It was fully dark by the time Emile reached the outskirts of the village. She could see the flickering light of torches dancing in the distance. The little dragon stopped short, and made a startled sound. Emile looked down at her, and laid her hand upon Gypsum’s head. Images of a volley of arrows, and the sound of men screaming filled her mind. She could see heavily armored men wearing strange masks and carrying bizarre long handled weapons. They were charging at her on horseback. She removed her hand, and looked down at the dragon. Gypsum was shaking in the darkness.
Emile said, “I don’t think that it will be like that here, but maybe you should go out and look for something to eat in the forest,” Gypsum chirped excitedly, “will you be able to find me if you need to?” Gypsum nuzzled Emile’s hand again, and Emile felt the assurance. Well, if worse comes to worse, I can find her with the map.
Emile decided that she would wait until tomorrow to make her way into Ravina proper. There was a little farmhouse with a thatch roof just on the outskirts, and she saw children’s playthings in the yard. I bet there are good people in a house like that, she thought and walked up to the door. Through a tiny window next to the door she could see the light of a hearthfire. She knocked on the door firmly, three times.
A skinny middle-aged man opened the door. He looked over Emile at first, and then finally looked down at her. His mouth seemed to be failing to form words until finally from inside the house a woman’s voice called out, “Byron! Who is it knocking at this hour of night then? Is it another peddler? Tell ‘em we’re full up on gods in this house!” All the of words seemed to run together in a litany without a single pause for breath or response.
“No dear,” Byron called back over his shoulder, “it’s a little girl,” he turned and looked down to Emile, “what are you doing out this late at night?”
Emile didn’t think that it was particularly late. The sun had only just set. She looked up at the skinny man and said, “I’m on my way to Cartson City and I need somewhere to sleep tonight.”
The man made a strange circular motion over his heart with his hand and said, “That’s treason talk that is! Everyone knows that the capital is called Puissant City now. By royal decree of the good king Everard Puissant.”
Emile stared up at the man and said nonplussed, “My pa said that changing his name and the name of the capital to pissant was the dumbest thing that king Curtis has done since he killed his own pa.” she smiled, “Now aren’t you going to invite me in?”
The man looked around as if he expected the guards to spring on him at any moment, and finally he said, “Well, you better come in I suppose, wouldn’t be right turning away a little girl in the middle of the night. We’re gods fearing folk in this house, we are.”
Emile walked into the house behind the man and was shocked by what she saw. Every surface and every wall was covered in various religious symbols. The shelves were lined with all manner of tiny statues of various deities, and the space visible on the walls was covered with a multicolored conglomeration of religious symbols that seemed like haphazard graffiti competing for dominance. The floor was littered with toys but there were no children in sight, and even the toys seemed to be painted with some of the same symbols from the walls.
A large woman who seemed to be as round as she was tall was busily counting the beads on one of the many necklaces she wore rocking in a chair in the corner. She looked up from her counting and said, “Byron! You can’t just be letting strangers into the house, what if she’s a demon!”
The skinny man gave Emile an apologetic look and then said to the woman, “I don’t think she’s a demon, I think she’s just a little girl. She says she’s on her way to Puissant City.”
The round woman held her hands out in front of her and made various gestures with them, “That’s a wicked sinful place that is. That just proves that she’s probably a demon!”
“Well, what if she’s an angel sent by one of the gods to test us and if we turn her away we’ll be punished?”
Emile was watching this back and forth argument with an air of detachment. She was very tired from walking all day, and she decided that she had better take control of the situation. She said, “I’m not a demon or an angel. You’re good people and you should give charity to a traveler in need,” they both turned and looked at her, the tired argument they were having fell from their lips.
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Emile had dreamed of rabbits. They were faster than she was. She would chase them in the darkness of the forest night, but they seemed to be able to disappear into the ground at will. She had realized that she needed to wait for them. They weren’t faster than her breath. She lay on her stomach and watched the hole. Soon, a fat rabbit’s ears and nose appeared. She breathed deeply, from the very bottom of her chest. The green fog bellowed out from her mouth, and the rabbit stopped moving. It lay half in and half out of the hole. Her jaws closed around the rabbit's throat, and the blood was still warm in her mouth when she snapped awake in the bed.
Emile ran her tongue over her lips, and was disappointed at the lack of blood. She stretched on the straw mattress, and sat up. The smell of bacon greeted her pleasantly, and she could hear the sound of a kettle whistling in the other room. With a smile at the smells and sounds of breakfast, she crawled out of the bed, and grabbed her pack. The room she had slept in was tiny, but neatly kept.
In the main room she saw Byron and his wife busying themselves over a cook fire. Bacon rashers sizzled on a skillet over the fire, and Byron was pouring water from a kettle into a teapot. He called out to her, “Oh, good. You’re awake, we were going to have to start without you if you slept much longer.”
Emile sniffed the air appreciatively and said, “Well, I’m glad you didn’t, it all smells delicious!”
Byron’s round faced wife smiled and said, “Well, I should hope so!” The bacon was removed from the skillet and placed on a stone plate that had been warming by the fire. Then she began cracking eggs onto the griddle and setting the shells set aside on a delicate looking plate on a nearby shelf beneath a small statue of what looked like a birdfaced woman. In a few moments the eggs were cooked over easy and also placed onto a stone plate.
Byron was pouring tea from the pot into five very fine and very small cups. Emile asked, “Who else are we dining with?”
Byron looked up from his careful pouring, “Beg pardon?”
Emile said, “Well there’s five cups and only three of us.”
Byron had apparently been measuring each cup precisely, and satisfied he began distributing the cups to altars beneath various statues that lined the walls. When the tea was placed on the altar, it would burst from the tiny cups in a cloud of steam. A satisfied sigh would follow. His wife was carefully placing the eggs and bacon onto tiny separate plates and distributing them likewise. Placed upon the altars, the eggs and bacon would burst into flames. Some green, some orange, some blue or black.
Emile was beginning to worry she would not be given breakfast at all. She said, “Are we going to eat any of that?”
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Both Byron and his wife looked horrified at the thought. His wife answered, “Oh no dear, we’ll break our fasts later on! First things come first in this household!”
Emile watched the rituals with equal parts confusion, curiosity and horror. After the couple had sacrificed their tea and eggs and bacon, they went through their cupboards and produced various bits of produce. A piece of celery, a carrot. Gone in a burst of flames. A tiny apple was placed on an altar before a statue of a man with a horse's face. It just sat there.
Byron looked at it, concerned. “Midge? D’ya think Gre’L’z is upset?”
Midge turned from where she was counting pieces of salt onto a metallic plate and looked, “Oh my! What’s the problem then? Is the apple rotten?”
Byron picked it up and looked at it. He pressed down on the skin firmly with his fingers, testing for soft spots. He turned it over this way and that, inspecting the surface the whole way over. Finally, satisfied, he said “It’s perfect, can’t find a thing wrong with it!”
Midge snatched it from his hand and began examining it herself, “Well, maybe you put it on the altar wrong!” With great reverence she placed the tiny apple on the plate before the statue of Gre’L’z and watched expectantly as nothing happened.
Emile felt her stomach rumble, and thought longingly of the warm blood running down her chin in her dream. “Might I have the apple then,” she said, “only if Grels doesn’t want it, that is,” she added remembering her manners.
They both turned and looked at her, horrified. Her logic was inscrutable, tearing the couple between some sort of inner conflict. Midge spoke up first, “Well, it doesn’t seem like Gre’L’z wants this particular apple,” she gestured to the apple sitting on the tiny metal plate before the statue, “Still, I don’t know if it’d be right. ‘Ave we got another apple for ‘im?”
Byron clamped onto this idea. He began rummaging through the cupboards searching. “We ‘aven’t! I can’t find one anyway!”
Midge pushed him out of the way, and started looking through the cupboards herself. She kept poking her head out of the cupboard and looking around at the statue of Gre’L’z, and the tiny apple that was stubbornly refusing to burst into a flame. Emile was seriously considering leaving now. There was food in her pack, hard cheese and travel sausage. Some fruit of her own even. An idea occurred to her. She rummaged around in her pack and pulled out a bright, red apple. It was a plump thing, much healthier looking than the little green apple that sat on the altar.
Byron and Midge’s eyes swiveled and landed on the red apple in Emile’s hand. They stared at it greedily. Emile said, “I’ll trade you. I like green apples better than red ones, maybe Grels likes red ones better than green.”
Byron looked to Midge and said, “I can’t remember! It’s worth a shot though, right?” He seemed to be terrified.
Midge said, “I’m not sure either. Can’t recall what the peddler said when we bought ‘im. We’ve been giving Gre’L’z green apples for as long as ‘e’s been in the ‘ouse.”
Tentatively, Byron reached for the green apple from the plate, and when he grabbed it he did it with the fearful expression of a man trying to grab coals from a fire. Nothing happened. He looked to Emile and she smiled and proffered her large red apple. The exchange was simply silly to Emile, but to Byron it must have been something sacred, for he bowed and cast his eyes low. Once Emile had hold of the green apple, she took a ferocious bite out of it, juice spraying her chin. She really liked sour green apples, and this one was pleasantly tart.
Byron very carefully placed the large red apple on the altar before the tiny statue of Gre’L’z. It burst into a flame, and both he and Midge let a relief filled burst of air from their pursed lips. Midge made a strange series of gestures over her chest.
Emile was busily eating the little green apple. When it was nothing but a spindly core, she said, “Well, I’ll be going. Do you want me to throw this out in the yard or?”
Midge and Byron both dashed towards her. Midge was quicker though, and snatched the core from her hand. Gracefully, she placed it on an altar before a tiny statue of a woman with a pig’s face. It burst into purple flame.
Emile said, “Well, thanks for letting me stay with you.”
Neither of the couple acknowledged her. They were arguing about whether they’d offered a sacrifice to a snake faced god this morning. She heard Midge say clearly as she was leaving, “I swear you missed ‘im! He only eats live sacrifices!”
Byron’s voice was discernible through the thin door Emile shut behind her, “I gave ‘im a cricket this mornin’! First thing!”
Faintly she heard midge cry out, “A cricket!” And then she was out of their unkempt yard.
Gypsum was sleeping under a tree just beyond the ramshackle fence. Emile could heard the sound of the river, and she could hear many voices shouting good-naturedly in the distance. The little dragon rose, and greeted her affectionately. Emile patted her head, and considered her next course of action.
She reached into her pack, and procured a length of cable. Gently she tied it around the dragon’s neck, and then fastened the little corkscrew dagger she carried on her waist to the cord. With her hand on Gypsum’s head, she thought of the invocation. In a way, it was like a jigsaw puzzle, or one of three rings puzzles the smith made in town. At first nothing happened, and then she saw the truth of it. The dragon was invisible. It was very obvious when you thought about it the way the little dagger thought about it.
“Right then,” she said and Gypsum chirped agreement. “That takes care of that, now we just need to find a ride.”
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Inside of Ravina proper was the strangest marketplace Emile could have imagined. The town square was built around the ruins of the old temple, carts and stands crowded together everywhere. Each and everyone of them stacked high with tiny statues that Emile recognized from Byron and Midge’s house. Behind each of the amalgamations of religious idols, a man or a woman stood calling out the merits of various deities for sale.
“Rain gods here, quality downpours, never a chore!”
“Safe travels for the weary, don’t let the roads be scary!”
“Little girl, do you need help! I’ve got every sort of deity you might need!”
“Has your mother sent you out for the latest stock? Well I’ve got just what you need right here, nary a sacrifice to be made, just good old fashioned prayer books!”
“Fresh fertility goddess, bless your house with children, thirty day money back guarantee!”
Emile looked from face to face. They all looked like they were excited to be there, but she could tell that their smiles were what her pa had always called a ‘cashier’s smile.’ The main square in the town housed a lot of merchants, but they seemed as if they’d set up a permanent or at least semi-permanent residence here. Next to each of the stalls of idols were tents, cook fires, clothes hanging out to dry on lines. It was a shamble town built around the decaying walls of the temple.
She pushed through to the other side of the town. The river here was wide and deep enough for flat-bottomed boats, and lined all up and down the dock there were boats filled to the brim with the same statues and symbols she’d seen in the town square. As she got closer to the docks, she could hear voices calling out. Promises of fair winds and easy sailing. Promises of fat fish and full stomachs with the purchase of this god or that. And they’ll even throw in your first sacrifice, Emile thought and laughed as she made her way towards one of the boats.
The man sitting in the boat put Emile in the mind of a frog. He had big buggy eyes, a round belly and short, bandy legs. He was wearing brown heavy robes that did nothing to hide his bulk. Half of his head was shaved, and when Emile got close enough to realize that his hair was long on the other side, she giggled.
“U’llo little girl! What’re you doing out this early in the mornin’? Did your mum sen’ you out for a deity?” He spoke in clipped consonants and was scanning up and down the shore for the potential early morning shoppers that wandered from merchant to merchant on the dock.
Emile looked at the boat he was standing in, and asked “Are you going to be leaving here soon?”
He scratched his chin and said, “Well, I was planning on heading down to Willet soon, maybe stock up on some eels. See if I can’na unload a coupla river gods down there.”
Emile looked at his boat and said carefully, “What about Cartson City?”
The man corrected her, “Puissant City, yea I’ll be heading there after Willet, doing the circuit tour you know.”
“Well, do you think you could take me with you, to the capital? We don’t need to stop in Willet you know.”
The man stopped scanning the other early morning walkers on the dockside. He looked down at Emile dreamily and said, “We don’t?”
Emile met his eye, she said, “No, I don’t think we need to stop. We need to get straight to the capital as soon as we can.”