“I think he could be,” Ren says. “An ally, now. He’s powerful, and he learns well enough. He could help save the forest. That magic—”
Basuin sneaks another look at her. Ren’s eyes are locked on her right hand now, where a blue glow rises from the white lines written into her palm.
“His magic,” she whispers. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never felt so…”
Her fingers curl into a fist as she trails off, teeth biting into her bottom lip. Effervescent magic bleeds from the cracks in her fist, running down her wrist and dripping from bone.
Then, Ren slams her fist into her chest and snaps her head up toward the dawning sky. Her eyes are narrowed, fierce and angry and pained all at once out of nowhere.
“Tell me,” she hisses, a sound he’s learned well. “Tell me,” she pleads, lips parted and empty. “Won’t you tell me what to do this time? Or am I still unworthy?”
A heavy, rolling disgust floods him. Shame crawls up his spine, icy fingers like knife-points in his skin. It hurts. Hangs from him like a ghost trying to haunt him, like a bloated, rotting corpse he carries back to the graveyard. This moment was never meant for him to hear.
Basuin knows, best of all, the futility of praying to gods that never answered. Until the wolf-man made its home inside of him. A blessing, or perhaps a curse, that this dog of a god crawled inside him and speaks to him. Just like Ren, the gods never spoke to him—not until now. Basuin closes his eyes tight.
Does Ren have a heart? Does Ren still have her heart?
“Right,” Ren tells herself. “Still not worthy enough to speak to the gods.”
Something hammers in his chest where his heart should be, quick and unforgiving. The wolf-man’s tail thumps against his ribcage, and then it throws its maw back and howls—a pained sound. Basuin scrambles back, panic racing up his throat. But he’s frozen.
Then, Ren rounds the corner of her home, nearly crashing into him where he stands unmoving. He couldn’t hear her over the pounding in his ears.
Fury colors her face, moonlight dripping like tears from her eyes and painting the blades of her cheekbones. Her lips part, poised in anger, but he opens his mouth first.
“I know of the elder tree,” he says, words a swift slur pouring out of him.
Ren’s eyes widen, but she culls her expression quickly. Her jaw tightens as she grinds her teeth together in anger. “What about it?”
“Hou-tou told me,” he says, “that the elder tree can sever my tie to godhood, if asked.” Basuin fists the godstone at his throat as if the edges could leave his palm raw. But for all he waits, Ren doesn’t react. The rage in her dies, and she stares back at him, almost emptily.
“Do you know how gods are born?” Ren asks him.
Without hesitation, he answers, “Prayer and worship.”
“Wrong,” she says, and he grits his teeth.
From the Winter River, his mother told, there arose a god, and that god was Sa-cha, and he was good.
“From the Winter River,” he tries again.
“Sa-cha did. But what of the rest of them?” He can’t read her expression.
“It was said that Sa-cha bled into the Winter River, and from his blood, the water bred another god, and then another, and then when humans sprouted up from the earth that baked them like clay, they would pray to the gods and more gods would be born from their cries for salvation.”
Ren laughs, but it doesn’t sound light. There is a ruefulness, a darkness like the one he finds in her eyes, that taints her breath.
“If gods were born that way,” she says with bite, “then godhood would be less painful.”
“So, then how?” he asks, fist clenched so tightly it could bleed the god mark from his palm. How was he deified?
Ren looks away and the glittering light that falls from the cracks in the canopy overhead dances on her high cheekbones. “Living animals dismember ancient animals.” Her voice carries on the wind.
New gods replace old gods, his mother said.
“People tear their gods apart,” she says. “They feast on their gods, drink their blood, destroy their body, howl their name in jest for a chance to play gods themselves.”
That’s how they fall out of worship.
