53 pages • 1 hour read
The Deer and the Dragon
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Chapters 21-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary
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. Marlow explains that Caliban never attempted to use her as others have done; he cared only about her happiness. She asks Fauna how to find him, and Fauna says that they will visit the King. First, though, she has a few more drinks to “prepare” herself to call Azrames.
Chapter 22 Summary
Azrames arrives, and Marlow notes his sexual tension with Fauna again. He drives them to his house. When they arrive, he directs Marlow to a bedroom down the hall, and she watches as Fauna shoves him into a different bedroom. When she wakes up the next day, she takes a long bath and goes to the closet. All the bath products smell like Fauna, and the clothes in the closet are her style; Marlow realizes that Azrames loves Fauna.
Chapter 23 Summary
When Marlow goes to the kitchen, she is arrested by the sight of Azrames and his tattoos. He explains that each one represents the life of a person he has freed from abuse. Fauna explains Marlow’s family situation to Azrames and says that “Lisbeth” means “God’s oath” (256). He calls in a favor from a “lillith” called Ianna, who works as a stylist for the King’s court, to help them prepare for their meeting. When Ianna arrives, Marlow introduces herself as “Merit,” and Ianna takes them to an upscale boutique for clothes. Once Marlow is dressed, she pins her great-grandmother’s sølje to her breast.
Chapter 24 Summary
Marlow works to “conjure Maribelle” as the little group walks into the King’s palace, hoping for her persona’s confidence and sophistication. After checking in with the receptionist, Azrames cautions Marlow against giving anyone her real name, making any promises, or agreeing to any deals. When he tells her to promise him, she asks if this is her first test, which pleases him.
The receptionist leads the group to the next layer of security, and Marlow introduces herself to a “Soul Eater” as Maribelle, the Prince’s human. Fauna privately reassures Marlow that she doesn’t have to do this and that they could listen to what the King says and then walk away. Marlow is a Norde, not a denizen of Hell, but she feels that she must see the King. She tells Fauna that she loves her, and Fauna returns the sentiment.
Chapter 25 Summary
The King wraps Marlow in a big hug while she notes his gigantic wings. He looks as she imagined a “fallen angel” would. His happy, kind, and gentle demeanor surprises her. He acknowledges how overwhelming this must be, but he says that her fae blood is “the bridge” that Hell has needed for thousands of years. Fauna explains Silas’s involvement, and the King expresses his fear that this life could be Marlow’s last.
Chapter 26 Summary
Fauna suspects that Caliban removed his protective wards from Marlow’s apartment so that someone else could respond to the mark on Richard. Then, after Marlow banished Caliban, he could not replace them, which allowed Fauna and Silas to enter freely.
The King explains the way favors work among the realms and how dangerous making deals can be. As the group leaves the palace, Fauna tells Marlow that Caliban classified his mark on Richard as a “tier-five” favor, which means “whoever you are, whatever you are, come right the fuck now and I’ll do whatever you want” (289). Silas can ask him for practically anything in return, meaning that this favor could end the war between Heaven and Hell in Heaven’s favor. Azrames and Fauna assume that Silas hasn’t called in the favor yet, and they determine that Marlow needs to speak with Silas immediately.
Back in his apartment, Azrames wonders if Silas could be a defector from Heaven while Fauna dresses Marlow for their meeting. She pins the sølje to the inside of her clothing. Marlow realizes that her ignorant mistake could destroy Caliban and the world as she knows it.
Chapter 27 Summary
The group returns to Marlow’s apartment. Her phone registers hundreds of texts and missed calls from her panicked friends. She is shocked to realize that her one night in Hell equaled two weeks in the human realm. They find a little golden statue under her bed known as a “poppet,” and Azrames and Fauna say that Silas left it in the hopes of establishing a connection with Marlow. It’s good that he’s not forcing her hand, they say, as that means that he wants her to choose him. Marlow decides to use the poppet to call him, convinced that she can get him to talk.
Marlow clutches the poppet and summons Silas, who arrives in a burst of light. She confronts him and asks why he hasn’t told anyone about the favor Caliban owes him. He admits that he already called it in. He signals to her not to speak, and he heals her bruised knees. When she tries to ask more questions, he loudly talks about sending Caliban to handle a situation with a pagan agriculture deity who is below Silas’s rank. He glares at Marlow meaningfully as she struggles to understand why Silas would waste a tier-five favor on something so minor.
Silas casually mentions the location, a town called Bellfield, and how he didn’t want to get involved because it might anger the Phoenicians, who are long-time enemies of Heaven. Just before he leaves, he whispers that he did Marlow a favor, that others will soon figure out where Caliban is, and that she needs to find the Wild Prairie Rose and get to him first. Before he leaves, he also tells her to keep the poppet with her in case she needs him.
Chapter 28 Summary
Fauna immediately searches for Bellfield. She’s inclined to trust Silas for now, especially because he could be rebelling against Heaven as Azrames did. Marlow feels like Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and she resists believing in all the things that now seem to be part of reality because it is so painful for her to accept that her mother was partly right.
Azrames draws more sigils in Marlow’s apartment; he does not want them to be overheard. Looking at images of Bellfield, Fauna and Azrames realize that the town is a trap with a lake in the center where Dagon, a Phoenician god of agriculture who also happens to be part fish, must live. If Caliban entered the town, then it trapped him, too, and it will trap Azrames. Marlow will be unaffected by the seal, but Azrames won’t let her go alone. He tells Fauna that he loves her before he and Marlow vanish.
Chapter 29 Summary
Azrames and Marlow appear in Bellfield. He will be invisible to humans there, though they can see Marlow. They find a seedy motel to stay in for the night, and Azrames immediately locates and disables the cameras hidden in the room they rent. The villainous man at the front desk is clearly to blame, so Azrames leaves to deal with him. Tomorrow, Azrames and Marlow plan to find Dagon and figure out what the Wild Prairie Rose is.
Chapter 30 Summary
When Marlow wakes up, Azrames reminds her that they’re in a god-catching city called Bellfield to find Caliban. He believes that there’s something very wrong in the town, or else Silas wouldn’t have told them to move quickly. Azrames has rendered the front desk worker a shell of a human who only answers the phone and stares at the wall.
They go to the lake, and Marlow prepares an altar. They wait for a long time before a strong wind blows dark clouds in and a thick, white mist appears all around them. Sloshing steps grow closer.
Chapters 21-30 Analysis
Marlow compares herself to the main character of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland multiple times as she continues to wrestle with The Limits of Human Life and Logic. This allusion emphasizes how strange and surreal her experiences feel now that she sees things that she never saw before: “I was Alice, twirling through the looking glass, and the world was mad” (312). Carroll’s story is often nonsensical and is full of whimsical, grotesque characters and disorienting events like Alice growing and shrinking after eating or drinking. At the end of her adventures, Alice’s sister wakes her up, and Alice realizes that it was all a dream; she is safe, and the world is as she has always known it to be. Of her own experiences, Marlow says, “It was the sigil that had turned me into Alice as I free-fell into Wonderland. Except with Alice, after she returned home, she’d been able to pretend it was all a dream […] There’d be no coming back from this” (291). For Marlow, the knowledge that she has gained has irrevocably changed her perception of the world and her own reality.
As Marlow learns about her new reality, The Impact of Childhood and Religious Trauma becomes increasingly apparent. The prospect of seeing her mother again causes her to tremble, and the new information she learns about the world clashes with the worldview she developed after rejecting everything she learned from the church as a child. As Marlow says, “Worse still: I was a child in church all over again. To accept one piece of this new reality meant to accept everything, except there was no barometer, no good book, no teacher save for those around me” (312). She is forced to confront the truth—that if she accepts the existence of the fae, Hell, and Caliban, she must also accept that the angels, demons, and God of her mother’s church are real.
For Marlow, this new understanding means confronting the trauma of her religious upbringing all over again in a new way. As a result of her mother’s neglect and emotional abuse, Marlow admits, “I was extremely perceptive to every shift in energy, every micro-expression, every twitch of the eye or tightening of the mouth” (266). As part of her effort to manage the trauma inflicted by both her mother and her mother’s church, Marlow rebuffed the possibility of any metaphysical beings or realms because her experience in learning about them was so troubling and scary. These experiences cause her to struggle even more with the new information that she acquires about the world because of the trauma that her introduction to the preternatural caused.
In addition, Marlow’s experiences reflect The Complexities of Identity and Self-Acceptance. Silas, Fauna, and Azrames all caution her against telling anyone her real name because it will give them power over her, reflecting the importance of names as a motif in the novel (See: Symbols & Motifs). The names that they use are not their original, true names but simply what they are “called” for now. This is something, again, that Marlow already intuitively knows because she created a name for her sex worker persona and uses a pen name as an author as well. She even assumed that she was “safe” from former clients like Richard because of these aliases and the distance that they create between the persona people know and her real identity.
When Marlow prepares herself to meet the King of Hell, she revisits her earlier sex worker identity, thinking, “Maribelle had earned me an ocean of money, and then Merit had outsh[one] her ten to one. But I hadn’t come to Hell seeking riches. My aliases had done well, but hopefully Marlow would be the one who found herself a prince” (262). When she must confront Richard, and just before meeting the King, Marlow attempts to embody Maribelle’s confidence and poise, an implicit acknowledgement of how naming these aspects of her personality actually empowers her. She acknowledges the various aspects of herself that are bound up with each name and how someone knowing her true identity gives them a form of power, which becomes all the more true in the supernatural realm.
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