19. Then Princess #2
A clacking sounded as the skeleton man who called himself Power brought together his many-fingered hands made of hundreds of bones. “Silence! We will be here for several eternities if this carries on.”
Behind him the innumerable white ghouls grumbled.
“You!” Power went on, pointing at the four stars.
“You have gone against the natural worlds. We are the gods. You are merely bits of light and dirt and have no right to creation. It is we who create the worlds, we who cast spheres into the endless dark and make people. It is us. Not you, little gods.”
“Yes, yes,” hissed War. “It is we who make them fight and fuck and die.”
“That word is a foul word,” Rowena gasped. “Now we know this is an unholy book.”
I kept reading.
“Oh I love to watch them die,” crowed a particularly spindly skeleton who stepped forward to the front of the throng of gray and white. “To die long deaths! I am Hate, and I am singular in my—”
“If you do not let me speak,” Power said, cutting off his fellow fate, “I will strip you each of your worlds and your powers. For at least an eternity.”
“Get on with it!” groused a new voice. The new skeleton man too stepped forward. “Let Power have his say so that I can feast on their children’s meat. I am hungry.”
“Thank you, Greed,” said the one called Power.
“What are you going to do?” said the stone woman, her arms stretched behind her, a too small fence for her sons and daughters.
Power stared at her. “I do not like you especially. Something in your manner challenges me even more than your husband does. As I have said—”
“What is a husband?” asked the water woman. “Why do you call Fire a husband? And why do you say he is Earth’s husband?”
At this, all of the fates began to screech and drag the ragged nails of their bony, many-fingered hands down their faces.
But while the pale skin over their cheeks split, they did not bleed.
Instead, they found the naked skulls beneath to make the most hateful sound—a wailing, a grating—dragging their fingertips into their cut faces and over the whiteness beneath.
The children of the four little gods began to shout, terrified of the noise.
“Please stop,” begged the stone woman. “You scare them.”
“And the air tastes so good!” screeched the one called Fear.
At this the fates ceased their screams and began to laugh.
When their terrific laughter died down, Power said, “This happens from time to time. We make worlds and we end them. We are forever at play in the sky, making mortals and breaking them and reshaping their existences. It has always been this way. But sometimes, a lesser star, such as you lot, accidentally makes a world. And we are to right such a wrong. First, we will strip your children of their magic.”
He held up a hand when the water woman opened her mouth to ask questions. “Magic is the source you have given your children. Their access to you will be cut off, and you will no longer speak to them. It is too easy a life. If they want to have that magic back, they will need to pay a price.”
Many of these words were foreign to the four little gods. Earth, Fire, and Sea were confused and could not keep up, but Air did. That god saw things before their family did, and that god began to grieve.
“And then,” Power continued, “we will put our own children into this world, and they will be at odds with your children.
“We will love them just the same,” protested the man of fire.
Power shook his head and beckoned forth Fear and War. “My brethren will put fear of the unknown and the need to hold dominion over the unknown into the minds of our children, and there will be an endless turmoil.”
“And,” sung the spindly skeleton called Hate, “when they do not succeed, I will step in. I am always successful at turmoil.”
Power rolled his eyes, except he had no real eyes in his sockets and so his head only gave a beleaguered canting as he let Hate finish. “Greed, you may speak.”
Greed also stepped forth. “I am like Hate in that I do not do very much to be a success. Just a whisper of ‘more, more, more’ in our children’s ears and they will want more, and they will take it from your children.”
“And finally,” Power spoke, “I bring you the last of the reigning five fates. The rest of these behind us are variations, and they have might to them, but it is these five who answer only to me, the king of the fates. They are the mightiest save me. You have met Hate, Fear, War, and Greed. Now I give you Death.”
From the back of the cluster, the palest of the skeleton men emerged, gliding instead of stepping. “I greet you, little ones,” he said, and there was a bizarre kindness in his voice. “I know you must be sad to lose your world and your children.”
“And what do you do?” asked the stone woman.
“I end,” he said, and there was apology in those two words.
“What is ‘end’?” she asked.
“I will show you,” Death said and reached far, far back behind the four stars.
And with a hand that had eight curling fingers on it, he plucked a wide-eyed boy from behind the water woman and snapped the child’s neck.
He set the boy down before the four gods.
“Sometimes, I am a sorrow, but sometimes, I am a mercy.”
The stone woman, the goddess we now call Mother Earth, knelt next to her dead child and put her ear to his chest. “Where is his heartbeat?”
The god of air gave another keening.
And that is how the four lesser gods came to understand what dying was. Their children began to cry out again, and the stone woman collapsed over her son’s body, holding him close.
“What have you done?” shouted Father Fire.
The goddess we call Sister Sea knelt next to her sister and kissed the stone woman’s cheek. “This is what an end is, then. And is this then mourning? I cannot bear it.”
Power nodded at his five mightiest fates and said, “Now, we right their wrongs. What is the price their children will pay?”
“For their magic,” Greed answered, “they should have to bleed or give up a part of their soul or mortal body. There is always a cost. Nothing is free.”
Hate rubbed his bony hands together, a scrape, scrape, scrape. “And take some of the magic away from some of them so as to create jealousy.”
War drove his bony heel into the ground, and thousands upon thousands of other creatures that resembled the four stars’ children sprang forth from the hole he made.
“These ones will challenge theirs for everything. Endlessly. A circle of woe and violence. Histories will eclipse histories will eclipse histories. And the origin of the first war will be forgotten as the next one is planned.”
Power turned towards the fate called Fear. “And you?”
Fear’s long red tongue was back out, tasting the air.
“I will be everywhere, in the hearts of both their children and ours. I will divide them simply by making them afraid of one another. I can already taste it. I will set myself up as a colossal edifice, a sign of good sense, a pillar of reason, but I will be nothing but myself. And those who help feed me will be given the courage of zealots.”
“You know what I do,” Death murmured, bowing his head to the king of fates.
“Very well,” Power said. “The five of you will clean up their mess. And I, Power, will strip these usurpers of their own star-shine.” He turned to the four gods. “Step forward, man of flame.”
Father Fire hesitated. He blazed in anger, the first time his heat had ignited in that way. Before it had been for warmth, for comfort, for protection. Now, he was fury itself. He did not want to part from his children.
“Step forward or your children will suffer yet more,” Power advised.
When he did step forward, he was picked up by Power, dwarfed by the tall skeleton, and he was flung into the sky where he erupted into shards of light that fell and faltered and collected themselves into an orb. His roar was bitter and impotent.
“You will be able to return to them,” crowed Greed, looking up at the lesser god now caught in the sky, “when they call to you for warmth. But only in bits and pieces. You will have to watch them from way up there for all of the eternities.”
The orb glowed orange and red in the darkness, pulsing and helpless.
“Step forward, girl of water,” commanded Power.
“I want to see this one squirm,” Hate added.
Fearing for her children, Sister Sea stepped forward.
Power’s fingernails grew into claws, and he slashed at her neck.
The pain was so great the woman began to weep. She wept so much she flooded parts of the tiny world her family had created. Her tears rose and rose, the salt flowing into the wounds at her neck.
“You will have to stay down there,” Hate explained, glee in his manner. He peered down into the ocean she had made. “You can only see your children when they dip into you or drink from you wherever you manage to flow.”
The little goddess had descended into the depths of her grief, but there was a thrashing on her surface.
Now standing before the children of the lesser gods was only Mother Earth, the stone of her body already splitting and shredding into shards.
“Oh, there’s always one who wants to sacrifice themselves in some misguided noble notion,” War said drolly.
Watching the stone woman crumble and reform into expanses of dirt and growth, he continued, “My children will do battle with yours for your old body, bickering over who owns what. You think you destroy yourself to feed them, but they will feed from each other. And you will have to absorb their bloodshed into your skin. You think you are their table? You are their grave.”
“Where is the fourth one?” whined Fear, sidling next to Power. “It tastes so good.” He wiped spittle from his lipless mouth, tongue rolling back out to undulate. “It mirrors their children’s pain, and they are so wonderfully afraid.”
“You will have your turn,” Power chided almost indulgently. “Step forward, zephyr. I may not be able to see you, but I know you are there.”
The god wanted their children to know they were not abandoned. They borrowed a bit of their brother’s light and their outline sparkled faintly, a mortal-shaped constellation hovering between the children and the fates.
“You cannot break what is formless,” said Brother Air, and the voice was sibilant, like a snake’s whisper in the grass, neither male nor female, neither mortal creature nor ghostly spirit.
“I am not to be contained by your understanding. I am less than smoke and more than flesh, and yet I am neither. I am the mystery in the universes.”
“What is it saying?” vented War. “I do not like this murkiness. It will use these speeches to dissuade them from me having my way.”
“Kill it! Kill it!” squealed Hate. “I can’t understand it.”
Greed ground his teeth. “I have seen this in other worlds. This is the unknown vibration that seeks to undermine me. It tells our children, ‘Oh you do not need.’ Or it says, ‘Look at what you have.’ It is a disease.”
“Abominable,” called Fear and stepped even closer to Power. “It is an abomination. My brethren speak true. We must kill it. My king, it is my turn! Let me have the little god. I will eat it and then their children.”
“Then do it,” snapped Power. “We have tarried here too long. Let us reshape this world and then leave them broken in it.” He sighed and seemed to collect himself. “You are my most mighty fate, Fear. Second only to me. Lick its essence clean from this place.”
“Oh, stop!” Rowena pleaded. “I am too scared.”
“No,” I replied. “It ends better than you think it will.”