Blocked nose. Warm head. Weak and trembling body that felt best doing nothing. A chest that couldn’t be bothered for deep breathes and an inescapable chill on the skin.
Ailaurus’ mouth was dry. She’d been staring at the jug of water and empty cup on the bedside for a while now. The blankets hugged her up to her nose. Drink, she told herself, but she knew she would have to get out from under the blanket. She knew she’d have to move. She knew she’d hate how heavy that jug would be.
Drink.
The journey was taking its toll. Her mind had been worn down to weak-willed and her body was too fatigued to take orders from a weak-willed mind.
Drink.
Her throat ached. She tried not to swallow. Every time she did, there was a sharp pain that made her want to stab into her ears at whatever infection was terrorizing her until there was no flesh left to be infected.
She stared at a droplet on the surface of the jug, sliding down and then flattening on the table. She imagined it was cold. She imagined that maybe it would ease the pain.
Saliva collected at the back of her throat. She swallowed involuntarily and that pain made her want to stick a finger down her throat and claw at the ulcers. She raised an arm slightly, about to get up and reach for the jug.
The lethargy said no.
Every muscle, all in agreement, gave up and she stayed put. She tilted her head forward, used her tongue to keep the saliva away from her throat. She closed her eyes. She thought about how much she missed home; how much she missed the Godless community. She thought about her own bed, her own people, her own village, her own foods. Consistent. Her bed would stay soft every night. She would see the same faces and talk to the same friends every day. She would see the same buildings every day. She would eat somewhat predictable meals at predictable times.
She wouldn’t have to worry about the soil she was putting her head on, or the strangers they may meet or whether or not there was a good bush or village nearby with edible fruits to pick or sell.
She needed a break. She knew she did. She wanted one, but it was one damn thing after another. Save a sacrifice, stop a burning, save a village from inquisition. Her fantasy was that one day she could hold the head of a god by the hair in front its followers and tell them how wrong they all are.
Unfortunately, the gods never showed themselves. They only came to people in visions and dreams and voices. The next best thing to killing a god was getting in its way.
She had to be the one to do this. She was the First Woman of Hell. She was the only one, the only person, with spirits to summon. She didn’t believe that if she couldn’t stop the spread of religion, any of the others could.
If she failed, nobody would be able save the next Ganthy. If she failed, the next powerful child would be raised like a sheep and slaughtered. She still didn’t understand what power was or what it meant for the gods, but she could guess what it meant for people.
Her body settled, everything letting go. Some of the saliva ran down her lip. She started to drift off when her shoulder did a little ache. She opened her eyes.
The followers of Ododagon were looking for the followers of Zathiri. Throughout her time at the camp, there were no preparations for a fight. They didn’t know where the Zathirians were.
She didn’t kill them all. There was probably a scouting party out looking for the Zathirians. They would find the would-be sacrifice site. They would know that she had been there. They would return to their camp to find everybody dead. They would know that she had been there too. They would know that she had Ganthy.
Treyus breathed deeply through his nose and exhaled loudly. He looked at Ganthy, who walked alongside him. It paid no attention to him. It just looked ahead of them. Treyus frowned.
For the sake of saving what little money they did have, Treyus negotiated with the innkeeper and offered his Banak skills as a service. The farm had a pest problem. The village relied on the farm for food. The Inn relied on the farm to feed customers and make a profit. So, Treyus and his apprentice took to the forest. He knew what he needed to make. He knew many different recipes for it. He just wasn’t sure if these forests had the right combination of leaves, stems and roots for any of those recipes.
If it came to it, he would just pay, but that was the last resort. Either way, he took foraging as an opportunity to teach Ganthy an appreciation for life. It was also an opportunity to shift Ganthy’s spirituality from divinity to nature, though Ailaurus may not have approved of that.
“The plants we are looking for will have a strong smell,” Treyus said, “Bright colours, too.”
Ganthy looked at him.
“You must keep your eyes and nose open. Pay attention to what the wind and light tell you.” Treyus tapped his nose and closed one eye.
Ganthy started to look around. Treyus felt disappointed. Ganthy wasn’t as easily amused as when they met. Even for this sacrifice, the novelty of kind people had worn off. When Treyus looked at Ganthy, he didn’t imagine much was going on in its head. It followed him where he went. It did what it was told. It was just the mostly-hollow shell of a person. There was a soul, but that soul wasn’t allowed to grow. That soul had no desires or wonders. That soul wouldn’t seek the colour or smell of flora unless it was told to, but Treyus had faith that he could spark something. No. Being told how to grow was probably all Ganthy had in its life so far. Treyus just had to let it grow. Treyus had to step back and let nature have its way.
“There,” Treyus said, pointing to a bush with small yellow flowers you wouldn’t have noticed unless you were looking for it. He walked faster and Ganthy followed. The flowers were no wider than Treyus’ fingernail. He squatted down, using his knobkerrie for balance. He plucked a flower, sniffed it, nodded, held it for Ganthy to smell. Ganthy sniffed and pulled a face.
“This is what we need,” Treyus said and sniffed it again. He opened a pouch hanging on his hip and picked a few off the twigs. “Do you think you can find some?” he asked Ganthy.
It looked at him. Treyus untied a second pouch from his hip and put it over Ganthy’s neck, letting it hang over its stomach.
“Go look for ones just like this. Bright yellow and stinky,” he said, holding up one of the tiny yellow flowers. He continued to pick. Ganthy waited for a moment, then turned, picked a direction and walked. It looked over its shoulder at Treyus… Nothing. He kept picking.
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Ganthy looked ahead…
It faced the world before it – trees and plants and strange sounds. Somewhere in there were yellow flowers with a bad smell. It walked into the mystery of what lay before it.
“Yellow”, it whispered, “Yellow” A new word. It thought about the bad smell that the flower made. It looked around. No yellow… What now? Where to go?
It looked over its shoulder one last time. Treyus was still there, far away, picking flowers and paying no attention to it. It looked back upon its path… There was no path. There were trees and bushes. Ganthy stood still.
A long moment passed.
“Yellow,” it whispered. It looked around. No yellow, but perhaps there was yellow hiding behind one of the trees. Which tree?
It looked to the closest tree, walked to and around it. No yellow.
It looked for the next closest tree and did the same thing again. Then it did it again. Each time it did it, there was either a bush or the tree’s roots showing through the soil. Brown and green. Brown and green. The leaves changed shape but the colour stayed the same. As it rounded another tree, it stopped when it saw something pretty and blue in the corner of its eye.
Ganthy walked to the bush and brought its head closer to these new flowers. They looked like little bowls for a butterfly to bathe in. It risked a sniff… it smelled nice. It smelled soft and soothing. Ganthy wondered what the name for this colour was.
Treyus would know.
It closed its stumps around the flower and pulled, but its stumps slipped and ripped the petals from the stem. Ganthy looked morbidly at the petals drifting to the floor. It felt guilty… but it also really wanted to know what this colour was. It found another. Pulling a branch down with its stumps, it put the flower in its mouth and bit down on the stem. It had practice with the dry meat from the Lerian village, so this was nothing.
It plucked the flower, keeping it in its teeth and trying not to swallow. It opened the pouch that hung from its shoulder, opened its mouth and dropped the flower in. Ganthy smiled, then continued its mission for the yellow flowers.
But what started as a mission for yellow flowers became a quest to find out what the names of different colours were. It stopped looking for yellow. It just looked for anything pretty. If it was pretty enough or if it didn’t know what colour it was, it would bite it off the bush. Some of them smelled funny. A lot of them looked the same. One of them made its tongue itchy and it started rubbing its tongue against its teeth.
Wherever it stood, it memorized every suspicious tree that looked like it might be hiding pretty flowers and made sure to check behind them one by one, discovering new suspicious trees as it did.
Something chirped.
Ganthy looked in the direction it heard it from. Bushes. There was a long silence.
It heard the chirp again, followed by a caw and rustling. One of the bushes shook.
Ganthy quietly walked towards the sound. The bush shook some more. Ganthy jumped back when a small brown bird flew out and a much bigger black bird came after it. The black bird grabbed with its talons. The small bird barely escaped and fell to the ground between Ganthy and the bushes. Ganthy stepped back. The big black bird landed near the small one and pecked at it, but it hopped aside with a flutter.
Ganthy watched them. It watched the small bird in particular. It jumped around to avoid the giant beak attacking it, but it didn’t try to fly away. Ganthy felt something like fear. The beak struck the little bird and for a moment it was lying on the ground, breathing heavily for small thing. It fluttered again to avoid the beak, less gracefully now.
Ganthy watched, knowing what was coming.
The big bird pecked one more time and the small bird was down again, still moving, but stiffly. The big bird held it down with its feet and pecked again.
“Red,” Ganthy whispered.
The big bird flew off with its prey. Ganthy stared at it, watched it land on a branch high up. It lost sight of it in blinking and the rustling of the leaves.
A feeling started to form. It was like the blooming of a warmth in its chest and head. There was a sting in its eyes and a weight on its shoulders.
“Your blood will be for something greater than you,” it said loudly and clearly.
That emotion, whatever it was, was quickly overcome by a plague of apathy. There was no more warmth in its chest or heard, or sting in its eyes or weight on its shoulders.
Ganthy looked for the nearest tree and checked behind it. It did this until it found a bush of pungent yellow flowers. Indifferent to the smell, it bit into the twigs and pulled them off. After a few bites, the itching stopped, but its tongue went numb. It spat a flower into the pouch and wiggled its tongue around. It was an odd sensation.
It continued to graze from the bush.
“Ay! Ganthy!”
Ganthy let go of a branch and looked to Treyus running towards it. Treyus threw down his knobkerrie and got to his knees and opened Ganthy’s mouth to inspect its tongue. He let go. “Did you swallow any of them?”
Ganthy shook its head, its eyes wide.
Treyus put a hand on his chest and sighed, falling back to sit on the ground. He looked at Ganthy’s hands. “… I had forgotten about your situation. I am so sorry.” He threw his head back and sighed again, louder than before.
Some time passed before Treyus calmed down. For all of it, Ganthy stood there and watched him. He got up into a squat and inspected Ganthy’s pouch, finding that the yellow flowers were outnumbered by an assortment of others. Smiling, he picked out the blue one that smelled nice. He held it to his nose and sniffed it. He looked at Ganthy and asked, “What’s this for?”
“Yellow?” it asked meekly.
Treyus smiled brighter. “Blue,” he said.
“Blue,” it whispered.
Treyus put the flower back in. “It looks like you enjoyed foraging. No worries.” He stood up and patted the heavy pouch of yellow flowers hanging from his hip. “I think we’ve done our job. Let’s go.”
Boil the petals. Dice the roots. Submerge them in the petal water. Toss the roots on the fields. The smell will stay strong for 8 days. The water will last forever if its stored properly. Ganthy memorized this lesson to the farmers. Even after teaching them all as a group, they would come to Treyus individually to ask again. Ganthy stood there at his side for each recital and now, if it needed to, it could teach the farmers itself.
Many of the farmers were hesitant to trust Treyus. Some of them trusted Banak botany. All of them were desperate enough that the smell of the final repellant was enough to convince them.
Ganthy learnt things today. It learnt the names of colours and it learnt to make a pest repellant from flowers. As they walked the dirt road back to the inn, Treyus tried to teach Ganthy the names of the flowers, but they were too ugly for it to even try remembering. They didn’t sound nice, like the colours.
Blue. Orange. Purple. Purple was Ganthy’s favourite to say.
As they approached the inn, Ganthy watched a flock of small birds dance across the tree line beyond it. It thought about that small bird and that black bird.
It didn’t like thinking about that small bird. It didn’t like watching it get stabbed at by a beak as big as its body. The image of that last strike flashed in its mind and that uncomfortable warmth started to bloom again. Ganthy tried to forget. What happened to that bird was supposed to happen.
Ailaurus was still in bed when they returned. The lower half of her face was under the blanket. The jug was still full and the cold droplets that it had this morning were pooled the table. Treyus put his knobkerrie and pouches down at the foot of his bed, opposite Ailaurus’, then dropped himself on the mattress, face down with his arms out.
Ganthy stood at the door. It looked at Treyus, then at Ailaurus, waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened.
It walked to the window at the foot of Treyus’ bed, a stool under it. It fumbled with the pouch hanging from its neck, turned it upside down and shook the flowers out onto the stool. It tried to name the colours.
Blue.
Yellow.
Purple.
Red…
… Bird.
It hated that small bird. The stupid small bird just had to make Ganthy feel this way. Why couldn’t it want to die? Why did it have to struggle and suffer? It couldn’t fight that big bird.
Why did it try?
It thought about the priestess. It thought about the night it lost its hands. It thought about the corridors of the church. It thought about those endless days quietly sitting in dark rooms to look for the light within and to harness it.
It thought about the forest. It thought about the colours of the flowers before it. It thought about the way its skin felt when the breeze brushed it. It thought about how warm it felt when the sun was at full breath. It thought about how vast the world seemed out there in the forest.
It thought about the quiet nothing it felt for most of its life so far.
It thought about the smiling children from the Lerian village.
Weren’t we all just put here to die?
It thought about the day it was meant to die. It thought about Ailaurus. It thought about the devil. It thought about the song.
Ganthy looked up, out of the window, at the few stars that showed now that the sun was dimming.
It started to hum. It tried its best to get the right notes, but it sounded better in memory than it did in its voice.
Laa lee luhh lohh
Laa lee luhh lohh
Ailaurus opened her eyes. She turned them to look at Ganthy. She held a breath for just a moment to hear what it was humming… It sounded familiar, but she was certain she’d never heard it before.