Monstrosity

by Laura Diaz De Arce

  "Skilarus," it said.

  Flor had never heard that word before, but she knew what it was. It was the language of the gods. Other chosen had mentioned it in their diaries and writing, but none could describe it or translate it. That did not matter. Flor knew it as surely as she knew how to laugh or cry. It was natural, she was a part of it. And she knew she could understand it. She could speak it to the voice if needed.

  Skilarus, was a simple salutation: It meant, "I am here."

  Two nights later, Flor tested the waters, curled up in her bed.

  "[Hello?]" she said, in a tongue that was foreign but close to breathing.

  "Skilarus. [We are together. It is good to be almost whole,]" it said.

  "[We? Are there more of you?]" Flor replied

  "[No. Just you and I. Soon we will not be separate. We will be one again as we were before.]"

  Flor dug deeper into her covers. "[What do you mean?]"

  "[You and I are the same. We are incomplete until united. Until we are one.]" The voice paused and Flor knew that it was assessing something about itself. "[Are we in pain?]"

  "[Sometimes. The headaches are the worst, but they are getting better. Why do you care?]"

  "[There is no 'me and you,' only us. Only an incomplete me.]" Another pause. The voice was measuring something in itself. Flor could feel it. "[I am in pain.]" It paused again. "[I have been in pain for years now. Since I put myself into this vessel.]"

  Flor could feel it, the pain, the longing. She could feel the missing, bleeding, raw portions of herself elsewhere. Calling to her. Imploring her to join them. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, a breath that was not hers. She could taste something: earthy, smoky. "[Who are you?]"

  "[We. We are the coming of things. We are the promise of new.]"

  Flor did not speak to the voice in public in much the same reason she did not discuss her pain. Her position as the soon to be goddess was too important to be caught up in human matters. Instead her study of what was to come became more constant the closer as the fateful moment approached. Flor dug herself into the studies of past goddesses and their vessels, sneaking off at all hours to read those histories.

  In all the ceremonies, in all the texts, in every gently passed over sentence, she knew why the people in her life pulled themselves away from her. It was a thing better left unsaid, that in order for the goddess to live, she would die. Despite the reassurances the voice whispered to her every night, of joining, of reunification, Flor remained skeptical.

  Flor could not escape her fate, but she spent plenty of time contemplating doing just that anyway. If she ran and did not do the ceremony, this goddess clawing her way through her body would kill her. She would also be a shameful memory for her mother and her people. If she did the ceremony she surely would die. As she contemplated the end of her own mortality, Flor found herself pulling away from everyone as well. Or, well—or at least she tried.

  Ilda did not treat her daughter like the goddess she would become. She treated her like the child she still believed her to be as much as possible. She scolded her, held her, bossed her around their humble home. Ilda held onto her child as long as she could.

  One night, Ilda snuck into her daughter's quarters long after she had fallen asleep. She set a chair beside Flor's bed, sat down quietly and just stared at the sleeping almost-seventeen-year-old. Flor had a chipped, bitten nail on her thumb, telltale evidence of a habit that she could not seem to get rid of, goddess inside or not. When Flor slept this soundly, it reminded Ilda of when her child was a toddler and would fall asleep in her arms in the middle of a family gathering. There could be noise all around, but an infant Flor had found peace in her mother’s arms.

  Ilda sang softly to herself and her child, stroking Flor's hair. It was a lullaby the Melyn sang to their new babes. The song came from a Jel poem that had been translated and put to music by the Hickt. Mothers often sang it to their children in the many tongues of their people.

  "Let the babe hear sweet songs,

  In the cool dark night,

  For my love for you child,

  Could blind the stars in the sky."

  In the middle of her song Flor's eyes opened. But the eyes that shone through were not her daughter’s. Ilda paused. She knew these eyes as well.

  Flor, but not Flor, sat up and looked Ilda directly in the eye. "Thank you," she said in an accent more ancient than the stone beneath their feet. "Thank you for having kept your part of the bargain."

  Ilda looked away at a corner where Flor, still a young mortal, had left her vestments in a pile. "Do you have to take her from me? Truly? Can you not simply leave it as it was?"

  "We are what we were always. You knew this.” The being inside Flor rubbed her own shoulders, brushing away a chill. “She will be here, for I am here. She is me, my spirit made flesh. This was the deal we made."

  "I thought... I thought it would be different. I was desperate and did not know what I was doing when I made that deal."

  Flor, but not Flor, picked at that chipped nail. She tucked a knee beneath her and looked at Ilda.

  "When last we met, the child in your womb had ceased to live. You begged for one of my kind to save her. I gave you myself, and asked only that you raise me as your daughter."

  "I remember the dream. I did... I did not know what I was doing. My husband was ill and I did not know if we would be able to make another. This was my fourth, I couldn't bear it if-if, I... I thought it would be fine. But losing her... I..." Ilda coughed and heaved.

  "It has always been this way between our kind. That you misunderstand our nature is typical. Flor is not only your daughter. She is me, the me that needed to learn from your people. She is the portion that I made and tore off myself. Now I will be complete and able to walk among you."

  "But why, but why me?" Ilda truly wanted to say "her."

  "Because the stars aligned for us that day. Because I needed a mother. Because you asked." The Flor that was not Flor looked Ilda directly in the eyes, meeting a gaze that she had seen every day these past seventeen years. Ilda felt her ache.

  "If it will help, know that our pain at the joining does not last." Flor that was not Flor pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

  Ilda wiped at her eyes with her palms. She gulped and heaved a bit more.

  The Flor that was not Flor sniffed and wiped her eyes. "Mom?" she said, in a smaller voice than before. "Can you hold me for a little while and sing to me like you used to?"

  Ilda had to laugh a bit and wiped her eyes, swallowing her pain once more. She moved onto the bed and held her child-bound-up-with-a-goddess and stroked her hair. She continued her song.

  "Let the babe sleep deeply,

  When the nightbird sings,

  For my love for you child,

  Could melt anything."

  In times past, the days leading up to the ceremony meant a number of parties, celebrations, ceremonies and processions. Flor opted for only one small ceremonial celebration and a procession— the absolute minimum. In times past, people would observe the girl vessel to get a sense of what kind of goddess would soon be among them. They would make predictions based on what sorts of ceremonies they would choose and other factors. They would observe the girls with keen eyes for their manners, language, and choice of clothing.

  Flor gave nothing away. To everyone's frustration she accelerated the process of detachment she had begun when her Goddess marks had been confirmed. She cut her relations to loved ones and her friends in a hundred little ways. Flor also tried to separate herself from her mother more and more. Ilda gave her space but she refused to be discarded.

  To pass the time away from other people, Flor would climb onto a hillside and sit alone watching her city through eyes that saw the passage of time converge. But she was never truly alone, not with the voice becoming more agitated as the days grew close to their "reunification" as it called it. At times it was soothing; not nervous and excitable. Other times it was impatient. But it
managed at least one aspect of consistency, in that it steadfastly gave nothing away as to its nature.

  Flor found herself lashing out at the voice for this reason. She was melancholy about her impending death and also anxious about what it would entail. And how could she even know what she would become without any clue as to the true nature of the goddess inside? It would coo about the time coming, or how their kind did not assign the same markers humans did. There were no goddesses of things, it explained—of wars, or love, or of art. They simply were.

  Three days before the ceremony, as Flor was in one such frustrating, probing, evasive discussion, Ilda came to the hillside. She sat down silently beside her daughter. Flor looked over to this woman who had birthed and raised her, and whom she was attempting to make into a stranger, and took stock of her. She saw the Ilda of the past, young and skinny and graceless; the Ilda that followed—a young mother, far more self-assured; and on to the present, and future, in both of which Ilda looked every bit the woman in mourning, her Jel features strained and elongated in the absence of her family.

  Ilda smiled and stroked Flor's hair. "I need to speak to my daughter, if you don't mind."

  Flor could feel the voice withdraw, retreating and growing silent for the first time in memory. "But how did you-"

  "Before you begin, I need to tell you something. I need to tell you this before it festers in my heart and kills me slowly." Ilda looked out on the city. In this light, golden in the late midday, Ilda's brown skin mimicked the sunset. She continued, "I made a deal—a bargain, a long time ago and it is why you are the way you are. When I was younger, the world seemed full of possibilities, but when I got older and married those possibilities dried up. I loved your father, more than the river loves to run, more that I knew I could love."

  Flor recalled the images of her father around their home, the recent visions she had seen with her new eyes. They shared a nose and eyes that had thinner lids. He had died while she was still a baby, and Flor had thus been too young to know anything of him. She knew stories about him, and to her he seemed to be a mythical figure, a ghost in her home, measured by an absence of presence.

  "But in those days, I had no real wealth,” Ilda said. “My parents used it all in the hard times. A few years before your birth, a sickness came to the city.”

  Flor remembered hearing about the sun sickness, as it was called. The disease caused people to grow exhausted when they went out during the day. Some recovered, but many others passed away. Others were sick for long periods of time, shuffling to a gradual death.

  "Your father and I both had the illness, and because neither of us could work in the fields he went to the city and worked twice as hard to provide for us. I recovered eventually, but he never really did. Your father could do little and I knew I would lose him sooner than I cared. I wanted to keep a part of him alive. I wanted— needed — to keep a part of him with me. We tried very hard for a child as your father grew weaker.

  "There were three before you. Two were miscarriages. Another was a stillbirth. I became pregnant with you, but by then your father could barely walk on his own. I prayed to every goddess that ever was. One night, when you weren’t kicking, I went to sleep and I had a dream.

  "In that dream I met you. Or the goddess you were, the one now inside you. And it offered me a deal: That I might let her save the child inside, that it would be chosen and I would no longer feel the pain of this disease. For you see, my dove, your silence had been a sign that your heart had stopped beating.

  "I knew, I knew what it meant." Ilda paused to look at her hands, remembering the hands that shook on this deal. "I knew that I would be sacrificing you for everyone else in seventeen years. I knew that you would have to go through the ceremony or be consumed by it. But I was in a dream, and I was not sure what was real, and your father was dying, and I could not bear to have another dead child in my arms. In my selfishness, I agreed to it."

  Ilda took a deep breath, making the tears pause their descent down her face. Flor looked away. She was angry that she would go through all of this for her mother's desperation. In the city, a child was eating a sweet sitting on a corner. She could see that child as she was then, and how she would be as an adult, searching for a shop that had closed. It occurred to her that if it had not been her mother, it would have been some other desperate person.

  The voice perked up. "I needed someone to let me in. We cannot make the bond unless a host is willing. This was my first time, and our mother, she was hardened but kind. I wanted to have a life like this. We needed this life and she gave it."

  Flor looked at her mother. She gained much from her choice. The mother of a goddess is given food, shelter. The vessel of a goddess is given fine clothes and education. Yet, they could not help but suffer from the choice she had made. Flor could make that suffering less. She took her mother in her arms. They held each other in silence.

  The day before the ceremony, the voice went contemplatively silent. Flor refused any last celebrations and rituals. Instead, she ate home cooked meals and wandered around the city. Her special vision relented for a day, if only to give her a few last hours of normalcy. Her city had changed even in her short lifetime. There was the amphitheater, which had had to be expanded for greater crowds. The taller buildings made possible by carrier boxes and pulleys that allowed people to move upwards without climbing. The little school she had attended as a child was now a series of shops with housing above. All things must make themselves anew, or cease to be. Noticing and documenting these changes in her mind was a balm to Flor. Her change was imminent.

  On her last night she watched the sunset with Ilda on the hillside. They watched as their city was cloaked in gold and oranges, which faded to a rich blue, and finally black speckled with the glow of lanterns. Flor kept her eyes open the entire time, despite the tears. She wanted to commit every moment to her final memory.

  The morning of the ceremony was filled with a desperate quiet. Flor walked with her mother to the shack in the early morning mist. Flor had known about what was to come since she had first been confirmed. She had read the passages about the ceremony over and over, each described it with an intense dedication to medical detail. Reading each step over and over to prepare herself, to steel her nerves for her imminent death, did not in fact steel her nerves. She still shivered when she opened the shack door.

  The shack itself was supposed to convey humility, but each decade it had become grander and finer as generations found themselves having to rebuild it when the wooden structure rotted. Inside, Flor was met with the five priestesses who would assist in the transition. She knew their names and faces from over the years even though they had all quite obviously kept their distance from her. Having been trained since youth to perform this act, they did not want to become attached to the sacrificial calf.

  Three of the priestesses were pointers, one was a hearth maiden, and the oldest was to be the cleaver. The hearth maiden commenced her task, lighting the fire and throwing in specific herbs to scent the shack. The pointers disrobed and bathed Flor, dusting her with perfumes and oils. They braided and cut her hair, to be set aside and revered at the temple by future generations. They shaved her head for a cleaner incision.

  The cleaver sharpened and blessed her knives at the altar. All vessels were given the option to select or design their knives. In the privacy of their temples the priests and priestesses would speculate about what the choice indicated about the goddess. The prevailing theory being that if it was a returning goddess, the vessel would select the same knives as before.

  Flor had chosen a very old, very simple handle design and only asked that the blades be replaced with the newest, sharpest material. The priests and priestesses did not know what to make of this choice. The knives glimmered in the firelight, reflecting the shadows that moved across the walls. Flor closed her eyes.

  The pointers tied their ropes around her limbs and waist. They took their positions at opposite ends of the hut and on the cleaver
's benediction, they used a series of pulleys to hoist her up, arms and legs splayed, directly over the roaring fire. The heat caused Flor to sweat, perfumed drops falling and turning to steam below. Flor kept her eyes closed, sure that she would die before the hardest part even finished.

  The night before, as Flor had lain in her bed trying not to sleep, she had asked the voice a simple question: "Will it hurt?"

  The voice had waited, she could feel it waiting. It finally answered, "Yes."

  "Why? Why do we do this?" Flor had cried into her pillow.

  "Until we no longer have to,” was all the voice would say.

  The hearth maiden heated the knives as the cleaver climbed a small set of steps to lean over Flor's backside. The hearth maiden passed a hexagonal knife to the cleaver. The cleaver took this knife and at the base of her spine, where a goddess mark had first appeared as a solitary dot, she pierced. Flor did not scream. She sucked in her breath as the knife moved above the spine. The cleaver gave it back to the hearth maiden to be reheated. The hearth maiden heated it again and passed it back to the cleaver. She pierced the next mark up on Flor’s back. They did this over and over, with each successive piercing being more painful than the last. Flor held in her vomit. The voice tried a few encouraging words, but all Flor had for it was hatred.

  When each mark had been done, the hearth maiden took a hooked knife and placed it in the fire. It glowed bright red when handed to the cleaver. She inserted the tip of it at Flor's belly button and pressing the molten tip to it worked backward, sliced the skin, down to between the labia and up through the buttocks. Flor screamed. The pointers had waited for this and tightened the rope. They were trained to see this pain and to pursue their duty. Flor's agony rippled through the shack. She held nothing but pain and anger.

  The final knife was a small, angled thing. Again, the cleaver initiated the cuts at the base of her back and moved on from there up the spine. By this point, Flor could say nothing, she only cried to herself as tears disappeared in the flames below. Working from her stomach, the cleaver took the knife and slowly brought it upward, splitting the skin between her breasts and neck. She ended at her chin.