And now I've had it-with you, I've had it, So now I'll send it, and end this bout.

She gave me trouble On a scale that's Richter, So from the rubble Now I have picked her.

And I will drop her Into a deep hole That will stop her From hurting people.

And this old clown Will be unfound As she sinks down, down, down.

The earth rumbled again, and a hole opened right under the old woman's feet. She dropped like a stone.

I stared.

Sobaka screamed.

I was so flabbergasted, I couldn't think of anything to do until she had disappeared. Then I came to and leapt over to the hole to tell her not to panic, I'd dig her out-never mind that she'd been threatening to kill me-but she was wailing, "Air! Nay, give me air!"

I looked down the hole and saw two very wide and frightened eyes peering up out of the darkness about ten feet below me. "The earth, the earth presses in all about me! Spare me, Wizard! I shall trouble you no more! Only release me! Do not let the earth fall in on me, I pray! " "Holy cow!" I gulped. I had just put a claustrophobic in a hole.

"Enough, right now!"

I heard a moo.

I froze. I didn't want to look up.

But the wailing down below roused my guilt; I had to do something.

I looked up slowly, straight into the big brown eyes of a leanlooking bovine female. It had a hump on its back-a Brahma cow.

Coincidence. Pure coincidence. Obviously, I was closer to India than I had thought.

I turned back to the hole, assured that the cow wouldn't bother me. "Just keep calm! We'll get you out of there!"

"Be quick," she wailed, "before my master seizes the chance to take my soul!"

I froze again.

Then I said "No taking of souls allowed. Not while the person's still living."

"Aye, but death might happen thus! The master needs but a slight chance, a crumbling of the earthen wall, to bring about a natural death! Then he can take me, and I am doomed forevermore!"

"He?" I frowned. "You're talking about the Devil?"

"Do not say his name!" she wailed. "Or you will hear the rustle of leathery wings!

I was about to object, saying that was only a superstition. Then I remembered the cow, and decided I didn't want any more coincidences.

"Look, as long as you've lived a good life by your own beliefs, you've got nothing to be afraid of."

"But I have not!" she wailed. "I have been as evil as I might!

I have sold my soul for power over my fellows!"

"Sold your soul?" I stared. "Why the hell-uh, heck?-would you do a dumb thing like that?"

"I was ugly, and small, and shrewish, and all shunned me.

'Sobaka,' they said, 'you are so ugly, even the swine will spurn you!

You are stupid, Sobaka-step aside.' ' 'Tis done badly, Sobaka-you can never do anything right!' 'Not even I could love you, Sobaka, and I am your mother!' 'Do not sing, Sobaka, you have the voice of a crow!'

Until, at last, hate waked like a burning coal in my breast, and I swore I would someday have power to make them all suffer, to rue the day they had mocked me! But I could see no way to it, till the master appeared to me in a dream!"

I couldn't believe it. Not only a paranoid with a five-star inferiority complex-it had blossomed into raving delusions. She had actually convinced herself that she had sold her soul! All of a sudden, I could understand how come she had dug herself under when she'd heard my verse-it had fitted into her delusional system and had convinced her subconscious that she'd been overwhelmed by a spell. And since I wouldn't sign up with the Devil, presumably I had the force of good behind me, which is always stronger than evil in the end-at least, in the sort of medieval culture this seemed to be-so she'd been convinced my spell had taken over anything she could dream up.

Selling her soul was a metaphor for having dedicated herself to evil, of course. She had probably managed to become a minor bureaucrat just by toadying to the people in power-but she had convinced herself she was damned.

I couldn't let her die in that kind of agony, no matter what she'd been trying to do to me. "Look," I said, "even if you sold your soul, you can still get it back. All you have to do is repent, tell God you're sorry and won't do it again!"

"But what if I should live?" she cried, in an agony of indecision. "If I should repent and live, I would be the lowest of the low! All whom I have wronged would rise to smite me down! The master would send agents to deprive me of what life I'd have left-though 'twould be precious little; I am more than an hundred years old already! " Delusion again-she couldn't have been a day over sixty, judging by looks. This being a medieval culture, she was probably only forty-life aged them fast, back then.

"Look," I said, "just because you were small and plain didn't mean everybody hated you."

"Yet they did! All need to know there is one lower than they!

How could they fail to despise me?"

"By your being good, way down deep," I reasoned. "Sure, they're cruel-but if they saw you were really good inside, trying hard to make up for everything mean you did, they'd start liking you."

There was silence down at the bottom of that hole. Then, almost shyly, "Do you truly think so?"

Well, no, I didn't, actually-just from the clues, I had a notion she had been maximally mean to everybody she'd ever known, and people aren't that quick to forgive. So I changed the subject. "It doesn't get done in a day, of course-you have to earn trust, earn forgiveness by proving you've reformed-and proving it again and again for years and years. They'll punish you at first, sure, but you deserve it by now, don't you?"

"I did not when I was a maiden!" she said hotly. "Where was their good will then?"

"That was then," I reminded. "How much punishment do you deserve now? "

It was quiet, down there in the dark. Then she began to cry.

I hate the sound of a woman crying. "Please," I said. "Please don't cry. I'll get you out of there somehow."

"I have been so evil!" she wailed. "I deserve death, slow and agonizing death! Nay, what if they were to do to me as I've done to them? "

"Maybe it would be quick," I suggested. inside me, my blood ran cold. just how wicked had this woman been, anyway? "Maybe they'd be so angry, they'd just kill you out of hand."

"Then I would be damned!" she howled.

"Not if you'd repented." Then I remembered my Dante. "Sure, you'd spend a long time in Purgatory-but at least it wouldn't be Hell.

Besides, the more they hurt you before they killed you, the less time you'd spend in Purgatory." I hated that kind of logic-I had a notion it had resulted in a lot of people torturing themselves, and certainly refusing painkillers when their last hours could have been a lot less agonizing-but it would help in this case.

"I cannot face it," she wept. "I cannot face the tortures I have meted out."

There was a rustling noise, just in front of me.

I froze. Then, very slowly and much against my better judgment, I looked up.

He was very toothy in the grin, very red in the skin, very black in the wings, and very sharp in the horns.

Sobaka saw him and wailed so hard she almost jarred the earth loose.

I found my voice. "Is this your master?"

"Nay!" she howled. "'Tis his minion!"

Or some peasant, I realized, come to get revenge by scaring the life out of her.

"Get back, slave," he sneered. "This soul is forfeit!" And he jabbed at my face with his pitchfork.

I recoiled, but reflex took over; I grabbed the pitchfork and yanked, hard. I took him by surprise; he stumbled into the hole and fell flat on his face.

Dirt cascaded down inside.

Sobaka screamed in terror.

I realized I had to work on her delusional system-nothing else was going to work fast enough. "Get out of here," I snapped. "You can't take her soul till she's dead!"

"I shall see to that, too." The devil bared his teeth in a snarl, rolling up to his knees, crouching to spring. "I shall cave in the hole.

Fear not-she's already buried." And he sprang at me.

I leapt to the side, rolling. Oh, well, what the hell-I had a delusional system, too. "Guardian angel! This is where violence is authorized! " "It is indeed!" a steely voice sang. "Avaunt thee, hell spawn! Or I shall rend your ectoplasm asunder!"

There he was, my guardian angel, twisting the pitchfork into a pretzel and throwing it at the devil. The horny one howled in terror and disappeared.

I wondered just what had been in those berries.

"Only juice," the angel assured me. "I am real, Saul. Remember."

I was thinking at a frantic pace. "Uh, before you go, could you step ver to that hole, for a second?"

"Wherefore?" The angel frowned down at the hole-and then, bless him, he stepped up to the brim and called down. "Sobaka! Call on God, and He shall yet send your angel to ward you! I have banished your demon, but he will not stay gone when I go!"

I couldn't take a chance on any more hesitating. I began to chant, "Aid me now, insightful Freud, To help this woman to avoid Paranoia stemming from Insecurities that come From toxic parents, spiteful peers, And all anxieties and fears They bred, that are a key That locked inferiority Into her soul, therein to fire Hot into a complex dire.

Vengeful fantasies, begone!

Grandeur-delusions, all be done!

I swear to this day, I don't know where that verse came from. I mean, if I'm really up for it, I can improvise-but not like that.

Then I remembered the tried and true.

"Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better."

"I repent me!" Sobaka wailed, deep down in the hole. "Alas, my soul! All these years, I have sought revenge for naught! For insults that need not have hurt me! Ah, what a monster I have been!

Well. Results already. What had been major wounds suddenly seemed like minor irritations. It didn't matter what people said to her, because she knew she was good.

Now.

But why was my guardian angel looking at me that way-I mean, surprised?

I shoved the question aside. The memories of her cruelties would swamp her newfound self-esteem, if I didn't give her an out.

"What's done cannot be undone, But what's broken can be mended.

Remorseful sinners can atone For all the hurt intended."

"Yet there is hope!" the voice cried from the hole. "I can make amends-some, at least! Those whom I've slain, I can give aid to their survivors! And if 'twill restore some faith in goodness to them, to see me suffer as justice dictates, why then, let them hurt me!"

I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that-but it would probably give her the strength she needed, to endure the transition back to goodness.

Seeing herself as a martyr was better than the fire of her own self-damnation-I meant, condemnation-and if I ever came back this way, I could see to it that she moved on from suffering to ser vice.

"I repent me!" she cried again. "Dear Lord, save my soul!

inflict what trials Thou wilt, what sufferings Thou dost deem just!

Only let me come into Thy presence!"

There was a howl of rage and frustration somewhere, distant, but ringing. I looked up, surprised, but I didn't see anybody except my angel.

He was smiling a very smug smile, though. "That, Saul, was her personal tempter. You cured her mind, and she saved her own soul."

I stared.

Then I gave my head a shake. Whatever sort of dream this was, working within its rules was working very well. "Okay," I said, "but we'd better hurry up and save her life, shouldn't we?"

"Should we? For the longer she lives, the greater the chance that she'll slip back into sin."

I looked up at him, scandalized-but he wasn't even looking at me, he was talking to empty air on the other side of the hole. I felt the gooseflesh rise.

"Indeed, you are right," he said with regret. "If the Lord doth wish her home, naught we can do will save her."

"So if we can save her," I said, "that means it's not her time."

He looked down at me in surprise. "Indeed, Saul. You see it most clearly. " Well. I wasn't impressed. I'd figured that one out, long ago. Hadn't he been watching? "So how do we get her out?"

"Try a verse," he suggested.