Beginnings

Everyone has always said that Una couldn't hurt a fly, Una would never want to rend a man limb from limb and then use his skull as a brandy glass...

Yeah, they're wrong. I do not blame Una one bit for his mood, I'd probably be all for hiding under the bed, even if someone was standing over me. It takes a lot of backbone to do that. At the same time, Erit is teaching him a necessary lesson. Una has used this exact method to get his way so many times. Distract you over here with a smile and polite words while a Sidhe sneaks up behind you and snacks on your ears.

I want to write the next chapter now... but at the same time I'm squeamish. I don't entirely know what's going to happen and I'm not so good with the writing in the way this is going.

Read, Review and Enjoy.





Souls, according to Vera, were an anomalies. She had become aware of the existence of souls in people whose only unique trait was the soul itself. Vera had not seen the outcome of a soul, but she knew that these souls were different, she knew that the soul left the body and that the gods had begun talking of these souls who came to the heavens. Souls came as varied as the bodies they inhabited and could be punished once the person died.

Vera.

She was the one who first proposed using the peoples’ own beliefs to control them. About a year into my tutelage she first suggested the idea. I was a quick study and slept little, spending what spare time I had when I wasn’t studying learning about the pleasure of the bed.

“If we tell them that there is an underworld, that they will be punished for their sins against Mother and the gods, then we can control them.”

We were walking Vera’s gardens. Vera was snipping bits off a bush, pruning it back so that the next year the bush would grow back bushier and thicker. It’s fruit would be sweeter, Vera told me.

“But, did you not say that it is wrong to control the people?” I countered, sniffing the fallen bloom of a cherry tree, “Where do we draw the line? Immortal as we are, we could pose as living gods.”

“But that would be wrong, Sister and her mate have control of Mother, we have agreed to stand aside.”

“You agreed to stand aside and reside here, I made no such agreement, if you recall. So what would stop me from taking your little step and turning it into a new religion?”

Vera smiled and looked at me, “but that is exactly what we should do. The people are aware of the gods and are aware of Mother. Mother says that the people can do as they please, so the people follow Mother. Much as a child will follow the parent who punishes them the least.”

“But Sister and her mate have reign of Mother which means the people should be following the words of Sister and her mate.”

“Exactly.” Vera moved from the plant she had been pruning back and to one that had been pruned the year before, “prune them back so that they grow the way we want them to. Otherwise they will move as they want, break whatever they please and think it is right to murder or rape or piss on the gods.”

Rahl-ta would be the first god to want to be loved by the people. He would be the first to look down on the people and declare that the people should follow the gods, not the other way around. Harella-shay and Shey-har had little interest in ruling the people. Shey-har believed in free will, that if the people wanted to follow the gods, they would. Harella-shay believed in her mother, in Mother, and was content to allow the people to continue to follow the first god.

Well. One of the first gods.

“What would be the deciding factor of what did and did not get included in this religion?” I asked, “what would be a sin?”

“Murder, rape, theft, obviously,” Vera said.

“Homosexuality?”

“No,” Vera shook her head, “Mother made you as you are and so you should not push away the gift she has given unto you.”

“Mother also makes people capable of being rapists and murderers, the same argument used to validate homosexuality can be used to validate every sin we could create,” I followed Vera down the path that would lead deeper into the gardens. This place in the gardens was where Vera kept her most precious plant, the place where I had not been permitted entrance to for my first year, “Which gods are included, which are excluded? Erit says there are said to be gods all across the land. There is a cow god to the east and a serpent god to the south.”

“There are only three gods,” Vera murmured, hand trailing over the top of a topiary, “Harella-shay, Shey-har and the one whose name we do not mention least we draw Sister’s wrath.”

“The… one…”

“Mm, it is gorgeous, it is beautiful, it can sing and whenever it speaks the people listen and bow to its words. It smiles and the world smiles. It laughs and the world laughs. I have never met this one,” Vera paused, hand just above a blooming flower, “but the allure alone of the god is enough to entice even the coldest heart.”

“I don’t understand. Why is Sister upset with this one?”

“Jealousy,” Vera said, “if one is brighter than Sister, better than Sister. Larger breasted than Sister.” Vera crushed the flower beneath her fingers, “then the competition must be destroyed.”

“Is that why you are here?”

“Yes. My name travels far but few see me at my full. That cow goddess you spoke of,” Vera sighed, “was me. I was born near here, Sister was not cruel enough to remove me fully from my tree, but travelled east with my family and settled in a new village as many new families do. Things got out of hand. When I changed, I didn’t realise what was going on. I stayed and my husband died and I was still viable. Then Sister looked down on my followers and declared that all evidence of my beauty must be erased. So the head of the goddess my people followed was replaced by a cow and the hips were widened and the breasts elongated.

“The thing the people will not realise for a good long time. Is that the gods are more prone to jealousy. They are meant to be the perfect beings, they were created by perfect beings and should be above the people. They think. If ever there is one who threatens their reign or is more beautiful, more delicate, a better dancer. Then that person must be gotten rid of. It is not the place of the people to try to ascend beyond the gods.”

“Beauty is something gifted to us by Mother though, so while one should appreciate what Mother gives them, one should not be prideful of that gift.”

“Good,” Vera smiled at me and walked on, “Sister and her mate are the only two to be mentioned. The third. I think the third would appreciate us more if we did not bring it to the attention of Sister.”

“Why it, why Sister so much? Can they hear us if we say their name?”

“Supposedly, yes,” Vera said, opening an iron made gate with the key she always keeps on her person, “But myself, most especially. Sister watches for any sign of rebellion. If I say something bad about her, I lose people. A plague will sweep through or daemon will come in and slaughter.”

“What if I say something bad about her?”

“I would not tempt her, little one,” Vera murmured, opening the gate, “she may not hurt you today or even tomorrow, but one day she would take something very dear from you.”

Vera stepped into the cordoned off area and invited me to walk with her. I stepped over the thresh hold and immediately shivered. Cold washed over me, the a tingling fear.

“I’ve never had the pleasure,” Vera murmured, stepping away from me, “of bringing another to one of my trees.”

“One of?”

“Yes, one of. This,” Vera motioned to what looked to me to be an oak tree. Little did I know, it was a stunted old time tree, the trees were called savnell at the time, and from the trees, a family took their name. The Savnell family was the only family capable of harvesting the wood of the old time trees. Each member of the family, upon coming of age, would take a tree and spend the rest of their lives making beads and sculptures from its wood, “I hope it doesn’t hurt you.”

“No,” I said as the feeling of fear dissipated, “though I think we need one another’s permission to be near a tree. Will my tree grow this large?”

“Larger,” Vera said, patting its trunk, “this is a stunted tree, transplanted from the others.”

“From the others?”

“Your tree will grow and grow and one day drop fruit or send shoots running along underground. If the conditions are right, it will make more of itself. I have an entire forest, with the original tree at the center of it,” Vera leaned against the trunk of her tree, “being near your tree, even a stunted offshoot of it, is like nothing else on Mother. For that reason, I think it should be a sin to cut them down.”

“Cut down our trees.”

“I’ve given one family permission to cut the trees, they take from around the edges of the forest, the young ones. It helps keep the forest somewhat manageable. Least I be surrounded by my own forest by now. But a man once reached my original tree and took an axe to it.”

“Did it hurt?” I asked, swallowing hard.

“I awoke from a long slumber screaming so loudly that the people in the nearby village heard me. My throat was bloodied and I could not speak for nearly a century. Mother reacted to the attack as well. She was not impressed.”

I swallowed again, feeling my gorge rise, “then we must say that the trees are of Mother, that they-”

“Are a representation of Mother and thus of Sister,” Vera nodded, “I’ve asked the Sidhe to move into my forest, they will help protect it but only to a point. The people can never know of the existence of the Sidhe. The races are too different, the people would believe the Sidhe animals and the Sidhe are pacifists. They don’t believe in wasting the time to kill stupid meat.”

“That’s a very animalistic thing to say.”

“They eat what they kill, they do not waste the life of Mother. There is nothing we can say about the Sidhe that would not reveal them to the people. To them we can afford no protection but to say that the people of the gods, the people chosen to serve the gods are above all other people.”

“So long as they reign piously.”

“Why?”

“What if a priest touches a child inappropriately and the people find out? Would the people not then say that if a priest can touch a child and still go to heaven, then surely they can? The punishment for those who are in command and yet still break the rules should be more harsh than those who are followers.”

“I do not agree.”

“Well, you are in control.”

“You’ve never been abused by someone who was higher ranking than you have.”

“And you have.”

“And I know my place.”

“Your place can go to the underworld we’re making, for all I care. This should not just be about protecting ourselves, this should be about protecting the people who cannot protect themselves.”

I was looking at the problem from the standpoint of a victim. I was hurting still, would always hurt from the events that transpired in my early life. I thought myself clever, I thought it a simple thing to enforce. It made sense, it was the way of things. But those in power who do not follow the rules do not allow those without power to discover the actual rules.

In theory it was perfect, in the real world, it rarely worked. There were some villages that believed as I did, that came to the same conclusion and upheld the highest standard for those with authority. I tried to instil the belief into as many villages as I could and the belief became law in many civilizations, but those with authority simply found ways around the laws. Bribes and bullying.

The conversations between Vera and I on what should and should not be included in the list of sins went off for millennia. Erit was the one who overheard us talking to one another and began spreading the word. Soon all Vera’s servants and people knew of the imaginary underworld. Those people told the merchants, the merchants began spreading the rumours, the gossip.

It didn’t quite take at first, not many people were too keen on the idea of going to a hellish place as punishment for bad deeds done while one was alive. Centuries before people started believing in hells. A hundred years or so before there was a hell.

Created for two souls by Shey-har to appease his heavily pregnant mate.

I don’t want to talk about them right now…

The conversation that day, with Vera, ended as any conversation on the matter does between the two of us. We agreed to disagree while we secretly decided to convince the other one to our side through other means. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. That day we disagreed and Vera went off to inspect a new person, she was constantly accepting new people, just as she was constantly letting people go, while I went off to meet the new merchant.

At that time, as I said before, I had been at Vera’s for over a year. Or… it may have been longer than a year. I do not recall, come to think of it. How long I was at Vera’s temple before she brought up the underworld. Oh dear, it must have been a good long time. Noran had passed on by then and his son had a son of his own.

Oh dear…

Ah well, time passed swiftly at Vera’s temple, let us say. I had seen no new faces but for those that Vera accepted into the temple and was becoming more and more curious about the outside world. I wanted to see the places I heard about, to visit the temples of the cow and serpent gods, to dance with the western tribes and hunt with the people of the north.

But it was not the smartest idea, Vera had told me this many times. She had warned me against meeting the people who came in every day to visit and the like. But I, being so young still, would not listen. I think, perhaps, the problem was that I had forgotten what I looked like, forgotten that I was surrounded by people who were told to come to terms with Vera’s and my own existence or leave.

Twelve to fifteen years, I must have been in Vera’s temple, if I count correctly. Noran’s son was a young man now and myself, I would have been a man with a family of my own, my father would have been in his twilight years.

The men who raped me would have been at the end of their primes.

Bastards.

Why do I bring them up, you might ask? Am I really that bitter, still, after all this time? No, no I am not. But their age is very important, you see. For they were the leaders of the merchant band that came through. I rounded the corner to the greeting area and recognised them immediately. They looked passively back at me for a moment before the younger nudged the elder and grinned, whispering something.

Oh, I knew what they were whispering about and I knew instantly that they were still doing what they had done to me. Raping young men as they went through the lands, leaving them disgraced and dying on the side of the road somewhere.

“Boyo,” the elder motioned to me, “come here, come introduce yourself.”

Erit stepped up beside me immediately, “be polite, they bring dyes that Vera wants.”

“I can’t,” I said, turning away from them, “Erit, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t, don’t make me.”

“Why are you panicking? What is upsetting you…” Erit trailed off and looked over at the men, “they look like them, don’t they?”

“No. No. They.” I pressed my lips together, clenched my jaw, “those are them.”

I was afraid, the strength had gone from my limbs.

“They don’t recognise you,” Erit said quietly, “and I won’t tell Vera if you dig a couple of graves in the far corner of the garden. In fact, I’ll grab the shovel and dig them myself. Just smile and nod along, tell them your name is Unaesios,” the actual name Unaesios, not my true name that I am substituting. Erit was well versed in languages and had begun teaching me various names I could use for myself that I might react to more readily than others because they sounded like my real name or were derived from it, “and you are a sexual demon.”

“Why would I say that?”

“You would be telling them what they want to hear,” Erit responded soothingly, “which is something you’ve been learning to do. People out in the world will hurt you and you will still have to smile and play along while your people slit their throats. But if you can’t be convincing, it will all be for naught. Get them out to the side garden.”

“I don’t think killing them is the answer.”

Erit shrugged, “then we’ll cripple them. If you let them leave, do you really believe they will not hurt more boys the way they hurt you?”

“No.”

“Then. Smile, say hello and be coy. Let your instincts run you.”

“My instincts tell me to run away,” actually, my instincts were telling me to bash their heads in with a rock, but I was not about to share that with Erit, who believed me a gentle, innocent creature devoid of violent thoughts.

“That will help you be coy, go. Say. Hello.”

I swallowed my pride and my fear, tucking it away as best I could as I turned back to the merchants. It was a difficult thing for me to do, to stand there and not shake like a leaf in a windstorm. To face my abusers. If Erit had not been there, I would have run away, I would have hidden under a bed and sobbed like a child until someone came and dragged me out kicking and screaming.

But with Erit watching over me, I had to stand my ground, had to stand up for myself. So I swallowed again and tried to bring myself to meet their eyes.

I couldn’t do it. I met their feet, at best, and said, “Greetings and welcome to Vera’s temple.”

Little did I know, my fear made them think I was aroused. My shy demeanour, created by my inability to meet the eyes of my abusers, only made them want me more.

I do not regret what Erit and I did that night, but I feel shame. I am ashamed of myself for thinking that it was not enough, that I should have bathed in their blood. Erit was right, when he told me so many times afterwards, killing them would have been too good.


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