until I was completely out of the village, and then I saw the two children. They were Marie and Cael, two children I knew fairly well from the time I spent in the village.
At first, I saw they were only playing. Pushing each other, tickling, and teasing. But they were doing this near a steep fall in the land. As I came closer, I saw one push the other over the edge by accident. My eyes widened and I rushed the remaining distance. I ran down the slope beside the fall, but the child had broken his neck. The little girl who had accidentally pushed him was weeping uncontrollably. I looked up at her from beside the body. Was my brother controlling this incident, or was it truly an accident? I held the lifeless body in my arms and thought for a moment.
Death was not so easy when it was seen so close. It was easy to watch these people from The Above and pass judgment on them. I didn’t know them, and they had no effect on my life, but up close…
I closed all three of my eyes and passed a hand over the child’s face. He awoke, and the little girl stopped sobbing. I thought it might be a waste to use what miniscule powers I had left on such a small life, but to see someone I knew, even if it was someone I didn’t know particularly well dead and lifeless was too hard for me. Everyone must die, but it was too soon for him.
The child sat up and blinked as if he was sleeping for a long time. He looked confused, as if he knew he shouldn’t still be there, and then he looked at me. “You saved me…” he said breathlessly.
I was silent. I didn’t want him to tell the village he thought I was a God. It would probably get him, me, and Heidi into more trouble. I simply smiled thinly and, since I was so tall, lifted him up and put him back on the rise. The girl, who was his sister, gave a cry of joy and embraced him.
The next day, not wanting anyone to get hurt, and taking no belongings--as I had none-- I got ready to travel. I got up before Heidi and walked out on silent feet. The sun was coming up, and the world was dyed an early morning bluish-yellow. I breathed in the fresh scent of spring flowers; and as the wind blew, I looked in the direction it blew in. I wondered briefly how badly death hurt. I had signed death warrants, but never caused death. I thought about how scary it would be, to have your life in someone’s hands, someone you could not even see….
But I mustered my courage and started heading north… but then I heard someone say, “Where are you going?” I looked back. Heidi. She’d thrown on a dress and didn’t bother with making herself presentable.
“I have things to do. Thank you for your hospitality.” I started walking away from her.
“So after I took care of your sorry self for so long, you’re just going to leave without giving me a reason why?”
I frowned and I remembered our argument the previous day. “I can’t stay in the home of someone who dislikes me.”
She looked a little sad and opened her mouth to say something. Even though she hated me, I knew she was about to apologize and ask me back, so I added hastily and truthfully, “and I must see someone in Mahesha – Death, my brother.”
“More God nonsense? So your brother is Death now?” She sighed like a mother listening to an elaborate lie told by a child.
“Yes. He’s killing people at an unnatural rate.” I ignored the hint of sarcasm in her voice.
“I’ll play along with your God premise for a moment. What’re you going to do about your brother? Ask him to stop killing people?”
“No. Everyone must die.” I repeated what I’d said to Katharos.
“Then why stop him?” She countered.
“Because he’s killing people without my warrants. He needs me to judge who should live and who should die before he takes a life.”
“So you get to decide when other people die?” She crossed her arms in disbelief.
I was growing tired of her again, so I decided not to continue on the conversation. I turned away from her and continued slowly on down the road without an answer.
Heidi caught up to me easily. She just walked beside me for a moment, and then spoke. “Joshua… I know I can be a pain, but I really didn’t mean what I said about you. I want to come. Besides, I want to find out whether you are a God or not.”
“I don’t want you to come. You will get hurt.” I said frankly.
“I don’t care… besides, I owe you, for helping me make as much money as I did. I don’t know what you did, but my garden was thriving for almost a month, and I made good money off of it. I owe you, so you may as well let me come.” She shrugged.
She only wanted to come, of course, because there really was nothing left for her in this place. Her beloved garden had died, her cruel father had died, and she was all alone in the world. Regardless of whether she liked me, I never wished her to be alone. “You may come.”
She grinned. “I’ll go get my gold! Oh, and some proper clothes.”
I waited for her. I was chilled to the bone this early in the morning. It was a sensation I was completely unfamiliar with, as Gods do not feel cold. I was being attacked by the Mortal Disease, as God’s called it--and I just wasn’t feeling very well. This was the worst disease to have where you slowly lose more and more power by being among humans.
Heidi came back, and she brought Katharos with her, at which I gave her a sharp look, but what was done was done. She may as well just tell the whole village at this point.
Katharos looked a little downtrodden. “Heidi told me everything…I wish I could go too…”
I knelt down, and gave him the most genuine smile I had ever mustered. I looked him right in the eyes. “I am so proud of you… mortals like you make me love what I do…”
“But you are a God! And I am nothing…” He shuffled his feet and looked down.
“You are not nothing. You give this world all you can, and you will someday get back what you give.”
He embraced me. My eyes shifted uncomfortably, not knowing how to respond. I patted his back awkwardly.
After a moment, he disengaged, and I patted his head. “Take care of yourself, please.” I said quietly.
He nodded. “Goodbye. I hope I shall see you again…”
I informed Heidi that we were going to the Mahesha, and I was happy to know that she knew where they were situated. An hour later, Heidi looked up at my face as we passed over very flat land and made progress towards our goal. “You look ever so slightly sad. I mean, I guess your default expression is unamused, but there’s an ever so slightly thin line pulling down on the corner of your mouth.”
I said nothing. I felt sad at my parting with Katharos. Sad. Over a mortal. Reprehensible.
To Heidi I said, “Why are you friends with Katharos?”
“Why?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Katharos is royalty. Royalty is not often friends with…” I stopped myself. She was already giving me a look.
“With rabble like me? You’re thinking it. You may as well be honest. I knew when Katharos first came here that he wasn’t like most royalty. He always seemed so sad… I thought he just needed a friend, so I offered him friendship, and he accepted it. It seemed as if all of his cohorts were disgusted that he would lower himself to my level… not that I care. I’ve gotten far worse from my Father.” She shrugged.
They were quite a pair. Both so young, and both treated very badly. Even looking at Heidi, she had a rather faint scar on her leg, no doubt from her father.
She caught me looking. “Haven’t you ever seen an ugly scar before?” She asked.
“Why did he treat you that way?” I asked.
She didn’t look at me, but she had a hardened look on her face like she didn’t care. Like long ago, she had accepted what her life was, and she’d moved on from it. “I can’t explain why some people are messed up, Joshua. All I know is that some people have all the luck, and I have none. I think… my Father wanted to have no weight attached to his life, and he wanted me to pull my own weight, without having to care about me… he took so many things
from me.”
“Like what?”
“I just… I can’t look back like other people can and see a happy, comfortable life. I have no happy memories to rest in, nothing to look back on in fondness. People have those things to look back on for comfort, and I have nothing. “
She stopped in her tracks. “Look at this… a year ago this was green…”
We came upon a large stretch of land with no green. The grass and trees very suddenly cut off, and there was nothing left but cold, hard earth. The vapors had killed the land here. They were especially intense in this area, and particularly visible. They had a reddish tinge to them.
“This place has festered horribly,” I commented.
“Well yeah, clearly,” she replied. There was a steep incline in front of us, with unsteady rocks caked it. Heidi carefully lowered herself down onto the incline, and slowly started making her way down by grabbing hold of the rocks. I carefully place one foot down before the other one. In my robes, it was hard to move, and even harder to see past my long body. I stepped on something unsteady and nearly fell over, but I caught myself just barely. I breathed in sharply.
Heidi was doing great, even climbing in a dress with clunky boots on. She was already half way down.
Suddenly, I wondered what it would be like to slip and die here, and I had a sensation of complete fear. I grabbed onto the ledge I was on, and was too scared to move.
Heidi looked up at me. “Joshua, are you okay?”
“I am stuck.”
She laughed. “Do you want me to come back up there?”
“Yes.”
I waited while she climbed back up. She was sweating and exerted, but she was used to this sort of work. I was not. She got beside me. “Okay, I’ll guide you.” She looked down. “Lower your right foot down and to the left a little…”
It took us many minutes it seemed, but eventually we got down. Heidi was out of breath, but not nearly as much as I was.
“Don’t you ‘Gods’ ever work out?” she said snidely. “Aren’t you glad I came with you?”
“No. You might get hurt.”
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who was stuck just now. Why do you care so much about me anyway?” She took a skin of water out of the backpack she brought, and sipped some, and then she gave it to me. I guzzled it.
Irritated, I said, “you make it hard sometimes.”
We sat down, needing a break, and after a moment she said, “So Joshua, if you are, indeed a God what’s life like in ‘The Above’.”
Looking for a single word, I said, “ineffectual.”
She laughed. “It’s boring?”
“No. It had no effect on me.”
She didn’t follow. “Was it supposed to?”
“No. Gods are not meant to feel much.” I answered truthfully.
“Did you…?”
“More than the average God; I never thought walking through a life that lasted forever was fun. I always wanted to run. But life was not meant to be fun, at least not for me.”
She could not feel pity for me, because she thought I had everything handed to me in life. She had the decency not to say anything though.
“The truth is,” I decided to elaborate, feeling slightly more talkative than usual; “when you’re a God… feelings can damage anything around you. You never want to wipe out a whole village in a fit of rage, for example.”
That seemed to get under her skin. “I feel so bad for you. You hold the power over someone’s life in one hand; life must be so hard for you.”
I didn’t let her get the rise out of me she wanted. “Most people would feel blessed that a God looked after them and saved their life.”
“Most people weren’t beaten black and blue from ages six to twenty-five. Where were you then?” She looked wounded. She was beginning to believe I was real, and it hurt her all the more to know that someone could watch her suffer, and do nothing about it.
“I was not meant to rescue you from every traumatic moment in your life Heidi. You must find your own way.” I answered simply.
“Why… why didn’t you help my brother?” She asked.
I glanced away from her. “I had no power over that case. He died on his own, without my assistance. I could not judge him either way.”
“That’s not fair! Why did my Father live longer than him?” She cried.
“It was fair,” I countered.
“You’re such a coward and you can’t stand seeing the bad things mortals do that you won’t even take a moment to realize we do good things to! My brother was good… why didn’t you help him?” She was angry now.
Evenly, I said, “your brother was not good or bad, his life had barely begun. I had no hand in his death, either he would live or die and he died. There was nothing I could do.”
Her eyes looked distant, like she wasn’t looking at anything in particular.
I had no words of solace for her. I felt bad for her because really; I liked her… I liked her a lot. But I was not good at consoling people, and I was even worse at pretending to empathize with them. I always thought it was somewhat insulting—when someone said they knew how you were feeling. There’s no way they could know that…
“I know he deserved better…” I said truthfully, “watching your father abuse the both of you was—hard—and I am sorry.”
She looked over at me. “You mean that. That’s nice…”
We got going a little afterwards, after guzzling water. I never knew what it was like to feel hungry or thirsty. I didn’t like it. Having a dry throat and an empty stomach was one of the worst things I’d ever felt. We walked through the barren ground and red vapors all day until we finally got exhausted and had to stop and sleep. Feeling tired was another new sensation.
And frankly, suddenly I wasn’t feeling very well. Heidi seemed dazed as well. “Joshua, I feel sick…” she coughed weakly and collapsed.
I walked over to her, feeling sick myself. Suddenly, I had a heated moment of complete fear. I felt so sick I thought I was on the verge of death. I was coughing too; the red vapors were suddenly affecting me. I never thought I’d ever be so close to death in my life, and I never knew it’d be so frightening. From a hot, pounding head, to a weakness in my legs I could not stand this feeling. I wondered if this was how the mortals felt when they were about to die…
All I could think of was Heidi. I crawled over to her and touched her shoulder, erecting a shield around her, and then I collapsed.
I awoke somewhere incredibly green. I was surprised I was not dead. It was like a paradise… I had never seen this place before, not even from The Above… butterflies, colorful flowers, pollen floating around, and a soft breeze blowing by. I got up and walked about. I stopped in my tracks and looked up. There, in a grove of many trees, was the biggest tree I’d ever seen in my old life. So large I couldn’t even see the top of it. The most wonderful thing about this place was that there were no vapors. The air was so clean. “Wow…” I whispered breathlessly.
I realized I hadn’t found Heidi. Calmly, I looked about for her. But there was something odd about how a patch of grass was moving nearby…. It seemed to be coming towards me. When a person popped out of it, I fell on my rump.
It was a little green child-- with yellow hair--dressed in nothing but leaves, with only one eye.
“Moving grass!” I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I’d seen everything, being a God.
“I am not grass. I am a tree. How dare you confuse me with something as wretched as grass!”
I looked him up and down. “You are green, not brown. You must be living grass. Now, have you seen my friend?”
“Not unless you apologize to the great Shankar.” He crossed his arms indignantly.
“Sorry…” I shrugged. I supposed it wasn’t beneath me to apologize. Even if it was to grass.
“That’s better. She’s a nice girl, far too nice to be keeping someone like you company. She gave me resp
ect right off the bat. She ought to be taking care of those mortals, not you. She was almost dead when I found her, just why were you dragging her through those vapors?”
“She volunteered to come. I told her to stay behind.”
“You seem to like her. Why only her? I thought you Gods didn’t care about anyone.” Shankar said sarcastically.
I ignored him. “Where is she?” I repeated.
“She’s right over there.” Shankar moved aside and pointed to a nearby little hill. Heidi was on top, lying on her belly, looking at the sky. “You know, you big oaf, you should really learn how to treat your betters—where are you going?”
I walked past him and to Heidi. She glanced at me for a moment, and then back at the sky. I knelt by her side. “I think you should stay here, Heidi…”
“You almost died just like I did… why do you get to keep going and I don’t…?” she made a face.
“You’re special Heidi. I think I finally found someone who I would die for.” I sat down next to her, cross legged.
She looked at me askance. “…why?”
“I’ve watched you from The Above, Heidi. I know what you did, all those months ago….” I gave her a sidelong glance, and she looked embarrassed and avoided my gaze.
“A child in that village, the one who looks like your brother…. He was dying. The mage in your village, she told you the only way to save him was to use some of somebody else’s life. You let her use yours. I’ve been trying to understand such a selfless act. Why?” I looked at her intently.
She frowned and sighed. “My life was going nowhere, everyone I loved was gone or dead… that boy has a good life, a good family. Saving him was like getting the second chance to save my brother.”
I felt a deep hurting in the depth of what a mortal might call their soul. I closed my eyes and bit my lip. “You shall only live to be thirty. I can’t choose whether you live or die at thirty, because then you shall die not of old age, but of magic. Something I don’t control.”
“You shouldn’t have saved me in the first place. I don’t deserve special treatment.” She murmured distantly. “My life has been sad, Joshua. I feel… empty.”
“I shall make you into a Goddess.” I said, hoping to cheer her up.
She smiled. “Cute.” After a moment of enjoying the weather and beautiful scenery, she said, “well, I wish to come with you, Joshua. You saved my life. I owe you one anyway. I’m tired though… can we spend the night here?”
“I don’t know where ‘here’ is, but we can ask that Shankar fellow.” I looked about skeptically, but couldn’t help but love the wind wrestling through my hair.
“Okay. He seems friendly enough.”
“I don’t think so…”
She giggled. “You didn’t give him proper respect, did you?”
I helped her to her feet. She wouldn’t change her mind, so I didn’t try to change it for her. Besides. I enjoyed her company. Was that a crime?
I looked around for Shankar, but he seemed to have disappeared. At least I thought as much until he arose from the grass with a yawn.
“Hello, Shankar,” I
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