Part 1, Chapter II

Chapter II: Portents of Fire and Blood

 

        That was in my thirteenth year, according to the date I arrived at the temple. It was not long before the other my children, began to quit the sanctuary of Sol’s cult, like flowers coming into bloom, sometimes few and far in between and other times by the myriad, whole fields turning from bud to blossom when the sun arises. The children of Augustine disappeared into the emerald shade of the orchard, not to be seen by the temple’s patrons until old age made waste of their beauty and charms, causing them to once again turn to matters of spiritual devotion. I observed this throughout my youth: old men and women crawling into the shelter of the temple, where many were raised from babehood, and with piety secluded themselves to worshippin Sol -- at least in external display. It was profitable for the Augustinians, I suppose, to pursue all sorts of lusts in the prime of age, so long as they came to repentance at the end of their lives. That way, they could have the best of paradise, both in this life and the next.

            Not all left the cult. Some spent their entire lives ministering. This must have been what the nuns thought I desired, when I failed to leave with the rest. They attempted to groom me for service in ministry, but failed. It’s not any mystery why; though I did not make it obvious, I had long regarded the cult’s practices -- not to mention Sol’s deity -- in the light of the skeptic.  

            In the end, they gave up and granted me the less pious job of keeping the temple spotless, a work into which I flung myself with great enthusiasm. Just like the garden, sweeping, mopping, and carefully washing all the sacred instruments kept my hands busy and freed my mind to dwell on other things. Manual labor had always been fruitful with me -- you’ll find no better worker than in these two arms, Old Man. I might have been content to live my days busying the hands with work and the mind with its own quiet philosophies. It’s hard to say what life could have been, had it continued on a smooth and narrow course. Perhaps I would have grown sore of the monotonous pleasures of Augustine regardless; I suppose I’ll never know for sure.

            I was in the inner sanctum one night, scrubbing the blood of the morning sacrifice from the altar. Everyone else has fallen asleep beneath the stars on the temple steps long beforehand; I was alone. This would have been in my eighteenth year.

            Midway through my work, I heard the soft patter of feet against the temple’s stone floor. One bearing a lantern approached, concealed in the black cloak of mourning worn by the nuns at night, when Sol disappeared over the horizon.

            “Good evening, Blessed One,” she Sister Eleanor, invoking the customary greeting.

            “Cursed is the night; might She who provides conquer soon,” I replied. It was the cult’s belief that Sol was destined to defeat Luna’s hound Cerberus each night before she arose on the east and returned to Augustine.

            “Leave the altar be,” said Eleanor, “I’ve more important work for you.”

            “What sort of work?”

            “In the solar chamber. I expect you there soon, Fae.”

            I cannot claim to have been completely naïve to her intentions -- I’d been around long enough to know better. It might have been curiosity, I believe, that lead me up those shallow steps. Perhaps not. Perhaps, though it pains me to think it true, I was possessed by some blacker charms: some carnal and destructive lust that I unconsciously disguised as obligation. I know only this: I left my broom and mop behind when I mounted those steps.

            Access to the solar chamber was forbidden to all but an elect few. It was located on the temple’s roof, a dome cupola veiled by a curtain but otherwise open to the elements.

            With a tightness in my gut, I approached the chamber and flung back the thick, heavy curtain.     

There she was, Sister Eleanor clothed in flesh. What drew my eyes first was her long, golden hair, which had been unclasped and allowed to flow down her shoulders. Thick tresses rippled down her back, disappearing behind her shoulders before swirling and breaking off into churning eddies atop the cushions upon which she sat. The rest streamed off into murmuring, liquid-gold channels down her front, diverging where it met with generous, cinnamon-colored breasts. From there, my eyes fell on her plump stomach, and I willed them go no further.

            “What do you want from me?” I asked.

            She chuckled -- a full, deep laugh that made her bosom quake. “Don’t be so naïve. Do you prefer to stand there and make mouths at me?  Come on. It’s perfectly okay; it’s what this chamber was designed for.”

            The heaviness in my gut turned into a sickness that slowly spread to the rest of my body, beginning first with my lungs. When I spoke, it felt as though they’d been filled up with thick fluid; I was drowning. “What godless purpose are you talking about, Eleanor?”

            “It’s considered a sign of blessing when a child is conceived in the sacred chamber when Sol first rises. Only Her holy ones are given this privilege. Look! To the east, you can see her pale forehead crown the hills! We haven’t much time.”

            “So that’s the mystery of religion!” I snarled. “You tear God down from the sky to make yourselves w****s! Is this a temple, or brothel for prostitutes?!”

            There are no words adequate to describe the way Sister Eleanor looked at me. It was the first time I’d voiced my opinions concerning the cult, and as soon as the words had been expelled I felt the gravity of them.

            “It’s our custom,” she muttered. “A sacrifice of the body.”

            “The body’s a-burnt in sacrifice. I see only lust bedded here.”

            How deep was my embarrassment at seeing her bare her breasts thrust at me. From the divan I tore a sheet and forced her to wrap herself in it, but shivering and huddled up in her sheet, she seemed somehow more shameful than before.

            “You reject Sol by scorning her bed!” she hissed.

            “Goodnight, Sister.”

            She cried out obscenities, clutching her garment close to her naked breasts. What loathsome noises that woman could make! It was then I quit her presence, driven away by an uneasy feeling that caused my body to quicken hot.

            When I was halfway down those shallow steps she called out: “You’ve soiled me, Imp! May you be cut out from Sol’s sight!”

            For a time thereafter, I wandered about in the forest, assaulted by guilt. The sun rose and I took shelter beneath a slick-leaved palm tree. When I realized what I had done -- specifically, what it was I had rejected -- a moan rose from my throat and I clawed at my breast, not because I desired Sister Eleanor, but because I felt loss’s sting. Eleanor was not an undesirable woman; her body was plump and firm, and there was hardly another head of hair that could match her own golden locks. I could have easily laid with her, shoving aside my reservations so that I might take the same pleasures as the other Augustinians. Instead, something in both body and soul had thrust me away from that chamber. It was clear to me now that I would never be able to enjoy the same lot as the Augustinians. Instead, I was destined to live a life of hardship, governed by my sensibilities and not by my senses. How much simpler it would have been, if only it was the other way around!          

So remorse drove me, but not away from the temple. It was all I had known from childhood, and my mind could neither left nor right from it -- and thus I was tethered, and might have remained so all my days had not the world come to fetch me.

            But to remain at the temple meant offending Sister Eleanor. She would not sup with me when the devout gathered for their evening meal and wine, and when we met in passing she would keep her eyes from mine.

She must have drawn the younger Sisters into conspiracy with her, I believe, for they too would vacate my presence as if I were foul and unholy. Nor did these girls call me blessed Fae, but named me Imp, just as the children did, though the elder nuns and monks were none the wiser.

After all this, Eleanor’s vexation could not be soothed, and I made no effort to ask forgiveness. As much as she avoided me, so I also avoided her, and when I addressed her -- yes, I spoke with her still, though only for my own mislead pleasure -- my speech was tipped with poisoned words: “Sister Eleanor, how does your journey to Sol’s paradise? She must look fondly upon thy chastity.”

            Words as these gave fangs to her hate. Eleanor was no small saint among the temple’s devout, so it did not take long for her venom to spread to the others. Like the holiest of believers she approached Titana, who had recently replaced Austerus as head of the temple. Kneeling at Titana’s feet in humble supplication (or so I entertain myself believing), she babbled into the matron’s ear stories of how she’d overheard me conjuring the names of other gods.

It was not until two of the faithful seized my broom and dust pan from my hands and dragged me into the matron’s chamber that I’d any notion of this ploy. I was made to lie prostrate before Titana as she laid Eleanor’s charges of spiritual gluttony upon me, and when the name of my accuser was disclosed I could not so much as feign my surprise. Why I so pushed thee, Sister Eleanor, as to expect your vengeance, I know not.

            Titana’s remedy for my religious illness was to remove me from my custodial duties and to place me under the jurisdiction of the temple’s strictest order of monks. Four weeks was I to spend among them in quietude and contemplation, wasting my throat away in chanting evening odes to our mother, Sol. Titana herself escorted me to their monastery, a filthy cloister at the far corner of the temple grounds. At its heart was a tall, unembellished cathedral, stained to the black by smoke and topped by a lofty parapet. All around the tower lancets windows were placed, so narrow that nary a bird could pass within. After I had taken in the galling sight of the cathedral, I turned my attention to the squalid dormitories which squatted at the tower’s feet. These were blackened stone too, but with shallow gables of thatched wood.

            Into one of these small quarters I was lead, where a cluster of scrawny, pale-brown skinned monks received me. They garbed me in green cloaks like theirs, before dictating their schedule.

            We’d wake before sunrise and gather on the chapel’s roof to observe in silent prayer until Sol appeared on the horizon, and then, in celebration of Her victory, we’d recite the Chant of Heaven until Sol had risen a quarter of the way across the sky. Afterwards, we’d take our first meal -- a soggy porridge fixed by the temple nuns -- before proceeding to meditate for an hour. Finally, the rest of the day would be spent copying from the Solar Verses and pouring over new works, deciding what was canon and what was hearsay.

This was the only part of the day I enjoyed. The monks had a far more comprehensive library than the temple proper, and it was always a pleasure to sneak a glance at those works discarded as “heretical”. These I took from a pile destined for burning without the monks’ knowledge. The writers’ notions were not mine, but they brought me delight regardless, with such unspeakable ideas like that of Sol being a man, that animal sacrifices ought to be halted, or that Luna too harkened equal worship from Augustine. When these texts weren’t available, the recopying of canonical texts sufficed -- with smooth strokes of the pen, I would lose myself in the rhythm of the words.

            Less than a week into my stay, however, on a particularly tedious day, I grew tired of copying the tome before me -- an early edition of an obscure hymnal -- and allowed my pen to wander on the page, following the wanton path of my wayward mind. On the page before me I began to draw illustrations of subjects from the text -- mountains lit by glorious sunrise, Sol with her sword in hand, deep and sweltering jungles of bounty -- and from the first letter of every hymn I designed an intricate piece, with ornate swirls and loops and small creatures all embellishing it, and each page of the text I would garland in ivy leaf.

Before long the monks found me out. Where punishment was expected, I received only praise, and they commissioned me to copy more pages after such fashion. The monks called me an artist, but at the time I had no notion of what the word meant.

            With my etching and reading to keep me occupied, my stay at the monastery, chanting aside, was far from miserable. It was actually a relief to be away from those whose presence had caused me difficulty at the temple. For the first week or so, I was even under the illusion of having attained some kind of tranquility. Midway through the second week of my stay, however, Titana decided to send for word of my progress, and who else did she make ambassador but unlucky Eleanor.

            Had I kept my peace during her inspection, and shown the remorse that was expected of me, it would have run its course and my punishment marked complete. Unfortunately, in the headstrongness of my youth, I’d no inclination to keep my peace. When Sister Eleanor approached, a desire came upon me not to allow that woman to have her way. And so with wicked glee in my heart, I put upon my brightest expression, to prove she was not the conqueror.

            When Eleanor entered with one of the monks, I was bent over a manuscript.

“He does good work,” said he. “We’ve been a while without a decent illustrator. If you’ve others like him, send them for reformation as often as you please!”

            I lifted my eyes from my work. Sister Eleanor’s face was drawn tight, lips pressed together in a thin line. When her gaze met mine, I grinned at her and she briskly turned away, hands shielding her face. She murmured a few words to the monk and sauntered from the room, unable to completely disguise her tears from me.

            On my final afternoon at the monastery, a wind from the north pitched against sun-bathed Augustine, causing all to scramble to the temple’s shelter. The prophetess demanded a raid on the orchard; we chopped down a young apple tree. Its plume was heavy and full, enflamed with white blossoms which it wore like a bride’s gown, and its branches were virgin of fruit. A shudder seized the tree each time the axe struck, and at last it gave up a groan of pain and crashed to our feet, shucking its maiden garb in a flurry of mangled petals and dead leaves. Upon the apple tree’s fallen trunk I gazed, feeling an awful chill at the sight of such a pathetic sacrifice, and I wondered what good might be gained from it.

            At the temple’s hearth, our victim burned. As I kept watch over the last glowing embers, I spied Sister Eleanor huddled amongst the crowd, but I paid her no heed. Throughout my stay at the monastery, I had at numerous times plotted some weak-minded revenge or another upon her, but in cutting down the apple tree I’d somehow managed to sever myself from the last of my childish ways -- as the tree’s thick amber lifeblood slicked the altar, it was like a fog cleared from my mind that had previously rendered me insensible. In those moments, I vowed to make a quiet return to my work, and perhaps even join the monastery permanently.

            But my vow came too late, for as the final embers faded, in scrambled the prophetess from the vestibule where she’d been reciting incantations against the storm.

“Demons!” she shrieked. “They’ve brought their demons with them!”

            We rushed out onto the temple’s front steps, a-twitter with fear and astonishment. Swirling in the gale were leaves of unnatural color, some red as blood, and others orange and yellow like flakes of fire.

            There was a moment when I stood ape-mouthed and struck dumb, as my fellow Augustinians faded in periphery until my vision was a focused pinprick of clarity.

            What came rattling from the jungle was a full-blown caravan, the first of its kind I had ever seen. A pair of weary, seal-brown horses led the haul, snorting madly with sweat trickling down their flanks. Behind them clattered a wagon whose wooden, clog wheels were not all quite the same size, causing the carriage to jostle about with every rotation of the wheels. The wagon was topped off by a canopy which had probably been brilliantly plumed once, but time and weather had stripped its paint to a dull, homologous assortment of hues. Some of the canopy’s gold foil trim remained intact, but only just -- it was filthy and tarnished, in some places shredded and mangled and in others trailing pathetically in the wind, like the leafy creepers I’d seen tangled in the jungle’s canopy.

            Behind the wagon others yet came, all pulled by horses in an equal state of disrepair. Alongside the wagons, men and women kept pace. At first I believed my eyes were playing tricks, for these people were pale and dark haired, exactly like me! Though I’d heard of the fair complexion of the Northerners before, to see these people in the flesh was an entirely different matter. I could not speak; I cupped my mouth with my hands and kept quiet as the caravan drew close.

            “They’ve got no color to them!” one of the children exclaimed. “Just like our Imp!”

            I might have laid that boy low, even though he was only half the size of me, had I not been preoccupied by the man dressed in thick, unusual clothing who strode out to meet us with a bundle of rags in his arms. He was impressive in height, but skinny as a reed and with skin the color of dandelion milk. When youth’s prime is just passing away, its flowers dry and beginning to wither but for all its creases no less beautiful -- such was the stage in life that I would categorize the man. Though he carried the weight of his years in the bags of his eyes and the lines of his forehead, the handsome spirit of youth lingered in his features. His cheeks were carved out below the bone, though the apples themselves were high and shapely, and between these cheeks there rose a narrow, hooked nose that jutted out at its bridge. His cheeks, nose, and the long, narrow shape of his face were completely unlike those of the Augustinians. Russet locks were plastered against his forehead, his bangs falling all the way down to his thick, bushy eyebrows.

            “What dost thou want of us, milkweed?!” hissed the prophetess.

            “Just your favour, ma’am,” he replied, “and maybe a hole to bunker down from this blasted wind!”

            “Thou hast brought portents of fire and blood with thy storm. Send them away, or we shall rip your band apart at the altar!”

            “Demons? What, the leaves? They told me you were a superstitious lot, I s’pose. It’s just a little blow-over from the north; it’s been one hell of a winter. Lost some of our trees up in the borderlands -- changed color and died just like that! Surprised you’ve never seen them blow this way before, but like I said, it’s been a hell of a winter.”

            As soon as the Northerner finished speaking -- and even now I have difficulty believing it was not just a dream -- the gusts went silent and their omens fluttered gently to the ground. While the others all held their breath in awe and reverence, I reached for a leaf that had come to settle at my feet. It was dry and creased like parchment, and crumbled to dust when I closed my hand around it.

            “What do you desire, traveler?” the prophetess demanded, cheeks gone pale. “Speak!”

            Her words snatched my away attention from the leaves and I realized that the stranger was peering directly at me. No expression touched his face except a small, half-crooked smirk.

To the prophetess he said, “We’re looking for a place to spend the night, if your goddess doesn’t mind us spreading out in her temple for a bit. Excuse me if I’m missing the mark, but that’s your calling, isn’t it? House the traveler and slay the heathen? I’ll say all the sun prayers you want, recite ‘em till I’m blue in the face, even -- look! My crew’s practically brained, they’re so worn-out.”

            “Why hast thou come this far into Our Mother’s holy lands? You o’er step thy boundaries.”

            “S’blood-chilling cold in no-man’s land this time of year, and it’s murder paying for a stitch o’ roof in Ambitus when you’re in my kind of occupation. These lands here are good for warming the fingers, but spring’ll set in soon enough and we‘ll be hopping our way back to the city before the fortnights turns on its arse.”

            I’d never heard of Ambitus before, but as soon as that word left the Northerner’s lips, the temple dwellers began to stir. Ambitus, Ambitus, the word brushed from throat to throat like a raging wildfire, till at last, with greater fervor, a hiss rose from the older nuns: Heathen city…

            “Oh you proud creatures!” cried the Prophetess. “Thou hast leeched our generosity from Sol’s very soil -- what other favour wouldst thou plead from us now?”

            From his arms, the Northerner let his cloth-wrapped parcel fall. It flopped to the ground, bandages coming unraveled. The prophetess gasped.

            When the body is submerged underwater for a period of time, it comes out shrivelled like an aged cottonwood tree, marked in runes like an ancient and illegible script. Such was the condition of the putrid corpse which rolled but a wing’s breadth from the temple’s steps. It was the first vision of death I’d experienced, for in Augustine the old and the sick always went off deep into the jungle to heave and shudder and breathe their last.

While the others shrieked and drew away in disgust, I could not help but remain planted where I stood, eyes locked on bloated, yellowed flesh and milky eyes that bulged forth from concave sockets where rot had all but eaten the flesh away.

            “Can’t be leaving the dead to set a stink in the place. One of mine. The snow-lungs caught him before we reached Augustine. Coughed his guts out the better part of this month, poor sop -- just a kid too. Well, he’s over it, all right, and good and ready to be put in the ground. Wouldn’t refuse a soul his rights, would you?”

            “Very well,” said the prophetess, sending a flock of fawn-eyed nuns scrambling back to the temple with a sweep of her staff. “You’ve a night under our hospitality. That’s all. Bury thy dead and perform whatever rites belong to your people -- and be quick about it!”

            Yet again, I felt the stranger’s eyes on me. He seemed as fascinated with me as I was with him. The round, brown faces of the Augustinians were already beginning to seem foreign.

Though I’d always been aware that I was from a land far from Sol’s cherished children, it had been easy for me to forget the shade of my skin when I lived among them day to day. Only when my eyes lit upon a glassy surface, and the pale character of my face revealed itself -- only then did the degree of my separation pang me. How much greater an effect than the still waters of a pond did the Northerners have upon me! No longer was I merely different; I was a Northerner. They seemed so uncouth, so rough and sacrilegious, that the thought of belonging to their breeding was detestable. Yet, the name of their home, Ambitus, stoked my heart with secret longing.

            As the Northerners heaved rucksacks and barrels up the temple steps (much to the chagrin of the Titana, who had only just arrived), and the cult members drifted away like spectators of a show when the curtain’s been drawn, the Northerners’ leader stuck out a hand to the prophetess, who gawked at it as if it were ablaze.

“Name’s Orchid, by the way. You have problems with my crew, you come talk to me, are we skivvy?” -- and this, Bard, take mark: when he said it, he was looking right at me, as if I were the one he meant to address!