The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski
THE GOD
ONCE THERE WAS A GODwho wearied of the pantheon. One hundred gods. That was all, for eternity? Little wonder we connived against one another, fell in and out of love, and nursed resentments that could last a human century or more. Yes, there were gods who somehow did not fall prey to inevitable boredom, who cherished certain fellow gods. The Seamstress and Death remained true to each other, and rose above the pettiness of others. This only intensified the restlessness of the rest of the pantheon. We are gods, they said. We are eternal. It is tiresome. We crave newness. An escape from ourselves.
When we walked in Herrath, our island of jungle and pink sand, with its stone city of Ethin reared by mortals in our honor, what we sought was easy to find. Mortals touched us with their dragonfly lives, with their courage in the face of inevitable death. By living alongside us they changed us. They gave us children. They surprised us with their own gifts. Their rage, their hope.
But you know as well as I that it did not last. Our demigod children, with the aid of the god of thieves, murdered Thievery’s brother Discovery. The pantheon erupted in fear and fury. One of the hundred was dead. An immortal could die. The rest of us—save the spurned god of thieves—fled to our realm. We pulled our opaque cloak of divinity around us. Mortals forgot us, almost, and we were left with one another.
What was there to do but quarrel? I taunted another god. Had it been any other god, I might have emerged unscathed, but this was the red-haired god of games, as bright as the edge of a knife. You seem very sure of yourself, she said. Would you care to make a wager?
Though reckless, I am no fool. I knew that she had tempted me to taunt her, so that she could offer her challenge and make it seem as though I alone had provoked it. It is her nature not only to game, but also to make a game of games. Mortal, never play against a god, let alone this god. Yet she had pricked my honor, and I was bored. What are the stakes? I demanded.
She ignored my question. She said, You have been talking with the god of foresight.
No, I lied.
Yes. You have been meddling in human affairs. You have been watching the lands beyond Herrath, and the great war that consumes them. You have a mortal favorite: Arin of the Herrani.
I denied it. Death loves him, I said. One did not stray into Death’s territory—at least, no one wise.
Wisdom, however, has never been my strength.
Lucky mortal—the red-haired god smiled—to have been blessed with the love of not one, but two gods. Arin seeks his revenge, and he will face General Trajan in the field.
So the god of foresight had told me, but I kept silent about that.
The god of games continued, One of them will fall. Trajan, however, will escape Arin’s sword. Trajan will live.
That is not true.
Who are you to tell me about truth? Wager me, and we shall see. I wager you: Arin of the Herrani shall not have his revenge.
She set the stakes: the winner would seize the power of the loser, who would be cast down from heaven and into whichever form the winner chose. You will not be free, the god of games warned me, until a human pities you.
She won our wager, of course. She always wins. When Arin met Trajan in battle, one of them did fall: Trajan, his army vanquished, his hopes and honor ruined. Yet he did not die. Arin stopped his sword from delivering a death blow, and the god of games laughed.
You might think I was lucky she did not turn me into a dirty goat, or a toad, but the god of games is clever. Instead, after she stole my power (I am borrowing it, she said. Do not sulk! You may have it back when you have earned it), she changed me into something beautiful: a rose.
What human would pity a rose? Better that I had become a goat.
I grew in mortal soil. My thorny stem thrust up from the earth. My flower was a tight, hard bud. Even before I bloomed, I despaired. I knew humans. Flowers, to them, were a simple pleasure. A flower could not feel or think. Cut the stem and take it home. Place it in water. Enjoy its scent and color. What was there to pity?
It always amazed the pantheon, to see what might inspire a human’s compassion. Who would have thought that Arin, having lost everything at the hands of General Trajan, would find compassion enough to spare the man’s life? Kestrel of Valoria, the general’s daughter, had made Arin swear not to spare her father in battle, yet when the moment came, Arin could not murder the man. Compassion demanded he stop his sword. How could he kill the father of the woman he loved? She would never cease to grieve, no matter what she had made him promise. Her grief would grieve him.
Nirrim, Queen of Herrath, wondered what the god of thieves had truly taken from her. Regret, maybe, she thought. Or love.
But it was not regret. It was not love. It was what makes love and regret possible.
Then what?
Nirrim could have wondered about the truth of what she had lost for every moment of her little life, but she could not have named it, for it was compassion, and it remains the fate of all humans who lack compassion never to understand that they lack it.