Chapter Text
It was uncharitable at best, downright wicked at worst, but Aziraphale couldn't help thinking that things would have been a lot more pleasant if Gabriel had, in fact, remained lost in the woods. True, it would have left Michael as head of the family, but in some ways she was easier to deal with, even if she terrified him.
As it was, Gabriel was here in the too-small house, two days late, dripping all over everything as he paced in agitation, loudly bemoaning the confirmed loss of two ships and the unexplained failure of a third to arrive in port. There was a lot of sidetracking onto minutiae, and Gabriel was very quick to blame the captains (all of whom he had insisted on hiring himself), and by the time he got onto something about a castle in the woods, Aziraphale had stopped listening.
He'd surreptitiously gone back to his book, carefully propped beneath the table out of view. It had taken him weeks to get hold of this one, cost him money he didn't really have to spare, and it was always a toss-up as to whether the brown paper package would even arrive on the mail coach. Who knew how long he'd have to enjoy it before something happened to it? All sorts of things happened to his books. It was remarkable how, in a house crammed with the belongings of an entire family, it was always Aziraphale's books that got pitchers of water spilled on them, or accidentally knocked out of windows into deep, sucking mud, or - on one memorable and particularly unlikely occasion - catapulted directly into the open fire with allegedly no witnesses.
It took him a moment to realise that Gabriel had spoken his name. He jerked his eyes up from the page in a panic. They were all looking at him. Uriel was smirking. Oh dear.
"What was that, Gabriel?" he tried, hoping against hope that Gabriel had taken his distraction for distress over the terrible tale of woe unfolding before him.
"You see?" Gabriel said to the others. Michael was frowning in the worrying way she frowned when one of the others had suggested something distasteful, but she'd decided it was still the most practical option. Uriel was smirking openly. Oh dear, oh dear. "We can spare him."
"Sorry?" Aziraphale clutched his book tightly like it would protect him from whatever Gabriel was planning to do to him this time. "Spare me? From what?"
"Oh, I don't know, how about providing any sort of contribution to the family?" Gabriel snapped. "It won't make a difference if you're not here."
"Not... here?" Aziraphale looked between the three of them. "What?"
"It's not like you're here most of the time anyway. You're always somewhere else," Michael said. She jarred the table, causing Aziraphale to fumble his book and almost drop it on the floor. Uriel sniggered. "You may have a point, Gabriel. Still, you don't have to honour the bargain. It's not like the snake can do much about it."
Aziraphale was beginning to have serious regrets about tuning out the previous conversation.
"Snake?" he echoed weakly.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Aziraphale, weren't you listening at all?" Gabriel reached across the table and yanked the book out of his hands. "What is this drivel, anyway? Across the Moonlit Moor - another one of those trash novels you insist on wasting money on?"
"It's not trash," Aziraphale protested, even though he'd already had and lost this argument with Gabriel more times than he could count. "It's rather poetic, actually, and it has some fascinating things to say about the concept of loneliness—"
"Fascinating," Uriel said in poor imitation of his voice, and started to laugh. It wasn't a very nice laugh. It never was, when it was directed at Aziraphale. "I say we do it. Give him to the snake. He'll probably get kicked out after a week anyway when the bastard realises how useless he is."
"What snake?" Aziraphale demanded, trying not to watch nervously as Gabriel flipped the pages with rough hands. "Why are we talking about a snake?"
"The snake in the castle in the woods," Gabriel said, as if that explained everything.
It did not explain anything.
"All right," Aziraphale confessed desperately, "I wasn't listening, I'm sorry. You just— you were talking about the cargo manifest on the missing ships and I— my mind wandered..."
"Your mind never stops wandering."
Gabriel grasped the book vengefully and for a horrible moment Aziraphale thought it was about to take a swan dive into the fire. Instead, Gabriel tossed it blindly over his shoulder. Seeing it land face down on the muddy floor, pages bent every which way, was almost as bad as seeing it burn. Aziraphale bit his lip and stared at the wooden table top. He'd polished it up all clean just yesterday, but somehow Uriel had already covered it with dye stains again while working on her latest batch of silk samples.
"You must have heard the story about the cursed castle," Gabriel continued with a scowl. "Even you're not that oblivious."
"Well... yes..."
Of course Aziraphale had heard the story. Deep in the woods, there was a castle under some sort of enchantment, ruled by a mysterious lord. You couldn't find your way there unless you got lost, and you'd better hope you didn't get lost, because the castle laid claim to those who stepped inside. Aziraphale had never put much stock in it. There weren't many actual enchantments hanging around these days, and besides, he'd always thought, if you could never leave the castle once you'd entered, who was bringing back these rumours about it?
(Aziraphale loved novels and tales and songs and poems but he also had a very keen sense of logic. Sometimes he thought that was the true reason his siblings disliked him. He'd pointed out one too many flaws in their grand plans to increase the family fortune. On the other hand, he couldn't argue that they had a lot of options to choose from, when it came to finding him wanting.)
"It's... are you saying it's true?"
"Yes, Aziraphale, that is exactly what I have been saying for the last half an hour," Gabriel snapped. "The damn horse got spooked and bolted—"
"Not Sappho? She's usually so calm - is she all right?"
"Is she— is the horse— I have no idea how the horse is, because I never saw it again after it dumped me in the middle of the woods to be chased by wolves—"
"You mean you've lost her?" Aziraphale was horrified. Sappho had always been his favourite. She let him hide in her stall sometimes when he wanted to read uninterrupted, and she very rarely tried to eat his books. "Oh no!"
Gabriel turned his eyes heavenward as if praying for strength, although Aziraphale was fairly certain he'd never prayed a day in his life before anything other than the altar of his own ambition.
"Forget the horse," Gabriel gritted out. "The horse isn't important. What's important is that I ended up at the gates of the castle, and it is definitely a real place, and it is definitely cursed."
Aziraphale most assuredly would not forget the horse, but he did let it go for now, hoping fervently that poor Sappho hadn't been eaten by wolves.
(Wolves? In the woods? He'd never heard that before. It wasn't the right climate for wolves, and surely the sheep farmers would have had something to say before now if so...?)
"Then how did you get away?" Aziraphale asked, as Gabriel clearly wanted him to. "I thought no-one could ever leave."
"As it happens, I am very cunning," Gabriel replied proudly. "I outwitted the snake! It had to let me go."
Michael did not roll her eyes, because Michael never openly disrespected Gabriel, but Aziraphale saw the little twitch that meant she wanted to.
"You keep talking about this snake—"
"It's the monster that guards the castle," Gabriel explained. "Huge, ugly brute, longer than this table - longer than this room! All black and red with evil yellow eyes, nasty poisonous thing—"
Venomous, not poisonous, Aziraphale thought but didn't say. He rather liked snakes, but Gabriel had had an unfortunate childhood encounter with one in the privy, and never really got over it.
"— and it can talk!" Gabriel finished with triumphant horror. "That's how I bargained with it."
A slow, cold sensation took hold in the pit of Aziraphale's stomach. He was starting to guess at the shape of things, and he didn't like it at all, not when Gabriel was such a notoriously poor negotiator.
"I told it that it had to let me go, because without me, the rest of you would starve—"
There went the eye-twitch from Michael again. Aziraphale had to struggle to keep his own face neutral. Gabriel might be thinking of the household income, but it was Aziraphale who did all the cooking. He was unsure if Gabriel knew how to boil an egg.
"Laid it on thick, really got its sympathy—"
(Sympathy? From a giant evil monster? Aziraphale was starting to wonder if Gabriel was simply making this up. Perhaps he merely fell asleep in an abandoned shack and had an upsetting encounter with a grass snake?)
"Anyway, long story short, it agreed to let me go as long as I sent someone back in my place. And we all vote for you to be the one to go."
Gabriel raised both hands and pointed at Aziraphale like he was awarding a prize. Aziraphale stared at him, too gobsmacked even to be upset.
"Gabriel," he started carefully, "are you sure you didn't— hit your head, or something? It's just, this is a little difficult to—"
Gabriel held up one finger, turned, and rummaged in the travel pack lying at his feet. He pulled something out, a flash of velvety red in the lamplight. He laid it on the table: a single, perfect long-stemmed rose.
"There," he said. Aziraphale blinked at the flower. It was the wrong time of year for roses, but some of the richer folk had hothouses, these days... "That's the token. The snake said to give it to whoever I send back, and they'll get safe passage to the castle."
Aziraphale stared at the flower for a few more seconds, then looked helplessly at Michael and Uriel. It wasn't that he expected them to stick up for him, but surely they could see how ridiculous this was?
Michael returned his gaze implacably. Uriel grinned, and Aziraphale realised that she didn't believe a word of it either, but she was just thrilled at the idea of sending Aziraphale traipsing off into the woods in February to meet a non-existent giant snake. While clutching a flower. In fact, he began to wonder if this whole thing was a setup, a prank Uriel had somehow talked Gabriel into.
"You can't be serious," he said finally. "Gabriel, really, you can't expect me to—"
"I can, and I do expect you to do your duty for the family," Gabriel said, suddenly cold and stern. "It's not like you pull your weight around here. You might as well do something useful."
There was something in his tone, something in his face, that forced Aziraphale to reconsider his story. Something like real fear, the hunted look of someone who had made a bargain they dared not break. And Gabriel didn't have the imagination for something like this. Nor the dedication to let himself get so damp and dishevelled just to embarrass Aziraphale.
Cautiously, Aziraphale reached for the rose. There was enough space between the thorns to hold onto it without hurting himself. He touched the petals, and was stunned to feel them warm beneath his fingertips, as if they had been basking in full sun only a second ago. There was something about the rose, something he could feel in his skin, something not quite natural. Enchantments were rare, these days, but you did come across them now and again. He'd touched the ancient horseshoe above the smithy door once. It felt like this.
"And what exactly happens to me?" Aziraphale found himself saying, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice. "Do I get... locked up in some dungeon? Does the snake eat me?"
"Good Lord, no," Gabriel replied with genuine dismay. "It said you'd be its honoured guest."
"And you believe the giant talking snake on that point, do you?"
"It kept its side of the bargain," Gabriel said bluntly. "It let me go."
In exchange for someone else, Aziraphale thought, and a terrible sadness seized him, not so much for himself - he'd long since lost any hope of winning Gabriel's good opinion - but for the way that Gabriel didn't even see a problem with it. He was, in his own mind, so self-evidently so important that it made perfect sense to get someone else to take the fall for him.
And Aziraphale was, after all, the useless sibling, the one who didn't conduct trade meetings like Gabriel, or maintain the ledgers like Michael, or experiment with new dyes and fabrics like Uriel. No, he just cooked, and cleaned, and looked after the horses and the chickens, and made sure the house didn't fall apart, and went to town to buy the groceries, and drew water from the well every morning, and chopped the firewood, and then when he'd done all that, if he was lucky, he might find a bit of time to read a new book, or an old one, if any had survived the latest run of ill fortune, and if he could avoid being spotted by any of his siblings. And not a one of them ever said thank you...
He made up his mind with a suddenness that left him breathless.
"I suppose I'd better pack, then," he said, grasping the rose just tight enough to feel the thorns prick his palm. "You won't mind if I wait until morning to set off, will you?"
Gabriel glanced out at the darkening sky, and said grudgingly, "Oh, well, I guess so."
"Right, then," said Aziraphale, and rose from the table, the rose carefully cradled in his hand, its warmth and its sharpness both oddly comforting. He stooped to retrieve his book on the way to his tiny room; for once, none of the others commented. Uriel looked like her birthday had come early; Michael still looked like she was calculating profit and loss in the ledger she kept in the back of her head. Gabriel just looked self-satisfied. "I'll say goodbye before I leave."
The woods were exactly as cold, wet, and unpleasant as Aziraphale had imagined, but he found himself oddly cheerful all the same. It was quite exciting to simply pack a bag and walk away from all his daily chores, and even the damp air was rather pleasant, loaded as it was with the earthy smell of the forest floor.
He wasn't really sure what he was expecting. A night's sleep had brought him back around to doubting Gabriel's whole story, even with the rose held carefully in one hand. He thought he'd probably spend the day wandering around in the trees, and then go home at the end of it. Gabriel would be annoyed, but it was still a kind of holiday, even if it wasn't exactly the activity he would have chosen.
It occurred to him briefly that he could just find a nice dry sheltered spot and read for the day, then head home and tell the others he couldn't find the castle. It wasn't like they'd know. But there was still a little trickle of curiosity and uncertainty beneath his cynicism. The rose was still warm in his hand. And what if there was a castle? What if there was a snake? What if Gabriel really had bargained him away to eternal imprisonment in the depths of the forest?
(He felt a flicker of fear when he considered that possibility. Was he walking himself into a trap? Should he try to find the road that passed through the forest, travel on to the next town? Run away to sea like Raphael? Oh, but he'd be even more miserable on a boat, wouldn't he? And probably just as useless...)
He kept a wary eye out for wolves, but wasn't surprised when he saw nothing more sinister than the odd deer. At one point a fox stuck its head out of a bush and gave him a look so profoundly skeptical that Aziraphale felt like he needed to defend himself.
"It's just to keep Gabriel happy," he told the fox. "And it's nice to have a bit of an adventure, isn't it?"
The fox vanished without comment.
Aziraphale sighed and held up the rose again. He brushed it lightly against his own cheek, just to feel how soft the petals were. If it was supposed to give him some sort of sign about which way to walk, he hadn't spotted it yet. There was a delicate fragrance to it, though, soft and sweet, and he smiled despite himself. He'd keep the rose after he went home, he thought, dry it out and preserve a whisper of that scent, keep it somewhere safe as a reminder of this whole strange episode.
He ducked under a low-hanging branch and found a narrow forest trail, the kind that might equally well have been made by hunters or their prey. For want of anything better to do, he followed it on its winding way for a little while. He began to hear a cacophony of crows, growing slowly louder as he walked, and a little shiver of dread took hold of his throat. They usually only gathered around carrion, didn't they? He hoped he wasn't about to find something unpleasant in the bushes...
And then he rounded a shoulder of mossy rock, and found himself staring at a set of wrought-iron gates, and he was so surprised he almost tripped over his own feet.
"Good Lord," he said aloud. "It's real."
He approached slowly. The gates were polished to a gleaming black, not a hint of rust or wear. The high wall they were set into disappeared into the forest on either side. The trees grew close up against it, but on the other side, there seemed to be clear space. Aziraphale could see a wide, well-kept path beyond the gates...
... which swung open at his approach.
"Oh," Aziraphale said, stopping dead in his tracks, clutching the rose so tightly he winced as the thorns dug into his skin. "Oh dear."
He stood there for what felt like a long time, staring through the open gates at the castle he could no longer deny existed. It looked rather lovely, with a couple of tall towers that must command an incredible view over the trees, and some fascinating gargoyles up under the roof. He'd half-expected it to be crumbling and covered in ivy, but it was as pretty a dwelling as any of the fine houses he'd seen.
It didn't look particularly cursed. Aziraphale bit his lip. He urgently wanted to explore, to find out the truth about this place and its inhabitants, but he was suddenly terribly conscious of that part about never being able to leave once you step inside. Except Gabriel had managed it, hadn't he? Though Aziraphale knew of no-one in the world who would willingly take his place...
And then he jumped as someone spoke from the top of the wall.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me."
When he craned his head to look up, at first he couldn't see anyone at all. Then there was a sinuous movement, and a sleek, dark head dangled a bit further down over the stones, and Aziraphale saw the line of a long, scaled body behind the parapet. So there was a snake! It was certainly a large snake, but not nearly so huge as Gabriel had described, and there was nothing monstrous about it at all. It was a lovely, burnished black with a vivid red underbelly, and eyes that gleamed like amber. Aziraphale was quite charmed, as well as quite thunderstruck.
"Um," he said. "Hello?"
"Did that idiot seriously—" The snake made a very human, very frustrated noise. "That's it, next time someone comes barging into my castle in the middle of the night and upsets everyone, I really will lock him up."
"Er. Sorry?"
The snake sighed.
"You might as well come in, now you're here," it said. "Have a cup of tea or something before you go back."
"Go back?" Aziraphale looked again at the open gate. "But won't I— aren't I supposed to— what about the curse?"
"What about it?"
"I thought that anyone who enters can't leave again."
"Oh, so that's why he was making such a fuss," the snake muttered. "No, no, it's not like that. You can leave easily enough. You just can't come back once you've left. That's how it works."
"Then why did you make Gabriel promise to send someone to take his place?"
"I didn't!" snapped the snake, sounding very offended. "That was all his idea! He wouldn't shut up so I just agreed to whatever he was babbling about and sent him off. I thought he'd run for it and never come back. Never expected him to actually send someone else. What a wanker."
"Oh," said Aziraphale, paradoxically disappointed. "So I'm... I'm not needed here, then?"
The snake paused, tilting its head and eyeing him as if something in his face had given him away.
"Look, why don't you come in?" the snake said after a moment. "It'll take you longer to get back than it did to get here, trust me, and it's going to rain any minute. You may as well sit down and rest for a bit. And tell me why you came all this way in the first place."
"Are you sure I can leave again?" Aziraphale asked hesitantly. It did occur to him that the snake could be lying, but his instincts were already finding it a lot more trustworthy than Gabriel. "I can go back?"
"Absolutely. Anytime you like." The snake began to haul itself in from the parapet and disappeared. "There's cake," it added temptingly from somewhere on the other side of the wall. "Or there will be, if I tell the kitchen so."
"Won't— er. Won't the lord of the castle have something to say about that?"
The snake slithered into view on the other side of the gate with an amused snort.
"I am the lord of the castle," it said. "Name's Crowley. Are you coming or what?"