Moon Chosen

Chapter 3

     Far to the northwest, just beyond the boundary of the ruins of the City, Dead Eye made a decision that would alter the fabric of the world. Recently the restlessness that had punctuated his entire life had grown to an almost unbearable level. He knew why. He was well and truly disgusted by pretending that his God, the People’s Reaper, was alive. Dead Eye had known the God was dead from the day the Caretaker had presented him to Her.
     The day of his presentation he had been as excited as the rest of the younglings who had survived the sixteen winters it took to be proclaimed one of the People. Dead Eye had fasted and prayed and brought his living sacrifice. Naked, he and the other younglings had entered Her Temple in the heart of the City and climbed the stairway up and up to the Watchers’ Chamber.
     The chamber had been filled with the sweetly pungent smoke of cedar wood. The bones of the Others who had been sacrificed for the People were stacked against the walls of the large room, forming intricate decorations to show the People’s pleasure in their God’s bounty.
     Sleeping pallets were interspersed between metal pots filled with fragrant, always burning wood, curtained by walls of vines that had been coaxed to grow from cracks in the Temple’s ceiling.
Then the Watchers had included young women, as well as the crones who chose to end their days in service to the Reaper. Dead Eye remembered that the day he had been presented to the God many of the pallets had held young Watchers, their bodies actively accepting the Reaper’s tribute from young, virile men.
     “Best concentrate on the God. If She accepts your sacrifice and answers your question, there will be time for pleasure later.” Dead Eye’s Caretaker had reminded him when his attention had strayed too long to one of the more vocal couples.
     “Yes, Caretaker,” he’d replied, instantly averting his gaze and refocusing his thoughts inward.
Even then—even when Dead Eye had barely known more than sixteen winters—he’d believed the God had a plan for him. Believed it. Known it. Never doubted it. Yes, the People were suffering. No, Dead Eye did not understand why. He didn’t understand why the Reaper, the beautiful, ferocious God of the People, allowed death and disease among them. He didn’t understand why their God told them to flay the skin from the living Others so that the People might heal their own shedding skin and absorb the Others’ power, and yet the People still sickened, shed their skin, and died.
     But Dead Eye had planned on understanding that very day.
     The God would accept his sacrifice, and then She would answer him, and he would be eternally in Her service.
     A youngling ran past him, clutching a tiny gutted creature to his naked chest as he wept brokenly.
     “His sacrifice was not accepted! The God is not pleased!” The lead Watcher’s high, reedy voice came from the balcony.
     With a jolt, Dead Eye had realized he was the only youngling left in the chamber. His gaze flew to the balcony as he cradled his sacrifice close to him, praying his instincts had served him well—that he had chosen wisely when he’d spent days trapping and then rejecting all except the pure white pigeon that rested in his hands.
     “Caretaker, present the next youngling!” The lead Watcher stepped into the chamber, standing before the huge glassless windows that separated the room from the balcony on which the enormous statue of the Reaper perched, looking out from Her Temple and beckoning Her People to come to Her.
     “I present Dead Eye,” his Caretaker said. Then she stepped aside, allowing him to walk the rest of the length of the chamber alone.
     When he reached the lead Watcher, she turned and together they walked out to the sacred balcony.
     Though he now knew the statue was just dead metal, and the God an empty shell, Dead Eye would never forget the first time he approached the Reaper. As always, metal pots arranged in a semicircle around Her were filled with fire, illuminating Her, warming Her. Dead Eye had stared up at Her, taking in the magnificence of Her presence.
     She was everything a God should be—strong, terrifying, beautiful. Her immortal skin was made of metal that glistened seductively in the firelight. She was taller than ten men and more magnificent than any woman Dead Eye had ever beheld. She knelt above the entrance to Her Temple. With one hand She reached down, calling Her People to Her. With the other hand She held aloft the trident—the deadly three-pronged flaying knife with which She gifted Her people after the Time of Fire.
     “What sacrifice have you brought our God?” the Watcher had asked him.
     Just as Dead Eye had practiced, he said, “I offer this creature’s spirit to our God, the Reaper, and its body to our God’s chosen servants, Her Watchers.” Ritualistically, Dead Eye offered the pure white pigeon to the old woman as he bowed deeply.
     “Yes, this might do. Come to the pit.” The lead Watcher had gestured for Dead Eye to follow her to the largest of the metal fire pits. It was directly in front of the God. Around it, other Watchers, all ancient crones, hovered greedily, licking their lips and whispering among themselves.
Dead Eye shivered in remembrance of the stale smell that had wafted from them and of their rheumy, restless eyes.
     The old woman had lifted the ceremonial trident and slit the struggling bird’s belly, from crotch to chin so that it had looked like a beautiful scarlet flower had blossomed from its body. Blood had spewed so high and fierce that a few drops had actually touched the skin of the statue.
     “Ah! It is a sign of the God’s pleasure with this youngling!” the old woman had croaked, holding the bleeding, twitching bird aloft. “What role would you take among the People?”
     “I would carry Her mark, and be a Harvester,” Dead Eye had said. He remembered with pride that his voice hadn’t broken and that he had stood proud and tall before the old women and the statue that dwarfed them all.
     “So be it!” The Watcher had nodded to the other women. They’d surged forward, grabbing Dead Eye’s arms. With surprising strength, they’d pulled him off his feet and pinned him to the floor of the balcony, arms spread. Then the crone had pulled a small trident from the God’s fire pit. The deadly metal of its triple-edged blade had glowed like fresh blood. With a flourish, the Watcher lifted the weapon, asked for their God’s blessing, and then knelt beside him. “From great pain comes great knowledge. As you are accepted into the service of the Reaper, you may ask Her one question—and the God will answer.” Then she pressed the burning blades against the skin of Dead Eye’s forearm.
     He hadn’t flinched. He hadn’t cried out. He’d stared eagerly up at the face of the God and asked his one question.
     “What must I do to make the People strong again?”
     Dead Eye’s fingers found the raised, trident-shaped scar. He stroked it as what happened next replayed through his memory.
     Nothing.
     The God had not spoken.
     Dead Eye lay there, ignoring the blazing pain in his arm, waiting for the God’s mighty voice to fill his mind.
     “She answers Dead Eye!” the crone had suddenly shouted as she stood, holding up the trident that was covered with his blood and seared skin. “She accepts him!”
     “I heard Her speak! She accepts him!” cried another of the old women.
     “She spoke! She accepted him!” cried another.
     “Behold!” the lead Watcher shouted, still brandishing the smoking trident. “He is no longer a youngling! He is Dead Eye, one of the God’s Harvesters!”
     The women tried to help Dead Eye to his feet, but he shook off their skeletal hands. Swaying only a very little, he stood before the God, staring up and into Her face, searching for any sign at all that She had spoken.
     All he saw was a lifeless statue surrounded by dying old women.
     He’d looked at the leader of the Watchers, asking, “The God spoke to you?”
     “As She did to the rest of her Watchers and to you, though She is difficult to hear if you do not have the ears of a Watcher,” said the old
woman. “Did you hear nothing, young Harvester?” “Nothing,” Dead Eye had said.
     “Do not fear, She will always speak through her Watchers, and we will always be here to guide the People to act according to Her will.”
     Dead Eye had looked from the lead Watcher to the other crones, who were taking sharpened sticks and picking through the body of the pigeon, plucking out steaming entrails and sucking them into their greedy mouths as they laughed and whispered to one another.
     Then he’d looked up at the God once more—really seeing the statue for the first time. And that was the moment it had happened. He had met the God’s metal gaze with his own, and with all the force of his mind, shouted at the Reaper.
     If you were alive you could not tolerate these vile old women. If you were alive you would make your People strong again. There is no Reaper. There is no God. You are dead.
     Dead Eye remembered how he’d stood there, wishing he was wrong, even if it meant that the God chose that moment to strike him down for his blasphemy.
     But She did not.
     Dead Eye had turned his back to the statue, drawing cries of shock and anger from the Watchers, who were not too busy sucking the bones of the sacrifice or pleasuring the men to notice. He had ignored them all and strode from the balcony, the chamber, and the Temple, promising himself that he would only return when he had an answer—and as his God was dead, he was determined to find the answer himself.
     Which is why Dead Eye found himself there, five winters later, entering the forest that belonged to the Others.
     It drew him, that ancient pine forest, as the moon draws the tide. Unlike the rest of the People, the forest had long fascinated Dead Eye. Since he had discovered that their God was dead, he had come to believe the forest could very well hold more than enemies and death—it could hold answers.
     It was difficult, though, to be out there alone. There were no slick walls of glass and metal—no mazelike pathways through buildings that hid sanctuaries and escapes in equal measure. There was only unrelenting sky and the forest and the Others.
     Dead Eye stroked the puckered scar shaped like a trident on his forearm. The movement called attention to his skin. Cracks in his skin had begun to cluster around the creases of his wrists and elbows, radiating pain into his joints. A terribly familiar lethargy had begun to seep throughout his muscles. He set his teeth against its seductive pull.
     “I will not succumb.” Dead Eye forced the words from between his clenched teeth. “There will be more to my life than this never-ending cycle of disease and death. The Others do not come to the City, so I come to the forest instead. There must be a way, and since the God is dead, I must create the answers myself. I will find my own sign—my own sacrifice.” Dead Eye went to his knees, bowing his head. “Yes, there will be a sign, and when there is, I will take word to the People.”
     The forest around him went completely silent. Then, with a majesty that was second only to the image of the God that beckoned from the heart of the City, a stag stepped from the underbrush before him.
     With no hesitation, Dead Eye hurled himself at the beast, catching it as it leaped back, trying to scramble away from him. Dead Eye wrapped his arms around the stag’s neck and set his heels into the damp loam of the forest floor. The creature tried to rear and strike Dead Eye with his cloven hooves, but Dead Eye grasped his antlers and, using all of the strength in his massive arms, he began twisting the stag’s head—pulling it back and back—until the creature lost its balance and fell hard on its side where he lay struggling for breath and trembling.
     Dead Eye worked fast. He rammed his knee into the point between the stag’s head and neck, pinning it to the ground. Then he drew the triple-tipped dagger from the sheath on his belt and lifted it, preparing to drive it into the sweet spot on the stag’s spine that would paralyze the beast. But before Dead Eye could strike, the stag’s dark eye met his. Dead Eye saw his own reflection there as clearly as if he was standing before a mirror. With one hand he held the trident aloft. With the other he reached down, in a gesture that beckoned as if he had called the stag to him. In that reflection Dead Eye saw not himself, but the image of Her— the Reaper—the dead God.
     The power of understanding coursed through his body hot and rich and exciting.
     The sign was clear. Dead Eye had become the God! And he knew what he must do.
     “I am a Harvester! I will not slay. I will slake but not kill. Harvest but not cull. That is how I will make the People strong again. Then the Harvest can spread beyond the City—beyond the People—to the entire world.”
     He sheathed the knife and pulled a length of rope from the travel pack slung over his shoulder, tying the stag’s front and back legs together by the creature’s ankles. With the beast unable to struggle free, Dead Eye used a second rope to wrap around the stag’s neck, then he looped the end of that rope around a low-hanging branch of a young pine, stretching the creature up so that it was more interested in struggling to breathe than struggling to escape.
     It was then that Dead Eye unsheathed his flaying trident again. But instead of turning it on the stag, he pressed the triple blades against his arm, slicing across the cracks in his skin so that they wept pink fluid. Only then did he begin to fillet the flesh from the living stag.
     Dead Eye worked quickly and efficiently. He accepted the screams of the stag, drinking them in as if they were water to a man dying of thirst. He cherished every inch of the stag’s flesh, anointing the creature’s raw wounds with the tears from his own before packing each strip of the creature’s bloody hide carefully into his cracked skin. Though the stag’s flesh was alive and warm to the touch, it felt cool against his wounds, soothing the pain and inflammation there almost instantly.
     The stag came to the Sacred Place that marked the line between life and death much faster than Dead Eye would have imagined, but there was no mistaking the signs. One more strip of flesh and the beast would pass beyond life and begin embracing inevitable death. Dead Eye bowed his head, pressing his bloody hand against the trident mark on his forearm.
    “I thank you, my stag, for the gift of your life. I absorb it with gratitude.”
     But before Dead Eye could cut one more ribbon of scarlet from the creature’s hide, his gaze was again caught in the stag’s mirrored gaze.
Dead Eye paused, mesmerized by the mighty image of himself as God.
     Slowly, Dead Eye began to understand.
     What would he expect from his God? Truth—righteous anger— compassion. And through his reflection in the stag’s eye, he found the answer.
     I am a Harvester, not a Reaper. I must deny myself the final stroke. I must free my messenger to complete the fate I have set him to by sharing my life and my wounds with him.
     Dead Eye brought the dagger down in two motions, cutting the noose around the stag’s neck and around his legs. Then he stepped back, watching the creature struggle to its feet. Eyes flashing white, skin raining a trail of scarlet tears, the creature staggered away.
     Dead Eye watched it go and his gaze was drawn to the distance where the sugar pines grew to mammoth heights, great sentinels that stood guard over the mystery and magick that waited beyond the dead City with the Others.
     Dead Eye smiled.