It is impossible to measure a winterless time. We know that four seasons equal one winter. But this was before the annual snowfall and chill that marks our time. It cannot be marked or measured. This was before. This was when four stars gathered in the sunless, moonless sky and made a family. They did not know what they did, and they did not know who they were. Their love for each other created children, and the four stars delighted in these children. It was through this love that the stars became individual in their manifestations. A man made of flames kept the children warm in the cold, dark sky. A woman made of stone gave them a small spot to stand on. A second woman made of water kept their frail bodies from drying out due to the fire and arid rock of the first two stars. A fourth star, unseen and unheard, without gender, gave the children hearts and minds and swiftness.
The four did not know what they had done by loving this way. They had defied the powers that rule all, the fates.
I cannot tell you that it happened “one day,” as this was before the measurement of days. But you can imagine that “one day,” the four stars were visited by the fates. They were white, skeletal, tall, and stooped. Their skin was pale, stretched thinly over creaking bones, and they were swathed in gray. Their number was countless. They claimed to be neither good nor evil, and the largest and tallest of the skeletonmen explained they had come to right what the four stars had done wrong.
His smile was a leer as he peered down at the four who stood in front of their children. His long, red tongue flicked out from a lipless mouth to taste the air of the world they had made. “I confess, brethren. I do love the taste ofnewfear.”
“As do I,” said a second skeleton man, peering over the first one’s shoulder, and his long tongue also tasted the air.
The fourth star, the one we know now as Brother Air, made a painful keening noise at their essence being licked.
“Who are you?” demanded the flame man, the god we call Father Fire. “Why do you loom so? Why do you threaten my children?”
The second skeleton smiled like the first one, but it was not a smile. It was ugly and hungry. “I loom because I am the fate called Fear. It is the only way I can stand, you see.”
“Speak later, Fear,” said the first and largest of the fates. “I will explain to them why we must rewrite their stories.” He turned his skull towards the little gods. “I am called Power, and you have wielded power you do not have.”
“What is this word, ‘power’?” asked Father Fire.
“Ha!” scoffed one of the shorter skeletons, flapping his gray robes. “He does not even know he is powerful! He is a fool. All four must be!”
The fate called Power scowled. “Hush. You are beneath me and beneath many of us. You are not in charge here.”
“You are certainly beneath me,” said another fate, one with broad bones where his shoulders were. “I am called War,” he said to the stars. “I am your end and your beginning. I will begin and end and begin again. Too long you have been without division. Your children will never be ridof me.”
“Or me,” said Fear.
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.”
