There is an undefeated majesty to trees. They harbour so much life within themselves. Worms and birds and lichen, in their bark and in their hollows and in their fruits. Trees shelter and bring forth life, and we consume them and all this life that they produce as we sit under their shade and think nothing at all.

As a child my mother scolded me for eating apple seeds - she threatened that a tree would grow out of me. More realistically, I know, the cyanide in those little things might poison me. But I like to think that she was speaking the truth; that one day I will feel something rustling in the pit of my stomach, then tearing through me and emerging, shiny green and nourished, out of me. I will die and it will be new life, not death, that will be my legacy.

So, I still eat apple seeds.

Valdemar idly ran his hand across the lower branch of an apple tree, its new leaves still scattered and small.

“It’s a good tree.” I said, foolishly it seemed, because he cocked an eyebrow in response.

“Right, let’s get on with it.” He smiled. “How do we start?”

“Start?” I blinked. It dawned on me suddenly that Valdemar likely didn’t know a single thing about the Feast - did they even have any religious events in Woltair? It was such a strange, diverse land, that I imagined their festivals to be a mixture of every God in the sky. “Well,” I said, “we need a figure representing Asmara.”

Valdemar spun on his heel, scanning the fields as if he expected to just find the Goddess lying around amongst the empty, unsown soil. “I don’t suppose you have one on hand?”

“No. We have a small one at home, but I can’t go get it now…”

“Why do we need the figure anyway?”

“To hold the bowl.”

“And the bowl because?”

“To collect the blood of the community, before it is poured into the soil for Asmara.”

Valdemar hummed thoughtfully. “But there are only the two of us here, we don’t need a bowl to collect anything. And if Asmara takes from the soil, and so the figure is only a symbol, then we don’t need that either. Isn’t that right?”

I looked away, sheepish. My own knowledge of the Feast and its meanings were mediocre at best, for the Chaplain had never taken it upon himself to explain the reasons for what we do - and what did the common man care for what was a symbol and what was not? Years ago, people watched in awe as the previous High Priest slaughtered a manticore and made a spectacle of its flowing blood, and now the same people laugh and applaud the displays of floral, peaceful magic that High Priest Caine organises for a Feast once drenched in gore.

And the village found beauty in its single, golden bowl.

“So, what else?” He asked, breaking my line of thought. “A knife?”

“A knife.” I agreed. “But I don’t have that either.”

“That’s not a problem.” Said Valdemar, and pulled out a small knife from his inner jacket pocket. Its downwards-curved blade was only four or so centimetres in length, its handle wooden and worn. He caught the slight surprise in my expression and twiddled the tool between his fingers. “It’s for wood carving.”

“Oh.”

“It crossed my mind for a second that I should carve us an Asmara. But that’d take a while, and I’m conscious we don’t have much time. I could show you sometime. If you’d like.”

“Really!?” I exclaimed, then to reel in my excitement, “Maybe. Sometime…”

Valdemar took me by the wrist and placed the knife into my hand. “Cut me first.”

“Huh? Why me?”

“Well, who else is there?”

“I mean, why not do it yourself?”

He shrugged as if it were only obvious. “The Chaplain did it for the others. Isn’t that a part of the ritual?”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He was looking at me again in that way he did in the Chapel - judging, calculating, yet simultaneously dismissive of me, as if I was failing a test that I didn’t know I was engaged for.

“I’ve never cut anyone before.” I said, and it was true. “You’d really be better off doing it yourself.”

But Valdemar, as I was quickly learning, was a stubborn creature not to be argued with by the likes of me. “But you’ve spent so much time with the Chaplain. You’ve seen how he does it, haven’t you? Take this as another way, as you called it, to show your faith.”

And did that convince me? A little. I was acutely aware that I was shirking my duties to the Chaplain by being here; in turn, I did not fully believe that carrying this out without his permission was allowable in the eyes of Asmara.

But I liked the way the Chaplain helped the villagers, the way they put all their trust into his hands as he guided them to a religious reverie achieved only through the steady fall of blood into the earth. For once, I wanted to feel trusted too.

“Fine. But don’t blame me if it hurts.” I said.

“I expect nothing less.” Valdemar smiled pleasantly.

He walked closer to the tree and rolled up his sleeve. I came to stand behind him and, gingerly, took him by the wrist. I noted the softness of his tanned, unblemished skin and found myself unable to do anything more than raise the knife - the weight of it in my hand was unfamiliar and threatening.

“Don’t worry,” encouraged Valdemar.

Reluctantly I pressed the tip of the knife into the side of his hand, just below the basal joint of the thumb. The blade must’ve been sharpened recently - it broke the skin with ease, and Valdemar hissed as the cold metal met his flesh. I started to draw the knife onwards, but for some reason he took a step back, so his back was against my chest. I paused, wondering if this was already proving to be too much for the both of us.

But there was no hint of hesitation in his voice when he said, “Deeper, Gustav… we’ll be here all day at this rate.”

So I held him tight and pushed deeper, feeling him tense up suddenly against me. He tilted his head back to rest on my shoulder, his pretty sun-kissed neck exposed and vulnerable. Beads of blood pooled at the tip of the knife and travelled down his hand, leaving a crimson trail as it dripped down into the soil.

There was a prayer to be said here, a plea to the Goddess for something or other, but my head was full with the scent of his hair - hazelnut, vanilla, something else unique and wholly him - and the warmth of his shuddering body pressed against my chest. I listened to his trembling breaths and the pained hisses that he was trying hard to bite back, and I pushed down harder, wanting only to draw more of those sounds out of him.

He let out a strained gasp; without thinking, I let go of his wrist and instead wrapped my arm around his waist, bent my head towards him to better hear his quickened pulse. “Wait-” I think he said, but it was distant, like a voice from under the sea, and I was conscious that his waist was even thinner than I had imagined and it fit so well into my embrace.

I was dimly aware that he was saying something, a desperate murmur… enough…? And how sweet his voice was! Like harp music in the Chapel.

He shoved my arm away and broke free from my hold.

The sudden movement broke my reverie. I looked at Valdemar, saw that he looked pale and was staring at me with wide, frightened eyes. He held his hands clutched to his chest, so I could not see what damage I might’ve done, and a stupid thought crossed my befuddled mind; it’ll be so difficult to wash the blood out of his clothes. I looked down at the knife then, a part of me somewhat surprised to see it still in my hand - some of the blood had seeped into the wooden handle, and a slim trail ran down the blade and into my palm.

It all dawned on me so slowly - the confusion, the piecing together of what I’d done mere moments ago, the dizzying sickness of realisation. I tasted metal.

Oh, Goddess, was I going crazy?

They will be abnormally pale, as if their blood was sucked in the night without a single wound left behind, and often too delirious to speak those —

“...Are you alright?”

Valdemar was standing next to me again. Strange, he no longer looked pale, or frightened, and that shift in his demeanour only rattled me more. “You did well.” He said.

I shook my head. Even as he reassured me, he kept his damaged hand hidden.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and my own voice sounded distant, wrong.

“Sorry?”

It kept replaying in my mind - how I had lost myself.

Was it his beauty, my want for him? The scent of his hair, the flexing of his muscles against my chest, the tilt of his head that made me wish he’d turn towards me a little more so our ritual could be sealed with a kiss? Even though I recognised the joke of it all; a man I hadn’t spoken to before today, a man I’d only watched for a week, a man whose nineteen years were spent across the ocean, dancing to music I’d never heard, and yet I dared…?

But maybe it was not him. Did it matter that it was him? The knife sank into his flesh and the pain it drew out had captivated me, ensnared me into the very trap that had been promised me since birth. Maybe, if I listened now, I would be able to hear the shudders of a second heart in motion.

How it all made me sick.

“I need to go back - the cow. I’m sorry.” I said to him, though we both must’ve known that it was too late for that.

Valdemar looked like he wanted to say something else, and maybe he did, but I had already turned and walked - no, ran, I must’ve ran - through the fields, the trees, and the horrors of a predestination that, until then, I had never truly learned to fear. `