Chapter Text
Once upon a time, in the days before the Godhammer fell, there was a village that lay along the banks of a wide and placid river that wound its lazy way down from the crags of the White March and out to sea. Some called it the Eddenslow, using the Aedyran name, some used the standard Ixamitl name, Mocuepāpan, but the folk of the village just called it ‘the river.’
The village along the river was also known by two names. The Aedyrans, who had come, decades before, to the existing fishing outpost and lined the banks with stone houses, called it Ehresleyde. The folk who had built the fishing outpost maybe a century before the Aedyrans arrived and then begrudgingly accepted their new neighbors and their strange ideas, called it Cuepāntlān. That said, most of them just called it the village.
And there, in the village, there was house that was half stone built upon the land, and half wood built out on a jetty over the river. On one side were fields of corn and squash and beans. On the other was a barn where the goats and donkeys lived. And beyond those fields were meadows left to grow wild and feed the bees.
In that stone-and-wood house lived a little girl named Miretha, though most everyone who knew her shortened it to Miri. She lived with her mama, Safra, and her papa, Xitlal, and her little sister Yavna. In the summers, she helped her mama tend to their crops and her papa herd the goats and collect honey from their hives. In the winters, she rode her donkey, Helvi, to school, with Yavna balanced in front of her on the saddle, and there they learned their letters and their numbers and their stories. The children of Aedyran settlers learned Ixamitl, the children of Ixamitec settlers learned Aedyran, and Miretha and Yavna, who were both, learned that neither of their parents was any good at grammar.
Miri’s world was a small and dependable circuit. The path through the fields to Edania’s house, the road to the town center, the stone walls demarcating their family’s land from the surrounding farms, and the meetinghouse bell that tolled hours and emergencies with equal solemnity. She knew that her father’s people were descended from various tribes whose native lands had been subsumed into the Quechmatec Empire, far to the north, long ago. Her ancestors fled their respective villages and shared the same road for so long that differences between Xapuyatec and Tzinque, B’nitza and Ohomi no longer mattered. She knew that her mother’s people were Aedyran and that the land they had come from, Aedyr, was far across the sea, which would account for their complexions being ill-suited to the climate. She knew that the Aedyrans called the territory they claimed ‘Readceras,’ while the Ixamitecs called it Nēpanōhuayan, though whether the borders of the two conceptual regions tracked each other precisely was up for debate. And she knew that to the south across the mountains was the land the Aedyr called Dyrwood and the natives called Eir Glanfath. And then, south of the Dyrwood, were the Vailian Republics, inhabited by the oceangoing folks from Old Vailia who seemed comfortable everywhere. She did not know the original name of that territory, perhaps it had also been called Eir Glanfath. Or perhaps the first kith who had claimed it first had been gone for too long for anyone to remember.
On sabbaths, Safra would braid ribbons into Miretha and Yavna's hair, and they would all ride in the wagon drawn by Helvi and their other donkey, Nimqeq, to the village center to attend services at the temple, where her great-uncle Haialf was the priest. There, they gave thanks when the harvest was good, repented for what sins they could think of when it was not, and, at all times, prayed for good fortune and soft winters.
After services, the congregations of the smaller temple of Ondra and the handful of families who followed Galawain and held services in a trading post off the main road, would all come together. The Ondrite fisherman would bring the best of the previous day's catch, the hunters who followed Galawain would bring their contribution in game. The Eothasians provided the rest of the repast, Miretha's family included, who would serve bread and hominy, honey and cheese. And the village would eat well, even those whose harvest had not been good, even those whose boats were held together with pitch and prayers, even those too sick or too weak to work themselves. Miretha always sat near her best friend Edania, the daughter of a fishing family. Xitlal would brag about Miretha's acumen with a arquebus, Edania's father Emerlyn would brag of his own daughter's quickness with a harpoon. Then Xitlal would tell the story of how Yavna could speak to the bees and coax a queen out to be moved to a larger hive with just her sweet words, and Emerlyn would tell of how his boy Ilvan wrestled a hundred-pound catfish into submission, all without capsizing his canoe.
And so it went, season after season, year after year. Eothas brought the dawn and Ondra brought the tides and Galawain sent the herds on their seasonal migrations. Some years were fat and some were lean, as was the way of things.
Looking back, there was no moment when things had decidedly changed for the people of the village. One year, more beggars were coming through town from the high road. Another, the governor sent soldiers because too many in town had not paid their taxes. Each of these things seemed like nothing more than a hiccup in a normal breath or a pebble being tossed into a placid lake. Looking back many years later, Yavna and Miretha would argue over when they first realized that changes were taking place. While they disagreed on a few points, both of them pointed to the arrival of the wildeyed stranger as the first clear sign.
It was the summer after Yavna turned seven and right before the autumn when Miretha would turn eleven that something strange happened. Well, strange for a village like theirs, where the hundred-pound catfish had been the only extraordinary event for a good three years at that point. It was a sabbath day, and Miretha sat, Mama on her right, Papa on her left, and Yavna, who had recently learned that she could make her sister squeak involuntarily during the most solemn part of a sermon by poking her in the armpit, on the other side of Papa. Normally, Mama would be the one to call her to account, but this summer, Mama was busy building her third child and had neither the energy nor the patience to rein in her second calmly and without causing a scene.
But on this day, Safra didn't need to worry about her brood, because someone else had gotten it in their head to disrupt Haialf's monotone entreaties for redemption and repentance. That someone was a strange-looking young man, light-colored, surely the descendant of settlers from the south. He was not one of the congregation – indeed, none had ever seen him before - and he threw open the doors to the sanctuary, the sunlight outlining his frame. His face was unshaven, whiskers growing in patchily as they often did on very young men, and his hair was unruly. His eyes, so light a green they could be called yellow, roamed the congregation wildly. Something about him discomforted Miretha, and she shrank down in the pew, leaning against Papa's shoulder. The congregation began to murmur in disapproval. They were silenced by Haialf, whose only true fault was thinking everyone else was as interested in hearing the same fables as he was, week after week. He looked down from the pulpit with pity, and then, slowly, for the arthritis had begun to wear away at his knees, descended the stairs to meet the young man in the aisle where he stood.
"Are you lost, son?" he asked.
"No, no!" the young man insisted, "You are the priest of this village, yes?"
"I am the priest of Eothas in this village. There is a priestess of Ondra and one of Galawain, if you're looking for them," Haialf said, taking the young man by his shoulders, "Are you hungry?"
"We are… we are all hungry," the young man said, the fingers of both hands fidgeting against each other, "And it is not the will of Eothas that we… that we remain so."
"Papa, what is that man talking about?" Yavna whispered furiously.
"Don't mind him. His mind has broken. Like you broke your wrist last winter."
"Will he have to put a splint on his head?" Yavna knew full well that that was not what one would do with a crazy person, and had they been permitted to sit next to each other, Miri would have punched her gently in the arm for being impudent during services.
“Maybe he will ask Eothas, and Eothas will fix it for him," Papa said.
"I dunno, he smells. Not like animals or fertilizer. He smells unwashed. I don't think the gods like it when you smell. That's what Auntie Txiyaxti always said."
"Your auntie sells flowers, of course, she thinks bad smells are unholy," Mama observed, though she had wrinkled her nose. Her stomach was sensitive these days, the baby inside her deciding what foods she could and could not eat and what smells would send her lurching for something to vomit into.
"My friends!" Haialf intoned, "Perhaps we may leave the lessons today. It is nearly time for the repast." He laid one age-spotted hand on the young man's shoulder, "Come, eat with us, and then you may tell me what Eothas has said to you."
The congregation, most of whom were not particularly pious, filed out of the sanctuary, out to set up tables and benches in the town square, the cooks among them to go tend their pots. Miretha, though, both repulsed and fascinated by this strange man, lingered, trying to overhear the low words he exchanged with the priest. What she gathered from behind a pillar was that he was from a vorlas-farming village to the north, originally, and the last memory he had before finding himself in the town square of Ehresleyde was walking out of his own house to tend his fields. He was surprised to learn how close to the Dyrwoodan border his travels had brought him, and more so that he had no memory of how he had gotten a good week's journey away. Haialf listened without judgment and, ultimately, bade him go out to the town square and fill his belly, and the townsfolk would see about the best way of getting him back where he belonged.
Miretha cowered behind the pillar as she heard Haialf's footsteps head back to the rectory, waiting for the sanctuary to empty so she could walk casually out the side door and not alert her family to her spying. She listened to the stranger's footsteps on the flagstones of the sanctuary as they approached the door, holding her breath and pressing both hands over her mouth.
"Don't be afraid, little sister." It was not the voice of Haialf, deep and resonant, but thick with age. Nor was it the voice of the young man, high and shaky and uncertain. It was a warm voice, a gentle one.
Miretha thought a word that would have gotten her spanked if she said it out loud, and she peeked out from behind the pillar. The young man had paused, looking not at her but straight ahead, with a mysterious smile at the edge of his mouth. Something in his posture had changed, he stood solidly with both feet on the ground, not discomforted and fidgeting as he had been. He turned to look at her, and instead of the pale green eyes she had seen before, it was as though the sun itself shone from inside the young man's skull.
She turned and ran as fast as her legs would carry her.