You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
I
n my homeland, there are only two holidays. There is the Summer and the Winter Solstices, when we give offerings to the Old Gods. Lambs and doves; but mostly, Souls.
I am reminded by this, above the laughter of children and the sweet words of lovers. I am reminded of this, by the smell of smoke and springtime.
A wide circular stone altar remains atop the cliffside closest to the village of Oresziah; the old church is built behind it, with stained glass enchanted to weather any storm, no matter how terrible. The church is wrought of old ships, brought by our ancestors when they were first stranded on Oresziah by magic.
This is where I Bound the Souls of the last Khashran. It had been Bondike and I, shoulder-to-shoulder. I had to lean my weight into him in order to remain steady, as my fall from the cliffside had only been a handful of days before.
The Last Prince of the Khashran, the Prince of a Thousand Tides, of the Lost People—he knelt in copper chains at the center of the axial stone circle, and we carried bowls of the paint used for Binding. The priests did not tell us what it was made of; only that it was sacred. The rumor was that it was the ichor of our oldest god, the one who died so that men might live—
I only knew that it burned, and smelled of horsehair on the fire. I only knew the sound it made when I pressed it carefully to the dark brow of Orestes, the Last Prince, and listened to him scream as I painted a sun between his eyes.
It was the Winter Solstice; the holiday when our Souls are closet to the sky, and closest to the earth, and wily enough that they might escape. Legend has it that for a man to Bind another’s Soul, they must lose a piece of themself. The legends say that at Winter Solstice, the line between is thinner; our ability to err much larger.
I am reminded of it because of the bonfires and the way they seem to burn every color except for the color fires ought to be.
I am staring into the flames as the race begins somewhere in the middle-distance; a young child is leaping over a smaller fire, silhouetted so that they are faceless, nameless, and it is not so difficult to imagine them as myself, a lifetime ago.
I am reminded of the Solstice, because when your Soul breaks it feels like fire from within, like an ember lodged in your chest, like—
Like a burning, and then the absence of heat, the sudden snubbing of an ember.
And, anyways, I am thinking of it because—the air feels magical. The air feels thin. Perhaps it is the cool remainder of spring, the essence that says, winter was not so long ago.
I walk beyond the bonfires, to the edge of the trees. There is something there—
Another festivity.
Somewhere, a musician is singing. Their call is low in the night, almost somber; but they speak of growing, and being. There are more children, rushing between the trees as they sing in the nighttime wind. There are lanterns hung on posts; I walk down a long aisle of grass and leaves, overgrown. On the edge, toward the meadow where the fires are, there are buckets of paint and jewels that wink even in the dark. The fire of the lantern dances across them; there are couples here, painting one another; children playing games; and the poet continues to sing of an epic ballad.
A story befitting those gods of the springs,
What does that even mean?
But before I can think better of it, I am delving into the paints and the jewels, and am decorating myself the only way I know how—
In red paint.
Red brighter than red. Red like copper. Gleaming, and metallic, and ember-bright. First: twisting copper rosettes, all down the gold of my neck, and the rosettes bleed into spindles like roots that entwine my front legs; it does not take long for the spindles at my shoulders to become the old symbols of my homeland, symbols of elms and arrows, broad strokes and narrower ones—
The chaos of growing, and relenting; the light snubbed from the sky by a too-thick canopy of copper paint—and then, the undulating of gold-red-white, a combination of colors like the mottled light that shifts through the forest of becoming things—
War paint, I remind myself. I cannot finish it, myself. I glance around, unhurriedly, and begin to wait—until at last I see someone who does not appear so occupied, and approach. They look alone, like me—waiting.
“I can’t do the last part myself,” I say, quietly. “It’s bad luck, you see.”
My voice is quiet, and dark, made huskier by the lanterns, by the paint, by the chorus of poetry.
I ask: “Could you help me?”
I want to close my eyes, but—
I know what I will see if I do.
My warpaint, staring back. A brilliant copper sun, a sigil at my brow.
To Bind a Soul, you must sacrifice a piece of your own.
I had given the Last Prince my Mark.
