Chapter 2
Chapter two
Ashara
The Small Sin
Like always, I refused to look when we crossed the chappellum’s threshold, but I could do little for my nose—that smell. Gods, the stench of festering flesh was so strong I could taste it, even from the iron gate ten or so paces from the wooden doors.
I swallowed a retch.
The Dendralis do revel in displaying their spoils.
I longed to run and lose the rot in Dendra’s cobbled streets, but our enclave moved at a shuffle, delayed by the pieties of those in front.
Some had fallen to the limestone, on their knees before the colossal statue to our right, lurking outside the chappellum’s walls in the centre of its cloister yard.
I just wanted to bathe, and eat, and relieve my godsdamned bladder.
I thought of the lad and his stained, wet breeches. Of Adelaide.
The shuffle slowed to a standstill, as more of the enclave dropped like flies to render their dues.
Fanning myself with a limp hand, I debated clambering over them.
It was tempting. Would it be cause for a penance?
Would it lose me a leg? I turned to the source of their devotions, resisting the urge to tap my foot, or worse yet, leap over their hunched backs.
The pride of our enclave—a carved replica of the First, chiselled from marble, not the infamous bloodstone.
Capriche assured us it was an exact match, saying her likeness so similar to the one in the templum that, “even the High Druid of Dendra, the Dendralis’ great leader, would be at a loss to tell them apart.
” I paused my fanning, squinting. Surely, the artist had taken some liberties, for what babe would smile whilst dying?
Her little face was angled back, as if trying to catch a glimpse behind, to see Him, the one who clasped her shoulder.
Chubby fingers reached upwards, like Adelaide used to, in a plea to be carried or held.
The First was such a little thing, no older than two or three winters.
The Blood God, a veiled, robed figure, loomed high above her, almost as tall as the chappellum’s spire.
His red, marbled robes pooled at His feet, as if submerging them in His bloods, both knee-deep in a plague.
I shuddered, despite the sweat sheening my skin.
Some claimed to feel His presence here, in the shadows of the chappellum.
I couldn’t think of anything I desired less; He could stay well over there, and I’d stay well over here, and it would be better that way.
A pinch on my behind, its sharpness muted by my skirts, snapped my head left.
A dimpled smile lowered, its owner descending to his knees.
“Excuse me, m’lady, but the width of your hips is blocking my view of the Blood God, for Blood Demands Blood.” A familiar voice, one that had deepened of late, drifted up from the ground.
My mother, twenty or so paces ahead, was trapped by her own circle of praying Thromarrians, her back turned to me, face angled away from the sun.
“M’lady. I wish to be a good boy and pay my creator His dues. Now, be so kind and move your gluteus maximus, or better yet, get on your knees, too.” Disguised by the masses, Demetri tugged at my skirts.
He deserved a smack for that. My hand itched to move, to clip him over the ear, just as a smile wormed its way to my lips.
“Come on, darling girl, on your knees,” he whispered, low enough for only me to hear.
I huffed, giving the blush time to drain as I smoothed out my skirts. Descending onto the stone, I winced as my gown met the path, its surface smeared with muddy footprints and rotten leaves.
“Does this please you, sir?” I whispered back, unable to see his face past my wimple’s wing.
The flagstones under us practically shook with his silent chuckle.
“It would be more pleasing if I were standing, preferably there.” He motioned to the spot of space before me, the backs of two more of our enclave bent over in prayer a little farther in front. “So I could look into those beautiful green eyes whilst you put my—”
I pinched the back of his thigh, hard, earning me a grunt.
It was a dangerous thing to speak this way with so many ears not yet nailed to the doors.
Such talk would see our tongues meet the same fate as the cobbler’s: limp, torn, bleeding, and noticeably absent from our mouths.
It was a marvel that no matter the penance, Thromarrians were always defying the rules.
How else would the Doors of Judgement grow so heavy with fruit?
“Be careful…I bite,” I warned, flashing my teeth.
“Don’t I know it, darling girl.”
The enclave started to shift, legs passing us by as their pledges concluded. Waiting until any lingering folk had moved on, he snuck a little closer to my side. “Will I get a chance to feel the full force of your maw this day?”
I shot a fugitive glance over my shoulder. More had ascended. We didn’t have long.
“Mother caught us staring.” I was as disappointed as he. Demetri never failed to calm me after a penance, and this one had me feeling all wrong. “She’ll be suspicious this night.”
He tutted. “But Ashara, you must return to the guild…you’ve left the miller’s wife’s commission behind, and it needs to be done by the ‘morrow.” Silver-tongued as ever. “How else is her husband to wipe his arse without embroidered cotton and lace? Idleness is certain to earn you penance.”
My mother must think me the most forgetful seamstress in all of Thromarra.
Seldom was there a Seventh Day where I hadn’t left some project misplaced.
Not since our parents had forbidden us to meet those eight cycles past, even with his sister Adelaide as chaperone.
They were right to do so. To be alone together risked more than a tongue.
It was foolish, really, to gamble with fate, our bodies the wager.
“When the clock strikes six turns, before supper, I may have time to retrieve it.”
“Sage choice, m’lady. I’ll get the fires burning to keep those needling fingers warm.”
Another descended beside us, muttering parables under his breath like spells.
I rose to my feet, cupping my hands towards the statue, as was custom.
Demetri did the same before slipping into the swell of the crowd, but not before giving my gluteus maximus one last pinch.
Oh, he’d definitely earnt himself a strike for that one.
A hard one, to the groin, since apparently it had commandeered his wits.
Before I reached my mother, two acolytes emerged from the doors, and my stomach dropped. Clasped in their bony, white hands was the owl, one of its sides matted with blood.
Don’t look.
For if I looked, I’d see the doors whilst lying in my cot, behind the veil of my lids when I closed them to sleep: the owl, the tongue, the fingers, the hands, the wombs, all strung up like May-Day bunting.
Against my better judgement, I looked anyway.
Stretching the poor thing wide, they splayed its wings on the wood, nailing them down, one after the other—a mockery of its motion in flight.
My teeth clenched with each hammer, the air feeling thin.
It screeched. Oh gods, how it screeched and flailed, feathers drifting to the floor in a brown and white flurry.
Shutting my eyes, I did what most do when life becomes dark: I begged for some light.
Not from Him, never Him for mercy, but from the Other—the one who governs what comes after we render our dues and return our blood to its Maker.
Other, kill it quick. Let it die. Kill it now and let it take wing in the beyond.
Green as my dress, I eventually turned, making my way towards where my mother was waiting beyond the gates.
The owl’s mournful wails followed me, its agonised hoots tolling like bells.
I’d see them tonight, my penance for looking, as I lay trying to sleep: the owl that dared to defecate, alongside the tongue that dared to laugh.
***
“Perhaps Capriche’s blessing doesn’t extend to the bowel movements of fowl,” Demetri mused, swigging from a flagon of ale—“Just a flying visit to the tavern, darling.”—the liquid sparkling in the firelight.
“It seems his ability to predict the future is solely reserved for the weather and if the wheat will sprout. Though I can’t recall the last time he got that right, either.
Didn’t he divine we’d have flooding last phase? It’s been nothing but sun for an age.”
I prodded the small fire with a pincer, turned orange with rust. The smith’s yard was littered with abandoned tools, its shingled roof more sky than slate, open to the rains.
No one came here, and it was but a stone’s throw from the guild.
I would be home before my mother suspected anything was amiss.
“He made good on his prophecy of an outbreak of pox. Mother wouldn’t even visit the baths.
” I eyed Demetri over the flames, his mouth swollen into an obscene pout and his hair a scandal of curls.
A kiss and a wandering hand or two each Seventh Day was our ration.
I dare say it was worth it—to wait so long between touches left us starving, pawing at each other like animals knowing we had but a turn.
I chewed on the tender swell of my lip, recalling how his breaths had filled my mouth only a few short moments ago, his air my air, his spit swirled with my own.
An ache, deep in my core, grew harder to ignore, the addictive feel of him in my hand, in my mouth, no longer enough.
But we’d drawn lines in the ash of the blacksmith’s dead furnace, and it would be unwise to cross them.