The heavy footsteps of the God echoed across the Breaks as it neared the edge of the town. It might have kept walking, and disappeared into the horizon. It might have turned, and crunched homes and occupants underfoot. Instead, the God veered to its left, and began its strange circuit again.

Nessa Rawley watched it from the roof of her house. She had lived in Grackle her whole life, and had never seen one this close. She couldn't get over how big it was, as she let her eyes wander past its shoulder and up to its face. They told you Gods were huge, but Nessa hadn't been prepared for the way it filled up the world.

She watched as a flock of crows chased after the lumbering giant. That was another thing people said, that birds chased them, and Nessa was surprised to find that it was true. Typically, Nessa found that most things that everyone knows were about as useful as a fistful of shit. She was glad this was true, though, and watched with fascination as the crows dove at the God. One of them kept landing on the head, and pecking at the neck. Nessa thought it was just about the most bad ass thing she'd ever seen.

The God had been circling Grackle for three days. Her father was due back in no more than another five. He would driving twenty head of cattle with two other men. Nessa didn't want to think about what that thing would do if they tried to push past it. She had a mind to make a run for it, warn her father to hold up, but no one was supposed to leave. Plus, she was afraid to leave Spratz and Bratz.

"Nessa," a scared little voice hissed from the ground. "You're not supposed to look at it." It was Spratz, whose real name was Lucas.

Nessa hopped off the roof, a move that seemed to impress her little brother every time she didn't break her ankle.

"How the flark are we not supposed to look at it? It's gigantic," she said, glaring at him.

"But they said. And Dad says your not supposed to say flark. He says it counts just as much as —" he whined.

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"Flark. Flark. Flark," she said, repeating the favored curse word of the Grackle children. "Now shut the flark up before I take my flarking finger, shove it up your flarking nose, and scramble it around until your brains are so mushy you can't even say flark."

She thrust her finger in his face, and wiggled it around. Lucas was just young enough to take the threat as possibly serious, so he took a step backwards and clamped his hand over his mouth.

"Now get inside with your brother," she said, referring to Bratz, whose real name was John.

Nessa looked up at the God again. She was scared, and she was angry. It could turn at any moment, for whatever reason a thing like that did anything, and destroy everything she had ever known. They needed to be planning, or fighting, or calling for help. They needed to be doing something.

Instead, these idiots were listening to Mrs. Sparkless.

They called her Mrs. Sparkless because she had no eyes. She said that it was because she had no eyes that she could see what the Gods wanted, and so she knew how to keep them away and even how to gain their favor.

Everybody knew that was true, Nessa thought disdainfully.

What Nessa knew was that they had entrusted their safety to a crazy old woman with leathery skin and two gaping holes in her face.

It was actually Mrs. Sparkless' daughter who did most of the talking. She was a tall, severe sort of woman who usually dressed all in red. Most people just called her The Daughter. Nessa's dad said that her name was really Jeannie, which had made Nessa laugh out loud. Nessa guessed you couldn't play an alpha bitch if your name was Jeannie.

But there was a group of people that credited Mrs. Sparkless and her daughter with the fact that the town had never been attacked by a God. This was unconvincing to Nessa, whose friend Paris lived over in Stout. Stout had never been attacked, either. They didn't have a Mrs. Sparkless.

And yet every time there was strange weather or the crops did poorly, there they were, lining up for advice from the eyeless wonder. Nessa figured those things should have meant that whatever she was doing wasn't working, but apparently what did she know. The worse things got, the more they wanted to listen.

They were listening now. Nessa didn't care about the white arm bands they all had to wear, those were just silly. Ditto the sermons they were enduring twice a day. A waste of time? Sure. A test of just how hard she could tense her facial muscles before laughing? Absolutely. But the tone of the sermons was darker than usual. The God was here to destroy happiness, Mrs. Sparkless said. If the God sensed no happiness, it would not attack. If it found pain and suffering, it might even turn and walk away…

That worried Nessa, as did the strange mounds of dirt that they were making.

And none of, precisely none of it, was helping with the towering beast that was slowly circling the town. The beast that could, Nessa was sure, kill them all whenever it wanted, white arm bands be damned.

Flark.

Flarking flarking flark.