by P. C. Cast
Mari worked awhile longer, and then finally put her quill down and studied the sketch critically, waiting for it to dry. Would she show this one to her mother?
Probably not. The first time she’d tried to draw her father she had only known a little more than nine winters. Proud of the scene she’d brought alive from her mother’s stories, she’d shared the finished piece with Leda. Her mother had told her it was a wondrous thing—that she’d captured a miraculous likeness of Galen. But she had also gone pale at the seeing of it, and her hand had trembled so violently that Mari had had to hold the sketch for her. For many days after that, Mari had listened to the muffled sobs that had drifted like lost dreams from her mother’s room.
Seeing that Leda’s hair needed more shading, Mari bent back to the sketch, working on bringing the younger, hope-filled version of her mother to life while she wished that she didn’t have to live a lie and live in fear—always, always in fear. “And I wish I could finally find my own story…”
* * *
In finding his answer, Dead Eye had become a God. He knew it because of the power that coursed through his body as he had begun to shed his skin! It should have been impossible. The stag hadn’t been one of the Others. Absorbing his living flesh shouldn’t have worked. Even absorbing the living flesh of the Others hadn’t worked for the twenty-one winters of Dead Eye’s life. No matter how many of the Others the People trapped and reaped, none of the People had ever been healed—not truly. Always, always, within a season the People would sicken. Their skins would crack, shed, age, and eventually they died. They always died.
But no more.
Dead Eye stretched out his mighty arms, flexing his muscles and laughing. He had asked for a sign, and the stag had given him one. Let the old men slink about the City begging the Reaper to make their skins last longer, or—if all else fails—to draw more of the Others to the City so that their pitiful lives could continue.
No. Dead Eye would not beg a dead God for those things. And if the People wanted to live, to thrive, they would stop worshipping a metal statue and acknowledge the God who walked in their midst. The proof was as obvious as the power coursing through his body.
First, he must make the People understand. Dead Eye had thought a very long time about how to approach the People. Though he longed to proclaim the truth he knew that the People would not be ready to hear it. No, they would not be ready for a new God, but perhaps they would be ready for a new Champion.
Ineffective old women had been speaking for a dead God for generations. How much easier would it be for a Champion to speak for God?
As dusk fell Dead Eye made his way to the Reaper’s Temple. At first he was glad to see so many of the People gathered there among the bonfires that littered the entrance and the great, broken bricks that paved the way to the Temple. Then he saw that most of them were old, with broken skin and slack, lifeless eyes. He thought they looked like beaten animals that waited witlessly to be slaughtered.
He stepped forward, and then turned to face the People.
“Will none of you approach Her? Will you all be content to die here, in the shadow of Her Temple?” he asked the group, his voice echoing from the massive walls of the crumbling Temple behind him.
“We worship the Reaper from here,” said a white-haired man who was naked except for patches of ragged moss pressed to his oozing skin.
“Turtle Man, She beckons, yet you are content to worship from a distance?” Dead Eye scowled at the old man.
“She beckons for Her Watchers, and they are with Her,” said Turtle Man, scratching at a sore on his arm. “We wait here, as the Watchers tell us, for the next group of Others She draws to the City. If we pray and make enough sacrifices, the Others will come.”
“I think She beckons for more than that! I think the Watchers are wrong. Our Reaper is tired of old women and is beckoning for Her Champion!”
The crowd erupted in shocked shouts. With a flourish, Dead Eye flung off his tattered cloak and stood, bare-chested, before them. He saw the People’s amazement as they took in his shedding skin, and the strips of stag flesh he had cut and packed into the open wounds on his arms and torso. The wounds were completely healed and pink with healthy new flesh that was closing around the stag’s flesh as his body absorbed and digested the creature’s strength. He flexed his arms, reveling in the power that flowed through him. With a grace that was more stag than human, he leaped against the side of the Temple, grabbing one of the thick ropes of living vines that cascaded from the Reapers’ perch, and using it to scale the slick green-tiled outer wall. When he reached the balcony, he jumped easily over the ledge, and automatically dropped to his knees before the huge statue.
“Though She is not pleased by your abrupt appearance on Her balcony, the Reaper acknowledges her Harvester. Present the sacrifice you offer,” demanded the leader of the Watchers in her thin, high voice.
Still on his knees, Dead Eye pulled the rodent from within the pack slung over his bare shoulder. Free of the confines of the pouch, the fat creature began to struggle.
But instead of offering the sacrifice to the Watcher as expected, Dead Eye abruptly stood, brandishing the triple-tipped dagger he drew from its sheath at his waist. As the Watchers gasped in horror, he bent the rodent back so that its body strained to form a crescent, and with a deft motion slit the creature’s throat. Hot scarlet blood spewed, arching up and up so that it splattered the Reaper’s face.
“She cries! Dead Eye’s sacrifice has made the God cry!”
From the corners of the balcony on which the statue perched, Her Watchers rushed forward, jostling one another to get a closer look.
“Why? Why have you caused the God to cry?” several of the old women asked fearfully.
“Can you not answer that question?” Dead Eye’s voice was filled with disgust. “Does She not speak through you?”
The lead Watcher’s eyes narrowed. “Do you dare to question the Watchers of the God?”
Dead Eye stood, tossing the still warm body of the rodent onto one of the many fire pits. He ignored the lead Watcher. The rest of them were mute, staring at him with a mixture of horror and fright, while others poked sticks into the fire pit to retrieve the burning rodent entrails, sucking them noisily into their ravenous mouths. They were revolting. What were they but fear-filled old women in sick, wrinkled skin sacks that proclaimed they were past fertile years, past harvesting, past life? Lithely, he jumped up on the lip of the Reaper’s ledge and looked down at the People.
They were milling with nervous excitement, having taken up the cry of the Watchers, “She cries! She cries!” They stared up at Dead Eye, their eyes catching the reflection of the flickering firelight and sparkling like glowworms in a sea of pale faces.
“She cries with joy because Her Champion has finally appeared!” Dead Eye’s voice was a clarion trumpet that silenced the People. “I have prayed for strength. I have prayed for guidance. I have been answered!”
The most ancient of the Watchers approached him, her sallow, sagging face set in disapproving lines.
“It is only for the Watchers to say whether the God has spoken.” Her voice was so shrill that Dead Eye felt it like daggers. “Now go! If the God needs a Champion, he will be chosen as all is chosen for the People, though our reading of the sacrificial entrails.”
“You mean through what you decree. And what is it you old women decree except the same things you’ve been saying for generations? But are the People better for your words, or is it only a select few, you Watchers, who gain from them?” Dead Eye said.
“Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” the Watchers began to chant in their pathetic old voices.
“I agree! Blasphemy has been committed against the Reaper, but Her Champion will right this wrong that has gone on far too long.” Dead Eye’s deep, powerful voice cut through the whispering women, as easily as his trident sliced through living flesh. “Look at me! Look at my skin! I did not sit idly by, waiting for one of the Others to
wander close enough to the City to be taken. I Harvested a stag and our God rewarded me. I have absorbed it. I am the stag, just as the stag is me!” He held open his arms for all the Watchers to see. “Bare yourselves and prove that our Reaper shows you favor as well.”
The old woman made a dismissive gesture with her long, skeletal fingers. “I am a Watcher of the God. You are a mere Harvester. I need not show you anything.”
“Did you not hear me? I am Her Champion!” With no hesitation Dead Eye sprang forward. Lifting the Watcher by her scrawny waist he hurled her up, impaling her on the three-tipped spear the statue held above them. As the old woman shrieked and writhed in the agony of her death throes, Dead Eye closed on the other Watchers. Panicked, they tried to flee from him, but he caught each easily, throwing them from the balcony to the broken pavement below.
Filled with righteous power, Dead Eye leaped to the ledge again, this time standing intimately within the curve of the Reaper’s beckoning arm, as if She embraced him.
“Does anyone else dispute my right to be Champion?”
Scattered around the bleeding, broken bodies of the dying Watchers, the People fell to their knees. Dead Eye memorized each face, noting who remained and who had disappeared into the shadows of the night-shrouded City. He was pleased to see the younger People had stayed. He was equally pleased to see that Turtle Man and the rest of the old ones were absent.
Good. He had no use for the weak and dying.
“We do not dispute you!” First one voice lifted, and then another and another. “We do not dispute you! We do not dispute you!” the People took up the chant.
Dead Eye basked in their worship, smiling down at them beatifically as his mind whirred with the limitless possibilities the future held.
5
High above the forest floor, the female stirred. She uncurled herself from around the last of her littermates—the only other pup who had yet to choose a Companion. She snuffled at him, breathing in the familiar, comforting scents of their whelping nest, their mother, and the raw rabbit on which they had both recently fed. The big male pup sighed, yawned, and rolled a little toward her before putting his paw over his nose and drifting back to sleep. For a moment the female almost allowed the pull of sleep to reclaim her as well, but the call sounded through her body again, and this time it was more insistent.
She must not sleep. The young canine must find the one who would be her partner, her life, her Companion.
The door to the whelping nest was closed against the coolness that was coming with the lengthening of shadows. She sat before it and barked twice, two sharp bursts of sound that were far from the puppy-like yaps that had been her norm until that evening. From a cozy spot near the opening, the man who had been drowsing came instantly awake—as did the big Shepherd that lay curled beside him.
“Finally!” Pleasure filled the Guardian’s voice as he quickly patted his canine’s head and then untied and lifted aside the pelt curtain that served as door to the whelping nest. The man’s expression telegraphed excitement to the pup. She met his eyes, body trembling as she waited impatiently. Then the man smiled and gave her the most important command of her young life, “Seek!”
With no hesitation, the female leaped from inside the nest onto the narrow walkway outside and began to run. The Guardian, with his canine close behind, called ahead of them, “The female has begun the choosing! It is time!”
The Tribe often debated what it was that compelled a pup to find its Companion. Was it something in the look of a particular person? Something unique about their scent? Or was it luck mixed, perhaps magickally, with fate? Had the Tribe been able to share the moments just before choosing with the pup the factions would have been surprised to learn that neither and both were correct.
“Clear the walkway! Clear the walkway! The female is choosing!” The Guardian cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, warning the people who were slowly meandering to their nests thinking more of the beauty of the waning sunlight and the aromas of simmering meals than of the young canine who ran silently and swiftly along the winding walkways with a single-minded goal.
“It’s the female! She chooses!” The cry was caught up and the Tribe began spilling out of warm nests, eagerly watching the pup, whose pace was becoming increasingly more frantic.
“Light the lanterns. Won’t do for her to slide from a walkway before she’s made her choice!” A voice boomed and torchlight began to blossom as sunlight faded and shadows continued to lengthen.
As the pup scurried around and around the vast walkway system that tied nestlike dwellings together, the Tribe followed the young Shepherd, knowing smiles on the faces of those who were accompanied by their own canines—and eager, hopeful looks of anticipation on those who lived, thus far, Companionless.
Within a very few moments, the pup’s quest was joined by music. First so faint that only the deep, sonorous sound of drums came rhythmically, as if to goad forward the tap, tap, tapping of her feet on the wooden walkway planks. Soon the drums were joined by flute and strings, and then, lastly, by the crystal beauty of women’s voices raised together in perfect harmony.
“Verdant you grow—verdant we grow
On and on and on
Secrets you know—secrets we know
On and on and on…”
The sweet strains of the Tribe’s most sacred music surrounding her, the pup came to a drawbridge section of the walkway and sat, impatiently bouncing up and down with her two front feet and barking in time over and over, as if trying to hurry the song as well as those tending the drawbridge.
“She’s not even waiting for the lift to catch!” the Guardian shouted, trying unsuccessfully to grab the pup’s scruff before she gathered herself and jumped from the partially lowered bridge. There was a collective sigh of relief when, instead of plummeting to her death on the forest floor more than fifty feet below, the young canine’s front paws caught the far side of the bridge and she scrambled onto the wide, solid platform.
The music and singing fell silent. A dozen women of different ages had been lovingly tending the Mother Plants—singing to them—pruning them—worshipping them. At the young Shepherd’s very noisy entrance and the trail of eagerly watching Tribesmen and women that followed her, eleven of the twelve singers turned to greet the pup. The women who had canines close beside them watched with smiles and soft eyes, hands automatically stroking their Companions’ fur. Four of the women had no canines. They were young, having barely known eighteen winters. They watched the pup, expectation and desire clear in their rapt expressions.
The pup ignored the eager young women, inexorably making her way to the only woman who was not watching her.
As the pup drew closer to the woman her frantic energy calmed and the female slowed, moving with a maturity well beyond that of the scant five and a half months of her life. The woman who was the focus of the pup’s attention was sitting cross-legged before an enormous Mother Plant that looked as if it was close to opening. The woman’s head was bowed. The pup lifted her muzzle, touching the back of the woman’s neck where the thick mass of her hair, golden except for a few streaks of gray, was tied up in a loose but tidy knot.
At the touch of the pup’s nose, the woman’s shoulders began to shake and she put her face in her hands.
“I—I don’t think I can bear this. Not again. My heart may break.” The woman’s voice was muffled with tears.
The young canine scooted closer to her, leaning against the sobbing woman and whining softly in shared distress.
“Your heart may break if you choose to accept her,” the Guardian said from behind the pup. “But if you reject her, it is a certainty that her heart will break. Can you bear that, Maeve?”
Maeve turned to look up at the Guardian. Her face was still beautiful, even though it showed lines of age, loss, and regret.
“You know none of us understand why some are chosen more than once, but it is a blessing, Maeve.”
“Speak to me of t
his blessing when your Alala is no more,” Maeve said in a voice that was sad rather than angry.
“I dread that day,” the Guardian said, his hand automatically reaching for the head of the big Shepherd that was never far from his side. “Yet I would not change one moment of my life with Alala. Remember and honor the love you had for your Taryn, and for her blessed life as your Companion, but do not allow your mourning to stop you from living.”
The older woman’s shoulders slumped, and still she did not look at the pup. “It is time for others to take on the mantle of Leader.”
The Guardian chuckled, but not unkindly. “The Mother Plants flourish under your care. Your voice remains as crystal and true as it was two decades ago, and now this young female has sought you out—you—when she could pick from anyone in the Tribe. Maeve, think! A Leader’s pup is choosing you as her Companion—and that choice is never wrong, can never be undone, and will never be broken.”
“Until death,” Maeve added, her voice cracking as she tried to stifle another sob. “At death the bond is broken.”
“True, at death,” the Guardian agreed solemnly. “Remind me—how many winters did you have with your Taryn?”
“Twenty-eight winters, two months, twelve days,” Maeve said softly.
“And how long has Taryn been dead?”
“Three winters, and fifteen days,” Maeve responded without hesitation.
“And though your pain in still raw, in the three winters and fifteen days you have been without her, have you ever regretted that Taryn chose you?”
