Hot tears streamed down Brittle’s face as he ran. The dark passage stretched on before him, bathed in the ghoulish green glow from his hollow eyes. He hurtled past the pit of sharpened stakes, beyond the tumbling rocks, and darted through the legs of a confused pack of saber-toothed marmots. It wasn’t until he reached the rickety bridge that his wee body gave out from exertion. He collapsed into a sad, unmoving pile of bitter tears and hollow wood.

Brittle hugged his legs to his trunk and squeezed tight. He grimaced, feeling his stomach churn like the choppy tide during a windstorm. It sloshed back and forth, up and over, again and again with no end in sight. His thoughts were more of the same. No matter how he tried, his mind kept returning to the visions – to the burning house on the hill, the little girl, and the horrible, horrible things that the person responsible for his very creation had knowingly committed.

A fresh bout of hot tears welled up within his eyes at the realization that it was all true. Mara, the Great Maker, the Goddess of Ill Fortune, was every bad thing ever said about her. She was bad luck. She hurt people. Oftentimes by accident, but sometimes not. A harrowing revelation plagued Brittle’s thoughts. It gnawed at the edge of his conscience, wearing his former convictions paper thin.

If Mara truly was all the terrible things she’d been accused of, what did that make him? How could Brittle expect to be any different?

The humans called him a monster. A fiend. A beast. An abomination of the natural order. Maybe he really was all of those things. Maybe the men in boats had been right to take the bog log beasts away in nets. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, when he felt like giving in to the current and letting it pull him under, Brittle found himself wishing the men in boats had taken him too. At least then he wouldn’t have to be a lonely monster left to fend for himself in a world he clearly did not belong.

A growing clamor pulled Brittle from his troubled thoughts. Muttered cursing bounced along the passage in the same direction from which he’d come, growing louder as the source of the noise drew nearer. Brittle considered clambering back onto his twiggy legs and tottering off again, keeping ahead of those that pursued him, but the nauseous sloshing within his stomach was worse than before. He sat huddled instead, too sad to do anything else other than sit and await the inevitable.

“This…isn’t…funny!” Mara came limping around the corner. Her clothes were drenched and her slippers produced wet, slapping squelches with every exaggerated stomp. The goddess’s right leg moved freely, but her left dragged behind her, slowed by the saber-toothed marmot currently clinging to her ankle.

Seeing Brittle, Mara’s posture lost some of its rigidity. She collected herself a moment later, and stood straight, peering down her nose at her bothersome tagalong. “Listen here, you,” Mara’s voice flowed with power. “As both your goddess and employer, purveyor of foods, dens, and tasty trespassers, I command you to release me.”

The saber-toothed marmot decided it would rather paw at her left slipper instead.

Mara’s dark eyes narrowed. “You dare negotiate with your goddess?”

The beast simply stared back up at her with black, unblinking eyes. Brittle suspected it wasn’t so much in defiance as it was the result of having played with one too many jute balls. In addition to making vicious beasts docile, monster wort often left its users with the combined brain power of a handful of rocks. Temporarily, of course. Unfortunately for Mara, the marmot’s return to clear-headedness was still some hours off.

“Fine! Take it.” Mara wrangled her soggy slipper from her left foot and flung it back down the dark passage, adding, “But that counts as your pay for the week.”

The saber-toothed marmot released its death grip on the goddess’s ankle and galloped after its new chew toy, disappearing around the corner in a blur of shaggy tan and brown fur.

Brittle’s sad gaze took in the empty passage for several seconds before moving back to Mara. He flinched, realizing that she was doing the same. Her dark eyes bored down on him, unconsciously chewing the edge of her bottom lip as she contemplated what to say. The goddess’s mane of springy, black hair was soaking wet and plastered to either side of her face. Her yellow robe, too, looked as though it’d been recently dunked in the wash tub.

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Oddly, there wasn’t any body of water between the rickety rope bridge and Mara’s home. The dark pools lay ahead of them, near the entrance to Stay Away Canyon. The goddess anticipated Brittle’s unspoken question and answered accordingly. “I tried to portal after you.” Her eyes shifted to the scrap of wet seaweed clinging to her shoulder. Mara flicked it away with her fingers, scowl deepening. “It dropped me over an ocean.”

Brittle wondered what he was supposed to say to that. If the goddess was looking for pity, she wouldn’t find any with him.

With a sigh she started towards him, slipping her hands into the front of her robe as she walked. The goddess’s expression pinched with sudden pain. “There’s a crab in my pocket.”

A bark of laughter nearly leapt from Brittle’s unsuspecting mouth. He swallowed it back down, not yet ready to admit that it was kind of funny. Stubbornly, he turned away from her, gazing out across the bottomless pit.

Kicking off her remaining slipper, Mara’s bare feet padded over, stopping a few paces short of him. “Can I sit?”

“Can you?”

Great Maker or not, even Mama would have tsked at the way Mara rolled her eyes so far back, they probably had to ask for direction to find their way out again. “May I sit down?”

Brittle shrugged, knowing his answer didn’t matter. It was her bottomless pit. She could sit wherever she wanted.

She settled onto the rocky ground beside him, mindful to keep the buffer between them this time. “I’m sorry for what happened, Brittle.” Mara spoke slowly, as if she too didn’t know what the next words out of her mouth were going to be. “It wasn’t something you were meant to see.”

Despite his resolve to keep quiet, the same question as before came blurting out all on its own. “How could you?”

Mara opened her mouth, but her tongue failed her. Regret softened the hard-set lines around her eyes.

“That was your doing, wasn’t it?” Brittle persisted. “The fire on the hill? Taking everything from that little girl? How could you, Mara? Mama said you were better than that. She said not to listen to all the terrible things the humans said about you. But I’m starting to think she was wrong.”

“The truth is not so black and white, little one.”

“What did the little girl do to deserve that?” Even now, back in his own hollow body, Brittle could feel the remnants of the little girl’s terror and rage bubbling up inside of him. Her hot fury writhed like grubs beneath his bark.

A strange sense of calm settled over Mara. for the briefest of moments, a faint smile pulled at her lips. “She had the misfortune of being born to loving parents. They were well off and life was easy. For her first thirteen years, she never had to worry a day in her life.” The goddess took a breath, steadying the sudden tremble in her hands as the smile slipped from her face. “And then it was all taken away. First her father, and then the house, the money, leaving her and her mother with nothing but each other. Her mother tried to stay strong, but she too was gone within the year, wasted away by a broken heart, leaving the little girl with nothing.”

Mara stared out across the bottomless pit stretched before them. Her expression had a far-off look to it. Brittle swore he could see shimmers of fire dancing within her dark black eyes. “She was angry and scared. She wanted to make the world hurt as much as it had hurt her. And so, when the God of Champions came along and offered her retribution, she traded her soul for the chance.”

The churning in Brittle’s stomach compressed to stone, sinking to the very bottom of his gut, threatening to drag him under with it. “The little girl was you?”

“I’m not proud of the things I’ve done,” Mara said softly. “But I was a different person back then. Young, naive, consumed with rage. I took Gabor’s deal and became an all-powerful goddess. I did not hesitate to inflict vengeance on those that wronged me. But spreading the pain doesn’t heal the wound. In the end, all my anger did was make things worse.

“I was not always a good person, Brittle. But I’m trying to do better.” She studied him from the corner of her eye. “Occasionally, the fates send a sign, reminding me that not all is lost.”

“Like putting a crab in your pocket?”

“Something like that.” Mara’s wan smile returned. “The truth is, I’ve been struggling lately. It’s not an easy thing to admit. But the fates have opened my eyes. I know now that I can’t be all bad.”

Brittle was still caught up on the sign. Crabs were interesting, sure, but he felt a sandwich would have driven the point home much better. It didn’t pinch, for one. And then, when you were done feeling sorry for yourself, you could turn around and eat it. The fates had a very odd sense of humor, apparently.

“How’s that?” he said.

“Because I’ve never met anyone as good as you. And if you were created by my hand, then I suppose there’s still hope for me yet.”