“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.”
20
THEN: TINTAR
Fear creaked and scraped from beneath his gray robes, pulling his skeletal body close to Brother Air, to the constellation that danced on the wind. “Why do you no longer taste good? Why do you taste like ash and smoke?” And the fate’s tongue lapped outward again, grazing the shining, dancing dots of light, but then the thin, white skin around his mouth wrinkled in disgust. The fate’s tongue retracted into his mouth, and then he screamed.
“It burns! My king, the zephyr has scorched me! My tongue! I burn!”
The fates all began to clamor amongst each other.
Fear swiped out his many-fingered hand through the shape made of stars, but the stars remained and his hand did not catch flame. Only his tongue had, the smoke seeping out of the gaps in his teeth and out from his small, hole-like nostrils. “How did you burn me? How!”
