Chapter 47
a temple may be erected anywhere the gods can see
the home is a temple
and so the cattle shed
and so the skull.
—Meditations on the Vanished Arts, lecture series
The twilight is cut with the first strands of night, the wind low and lazy between the pillars, slinking like a loose-limbed dog over the cobbles of Astic. Lamps gutter, spit and fall to curfew. Shutters are pulled tight, latches dropped. Evenings turned to the spit and crackle of embers.
The hands of the people of Astic are scarred, scrubbed raw. Blistered by forges, scoured by pickling brine. The hands of the people of Astic are methodical as they set coals, stoke fires, turn skillets, push smoky hair from tired eyes.
Hundreds of little grey houses fill with warmth, with the smell of meat and oil, the close-lipped bubble of heavy-lidded pots. Bars fall across doors, feet slip under blankets. Swords lie loosely over knees given up to the whetstone kiss.
In the streets outside, blades walk on long, dark legs. The shadows are filled with the tall, thin strips of men who tend to the city as she sleeps.
As the last lantern goes out, the lights of the gallowswatchers wink on, one by one. The slow swing of their bones against the gibbets. Lambent eyes casting listlessly into the gathering dark.
The long men run fingers over the knots that hold them tight. Murmur instructions to each other. Carve sigils into skin, quick and precise, as Crowkisser’s instructed them.
In the warming houses, the timbers stretch and settle as they shake off the evening cold. Strong arms tickle squealing ribs, and small heels kick a frenzy of rushes and laughter and bathwater.
Ladles swim and stir, and steam rises to the eaves which shuffle with rats and owls.
Lips brush each other, stubble against cheek. Quick handclasps are snatched against ranges, by bedsides, beneath covers.
In the streets, the long men climb the winding path to the old temple.
It stays open to the sky, its belly boned with pillars which hint at the ghosts of carvings.
These are the spaces where the story of the gods used to be told, spaces where offerings could be left to the hosts and priests, in hope of wisdom, or favour, or peace.
Their hands are quite full with different offerings by now. With meat, bones and secrets. Sometimes, they carry them two abreast, their long limbs bowing under the strain.
Above their heads, the moon is a coin in the clouds. Above the clouds, the first black specks of crows begin to spin and fall towards Astic’s sleeping heart.
In the cottages, sleep-lidded eyes turn pale faces to flames, to voices, to stories. Small hips are set on tired legs, which become horses for knights and dragons for wizards. Strong hands scratch small skulls, tuck stray hair behind soap-pink ears impatient for the story.
So familiar voices tell a familiar tale, and it starts like this:
‘First there were the crows. And then, there was the Crowkisser.’
She stands at the entrance to the old temple, scrimshawed out of shadows. Her eyes are weary, her body bent back into the smoky sculpt of the Slickwalker. His arms lace her hips like a belt, his fingers tracing small curves on the edges of her tiredness.
The path unfurls down the temple hill, wet with recent rain. Crows chuck and worry over the scraps caught between the canted stones.
The long men lay their burdens at her feet. She sifts them rapidly, methodically. Brutally. Sometimes she cries. Sometimes she screams. Sometimes she tests things with the edge of her teeth.
She is searching for the future.
The long men wait with eyes downcast. Slickwalker moves among them, touching shoulders, murmuring encouragement, balancing blades. Once, he stoops to ruffle the hair of a slimmer shadow, adjusting the tuck of its scarf.
Crowkisser digs, her hands deep in the belly of the city. She sifts rope and leather and flesh. Fishbones and dogsteeth. Glass and clay and piss. Slowly, she feels Astic begin to breathe under her feet.
And the story carries on. Around cupped mugs and crossed legs and waiting hearts.
‘First there were the crows. And then there was the Crowkisser. Alone on the bloody beach. And the sand red, red and red again.’
‘Red again,’ the little ones chant, and giggle with the fear of it all.
‘And why was she alone?’ The storytellers ask.
‘Because there were no ships.’
‘And where were the ships?’
‘At the bottom of the hungry sea.’ Hands sketch shadows of waves, of tentacles and dipping dreams.
The audience wide-eyed and sleepy, torn between the voices stroking their hair and the battening of the wind outside.
High on the hill, the long men draw their coats tight and raise their thick wool collars. The smaller ones cluster together. The smallest hold gloved hands, but quietly.
Slickwalker rubs Crowkisser’s back as she searches, his strong hands moving over her sliding shoulder blades, her wriggling spine. If there are words in the sounds he makes, the wind doesn’t know them.
Crowkisser is lost to the city. Her fingers are deep inside it.
She can feel its thick pulse, hear the words on the tongues of its people, feel the warmth of the small fires that blaze for miles around.
For a moment, she feels like a mother. Then the wind gusts, the crows call and she falls beyond the walls and the sky.
To Hesper. To where a ship moves out to sea and slips northwards into the old grooves of another rebellion. She moans low and long and chews her lip.
Flies onwards.
To Thell where the dead are too quiet, where the people are hungry in their heart of heart of hearts.
She sifts, pushes. Her hand rises against bright light and she sees a mountain fall. Unimaginably vast. Its depths opening up to spill forth a river of mouths that scream and scream. She can do nothing.
She scrapes her nails along wet stone. She is trapped in a fountain, she is broken and hollow and hungry and she needs blood. But there’s a wall between her and the world. Shifting, patchwork, unfriendly.
She is trapped inside. The latch will not lift. The doors will not break.
She falls backwards, and Slickwalker’s strong hands catch her before she hits the stone.
She is above herself. She is endless and vast and spiteful and blind. There are feathers across the stars. And she needs the stars. She needs their golden light.
Crowkisser’s legs scrabble on the slick stone. The long men hold her, soothe her, they straighten her neck and mop at her lips where the spit and bubble of prophecy drips down.
Her bones cannot hold the seeing any longer. The night discards her. She lands in her own weak body with the weight of a falling star. She hurts, everywhere. But she is here.
Everything remains as it was. There is still time perhaps, to save a little blood. If she can hollow out the mountain before her father arrives with his time-worn lies and false promises.
She stands slowly, swaying gently. For a second, she feels the brief hearth fires of the city spreading out around her.
The night is studded with fragile hearts flickering against the darkness.
She feels the world outside stretching out to snuff them, and something in her stomach aches.
She feels like a mother. And she is hunger, and pain and vengeance.