Page 10 of Moon Chosen

The women tried to help Dead Eye to his feet, but he shook off their skeletal hands. Swaying only a very little, he stood before the God, staring up and into Her face, searching for any sign at all that She had spoken.

All he saw was a lifeless statue surrounded by dying old women.

He’d looked at the leader of the Watchers, asking, “The God spoke to you?”

“As She did to the rest of her Watchers and to you, though She is difficult to hear if you do not have the ears of a Watcher,” said the old woman. “Did you hear nothing, young Harvester?”

“Nothing,” Dead Eye had said.

“Do not fear, She will always speak through her Watchers, and we will always be here to guide the People to act according to Her will.”

Dead Eye had looked from the lead Watcher to the other crones, who were taking sharpened sticks and picking through the body of the pigeon, plucking out steaming entrails and sucking them into their greedy mouths as they laughed and whispered to one another.

Then he’d looked up at the God once more—really seeing the statue for the first time. And that was the moment it had happened. He had met the God’s metal gaze with his own, and with all the force of his mind, shouted at the Reaper.

If you were alive you could not tolerate these vile old women. If you were alive you would make your People strong again. There is no Reaper. There is no God. You are dead.

Dead Eye remembered how he’d stood there, wishing he was wrong, even if it meant that the God chose that moment to strike him down for his blasphemy.

But She did not.

Dead Eye had turned his back to the statue, drawing cries of shock and anger from the Watchers, who were not too busy sucking the bones of the sacrifice or pleasuring the men to notice. He had ignored them all and strode from the balcony, the chamber, and the Temple, promising himself that he would only return when he had an answer—and as his God was dead, he was determined to find the answer himself.

Which is why Dead Eye found himself there, five winters later, entering the forest that belonged to the Others.

It drew him, that ancient pine forest, as the moon draws the tide. Unlike the rest of the People, the forest had long fascinated Dead Eye. Since he had discovered that their God was dead, he had come to believe the forest could very well hold more than enemies and death—it could hold answers.

It was difficult, though, to be out there alone. There were no slick walls of glass and metal—no mazelike pathways through buildings that hid sanctuaries and escapes in equal measure. There was only unrelenting sky and the forest and the Others.

Dead Eye stroked the puckered scar shaped like a trident on his forearm. The movement called attention to his skin. Cracks in his skin had begun to cluster around the creases of his wrists and elbows, radiating pain into his joints. A terribly familiar lethargy had begun to seep throughout his muscles. He set his teeth against its seductive pull.

“I will not succumb.” Dead Eye forced the words from between his clenched teeth. “There will be more to my life than this never-ending cycle of disease and death. The Others do not come to the City, so I come to the forest instead. There must be a way, and since the God is dead, I must create the answers myself. I will find my own sign—my own sacrifice.” Dead Eye went to his knees, bowing his head. “Yes, there will be a sign, and when there is, I will take word to the People.”

The forest around him went completely silent. Then, with a majesty that was second only to the image of the God that beckoned from the heart of the City, a stag stepped from the underbrush before him.

With no hesitation, Dead Eye hurled himself at the beast, catching it as it leaped back, trying to scramble away from him. Dead Eye wrapped his arms around the stag’s neck and set his heels into the damp loam of the forest floor. The creature tried to rear and strike Dead Eye with his cloven hooves, but Dead Eye grasped his antlers and, using all of the strength in his massive arms, he began twisting the stag’s head—pulling it back and back—until the creature lost its balance and fell hard on its side where he lay struggling for breath and trembling.

Dead Eye worked fast. He rammed his knee into the point between the stag’s head and neck, pinning it to the ground. Then he drew the triple-tipped dagger from the sheath on his belt and lifted it, preparing to drive it into the sweet spot on the stag’s spine that would paralyze the beast. But before Dead Eye could strike, the stag’s dark eye met his. Dead Eye saw his own reflection there as clearly as if he was standing before a mirror. With one hand he held the trident aloft. With the other he reached down, in a gesture that beckoned as if he had called the stag to him. In that reflection Dead Eye saw not himself, but the image of Her—the Reaper—the dead God.

The power of understanding coursed through his body hot and rich and exciting.

The sign was clear. Dead Eye had become the God! And he knew what he must do.

“I am a Harvester! I will not slay. I will slake but not kill. Harvest but not cull. That is how I will make the People strong again. Then the Harvest can spread beyond the City—beyond the People—to the entire world.”

He sheathed the knife and pulled a length of rope from the travel pack slung over his shoulder, tying the stag’s front and back legs together by the creature’s ankles. With the beast unable to struggle free, Dead Eye used a second rope to wrap around the stag’s neck, then he looped the end of that rope around a low-hanging branch of a young pine, stretching the creature up so that it was more interested in struggling to breathe than struggling to escape.

It was then that Dead Eye unsheathed his flaying trident again. But instead of turning it on the stag, he pressed the triple blades against his arm, slicing across the cracks in his skin so that they wept pink fluid. Only then did he begin to fillet the flesh from the living stag.

Dead Eye worked quickly and efficiently. He accepted the screams of the stag, drinking them in as if they were water to a man dying of thirst. He cherished every inch of the stag’s flesh, anointing the creature’s raw wounds with the tears from his own before packing each strip of the creature’s bloody hide carefully into his cracked skin. Though the stag’s flesh was alive and warm to the touch, it felt cool against his wounds, soothing the pain and inflammation there almost instantly.

The stag came to the Sacred Place that marked the line between life and death much faster than Dead Eye would have imagined, but there was no mistaking the signs. One more strip of flesh and the beast would pass beyond life and begin embracing inevitable death. Dead Eye bowed his head, pressing his bloody hand against the trident mark on his forearm.

“I thank you, my stag, for the gift of your life. I absorb it with gratitude.”

But before Dead Eye could cut one more ribbon of scarlet from the creature’s hide, his gaze was again caught in the stag’s mirrored gaze. Dead Eye paused, mesmerized by the mighty image of himself as God.

Slowly, Dead Eye began to understand.