"ARE YE HAPPY?"
WE ARE MIGHTY.
"ARE YE HAPPY?"
NO: ART THOU?
Y
ou took away the only thing I had.
The world ripples around her, not exactly real; a long, red body of light.
The only thing I had.
He stares out at her from a shrine of darkness. Bexley can't help thinking that this must not have been what he looked like in life. His hair is dark and wild, cut terribly shaggy; his eyes are little stones in his face, cold and dark. He is certainly skinnier now than he was then. Her heart squeezes, tightens, at the fact that now it is a struggle to picture him correctly: no matter how strong her focus is, he shifts and creases like a mirage. Every time Bexley blinks, he has changed a bit, the markings on his coat having shifted, or his mouth having moved into an expression she just doesn't recognize.
The only thing she had left, and the fact that that thing was merely the smoothness of her face, sounds like a bad joke now. I was very young then, Bexley thinks. I could not have imagined there was so much left to lose.
∘₊✧──────✧₊∘
At one point he had accused her of having an impostor, because she had sent him a letter with the word sorry in it.
Now Bexley knows he was right.
I knew it was fake, ‘cause it had the word sorry in it, is what he had said exactly. That was true enough, but there were other clues. Things Bexley should have been wary of seeing in herself because, even then, being kind felt like a terrible lie. He always knew her better than was comfortable. (Is there anything you won't fake?)
Whatever version of her it was that could form her mouth around an apology; whatever version of her it was that stood at the summit, in the cool, bright wind, laughing because it would be her first time seeing the gods in person, and what else was there to do with all that anxiety; whatever version of her it was that loved, really, wholly, desperately loved—
That was the impostor.
The real Bexley is a bitter little girl, and she is climbing toward the top of a mountain, leaving Solterra so far behind.
∘₊✧──────✧₊∘
The desert is one long flame below her, a patch of pure gold in a sea of ocean and forest and field. Despite herself, Bexley can't help glancing at it over shoulder as she winds up the mountain's narrow path; the capitol is but a little spark inside the endless dunes, and she wonders vaguely what it is that everyone is doing in the city. Gearing up for the new king's coronation, probably.
Strange: this is the first one she will not be a part of. She was a champion at Maxence's coronation and a regent at Seraphina's; she had awoken from that long, supernatural sleep in time to witness Orestes' too, though that had been from the very edges of the crowd, watching with a glower made of blue flame. Four years and it has come to this.
(Solis' breath had been star-hot against her cheek. Even with her eyes closed, Bexley could not see anything but the pure white light of his skin and his flowing hair, a light so bright it bled into her brain. At that point, she knew. It was a rock in her stomach. It was not the worst shame, but it was close. When he had said Adonai's name, proud and regal, the worst part of it all had been that her eyes were still closed, and underneath the words he spoke, she had heard the thing he said to her so long ago: Such big words for someone with so little power. His voice had been a sneer. Let us see how you do without your magic.)
Looking back, Bexley thinks: that should have been the last straw. He has never shown himself to be a god worth worshipping.
∘₊✧──────✧₊∘
Up here the air is thin and cold. When Bexley breathes, she feels the sharpness of it prickling at her nose, her throat, all the way down to her chest. Summer feels like some long-gone memory; at this height, and in the sweet blue darkness of the night, all she can think about is the stars above and the wind that ruffles her long white hair.
Caligo's statue stares at her; and for the first time, Bexley looks back at it with more than distrust in her eyes.
do not mistake me for my mask
you see light dappling the water and forget
the deep, cold dark beneath
T
he first time Ira knelt beneath Caligo’s feet, his father killed a dove.
Next, they brought a bleating lamb, all the way up from the valley below. Ira still awakens some nights hearing that specific cry, cut off by the blade.
The third visit, Ira remembers, they brought a steer. This had been the most difficult sacrifice of all, to both procure and to butcher. They had been warned in the markets and by the monks the gods of Novus did not often ask for blood, or sacrifice, to which Ira’s father had replied: gods ask for nothing else.
The fourth time, Ira came alone, during winter. He walked not through a storm but in its wake, with all the world blanketed by white. The silence had been deafening; when he reached Caligo’s alter, he offered not flesh and bone but bits and pieces of his history. A silk ribbon, that his mother used to wear. The woolen cloak of his father’s old uniform. The history book of their homeland, his father had procured as they fled.
These things, Ira burned.
After, when he returned to Denocte, his father waited for him in their small cottage. He had known what Ira had taken, and to where, and he only warned: “Gods do not ask for riches, Ira. They do not ask for sacrifice. They ask for the most expensive offering of all.”
Ira does not know if it was in that moment, or after many other experiences, that he realized the profound depth of his father's warning. He had not burnt belongings on Caligo’s alter. He had burnt himself.
Now, when Ira comes, that is what he brings.
Pieces of himself.
A long braided strand of his father’s hair, snipped from his mane. Antlers of the prized stag of the season, larger by far than any other hunter’s. Each letter Saige had written him the last few months, all bound in long locks of his hair. This offering, Ira thinks, feels particularly heavy; but he has come to the summit devoutly each season since arriving in Novus. The habit comforts him, and he needs the comfort now, after the death of his father and the turmoil within the country.
He finds solace in the long uphill climb; the religious burning of his haunches; the wind that whips and bites his face. Ira finds solace in the sharpness of the air, and the familiarity of the path he treads, until at last Ira reaches the summit.
He does not find solace in the way he is met by company rather than solitude.
Ira pauses, for a moment, where the pathway opens up and veins to each respective god. He holds on to the subtle hope the mare stands not at Caligo’s shrine, but another.
(However, he is too familiar with the shrines to believe this hope for even a second. He recognizes the exact angle at which she stands for he, too, has stood before Caligo in hopes of seeing something—someone—stare back).
Ira says nothing, at first. He merely steps past her to reach the alter and lays his items at the goddess’s feet. He rarely speaks, believing instead the importance of his actions over his words. He never promises fidelity to his goddess, or lifelong service. He only kneels to strike the flint and catch, first, the braid of his father’s hair on fire. The fire spreads quickly to the letters; but the antlers Ira leaves unburnt, placing them instead at the goddess’s obsidian hooves.
The clearing fills with the scent of smoke. Ira looks up at Caligo and then, at last, to the woman beneath her gaze. He has never seen her here before, or within Denocte, although something about the fierceness of her expression seems familiar. Ira remains silent, at first; the kind of silence that belongs to mountains, and forests, and birds, and sometimes (but not often) to men.
"The first time I came here," Ira says at last. "My father killed a dove."
"ARE YE HAPPY?"
WE ARE MIGHTY.
"ARE YE HAPPY?"
NO: ART THOU?
C
aligo’s eyes are black, black, black.
They stare at each other, goddess and girl. The statue’s feet are piled with offerings; gold coins, perfume bottles, bits of hair, untouched food. She has a wild expression—her mouth open, front feet raised in a rear, her hair spiraling out behind her in perfectly carved chaos. Her dark skin catches all the light of the stars and reflects it in thin lines of opalescence. She is beautiful, Bexley thinks; and lonely. Even gods require love.
Around them, the night seems sweet and dark as the crushed heart of a blackberry. It is an open invitation, or at least it feels like one, to the future, or the rest of the universe: from this high up it seems as though the world unfolds to each side infinitely, and when Bexley looks down, her heart thrills at how small it all seems, and at the same time how large—as though she is only know seeing all there is left to experience. Lights glitter out from the cities; even the tallest trees look like flowers from here.
But it is cold. Cold enough to make the golden girl shiver as her hair is tossed by breezes; cold enough to jolt her back to the here, the now, and out of that brief dream-like state that comes from looking so far down. The wind, as it comes off the mountain, smells of sacrificing-smoke and blood. Bexley tastes the night in the corners of her mouth; she feels crawl over every inch of her skin, a fog settling over the ocean.
It is perhaps the first time the moon has seemed more beautiful to her than the sun.
Bexley has never been particularly religious. But she has always been strangely devout in her willingness to sacrifice. To her, it comes easier—and far more genuinely—than prayer. She will not bend a knee, but at many points in her life she has found herself offering a drop of ripe blood; a carefully crushed pomegranate; a life—though not hers—or an ageless gold necklace. (Words always mean less than actions, anyway. If I were a god, she thinks, that is what I would want. Violence over vernacular.)
Caligo’s eyes are black, black, black. And in this silky dark Bexley’s might be black, too.
There is a noise from behind her. The noise of a few pebbles shifting; the noise of one hoof, and then a second, clicking with their cool silver sound against the stone.
Bexley’s ear flicks back. She listens without acknowledgment, without movement, to the way the steps falter and then slowly stop, to the long-held breath that is suddenly released. Caligo’s lifeless eyes stare into her chest.
The steps pick up again. They are surer this time, more consistently placed, and they grow nearer and nearer each second. Though Bexley’s stare never moves from the statue, her ears swivel slowly to follow the noise; and then, like a shadow, he slides into view in the corner of her eye.
A young boy. (She is startled to see what she thinks of as young these days.) His coat is black as deep water, then white as sunlight on the sea; the horn that curves from his forehead a bright color that isn’t quite anything, but the blue-opal shine of a moonstone, lit from inside out. His dark eyelashes brush his cheeks.
In silence, he drops a pile of offerings on the altar. The letter, the braids of hair are burned; but the antlers lay perfectly upright against the stone, untouched by flame or soot.
He says quietly: the first time I came here, my father killed a dove.
Bexley bites her lip. Her nose fills with the smell of burning hair, of ash-eaten paper whose edges are curling. Somewhere far away, the scent of the desert still seems to reach her, but with each breath it is drowned further and further out, until all Bexley feels is the cold night air and the god-blood and the smell of sacrifice, like embers burning through bone.
Her stare still fixed on Caligo’s, she responds: “And have you killed her anything, or do you only bring the bodies?”
do not mistake me for my mask
you see light dappling the water and forget
the deep, cold dark beneath
I
f he had been even a few months younger, Ira might have asked her what she was thinking. He might have wondered aloud what thoughts—what demons—plagued her mind, staring up into Caligo’s black face. But because he is older than he was, because he is more aware—he only wants to say, be careful.
Be careful, Bexley.
Be careful.
(There is an abyss, here; an abyss opening up beneath Caligo's dark gaze. The saying, Ira wants to say, is true: if you stare too long, too deeply, you will become it).
At first, he ignores her question. Ira’s eyes return to Caligo’s; his posture a shadow of what Bexley’s had been. Neck craned; head upturned; eyes on the goddess’s dark, dark face. Ira has always seen less of the statue and more of the eyes; he has always wondered if Caligo does not exist within them, animated and restless, with a void just waiting to open. An abyss, an endless night.
(And what is the abyss, if not both sleep and death? And what is the abyss, if not the opening of the woods beneath a new moon, dark and endless and somehow full of life? What is the abyss, if not the way he turns to look at this strange, golden girl now; edged as a blade, expressionless as a wolf on the edge of the trees).
His eyes drift from the goddess to Bexley and he stares, above the dying smoke of his offering. The smell of his father’s braided, burnt hair. The letters Saige had written, turned to ash.
There are so many things he would like to say in response; the gravity, however, does not belong to him. Ira’s answers do not come cheaply and so, first, he asks, “Why do you want to know?”
No. Ira quiets for a moment, feeling the coldness, the proximity, the strange chasm that opens between their conversation. He could go now. He could leave his offering on the mountainside beneath Caligo’s hooves and return to the woods. He studies this stranger with a practiced eye; her scars; the nearly limitless expression, tangled, gnarled, in her too-blue eyes. He knows he should leave, that he should leave this stranger a stranger. But Ira doesn’t want to. Perhaps it is because he has never seen her here before, or because he has never seen her in Denocte. Perhaps it is because he feels called to act by his goddess.
More realistically, it is because Ira is curious. And his curiosity is not a cheap, playful thing; Ira’s curiosity has barbs.
“I find most people don’t understand the gods of this country,” he adds, at last. He breaks the silence with a voice so soft it is barely more than his breath in the cold. “That they believe soft offerings and prayers satiate them. Sometimes, I even believe it. And then—I remember.”
His smile is a wolf’s smile; a wolf, in the woods, with the snow coming down. A wolf who knows winter will bring not death, but prosperity as the rest of the forest, the less predatory, the less sharpened, begin to struggle, and weaken, and die. “Caligo is a goddess of vengeance—not peace treaties or kindness. A goddess who plunged the world into darkness to make them suffer.”
Ira turns, now, so Caligo is at his flank—he turns, now, to pin the golden mare with his eyes. He knows he is too intense. He knows the look on his face belongs less to him and more to his father. But when he speaks, the words are his and his alone.
“I brought a wolf," Ira answers. More somberly; perhaps the most somberly. "I brought her a creature she would understand."
