The Deer and the Dragon

Fauna tells Marlow that she is essentially a Norse “elf” called a skogsrå. She says that she’s basically “a god [humans] don’t care very much about. Maybe a nymph, if you’re using Greek” (117). She possesses an “ethereal” beauty and “supernatural grace” that reminds Marlow of a baby deer transformed into a human. Fauna possesses knowledge of Marlow’s fae bloodline—how her great-grandmother Aloisa had a sexual relationship with a fae male called Geir, producing one half-fae daughter, Dagny, who became Marlow’s grandmother. Fauna says that the Nordes, the pantheon to which she belongs, have a claim to Marlow and that if anyone is going to lift Marlow’s veil so that she can see the preternatural world, it should be one of them.

Fauna is a static character, unchanging throughout the novel, but she is round and complex, like Marlow. Although she quickly gets irritated with Marlow’s disbelief and questions, she also grows to love Marlow and genuinely cares about her well-being. Due to Marlow’s Nordic fae blood and Silas’s involvement, Fauna is protective of Marlow, unwilling to leave her alone and unprotected.

Fauna dresses in a hippie style and is a free spirit; she is also very sexually uninhibited and conducts a passionate, on-and-off again relationship with Azrames, a demon. Although she loves Azrames, she will not enter into a commitment with him because she values her freedom and independence too much to give them up. While Fauna can be short-tempered and irritable, she is sympathetic and warm when she understands the source of Marlow’s anxiety and childhood trauma, and she comforts Marlow when they return to her hometown to retrieve Aloisa’s sølje.

Caliban is the Prince of Hell; he is a demon and the son of Christianity’s original fallen angel, Lucifer. He is Marlow’s love interest, though she doesn’t believe that he exists outside her imagination for much of the novel.

Caliban first met Marlow nearly two millennia prior to the novel’s start when she was being stoned to death for her Christian faith. She was “on Heaven’s side” (398), accused of blasphemy, when Caliban appeared to her. Marlow called out to her God, loyal to him until the end, but, as Caliban tells her, “Your refusal to turn your back on that which ignored you…it broke something in me […] The deities you call aren’t always the ones who answer” (400). Caliban fell in love with Marlow and proceeded to find and love her in myriad incarnations between their first encounter and her current mortal life as Marlow. Though Caliban is the Prince of Hell and a demon, he is not “evil,” as Lisbeth Thorson and her church suggest. He merely opposes, in principle and practice, the God of Christianity, a deity who would not show up to support a loyal believer like Marlow.

Caliban is static, a character who does not change over the course of the novel, and he is flat, as his motivation and goals are relatively simple. He loves Marlow, and he wants her to be happy. He first appeared to her, in this lifetime, when she was a child, taking the form of a beautiful white fox to distract her from her unhappy childhood. He became her friend, watching over her, though he did not appear in his humanlike form until he feared that she was about to die by suicide at age 16.

Although Caliban is powerful in his realm, he is nonetheless bound by whatever limits Marlow places on him. For example, when she says that she can’t see him anymore, the rules of Hell mean that he must interpret this literally, and he becomes physically invisible to her, though she can still hear, feel, and smell him. When Marlow banishes him from her apartment, he has no choice but to obey. However, by the novel’s end, Marlow has openly declared her love for him.

Azrames is a demon who is rendered completely in black, white, and grayscale. He works with Betty, the mortal witch who runs a metaphysical shop, to punish the abusive men she identifies with the help of her female clients. Though he is a demon of Hell, this does not signify that he is “evil” in the sense that Lisbeth Thorson or Christianity would suggest. He refuses to let Marlow go into dangerous situations alone and is even willing to risk his own safety to maintain her well-being.

Azrames has a keen sense of justice, and he also loves Fauna deeply. Marlow quickly realizes this when she sees a closet full of Fauna’s clothes and toiletries that smell just like the fae. Although Fauna does not want to commit in order to maintain her independence, Azrames fully accepts Fauna and loves her as she is, with no desire to change her. Azrames rebelled against Heaven—not because Heaven is good and he is bad—but because Heaven, in the novel, is corrupt, as is the God who rules it.

Though Silas is an angel—a being who is, in theory, on God’s side—Caliban, Fauna, and Azrames ultimately question whether Silas is loyal to Heaven because of his ambiguous behavior. Silas answers the mark that Caliban puts on Richard, a “tier-five” favor that puts Caliban in Silas’s debt; Silas can literally ask for any favor he likes in return. The King of Hell, Fauna, and Azrames all expect Silas to use this favor to benefit Heaven in its ongoing war against Hell. However, for unknown reasons, Silas calls in the favor by asking Caliban to go to a small town, where a Phoenician goddess of fertility has entrapped an agriculture god by constructing a terraformed seal around the town. In sending Caliban there, Silas effectively traps him while keeping him safe from other immortals at the same time.

Fauna says that Silas serves a “controlling” master and compares him to an enslaved person. Silas’s later goals and behavior—such as his desire to protect and help Marlow—make it clear that he has conflicting motivations. At first, Silas seems willing to do what his God tells him to do: Although he initially declines Marlow’s request to lift her veil, he changes his mind after God tells him to do it. Later, however, Silas responds to Marlow’s summons from Bellfield, saves her at Caliban’s instruction, and then returns to help Caliban and Azrames fight Anath and her army of parasites, despite his earlier claim that he didn’t want to get involved in Bellfield. Thus, Silas is both dynamic and round. He goes from obedient to rebellious, and his motivations are, as yet, unknown but clearly complex.