My Mother Divinity [Unedited]

Chapter One

I wonder if the Gods make excuses for murder, if the three lifeless bodies by the basement door were looked down upon with little more than indifference. I wonder if they're the ones responsible for sending these men after the stranger and I, the ones that we've suspected have hounds on our trail. I'm too weak to fight off a pack of hungry dogs.

"Quickly." The man guides us towards a running stream. He wades in first and the water reaches his abdomen, so surely it will cover my shoulders. I strip off the extra layer he gave me and hold it above my head as I go after him.

The water is cold but invitingly so, washing off what's probably months of visible dirt on my clothes and exposed skin. I can feel the trickle of waves across my scars, a low buzz of sensation but as promised, no pain.

"If they catch up to us," the man pants, shocked into breathlessness by the drop in body temperature, "they won't kill. But you have to face them and scream." I determine he's talking about the hounds because I doubt such a tactic would deter the humans after us.

"Who are they?" The water almost reaches my chin at its deepest point before the elevation gains and we reach the other side of the river. It must have been forty feet wide. It's a good thing we didn't have to swim because I would be hard-pushed to remember how. Swimming is like riding a bike, making a cup of coffee, learning a faith - something instinctive that's supposed to stick with you forever. If I don't remember the Gods I'm supposed to worship, who's to say they wouldn't they let me drown?

"Friends of the men I killed," is all he says. I hope my feet haven't been slashed open by foliage - the last thing I want is to leave the heavy scent of bloody footprints. And speaking of feet, I have to think on them; I toss the bloody outer layer I was wearing onto a nearby tree as we divert to the right, running along muddy banks. Hopefully it will serve as a suitable distraction. Just as I think my lungs might give out and my consciousness along with them, the man pulls me violently into a burrow.

He motions for me to be quiet. It's dark again. Only the growing familiarity of a red moon's glow peeking through the soil eases me as I check my feet for new injuries and find none. His backpack and likely most of its contents are soaked through but it doesn't seem to be a cause for concern. There's barking behind us, a good third of a mile back, and it's impossible to tell how fast they're gaining on us.

Will the Gods help them? I want to voice this question aloud but it seems too irrelevant, so stupid anyway, that I don't dare to ask it. No matter who harvests the powers of divine intervention, we can only do as much as we are able. A few minutes later and the hounds reach the riverbanks if the howling is a reliable enough source.

"Fuck." I hear an exhausted man exhale. The dogs' barking is a piercing sound in my ears before: "Shut up! Get down." Then: "Did Bates stay behind and search the house?"

"Yes, should we go back?" Another one chimes in. I pray - well, perhaps just hope - they don't cross the river.

"Yeah, we lost them. Could be anywhere now, look." I assume the jumper I abandoned is being pointed at, accused. "Must be the blood of the guards the dogs were chasing because they aren't running any further. The scents are too muddled."

"And the guards..."

"All three of them are dead." A pause, and defeat. "Bates will find nothing back there; she's gone. Shit!"

*

Later once we emerge from the burrow, the sun, still well beneath the horizon, has started to brighten the sky with a tinge of blue. I'm exhausted but the memory loss makes it as though I've just woken up for a year-long sleep and I'm afraid to return to that. We half-walk, half-jog for a few miles and I feel as though I'm pushing through a wall of brain fog, hardly registering the surroundings or the fact we've gone off the paths of humans and ventured past even the deer tracks.