Chapter 1 #2
Though the dogs would help her lug the deer back home, Merle still had to hack it into fun-sized pieces so she could cram it into her bag.
She rubbed her hands together, the blood coating them already cold and sticky in the watery morning light; remembered, for an instant, the summers of her childhood.
Sunburns, butterflies, racing through the fresh green fields to swim in the pond.
Gods, she missed it.
But someday she would come across her very last sacrifice. And Jinse, fulfilled, could restore, rebuild, return the light of the sun back to his rich brown earth. And everything Merle had broken, all the people she had –
She shook her head.
– everything would be fixed.
Warmed by this thought, Merle riffled through her bag for a hacksaw and positioned it at the base of the deer’s neck.
The first cut was always the hardest.
~~~
A new tower had sprouted while she was away.
Merle rolled her eyes, lifting a boot to kick it.
A mistake: her heel sank into the malformed clay.
It was small, too small for a human to fit inside – just a useless spire with windows the size of her fist, like part of a child’s sandcastle, leaning pathetically against a tree as it sagged under its own weight.
Merle sighed. She hadn’t even presented Jinse with today’s sacrifice and he was already wasting his energy on this bullshit.
Jinse was an artist at heart, he said. A creator.
While Merle worked to restore his power to its former glory, Jinse held court in his temple and decorated the forest with art installations for his audience of one: leaning towers, doorways leading nowhere, half-bridges, ugly statues that Jinse called crowgoyles.
Merle cringed at one as she passed, anticipating an argument about this later.
Thank the gods no one else would see these things. The Witches’ Association had already been by countless times, but thanks to Merle’s tricks – or Jinse’s, really – the temple and all of Jinse’s little projects remained hidden, and Merle was blissfully left alone.
Barren, haunted trees loomed high overhead as Merle picked her way through the overgrown path.
It was colder here, quieter; Merle rubbed her arms, wincing at the dry blood cracking and flaking off her hands.
Distantly she heard one of her familiars barking; another emitted a high-pitched yelp.
She whistled, drew all three of them closer to her.
The duffel bag, fat and leaking, dragged a dark line of broken twigs and trampled dead leaves behind them.
An ancient stone arch peeked through the trees near the end of the path.
One of eight, each lined with carvings of pomegranates and sunflowers and something Sister Rhea called a spider lily, meant to cleanse pilgrims before they entered Jinse’s oldest temple.
Merle traced a fingertip along the weathered cracks, smiling wanly.
Come home, Tawny had said. But this was home.
Over the empty moat; beyond more crooked spires, new and old, dry and mouldy; into the wide, dead courtyard.
Home, even in the cold, even when rain seeped in through the corroded ceiling.
Even as fields died, as people, here and beyond, gradually lost faith in what was once the most powerful of the ten Divine Crows.
Tawny’s inn had hot water and cooked food, fresh from the can, but Merle could no more abandon Jinse than she could her own arm.
Her familiars picked up their pace as they sighted their goal.
Merle led the way up the worn stone steps and shouldered past the huge door leading inside, hanging onto its rusty hinges by a thread.
She cringed at its noise – it’d fall someday, probably soon – and coughed on the dust that never seemed to disappear.
Once it settled she flicked a little flame into the clusters of candles arranged about the once-grand receiving room.
Her shoulders slumped, beads of sweat forming on her brow from dipping into her own small cache of magic. Pathetic.
She dispelled the familiars once they had hauled the duffel bag with her to the laundry chute at the end of the hall.
It opened with a whine, setting her teeth on edge; piece by piece she hoisted the deer’s carcass down the chute, one leg, two legs, three legs, four.
The body, hacked into three, was harder, required both arms and close contact; she’d have to wash her coat later.
The head went down last, glazed-over eyes disappearing into the darkness, the awful splat of it hitting the floor below making her shudder.
Merle stared after it for a time, remembering the feeling of hands on her back, the darkness of the vent swallowing her.
The laughter of her classmates echoing as she fell.
She shuddered again, this time with anger – old anger, ten years old; half her life! – and closed the vent.
“Hey,” she called down the stairs after scraping her hands clean in a vat of rainwater.
She fucked her coat and bag in, would wash them later, see if she could scrounge up a bit of shampoo from a guest room in The Kite’s Kettle.
She shivered, left in just a thin undershirt and patched-up trousers. “I’m home.”
The door hung open at the bottom, dim orange light from the fireplace beyond throwing flickering shadows onto the walls of the stairwell. Merle sidled through the threshold, her eyes immediately falling on the reeking pile of deer parts waiting for her under the mouth of the vent.
Connected to the pile was another mouth: a sharp beak on a raven-like head the size of a horse’s, and an impossibly long, feathered neck snaking all the way around the corner on the far side of the room.
Just as Merle entered, the beak chomped shut over the deer’s spine, snapping it cleanly in half.
Merle suppressed a groan and rubbed her neck, the sound making her bones tingle. “Thanks for the huge mess,” she said, shooing Jinse’s head away from the pile. “I just mopped.”
In response Jinse crunched happily on the bones.
He took one of the deer’s legs into his beak and skulked backwards, slithering, to his quarters.
Merle sighed indulgently at him and righted the wheelbarrow that was supposed to be waiting for her underneath the vent – and that Jinse had, for some divine reason, saw fit to knock over.
“You can scarcely blame me,” came Jinse’s odd, rasping voice from the shadows. He sounded like he was constantly on the edge of a cough. “Venison! In this economy?” There was a horrible slurping noise, a whiff of marrow. “What day is it?”
Frankly, Merle wasn’t certain. “Midway through High Sun, I think.” She wheeled today’s sacrifice over to Jinse’s alcove and added, a little spitefully, “Not that I can tell. It’s freezing out.”
“High Sun,” Jinse echoed thoughtfully. “Not my birthday, then.” A claw at the bend of a black, ragged wing emerged from the shadows. It delved into the deer’s body and daintily plucked out the heart. “What’s the occasion, then? Such a treat. Genuinely. You shouldn’t have!”
“I found it. And you’re hungry.” Merle knelt on the moth-eaten rug before the fireplace and rummaged through her own food store: an old orange crate, mostly empty.
A few cans of this and that – spaghetti hoops, corn, spiced meat – glimmered pathetically up at her, but Merle passed them up in favour of a suncake she’d swiped from The Kite’s Kettle yesterday.
“And so am I.” She lifted the suncake, Cheers. “That’s the occasion.”
“You didn’t find it,” Jinse said reasonably. “A familiar did.”
“Same thing.”
Eight white eyes lifted in the dark. Crinkled, mirthful. Jinse liked arguing semantics, prodding Merle into arguing back. She hadn’t the energy.
She ignored him and nibbled at the suncake as she surveyed the room.
The new puzzle she’d brought him lay unfinished on the floor; against the wall stood stack upon stack of books, many of which they’d both read several times over.
He was bored, stuck down here. Desperate for something to do.
She couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to stay sane all this time.
She grimaced when he cracked open another leg and sucked out the marrow. A pointed tongue dipped into the bone, slurping; his taloned feet clacked against the flagstones, satiated. Maybe sane was a bit generous.
Jinse made short work of the deer’s body. Merle didn’t like staring at him while he ate, both because it seemed rude and it made her feel queasy, but today, she couldn’t help but look. Such a large, fresh carcass had to help, to make some noticeable change in him.
In the fluttering firelight, she could just about make out the lines of his form.
Great, weathered black wings draped over him, ending with claws that each clutched a deer bone.
His neck, no longer extended to its full length, bobbed heartily with every swallow, the ruffled feathers stained with blood.
He held down the deer’s body with one foot and stretched his neck, his razor-sharp beak tearing off long strips of flesh.
Although his body was larger and stronger after ten years of feeding him, it was still not powerful enough to break through the pillars of black glass limiting his movements. A curse, he had explained when they first met: whether Merle had meant to or not, she had cursed him that day.
Ten years, and the memory was still fresh.
A fall, a fractured elbow; groping around in the dark of the temple’s cellar, searching for the exit until she hit something hard, heavy.
Shattering; a sharp sting in her palm. Merle’s stomach roiled, protesting even the faintest recollection of that sound.
She grounded herself in the here and now, in the warm bite of the fire behind her, in the comfort of a full belly, the taste of sweet suncakes filled with spiced squash.
In Jinse, her god, her protector. Her purpose.
In his chest glinted the last, most damning glass stake pinning his body to the secular realm: a black, knife-sharp mirror shard.
Part of the mirror Merle had broken, an artefact so old that not even the priestesses knew the depths of what Merle had done when she shattered it.
Eat, Jinse. Merle traced the crescent-shaped scar on her palm with her thumb. Pressed, gritting her teeth at the deep ache of glass she had not been able to dig out of herself, either. Eat, and let this be the last.
“You’re quiet,” Jinse commented through a mouthful of organs. He worked his claws at the deer’s skull, opening it like it was a coconut. “Are you fatigued? Do you need more begging beads?”
“No, save your energy. Especially after wasting it summoning stupid shit like that new tower I found today.”
“Oh, let me have my fun. I may not see them, but I feel them – my little projects, my decorations. They remind me of home.” Eight eyes flitted to meet hers. “Or do you think I enjoy this prison you’ve shackled me to?”
She swallowed a retort, the urge to shout Of course I don’t think that! at him. The air grew heavier, sucked itself from her lungs; Merle swallowed, disquieted by the change in atmosphere, and remained silent. He was frustrated. They both were.
“Then you must still be hungry, my dear.” He chortled. “My deer.”
The heaviness lifted. Jinse extracted the grey-pink brain and pulled it in two, and without ceremony he slid his half down his throat. “I know, I know,” he said fondly. “I don’t expect you to eat it raw.”
He held the other half, drooping, in one claw; with the flick of his wrist it burst into a faint white flame. The stench filled the room, charred meat and sickly-sweet decay. He looked expectantly at it, and when it didn’t extinguish itself he frowned and blew the flame out himself.
“Sorry, it’s a little over-perfect.” He leaned forward, with difficulty due to the pillars holding him down, and offered up the burnt, rotting brain. “You know fire magic isn’t my forte, but I do try. Eat up, deerest.”
Merle froze, the bitter stench making her head pound. A peace offering. The God of Clay, sharing the food he so desperately needed… But she couldn’t stomach eating it. Blackened, gelatinous fat; thick, coppery blood. Oh, gods, she couldn’t –
Jinse chuckled, a low, rumbling noise like thunder. He withdrew his claw, the brain. “Fine, fine. I know you’re very picky.” He plopped it into his mouth and bit down, his beak slicing through like butter. “Oh! You were right about cooking it first. I didn’t know I’d be so good at it.”
Merle let out a breath. Forgiven. She summoned a smile and fished through their games shelf for a deck of cards. “Strife?”
“No.” With one foot Jinse nudged a box of blocks towards her. “Tumbling tower.”
“You’ll just knock it over again.”
“It’s in the name.” He laughed when she hung her head back. “I’ll play right today, then. Because you’ve provided such a lovely dinner.” He tilted his face skyward, eight eyes blinking out like snuffed candles. “I can already feel the strength seeping into my old bones.”
Merle eyed the black glass jutting from Jinse’s chest. Willed it to move, even a little. “Are we… close?”
“Oh, Merle.” Jinse lifted a claw, pressed it over the mirror shard. They had both tried pulling it out of him, had both cut themselves on it, time and time again. Only when Jinse’s power was restored could he break free of the curse tethering him here.
And only then would his divine light shine again upon the world, and save it from the slow and painful death Merle had doomed it to.
As usual when Merle asked a stupid question, Jinse answered with another one: “What is that suncake,” he asked, still staring up at the ceiling, “to a roast dinner?” He tapped the glass, pensive.
“A suckling pig. Baked sweet potatoes. Grilled pineapple. Sweetcorn with butter. Fresh bread, dripping with honey.”
Merle’s stomach growled, but she refused to let on how hungry she still was. Another memory from ten years ago: one of the last summer festivals Heulfan bothered throwing before they caught on that something terribly, terribly wrong had happened to the world.
Unfair, she wanted to say. What’re you trying to do, piss me off?
But she understood. The only problem was, compared to her usual sacrifices – maggoty squirrel carcasses or bacon stolen from Da’s fridge – Merle had thought that a fully-grown deer would be akin to the roast dinner.
If that wasn’t enough, what would be?
And what would Merle have to do to get it?