by Mur Lafferty
The only thing that gave him pleasure was to open ideas from the Idea Emporium in Lathe. He had an agreement with the proprietor, Professor Burns, who allowed him as many ideas as he liked as long as Barris blessed the business every now and then.
He never did anything with the ideas. But it felt so glorious to have them in his mind, whispering their potential to him. He had ideas now on how to become a scientist in the foothills outside Lathe, the hills of the forgotten and mad. He knew several key battle plans that would work against sky pirates who resided in the corrupt Dark north of Meridian. He now knew several ways to farm the chaos-riddled land under Meridian and Lathe. He was even pretty sure he knew how to move the floating city of Meridian if they ever needed to.
He closed his eyes and lay back on the roof to enjoy the slight remaining high from the idea. His self-revulsion was quickly replaced by a feeling of superiority. No one else had such brilliant ideas, and if he ever did anything with them, they would all — even the other gods — know he was a force to reckon with.
He was the sun, after all.
Barris the sun god slipped into sleep just as the sun slipped below the horizon west of the shining, floating city of Meridian.
* * * * *
Fifteen minutes later, he woke up. His eyes had changed from watery blue to a gold that illuminated the rooftop. His muscles rippled as he sat up easily and stretched.
Barris’s head was finally clear. Little paper and metal boxes lay strewn around the roof where he’d fallen asleep. He shook his head in disgust, remembering the intoxicating ideas and the high he’d felt. A sun god should have more self-pride. He vowed to lay off the ideas, to apply himself and become a needed member of Kate and Daniel’s team. There were other gods who had been imprisoned like he had been. They needed freeing.
He stood and relished the feeling of strength coursing through him. The same thought as always went through his mind: if he felt so good with the sun down, why didn’t he just take more of the sun’s energy for himself?
Barris was many things, but ignorant about his own role in the world was not one of them. He smiled to himself, deciding to stay content with feeling god-like only fifty percent of the time, and stepped to the edge of the roof. He had only known the other gods in person for a couple of days, but he wasn’t yet ready to reveal this part of himself to them. They might not understand.
His bare toes curled around the edge of the roof as wide fiery wings unfolded from his back. He inhaled deeply and stepped off.
Barris knew deep down that tomorrow he would not remember anything of this feeling, this power. The power, as well as the memory, would be channeled back into the rising sun. But he swore, this time, that he’d stop the idea usage.
The wind whipped through his hair and he grinned against the force of it, relishing the flight. He flew past an apartment building, tethered to the ground far below, catching the eye of a young boy who stared at him. His eyes flashed and he blessed the boy with power that Professor Burns would have given his entire business to receive. The boy would grow up to be a great leader of Meridian, he decided.
He swooped down below Meridian and surveyed Lathe, allowing them to receive some of his power: a treat that that they never experienced during the day. He glided west then, over the ocean. He loved the waves, the water, so unlike himself. Dark and heavy, they were another world, but it also was a prison to another god. He’d told Kate and Daniel about the sea god, Ishmael, trapped beneath the waves; he assumed they would be trying to free him soon. As beautiful as the ocean was, he feared venturing below it. It was not his element.
He surveyed the world as far as he could. He skirted the Dark place, the Wasteland north of Meridian and Lathe with its uncertainty storms and chaos energy seeping into the world, and flew over the mountains, blessing some of the madder scientists living — and experimenting — deeply inside. He remained tireless for hours but in the early morning, as his energy began to wane, he positioned himself over the water again, eagerly awaiting the Moon.
He knew her phases as he knew his own times to rise and set. It was time for her to peek out again, a sliver of silver glimmering on the horizon. He wanted to greet her, promise her that she would be rescued from her prison as he and the other gods, Gamma and Fabrique, the goddess of clockwork, had been. He would rescue the Moon and tell her everything he had thought about her since he first saw her glory outside his prison window.
The Moon rose, but she was smaller. He could feel her mass as smaller, her hold over the ocean not as strong. He hovered in place above the ocean and made another vow, to tell Kate and Daniel. He headed back to his perch atop his temple in Meridian and landed just as the sun’s edge broke over the horizon.
Barris’s head swam and he fell to his knees. He must have stood up in his sleep. He smacked his lips and grimaced at the taste. He struggled to his feet and squinted at the sun. Time for breakfast. And if he ate fast, he might have time to travel to Lathe to get another idea before the meeting with Kate and Daniel.
* * * * *
The temple had nine floors: one each for Daniel, Cotton the moon goddess, Prosper the harvest god, Kate, Fabrique, the goddess of clockwork, Persi the goddess of dinosaurs, Ishmael the god of the sea, Gamma the warrior messenger, and Barris, the sun god. Kate had been busy modifying her floor of the temple to be a sort of home base of operations. The priestesses of the Reborn Goddess had balked at first, and then when they realized whom they were dealing with, fell to the floor in supplication. After the tears were dried and Kate had reassured them all was well, they set about making the temple in the way their god wanted it.
Which essentially meant removing all the pews, bringing in a large round table, and setting up a coffee bar.
The head priestess, Ophelia, was clearly still agitated at removing the populace’s ability to pray to Kate. She was not pacified by Kate’s offer to meet with people directly to discuss things instead of just praying into the ether, because honestly she hadn’t heard any prayers since waking up.
“I mean, I’m pretty powerful, but I am not getting a constant stream of prayers and requests beamed to my brain. I think meeting people might be the best way of going about things.”
“But, my Lady, if the populace knows you are here, or knows any of them,” she waved her hand at Daniel and the other gods milling about the coffee bar, “I fear we’ll have a riot on our hands.”
Kate looked out the window at the city of Meridian. “I see your point. But they won’t be able to congregate, though. There’s nowhere to stand.”
“The Sidewalk will be jammed with people,” the priestess said, indicating the central hub of the city that had gondola lines and zip lines to every building in the city. “The chaos and possible violence won’t be here, but it’ll be somewhere.”
Kate raised her hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. Let us have this meeting and then we’ll move somewhere else so people can pretend to pray and I won’t hear it.”
She hated it when logic got in the way of a good idea.
“I don't think gods are good at micromanaging, Kate,” Daniel said, handing her a cup of coffee. “If you spend your time dealing with each prayer then you won’t have any time for anything else, like this whole rescue thing we’ve got going on. I mean, look at Barris.” He pointed to the milquetoast sun god who had slunk into the room, looking wide-eyed and a bit stoned. “He can see everything the sun sees. You’d think he’d constantly be up in arms about the injustices of the world, but he’s not.”
“Yes, but you’re talking about Barris here, Daniel. He’s not really what I would think of as a god to mold myself after.”
Daniel shrugged. “Point taken. Still. We have some pretty big jobs to do. And if we can return these people’s gods to them, then maybe more prayers will be answered.”
She nodded absently and sipped her coffee.
The temples of the city were all in one building, stacked on top of one another in descending size. So the bottom level, Da
niel’s, was the biggest, and Barris’s, the top, was the size of a small room. No one went to pray to Barris or Gamma, as the gods were actually there, imprisoned in the temples.
Kate’s was the fourth one from the bottom. The roof was made of white gold and its interior was decorated sparsely with images of herself (a small part of her was gratified that the images made her look better than she did), statues, painting of her feeding the poor (which she had done once in her mortal life), and one of her gazing so longingly at a disinterested Daniel it made her blush. These people made up a lot of their religion, but they also knew things about her that were uncanny.
The other gods, the washed-out Barris, the crazy-haired Fabrique, and the tall, strong Gamma, sat at the round table. Daniel had insisted on the round table idea, liking the concept of King Arthur. Daniel and Kate were very aware, however, that the others viewed them as the king and queen of the gods, and looked to them. As they had created the world, and therefore the other gods, Kate could see their point, but still it felt like a level of responsibility that she and Daniel had screwed up in the past.
She dragged the heavy chair from the table and sat down. “Okay, Barris, you said that Persi is in the south, Ishmael is under the sea, Prosper is in Lathe and Cotton was in Dauphine.” Her insides squirmed at this last one. Kate had razed Dauphine to the ground, not knowing a goddess was imprisoned there. She wondered what had happened to her.
Barris fiddled with a cardboard box lid. “Uh huh. Only Cotton isn’t there anymore. Dauphine isn’t there anymore.”
“Yeah, we had to send a message,” Daniel said. “We didn’t know she was there at the time.”
Fabrique nodded. “Maybe you set her free.”
Kate stared at the table. “If that were the case, then Barris could find her, couldn’t he?”
Barris nodded absently.
“Well, let’s work on the gods we know about,” Daniel said, slapping his hands on the table and waking Kate from her introspection. “Where are the maps of Meridian and Lathe?”
Fabrique pulled a map tube out of her tiny bag and pulled out two sheets — one was a clear plastic and one was paper. She unrolled the paper in the middle of the table. “This is Lathe,” she said, bending over it so her copper curls brushed the map. She then unrolled the plastic over the map of Lathe. A map was drawn in black ink and it took Kate only a moment to realize what it was. “And this is Meridian. So you can see where we are in relation to Lathe.”
“Very cool,” said Daniel. “So here’s your workshop, and here’s the Idea Emporium. So where’s this harvest god?”
“He’s not in Lathe proper,” Barris said, finally breaking out of his trance and addressing them. “He’s in the hills.”
Kate squirmed. “Isn’t that where the more crazy scientists go to try out their inventions?”
Fabrique nodded. “Smaller population there. I’ve been wanting to visit since I got free.”
“Speaking of which, we need to talk about something,” Kate said. “You were all under the impression that Daniel and I imprisoned you. I can only assume that the other gods will feel the same way. We need to be prepared.”
Gamma smiled grimly. “We’ll be fine, any attack they launch will be met with —”
“No, Gamma, what I mean is that we need to make sure we don’t hurt them,” Kate said.
“Oh.”
“So, what did imprison us?” asked Fabrique.
Kate sighed. “I am guessing it’s that black thing that threw us here in the first place. It’s imprisoning us, too; it’s just that our prison is much bigger than yours. We can’t leave this world.”
“Unless we go through the Dark,” Daniel added, pointing at the black areas north of Meridian and Lathe.
“Which I assume we’ll have to do at some point,” Kate said. She shuddered. She didn’t like the Dark. It was still Wasteland, full of potential, but tainted, chaotic potential that seemed to ignore divinity. She knew it was the taint of the dark beast that enveloped heaven, and it — like many other things — needed to be cleansed.
“Why would the Dark want to imprison us?” Gamma asked.
“You can’t directly help the people in this world, so its influence gets to spread,” Daniel said. “You harbor resentment and anger toward us, which makes things difficult for us. Is that enough?”
“It worked,” Fabrique said, color dotting her freckled face. “I would have done some pretty terrible things to Daniel if the kid hadn’t been there.”
Daniel grimaced. Fabrique had imprisoned him easily when he had tried to free her. It was only the boy, James, who could persuade Fabrique to let Daniel plead his case.
“So the other gods will be pretty unhappy to see us. And clearly,” Gamma said, with a sense of disdain in her voice that Kate had never remembered in her as an old human woman, “we must use diplomacy instead of force.”
“That’s what James did with Fabrique; seemed to work then,” said Daniel, glaring at his empty cup of coffee. It refilled with his divine will and he looked pleased with himself.
Kate stared into her own coffee cup, which was, “as black as night and sweet as sin,” as the old folks liked to say.
But she was not omniscient. There was an awful lot she didn’t know. She was also not omnipotent; she could make worlds, but couldn’t heal the eye that her best friend had traded for godlike power. They could be exiled, banished, and imprisoned. Which left her feeling oddly vulnerable, even though she knew she could tap into considerable power.
She had to face it: she was afraid. The corrupt worship of Dauphine had been over the top and needed to be cleansed, Gomorrah-style. But she didn’t know what had happened to the goddess, or how to find her. She was afraid of what she would discover if they did.
“So what are we thinking? Hit the caves in the morning?” she asked.
“Why not now?” asked Daniel.
Kate shrugged. “There are some things I’d like to do in Meridian and Lathe first. Prepare. You know.”
Daniel cocked his head and looked at her, knowing there was more to it, but he let it go. She knew he’d ask her in private. “Whatever you say. I’ll never turn down a visit to Lathe.”
Fabrique nodded. “I’ll be happy to get some supplies at the House of Mysteries.”
Gamma frowned. “I’ll be on the roof, then. If you need me, just draw your sword.”
Kate stood. Barris sat in the chair beside her, fiddling with the little idea box lid again. “Barris, where will you be in the meantime?”
“Lathe,” he muttered, not looking at her.
Kate nodded. “Well, uh, cool. Meet here at eight am, then. Daniel, can I talk to you before you head down to Lathe?”
Daniel nodded and they both headed to the head priestesses’ office. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“Obviously,” he said, frowning.
“That moon goddess, Cotton. She was held in the city of Dauphine.” Kate let the weight of her words hang in the air.
Daniel got it. “Crap. Do you think …?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “I don’t know if she’s dead or she survived or what. But Barris can’t find her. So we have to figure out what to do. If she survived, she’s probably very, very angry with us.”
“Rightly so,” Daniel allowed. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to remind you that we probably have a problem on our hands.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist and nuzzled her neck. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll handle it. How about we see Meridian and Lathe tonight, see the nightlife, hang out like old times?”
She let him hold her; she kissed him back, but inside she still felt cold.
CHAPTER TWO
She stole a piece of the moon from the sky. Because she could.
Yes, it was spiteful, and yes, it was mean. But she took it because she could, because it was hers, and because the world would miss it.
Where once she had cared for the
world, watching it through her prison window that waxed and waned, now she didn’t give a shit about it. It held no joy for her. She didn’t want to see the world, peeking as she could during the day or ruling over it during the night. She didn’t want to flirt with the sun and wonder if he was as lonely as she was. She didn’t want to have children wish on her or see patterns in her face.
Her face no longer held a gentle, soft glow. It had been burned when the city of Dauphine fell. The Goddess Kate had walked through the streets, sending fire to cleanse the city, killing innocent and evil alike. Some of the tethered airships had floated away in the night as their tethers burned, but her prison, the silver ship Luna, had caught fire when the tower port burned.
When night fell and the horror had ceased and the flames and cries of the victims had all died, she rose from the rubble. Her fingers touched the ruined mass that was her face and she cried. She cast about until she found a house where children had died, trapped inside. She used her will to meld their charred bones together to form one smooth mask to hide behind. She stumbled to a graveyard where the dead had been the only ones protected from the fire. There she knit a cloak from their hair to wrap around her charred nakedness.
Finally, clothed and properly hidden, she shook herself all over and transformed into a white crow smudged with blood and soot. She took to the sky and surveyed the world around her, the dead city of Dauphine and the surrounding countryside. In the air she could hear the whisperings of all of the lost souls with nowhere to go.
The moon hung like a scythe. To finalize her transformation, she would need a weapon. She reached up with her beak and plucked part of it from the sky. She landed lightly on the earth at the heart of Dauphine. She transformed back to human form and fixed the sharp crescent atop a leg bone where its ends glittered wickedly.
