Bhan took off his Face, and the villagers erupted in applause. He allowed himself a moment to pant, to be intimate with the exertion that comes after playing the Divinity. His audience’s expressions varied: the children’s mouths and eyes were wide, the men tried to keep their awe from showing while the women openly displayed theirs, and the elders cackled or hooted or applauded, or remained stone-faced. A few had wandered off during the performance – always a blow – but most had been enamoured enough that he’d performed the full hour without rest.
“And that,” announced Bhan, speaking from the stomach, “is why Dure searches without end – to find that which can never be regained.” He paused, allowing silence to settle. “So take heed, good people – and keep close what is loved. Loss waits always, but to obsess is to lose something greater. I am the Face Bhan – and from you I want one thing…“
“Humanity,” the crowd attempted to chorus. Most of the younger ones visibly panicked as they missed both the word and the timing, which was one of the most amusing parts of being a Face. They were nudged by the adults around them and, belatedly, managed to echo the sentiment.
The young man bowed, marking the end of a successful Divinity. He was moderately proud; he’d spun the classic relationships in a decent way, working off the intrigue ‘the Godslayers’ and ‘Slaughter’s Last Dance’ had bestowed upon the Raven and the Lizard. Divinity’s featuring the two had become popular, and Bhan had eaten only speartree tubules and cricket eggs for the past three days. He needed a good show. In the end it had been a derivative showing.
The audience cared little. One by one, small children were sent forward with offerings: a carved statuette or a well-knapped blade, a pretty rock or a colourful shirt. Only two approached with actual food – red onions and potatoes. The villager’s sunken cheeks and tired eyes obligated Bhan to refuse. He took them anyway. He was hungry, and the nearest trade outpost was weeks away – if his map was accurate. He’d refused food last Divinity, and it had nearly killed him.
He bowed deeply once again, and his audience began to disperse, returning to houses of mud and straw. The settlement was… pitiable. Very little could overshadow the gaudy House cities, the gargantuan Spires of Heltia or even the ice caverns of his homeland… but this village was the shadow.
It was dying – that much was plain to see. There were no dogs, or animals. What little clothes the villagers possessed were far too worn for the bitter cold. Most wore sandals, the tips of their toes blackening. The few enclosed shoes were little better: missing pieces and full of yellowed grass. People looked at Bhan, yet refused to make eye-contact with those around them. Some were covered in bruises.
The potatoes and onions were small and shrivelled. The walls surrounding the settlement had gaps large enough to fit a man through. Parts of their hovels were made from mud and trunks of sturdy trees, but an unsettling amount was built from speartree – rigid and bone-white, sharp as spite. Undoubtedly poor material for a home, but inflammable.
The passing Frost season had been cold, Bhan knew. Sometimes, the only thing that can provide warmth are the walls around you.
A bad place, Bhan silently concluded. Sick with a terminal disease. He would mark it off his map upon leaving, as he had done with the last two villages he had visited. And he needed to leave soon – as soon as they noticed he was only a man, they would recoup their losses.
There was a saying about Heartlanders: ‘Three steps from a meal, two steps from fertiliser, and one step from you.’ They were too fond of their sacrifices. With the Aching so late, they had only grown fonder. A Face’s reputation could only stretch so far.
The young man moved to accept the final offering, only to pause. A ragged greybeard held aloft a flute carved from spearwood – a material loathed for its difficulty to work and prized for its sturdiness. It wasn’t food, but it was possibly the most valuable thing this village had ever produced.
Bhan took it with a nod and slid it into his pack, and began hurriedly striding away, boots squelching in the muddied snow. The warbling rattle of a cleared throat stopped him. Inwardly, he cursed. He should have sprinted.
The geezer proceeded with a rusty formality. “Face Ban, if you ‘ould be so kind as to… sup, at my home.” Bhan turned, expression carefully neutral. “We ‘ave a, uh… spirit… matter.”
“Eyah old man,” Bhan drawled. The senior’s eyes widened slightly. “You lead.”
Inwardly, the Face seethed. What so strange about my voice? If anything, the way he spoke during the Divinity was stranger – the gods had strange tones – yet it never provoked this kind of reaction.
With a small gesture, the greybeard began hobbling deeper into the village’s housing – just as cramped and desolate as the rest. His stride constantly listed to one side. Clearly, the man needed some sort of crutch. Bhan considered offering a hand, but dismissed the idea. It would have been refused.
“What the problem un?” Bhan allowed a small amount of impatience to seep into the words. A fine line needed to be tread – make the man uncomfortable enough to kick him out quickly but not uncomfortable enough to refuse him food.
“W-well, Face Ban, y’see there’s a forest nearby.” The old man’s eyes flicked towards him, then away.
When the silence began to extend, Bhan spoke again. “Eyah, un. Saw it on the way. Why you not harvest it?”
All other forms of vegetation – besides speartrees – had been harvested or uprooted. The land around the village was desolate, empty of everything beyond the gleaming white of spearwood, the occasional wood stump, and snow mixed in with the faded red of dead grass.
The greybeard licked his lips. “That’s the, erm, issue.” He paused, then blanched. “Face Ban. There’s a… spirit, ‘aunting that forest.”
Bhan stopped. The geezer hobbled forward a few more paces before glancing backwards and stopping as well.
“What it do?” The Face kept his features still.
“W-well, we tried all the usuals. Lit up some ‘erbs. Gathered together and walk in. Arranged a sacrifice: th’ last goat we had. Even got some clubs, tried to spook it. It still attacked us, all the same.”
Bhan’s mouth fell open. “It attacked you? You attacked it? You stupid?” He threw up his hands, nearly flinging his pack of his shoulder. “Ox’s swinging ballsack! Why you not tell me, uh?”
“Ah, it’s just, I figured you-“
“What the wounds like?” the Face interrupted, spittle flying from his mouth. “They bruise? They cut? Anyone sick? Anyone die?”
“No!” the old man shrieked. “No one’s dead! Just bruises. Broken bones-“
“Broken bones?!” Bhan bellowed. “You sure? Absolutely sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure!” The old man stumbled backwards slightly.
Bhan sucked in a breath, held it, then let it go. The greybeard watched; eyes wide. “Apologies. I get fierce ‘bout this stuff. This serious business. Got to ask – you sure no one’s died?”
“Y-yes, Face Bhan,” the geezer responded, voice quivering. “I’m sure.”
“By the blood. Just had-“ Bhan’s eyes flicked to the elder watching him, perfectly still. “Apologies, old un. Need to skip dinner. I go visit your ghost. I manage to clear it – you see big cross.”
The geezer let out a short bark. “Th-thank-“
Bhan turned and began striding out of the village, trying to ignore the gurgling in his gut. The hovel’s reeked like a god had done its business in them. That stench – they probably burned dung. It would have ruined his appetite anyway.
He swore.
***
The forest was impossible to miss. Amidst an expanse completely absent of anything beyond speartrees, snow, tree stumps, and the occasional blood-red scrub, sat a densely-packed collection of trees nearly a thousand paces across. It practically dripped with promises of food and firewood – all the townsfolk needed to survive for just a few months more.
Unless the Aching came soon, it wouldn’t save them. And even if it did, the quakes might kill them before they could take advantage of the renewed resources. The village didn’t scream sturdy. Yet Bhan was a Face – it was his responsibility to bring spirits back if they strayed from the path.
He stood at the edge of the tree line and sniffed. The skeleton of an oversized elk was draped across a branch. Godkin. Most likely a Strain as well – the Ox hadn’t torn this area up for a few decades, now, so the monster had to be several generations removed from the original Blooded. There was an extra set of ribs as well – an obvious mutation, practically confirming his suspicion.
Bad luck for the ghost. A more potent monster might have absorbed the spirit into its blood, priming it for reincarnation upon the eventual bloodletting. Without any gods nearby, a Godkin or Blooded remained its only hope. Unfortunately, Bhan was neither of those things. He could only hope to contain it.
Still, all that begged a question: what kind of ghost slaughtered a Godkin, yet left humans alive? It was a strange combination. And if it wasn’t a ghost – maybe a timid monster or human Godkin – Bhan could only hope he could nail it with his sling. Or run faster than it.
It could probably run faster than him.
“Stupid idea,” he muttered.
The young man sniffed again. He didn’t have to go in. He could-
No, he did have to go in. If he didn’t, his Face would only be for show – and he had spent months making the thing.
He shuffled his feet.
He didn’t have to-
***
Bhan strode inside, undergrowth snapping beneath his feet. As soon as the boundary was crossed, he felt invigorated – alive. Certain death had a way of getting the blood pumping. It had only taken him ten minutes of self-reflection to make it inside.
Internally, his mind worked. If the being haunting the forest was a spirit, trapping it wouldn’t be easy. Its power marked it as either a former Blooded or someone with intense emotions – perhaps a combination of the two. Either were particularly volatile.
Most ghosts were more subtle creatures; formed of shadow, perceptible to the very young, the very mad, or the spiritually gifted. That had been the case with all shades Bhan had encountered before. This one was different. It could only be a hungry dead.
The forest sung beauty like nothing outside the Heartlands did. Blood-red fronds stretched to impossible heights, entwining and separating in their search for sunlight. The bark of most trees was darker than black, each crack allowing fleshy heartwood to peek through – much like a punctured skull exposes brain. Their branches carved through the sky above, interrupted by speartrees puncturing through trunks and branches.
Beneath, roots fought and tangled with one another, vying for space alongside crimson shrubbery and the wilted remnants of dead branches. Lichen and fungus of all varieties crawled across every surface: brightly spotted; covered with faded stripes; possessing unearthly reds. And Bhan knew that no botanist could place any piece of vegetation in the same species. The scene was a stunning glimpse into a madman’s fever-dream. Only the occasional sunbeam hinted an outside world existed.
It was no surprise the dead wanted it.
Two short huffs left Bhan’s mouth. The sound of breaking twigs dogged his steps – almost silent yet somehow unnervingly loud. There should have been birds. There should have been animals. Only bugs – ants, beetles, grubs – lingered, slowly moving through an alien reality.
Dark eyes flickered across the landscape. Shapes danced at the edge of his vision; yet when he looked at them, they disappeared. A gaze burned his back. Behind him was a dreadful quiet. He whirled, revealing the same landscape he had passed moments ago. Fearful delusions – or ravenous ghouls? He stepped over a fallen log, sensing death approaching – yet crossed it unmolested.
He paused. A clearing was up ahead. He had been walking for a little while, now, so Bhan thought himself reasonably close to the centre. Against the unknown, a man like him had only one weapon.
Fascination.
Bhan drew his Face from its satchel on his belt.
“Before humility and before Houses, before certainty and before security… there was Blood.” He spoke in a measured cadence, each syllable heavy as a drumbeat. “And alongside Blood came gods. Dure the Lizard, Enn the Ox, Kani the Fox, Siik the Spider, Wump the Dolphin, Yoot the Owl and Avri the Raven.” His spectator wasn’t human, so he could play the eighth, but doing so would only muddy the waters.
“The gods are wild and full of secrets – yet through this Face,” he raised the mask and turned around, so the audience could see its beige contours, “they will speak to you. The Artful Divinity is part history, part secret, and part fabrication – but none of it is untrue.”
A variation of his usual introduction – massively abridged and bereft of ceremony. He turned around, attempting to get a grasp on his audience. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Nothing revealed itself. A Face worked off their witnesses – without them, Bhan performed blind. Still, even without eyes, he could speculate. There were three gods that suited such a territorial witness. The first and final were erratic enough to push his witness to anxiety – a sure-fire way to getting Bhan mauled. Only one god could star in this Divinity.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“Have you ever wondered why the world twists the way it does? Why rivers run along their beds? Why an arrow can fell a deer? Why things fall when thrown? Siik never did – the Spider sees actions and outcomes as one. But even it is not all-knowing. And when something comes and disturbs its carefully collected web, there was only one thing Siik could do.”
He let the silence stretch, then continued, “Remove the obstruction.”
Slowly, Bhan buckled on his Face. He pressed two indents and twisted the mask; rotating it halfway and turning the pattern of the mask into one with eight piercing eyes, four oversized fangs, deep chitin and a lattice of web-like patterns, connecting it all. Siik’s Face – one of eight he had lovingly constructed.
As soon as it clicked into place, he stretched his limbs out and lowered his torso slightly. Then, he went rigid, breathing as shallowly as he could manage. The quiet stretched – one heartbeat, ten, twenty, forty, sixty – then his head twisted. An intake of breath somewhere in the canopy – the Spider’s eight eyes fixed on it. A silhouette, squatting atop a branch. There, Bhan thought, now I see.
The stillness stretched. Then he rotated his body at a mundane speed made rapid by contrast. His body went rigid again.
“Something,” the Spider spoke, words perfectly enunciated and almost mundane; excepting the rattling clicks occurring almost simultaneously, “meddles with Web.”
He scuttled across the clearing and stopped, then slowly panned his head from left to right. He did it again. And again.
“They are loud; they eat more than they should; they come into my mountain and create mess.”
“Something,” the Spider said, tone cold, clicks agitated, “is incorrect.”
The clicks continued, growing increasingly rapid. The Spider continued its patrol with a heightened fervour. Suddenly, his gaze fixed on a spot on the forest floor, and he grew still.
“There!” it exclaimed. “What is this small, wrong, thing?” He paused. “What will it do? Will it sing like a bird; flow like a river; fall like a stone; run like a wolf; rot like a dead thing?”
He scuttled backwards and forwards, even as his gaze remained fixed. “What must I do? When I wrap it in my cocoon, will it starve; will it burn; will it fall apart; will it break my silk?”
He continued to pace back and forward with the Spider’s peculiar gait. The clicking stopped, and he grew rigid once again. “Outcomes – consequences. I need to know.” He tilted his head. “Perhaps the Ox, in its rampage, has seen them before.”
He chittered over to one side of the clearing, keeping his Face visible to his only viewer. “Enn, look at this – have you laid eyes on it at all?”
In one fluid movement, Bhan depressed the indentations and rotated his Face once again, transforming Siik’s fangs into two curling horns, its eyes becoming the tumultuous brows of the Ox. Alongside his Face’s transformation came a change in mannerism: the Spider’s stillness melted into a constant trembling. His shoulders lowered, and a deep rumble began to sound in his chest.
Bhan was relieved at the transition – his tongue was beginning to hurt from all the clicking.
“This thing,” the Ox rumbled, “is a loathsome, hateful thing.” He bellowed suddenly, swishing his head back and forth. “Destroy it – and leave! There are more gnats to squash.”
He twirled, using the brief moment his Face was turned away from the silhouette to turn back into the Spider. Leaving a god so quickly always felt slightly wasteful – but a spiritual showing of the Divinity was much shorter than a human one. Some concessions had to be made.
He froze, rigid. The Spider chittered, “the Ox, that furious fool, has said little. A calmer god is needed: the Lizard, always cool?”
Bhan blanched as a scoff rang it. That was unusual. Rhyming in a Divinity felt somewhat alien to him – it used a radically different method of speech than he was used to. Attempts tended to feel lacklustre. Yet the audience rarely cared – for a ghost to be coherent enough to do so?
He used the transition from Spider to Lizard to make space to think.
Some knowledge regarding a spirit’s individual traits were required to trap it. That was part of the purpose of using a Divinity: to trick the spirit into revealing its nature. If he were Blooded, it would be a far simpler matter – but the best Face’s weren’t. It made them lean too heavily towards a single facet, instead of dealing equally in all eight.
For this particular ghost, its cohesion could mean a few things: it was an Owlblood, it felt very strongly about something, or… But none of that truly mattered. Whatever it was, his goal remained the same: learn about it, and lure it into a dialogue, trapping it if necessary.
But it was only a chance. More information was required. The thought nearly made him laugh. Was he playing the Spider, or himself?
The rotation had been extended to an excessive amount – yet the Lizard’s facet was his favourite by far. Every Face was biased in some way. To Bhan, Dure seemed like a romantic figure. It was, after all, a god who never stopped wandering, despite the many reports of it being constantly wounded. Despite those facts, most Faces played it as a dull-witted mute, more comic than anything else. Lizardbloods tended to be a bit thick, after all. But gods were gods, and a Face who taught their audience disrespect was, in Bhan’s opinion, an abject failure.
The rotation turned the Spider’s fangs into great chunks of flesh falling off the Lizard’s body, while its eyes became crawling parasites. Its eye-holes were deep-set and blackened. Bhan slid to his knees and began crawling forwards at an agonising pace. His body drooped, and movement forward became a constant battle not to fall over. It was hell on his wrists.
It was custom to ensure Dure’s words were incomprehensible. Whether that was due to it speaking in gibberish or simply because it couldn’t speak was left up to the Face. But just because the Lizard could not be heard did not mean it had nothing to say.
“The creature,” the Lizard murmured, whispers too quiet to be heard by any but itself, “does not still. But it can. And it can still others.”
He spun back into Siik. “No answer. Dure does not see,” the Spider said evenly, even as its clicking rose to a crescendo, “it only moves. Perhaps a more perceptive god is needed – the Fox, ever-hearing?”
He clicked the mask to its final aspect on this side. Kani’s design was minimalistic compared to the others – two massive ears formed from the Spider’s fangs and thin eyes from the Ox’s angry brows. In a moment of panic, Bhan decided to play down the Fox’s twitchiness – any surprises could provoke his audience.
Bhan felt the Divinity fall into place. The story had been put into motion. The hardest parts were always the beginning; improvising past the fumbles, awkward phrasings, and last-second adaptations. Nothing he did could conquer that. Yet now that he had pushed this cart forward, all he had to do was ride downhill to the finish.
He breathed in and out, tension falling from his mind. All the Face had to do was read the audience and finish the show.
The Fox vividly described the being the Spider was investigating – its four limbs, clever talons, blunt feet, and hairless body – before advocating the torture and eventual murder of the creature. The Spider, growing increasingly agitated, turned to the Dolphin for aid, which forced Bhan to invert his Face, turning it inside-out and revealing the other four aspects.
That manoeuvre resulted in an exhale barely audible in the quiet of the forest. Another piece of the puzzle slotted into place.
The other side was covered in what could be construed as either feathers or scales. It made sense – three had birds as their namesake, and the Dolphin was a fish. It was also the only god Bhan had ever laid eyes upon.
He was good at playing it, though. Even as his teacher had criticised all his other facets, the Dolphin always passed perfectly. Whenever the young man performed a Divinity, his Wump almost always got something thrown at it. It was closest to human – in an arrogant, distorted, and psychopathic way – and that made it all the more loathsome.
Of course, the Dolphin could only endorse slavery of the most brutal kind. Bhan wouldn’t allow it to give any other response. That wasn’t information, though, so the Spider consulted the Owl – the wisest of gods.
The Owl, rarely moving from its perch, gave Siik something close to an answer. According to tradition, that tended to be the Owl’s role – an expository device or, alternatively, a dispenser of misinformation. This time, it was the former. Yoot informed Siik that it had dubbed the creatures humans, and were indeed creatures that could bleed, and could be killed.
“Muuuch like hungry wooolves,” said the Owl, “oooooor rabid beaaars.”
Siik took the words, but remained suspicious. If they were indeed living things, and could hold memories and eventually die, then one god should be most familiar with them. Avri; the Raven.
Bhan moved to transition to that particular facet, only for a blur to cross his vision. Before he had time to react, a stone impacted against his hand, jarring his fingerbones. He clenched his eyes shut, supressing the urge to keel over and clutch at the injury. The Divinity wasn’t over. Breaking character could aggravate the spirit more. He tried again.
A sound emanated through the clearing; the twisted offspring of a growl and a cough. The hair on Bhan’s arm stood. Opened eyes found the silhouette gone from its perch.
“Liar.” The voice crackled like dead wood. “The gods. They don’t speak. They aren’t people. Monsters, all monsters.” Bhan twisted his body around and around, inwardly cursing at the narrowed vision his Face imparted. “You’ve seen. The warnings. Or heard them. Yet you come here. And-and lie?”
“The Artful Divinity always true.” The Face cast his voice across the forest, letting it search for his audience. “It not a god’s truth. It not the world’s truth. It a human’s truth.”
“Wrong audience, then.”
It was behind him.
He whirled, and there it was. The hungry dead, the ravenous ghoul, skin cast in scabs and blisters, wrapped around emaciated bones and muscle. Yet dying hadn’t robbed its form of power. Despite its state, it was large, possessing limbs thickly corded with muscle. Dark hair like dead weeds trailed down its head, concealing its face.
“Y-you.” The ghost’s words tripped, stumbled over themselves. “You. Leave.”
Bhan slowed his rapid breaths. He was a Face. He had a duty.
“Leave!”
Death stalked this place. Yet there was greater shame than dying. Here was a soul in need. And before it was a man with a duty.
“No,” Bhan whispered.
Then it moved, and reality fell away.
***
He woke up with blood in his mouth and the stars above him. The young man’s braid was spooled behind him, wet with melted snow. Bhan sat up, and immediately winced. There was a blacksmith in his head, filling it with the awful screech of blades being sharpened. Undoubtedly, this beat the worst hangovers he had ever had.
Most times he got punched in the face, he deserved it. This time, it felt more difficult to judge. Slowly, he rose. As he did, something slid off him.
A blanket. His blanket.
All his other possessions were missing.
Bhan frowned. Then snorted.
***
“…a Face something like a… theatre troupe, uh? Except it just one person – maybe apprentice, too. And it only speak of gods.”
Besides his words, the clearing was silent. Night reigned in full, casting the crimson forest a much deeper red. Yet Bhan knew how to project his voice, and the forest was small. If there were creatures within these woods, they would have to be deaf not to hear him.
“Gods important. But most people never see gods. And then the Ox comes running through, and they don’t know what should be done, and they die. Divinity teaches about gods. What they like. Teach about Blooded, too. What Blooded like.”
He was seated on red grass, in the process of mending his Face. There was a crack running through it. It hadn’t been struck – he had been hit in the jaw – so it must have hit something tough at some point. Sap from some heartwood would keep it from fracturing further, at least until he could get the materials to fix it properly.
“Little fib, there,” Bhan muttered. “Everyone knows gods. Most know Blooded, too. Face teaches people. Gods make good people. Even though they not.”
He used the ends of his fingernails to coat the gap, then spat angrily.
“Ox’s bollocks, that frustrating. Messed up. Didn’t set. Clear it out; start again. Anyway-“
“Leave.”
There it was. At the edge of the clearing, just shy of six feet, stood a figure Bhan recognised as human. A human man, unfortunately. It would be nice if it were some primal warrior-woman. He kept his eyes fixed on the mask, and his movements slow. Any hints of hostility would lead to him beaten and bruised.
“Eyah big un. You Blooded?”
“By the blood, leave you stupid bastard!”
“Och, good voice.” He thought about that for a moment, then corrected himself. “Good projection. What you doing in this pile of trees?”
At the corner of his eye, Bhan saw the man splay his hands in frustration.
“Funny thing – villagers thought you a ghost.”
“Then they’re idiots,” the savage spat. “Even bigger fools than you.”
Bhan covered his mouth just in time to avoid a smug grin. “Uh?”
“Ghost’s aren’t real.” The tones grew smoother the longer they spoke.
For the first time, Bhan turned around and looked at the man. The ‘ghost’ looked worse than a beaten dog. The wounds covering his skin were ceaseless, making it difficult to determine its original colour. Bruises; blisters; festering cuts – all laid atop a body barren of an inch of fat. Lizardblood, Bhan thought, only Lizardblood can live like that.
He schooled his expression. “Ghosts real, un.”
“How come I’ve never seen one?” The words allowed flashes of surprisingly white teeth.
“God got yours. Drew ‘em in, sucked ‘em up. Or monsters did.” The Face narrowed his eyes. “Maybe even Blooded.”
The man hunched over his stomach like he’d just been slugged.
Bhan continued quickly. “Not you, big un. Stronger Blooded. Barely human. Have the god’s features in full.”
“…Yeah, okay.”
Bhan rubbed the back of his head. He drummed his fingers.
“How old?”
“What?”
“You twelve?”
“Fifteen.”
Hook, line, and sinker. “You hate people? That why you want them out?”
The Blooded’s silence was thick, full of anticipation. “Yes,” came the answer.
“Mm. You know, Face does a bit of walking. Bit of lonely walking, place to place. Days. Sometimes weeks. I come out of it, I like to talk. Chat-chat, can’t stop. You like a talk, too.”
The boy made a choked sound, eyebrows scrunched.
“No, it true. You a talker too. Got to ask: you hate me?”
“Yes,” the adolescent hissed, “I do.”
“You very pleasant, then.”
“I knocked you out!”
“You cover me with a blanket, too.” The Face sniffed. “Do that for people you hate?”
There was a long pause.
“Don’t hate people,” he said, nodding. “I people. Villagers people. Haven’t killed us. You could; you don’t.
The boy’s silence continued.
“What is it, uh? What you think? Why you here?”
Bhan allowed the silence to extend, this time. There was a point, here. A fulcrum, on which this conversation would swing. It was a delicate situation. He had an opportunity to pry this boy away – but only one.
“Quiet place, here. Empty. Nothing moves.” He cast his eyes downward and nodded. “Lot of places like this.”
His listener was frozen.
“The Spider – Siik – I taught for you. Siik lives in a cave. Quiet. Like you. My Spider – scared, always scared. Cannot move.”
The boy’s breaths were audible. Bhan looked at him, squinting past the curtain of tangled hair and to the deep brown eyes beneath. Something familiar lay inside of them.
Gently, he smiled. “But, see, you said it. Gods not people. You people. Siik can only do one thing. Can only be one thing. Spider is trapped in itself.”
He took his mask and twisted it, showing it to the boy.
“Look at my Face. There are seven,” Bhan lied, “seven gods crammed in here. Monsters, all. And I put it on – I all those monsters. Every one of them is me.
“I can be scared. I can be angry. I can be mean. I can be violent. I can be something better off dead. And I can take it off, and be a person again.”
For a moment, the boy stopped breathing. Bhan wished he could read minds.
“You like the Spider. But more than that, you,” said Bhan, pointing at the boy, “like me,” he pointed to himself. “More than any god.”
“Leave,” the boy whispered. “Before I kill you.”
“You could,” Bhan crooned, nodding. “You could. But you gave me a blanket. You killed no villagers. You didn’t kill me. You don’t hate people.”
The boy’s gaze lowered, falling between his feet. Bhan staggered upright, and the boy flinched.
The Face sighed. “I want you to look at me.”
The boy’s shoulders began shaking. Bhan took a step closer.
“Look at me.”
The boy kept his eyes downward. His breaths emerged and withdrew – ragged as old bandages. Slowly, the Face walked until he could reach out and touch his audience.
“Look at me.”
Hesitantly, the boy’s eyes met his own. They gleamed. Trails of tears left clean lines through the grime covering his face. All the pieces were in place. Bhan breathed in, and out.
“You won’t kill me.” He took his Face, and tapped the small rupture. “And see the crack, here? You did that.”
The boy blanched.
“Took years to make this Face. You owe me, big un. I need a new one.” The Face’s expression concealed the lie perfectly. “Need you to make it. And you work for me until you do.”
The boy swallowed. Something incomprehensible passed beneath the tears, and for a distended moment, Bhan thought he would die. Then the tears grew heavier, and the boy’s chest began raising and falling minutely. Quiet sobs emerged from clenched teeth.
The young man wrapped his arms around the adolescent, and held him for a time. Then the weeping slowed. The adolescent managed a nod. At that, Bhan let out a deep sigh, and after a brief pause, let him go, took a step back, and bowed deeply.
He straightened. “I am Face Bhan.”
There was a long silence. Bhan shot him a meaningful look.
“Vin,” the boy responded. “I’m, uh, Vin.”
The man’s face opened, revealing his yellowed teeth. “Eyah, Vin.”
He offered an open palm. Vin wiped his face, and shook it.
***
Past a crimson forest, a young man and a much younger one walked through a ravaged landscape; picked clean of value, leaving only dead stumps, shrubs, and branches. White trees jutted out of it all like the bones of an enormous beast. The older youth looked back, keeping an eye on his fellow. The other’s back was hunched, as if the air above weighed a world. His gaze was fixed on the besmirched snow beneath his feet. Yet, hesitantly, it began moving upwards, until his eyes were cast skyward.
Above it all, the stars shone, and the moons watched. Briefly, his lips quirked.
Then his eyes fell on the earth beneath, and any hint of a smile vanished, as if it had never existed at all.