The Accidental God (A Pygmalion Fail Book 1)

by Casey Matthews

  I twisted to shout something angry and thumped square into Ronin. He still had his arms crossed.

  “Really?” I asked, adrenaline getting ahead of me. “You’re choosing right now to get in my face?”

  “Go below deck,” Ronin said. “I will see you shortly. Take your… friend… with you.” It was the gentler tone that cut me to my core—that stole the outrage from my swelling chest and left me deflated.

  “Hey,” Dak said. “Is that the grumpy ninja you told me about? Ronin! All the world’s worst fan-fiction authors just called. They want your name back.”

  I punched the icon to disconnect Dak and plucked the stone and transmitter from the deck. Clearing my throat, I said, “For the record, I really like your name. It’s really grown on—”

  Ronin pointed at the hatch.

  “Right,” I said. “Going now.”

  Chapter Nine: Long Time Till Tomorrow

  I couldn’t shut my bunk door because seven hundred pounds of dead witch lay in the threshold. Remembering poor Kyra, I fetched Leo from the corridor and set him on my bunk. Leo uncurled from his shell and Kyra stood on hind legs, whiskers twitching and head bobbing energetically in my direction. She seemed anxious. I’d probably have been anxious too if I were a shrew.

  “Hold still and I’ll fix you,” I said.

  I fetched the serpent wand and wrote my magic words on paper, working on a good anagram. Lifting the wand, I flicked it over Kyra. “Show me a freed thing!” It was rearranged from “dame-ing of the shrew.”

  Magaran magic must have liked literary references, because Kyra popped to full size in a shower of glitter, grown so fast her head banged the ceiling.

  Wincing, hair in disarray, Kyra patted her body and checked all the major components. She seemed as well put together as ever. Once assured, she gaped at me and threw her lanky arms around my neck. “Magister Grawflefox, you are godsent.”

  So this is what adulation feels like. My body rejected it like a foreign organ, spine stiffening and the awkward “this would be a horrifying time to get an erection” thought reminding me how little progress since middle school I’d made on being touched by girls. I patted Kyra’s shoulder and wormed from her grip, putting my hands in my pockets like a dope. “Glad you’re sorted out.”

  “I must check on my sisters,” Kyra said, dark eyes gleaming my way.

  I averted my gaze and nodded. “Go for it.”

  She left and once again I stood alone, staring at Gorfina’s remains. Head spatter decorated the floor and my bed. The room smelled like a meat locker. Meanwhile, snake-woman mucus had dried in my hair and on my face, arms, and clothes. Every inch of my clothing was crusted with it and my exposed skin was tacky. It was plastered to my wand, my backpack—even Leo’s shell. Everything I owned smelled like snake guts.

  I dared not sit on my bed, which had small chunks of Gorfina’s skull and brain lying atop it. There was nowhere to sit, no way to move the corpse, no way to shut my door, and I had no cleaning accoutrements. So I stood there. Sticky, corpse-scented, and feeling the enormity of tonight colliding with my small-town sensibilities.

  I’m not really here. I’m in a psych ward, bound in a straitjacket, and this is a hallucination. For the first time, it seemed plausible—and preferable. There were no cannibalistic witches in a psych ward. No heads blew up, showering me in gray matter. My friends would not be killed before my eyes; I was not responsible for anyone’s demise. The word “asylum” took on a profound new meaning closer to its original intent.

  Tonight was nothing like the fight with the orcs or the dragon. Elsie had nearly died. I flashed on a crystal-clear memory of her swollen face and ragged inhalations, on the color of her blue lips, and it sent my heart galloping. Fear chemicals tightened my muscles and the air around me thinned.

  I held the wall for support, head swimming. I bent over to get at some of the oxygen along the floor, but there wasn’t any there either. My face flushed and sweat worked through my shirt. I have to get out of this room. I made for the door.

  Ronin blocked my exit and put his hands on my shoulders. “Sit.”

  “There’s nowhere. It’s all…” I waved expansively, trying to seep past him.

  “Sit.” He pushed me onto my bed.

  My stomach rebelled when I felt things squish beneath me. “I’m on top of… someone’s head pieces.”

  “It washes out. Breathe into this.” He fashioned a small sack from the memory cloth he wore, handing it to me.

  “I’ll hurl into it.”

  “It washes out. Breathe.”

  I did. Gradually, the room stopped spinning and seemed real again. When the prickle faded from my lips and cheeks, I glanced at him. “I made a mess in here.” My whole body shook. “A total mess…”

  I realized Ronin was back to half a mask and his cowl, and he held me steady with his blue-eyed gaze. “It was an ugly battle. You were in terrible danger. Now you decide what to do with your horror—with the fear and restlessness that battle affixes to the soul. It’s embossed on you, and if you don’t confront tonight with clear eyes—ungilded, without guilt—it will haunt you.”

  I buried my face in my hands. “Can we have this conversation when I’m not sticky?”

  “Follow me.”

  Ronin took me a floor lower, to the Akarri quarters. Through the open doors, I could see neatly made-up bunks and Spartan rooms with few personal effects. It was deserted, the Akarri likely organized above deck. At the corridor’s end was a hexagonal chamber, its three back walls fitted with faucet heads near the ceiling and a drain on the floor. It was a shower.

  “I thought this was for Akarri,” I said.

  “My boat, my rules,” Ronin said. “No one will bother you.” He thrust a bar of soap into my hands and left me alone with the showerheads.

  I stripped, scooted my clothes out the door where they wouldn’t get wet, and made sure the door was secured. When the first drizzle of hot water hit the back of my scalp, I shuddered. Even without much water pressure, the sensation was exactly what I needed. I scraped the crud off my body and scrubbed my skin pink. All the filth swirled at the shower’s center and disappeared down the drain.

  Once, I flashed on Gorfina’s head popping. I could feel the mass of her brains thumping my chest hard enough to send me teetering. I groaned.

  Then I remembered her bragging about devouring a child. Not an ounce of me doubted her words. My fists clenched and I summoned again the memory and sensation of her skull fragments hitting me. This time the righteous anger I nursed in my heart whispered, Good. No matter how horrifying, I had no illusions that Gorfina deserved anything less than her fate. Maybe I should have been a better man; maybe that shouldn’t have mattered. But it did.

  After a solid twenty minutes, Ronin knocked. He passed a towel through a crack in the door and I dried, wrapping it around my waist. Outside the shower, I searched in vain for my underwear, breeches, shirt, and vest; everything but my shoes was gone. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Tossed them over the side.”

  My brow furrowed. “I thought it would ‘wash out.’ ”

  “Might have exaggerated. New ones in your bunk.”

  I hurried ahead of Ronin since I only had the towel, wondering how I’d change amidst the carnage in my room. However, when I arrived, I saw someone had scraped Gorfina from the floor and given it a quick scrub that had replaced the meat-locker smell with a caustic odor. My old bunk was removed from the wall for cleaning, the opposite bunk pulled out from the wall and dressed in fresh linens. A neat stack of clothes lay on the pillow.

  My heart swelled with gratitude. “You guys cleaned up brain matter for me?” I wanted to give Ronin a hug.

  “Dress,” Ronin ordered. “I’ll be back.”

  When he returned, I was slumped into the corner of my bed and halfway to feeling human. Ronin produced two short glasses and poured liquor into one.

  He passed it to me. “Drink.”

  I sniffed. “I’
m kind of underage.” And Dak’s no fan of the stuff.

  “You’re old enough to fight a battle. You can drink.”

  I turned the glass between my fingers. Ronin had spoken last and I felt like it was my obligation to fill the quiet.

  Ronin leaned back into the doorframe, liquor bottle and one empty glass in hand. He never spoke and his face was inscrutable beneath that damn mask.

  “I wanted to help,” I finally said. “That’s why I went above deck.”

  “Admirable.”

  I shook my head. “I had to. This world is my fault.”

  “This world is not your fault,” he said. “It’s larger than you. And it was here first.”

  “How sure of that are you?” I asked.

  “Very.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was there,” Ronin said.

  I blinked. “Before me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it like before I changed it?”

  “Not good. I lived on an island then. Alone. Ignored it for as long as I could.”

  “And now you’re at war with Dracon.” I sipped the burning liquor and winced. Resolving to get it down in one go, I tossed it back. Bad as it tasted, the nuclear sensation updrafting from my gorge was worse. “That’s wretched.”

  Ronin filled the second glass and traded it for my empty.

  “No fair,” I said. “You’re undoing my hard work.”

  “Last one,” he promised.

  I stared into the amber liquid, gulped it all in one go, and wiped at my eyes. My head was fuzzy and my body leaden. Words spilled more easily off my lips. “Elsie’s my friend—she’s a new friend, but I like her. I watched her almost die. She’s safe, but my heart’s not slowing down. Every second feels like the moment I thought she was going to die. I can’t turn that off. What if I never can? What if that incredible need to go and do something never fades?”

  “It will. But it may come back, too.”

  “Comforting,” I groused.

  Ronin shrugged.

  “I figured if I fought a battle, I’d be ready for Dracon.”

  He shook his head. “You will never be ready. But you will have help.”

  That actually was a comfort. “I’d much rather be the support caster.”

  “You have a knack. You fixed Kyra.”

  “I like her better when she’s tall. I can look into her eyes.” I studied Ronin. “I know why Dracon hates me. It’s because I changed things. Why does he hate you?”

  Ronin ignored my question. “He hates you for many reasons. Your presence divides the power allotted to your kind. Your mere existence and beating heart make him weaker.”

  “Why won’t he just let me go home, then?”

  “You would wreak more havoc on his world from your easel than from within Rune. He has to kill you here. That’s why he’s sealed the pathways to Earth. The only way out is through Dracon.”

  “I have a family. I don’t want to sound impatient, but… how long will this take?”

  Ronin shrugged again. “Who can say? But since you can speak with your Earth friend, you should make arrangements. You may not return home for some time.” He paused, as if considering whether to say more. “You may not return at all.”

  I sighed. “One more thing for my ‘to do’ list. God. Aunt Amy’s going to kill me if I miss Christmas.”

  “Worry about it tomorrow,” he said. “And add this to your ‘list’: talk to the Akarri about the battle. It may help exorcise your demons.”

  “I thought you said I had to stay in my bunk.” I passed him the empty glass.

  “You may now take your meals with the Akarri.” He turned to leave.

  “What about you? You going to talk about anything?”

  “No.”

  “So you haven’t got any demons to exorcise?”

  “There’s nothing in me but demons,” Ronin said.

  “Sounds badass. Maybe I should just do that instead.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it.” He shut the door behind him.

  It was a rough night. I woke twice gasping for air. The meat-locker smell came back sometime after midnight, pushing through the scent of lye. I tried sleep again, but was wrapped in Gorfina’s stink, which dipped me into nightmares of being swallowed and digested. Near dawn, an Akarri must have shouted outside my bunk; I woke instantly, muscles wired with twitchy alertness, with my heart in my ears. I lulled myself back to sleep and no one woke me for breakfast, so it was my computer stone’s ringtone that roused me around ten.

  I fumbled with the gyroscope, managed to get the stone floating, and saw Dak was calling me. Scrubbing the tired from my face, I tapped the icon and my friend appeared.

  “Long night?” he asked.

  “Look,” I said. “Thanks for last night. I mean that. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “I’ll always have your back. But just a reminder: that’s a lot harder when your back is far away.”

  Farther than you think. “It’s going to stay that way,” I said.

  “I get it,” Dak said. “Don’t like it, but we’ve run closed games before. You got the invite, I didn’t; and it’s a magnificent game. You’d be a fool not to play just because I’m not there.”

  “That’s…” I ran my hands through my hair. “That’s not what I mean. Dak.” I looked him in the eyes. “I’m going to be gone a while. Maybe years. So I have to disconnect from Earth and dilate time on your end. It’s the only way to spare Aunt Amy and Uncle Scott the freak-out.” And maybe you, too.

  He frowned, searching for my meaning.

  “I’ll check in every hundred days my-time,” I said. “That means we’ll talk tomorrow your-time. If I don’t contact you or leave a message once a day… assume the worst. If I disconnect, years on my end will be weeks or months on yours. It’ll keep my life from getting away from me. If I’m gone over a week and people come looking for me, try to keep Aunt Amy and Uncle Scott’s spirits up. If I stop calling you… it means I’m dead. They’ll do better if they know. I’m sorry if you have to be the one to tell them.”

  Dak’s frown deepened, blending hurt and anger. He couldn’t decide whether to tell me off or believe me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, voice pinching. I waited until I could speak again. “This thing could take decades. It’d kill my family. And hell, if by some stroke of luck it ends in the next few months my-time, I’d love to come home and convince you it was a stupid game I played over the weekend.”

  “But you’re telling me it’s not,” Dak said.

  I couldn’t lie to him. “It’s not.”

  “You’re an asshole,” Dak said.

  “It’s not a game.”

  “This is the dumbest practical joke anyone’s ever attempted. This is Andy Kaufman levels of messed up.” Dak shook his head. “And I’m not amused. Leveraging your aunt and uncle to make me buy it? That’s ugly.”

  “Yeah, it was a dumb idea for a joke,” I said. A lonely weight settled into the pit of my stomach like a frozen stone. I tried a smile that felt plastic. “I’ll talk to you Sunday. Get some studying done. Check you later.”

  I disconnected.

  And I stared at my gyroscope.

  I didn’t want to, but my fingers flicked the dial from EARTH to RUNE, severing the connection between our worlds—dilating time on Dak’s end. I accessed a calendar on my computer and set an alarm for one hundred days from now; it was the next time I’d allow myself to communicate with my best friend. “Long time till tomorrow,” I whispered.

  ***

  I saw myself as a modern thinker, capable of sampling from cultural traditions, able to keep what I liked for substantive or aesthetic reasons and jettison the rest. Traditional notions of “masculine” and “feminine” meant little to me: I loved to cook, despised sports that weren’t Calvinball or StarCraft II, and getting beat up by The Murph failed to dent my self-worth.

  However, some cultural taboos were stronger than I was. Afte
r cutting myself off from Dak for the next hundred days, I cried. And I was ashamed.

  It took a good wallow and some head-thumping into the wall before I had it together. I made it to the galley in time for lunch, though. The Akarri ate hot biscuits slathered in mashed chicken with gravy—the kind that came from a can. The soldiers treated it like a big deal.

  “Magister Grawflefox!” Kyra shouted. “Partake in our victory biscuits.”

  I snagged a tray and slumped onto the bench, lifting a drippy biscuit. Appearance aside, it was an incredible biscuit—the white fluff seemed to soak in the gravy down to a certain level, but not far enough to make the whole affair soggy. “These are amazing,” I said between bites.

  “We save them for good days,” Kyra said. “Surviving a scrape with Magaran witches counts as a good day.”

  I realized I had no idea what had happened in the fight. “Did everyone… I mean, we didn’t… lose anyone… did we?”

  “No,” Kyra said. “Though we have no idea how they found us over Korvian soil. The Magarans usually stick to the Shadow Fen. Have you any thoughts?”

  I shook my head. “No. But I’ll brain on it. It’s a safe bet I was their target.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “We think they flew through the forest at ground level to avoid our imaging stones. The infiltrator who attacked you made it past our watchwoman, but she caught the coven when they followed. They assumed the bottom of our ship was a blind spot—but the imaging stones give us a view of every facing of our ship, and we dropped lightning on the heads of those who flew straight to the weather deck.”

  “How’d they take out the cannons?” I asked.

  “Three dismounted below the ship and scaled to the weather deck,” Kyra said. “The imaging stone gives us sight on our ship’s belly, but the firing arcs on our cannons don’t cover that area.”

  “Something of a design flaw,” I said. My mood soured when I remembered I’d drawn the sky ships that way. It was my design flaw.

  “The three who disabled the lightning cannons were the ones who transformed into the big one,” Kyra said. “The big one who attacked you below deck had an eel shot out from under her and crashed into Agra.” She shook her head. “Filthy creature broke Agra’s arm and two ribs. She’ll need to visit the infirmary in Amyss.”