Late one evening, Mara, Goddess of Ill Fortune, took a shortcut home through the neighboring swamp. She was halfway across when the jeweled collet slipped from her neck and fell into the water. The necklace had been a gift from her late mother, befitted with precious gems of every color. The goddess stooped to collect the necklace and stubbed her toe on a stump. Hopping up and down on one leg, clutching her injured foot, the Great Maker spoke the holy words: “Curse the useless stump who will not move from my path! May you grow legs to carry you far from where my tender feet tread!”.
Unable to retrieve the necklace from the murky depths, the goddess hobbled away soon after, leaving it behind. As a tribute to she who created them, the magic of the swamp decreed that all bog log beasts be born with a precious gemstone heart, identical to one of the original stones from their goddess’s lost necklace. And so it came to pass. Generation after generation of bog log beast bore a reminder of their goddess nestled deep within their heartwood.
Mara slowly chewed a chunk of burnt sausage, staring into the empty space above Brittle’s antlers, deep in thought. “Are you sure that’s what I said?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember losing my necklace and then stubbing my toe so hard the nail turned black. But I don’t think those were my words. What I said was…” Mara’s voice trailed as her gaze dropped lower, realizing Brittle was hanging on to every word. “Less eloquent.”
They were seated at a massive pecan wood table. Mara had dragged the dusty pieces out from storage and assembled it with lots of muttered blessings. It was nearly twelve feet in length, fitted with an off-white tablecloth riddled with moth holes. The goddess insisted Brittle and Gilly sit at the end opposite of her, explaining that her powers were less potent at a distance. Not one for chairs, Gilly was situated beneath the table at Brittle’s feet, eagerly working her way through a plate of charred sausages.
Brittle didn’t care for sausages. The meat was overwhelmingly greasy and left a slick film in his mouth. He had hoped that sausages prepared by a goddess would have changed his mind, but Mara’s were no better. The skin of each link was black and smelled strongly of smoke. The inside was the exact opposite, looking as though it hadn’t touched heat at all.
Not wishing to be rude, Brittle reached into his pocket and sprinkled a fistful of dried silt over his dinner to make it more palatable. He noticed the goddess watching. “Want some?” he offered. “Gives you roots.”
“Uh, no. Thank you.”
Gilly nudged Brittle’s cork bark foot from under the table, volunteering to eat his dinner for him. Brittle shooed her away with a wave of his hand. While he wasn’t opposed to sneaking her his blackened sausages, it would be better to do so when the Great Maker wasn’t staring directly at him.
Mara skewered another hunk of meat onto her fork and twirled it near her head. Her thoughts drifted back to Brittle’s recount of how the bog log beast species came to be. “Do you really have a gemstone heart? Or is that just symbolic imagery?”
Brittle didn’t know what symbolic imagery was. “My heart stone’s an emerald. It’s what gives my eyes their hauntingly enchanting glow.”
“Huh.” The Great Maker seemed oddly puzzled over a design choice of her own making. Like any skilled craftsman, perhaps she was simply questioning the decisions made by her younger, less experienced self. She swallowed her bite of dinner before asking her next question. “And bog log beasts can reproduce on their own?”
“What’s that mean?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Mara’s teeth clenched, the grip on her fork suddenly so tight, she nearly bent the utensil in half. “Better ask your mother that one.”
“Oh.” The mention of Mama made his hollow body feel unusually solid. The weight pulled Brittle down with a force of its own, causing him to sink lower in the chair. “Okay.”
The goddess asked another question, but Brittle was so distracted by the impossible weight in his heart that he didn’t hear. He hadn’t meant for the tears to well up in his eyes. Tried his hardest to stop them, in fact. When that failed to work, and the tears only fell faster, Brittle settled for trying to hide them altogether.
“Brittle,” Mara called from across the long table, her voice marked with suspicion. “Why did you drape the tablecloth over your head?”
He barely squeaked the words out. “No reason.”
“Take it off please.”
“No, thank you.”
The legs on Mara’s chair scraped against the stone floor as she pushed away from the table. Her approaching footsteps were magnified by the cavernous nature of the dome-shaped chamber. Finally, her ominous footsteps reached him. Brittle held his breath, fearing the worst. He hadn’t meant to be rude, but short of running out her door, he couldn’t think of any other way to shield himself from her disappointment. He was a half grown bog log beast, for peat’s sake! This wasn’t any way to behave. All Brittle’s efforts to sound grown, to act like he knew what he was doing, and didn’t need to be watched over, were about to be for naught. The moment Mara pulled the cloth away would be the same moment she realized she wasn’t dealing with a brave beast, but a good-for-nothin’ baby.
Tentatively, Mara drew the off-white tablecloth back. The harsh lines around her eyes softened at the sight. “Did I say something?”
Brittle shook his head, unable to form words. He feared the impossible weight would come pouring out of him the second he opened his trembling mouth. He already looked like a fool. He didn’t need to sound like one, too!
Mara crouched lower. Her hand reached out to brush his cheek, but froze, as if remembering her touch had the power to cause more harm than comfort. She settled for a pitiful smile instead. “You can tell me.”
Brittle felt Gilly’s head rest on his knee, encouraging him to speak the words that twisted and churned like slippery worms inside his stomach.
Just as Brittle feared, he opened his mouth and it all came bubbling over at once. “I can’t ask Mama because she’s not here anymore. She got taken by the big meanies last summer and hasn’t come home. Gilly and I tried to look for her, for all the bog log beasts that went missing, but we didn’t find them. I’m starting to think they’re not ever coming back.”
“Oh my,” Mara said as she sank back on her heels, voice softer than Brittle had heard it all evening. “I’m, I’m so sorry, Brittle.”
He gripped the frayed edge of the tablecloth and rubbed it against his face, trying to scrub any evidence of tears from his eyes. “Can you bring them back? Not just Mama, but everyone?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she whispered, “it doesn’t work that way.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No. My powers only do bad things.”
“But you made me. That wasn’t bad, was it?”
She couldn’t hold his hollow gaze any longer. Mara’s eyes dropped to the floor, ashamed, probably, by the childish yearnings of one of her own ungrateful creations. “You’re not bad. My powers are complicated, is all. They never do what I intend them to.”
His own goddess was powerless to help. Brittle felt like a fool for thinking it could be any different. He slid from the chair, barely able to hold the impossible weight of his own body on his two rickety legs. “I think it’s time for me to go home.”
“Wait, I have an idea!” Mara said, her expression straining to reflect the flood of optimism in her voice. “I know someone who might be able to help. He’s another lesser deity like me. Edvin, the God of Ill-Gotten Gains.”
Gilly waddled out from under the table, sharing Brittle’s look of skepticism.
“It’s not a flattering title, I know, but he’s one of the few friends I have. We rejects have to stick together, after all.” Mara’s smile brightened as she stood to her full height. “He knows about everything that goes on around here. I’ll ask him tomorrow, alright?”
“Alright,” Brittle agreed, feeling some of the weight lift from his timber shoulders.
“Speaking of tomorrow, it’s getting late.” The goddess glanced over her shoulder at the motionless knight still laid out across her living room rug and frowned. “I suppose it’s time I get you all home.”