Earthfall (Homecoming) Read online

  Six

  The Ugly God

  Emeez’s mother took her to the holy cave when she was six years old. It was a miraculous place, because it was underground and yet it had not been carved by the people. Instead it grew this way, a gift from the gods; they had created it, and so this was where the gods were brought to be worshipped.

  The cave was strange, all jagged and wet, not dry and smooth-walled like the burrows of the city. Limey water dripped everywhere. Mother explained how the water left a tiny amount of lime behind with each drop, and in time that’s what formed the massive pillars. But how could that be? Weren’t the pillars holding up the roof of the cave? If the pillars weren’t forming until the water dripped for years and years, what would have held the roof up at the beginning? But Mother explained that this cave was made of stone. “The gods break holes in the mountain the way we chip off flakes of stone for our blades,” Mother said. “They can hold up a roof of stone so wide that you can’t see the other side, even with the brightest torch. And there is no wind so strong that it can tear the roof off the burrow of the gods.”

  That’s why they’re gods, I suppose, thought Emeez. She had seen what the storm did to the uphill end of the city, knocking down three rooftrees so that rain and later sunlight poured into what had once been nurseries and meeting halls. It took days to seal up the tunnels and create new burrows elsewhere to replace the lost space, and during that time two cousins and three nieces stayed with them. Mother nearly went crazy, and Emeez wasn’t far behind. They were private, quiet people, and didn’t deal very well with busybodies constantly prying into their business. Oh, what’s this, are we learning to weave at such a young age? Oh, I’ll bet you’ve already set your heart on some young fellow who’s just now out on his first hunt, you pretty little thing you.

  Such a lie. Because Emeez was not a pretty little thing. She wasn’t pretty. She wasn’t little. And she wasn’t a thing, either, though people often treated her that way. She was too hairy, for one thing. Men liked a woman with very downy hair, not dark and coarse like hers. And her voice wasn’t lovely, either. She tried to sound like Mother, but Emeez just didn’t have that kind of music in her. One time when Cousin Issess—there was an undistinguished name for you!—didn’t know Emeez was nearby, she said to her stupid daughter Aamuv, “Poor Emeez. She’s a throwback, you know. They’re just as hairy as that back on the east slope of the mountain. I hope she doesn’t have any of their other traits!” The story was, of course, that the hairy east-slopers ate the hearts and livers of their enemies, and some said they simply spitted their victims and roasted them whole. Monsters. And that’s what people thought of Emeez, because she was so hairy.

  Well, she couldn’t help what grew on her body. At least it wasn’t a horrible fungus infection like the one that made poor Bomossoss stink so badly. He was a mighty warrior, but nobody could really enjoy being around him because of the odor. Very sad. The gods do what they want with us. At least I don’t smell.

  There wasn’t any worship going on here—of course, since that was a man thing, and not for women, and certainly not for little girls. But she had heard that the men worshipped the gods by licking them until they were wet and soft and then rubbing them all over their bodies. She hadn’t really believed it, until she came into the first of the prayer chambers.

  Some of the gods were very intricately carved, with startlingly beautiful faces. There were pictures of fierce warriors and of the hideous skymeat beasts, of goats and deer, of coiled snakes and dragonflies perched on cattails. But when Mother started pointing out the very holiest of the gods, the ones most worshipped, to Emeez’s surprise these were not intricately carved at all. The very holiest of them were nothing but smooth lumps of clay.

  “Why are the beautiful ones not as holy as the ones that don’t look like anything?”

  “Ah,” said Mother, “but you have to understand, they were once the most beautiful of all. But they have been worshipped most fervently, and they have given us good babies and good hunting. So of course they’ve been worn smooth. But we remember what they were.”

  The smooth lumpy ones disturbed her. “Couldn’t somebody carve new faces on them?”

  “Don’t be absurd. That would be blasphemy.” Mother looked annoyed. “Honestly, Emeez, I don’t understand how your mind works. Nobody carves the gods. They would have no power if men and women just made them up out of clay.”

  “Well who does make them, then?”

  “We bring them home,” said Mother. “We find them and bring them home.”

  “But who makes them?”

  “They make themselves,” said Mother. “They rise up from the clay of the riverbank by themselves.”

  “Can I watch sometime?”

  “No,” said Mother.

  “I want to watch a god coming forth.”

  Mother sighed. “I suppose you’re old enough. If you promise you won’t go telling the younger children.”

  “I promise.”

  “There is a certain time of year. In the dry season. The skymeat come down and shape the mud by the riverbank.”

  “Skymeat?” Emeez was appalled. “You can’t be serious. That’s disgusting.”

  “Of course it would be disgusting,” said Mother, “if you thought the skymeat actually understood what they were doing. But they don’t. The god comes awake inside them and they just start mindlessly shaping the clay in fantastic intricate patterns. Then, when they’re done, they just go away. Leave them behind. For us.”

  The skymeat. Those nasty flying things that sometimes trapped and killed hunters. Their young were brought home and roasted and fed to pregnant women. They were dangerous, mindless beasts, treacherous and sneaky, and they made the gods?

  “I’m not feeling well, Mother,” said Emeez.

  “Well, then, sit down here for a few minutes and rest,” said Mother. “I’m supposed to meet the priestess three rooms up—that way—and I can’t be late. But you can come after me and find me, right? You won’t wander off the main path and get lost, will you?”

  “I don’t think I suddenly turned stupid, Mother.”

  “But you did suddenly turn rude. I don’t like that in you, Emeez.”

  Well, nobody likes much of anything in me, she thought. But that doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. I think I’m excellent company. I’m much smarter than any of my other friends, and so everything I say to myself is scintillating and exciting and has never been said before. Unlike those who say over and over, endlessly, the same bits of “wisdom” they picked up from their mothers. And I’m certainly better company than the boys, always throwing things and breaking things and cutting things. Much better to dig and to weave, the way women do, to gather things rather than kill them, to combine leaves and fruit and meat and roots together in a way that tastes good. I will be a fine woman, hairy or not, and whatever man ends up getting stuck with me will make a big show about how disappointed he is, but in secret he’ll be glad, and I’ll make him a whole bunch of smart hairy babies and they’ll be just as ugly and just as smart and clever as I am until someday they wake up and realize that the hairy ones make the best wives and mothers and the hairless ones are just slimy and cold all the time, like skinned melons.

  Angry now, Emeez got up and started looking closer at the gods. She couldn’t help it—there was nothing interesting about the overworshipped gods. It was the pristine, intricate ones that fascinated her. Maybe that was her whole problem—she was attracted to gods with poor reputations, and that’s why she was cursed with ugliness, because the really effective gods knew that she wouldn’t like them. That was terrible, though, to punish her from birth for a sin she wouldn’t even commit until she was six, only two years before she became a woman.

  Well, as long as I’ve already been punished for it, I’m going to go right ahead and deserve the punishment. I’m going to find the very most beautiful, most unworshipped god of all and choose that one for my favorite.

  So she b
egan searching seriously for one that was in perfect condition. But of course all the gods had received at least some worship, so even though she could find sections of them that still had the most beautiful details, there was none that was unmarred.

  Until she found the most astonishing one, in the back corner of a small side chamber. It looked like none of the others. In fact, it looked like no beast that she had ever seen before. And the carving was absolutely pristine. It had been smoothed nowhere, which meant that it had never been worshipped by anyone.

  Well, she said to the ugly god. I am your worshipper now. And I will worship you the best way, not like any of the others. I won’t lick you or rub you or whatever other disgusting thing they do with those other muddy gods. I’m going to worship you by looking at you and saying that you are a beautiful carving.

  Of course, it was a beautiful carving of an astonishingly ugly creature. Or rather, just the head of the creature. It had a mouth like a person, and two eyes like a person, but the nose pointed downward and its jaw was amazingly pointed, and down at the base of the head it narrowed down until the neck was much, much thinner than the head. How does it hold up such a massive head on such a skinny neck? And why would a stupid skymeat even think of making something that no one had ever seen?

  The answer to that last question was obvious enough, of course, when she thought of it. The skymeat carved this head because this was what the god looked like.

  No. What god would choose to look like that?

  Unless—and here was an astonishing thought—unless the gods couldn’t help the way they looked. Unless this god was just like her and grew up ugly and yet he didn’t think that meant he didn’t have a right to have a statue and be worshipped, and so he got a skymeat to carve his head but then when it was brought down here not one soul ever worshipped him and he got stuck off in a dark corner, only now I’ve found you, and I may be ugly but I’m the only worshipper you’ve got so don’t tell me you’re going to reject me now!

 

  She heard it as clear as if someone had spoken behind her. She turned around to look, but there was no one in this darkish room, no one but her.

  “Did you speak to me?” she whispered.

  There was no answer. But as she looked at the ugly beautiful statue, she suddenly knew something, knew something so important that she had to tell Mother at once. She ran from the room and up the main road until she reached the room where Mother and the priestess were conversing animatedly. “I see you feel better, Emeez,” said Mother, patting her head.

  “Mother, I have to tell you—”

  “Later,” said Mother. “We’ve just about decided something wonderful for you and—”

  “Mother, I have to tell you now.”

  Mother looked embarrassed and annoyed. “Emeez, you’re going to make Vleezheesumuunuun think that I haven’t raised you well.”

  From the priestess’s name, Emeez realized that she must be somebody very important and distinguished, and suddenly she was shy. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, that’s all right,” the old priestess said. “It’s the hairy ones who still hear the voice of the gods, they say.”

  Oh, great, thought Emeez. Don’t tell me that because I’m ugly I might have to end up as a priestess.

  “What was it you wanted to tell us, child?” asked the priestess.

  “I just—I was looking at a really beautiful god, only it was really ugly, and suddenly I knew something. That’s all.”

  The priestess went down on all fours. Immediately Mother did, too, and Emeez was well-bred enough to know that she must also assume that posture. It was exhilarating, though, because it meant that the priestess was taking her seriously. “What did you suddenly know?” asked Vleezheesumuunuun.

  “Well now that I think about it, I don’t even know what it means.”

  “Tell us anyway,” said Mother, and the priestess blinked a slow yes.

  “The ones that were lost are coming back home.”

  Mother and the priestess looked at her blankly. Finally Mother spoke. “That’s all?”

  “That’s enough,” the priestess whispered. “Tell no one.” The priestess’s eyes were closed.

  “Then you know what this means?” asked Mother.

  “I don’t,” said the priestess. “Not what it means. But don’t you remember from the song of creation, where the great prophet Zz says, ‘There will be no more meat from the sky on the day when the lost ones are found, and no more gods from the river when the wanderers come home’?”

  “No, I don’t remember that one,” said Mother, “and if you’ll notice, Zz didn’t say anything about lost ones coming home. She said the lost ones are found, and the ones who come home are the wanderers. So I don’t think you need to take this so seriously and frighten my poor daughter to death.”

  But it was obviously Mother who was frightened. Emeez certainly wasn’t. She was exhilarated. The god had told her he accepted her worship, and then had given her a gift, that bit of knowledge that meant nothing to her, but apparently meant a great deal to the priestess—and to Mother, too, despite her protests to the contrary.

  “This changes everything,” the priestess said.

  “I was afraid of that,” Mother said with a small voice.

  “Oh, don’t be absurd,” said the priestess. “I’m still going to find a mate for your daughter.”

  Find a mate! Oh, what awful shame! An arranged marriage! Mother was so sure that no man would ever want her that she had gone to the priestess to arrange for a sacrifice marriage? Some man would be forced to take her as a wife in order to make up for some offense? Emeez had seen that happen twice before, and both times the woman who was offered that way had also been an offender, and that was her penance, to be forced upon a man like some nasty herb to heal a wound.

  “What crime am I guilty of?” Emeez whispered.

  “Don’t be petulant,” said the priestess. “As I said, this changes everything.”

  “How?” asked Mother.

  “Let’s just say that when the words of Zz are promised their fulfillment in the mouth of a girl, that girl will not be given to a common blunderer or a moral cretin.”

  Oh, joy of joys, thought Emeez bitterly. I suppose that means I’ll be given to some truly spectacular miscreant.

  “She’s six?” asked the priestess. “Two years till she’s a woman?”

  “As far as we can guess such things,” said Mother. “It’s the choice of the gods, of course.”

  The priestess stroked Emeez’s fur. As always, Emeez stiffened under the touch. People were always touching the crooked limbs or stumps of cripples, too, and she just hated it, even if it was supposed to bring them luck. But then she realized that the priestess wasn’t doing that hesitant little lucktouch. She was stroking Emeez’s fur with real affection, it seemed, and it felt good. “I don’t know if we’ve been right,” said the priestess, “to call that soft downy nothing hair beautiful. I think along with the hair of our women we might have lost something else. A closeness to the gods.”

  Mother was too polite to disagree, but her very silence made it plain that she was not of that opinion.

  The priestess was still talking. “Muf, the son of the war king, will be of age at about the same time as Emeez here.”

  After a moment’s pause, Mother laughed. “Oh, you can’t mean that you’d….”

  “A girl who hears the echo of Zz after all these centuries….”

  Mother was still protesting. “But Muf won’t be happy to be given a….”

  “Muf intends to be war king. He will marry as the gods direct. As far as I’m concerned, the gods have chosen here today.”

  But it wasn’t the gods, thought Emeez. Or rather, I chose him.

  “It’s too much for her,” said Mother. “She never expected such honor.”

  “The girls who expect it,” said the priestess, “are the very ones who should never be given it.”

  Finally Mother
could believe it—or perhaps she finally realized that her very incredulity was making it plain to Emeez just what she thought of her. Whatever the reason, Mother finally squeaked in delight and embraced Emeez.

  Before they left, the priestess had Emeez show her which god she had been looking at. She knew as soon as Emeez led her into that small side chamber which god it would be. “The big ugly one, right? No one has ever touched it.”

  “But the workmanship is beautiful,” said Emeez.

  “Yes, that’s true,” said the priestess. “No large hands like ours could ever make such intricate perfection. That’s why the gods use the skymeat to give them material shape. But this one—I always wondered what he would do, since no one has ever given him a chance to make a child or bring the rain or anything like that. He must have been waiting for you, child.” And again the old priestess stroked her hair.

  I will be the wife of the new war king, if he turns out to be worthy to succeed his father. I’ll do everything I can to help him be worthy. And I’ll keep a beautiful room for him, with carpets and tapestries, baskets and robes more lovely than have ever been seen before. And when people see him, they won’t think, Look at that poor man, to have such a hairy wife. Instead they’ll say, the wife of the war king may be hairy, but she has surrounded our king with beauty.

  I will never forget you for this great gift, she said silently to the beautiful ugly god.

  “Will you move this god out into the open now?” asked Mother.

  “No,” said the priestess. “Nor are either of you to tell anyone what god it was who put these words into the girl’s mouth. This god has never been touched. Let him stay that way.”