Beneath the dark half mask of the Cuckoo’s visage, the man smiled in delight at her challenge. While his thoughts were hidden, it was clear that he found her request all too much to his liking. Laughing outright, he clapped his hands together to applaud her slowly in great appreciation for such her quick wit and cunning dig.

“Had you asked for some of those others,” the Devil admitted candidly, “I would have easily granted them, of course.”

“Money?” He snorted in distain. “Tis nothing more than the illusion of power and possession, a clinking and clanking of coins that are pretty enough to look at but have no real worth! Give a man a coin, he might purchase a tuber. Give him a tuber, and he may grow himself a farm. And you have wealth enough, your Majessty, so what good would more have done but to leave you so empty as to only be filled with greed.”

“Beauty eternal? Would you have me turn you to basalt and granite, frozen forever in time as you are for men to pine over and beg you to come to life for the price of their tears?” He gestured with a finely gloved hand at the stars overhead. “Or perhaps to make you a constellation in the sky, forever blessing wayward sailors with you grace and guidance, damning them to shipwreck with your name upon their lips or seeing them home to their wives and lovers in blessing at your merest whim?”

He looked back at her, pleased to part of her game and willing to give her the full knowledge of what consequences might have befallen her should her request have been so base. The Cuckoo leaned against the rail now besides her, thoroughly enjoying her company.

“And what is wisdom?! Even those who claim themselves to be wise can not agree on its foundations, and those who are so foolish as to actually be wise never see it. So what good does it do them?! Were I to grant you wisdom without your paid effort into it, you would have had a tool that you could never see nor use. And so I would have had to cheat you from the outright!” He made a face, his lips childishly pouting. “What fun would that have been for either of us I ask, your Majesty?”

The petulant expression vanished back into merriment as he continued to detail her rejected desires. “Murder. Most. Foul. That would have been difficult, I admit. The Devil does not murder or kill, your Majesty, never welds the knife, never drips the poison into the chalice nor sets the noose about the convict’s neck. I merely offer up the blade, bottle the venom, sell the rope. In doing so, the Devil allows the person to commit the act… and so murder his or her own soul. Still, I’m sure I could have accommodated you in the end.”

That same gloved hand waved back towards the ball, well underway with more livelier cadences now coming from the orchestra. Bodies whirled and twirled about, colorful displays moving about like so many enchanted flowers as they danced in their perfumes garden beneath the Baron’s gaze. “You well could have asked me for that which your father has sent you,” he coyly teased her, “to discover my nature and my reasoning for being here, to root out enemies and spies beneath his roof that remain undiscovered… Only I doubt the answers would have done you any good.” The Devil shrugged dismissively. “Again, it would have been a bad bargain for you anyway.”

His eyes narrowed then within his mask’s eyeholes, seeing the Swam Queen and Seraphina more clearly of rate first time. “But to make you… [i]happy.[/i] Truly [i]happy.[/i] And without harming another or allowing them to suffer!” The way the Cuckoo gave a low whistle of appreciation and shook his head in disbelief conveyed the depths of how well she had impressed him with her guile. “Such a challenge! Such a puzzle! And to do so by the next moonrise! It has been… a long time. There was a tale of the last time, a tale forgotten save in the dustiest of tombs and beetle eaten scrolls. So forgotten… that even the Devil Himself sometimes can not recall it…”

The Cuckoo leaned against the balcony’s balustrade in silence for several moment as he gave grave consideration to her request. Licking one corner of his lips, he nodded in consent. “So be it,” he announced quietly. His tone was darkly serious and somber, yet all the more honest for it. “Between now and the next time we see the moon rise from this spot, I shall endeavor to make you truly happy without harming another soul or body in the undertaking or its completion. But you must do as I bid you, to play your part in this story despite your fears and be assured that your virtue and safety shall be held inviolate save by your own wishes. Should I fail…”

He trailed off, his eyes downcast and sad as he pondered the costs of failure. “Should I fail, my penalty is that all I own is forfeit. Lands, wealth, possessions… and my very self. I shall quit this realm and not trouble it again in your lifetime and half that again.”

Was there magic in the air? If not, then how came that feeling of knots tying and mortar settling stones in their place? His words had lives of their own, and those lives now bound him to their service in such a manner that tingled the nerves and prickled the hairs upon the back of the neck. 

And then, just as abruptly as the sensation came, it fled away into daydreams and fancies. 

The Devil masked character righted himself from off the rail, his somber expression settling back into bemusement. “It is good that you did not ask for a love that is true,” he admitted charmingly. “For that is one thing that I can not grant. A love that is true is only as true as the love that is given. If the love was not true in your own heart, your Majesty? Then you could never received true love from another, even were his heart bejeweled and given to you upon a platter of silver.”

“That being said,” he abruptly smirked as he drew near. The Devil bent low to whisper in her ear, a seductive tickle as his warmth breath flowed words for Seraphina alone. “Meet me in the stables in a quarter of a candle. Tell no one, for if anyone has the knowing of it then your wish can not even begin to come true. I have a great stallion saddled and waiting, and I shall show you such sights as to try and make you smile and bring you true happiness.”