpaper and dark, polished wood floor and architraves.

The door closed behind him. 'There is no one there,' called the rather disgruntled-sounding manservant, shuffling back along the hall. 'It must have been those imps from number ten up to their pranks again...'

Murmur flattened himself against the wall while the old servant passed. But the little demon did not notice the coat stand beside him until he almost knocked it over.

The man snapped his eyes towards the sound, and then shook his head despairingly. 'Rats in the roof again! Will we ever catch them all...?' he muttered to himself, shuffling tiredly down towards the back room.

The little demon made quick to dart through an ajar door on the right. Bright gaslight hit his beady little eyes with stinging force. Momentarily blinded, he staggered and reached out to guide himself. His hands found a soft silk within their grasp. When Murmur regained his sight a moment later, he stood right behind a young lady dressed in lilac silk—a handful of which he gripped between his little fingers.

The young demon almost shrieked with fear. But she had not, it seemed, noticed anything unusual. She walked forward, and Murmur, his hand frozen with terror, walked forward too. Upon arriving beside a magnificent grand piano, the lady stopped to open the pages of the music book sitting on it. Then she swept her skirt forwards a little, making as if to sit down at the instrument.

The little demon only removed his hand just in time to avoid her brushing it with her own. Thinking quickly, he dived under the piano. But as she began to move her fine, slim fingers over the ivory keys, the demon started to regret his choice. Loud, sonorous notes and chords rolled forth from the instrument directly above his head. The pain in his only-slightly-pointy ears was sharp. Demons hate all true music almost as much as they hate love and goodness.

Murmur stuck his fingers into his ears and screwed his face up in discomfort. Then the young lady took in a full breath, opened her mouth, and breathed it out again as a string of silver song.

As her bell-like voice filled the room, Murmur's fingers fell unnoticed from his ears. The melody was so...nice, he thought dreamily, her voice so beautiful... He sighed and, without meaning to, smiled a little.

Looking around the room finally, the little demon saw that it was a large and opulent drawing room. A fine Turkish carpet of purple and blue covered the floor, green and gold paper the walls, and a glittering glass chandelier hung from the white plaster ceiling. Furnishing the room were a suite of gold-upholstered chairs and sofas scattered with viridian, magenta and plum silk cushions. And looking down upon this luxurious scene were the many fine paintings adorning the walls. Doe-eyed youths, laughing girls, brooding, noble-browed men, all gazed forth from their gilt and wood frames, and beside them saints and gods, heroes and geniuses.

It was all very grand, but none seemed quite so marvellous to Murmur as did the lady's angelic song. When it finished, she kept playing. The tune became a different one, one that sounded like a furtively creeping intruder. Murmur could almost see him. Conjured up by the music, he crept with fearful yet wonder-filled steps, his wide eyes gaping at everything they saw...

'Do you like it?' the lady suddenly asked. 'It is In the Hall of the Mountain King from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite.'

The little demon let out a shriek of surprise and jumped clean off the floor, banging his horns on the piano above. The shock that travelled down them to his head made him see stars for a moment.

'Oh, did I startle you?' she said, keeping playing. 'Poor little dear, cowering under there. You can come out now. I won't be frightened.'

No human around here except Saint Kriztofer could see demons—it had to be true, Belphegor himself said so! Almost whimpering with fear and with his teeth chattering and hocks knocking together, Murmur shrunk down as small as he could on the floor.

The fair young lady stopped playing and slid off the piano stool to kneel on the floor. Her cornflower blue eyes now looked straight at the cowering demon, who could no longer doubt that she could see him.

Her rosy lips turned up into a kind smile. 'I am Miss Sophia Ashby. What is your name?'

The little demon had been looking at her through the gaps between his fingers, but he now let his hands fall to his sides. 'My n-name is...Murmur,' he faltered, shuffling backwards.

Her welcoming smile widened. 'It is a pleasure to meet you, Murmur. Now won't you come out from there?'

The little demon stared back at the fair Sophia in silence. He was much too afraid to move. She could see him, and that meant she must be a saint. Saints were those humans on the side of the angels who had perfected their characters, purified their hearts, and filled their heads with wisdom. Both angels and demons were visible to their eyes, and they had powers beyond those of ordinary human beings. What exactly these powers were Murmur did not yet know. Senior school was where demons learnt all about saints, although there was an introductory class at junior school. Little Murmur now wished he hadn't fallen asleep in that class.

But how dangerous could a pretty young girl be, even if she was a saint? Surely not very. She certainly looked a sight less dangerous than that nasty, wet, fishy river nymph had.

Emboldened by this rationale, the little demon crawled out from under the piano and got up.

'You poor little fellow, all wet through like that!' cried Sophia, ushering Murmur towards the roaring fire burning in the hearth. 'Here, let me take that off and hang it out to dry.'

Murmur's little red satin cloak was whisked off his shoulders before he could answer, and hung over the back of a chair near the fireplace.

Then she snatched up a fluffy white towel. 'Now that hair just needs a rub— '

The stunned little demon was rendered sightless as she vigorously towelled his hair.

'What darling thick black curls you have, Murmur! My cousin June would give anything for such a lovely head of hair.'

Murmur had forgotten all about saints by now, and he had almost forgotten to be afraid too. No one had ever said anything nice to him before.

'How kind you are, Miss Sophia,' he said civilly, reaching his little hands out towards the warming fire and rubbing them together. 'I must say, you do keep a very fine house too.'

She put the towel aside and sat down on the nearby sofa. 'It is not mine, Murmur, but my guardian's. I have lived here ever since I was a little girl. I am an orphan, you see.'

'Oh,' said Murmur, 'that is sad,' and hoped very much that she would shed a tear.

But her smile remained as bright as ever. 'I do not think of myself as unfortunate. People have their time to come and their time to go, and that is ordained by beings much wiser than us. My guardian may be a somewhat stern and distant man by nature, but he has wealth and is greatly respected for being an upstanding and decent man. Many, many girls have much less than I. I count myself greatly blessed.'

Little Murmur was crestfallen at her seemingly endless sunniness. Getting a tear from the eye of the fair Sophia was turning out to be harder than he had fancied it would be.

'Are you not lonely living here all by yourself except for the old man?' he asked hopefully.

'Lonely? Not at all! I have my books and my music and my flowers, and then there is feeding the ducks when I walk in the park and watching the little children play. And on Sundays Uncle William lets Cousin June visit me.'

'Is there no one else who visits?'

'No, Mr Moore, my guardian is anxious. He does not like me going out to make calls, and he does not like strange people coming to the house.' Her eyes finally turned a little wistful. 'The boy who has moved in recently next door—I have caught him watching me from his upstairs window while I tend my plants and when I sit out in the garden. He seems a nice young man. Sometimes I wish I might be allowed to call on him and his mother and sisters. But Mr Moore does not like to make social calls, and I cannot call myself. He would not approve.' But still her eyes remained clear.

The little demon nodded thoughtfully, staring into the flames as he did. He could think of no way to make the fair Sophia sad, but there was that other occasion humans were rumoured to cry... It was behind the school pitchfork sheds that he had heard about it. Whilst loitering with Beball, Behemoth and their bigger, meaner friends, someone had said that humans sometimes cried for joy. Everyone had been disgusted and disbelieving, but Paimonia had said he'd seen it with his own eyes.

'Why don't you send this neighbour a note?' Murmur suggested carefully, a devilish glint lighting in his beady little eyes.

'His mother or one of his sisters would almost certainly pick it up, and seeing it was from a lady, might tease him or think him engaged in a secret intrigue. I could not do such a thing.'

'You could omit your name from it.'

'Then they would know for certain it was untoward!'

Murmur's little red eyes glowed darker. 'What if I deliver the note to him?'

'Oh Murmur, would you?' she cried, her face shining with excitement.

'It would be my pleasure, Miss Sophia.'

The fair lady had already pulled open her writing bureau and was dipping her pen in ink. 'Dear Mr Christian—oh, but that sounds so formal!' She scrunched the note up and tossed it aside. 'Dear Neighbour, we have not had—no, that is no good!' She started again. 'Dear Neighbour, I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting you, yet I think you do know me. I do hope you have not taken this lack of acquaintance between you and me as being the result of any cold feeling on my part. My guardian, Mr Moore, is an elderly man who does not much like to go out in society, or to have society come to him. I have sometimes glimpsed you looking down at me when I was out in the garden and thought I should like to meet you. If you should chance to be hanging a swing from the tall maple tree beside our fence tomorrow afternoon at three, I will not take it amiss. Very kindest regards, Miss Sophia Ashby. There, that should do it!'

The demon took the folded note from her and carefully tucked it into the breast pocket of his now-dry doublet. 'Excellent. It shall be delivered into his hands right away.'

Then he bowed with a flourish and turned tail. Hauling open one of the room's large sash windows, he vaulted outside with a single leap. Landing on his hooves in soft garden mulch, he sprung away fast and trotted off down the front path.

His delight with his devilish plan was a like a pair of springs attached to his hooves. Bounding along like a frisky lamb, he was soon standing in front of the neighbouring house looking up at its white-painted wooden frontage. Light glowed through the red curtains of the room to the left of the entrance door, but Murmur knew this was not the intended note recipient's room. He continued around to the side of the house, his hooves sinking into the soft lawn turf as he went along. A dim light shone out into the darkness from a window on the house's back corner.

'Now how shall we get in...?' Murmur muttered to himself, eying up the window. 'Ah yes, the ivy... We shall climb up the ivy and slip in through the window. Clever we are, very clever...'

In the twinkling of an eye, the little demon was up the ivy and prising open the window of the shining light. It only needed one haft to get wide enough to slide the note through.

After pulling it shut again, Murmur clung to the window ledge and pressed his face to the cold glass. A youth of about eighteen years old sat at a desk in the bedroom, resting his chin on his cupped hand and poring over a leaf of paper. In his ink-stained right hand he held a pen, with which he sometimes scratched out or added a word to his paper. He would then reread the paper, moving his lips as he did. Judging by the young man's wrinkled brow, Murmur guessed that he was not satisfied with his scribblings.

The boy sighed wretchedly and pushed back his chair. He stretched and yawned, finishing by sweeping his glossy dark brown hair back from his face.

'Oh Sophia, Sophia, why can I not capture your charm and grace in my verse?' he sighed, shaking his head despairingly.

'A poet,' muttered the watching demon. 'How pathetic. Why do those silly humans waste so much time on pointless nothings?'

The youth yawned again and got to his feet. He took his jacket off and begun unbuttoning his waistcoat.

'Look at the note, fool,' murmured Murmur, who was starting to tire from hanging on the window ledge.

Having now removed his boots and waistcoat, the boy paused before the mirror hanging on the wall. 'Perhaps she thinks my chin lacking in strength or my nose too thin...or perhaps she has caught me watching and thinks me improper...' He sighed again.

'Never have I seen such a wet rag of a fool!' hissed Murmur, whose little fingers were beginning to ache and burn. 'Look at the loving note here!'

But the love-struck young man was still fretting over his reflection.

The demon kicked the wall with his hoof. 'Over here, fool!'

With a start, the boy turned wide hazel eyes towards the sound. Then he frowned, noticing the folded note at last.

'What is that?' he murmured to himself, stepping over and reaching for the white note upon the windowsill.

'Finally the fool sees it,' muttered the demon, gritting his teeth with the effort of clinging on.

As the boy took the note, he looked out of the window. The little demon could not help flinching, but from the expression on the human's face, it was clear that his eyes passed right through Murmur.

The demon's mouth turned up in a self-satisfied smirk. 'Strong with evil, we are, very strong...'

When the boy's eyes alighted on the words of the fair Sophia, joy spread across his scarcely believing face.

Little Murmur chuckled to himself. 'My work here is done...' Then he dropped off the ledge.

Unfortunately, he had forgotten that he was clinging to a second storey window. The demon plummeted to the ground and landed with a thud, flat on his back. For a moment he saw stars in the murky darkness above, but quickly they vanished.

He dragged himself to his feet and set off across the lawn, veering from side to side a little as he went. The slightly stunned young demon had had all of his earlier self-satisfaction knocked out of him.

'Just get the tear and clear the angel out, then never venture out again,' he muttered to himself.

He was soon standing outside Sophia's drawing room window. He tapped upon it, and she appeared almost instantly to open it.

'Did he read it, Murmur?' she was asking before he had even finished climbing in. 'Tell me how he reacted; I can hardly bear to wait another moment without knowing!'

Still feeling sulky after his fall, Murmur shook off the hand she laid on his shoulder. 'The fool of a poet next door loves you. He's up all night writing silly verses about you and worrying about whether you think his chin is the right shape.'

'Oh, I am so happy!' she cried, almost laughing with joyous relief. 'That is wonderful! I was so afraid he would take my note amiss and think me very forward and foolish.'

Through her beaming smile, the fair Sophia's eyes were shining with tears of joy. The little demon's grin turned devilish as he took out a handkerchief and handed it to her. With great satisfaction, he saw her dab her eyes with it.

Now that he had what he'd come for, it was time to be on his way. Murmur lifted his warm, dry cloak off the chair and put it on.

'If you don't mind, Miss Sophia, I should like to be off now,' he said, holding his hand out to receive the handkerchief back.

She pressed it into his little hand. 'Thank you so much, dear Murmur. I am deeply in your debt for the kindness you have shown me.'

'Not at all, it is I who am in your debt,' replied Murmur, carefully tucking the tear-wetted cloth back into his breast pocket.

Then he bowed and turned to go.

'Oh wait, Murmur!' Sophia called after him. 'You have forgotten your pitchfork.'

The little demon skidded to a halt. 'Why, so I have!'

Sophia was already kneeling beside the piano and reaching under to retrieve the pitchfork where Murmur had dropped it earlier. But as her hand closed around it, she let out a gasp of pain.

'Ow, the prongs are so sharp!' she cried, dropping it and sucking her finger.

When she held it out to him by its handle, Murmur saw that red blood glistened on the tip of the middle prong. But he thought nothing of it. Taking it and thanking her, he gave a final bow and vaulted out into the night.

VERY soon little Murmur was trotting away from the fair Sophia's house, across the street and into the park. This time, he did not take any chances. With his beady eyes on the alert for water sprites, he trotted around the lake and continued safely across the big lawn. Once he had passed under the row of tall trees, he carefully picked his way through the stone-littered churchyard.

In his hurry to unite tear and angel, Murmur forgot to give the stone angel a wide berth. Glancing up to find its sad, noble marble eyes gazing back at him almost within arm's reach, he yelped and darted sideways.

'Argh, horrid, horrid thing!' he gibbered to himself. 'Always looking, always watching, always seeing...'

The little demon narrowly avoided stubbing his hoof between its cloven cleft on a sharp stone, and while he was still wobbling off balance, a large snowflake slapped wetly onto his nose.

'After you, they are after you!' he screeched, swotting up at the snowflakes as though they were a hoard of attacking wasps.

But within moments these few outriders became a flurry that rained down thick and fast. Pulling his cloak over his head, little Murmur galloped for the old well. By the time he was pushing through the dogroses and hazel, the ground was carpeted with fluffy, pristine white.

The glow of the angel was reflected by the snow as a golden radiance twice as brilliant as that which had previously stung the little demon's beady eyes. He stopped and blinked his watery eyes for a few moments until he no longer was blinded, then fearfully and distastefully sneaked up to the well's edge.

The angel stood in the well upon what now was not mud but a blanket of glistening white snow. With his beautiful face turned up towards the falling snowflakes and the palms of his hands likewise facing up as though receiving a gift from above, he seemed in a rapture.

'I knew the snowflakes loved the angels...' Murmur hissed to himself, fearfully fiddling with the end of his tail.

The angel suddenly opened his radiant blue eyes. 'Ah, Murmur, you return. Is not this snow beautiful!'

'You angels might be friends with the light-glowing snow, but it is still us demons who rule the darkness!' screeched the little demon, jittering so that his teeth chattered together. 'Now that is enough from you, angel!'

'Forgive me, I did not wish to offend. I had forgotten that you are afraid of your own shadow,' the angel replied.

Already almost hopping with terror at all the snow falling upon him, Murmur now hopped with annoyance too. 'Here are your tears, angel!' he shrieked, tossing the cloth at the angel. 'Now fix your wings and clear out of here! Next time I come you will be gone—do you hear me?'

The angel caught the handkerchief with his fine, long-fingered hand. 'Thank you, Murmur! Thank you a thousand times over!'

'I don't want your thanks, I just want you out of my churchyard!' screeched the demon, who was shaking with terror. He could hardly make himself look at the angel another moment longer.

'Murmur,' said the angel, 'I cannot promise that my wings will be completely healed by these precious tears. The blow of the black demon was heavy and his dark magic powerful. I may need something more before these broken wings can once again lift me heavenwards.'

Murmur refused to hear this. 'Tomorrow night I will return and you will be gone!' he shrieked, pointing his little finger at the angel and hopping with rage.

He did not wait for a response. Pulling his cloak more tightly about his face, he turned and bolted for home. He hoofed it all the way up the snow-covered trail and arrived inside with a final leap that made his hooves go 'scleech!' as he slid halfway down the hallway.

He came to rest at last beside the coat stand. After shaking the snow from his cloak, he hung it up.

A wild cackle suddenly rent the stillness. 'The fool, oh the fool—aha ha ha ha!'

'It was well done, Behemoth, well done!' shrieked Beball, clattering in after his brother.

Grinning wildly, Behemoth slapped Beball on the back. 'Oh, but that bit you added about the ultimate unknowability of all things was masterly, masterly!'

'Yes, the foolish student has been reduced to despair, utter despair!' howled Beball, almost bent double with laughter.

'He has lost all purpose now that he believes there is no such thing as truth, but only mere opinion!' shrieked Behemoth, who laughed with such fiendish delight that he almost dropped his pitchfork.

This all sounded like a lot of work to the small onlooker beside the coat stand. Even understanding what it was the two demons had managed to convince the foolish student of seemed like a lot of work. It was certainly too hard for Murmur. He hadn't a clue what his brothers were talking about. Maybe when he was older and in middle school...then again, maybe not... The little demon sighed tiredly.

'Tomorrow night we shall return and finish our work,' chuckled Beball, rubbing his hands gleefully together. 'Heh heh heh...'

Behemoth's eyes glinted with fiendish excitement. 'Indeed we shall... When we have finished with him he won't be sure about anything, not even of his own existence!'

'Heh heh heh...' Beball chortled, nodding. 'Such fools those humans are... Heh heh heh...'

Behemoth, having already put his pitchfork in the stand, now removed his plumed red cap and reached out to hang it up. But suddenly his arm froze in mid-air. 'Murmur, w-what has happened...to y-you...?' he stammered, staring at his little brother with horror and shock.

Murmur looked first at Behemoth's horrified face, then at Beball's equally dumbstruck countenance. He began to feel a little afraid, but was not entirely sure that this was not another of his big brothers' mean pranks.

'What sort of fool do you take me for?' he squeaked, stomping his hoof. 'I'm not falling for any of your mean tricks!'

The faces of the staring demons remained unchanged. 'W-what have you been up to?' gasped a wide-eyed Behemoth, staggering slightly.

'What do you mean?' screeched Murmur, who was beginning to panic.

Beball lifted his finger and pointed weakly at Murmur. 'Your hands, your ears, your nose, your eyes...' Then he trailed off, seemingly too shocked to speak.

'Your joke has gone far enough!' squeaked the little demon, whose furry hocks were now knocking together. 'Stop it now or I'll tell father!'

The expression on their faces did not change. 'Beball, get him a mirror.' Behemoth's voice was strangely numb, and his horror-struck eyes remained fixed on Murmur.

Without looking away, Beball picked up the mirror lying upon the nearby hall table and handed it to Murmur. This was no human-made mirror. It was forged deep under the earth in the depths of Hell. Every demon could see his reflection in it.

With a jittering hand, the little demon took the offered mirror and looked. But the mirror shook so in his hand that it bounced wildly. Murmur could not make out anything except a blur.

'Here, I'll hold it!' shrieked Beball, yanking the mirror off his little brother.

Murmur looked in the now-still mirror. His terrified eyes took a moment to focus, but when they did, he uttered a shriek of fright and leapt half a meter into the air.

'My ears, my chin, they are less pointy!' he gibbered, his teeth and hocks filling the hallway with their din as they knocked together.

'Did you notice your eyes?' Behemoth asked grimly.

'W-what?' gibbered Murmur, reaching his shaking hand once more for the mirror.

The shriek that he uttered upon meeting his reflection was even louder than the last one. 'My—my eyes—they are n-not red!' Flinging down the mirror, Murmur snatched his cloak off the coat stand and buried his head in it. 'My eyes, my eyes!' he gibbered to himself, quaking with the horror of it. 'Purple, purple!'

'Look at his hands!' Beball's horrified gasp reached Murmur's muffled ears.

'Evil Satan!' screeched Behemoth.

Murmur tossed aside the cloak and held his hands up before his eyes. They were plumper and less sinewy. There was now little difference between them and human hands. The little demon whimpered fearfully and let them drop.

'Now tell us what you've been up to, small-ears!' demanded Beball, jabbing Murmur in the chest with a long, taloned finger.

The little demon backed away, but only made one step before his back was against the wall. 'Ahhhm...' he muttered, fiddling franticly with the end of his tail.

He did not want to tell his brothers about the angel in the churchyard. No one must know about his secret retreat. He was fully resolved to never voluntarily venture any further than the churchyard ever again. Look what happened when you did: your eyes went purple, your fingers got fat and your face shrunk. No, never again was he going anywhere.

'I—I came across an angel down there—' He waved an arm in the general direction of the park. 'And then I gave some nasty, fishy naiads down in the lake a piece of my mind. Then I sneaked up on a saint and pricked her with my pitchfork. I finished the night by startling a foolish young poet...'

Beball and Behemoth's grim stares got a little grimmer as this tale fell upon their pointy ears. The little demon looked down and hoped desperately that they would swallow this selectively edited version of the night's events.

His two brothers exchanged glances. Then Beball turned his little red eyes back on Murmur. 'Did you look into the eyes of this angel?' he demanded sternly.

Looking down at his fiddling fingers, the little demon nodded reluctantly. 'I—I—yes.' He couldn't even think of any excuse to serve it up with.

'What colour were they?'

'Blue...'

Beball and Behemoth looked at each other again. 'You were taught about the dangers of angels in last year's class. Why did you not heed them?'

Murmur hung his head some more and fiddled faster. 'I...I...spent most of the time staring out the window and I...never did my homework.'

'Alright, Murmur, now you shall learn it!' Behemoth said roughly, glaring down at the cowering demon. 'This is how it is: the eye is formed by the light and the impressions that pass before it; the ear is formed by the sounds it hears. If you see or hear an angel or a saint, your eyes or ears vibrate in sympathy. If you are near them, their influence spreads onto you. For, you see, in the spirit realms nothing is an island. All things intermingle. When it is the spirit of an angel or saint that intermingles, you can start turning into one.'

The little demon looked back at his brother in wide-eyed astonishment. He did not recall ever having heard that. 'But how come the big demons can look into the eyes of an angel and remain unchanged?' he asked.

'Well,' replied Behemoth, 'the stronger the spirit, the more it can remain true to its own essence. A great Prince of Hell can look into the very eyes of God and remain unchanged.'

'Oh, I see.'

'That does not explain how his hands got so fat,' spat Beball. 'Did you touch any of these loving saints?'

The little demon swallowed hard. 'The...the water nymph forced me to kiss her hand...'

'What!' Beball and Behemoth shrieked as one.

'She made me do it—I'd have got all splashed with water by the other nymphs if I hadn't!'

'What's this then?' screeched Behemoth, pulling a piece of riverweed out of Murmur's mop of curly hair.

'She was horrid! I did what she demanded, then she goes and pushes me into the lake because I tell her she smells like a fish!'

'What!' shrieked the older demons. 'You fool!'

'Well, she did! It was very unreasonable to be so offended at a simple truth.'

'Now tell me,' said Beball, his eyes narrowing with suspicion, 'did that saint make you do anything for her?'

'What if she...did?' squeaked the little demon.

'Doing a good deed is the most harmful thing a demon can do, that is what!' shrieked Behemoth, who looked as though his little brother had exhausted what small measure of patience he had.

'And saints only get you to do one sort of deed—a good one!' added Beball in a screech, beginning to steam and smoke.

'Well, I did deliver a note for her...' muttered Murmur, shaking a little.

With his eyes glowing and his ears smoking, Behemoth pointed a finger at Murmur. 'Now we hear the true story of his little outing!' he screeched, and began clattering up and down in a rage.

'Father will be so angry when he sees the state of me,' whimpered the little demon. 'As for Belphegor...' He fiddled franticly with the end of his tail, trying hard to keep his mind off the monstrous Belphegor.

'As for Belphegor, he will never see you in this shameful state!' shrieked Behemoth, screeching to a stop before Murmur. He grabbed his little brother by the collar and pulled him up. 'You are a disgrace to the name of Demon! No one must see this, no one!'

'Yes,' screeched Beball, 'no one!'

'You are coming out with us tomorrow night, angel-eyes,' continued Behemoth. 'You will spread evil and mischief abroad as you pass through the town; your eyes will redden and your will face sharpen!'

'We will be leaving at three in the afternoon,' Beball added over his brother's shoulder.

'Th...three in the afternoon?' squeaked little Murmur, looking up at his brothers in horror. 'But it is not even yet twilight then! That is much too early for me—well before my leaving time.'

Behemoth gave little Murmur such a fierce jerk that his talons tore through his satin doublet. 'You will leave when we tell you, baby-ears!'

AS HE followed his two older brothers down the path and out the front gate, Murmur kept his cloak wrapped tightly around himself. When the demon trio was heading down the street, the little demon's eyes, peeping out from beneath his pulled-low cap, roved ceaselessly about. He was looking for danger. It was too early to be out, much too early. As for the snow covering the ground with a thick blanket of white...

'It is so light!' he squeaked fearfully, trotting quickly to keep up. 'My eyes, how they water and sting! We ought not to be out in these conditions. The snow, it loves the angels and they loves it!'

'Shut your trap, Murmur!' screeched Beball, who did not slow down.

'But the horrid yellow disk, it shines and glints! The snow loves it and it loves the snow!'

'Look here, runt,' screeched Behemoth, 'that is enough from you!'

'But the light— '

'Shut it!'

Beball trotted even faster. 'I can't wait to get to work on that student!' His beady red eyes gleamed with excitement.

'Me neither,' cackled Behemoth, keeping pace with him.

The demon three were now passing down a lane leading towards the park. The laughter and joyous shrieks of children echoed on the still, bright air. As the trio reached the park, little Murmur saw children everywhere, playing, running, talking, laughing. Cringing and jittering, he reluctantly hastened after Beball and Behemoth as they headed across the snowy park.

Passing two mothers seated on a bench watching their frolicking offspring, Beball and Behemoth suddenly slid to a stop.

My Jane is so much prettier than her Alice, one of the mothers was thinking.

'Yes,' whispered Beball. 'Her child is an ugly little thing.'

'And your Jane is so much cleverer!' added Behemoth, leaning in close.

'That Mrs Peters really ought to acknowledge the fact,' whispered Beball.

'Rather than being so proud of her Alice when clearly there is nothing to warrant it,' Behemoth chipped in nastily.

'Go on, set that Mrs Peters straight,' urged Beball.

Mrs Crocket turned to her neighbour and opened her mouth.

But Murmur did not hear what she said. His attention had been taken by something else. Something he had been afraid of from the moment he stepped out. It was the fair Sophia. Rosy-cheeked and laughing, she stood not twenty paces from Murmur, hastily fashioning the fluffy snow into snowballs to return the hail raining down on her. The attacker was—surely not! The little demon shielded his stinging eyes from the sun. Yes, it was the lovesick poet!

Letting out a fearful squeak, the little demon ducked behind the snowman standing near him. Then he peeped furtively around the snowman's head. On Sophia's side was a tall, dark-haired young lady, and on the poet's two girls, one about fifteen and the other twelve. The youngest girl was distinguishing herself greatly in the snowball fight. Her balls came flying thick and fast, and very soon the two young ladies were laughingly holding their mitten-clad hands up in surrender.

'Ida, you will have us buried if you go on!' laughed Sophia, dropping down onto the sledge parked behind her.

'Not without him to help!' cried the youngest girl, throwing her last snowball at the poet. 'He was playing soft and only throwing his snowballs low so they would not hit you and Caroline on the head!'

'As a gentleman should, Pirate Captain Ida.'

'Miss Sophia, I hope your cheeks are red from the cold and not from the hit of my sister's snowballs?' said the poet, sitting down beside her.

She turned a wide smile upon him. 'Thank you, Johan, but you need fear not. I am merely warm from the running.'

He blushed. 'Such is the roughness of my little sister's play even the boys complain about her!'

'You are so blessed to have three such kind and delightful girls as your sisters,' said the fair Sophia, smiling a charming smile as she watched them playing together in the snow.

'Yes, although they do sometimes plague me rather.'

Sophia laughed softly. 'Ida was terribly provoking, asking for a full report as you sat up in the tall maple tree trying to fix that swing. You poor boy, having to describe your neighbour to your sister while both can hear you!'

'That was not the first time I had wished the wall lower,' he replied a little bashfully.

'I have wished it often too.'

'It was mighty decent of your uncle, letting you come out to play with us.'

'I think it was little Ida, pleading with him to let me come from behind the tall brick wall! He is an anxious man, but I think between your sweet, kind face and your sister's charming impudence, he was assured.'

He shifted a little closer. 'I'm still confounded if I know how you got that note up there,' he whispered, colouring at what he felt was a slightly impertinent question.

She smiled secretively, more to herself than to him. 'It was a dear little friend who helped me, to whom I shall forever be grateful. Without his aid, we might never have met.'

After glancing about to see that no one was observing, he squeezed her hand imploringly. 'Who was it, Miss Sophia? Do tell me!'

Her smile deepened. 'It was him,' she replied, pointing at the little demon.

Murmur let out a shriek as she looked directly at him with her clear blue eyes.

'A snowman!' exclaimed the young poet, laughing. 'You tease me! I know it was not he that left the note.'

The fair Sophia just smiled.

'Beball, Behemoth!' shrieked little Murmur, tugging franticly at their coats. 'We are leaving, we are leaving!'

The two had finished drawing out the petty envy and meanness of Mrs Crocket and were about to move on anyway, so let their little brother pull them along.

'What is all this sudden hurry?' screeched Beball. 'I thought you wanted to stay home!'

'Yes, what is this about?' hissed Behemoth, who was beginning to get annoyed at being hustled along.

'It's—it's because I can't wait to get stuck into that foolish student!'

The older two greeted this with a suspicious grunt, but they were not about to waste any more time questioning their little brother's sudden rush of enthusiasm. It was enough that he was no longer whining and whinging.

When the demon trio reached the university, twilight was beginning to descend. Comforted by the deepening shadows, little Murmur jittered slightly less. Had he not always wanted to venture abroad with his big brothers? Now his wish had come true, now he would learn their evil secrets...

Entering a student tenement building by a narrow side door, the demons eagerly trotted along the hallways and then mounted a pokey little staircase. When they reached the top, Behemoth and Beball stopped at the first door.

'This is it,' cackled Behemoth, 'this is the den of the foolish student...'

'Heh heh heh,' sniggered Beball, laying a sinewy hand upon the door handle.

Then the demon three slipped inside.

Nothing exists, nothing is real... I feel as though I am falling. Would that I had something to hold onto, something to put ground beneath my feet!

The little demon looked at the place this despairing thought had come from. A young man sat leaning his elbow on the table in front of him, rubbing his forehead as though it ached and staring down with eyes that contained a hint of madness. He was tall and thin, with hollow cheeks and pale, clammy skin. His hair was wild and dishevelled, and even though it was cold in the small room, he was dressed only in a shirt and trousers. A glass, an empty wine bottle and a guttering candle set on the table, the candle being the only light in the room.

When there is no ultimate truth, there is no hope, no worthwhile work, no purpose, no reality... he mused, almost sobbing.

'We did well, brother, well!' Beball chortled to Behemoth.

Behemoth rubbed his hands gleefully together and looked on with shining red eyes. 'Heh heh heh...'

The student began to shake and shiver. I feel so afraid and alone... Even when I am surrounded by people I feel so alone that I might as well be on a desert island. For how can I be certain they are truly real, not merely things that I see...?

Beball went and sat down in the chair across the table from the student, while Behemoth perched upon the table's edge.

Life has no point or purpose, continued the fear-filled, despairing young man. It is merely a cruel joke...Oh, why do I think it a joke? That is not rational! It could only be a joke if some god existed, and only a fool would think anything but matter real!

'Heh heh heh,' chortled Behemoth, nodding with satisfaction. 'Such fools, they are, such fools...'

There is no beauty, no goodness—why do I even think thus! For what is beauty? Merely what society tells us we ought to like. There is no beauty or ugliness, merely things. As for goodness, that is just a foolish notion imposed upon us by churchmen who wish to control us!

'Quite right, quite right...' whispered Behemoth, his beady little eyes glowing excitedly.

'Finally your thoughts are achieving clarity,' murmured Beball, eyeing the student intently.

The student nodded to himself. Yes, now I see it clearly... Perhaps, if I threw all these foolish notions away and thought no more of truths and beauties and goodness, I will be free of this torment. He that decrees such values null and void is not tormented!

With his eyes shining with new hope, the student banged his fist down upon the table. The little demon, who watched from a dark corner, started so violently that he jumped clean off the ground. This earned him two furious and disgusted demon glares.

But why do I only feel more afraid? thought the student, looking fearfully about and hugging himself tightly. Terror and despair, they afflict me more powerfully than ever! The gloomy darkness, it seems filled with thoughts and terrors that swarm about me, that do assault my mind and steal my peace!

Cowering and trembling, he searched the darkness with wild eyes. Madness, surely it has come upon me...I am losing my mind—'What thing is that moving in the shadows!' he suddenly cried, staring with terror at the dark corner the little demon lurked in.

But just as suddenly, his eyes dropped. Oh, but it is only my fevered brain...

'That's right,' hissed Beball, 'it is merely your brain misfiring. There is no spirit, only matter.'

The little demon had shrunk further into his dark corner. Unfortunately, the student was not much of a one for cleaning. The corner was very dark, but it was very dusty too. The dust tickled little Murmur's nose. He wriggled it and sniffed. It was no use. A great sneeze escaped him.

'What is that?' cried the wild-eyed student. Perhaps there really is some spectre there!

Hisses of rage were coming from Beball and Behemoth. Then a knock sounded upon the door.

'Yes?' called the student.

'It's Emerson,' replied a calm, steady voice outside.

The student was up in a second, hurrying to open the door. 'Emerson, dear chap!' he cried, stepping aside to let his caller enter.

'Good evening, Rhett,' said a tall, lean gentleman. 'How is my godson? Keeping warm on this cold day?'

The student reached out to take his visitor's top hat and scarf. 'I am well, Emerson. But how good it is to see you!'

'You don't look well, my boy.' Smoothing his white hair, the tall visitor turned his piercing grey eyes upon his host from down a long aquiline nose. 'Has that Professor Dorking been filling your head with nonsense again, eh?'

The student coloured a little as he pulled an armchair out for his guest. 'Emerson, he is a very learned man! There is no need to go around shafting the chap just because you don't agree with his theories.'

'I think little of the man not because I disagree with his theories but because he talks rot and nonsense—dangerous rot and nonsense.'

'It really was a surprise, this snow. The first fall of the year!' The student smiled hopefully, eager to change the subject.

'You have been reading Kant and those other philosophers of his ilk, have you not?'

Now seated in the other armchair by the cold hearth, the student nodded uncomfortably. 'Yes, and mighty clever fellows they are!'

Emerson's alert but kindly eyes still studied his godson's face closely. 'You are in the grip of metaphysical terror, aren't you?'

Picking nervously at his fingers, the student remained silent.

'I can see it in you, my boy. You look pale and unhealthy. Your mind is disquiet and your heart filled with fear.'

The young man nodded reluctantly. 'I must admit, I have been feeling a little off-colour lately...'

'It is demons, boy, demons. They swarm about the head of men like Dorking and between the pages of their books, and anyone who reads or hears them cannot help but hear the demon whispers.'

'Nonsense!' cried the student.

But Beball and Behemoth were beginning to look decidedly worried.

'This whole thing is derailing!' hissed Beball.

'Emerson, the great sunlight! He's been listening to those angels again in his sleep,' growled Behemoth.

The guest remained calm, his eyes still resting on his godson with love. 'You yourself have attracted a little demon following of your own.'

'I say stuff and nonsense!'

The tall godfather nodded his head towards Murmur's corner. 'You see him lurking there in the shadows, don't you?'

'By God, you see it too! I thought it was merely my fevered brain, I thought I was going mad!'

'There are two others sitting at the table behind you. I cannot see them clearly, but I hear their voices.'

The student turned his wild and hollow eyes slowly over to the table. 'God, maybe you are right! I did feel something was there...'

'These imps have doubtless been visiting you regularly to work on you with the poisonous lies they go around whispering into human ears. Next time one of the evil rogues comes calling, tell him to go to Hell. They don't like it when you reply back—do they!' he added loudly at Murmur.

The little demon's hairy hocks knocked loudly together and his teeth chattered. It was all he could do to prevent himself gibbering aloud.

The tall visitor handed the student a book. 'Rhett, my boy, read this. It tells you all about these demons. Its author is a great man. He is wise beyond all other mortal men in matters of demonology.'

The student took the book and opened its pages. And as he did so, Beball and Behemoth uttered a shriek of rage and clattered for the door. Murmur was quick to follow them. In a moment the door was hauled open and slammed shut, very nearly on Murmur's tail.

'You fool!' the older demons screeched, fuming and steaming down at their little brother.

He backed up against the hallway wall. 'What was I meant to do? I did my best to keep in the shadows!'

'You could have not sneezed, you weak-nose!' shrieked Beball.

'But that man knew you and Behemoth were there too.'

The passageway was beginning to fill with smoke and steam. 'But he could not see us!'

'What does that matter? He knew all about you and your workings.'

'It matters because...because—Behemoth, you tell him!'

Behemoth's sharp face emerged from the smog. 'Rabbit-tail, it matters because the foolish student did not know we were there. If he had not heard you, he might not have believed that angel-eyed Emerson about us demons!'

Hanging his head, little Murmur fiddled remorsefully with the end of his tail. 'I'm sorry, brothers. I never have been much good at evil, and now I have spoiled all your work...'

'What!' shrieked Beball and Behemoth together. 'A demon has no business being sorry and humble! Start being proud and obnoxious or we'll make you!'

'Alright!' hissed little Murmur.

He was beginning to regret ever having gone out with Beball and Behemoth. They had been right; he could not keep up and he was cramping their style. He sighed.

'What are we going to do now, Behemoth?' screeched Beball, kicking the wall.

'What about paying that science student down in the basement laboratory a visit?'

'A science student...? Yes indeed, that might be worthwhile...heh heh heh...' The fiendish glow was returning to Beball's eyes.

The biggest demon snuffled his nose. 'A science student is low-hanging fruit ripe for the plucking, ripe for the plucking!'

'Indeed...there is no fairer game than a scientist...heh heh heh...'

The demon three were soon clip-clopping quickly back down the stairs. Beball and Behemoth's beady red eyes glowed with excitement and anticipation.

Murmur smelt the laboratory before he saw it. Smoke and steam from all manner of foul, sulphurous chemicals snaked curling tendrils up the basement stairs, and once the little demon was at their foot, the acrid fumes engulfed him completely.

'Ah, just smell that foul stink!' said Behemoth, taking in a great breath and savouring it.

'Delicious,' agreed Beball, breathing deeply of it.

Behemoth pushed open a door, from under which a strange, lurid yellow light glowed forth. When little Murmur stepped inside, he found himself in a large room with a bare stone floor and white-painted brick walls and ceiling. Upon the steel benches standing in rows were pots, vials, bottles, decanters and hoses, some boiling, some steaming, some smoking, some fizzing, the liquids within them.

'Magnificent!' cried a voice within the thick of the luridly yellow smog filling the room. 'Now will you give up your secrets to me, little frog...now will your secret of life be revealed...'

The devilish trio advanced into the stinking haze. Squinting at a large clear decanter through thick glasses was a tall, skinny young man with short-cropped hair standing on its ends. His slightly bloodshot eyes glowed with excitement and his hand shook a little as it held up the glass. In the glass, floating in a bright yellow liquid, was a dead frog. But it was not like any frog Murmur had ever seen before. It was bright blue.

As the little demon gawped, the scientist put the glass vial into a wire holder that suspended it above a flame. The liquid began to boil and steam and fizz and spit, and the vapour to rise up into the tube the scientist had attached to the bottle's top.

'I shall soon have the very essence of life decanted into this bottle,' muttered the wildly grinning science student. 'Then I will be able to use it to bring anything to life; then I will be as God!'

'Heh heh heh...' chuckled Beball, rubbing his hands gleefully together, 'heh heh heh...'

Behemoth leaned in close to the scientist—though not too close, for the scientist had very red, puffy, angry skin which even this demon found a little distasteful. 'You are a genius,' he whispered, 'and soon every man will be saying so. Soon the country's foremost science prize will have your name inscribed upon it...'

'And that doubting Thomas, Professor Wagner, will give you the respect and reverence due to you. He will finally see your astonishing genius,' added Beball.

Meanwhile, Murmur was busy gawping at the massive, twisting apparatus boiling and bubbling before him. He had never seen anything like it before. It was terrible and magnificent.

Then he looked down at his pitchfork. That red mark still was upon it. No matter how hard he had tried rubbing, the blood left by the fair Sophia when she pricked her finger would not come off. It had turned into a pure, shining ruby that glittered against the pitchfork's dull black iron. It was another shameful blot on little Murmur's record.

He rubbed his pitchfork's ruby tip with the corner of his cloak. It only shone more. He had not expected it would work, so he let out just a slight sigh. Then, looking at a boiling, bubbling fizzing cauldron on the bench in front of him, a thought occurred to him. Did not humans use chemicals to clean things? Chemicals, it seemed, were corrosive. That boiling neon green slop certainly looked toxic...

The little demon rubbed his none-hooked nose thoughtfully. Yes, if anything might erase the glittering ruby, surely it was that... He rubbed his nose a bit more. Surely it would do no harm to just try it... After all, what was the worst that could happen? Nothing?

He slowly reached out his little pitchfork-clutching hand and experimentally dipped his pitchfork's prongs into the toxic soup. Nothing happened. The little demon looked left, he looked right, he looked ahead. Nobody was watching. Beball and Behemoth were intently whispering into the scientist's ear, and the listening scientist was enraptured by the prospect of his eminent international renown.

After a final furtive look, the little demon plunged his pitchfork into the boiling, raging pot and stirred it vigorously about. At first nothing happened. But just as the little demon was lifting his pitchfork out, the cauldron suddenly erupted. Its vitriolic contents spewed over its sides, raging and boiling and spitting. Then, just as suddenly, they vaporised into a puff of green smoke.

Blinking hard, little Murmur held his pitchfork's prongs up to examine. The ruby was gone.

'Very clever, Murmur, very clever we are indeed...' he chuckled quietly to himself, feeling very self-satisfied.

But he had not given any thought to where the ruby had gone. Dissolved by the lurid liquid, it flooded through the great interconnected web of pipes, pots and bottles. The laboratory exploded.

The little demon was thrown clean out the doors by the force of the blast. Blinking hard and rubbing his eyes, the stunned demon stared as he lay sprawled in the corridor. The laboratory's doors had been blown off, and within there was nothing but a tangled, twisted, shattered mass of smoking debris.

With his hair and eyebrows burnt, his face black and his clothes hanging from him in tattered ribbons, the scientist staggered out. 'Seven years work, gone...all gone...' he mumbled dumbly, staring at the wreckage with scarcely believing eyes. 'Gone, all gone!' He fell to the floor and began banging his head against the ground.

Then Beball and Behemoth staggered out. Beball's pitchfork had more twists than a corkscrew in it, and the prongs of Behemoth's were entirely absent. The clothes of both demons hung off them in ribbons. Murmur also noticed that Behemoth's left horn was half the length it had formerly been. He resolved at once not to be the one to tell Behemoth that his horn was broken.

'Murmur, w-what did you do?' demanded Behemoth, wobbling from side to side and staring dumbly into space.

'Nothing!' squeaked the little demon. 'I did nothing—why does everybody always think it's my fault when something goes wrong!'

'The reason, Murmur,' slurred Behemoth, 'is this: because it always is.'

'I don't like it here!' squeaked the little demon, scrambling to his hooves. 'I'm going home!'

And with that he shot down the corridor, up the stairs, and all the way back home, where he scurried upstairs and dived behind the old dresser in the attic.

'I DON'T like it here, Gribon!' squeaked little Murmur, trotting nervously along beside the fair one.

'You think it's bad for you? You are not the one who has to be around a purple eyed, human-faced freak!'

'It is bad for me, you ghost-eyed twit! I am the purple eyed freak!'

Gribon's hooves crunched on the golden gravel path cutting a swath through the grand park. 'True, but that is your own doing. I was born coloured thus.'

The little demon's beady eyes swivelled nervously about, searching the park for danger. 'I really don't like it here!'

He could barely prevent himself bolting for cover like a startled rabbit. Belphegor—he was the one behind this. Little Murmur's slightly-pointy ears still ached from all the cries of 'what!' that had rained down upon him in the past day, first from Mammon, then from Belphegor when he arrived at school. The entire demon class had gathered about Murmur, gawping, whispering and nudging each other. When he had suddenly moved they scattered with shrieks of alarm. Belphegor's solution to the problem had been predictable: Murmur needed to harden up. Murmur needed to start acting like a real demon. Murmur needed to walk through the centre of town under the noonday sun.

'Why did he choose me to go with you?' squeaked Gribon, fiddling with the end of his tail.

'Because you are the second most useless demon in all of Hell, that is why.'

Gribon squeaked like a nipped mouse, but he did not say anything.

Murmur was happy with the silence that fell. He still had not thought enough about what had happened in the street on the way down to the park in the centre of town. A gaggle of demons from the senior class at Hell's Gate had been coming up the street, heading towards Murmur and Gribon. When they clapped eyes on the pair coming their way, the demon gaggle had not only crossed the street, they had dived over a hedge too. Murmur still could not decide if he ought to be pleased with giving a bunch of big demons a fright, or hurt at being thought a freak.

'Heh heh heh...' he chortled to himself, finally deciding he enjoyed it.

'Why do you think Belphegor wanted us to walk down this avenue under the noonday sun?' mused Gribon, kicking at some dry leaves lying on the path.

'Perhaps because it would make our eyes water and sting.'

'But my eyes, they do not water and sting,' replied Gribon.

'They do not?' cried a startled Murmur.

'No, I can go out in all but the brightest summer sun, and my eyes do not sting at all. As a matter of fact, I have always rather enjoyed a bit of sunshine. It is nice, you know, to catch a few warming rays on a sunny winter's day like this...'

'No, I don't know!' Murmur shrieked nervously, shrinking away from his companion.

Gribon did not appear to notice. 'Did I hear Belphegor mutter something about us running into someone on our little walk?' he asked, kicking at a few more leaves.

'I did hear him mutter something and then laugh very fiendishly and gleefully, saying 'that will frighten the stupidity out of the pair of fools!' Murmur suddenly skidded to a stop. 'Gribon, Gribon!' he shrieked, tugging at the fair-haired demon's sleeve. 'It's a trap; Belphegor means to have us walk into a trap!'

Although he frowned slightly, Gribon did not seem overly alarmed. 'What sort of trap?'

'A saint or some such thing likely walks along this way every day at noon!'

Gribon's eyes widened. 'Do...do you think so?' He looked around nervously.

On this unusually fine winter's day, with the sun shining in a cloudless blue sky and the air crisp and still, the park seemed safe enough. Murmur saw only groups of young friends, couples walking arm-in-arm, elderly people sitting on the park benches chatting or sunning, and children playing. But he did not let that fool him. Belphegor clearly had something in mind for him.

Little Murmur trotted more quickly than ever, all the while swivelling his beady eyes from side to side.

'Slow down, Murmur!' called Gribon. 'I see nothing here to cause us demons any bother. Let us simply enjoy the outing—after all, it is not often a teacher gives you an assignment that is actually pleasant.'

But there was no appeasing little Murmur. 'Hurry, Gribon, hurry!' he squeaked, tugging at the fair one's coat. 'There has to be someone out to get us, has to!'

'Calm down, would you!' screeched Gribon, shaking Murmur off. 'You really are starting to get on my nerves, rabbit-tail.'

'No, quickly, Gribon, we must pass quickly!'

'You are such a nervous Nelly. Now shut your trap—'

'Look!' Murmur suddenly shrieked, pointing directly ahead.

Saint Kriztofer was striding towards them directly ahead on the path.

The shriek Gribon uttered was not quite so loud as Murmur's had been, but he was no less panicked, although he was quicker-thinking. He had flipped up the lid of a nearby tin dustbin and leapt feet-first into it before Murmur had had a single thought.

'Where to hide, where to hide!' gibbered the little demon, flapping and floundering around in a circle.

He could see no other hiding place except the one just taken by Gribon. All around was open lawn; the nearest trees were over seventy paces away. Saint Kriztofer was walking briskly. Murmur could already smell him.

'Doomed, we are, doomed!' he gibbered franticly.

There was no shelter but the tin dustbin. Filled with panic, little Murmur flipped up its lid and leapt in. Gribon let out a muffled squeak as Murmur landed on top of him. Crouching down as small as he could, the little demon pulled the lid shut over himself. But it would not quite close. Murmur's horns prevented it, and hard as he tried, he could neither shrink down lower nor force the lid any further shut.

Through the gap, he watched with terrified eyes as Saint Kriztofer came closer and closer. Kriztofer was a lean man of medium height. Dressed in a long dark coat, he walked with a purpose, energy and dignity which Murmur had never before seen. As the man neared the dustbin, Murmur could see his features clearly. His straight, jet-black hair was slicked neatly back from his pale, care-lined face—a face filled with such kindness and wisdom as Murmur had never before seen in any human face. His piercing dark eyes seemed both to see everything, and to see through everything. And when he drew level with the dustbin, the saint's all-seeing eyes suddenly were looking directly at little Murmur. His firm, determined lips lifted into a slight smile as he halted before it.

Cowering within, the little demon trembled and jittered and shook, while beneath him Gribon steamed and smoked.

Still smiling his kind smile, Saint Kriztofer reached out and lifted the lid on the dustbin of demons.

'Why are you so afraid of me, Murmur?' he asked quietly.

Little Murmur's teeth chattered as he trembled and shook. 'Don't kn-know!' he gibbered, looking up in wide-eyed terror.

'There is no need to be afraid of me, Murmur. What beautiful eyes you have...' Kriztofer's kind yet piercing eyes gazed with wonder upon Murmur.

'A horrid sunlight of an angel gave me them!'

'If ever you are in need, Murmur, or just wish to talk a bit, come to see me where I lodge on top Duet Hill. You will always be welcome.'

And with that, Kriztofer nodded a goodbye, let fall the dustbin lid, and continued on his way.

As the little demon's terrified eyes followed the saint's departure, he noticed an entourage he had not before. Fluttering all about Saint Kriztofer in the air above his head and behind him, were a host of winged angels and spirits. There were little baby angels, lithe, dawn-faced youths, and noble-browed, magnificent-winged great angels with eyes of love and wisdom. In voices that were music more beautiful than any earthly music, the winged spirits sang, talked among themselves and sometimes fluttered close to whisper in Saint Kriztofer's ear. In thought, he would answer back or ask questions of the hovering angels.

But also accompanying Saint Kriztofer was a great two-horned black demon with vast bat-like wings, taloned toes and fingers, glowing, beady red eyes and a sharply pointed, snarling face. Marching beside Kriztofer, the two-horned beast jeered and mocked and hissed at him. Sometimes the saint answered the taunting, jeering demon back, but mostly he ignored him.

Watching from between the gap in his dustbin, little Murmur felt sorry. The effects of the relentless demon assault were worn into Kriztofer's tired face. To be plagued day and night...Murmur could think of no worse thing than that. But before he could dwell any further on these very un-demonic feelings, a sharp pair of horns jabbed him in the rear.

'Has he gone?' came Gribon's muffled screech from below.

'Not quite,' muttered Murmur, crouching low as the saint receded into the distance attended by his spirit-band.

The squashed demon at the bottom of the bin pushed up. 'Get out, rabbit-tail!'

The top demon clung to the sides with his little fingers and pushed down. 'I can still see him in the distance, he's not quite gone!' squeaked he.

'Get out!'

Even though smoke and steam were beginning to seep up around him, Murmur still clung on. 'It's not safe!'

'I'm getting out anyway, saint or no saint!' screeched Gribon, pushing Murmur up and out.

The dustbin toppled over and tipped out its demonic contents. Once the grumpy Gribon had dragged himself to his feet and done something to smooth his rumpled clothes, he turned to Murmur with a hiss.

'This dustbin was taken!' he screeched. 'I'll get back at you for squashing me like that, you rabbit-tailed, baby-faced, angel-eyed, human-handed little runt!'

'Don't you call me mean names!' squeaked the little demon, jabbing his finger at Gribon. 'A sunlight-haired freak has no business calling other demons mean names!'

But Gribon merely turned his respectably hooked nose up and stepped away. 'I'm not talking to you anymore, small-ears.'

'And I'm going home!' screeched little Murmur, seizing his pitchfork.

'What will Belphegor say when you tell him you didn't do as he asked?'

'A lot of mean names and rude words!'

'You are such a wet drip,' scoffed Gribon, looking down his nose contemptuously.

'I thought you were not speaking to me anymore!'

Gribon did not reply to this very valid point. Instead, he turned away even more sniffily.

Without further ado, little Murmur set off at a brisk trot. His beady eyes snapped this way and that, scanning for demons and saints. But apart from a squirrel that darted across the path and made Murmur jump half a meter off the ground in fright, no danger did he see.

Meanwhile, Gribon strutted nonchalantly along down the path. But with every step he took, his walk became a little less nonchalant and a little more furtive. Rapidly becoming the only demon in the very open and very sunny park was frightening. After a few more timid, faltering steps, he stopped. Birds were singing all around, the sun was shining, and joyful childish shouts and laughter rang out across the wide lawn. Panic suddenly gripped him.

'Wait for me, Murmur!' he cried, turning back and breaking into a gallop.

Almost about to hurry through a gap between the hedge, Murmur paused and looked to find a vision of flapping black and red satin, flailing goat-legs and wild little eyes bolting towards him.

'Now we see his true colours...' hissed the little demon. Then he sniggered quietly to himself. 'Now we see them...'

When the wild-eyed Gribon drew level with little Murmur, he did not stop. Flashing past him, he bolted on.

'Gribon?' squeaked Murmur, trotting more quickly after him. 'Gribon, wait!'

Gribon did not wait. If anything, the flailing blur that was his little goat-legs moved even faster. 'Run,' he shrieked, 'run for your evil, Murmur! It is not safe in this saint-infested sunlighty park!'

Gribon's panic was contagious. It shot through Murmur. In no time his furry little goat-legs were flailing as fast as Gribon's. In a wild-eyed panic, he sped out of the park and down the street towards home. Then he veered off into the park in front of the old churchyard. The sound of Gribon's high clatter was still with Murmur. He swivelled his beady eyes sideways and found Gribon sprinting along beside him.

'What are you doing?' he shrieked. 'Your home is back the other way!'

'I'm not going back there—they pick on me and call me mean names because my hair is pale!'

'And your eyes!'

'Don't you call me pale-eyed!'

Murmur was about to answer rudely back when a branch slapped him across the face. 'They are after you, Murmur, after you!' he gibbered, ducking and diving in an attempt to avoid the branches which reached out twiggy arms. 'The trees love Saint Kriztofer and they loves him!'

A sudden shriek erupted beside Murmur. He swivelled his beady eyes to see Gribon's lacy white ruff being torn from him by a low-hanging branch. 'I told you they are after us!' he shrieked, and increased the speed of his goat-legs' flailing.

Then something tight about his throat jerked him back. A tearing sound followed, and he was released. Leaving his little satin cloak hanging from the branch that had hooked it, he bolted onwards without looking back.

When Murmur finally emerged into the churchyard, he slowed. But he still was hurrying. Through the broken stones he hurried, then past the stone angel, then past the tomb slabs. Throwing darting glances about him, he was soon hurrying along towards the gap in the tumbledown wall. Then a smell reached his none-hooked nose. It was the smell of the angel.

'It's there, it's still there!' he gibbered, reaching to fiddle with his tail.

But his tail was not there. Still with his beady little eyes fixed fearfully on the place where light shone from amongst the hazel and dogroses, he fished for it again. His hand did not close around anything. Franticly he flapped around feeling for it behind himself.

'Gribon, my tail—I can't find my tail!' he squeaked, in a voice so high-pitched it could hardly be heard.

'Don't think I'm falling for nonsense like that!' Gribon replied crossly.

'But I can't find it, I'm telling you!'

This wiped the scowl off the fair one's face. He looked at the place where Murmur's tail ought to be.

'Well?' demanded Murmur.

'It's—it's gone.' Gribon's face was pale and disbelieving and his mouth gaping.

The little demon could only gasp and put his hand over his mouth. His eyes were round as full moons and almost popping out.

'Who's the freak now, goat-tail!' Gribon suddenly shrieked triumphantly, pointing a mocking finger at little Murmur. 'Not so clever now, are we! Not so superior and normal, eh!' he crowed, dancing a little jig.

'Gribon...'

'Tailless demon, tailless demon, where is your mean tongue, where is your mean tongue? Did it fall off with your tail, with your tail-tail-tail!'

'Gribon!'

'Don't think I'm stopping here! Oh no, you are only at the beginning of this!' hissed the pale-eyed demon, continuing his dancing.

'Gribon, your tail is gone!'

The dancing suddenly stopped. 'W-what?' gasped Gribon, staring at Murmur with horrified, disbelieving eyes.

'Your tail, it's gone too!'

Gribon felt fearfully behind himself. 'I...can't find my tail...I can't find my tail!' he gibbered, his eyes staring with an almost mad horror.

Little Murmur could not take any more. He bolted like a startled rabbit and did not stop running until he was crouched down behind the old dresser in the attic.

Gribon followed close behind. With a crash and a clatter he thudded down next to Murmur. After a taking a few minutes to calm down and catch his breath, Gribon peered over the top of the dresser. Having satisfied himself that it was safe, he then hopped back over the dresser and started pacing up and down the room. Noise enough for three stampeding baby goats filled the air.

'I'm not having this, Murmur!' he screeched, shaking his fist. 'That Saint Kriztofer is not getting away with the theft!'

'W-what are you going to do?' came little Murmur's tiny, shrill squeak from behind the dresser.

'I'm going to stride right up to him and demand he give us back our tails!'

'B-but I did not see him take them...'

'He's taken them; I'd wager anything on that!'

The room was getting mildly smoggy from Gribon's wisps of smoke and steam.

'But I did not see them on him...'

'Listen to me, rabbit-tail—'

'Don't you dare, no-tail!'

'Shut it, small-ears! Now you listen to me; tonight we are marching up Duet Hill, finding that angelic, goody-goody saint and demanding he give us back what belongs to us!'

'He can't give back what he doesn't have...' came Murmur's timid little reply. 'What if we end up losing something else? That saint is dangerous.'

'We are getting our tails back and that is that—I'm having no more of your drippy, wet-behind-the-ears nonsense!'

MURMUR trotted quickly yet rather reluctantly along the darkened street. The shining silver orb in the sky above flooded the town with its white light, and all around it hung a host of twinkling stars. The air was cold and still. Jack Frost would be having a busy night—a night Murmur was determined would not include giving a little demon a frosty nip. His beady eyes roved around, scanning for any signs of the frost sprite.

Ahead clopped Gribon. The pale-eyed one looked neither left nor right. His eyes were fixed ahead, just as his mind was fixed on one thing: getting back his tail from Saint Kriztofer. He had been steaming and smoking up in the attic all afternoon, impatiently awaiting night, all the while working himself into an ever greater rage.

And as Gribon did that, Murmur had remained cowering down the back of the dresser. He was terrified of Saint Kriztofer, but he was almost as afraid of his father and of the monstrous Belphegor. Had it not been Belphegor's order that had resulted in the two lost demon tails? He kept up the unhappy silence he had maintained all afternoon.

Through the sleeping, moon-washed town passed the demon pair, Gribon striding ahead steaming and brandishing his pitchfork, and Murmur trailing behind dragging his bumperty-bump down the street in a drooping hand.

Finally the street began to climb. Painted wooden villas with verandas lined either side of the street, settled behind their white picket fences amongst plant-filled gardens. The top of the hill was reached. On it was a little garden area with grass and a few park benches. And seated alone on one was Saint Kriztofer.

Gribon charged, his pitchfork levelled at the saint's back like a lance. A gasp of pain escaped Kriztofer as Gribon speared him on the prongs of his pitchfork.

'Give us back our tails, saint!' screeched the pale-eyed demon.

'Your name, demon, is—is Gr—' The saint was searching, and Murmur looked on in terror, desperately hoping Gribon would not be named. If a human named a demon, half that demon's power over him was lost instantly.

'Your name, fiend, is Gribon!' cried Saint Kriztofer at last.

Gribon was thrown back as though struck by a shattering physical blow, although Murmur saw no movement from the saint.

Kriztofer now stood over the sprawled demon, looking sternly down on him. 'What do you want with me, Gribon?'

The fair one whimpered fearfully at this second utterance of his name. Lying on the ground beside him, his pitchfork's prongs were reduced to three pools of melted metal.

'O great, mighty and wise Kriztofer,' squeaked little Murmur, cowering and shaking, 'we do not wish to cause you any bother...'

'In that case, why is this young fool so intent on pricking me with his fork?'

'O most wise and noble Kriztofer, we merely came to retrieve something that you appear to have accidentally carried off with you when you met us in the park...'

'What thing do you refer to?'

The little demon's furry hocks knocked together as he cowered and cringed beneath the saint's penetrating eyes. 'O wisest, mightiest, most noble and exalted one, it is our tails... We...we have lost them...'

The saint's stern dark eyes twinkled with a slight mirth. 'How very careless of you, Murmur.'

'I don't suppose you would happen to have them...about you?'

'I'm afraid, young Murmur, that I do not.'

'Tell us where you put them then!' screeched Gribon, who had now got back up, although he was standing well away from the saint and brandishing his melted pitchfork.

'I put them nowhere.'

'Stop talking in riddles, saint!' shrieked the pale demon, beginning to steam and smoke once again.

'Pardon me. I meant to say that your tails are nowhere because they no longer exist.'

Gribon stared at Kriztofer with wild, horror-filled eyes. 'W-what do you...mean? Our tails have to be somewhere—you lie!'

Little Murmur did not know much, but he did know that saints never lie. 'W-what has happened to them then?' he squeaked shakily.

'They have been redeemed, dissolved back into air.'

'This was your doing, saint!' shrieked Gribon, shaking his wilted pitchfork at Kriztofer and hopping with rage.

'It was indeed.'

'I'll get you back for this, you angel-faced innocent!' shrieked the pale-haired demon.

Kriztofer just smiled. 'Look at your hands, demon.'

Gribon looked. 'Murmur, Murmur,' he shrieked, 'my hands, my talons, they are human, human!'

Murmur turned fearful little eyes upon his companion's hands. They were now neither bony nor sinewy, and had fingernails instead of talons. The little demon gaped in horror.

'Your...your hands look...all plump and soft...like human hands!' he gasped, shaking and cowering and jittering so fearfully that his teeth chattered and hocks knocked together.

'Perhaps next time you will have the courtesy not to prick me in the back with your little fork, Gribon,' said the saint.

'I'll teach you yet, saint!' shrieked Gribon. 'It is us demons who rule the darkness, not you humans!' And then he uttered another shriek and lunged at saint Kriztofer swinging his pitchfork.

With one swift movement, the saint knocked Gribon's pitchfork from his hand and had him by the ear. The caught demon squeaked and shrieked and gibbered for mercy.

'Go, demon!' cried Kriztofer, releasing the squirming fiend.

Gribon went. He bolted straight down the middle of the street, his eyes wild with a mad panic and scarcely seeing. The rapid clatter of his cloven hooves echoed through the empty night. But then their sound changed. The footfalls became softer and lower, quickly changing into more of a slap before they disappeared into the distant night.

The little demon could hardly believe his ears. Gribon's goat-legs and cloven hooves had to have changed into human feet and legs. No other feet made that sound except bare human feet.

'W-what have you done to him?' stammered Murmur, still looking with horror down the now-empty street.

'When he attacked me I had to defend myself. In so doing, I took from him some of his evil powers.'

'Some? I think he has little left.'

'Yes, you are right. I don't think Gribon will be causing human beings much trouble from now on.'

Little Murmur looked up at the saint in fear and trembling. 'You—you won't do anything to me, will you?'

'If you do not do anything to me, no.'

'Your honour, I would not dream of doing anything to you!' gibbered the little demon, bowing and scraping as he backed away. 'I am nothing to you, nothing at all. I am beneath your notice, not worth a second of your time, worthless...'

Murmur had now put a bit of distance between himself and the tail-taker. After bowing and scraping a few more times just in case, he turned and bolted. His high goat-clatter echoed down the street, and for once, he was glad to hear it.

* * * *

'You have no business being here, Gribon!' hissed little Murmur.

Sitting on the floor behind the sofa in Murmur's living room next to him, the fair demon hugged his drawn-up knees unhappily. 'Where else can I go? Now that we have been expelled from school, I have nowhere but out in the cold. My demon family has disowned me; they will not have me anywhere near them!'

'Well just go loiter in some thicket, why can't you!' Being utterly shamed was bad enough without having to look at such a sight as Gribon. The school refused to have him as a pupil. Demons with no tail and no hooves had no place at the school, Headmistress Hellic had told Gribon, her harsh screech loudly heard by Murmur as he waited outside her office.

The little demon stuffed his fingers into his mouth. His teeth were chattering at the memory of Headmistress Hellic looking upon him with scathing contempt. 'You are the laziest, stupidest runt ever to have crossed the threshold of Hell's Gate!' she had shrieked down at the cowering demon. 'We have given you every chance to succeed; we have done everything for you! You have let yourself down, Murmur. You let down this school, and what is worse is that you have made me look bad! How dare you make me look bad! You disgust me; I can't stand looking at you—get out of my sight!'

Little Murmur gave Gribon a poke with his pitchfork's melted prongs. 'I said, go loiter outside somewhere!'

The fair demon squeaked like a mouse. 'If you do that again I'll touch you!'

Murmur instantly shrunk back at this terrible threat. 'Alright, Gribon, stay if you want to,' he muttered, eyeing the fair demon warily. 'Why are you so keen to be here, anyway?'

'The thing is, Murmur,' Gribon began reluctantly, 'my feet feel the cold rather...'

Little Murmur stared back in horror. 'They...they do?' No demon felt the cold—not until now, at any rate.

Gribon nodded miserably.

The little demon continued to stare. The only things identifying Gribon as a demon were his slightly hooked nose, horns and pointy ears. Without them, he would have looked like a human boy. Murmur shuddered.

'You really ought to have listened to me, Gribon. I told you we should not go near saint Kriztofer.'

Hugging his knees even more miserably, the fair one nodded again. 'You are right, Murmur. Now I am an outcast.'

'Let's go for a walk,' Murmur said after a while. 'We might be able to find you some boots.'

Gribon agreed, and soon the demon pair was walking down the snow-covered street towards the centre of town. It was late afternoon, and on this winter day, lights already were glowing in the windows of the houses they passed.

'How warm and cosy it looks in those homes,' said Gribon, gazing wistfully into the windows of a cottage near the street, where a tiny grey-haired woman was putting a steaming pie onto the table her beaming grandchildren sat at.

Murmur tugged the fair one onwards. 'Come on, we will soon have some warm boots on your feet. Then you will feel much better.'

Sniffing and pulling his cloak tightly about himself, Gribon trotted on. But his eyes remained fixed on the scene in the warm, golden kitchen until it was obscured by the hedge of the neighbouring house.

When the two demons reached the town centre, Murmur was quick to spot a cobbler's shop.

'Come, let's sneak round the back,' he said, pulling Gribon along behind him.

With many a furtive glance and panicked start, the two crept around to the back of the shop and slipped inside. The smell of leather surrounded Murmur as he found himself in a small, dark room filled with ceiling-high shelves stacked with boxes and pairs of shoes and boots.

'Quick, try these on!' hissed the little demon, seizing a likely looking pair of boots and thrusting them at Gribon.

Gribon took the boots and hastily pulled them on his feet. 'They seem to fit,' he muttered, tugging and frowning at the new footwear.

'Let's get out of here then!' urged little Murmur, reaching for the door handle.

But Gribon loitered. 'I don't know...these boots are awfully floppy...'

'I think I hear someone coming!' shrieked Murmur, and dived out the door.

Gribon followed instantly, and the two demons bolted out into the lane. Then Gribon seemed to get his feet all tangled together and fell flat on his face in the snow.

'Get up, fool!' shrieked little Murmur, who had lost all calmness and boldness. He was gripped by panic. The dresser in the attic beckoned.

Gribon scrambled to his feet. But only a few moments later he was down again.

'It's these boots!' he gasped. 'They are flopping about and the trailing laces keep tripping me up!'

Murmur roughly hauled Gribon up by the coat. 'Tie the laces together like humans do, fool!'

The pale-haired demon hastily bent down and did as Murmur suggested. The little demon kept running on the spot as he waited, darting his fearful beady eyes hither and thither all the while. 'Hurry, hurry!' he gibbered, tugging at Gribon.

After only a few seconds Gribon seemed done. The demon pair was off. But something was wrong.

'Why are you running as if you are in a sack?' Murmur shrieked at his oddly hobbling companion.

'My feet—they are all stuck!' cried a wild-eyed Gribon, doing his best to keep up with the rapidly bolting Murmur.

'That's because you have tied your bootlaces to each other, fool!'

'You said to tie the laces together!'

'Tie up the two ends of the laces on the same boot, not the laces of one boot to the other, fool!'

'Don't you keep calling me a fool—' But suddenly Gribon stopped screeching and went paler. 'It's Saint Kriztofer!'

Murmur looked to where Gribon's shaking finger pointed. At the door of the house they were passing stood the saint. He appeared to have just knocked and now was waiting for an answer.

Murmur let out a squeak of terror and bolted, zigzagging from side to side like a panicked rabbit as he went. Gribon followed, in an even greater panic than Murmur. He zigzagged too, but kept falling and tripping. Every time Murmur dragged him back up again. When the demon pair reached the end of the street and turned the corner, they stopped darting from side to side and just ran straight. Gribon fell twice more. Murmur was really beginning to lose patience with the fair one.

Then Gribon fell flat on his face yet again.

'Just pull the boots off, fool!' shrieked Murmur, shaking his fists in the air and hopping with rage. 'Get them off!'

Gribon still lay sprawled on his front in the snowy alley. He was staring down at the ground with a strange look in his eyes. 'The...Cross of Darkness...' he faltered.

Little Murmur snapped his beady eyes downwards. There, shining through the white snow, was a Cross of Darkness.

Then a whisper reached through the icy, still air. 'Come to me, demon. Come to your master... I summon you; appear!'

The little demon uttered a shriek. It was the alley—the alley where they had scratched the circle and sign! Suddenly Murmur and Gribon were airborne, flying high above the snowy town. Their flight became faster, and the winter-gripped town's snow covered rooves and streets faded from view. Dark, turbulent seas now raged below, foaming and tossing.

Faster still they went. After a while, the ocean below became still and serene, shimmering and rippling beneath a cloudless blue sky and brightly shining sun that made Murmur's eyes water and sting. The clear azure waters now met a shore of white rocks and golden sands. Over passed the demons, and the land became a patchwork of lemon, olive and orange groves, shady bowers, and glinting silver streams that twisted and glided past fields, pastures and woods. Here and there was a white-painted stone farmstead or marble villa, and occasionally a little church.

Then the land became drier and rockier. Herds of sheep and goats roamed below, and the few streams were at the bottom of steep canyons. The voice in the wind was becoming louder now. The two demons clung to each other in terror—Murmur had forgotten altogether to be repulsed by Gribon. On the flat plain they now flew over, a great city shimmered in the hot sun. Minarets and domes arose from the cluster of white stone buildings and from the three magnificent blue-tiled mosques gracing the city.

The terrified demons then found themselves swooping quickly downwards. Murmur could not bear to look, so he shut his eyes. With a thud, the demon flight ended, and Murmur was sprawled on his face on a Persian carpet beside Gribon.

THE little demon blinked hard. There was something familiar about the Persian carpet. He could not remember exactly where, but he knew he had seen it before. Then Murmur looked up. Looking back at him with horror-bulging eyes was the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai. The magician's scarcely-believing face was filled with shock. In a flash, he kicked the two demons under a nearby desk.

'So, think you still that the man who sells his soul to the Devil gains the greatest wisdom of all, Hernando?' asked a woman, in a loud, ringing voice.

'Indeed I do!' replied the great one. 'There are many things a demon can tell a man which he may not discover for himself. Demons are cleverer than men, and therefore the man that can summon a demon to answer his questions and do his bidding is mightier than any mere mortal alone can be.'

'Ah, but can they tell you all about the things that are in Heaven?' cried the woman, in her commanding tone.

'What man needs to know about Heaven?' scoffed the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai. 'A man with all earthly knowledge and power does not need Heaven! Why? Because he has everything here on earth.'

'What about your immortal soul, Hernando?'

'Better a king for a day than a worm for eternity!'

'Indeed? Think you to be a king, do you?'

'Certainly, Madame d'Angelo! Through my dark magic, I have many demons at my beck and call. Through them I have built a great fortune. See those men working breaking rocks in yonder quarry? All are my slaves, all! And see those beautiful women lounging in the shady courtyard? All are my concubines, all!'

'Ah, but wait—who be the master and who be the slave? I say that it is not you who are lord over these fiends you do conjure, but they that have the power.'

'I see that you are jealous of my riches and powers, Madame!' cried the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai. 'The green-eyed lady does envy!'

Still crouching under the desk, little Murmur put his eye to a chink between its planks and peered through it. A very tall, slim lady stood in the centre of the room. Long silver hair cascaded down her back, her nose was long and aquiline, her eyes flashing, and her brow noble. She moved with the grace and dignity of a queen.

The beautiful lady drew herself a little taller as she fixed her glittering blue eyes on the magician. 'I challenge you.'

'To what?'

'I challenge you to prove that your demon-given powers and wisdom are greater than what may be achieved by being good.'

'I accept!' cried the great Hernando, proudly strutting across the room.

The regal silver-haired lady stepped forward. 'Then tell me; what star was I born under?'

A slight flicker of doubt passed over the magician's face. 'I must first say the spell and draw the signs that will make a demon-servant appear...' Stroking his goatee beard, he flipped through a foot-thick tome lying open on the table before him.

'You mean to conjure a demonic presence? But you already have one—two, in fact!' The queenly lady had stridden around the desk, and now stood looking down at the cowering demon pair.

'They are nothing, mere toying to pass the time!' splattered the great Hernando. 'I must have uttered some spell quite by accident!'

'I think not, Hernando. I say you attempted to conjure a fiend the instant you saw me cross your threshold.'

'They are nothing!' shouted the now-flustered magician, waving a dismissive hand. 'I don't even know what they are doing there!'

The regal lady bent and reached her hand out to pluck Gribon up by the back of his collar. 'Does the magician speak the truth, demon?' she asked, holding the little devil like a cat might hold her kitten.

Hanging limply, the fair-haired fiend stared back at the lady with round, frightened eyes. 'I don't know why I'm here!' he squeaked, in a tiny voice. 'I just wanted to get some boots for my cold feet—I want to go home!'

'Oh, you poor dear,' cooed she, setting Gribon down on the windowsill. 'Your laces are all knotted up... There, is that not much better?'

Looking down at his now properly tied up boot laces, Gribon nodded. 'Thank you, madam. It is very decent of you.'

'Fear not, I will tell you the spell to get home later.' She then turned back to the horrified magician. 'You have not yet answered me, great Hernando.'

'Patience, woman, patience!' blustered he, flipping through his book with hands that now shook slightly. Suddenly he stopped. 'Demon, by the sign of six I command you; come!' he cried, spinning around thrice.

'Master, you called?'

Every eye in the room turned with a start towards the direction from whence the sly, slippery voice had sounded. There, standing in a corner, was a tall goat-legged demon smartly dressed in the fashion Beball, Behemoth and the other demons of their ilk adopted. He held his feathered soft cap in his hand and was bowing low with the elegance of a courtier.

'Ah,' said Hernando, looking smugly upon the demon, 'Malphas, the mighty Prince of Hell with forty legions of demons under his command; the builder of high towers and strongholds and reader of minds. I command you, demon; tell me the thoughts of Madame d'Angelo!'

The sly, suave, slippery demon put his cap back on his sleek dark hair. 'Malphas? You think me to be Malphas?' Then he sniggered.

The great magician's eyes bulged once more with rage and shock. 'What! Then why are you here?' he screamed.

The tall demon gave a twirl that showed off his very fine red satin cloak. 'Because you called, master.' He bowed again.

'Who are you then?' demanded the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai, seizing his book.

'I, your honour, am Adramelech.'

'Rank?'

The suave devil strutted into the centre of the room. 'Demon.'

'A common, garden demon?' The rage and indignation of Hernando was great. He slammed the book down and banged his clenched fist on it. 'Where is Malphas? Why have I got you instead?'

With a swagger that the watching Murmur thought very fine and grand, Adramelech sauntered up to the magician. 'While your call is very important to Malphas,' the demon said sniffily, 'he regrets that he is unable to answer due to the high volume of calls he is currently experiencing. He will get to you as soon as he is able. That may be sometime next century. He apologises for any inconvenience this may cause you.'

'Answer my questions, demon, or get me your superior!' snarled the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai.

'As you wish, your honour.' Adramelech bowed again.

'Tell me what star was this here lady born under.'

'Hmmm...' Frowning thoughtfully and twirling his smart black moustache, Adramelech hesitated. 'Hmmm...'

The tall, silver-haired lady had been observing these events with mirth. At this latest setback, she threw back her head and laughed a pealing, bell-like laugh.

'Answer, demon!' screamed the magician, hopping with rage.

'Hmmm...' went the demon again, frowning harder and twirling the end of his moustache faster. 'Hmmm...'

'You don't know, do you?' The great one's voice was now hoarse from shouting. 'Get over there!' He pointed at the ledge the round-eyed Gribon sat on.

Then the great Hernando began franticly flipping through his book. Suddenly his flipping stopped. 'Ich gom banet som kabash!' he cried, drawing signs in the air.

A great booming and beating of wings filled the air. The room darkened as a great shape blotted out the sun. Then a hideous winged creature that was half vulture, half dragon swooped in through the open window, knocking Gribon off his perch.

'You called, master?' said the creature, in a hoarse, croaky screech, as he folded his wings.

'Are you the demon Furcifer, Great Duke of Hell?' asked the now-smug great Hernando.

'I am,' croaked the horrid creature.

'Oops!' exclaimed the magician, stooping to pick up the pencil he had just let fall onto the floor. 'Here, draw a triangle on the ground!' he hissed to little Murmur, passing him a chalk.

The little demon rather reluctantly did as he was bid.

'Tell me, Furcifer; what star was this lady born under?' asked Hernando.

'She was born under the constellation of the Ram!' cried the creature.

'Wrong!' answered she.

'Come around to here...' said Hernando, beckoning the creature to step where Murmur had just chalked the triangle.

Furcifer did. And suddenly he was changed! In a puff his wings and scales were gone, and he took on the form of a deer.

'Tell me what star the lady was born under!' cried the triumphant magician.

'You two-faced beast!' shrieked Furcifer, struggling and pushing as one might against a fence or wall.

'Yes, the great Hernando knows that the demon Furcifer is a great liar unless made to enter a magic triangle!' crowed the magician.

Little Murmur jammed further into the dark corner under the desk. No demon must know about his drawing. Not one.

'Ahhh!' shrieked the demon Furcifer, throwing himself at the invisible wall. Then he seemed to have found a gap.

'Do as you are bid, demon!' cried the magician, desperate now that he saw his captive was in danger of escaping.

Cowering in his corner, little Murmur stuffed his fingers into his mouth to silence his chattering teeth. He saw it now. The triangle, he had not drawn it correctly. There was a gap where the end of the stroke did not quite meet its beginning. It was sloppy and lazy.

Still squeezing and struggling, Furcifer was compelled to answer. 'She was born under the sun! That is her star!' Then he shot through the gap, bounded out the window and was gone.

Lucky for Gribon he had decided against remounting the window ledge. If he had, he would have been thrown out by Furcifer's speedy exit.

'There, I have your answer!' cried the magician, turning triumphantly to the tall lady.

But she flicked a dismissive hand. 'Bah, that was nothing! Any man or woman who studied the books of knowledge could answer. I am surprised you even thought to conjure a demon to answer such a trifle. Every child is born under the sun!'

'If you think that so, give me another challenge!'

'Very well. Tell me, what lies forty fathoms beneath the ground here?'

'I accept your challenge, Madame d'Angelo,' replied the great Hernando, 'but I issue one to you in return. You have for many years tried to get me driven from this city. I say that this shall be the final. Whoever wins shall stay.'

The silver lady's eyes flashed more brilliantly than ever as she regarded her nemesis from down the end of her long nose. 'It shall be as you say. It is time this land was rid of you and your evil.'

The magician began to chant spells and incantations, and to make signs and gestures that were wild and terrible. Faster and faster he chanted, and his gestures became wilder and more contorted. Then a clap of thunder boomed forth and rolled across the city.

Gribon shot under the desk and crouched beside Murmur, shaking and jittering.

The magician started to whirl. Round and round went he. More thunderclaps boomed, and the sun was blotted out once again. This time, it became as night. Little Murmur could see the stars twinkling in the sky. Then the stars were blotted out as a black shape filled the window. With a final boom of thunder, a demon appeared. He was riding an infernal beast with dragon's wings and a serpent's tail. The horrid creature had his wings outstretched as he alighted on the window ledge, then folded them once he had taken a bound to land in the centre of the room, right before the magician.

The magician's eyes glittered with triumphant delight, although he was careful to hold a certain ring close beneath his nose. This was on account of the demon's noisome breath, which reeked most terribly. The demon was in the form of a hurtful angel, scrawny and sinewy with long, taloned fingers and toes and feathered wings. He had a golden crown upon his head and in his right hand carried a spitting, striking serpent. This was all that he wore.

'You summoned me, master?' he cried, his voice harsh and cutting beyond compare.

'You are Astaroth, the Twenty-ninth Spirit, mighty, strong Duke of Hell who ruleth forty legions of spirits?' asked the Magician, keeping his ring close.

'I am he!' screeched the infernal Astaroth.

The great Hernando stroked his goatee beard with smugness and immense satisfaction. 'Ah, excellent!'

But the regal lady was unperturbed. She did not even pay him the compliment of looking slightly horrified.

'Tell me, demon of the First Hierarchy,' demanded the magician, 'what lies forty fathoms beneath the ground here?'

'Forty fathoms beneath the ground here there lies a rich river of gold!' screeched he of the deadly breath.

The silver lady paled a little. She put her hand against the wall to steady herself and took a breath. Then she went paler still and staggered slightly. 'You did well, magician,' said she.

'Now I will challenge you!' cried the great Hernando of Isiz A'bai. 'Tell me how many stars are on Astaroth's seal.'

'One.'

'How did the Spirits fall?'

'You cannot ask me questions the answers to which you know not yourself, magician! That foul creature of your summoning knows of that, and of things past, present and to come. You do not!'

The magician then asked the lady a mathematical question so complex that little Murmur scarcely understood a single word of it.

'I see that this is not your first meeting with Astaroth,' said the lady, who was growing ever paler as the infernal demon's breath slowly overcame her.

'Oh no, indeed not. Astaroth is a very learned fellow. What he cannot teach a man about the mathematical sciences is not worth knowing.'

Barely succeeding in holding herself up, the lady closed her eyes in concentration. After a few moments, she opened them and gasped an answer that did not reach little Murmur's ears.

But he knew it was the correct one. The magician went pale. Quivering with rage, he turned to the infernal Astaroth. 'At her! At her with your serpent!' he screamed, pointing his long, long finger directly at the lady.

The mighty demon kicked his beast, which bounded forward. Then Astaroth hurled back his serpent-wielding hand as one would a whip, and brought it forward. Held by the tail, the snake hissed and spat with rage, striking at the air.

Murmur could see the serpent bearing down on the shrinking lady, who was pinned against the door. He felt sorry. She had been awfully nice to Gribon. The little demon let out a sigh.

The serpent was almost upon her. The infernal demon flung back his living whip and brought it forward to strike. Almost fainting from the demon's terrible breath, the lady could not defend herself. She raised her eyes towards Heaven.

Suddenly a flaming golden sword flashed through the air and slashed the serpent's head off. Wielding this sword was a magnificent warrior-angel. Hovering behind the lady on outstretched wings of blue and white feathers, he was dressed in a breastplate of shining gold over a short tunic of yellow silk, and draped across his shoulder was a cloak of vermillion red satin that floated and rippled all about him. His stern face was breathtaking in its terrible, heavenly beauty. His hair of spun gold waves brushed the top of his shoulders, and encircling his head was a circlet of radiant light—or was it pure gold? Murmur could not tell.

The angel put one of his strong arms around the drooping lady to support her, while with the other he held his sword out at the serpent, whose head had now regrown. The snake was more enraged than ever. Venom rained down as it hissed and spat. But none of it fell upon the lady, for it was vaporised the moment it touched the angel's radiant aura of golden light.

The infernal Astaroth lashed the serpent forward to strike. And in a flash the angel slashed its head off again. Letting out a howl of rage, the mighty demon kicked his beast to the attack. The vile creature flapped up into the air, and the demon steered it in for the attack. Still holding the lady, the angel warrior rose into the air too, and together the spirits did battle. The room was filled with the beating of wings, and soon there was not one piece of furniture still standing. Ever and again the serpent regrew its head, and ever and again the magnificent angel sliced it off.

All the while the great Hernando screamed at the demon to attack and defeat, ducking and diving as the winged spirits crashed and rose about the room. Now not one piece of furniture was intact. The desk the two demons cowered under had collapsed at one end, and Murmur was sure it would not survive another blow.

Adramelech watched the drama with a detached interest, perched on the window ledge and carelessly filing his talons as he did.

Suddenly the magician noticed this inactive bystander. 'At them, demon, at them!' he screamed at the careless demon, pointing at the prey.

'What do I get in return?' asked the slippery knave, continuing with his filing.

'Anything, just kill her!'

The evil dandy paused his filing. 'Anything?' Murmur caught a very fiendish flicker in the beady red eyes.

'Anything! Now get off your rear and attack!'

'Alright,' said Adramelech, and hopped down from his perch.

Murmur and Gribon shrunk into the desk's darkest corner. The lady and her warrior angel were frightening, but worse still were the infernal Astaroth and his beast. Though they were not the little demon's greatest source of fear—that honour belonged to Adramelech. There was something about the sly demon that sent a chill through Murmur.

That demon slipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of pebbles, which he began to toss one by one at the angel. The pebbles did nothing. They simply bounced off the angel's radiant aura of light.

In the angel's arms, the regal lady had recovered somewhat from the demon breath, which could not penetrate the angel's field of light. She reached up and took a dart from the quiver slung on her angel's back. This she threw at Astaroth. The dart bit deep into the demonic beast's serpent-tail.

The creature let out a howl and began to writhe and thrash with its tail. It flew even more savagely to the attack, biting and snapping while its rider lashed out with his hissing serpent. The angel's sword was a fiery streak as he sliced and slashed, all the while wheeling and ducking.

Then the queenly lady reached again for a dart and sent it on its way. The dart found its target in the beast's hide. Scarcely had the creature howled and thrashed when another dart hit, and another and another.

Letting out a roar of rage, the beast attacked madly. Crashing against the walls and roof, its blind fury knew no bounds. The furniture was pulverised, and the walls too began to crumble before the constant battering.

With a sweep of its tail the beast swiped the broken desk against the wall. Clinging to it, Murmur and Gribon were swept along too. Masonry started to crumble and fall. But the magician hardly noticed. Standing livid-faced in the room, he screamed at the beast to attack and the demon to kill, his eyes bulging and voice hoarse from shouting.

With a fierce kick, the beast suddenly had the angel on his knees. Then the infernal Astaroth lashed with his serpent. The angel warrior did not have his flaming sword on guard. Open-mouthed to strike, the serpent attacked. But suddenly its fangs were embedded in a piece of wood—a piece of wood held by Gribon.

The angel had stumbled right beside the desk Murmur and Gribon cowered under. Gribon could not see the lady hurt. She had been kind to him. Nobody had ever been kind to him before. He had unthinkingly thrust out his wood into the serpent's jaws the moment it was about to bite. Its hissing stopped abruptly. With its fangs embedded in the plank, the serpent was disarmed.

But while the lady was out of danger, her angel was not. The infernal Astaroth reached out his scrawny hands and twisted them around the angel's neck. The magnificent angel let out a choking gasp and his sword-bearing hand dropped.

'Kill, kill, kill!' screamed the magician, hopping with mad blood lust as victory came near.

Standing idly by, Adramelech merely tossed a few more pebbles at the angel. They bounced off just as quickly as his earlier ones had.

The angel's deep sapphire eyes began to glaze and dim as the infernal demon tightened his chokehold, all the while cackling with fiendish laughter.

The little demon could stand it no longer. The angel was the most fearsomely beautiful and magnificent thing Murmur had ever looked upon. It would not fall. It could not fall. It must fly again. He would see it soar high up towards the heavens. Seizing his little pitchfork, he stabbed hard at the beast's exposed, scaleless underbelly.

The hideous beast let out a roar and bucked violently, throwing the infernal Astaroth from its back. The angel was free. He instantly rose on his magnificent blue-feathered wings, lifting the lady with him. Below, the beast was bucking and thrashing about with Murmur's little pitchfork stuck in his underbelly.

'Here, slave, here!' screeched the infernal one, in a wild fury at his disobedient mount.

But much as the demon lashed at the hideous creature with his serpent and roared obscene words, it did no good. The plank still was in the snake's mouth; it was impotent.

Letting out a howl that shook the tower's very foundations, the Twenty-ninth Demon leapt onto his creature. Urging it on with kicks, howls and yells, he turned the beast towards the window. Still mad with rage, the demon-mount bucked so violently that its master could barely cling onto its back. The beast's mighty serpent-tail thrashed and writhed, even as the demon wrestled his slave into submission.

'Hah! hah! hah!' shrieked the infernal demon, lashing the beast with his snake.

The hellish creature finally obeyed. With one bound it leapt out the window and spread its wings in a shaky flight. But its mighty tail thrashed one final time, crashing through the window frame and taking out the entire west wall of the tower. As the demon sped away over the city on his still-bucking beast, the tower shook down to its very foundations once more.

'Come back, I order you!' screamed the magician, shaking his fist at the fast-disappearing mighty Duke of Hell.

'Rot in Hell!' was the demon's distant answering screech.

But this time the tower did not stop shaking. More stones crashed down. Then the roof began to creak and sag. Mighty groans and splits rant the dusty air. Then the west side of the swaying tower's roof crashed down. A cry sounded, which ended with a gasp.

Gribon and little Murmur crawled cautiously forth from their hiding place. Lying on his back on the floor, almost entirely buried under a pile of rubble, was the once-great Hernando of Isiz A'bai. A trickle of blood run from his mouth, his face was almost white, and his eyes bulged with shock at this sudden end to his raging.

'My life—I feel it ebbing away!' he gasped. 'Help me, demons, help me!'

Adramelech sauntered over to stand over him. 'Why should I?' he demanded callously.

'Because I am your master.' Hernando's fading gasp was barely heard by Murmur.

'Hah!'

Horror crossed over the magician's ashen face. 'The end, I feel it drew nigh...' he murmured, staring fixedly up. 'Help me! Help me!'

'Afraid, are you?'

'Terror fills me!'

'Heh heh heh...' sniggered the sly demon, rubbing his hands together. 'You promised me, magician.'

'Promised you what?'

'That you would give me anything if I attacked the angel.'

'You tossed a few—wretched pebbles,' gasped the stricken Hernando.

'A promise is a promise, master,' sneered the sly one.

Fresh horror filled the magician's face. 'What is it...you want?'

'Your immortal soul, that is all.'

His eyes widened with fear. 'My...my mortal soul? I never promised to sell my soul to the devil for the tossing of a few pebbles!'

'I think you will find, master, that you did,' replied the slippery fiend.

'I—I did? I did...'

'And now I claim it! You belong to me, slave!' shrieked the triumphant Adramelech, and laughed a great 'mwah-ha-ha-ha!'

Twilight now hung over the city. Into this gloom, a light flashed forth. A mighty angel stood before the magician.

'I am the Angel of Death,' said the towering spirit. 'I have come to bear your soul away.'

'Excuse me, angel.' It was the sly fiend Adramelech who spoke. Twirling his moustache, he looked casually up at the great spirit-being. 'I have a prior claim on this man's immortal soul. It belongs to me.'

'Man, is it as this demon says?' came the Angel of Death's booming voice.

'It is. Now get away from me, you infernal angel!' cried the magician.

In a flash, the towering being of swirling flame-coloured light was gone. Darkness held sway once more.

'Come, follow me to Hell!' shrieked the triumphant demon, seizing hold of the magician.

The man cried out in terror as the demon's talons bit into him. But he could not shake him off.

'Come, slave! To heel!' ordered the devil, pointing the way.

The magician's immortal soul now had left his body. It cowered at the demon's feet, pale, cold and afraid. 'Ah, darkness, now it surrounds me!' he cried.

The demon seized his soul and sprung up into the air bearing it with him. As the demon flew off into the night, his cackling laughter rung out across the city, and with it the magician's cries of terror. Then they were heard no more.

Standing in the ruin beneath night's dome of twinkling stars and the slim sickle of a crescent moon, Murmur looked at Gribon, and Gribon looked back.

'A terrible fate,' muttered the little demon, shuddering.

'Terrible...' echoed Gribon, staring bleakly into the night with his pale eyes.

'Only a fool thinks to go in league with a demon and remain the master,' said the lady. 'The Devil always gets his pound of flesh. Always.'

'Is the magician damned for eternity?' asked little Murmur (he was woefully ignorant of the workings of Hell).

'Every man must pay his dues, but ages in time and space come around when a man has a fresh chance to redeem himself,' answered the warrior-angel. 'There is nothing that does not have its chance to be redeemed. Although often times one may have to wait many, many ages before a missed chance comes once more around.'

'I want to go home,' said a little demon voice.

'I want to go home too,' said a second.

The lady looked down at the two young demons. 'And so it shall be.'

There was a sigh of air as the magnificent angel unfurled his great wings and stepped forward. With each arm he lifted a demon, and then he rose into the air. Quickly they passed high over the city, the land and then the ocean. When the snow-covered rooftops of the town came into view far down below, dawn was breaking in the east. The clear sky was flushed magenta and the pristine snow pale pink.

The angel swooped down to alight in the garden of Murmur's tumbledown home, where he gently set down his young charges.

'Thank you!' cried little Murmur, who was mighty relieved to be home safe.

'Thank you, thank you!' echoed Gribon, even more relieved to be home safe.

The beauteous spirit-warrior smiled a gracious acknowledgement before taking flight once again. He rose up towards the heavens on his blue-feathered wings, his vermillion drape floating and swirling about him and the first rays of the rising sun shimmering on his golden breastplate.

HAVING taken leave of the angel only moments ago, Murmur and Gribon darted quickly along the hall towards the stairs.

'By all the humans on earth, I'll get at that angel! I'll get back at him for treating me like that!'

This demon screech sounded from the door. Accompanying it was the clatter of two pairs of cloven hooves.

'Quick,' hissed Gribon, 'it's Beball and Behemoth!'

The little demon's hooves scrabbled and slid as he started in fright.

'Hey, there's the runt responsible for all this!' screeched a voice that belonged to Beball.

Murmur and Gribon bolted. But Beball and Behemoth bolted faster. The smallest pair of demons barely had reached the top of the stairs when the bigger overtook them.

'You broke my pitchfork!' shrieked Beball, pointing his talon fiercely at Murmur.

'You broke my horn,' growled Behemoth, with a look of black thunder, pointing a talon twice as accusing and thrice as threatening.

'It was not me who blew up the laboratory,' squeaked the little demon, backing up against the wall. 'That scientist was a dangerous fool; you should have known to steer clear of him!'

'He built that apparatus under our instruction!' snarled Behemoth.

Beball jabbed his talon into Murmur's chest. 'Yes, angel-eyes, without us whispering into his ear that scientist would have been nothing! We taught him everything he knows.'

'Well, there you have it,' Murmur gibbered hopefully, 'the explosion was all your fault!'

'You tempered with it,' snarled Behemoth, seizing Murmur by the collar. 'We know you did!'

'And now our powers have been reduced by half!'

'That frosty imp-wretch, Jack Frost, dared to nip my nose!'

'And that student saw us—saw us as plainly as he might a saintly stone!'

Snarling and steaming, the two demons began to shove, pinch and jostle their little brother. Murmur shuffled along the wall until he was at the top of the stairs, then made a dash for it. His hooves almost flew out from under him as he bolted down the wooden stairs. Beball and Behemoth were at his heels, shrieking and fuming and steaming. But in the hall, Beball caught up with the little demon and got hold of his coat.

'You are going to pay for putting us in this state!' he shrieked, throwing Murmur back against the wall.

'Vengeance is ours!' snarled Behemoth, and seized hold of Murmur's horn with the intention of banging his head against the wall.

But the horn came away in his hand. The demon's snarling and smoking paused abruptly. He blinked his beady red eyes disbelievingly down at the horn in his hand.

'That is a trick!' screeched Beball. 'Murmur has knocked that horn off somewhere and glued it back on!'

Letting out a snarl of rage and a snort of steam, Behemoth seized Murmur's other horn. 'Yes, no horn breaks away that easily—this one will not and your trick will be exposed!'

The horn came away in Behemoth's hand just as easily as the first had. While the demon blinked down in shock a second time, little Murmur saw his chance to escape. He dashed past his brothers and, with a final bound, leapt out the door.

With a shriek, Behemoth and Beball charged after the escapee, determined to catch him and deliver a hiding. Murmur landed in a deep snowdrift. He worked hard to drag himself up, but just as he was on his knees and about to spring away, a sound stopped him. It was the sounding of a horn from above, a rough, blaring blast that cut through the icy dawn air. Both pursued and pursuers stopped to look skywards.

There, flying towards them, was a black demon dressed in armour and riding upon a vulture, and going before him were two of his ministers sounding hellish horns.

'Forneus!' squeaked Murmur, in great fear and trembling, as he shrunk down low to the ground in the hope of escaping the Great Duke and Earl of Hell's notice.

But it did no good. Whipped on by his fearsome rider, the horrible giant vulture swooped down towards the little demon.

'Ah, here the little worm crawls!' shrieked the great demon, as his mount alighted. His voice was like the shriek of a raven or bird of prey, and his nose as fearsomely beaked.

Murmur was so terror-struck that his teeth did not chatter at all. He could only stare. Great Earls and Dukes of Hell did not pay lowly demons personal visits unless they had done something that was either very good or very bad. Murmur had never done anything that was even moderately bad, so that left only the former reason.

'Traitor! Judas!' shrieked the demon, pointing a bony, bony finger straight at Murmur.

'O mightiest, vilest, most profane, lowest Forneus, a thousand pardons!' gibbered the little demon, prostrating himself before the terrible black demon.

The armour plate-encased Forneus rattled like a sack of empty cans as he dismounted his vulture. 'I have not told you what you've done!' shrieked he, in a screech so harsh that Murmur's eyes watered from the hearing of it.

'Whatever it is, I am entirely remorseful,' squeaked the little demon.

'How dare you be remorseful! A demon has no business with remorse!'

Murmur made to bow and scrape, but when his head only pressed further into the snow he was reminded that he already was as low as he could be. Shaking and jittering, he kept silent. Every time he opened his mouth it only seemed to make things worse.

'We have received a complaint about you and a certain freak named Gribon!' screeched Forneus. 'The great Astaroth alleges that you did deliberately spear his mount with your pitchfork causing grievous bodily harm to it, and that the freak Gribon did deliberately and without regard prevent the attack of his serpent, therein causing grievous bodily harm. Out here, freak!' shrieked the demon, pointing his bony, bony finger straight at Gribon, who he glimpsed trying to dash back up the hall.

Trembling and shaking, the fair one very reluctantly crept out to stand before Forneus.

'This matter was raised at the great Council of Hell,' the soldier-demon continued in his horrid screech, 'and Astaroth demanded that you two be made to pay for turning on your own in such a manner. He asked that the most severe punishment possible be meted out. This request was granted by the great Council.'

'W—what punishment is that?' asked Murmur, in a tiny squeak and with much trembling.

'Armmm...' The demon frowned and scratched his head. 'Armmmm...' Then he snapped his bony, bony fingers and cried 'Baal-berith!'

A dusty, musty, hunched-over demon appeared. Murmur recognised him. He was the Chief Secretary of Hell and head of its public archives.

'You called?' croaked he, bowing stiffly.

'Read out the punishment Astaroth demanded be inflicted upon these here demons!' ordered Forneus.

Hell's chief pen-pusher squinted down at the yellowed page in his hand. 'Ahem, he asked that they be expelled from Hell and officially declared outcasts, that they be no longer recognised as belonging to the ranks of demons...'

'There,' screeched Forneus, 'you are herewith no longer a member of the ranks of demons. Gribon and Murmur, be gone!'

Shaking and jittering, the two condemned demons prostrated themselves before the great Duke and Earl. Little Murmur, fearful that the great demon might do him harm, tried to utter grovelling words. But all that came out were muffled 'oh's and 'hm's. His mouth was filled with snow, and he could not speak.

'Are you not grateful for the leniency and mercy shown to you, Gribon?' demanded the great demon, in his croaky screech, prodding the fair one with an armoured foot.

'Yes, vilest, most evil and degraded one!' gibbered Gribon, shaking hard, as much from the cold of the snow as from fear.

With a contemptuous 'harrumph!' the demon soldier mounted his vulture, clanking and clattering loudly as he did. Little Murmur dared to lift his head, and saw the demon whip his hell-bird on and take flight. Quickly vulture and demon rider rose into the sky and passed up into the clouds, his ministers' hellish trumpeting fading with him.

Little Murmur looked at Gribon, and Gribon, lying beside him in the snow, looked back. His pale eyes were afraid and uncertain.

'What are we going to do, Murmur?' he whispered.

'I don't know,' squeaked the little demon.

'You can start by clearing out of here!' came Behemoth's shriek from behind.

'Yes, be gone!' added Beball. 'We don't want you two useless freaks around here!'

Two sharp points poked Murmur in the rear. He leapt up with a shrill squeak.

'Out, go on!' Behemoth poked him with his broken pitchfork again. 'Be off with you, freak!'

Gribon was getting the same treatment, only the pitchfork that poked him was as twisted as a corkscrew. Letting out squeaks and shrieks, the two young demons were chased down to the bottom of the garden and over the wall, which Murmur cleared with a goat-like bound. But the wall was Gribon's undoing—he failed to clear it cleanly with his un goat-like bound, landing in a heap on the other side and tumbling into the thickets of hazel and dog rose.

'Murmur, Murmur, I smell angel!' came his panicked squeak from amid the tangle.

'Get out of there, Gribon, out!' shrieked Murmur, as his heart skipped with panic. But suddenly a second wave of fear flooded him. Demons did not have hearts! Their hearts could not therefore skip.

'Murmur, help! Help!' shrieked Gribon. 'I've fallen, I've fallen! The angel is in my face!'

Murmur scarcely heard him. 'I've got a heart, Gribon, a heart! I feel it beating, I feel it pulsing!'

'I'm stuck, help, help!' screamed the fair one. 'The angel, I can't get away from him! I'm down the well, down with the angel!'

'My heart, my heart!' screamed Murmur, floundering around in the snow in a panic with his hand to his chest. 'It beats, I feel it!'

'Murmur...' Gribon's voice was calm.

The little demon stopped. 'Yes?'

'Why don't we just stop being evil? Perhaps being good is not so bad after all. This angel seems awfully nice. His feathery wings are so soft and warm, and his robe so silky and smooth. Even his smell is not so bad. I think I could endure it.'

Standing alone in the snowy churchyard, little Murmur paused to think. It was so simple. Perhaps Gribon was right. Being good was not easy if the trouble humans had with it was anything to go by, yet surely being evil was not easier. It certainly was very hard work indeed!

'Gribon,' said Murmur, 'let us do it. Let us be good.'

He pushed his way through the thicket to stand before the well. At its bottom, Gribon was helping the angel to climb up onto his shoulders. The angel then could reach the top of the well with his hands. He pulled himself out and got to his feet.

'Oh thank you, young Gribon!' he cried warmly, his face beaming with a golden radiance. 'My wings were healed by the tears of the fair Sophia, but in the well's narrow confines I could not spread them to take flight.'

Murmur knelt and reached down to pull Gribon out as the angel held his hooves to prevent him falling—no, it was his ankles, for they changed into human-like feet beneath the angel's hands.

Very relieved Gribon was to be out of the well. He thanked the angel and the demon. Then he frowned as he felt his bare feet.

'It is awfully strange, Murmur, but my feet no longer are cold,' said he, frowning and feeling some more.

Little Murmur felt Gribon's foot. It was warm. 'That really is mighty strange, Gribon. Demon-feet are cold and feel no cold. Very strange indeed...'

'Yes, it feels as though there is a sun inside of me, shining and warming me all up from within.'

Murmur turned to the angel. 'We want to be good, Sengriel.'

'Yes,' said the fair one, 'we want to be on your side.'

'Welcome!' cried the angel, beaming down with a radiance filled with joy. 'Welcome to the ranks of the angelic hosts!'

The End

Dear reader

Thank you for reading The Little Demon Who Couldn't. I really do hope you enjoyed spending time with Murmur and accompanying him on his adventures. I know I did! We authors spend a lot of time holed up alone, putting words on paper, editing said words, and getting our books into a shape suitable for you readers to (hopefully!) enjoy. That is why we always love to hear from readers. You can drop me a line at odeliafloris@gmail.com to tell me what you think of The Little Demon Who Couldn't, or just to say hi.

We also LOVE getting nice book reviews. If you bought your copy on Amazon, I will be thrilled if you go and write a customer review there. It is very easy. Just go on the book's product page on the Amazon website and find where it says 'write a review', and then click it.

Thank you again for reading The Little Demon Who Couldn't, and for spending time with me. I hope we'll get together again in the future sometime.

In gratitude,

Odelia Floris.

ODELIA Floris lives on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island. Her home is on a sixteen-acre farm, which she shares with her family, her two horses, and a much-loved cat. She has previously written two historical novels for adults – The Heart of Darkness and Beguile Me Not. This is her first book for children.

When she is not writing, she enjoys singing opera, gardening, horse riding, reading, listening to music, and painting. She has many more story ideas that are begging to be written down, so watch this space!
OTHER CHILDREN'S FICTION FROM ODELIA FLORIS

Rusalka: A Supernatural Czech Fairy Tale

Based on Antonin Dvorak's opera Rusalka, which in turn was inspired by traditional Czech fairytales, this novelette tells of the water nymph Rusalka and her love for a human prince. A haunting supernatural love story suitable for readers of all ages.

GET RUSALKA ON SMASHWORDS – FREE!

Visit Odelia Floris' website to learn more, and to view her other books:

https://www.odeliafloris.com/

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