She Walks in Shadows(66)
“Come on,” she croons. I can see their bodies framing the doorway to the Paula shrine. Goddess of the light. I watch as Erica caresses the side of Jonah’s face, watch the way his body sags toward hers.
Thief.
“That Marchosias shrine is in the best spot in the church. Paula deserves it more.” She places a kiss by the side of his mouth. “Think about it. All that rotting meat and food in the best place in the church? Paula demands sweet things, perfumes and incense.”
Jonah is uncomfortable, but he doesn’t move away when her mouth finds his. As he is a priest of the blood gods, I can imagine his discomfort at the way Erica has framed her argument.
“Marchosias is a great goddess. She belongs in that shrine and she has followers, even a priestess in the making.” My heart catches in my throat at his words.
Erica sucks air between her teeth. “Do you mean that puny Sorha? If that’s the priestess that Marchosias chose, then I can see why she’s going to lose that shrine before she can even be dedicated.” Jonah moves away from Erica, but she doesn’t seem worried.
“You like her. I can tell. She has that old quality to her. Like you.” Erica presses her palm to Jonah’s chest. “But you know how we operate. We’ll see who wins the spoils of war.”
She enters the shrine as Jonah walks away from her. I turn on the kitchen light, turning the water on again. The silence in my mind is deafening. I finish washing and drying the plates, bringing them up the stairs with me. The church is quiet as I make my way to my shrine. I put away the dishes, finish cleaning the stone beneath Marchosias’ feet. Gone is the contented look. Now her head is lowered, her muzzle furled, revealing sharp teeth. I tip some of the jasmine oil over her head and on her feet. It fills the shrine with its aroma.
“Well, that’s a change.” I whirl around and Erica is at the entrance to the shrine, her long, dark hair in a low ponytail. Her dark eyes look over Marchosias and there is almost a tinge of envy in them. “If only most of her offerings smelled as good as that oil.”
I say nothing and continue to wipe down with the oily rag. She moves into the shrine, kicking the pail at the foot of the statue.
“You should stop.” My voice is clear, strong. Every cell in my body is vibrating to some distant hum. I feel it radiating from the statue, inside of me. “Please stop,” I say again.
I’m not sure if it’s the ‘Please’, but suddenly, Erica is in my face, her long finger in between my eyes.
“You have no business being a priestess! You and this abomination have no place here. She’ll be out of here before the end of the month and you with her. There isn’t another church giving the cult of the Fallen a chance.”
Her smile is sharp.
I know she isn’t lying. I know the power that she and others hold in the church. I move faster than I feel. I pick up the ceremonial blade, slashing it across her throat as arterial blood sprays me in the face. I wind my arm back, bringing it forward with all the force I can summon, finally burying the blade in her stomach.
Her face is a mask of confusion but only for a few moments. I drag her by the hair and place her bleeding neck at the statue’s feet. There is so much blood that it pools around the statue, dripping down the altar, all over the shrine floor. The blood creeps along the marble, turning the green lake black.
When the pools of blood stop moving, I hoist the body on my back, carrying it out into the garden. With a shovel, I make a place for her beneath the mountains of maggots, and watch as the moving earth and garbage cover up her limp body. There is no trace of blood in Marchosias’ shrine the next day. Erica’s body is not found and Paula’s shrine is destroyed that same night. The goddess is found crumbled, teeth marks along her white neck, her eyes hollowed out. When I look at Brother Jonah now, as helplessly as ever, I don’t look away when our eyes meet. My ears and lips burn, but I don’t look away.
WHEN SHE QUICKENS
Mary A. Turzillo
AYAHUASCA FELT COLD stone under her head, back and legs, smelled lilies and corruption, heard bird song, human stirring and animal cries, as if it were dawn. She tried to remember who she was this time. It was always the same in some ways, different in others. Her body this recent time was a woman of 30 years, destroyed by a disease of stomach pain and evil dreams. Her soul, and her formal name, were unchanging: Ayahuasca, Empress of the known world, eternal thread of the world necklace.
This must be death, then. She dimly remembered other deaths and she knew she would live again, and reign again, in a new body. But horrid truths came to her. She began to mourn the life and the body she had just left. And what of her subjects and her friends? Their deaths were more permanent than hers. Even Yaje, her favorite, who wept and swore to follow her to the death house, would be ashes and dust, or the food of worms, all too soon.
She would have cried aloud at the biting cold of the stone, but her throat was paralyzed in death. Her eyes, the eyes of this body, were shut forever and the room in which she lay — the chamber of passing — was so dimly lit she could not see even faint red light through the blood in her lids.
The only warmth she could feel were the two other beings whom she had loved almost as much as Yaje: her yellow hound Burrow and her small gray cat Dark. She tried to stretch her neck to nuzzle Burrow, her toes to feel the silk warmth of Dark, but she could not move. She was, after all, dead.