The Deer and the Dragon

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child abuse, substance use, and cursing.

Marlow lands on her hands and knees on Hell’s cobblestones. Fauna ushers her into a dive bar while Marlow looks around for fires and the lake of sulfur. A bartender wholly composed of shadow converses jovially with Fauna, who orders something that tastes like candy while Marlow asks for a beer. Fauna encourages Marlow to ask questions quickly, though Fauna finds them irritating. When Marlow says that Hell is evil, Fauna explains that the original Hebrew word meant “realm of the dead”; she says that Marlow’s ideas about Hell come from Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno, which Fauna calls “religious fanfic” (232). She says that most realms thrive on diversity and that many of Heaven’s original inhabitants have “defected” to other kingdoms. Fauna describes Silas’s master as very “controlling.”

Marlow marvels at Hell’s modern amenities, like electricity, and Fauna says that they like to incorporate new technologies. She says that adaptability is the key to joy. Fauna wants to know why Marlow is so desperate to find Caliban when she didn’t even believe in him until recently.