Read Prospero in Hell for Free Online Page B

hidden door. If this one doesn’t produce anything of worth, I’ll call it a day.”
    The hidden door opened into a chamber decorated in jungle décor. A foot below the ceiling, water pipes, wrapped in vines and palm fronds, crisscrossed the room. Heat radiated from them, making this room warmer than the surrounding house. Rubber trees had been painted onto the walls, and the furniture was upholstered in leopard and zebra skins.
    The pool here was kidney shaped and tiled with a rain-forest fresco. Incorporated into the scheme were the mouths of the underwater tunnels leading into other parts of the house, which seemed to pop up under giant tree roots or have odd-looking animals peering out of them, as if they were dens.
    “What’s this room for?” Mab glanced around.
    The windows were opaque with steam. Mab rubbed some of it away with his forearm, and we looked down upon a frozen lake. Pine trees bordered the shores and covered the surrounding hills. Beyond rose jagged snow-covered peaks, tall and majestic against the deep blue sky.
    Nowhere were there any signs of mankind. A mammoth lumbered across the ice, however, and the chimera that had rescued us on St. Thomas’s charged to and fro in a snow-covered paddock, chasing a large boar. In the next paddock, a cockatrice strutted. Beyond that, the reindeer Donner nuzzled Pegasus beside a sturdy red barn. On top of the barn, the magnificent roc roosted.
    Seeing Donner reminded me of the reindeer barn where Mephisto had kept Pegasus while we sojourned at the North Pole. An elf had given me a brief tour of it while Mephisto readied the winged horse for our departure.He had introduced me to all nine of the reindeer, each in his own stall with a brightly colored name plaque on his doors. One of the deer had eaten a slice of apple from my hand.
    From the ceiling above us came a slithering and a flash of bronze and brown. Mab drew his lead pipe. I whipped out my moon-silver war fan and slid it silently open. Above, gazing down at us with beady black eyes, was a giant hamadryad. The thick coils of its long body looped repeatedly about the warm pipes. As its serpentine head peeked out from between two fronds, the back of its neck flattened, forming a wide hood.
    “Trussst in me,” the cobra sang, swaying hypnotically.
    “Can it, Kaa.” I closed my fan. “You’ll get no supper here.”
    “Handmaiden Miranda. How sssplendid,” The cobra curled around another heated pipe and fixed his beady eyes on Mab. A loop of his coils began lowering themselves just above Mab’s head. “What’sss thisss? Can I eat it?”
    “Certainly not, you overgrown pipe cleaner!” Mab huffed. His eyes focused on something beyond the serpent. “Hey… what’s this?”
    “Maybe, you should not go there…” the hamadryad began.
    Mab ignored him. He pushed aside some silk vines and peered at a section of wall, tracing the bark of the rubber tree with his finger and tapping on the painted plaster in several places. Something clicked, and a narrow door swung open, revealing a closet filled with ponchos of every kind, color, and description: Mexican ponchos, Hopi Indian ponchos, multicolored knitted ponchos, a white velvet poncho with pom poms, bright yellow rain ponchos, and a poncho made out of soda-pop bottle caps. Each hung from a hanger marked with a description of the garment. After pushing through them, Mab brought out a golden hanger and held it up so I could read the message embroidered onto its cloth covering.
    THIS HANGER IS FOR MY CHAMELEON CLOAK, GIVEN TO ME BY (SEE MURAL HALL). REMEMBER TO HIDE IT FROM MY FAMILY. A second note, stuck to the hanger reads: DON’T FORGET THE ELEPHANT’S trunk! Stuck atop this at an angle was a third note scrawled in angry red letters. THAT DOPEY THEO!
    “The massster will be angry.” Kaa withdrew up into the greenery and slithered away over the pipes, murmuring, “I wasssn’t here. I had nothing to do with thisss, and I will deny everything if