Brittle stood in the middle of the Great Maker’s kitchen, wondering for the life of him what it meant to ‘put the tea on’. On what? The table? The floor? The humming ice box? As Mara currently had her hands full keeping Sir Thomassin from turning all stab-happy again, Brittle decided against bothering her with pesky follow up questions. Thus, he tottered around the towering kitchen island, resolved to figure it out on his own. He drew open the strange hinged door on Mara’s clay stove and peeked tentatively inside. Red and orange embers glowed like sinister eyes in the dark back at him.
“Son of a gum tree!” Brittle snapped the door shut with a terrified squeak. “Stay out there, Gilly Girl. Unimaginable evil lurks within the heart of the Great Maker’s stove.”
Gilly stood on alert near the end of the kitchen. With her angular head held high and tail stiff and pointed, she seemed more concerned with what was taking place in the living room than she was preventing Brittle from catching fire.
Brittle shuddered, giving the stove a wary distance. He’d learned his lesson not to meddle with fire after playing with the matches left by some careless trappers. Luckily it was only their boat that caught flame and not Brittle himself. Still, watching the way the hungry blaze lapped up the dried, sunbaked wood had left him with a cautious respect for fire. Gilly had insisted they use the remaining matches to burn the rest of the trapper boats to ashes afterwards. In the end, she grudgingly settled for throwing their nasty traps in the swamp instead.
Eager to rejoin the rest of the company, Brittle resolved to forge on ahead regardless of his severe lack of culinary knowledge. Whatever he came up with surely couldn’t be any worse than Mara’s boiled shoe leather. He filled the kettle from the water pitcher on the counter and rummaged through the row of clay jars aligned along her back counter. He lifted the lid of each and sniffed its contents before deciding whether to put it back or add a dash to the kettle. Satisfied with his mystery brew, he gave the contents a vigorous stir and then fitted the kettle lid in place.
Mara’s collection of mismatched teacups was already arranged on the short-legged table by the couch, awaiting tea. Gilly made herself at home under the table as Brittle poured. He mimicked the way the goddess had served her guests earlier that day by sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and uttering colorful words each time a drop of liquid sloshed over the chipped rim of a cup.
Brittle noticed Mara watching, eyes wide and teeth clenched in obvious astonishment. He smiled back. “I’m a fast learner.”
“I’m going to have to start watching what I say around you.” The goddess swept over to the dining area and returned, dragging a wood chair behind her. The chair legs scraped against the stone with a screech before its sounds were muffled by the rug. Mara set the chair down and then sat, mindful to maintain the anti-ill-fortune buffer between her and the couch.
“Tea? Brittle offered her a room temperature cup.
Mara hesitantly accepted. She lifted the cup to her mouth and inhaled sharply through her nose. “What did you put in this?”
“I dunno. Stuff?” Brittle watched her like a hawk watched a mouse, hungry for her approval.
Oddly, the goddess suddenly looked like the mouse being watched by the hawk. Wide-eyed, hand trembling with excitement, she braved a tentative sip. A moment of silence slowly ticked past before the customary furrow in her brow doubled down on its efforts. “How?” she demanded, glaring accusingly at the cup. “How does it actually taste good?”
Brittle’s hollow bones swelled with sudden warmth, like the first kiss of sunshine on a bitter winter morning. “I did good?”
“Not fair,” Mara muttered under her breath. She made a halfhearted flourish with her free hand, announcing, “As your goddess, I hereby appoint you in charge of the tea from now on.”
Gainful employment at last! And to think, just the day before he’d been nothing more than a young, naive bog log beast jobless and without purpose, chasing a lizard through the swamp for his breakfast. Oh how much brighter the world seemed. Unable to hide his beaming smile, Brittle settled onto the flounced couch alongside Sir Thomassin and offered him his tea. “For you, sir.”
Sir Thomassin stared straight ahead. Like a stunned fish, his gaping mouth opened and closed, unable to produce sound.
“I think he’s broken.” Brittle whispered across the table to Mara, “Got any swamp ooze? That’ll cure whatever ails you, Mama always said.”
“He’s in shock,” Mara explained.
“From what?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Identity crisis, I imagine.”
Finally, Sir Thomassin responded. His voice was as soft as the summer evening breeze wafting between the cattails. “I can never return home.”
Gilly thumped her tail from beneath the short-legged table.
“Gilly says you’re being dramatic. And you should stop, because that’s my job,” Brittle translated before fully realizing what he was saying. He glared down at the grinning lizard fiercely. “Hey! That’s not all I do. I’m the official tea putter-onner now too, you know.”
Sir Thomassin ran a trembling hand down his dirtied face, flaking some of the dried dirt and blood loose from his forehead as he did so. The flakes drifted downwards, reminding Brittle of cottonwood fluff, before settling onto the knight’s lap. “You don’t understand. King Eluard said so himself. ‘Don’t come back until the job’s done.’”
Mara set her empty teacup aside and smoothed the wrinkles in her nightgown, stating, “It’s hard to feel sorry for you when the job in question involves killing me.”
Sir Thomassin gave no indication that he’d heard her reply. He continued, voice wavering, “Being a knight is all I’ve ever known. My whole life has been towards a single focus. The schooling, the years grueling away as a page, and then a squire, all for nothing.”
“So sad.”
“If I no longer have a pure heart, then I can no longer be a Noble Knight, either. I…I don’t know what else to be.”
Brittle leaned closer and gave the man’s metal knee a sympathetic pat. “You could always try your hand at dramatic. The position’s open now that I have an official job.”
All Sir Thomassin managed with a little squeak, pitiful, like the water shrew seconds before the owl’s mighty talons closed in around it.
“Oh for my sake.” Mara rolled her head back with a groan, dark curls bouncing along her collarbones. “I can’t believe I’m having to explain this to a grown man. There’s no such thing as a pure heart. It’s all a crock of…”
The goddess’s dark eyes darted to Brittle. The last word of her sentence was forced through tightly clenched teeth. “Shrimp.”
Crock of shrimp. Brittle nodded sagely, vowing to remember that one for the future. He didn’t quite grasp the meaning, but figured he could narrow down the context by testing it on the next unsuspecting conversationalists he came upon. The friendly witch was going to be in for such a treat.
“It is not a crock of anything!” Sir Thomassin’s slumped posture straightened. Some of the life returned to his eyes. Alas, it did nothing for the rest of his sad, swollen face, which remained sad, swollen, and rather unfortunate-looking at as far as faces went.
“It is,” Mara said with patient confidence. “I know because it’s a lie the gods have been feeding humanity since the beginning of time. You can forget all of that pure of heart nonsense, noble knight. There’s only one true way to kill a god and mankind has been going about it all wrong this entire time.”
The teacup slipped from Brittle’s fingers. It bounced off his leg, hit the rug, and rolled under the short-legged table, coming to a stop alongside Gilly. “I thought the gods were immortal.”
Mara shrugged. “Also a lie.”
It was a strange sensation feeling like the only adult in a room full of elders who should have known better. Brittle leaned forward on the couch, hissing, “Great Maker, please, be careful what you say. Between you and me, this man’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Don’t give him the power to kill you.”
“I welcome him to try, Brittle.”
“Well I don’t!”
Gilly hissed her agreement.
“Do you want to know the truth, Sir Thomassin?” Mara asked, ignoring the withering glare Brittle sent her way. A knowing smile pulled across the goddess’s tired lips. “The truth is there is only one thing that can kill a deity – obscurity.”
The knight sat silent and considered her words with a blank expression wrinkled across his face. Eventually, he was left with no other choice but to admit the painfully obvious. “...I don’t follow.”
“The only way to kill a god or goddess is to forget about them completely.”
Even Brittle had his reservations. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“Brilliant, isn’t it? This whole silly war, the great battle between mankind and the gods, is a total sham. A little something Gabor, the God of Champions cooked up. The more well known a god is, the more powerful they become. By stirring the humans into a senseless war, making them rage against him and his allies, Gabor is ensuring that his legacy is cemented for all of time.”
“No.” Sir Thomassin said as the remaining color drained from his face.
Mara seemed to be enjoying herself. Her knowing smirk transformed into a full-toothed smile. “Mankind was told that they needed the gods to survive, but the opposite is true. Without humans, the gods are nothing. You want to kill a god? You have to wipe all traces of them from existence.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Mara shrugged. “No skin off my back.”
The revelation slowly unfolded behind Sir Thomassin’s gray eyes. His expression slipped from denial, to anger, and then defeat, all in the matter of a single minute. “Oh my gods,” he said at last. “Even if you were lying, it doesn’t matter, does it? I can’t return if I can’t kill you. And if I can’t kill you, then I can’t return.”
The knight sank back against the couch with a creaky groan. “What am I supposed to do with myself?”
The answer seemed rather obvious to Brittle. “You could have some tea.”
And then maybe a bath. Or two. Twelve even, if necessary. Because as pitiful as the man looked, he was starting to stink. Brittle had the strangest feeling Sir Thomassin wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Might as do the rest of them the courtesy of not smelling like week-old fish.