bexley briar
"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?”
