#the gods of andium

[finallymothman]

Book WIP

Looking for feedback on the first chapter of my first book. It's the start of what will probably be a trilogy, it's fantasy, it's roughly 5000 words, it's queer, and it's an analogous critique of the church.

Enjoy chapter 1 of The Gods of Andium

Chapter One: The Summer Solstice

The sun rose over the horizon of Soroyo Valley. Settled comfortably in the bowl of the valley sat a village where life pulsated through every cobblestone. In the center of the town where all their roads converged, a magnificent bonfire ignited. Large, fresh-cut logs crackled in a bronze brazier. The flames danced with an intensity that matched the chaotic energy of its caretakers, a dozen-or-so teenagers of varied ages dressed in saffron robes. The air teemed with purpose and anticipation, but the youngest of the adolescents giggled their way through preparing for the festival. The handful of older teenangers guided the younger on their duties. Someone’s mother whipped around from a nearby cart and scolded her child for sprinkling the tinder from his basket into his friend’s hair. Before his mother could punish him, his friend shook her hair out wildly, the shavings of wood and paper sticking to his robes, much to the dismay of an older boy, who hung his head in defeat as the adolescents shrieked in chaotic delight. 

Shopkeepers arranged their wares, adding festoons of vibrant decorations to mesmerize and enchant passersby, the hum of conversation awakening the village with the dawn. Yellow and gold and red baubles and tinsel hung from lightposts. The disgruntled elder teen, fed up with the misbehavers, picked up the younger boy and slung him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, gleeful shrieking piercing the early morning. She carried him to a nearby fountain, threatening to dunk him in the water if he didn’t behave. He kicked and squirmed, but the bigger and stronger girl kept him from knocking himself into the fountain, which also meant she kept him from escaping. 

“Say you’re sorry!” she demanded, playful sternness met with uncontrolled giggles. “I mean it, you’re gonna get all wet!” 

Amidst this whirlwind of activity a group of seasoned men laboriously pushed a large wooden pallet on wheels, bearing an immense statue that towered above them, threshed onto the platform. The mostly-painted statue was of a magnificent woman with wide features, a flowing, layered gown and a red veil over long hair with thick strands of braids on either side of her head. Her skin was dark, and her eyes had been painstakingly leafed in gold. In one hand, she held a representation of the sun, a yellow sphere that rested in her upturned palm. Her other hand reached out to the side, fingers positioned in such a way that if a person laid their palm against hers, it would be like she was holding their hand. 

 A young woman sat cross legged between the feet of the statue. The woman, Emer, had suntanned skin, long, dark hair that she wore loose, and dark eyes. At some time, she had had bangs, but they had grown out past her cheeks and framed her heart-shaped face. The dress she wore was the color of wet terracotta. The fabric was light and moved easily in the early-summer breeze. Stacked on the pallet on either side of her were jars of paint and a basket of brushes.

She and her twin brother, Terano, were the youngest grandchildren of the village priest, Alder Trevino. He was their mother’s father. Hidone was an artist, like her youngest daughter. She blew colored glass and crafted stained-glass windows that hung in temples and fashioned jewelry that was worn all over Andium, thanks to the favor of the queen regent of neighboring Ereba. Their father, Breka, was an immigrant from the far north, born in a city called Khork. They had an elder sister, Bronwyn, who was almost a decade older than them. Breka and Hidone were both in their thirties when Emer and Terano came into the world. Despite being an immigrant, Breka made his place in the valley. He was a businessman and organized the transportation of his wife’s wares. 

Bronwyn was a recluse, averse to crowds and noise, but doted on her younger siblings.  She hadn’t even turned ten years old before she realized that she wasn’t going to live up to the lofty standards the community, as well as her parents, had imagined for her by being born into the family that she was. That wasn’t to say she was unremarkable, but she couldn’t help but feel relieved when the twins were born to distract everyone from their expectations of her.

Of the two, Terano was more secular by nature. He learned how to blacksmith when he was a teenager, having taken an interest in his mother’s glassblowing as a child. Some of his favorite memories were of his sisters and his mother and himself, sorting glass beads by color and stringing them into necklaces and bracelets. Usually, they would chat and joke, but sometimes they would all sit quietly. Creaking wire and clicking glass were the only sounds in the room. Hidone always gave the three of them a share of the money she made selling them when they helped. Every once in a while, Alder would watch, his old, thick fingers no longer dextrous enough to thread the beads efficiently, and tell stories of the days when the Gods would walk the Earth. Terano appreciated the stories, of course, but in his lifetime he’d never seen proof of the Gods that they worshiped. It was a private belief, one that he never dared to share with anyone besides his sisters. With such significant family members, all eyes were on them to be just as remarkable, and embarrassing his family with such controversy was unthinkable.

Emer, however, hung onto every word that came from her grandfather’s mouth. The patroness of their land, Amara, was the goddess of the sun and the giver of souls. She watched over artists and craftsmen. Blacksmiths named their most significant projects to honor her gift, granting their creations a kind of soul of their own, as did painters, jewelers, and builders. She was also the goddess of fire. As Emer looked up at the visage of the goddess, she thought back to the first time she’d dedicated herself to her. She couldn’t have been any older than seven, maybe eight years old. 

Upstairs in the bedroom she shared with her brother, little Emer had sat in her room, mesmerized by the tongues of fire that danced from her fingers, her skin completely unharmed. She’d passed her fingers through candle flame before, quickly enough to keep from burning herself. Even in the brief moments it had touched her skin before, she could tell that this felt similar. Warm, pulsating, alive. Rainbow flame bloomed large enough to light up the whole room when she cupped her hands. She'd been able to call upon this magical, unburning flame for days now. Her first thought had been to tell Terano immediately. The sight frightened him, but not out of fear of physical danger to her. 

“You’re not supposed to do that!” He scolded, looking around to make sure no one had seen. Extinguishing the flames like an exhale as Emer pouted. She had been hoping he would have been more excited for her, even though magic, of any kind, regardless of natural-born gift, was illegal to perform. Unless you had studied and graduated from the school in Ereba, and only if you were participating in a guided ritual, was punishable by law in all of Andium. From Novak in the Northwest, to the great desert in the south, the only place to educate people was Very-Much-Not-Hogwarts-Think-Of-Name-Later. The school was nestled at the foot of the tallest mountain in the Makabon range and difficult to get to. Magic was not easily accessible and it certainly wasn’t for children. 

She liked that she had her own little secret, and she knew the rules well enough that she wasn't supposed to be able to do something like this, so for some time, she kept it to herself. Eventually, the excitement was too much to bear alone. One day after playing with her fire in secret, she hopped up to find her grandfather. She knew he had a friend who was very important at the temple of Tesser in Ereba, but that was all she knew about Kalon Selenestone. Clearly, Amara had given her a special gift, and her grandfather was the perfect person to ask for help.

As the cart came to a stop, Emer hopped off, a jar of paint tucked under her arm. Her father straightened up from his place on the cart. He wiped his brow and swung an arm around his daughter’s shoulders. She protested, complaining of stinky armpits and pushed against him, only to eventually duck under his arm and nearly avoid the knuckles he’d intended to rub on her head.

She grabbed a brush from the basket and brandished it like a knife. Breka let out a loud belly laugh as she popped the stopper out of her paint, quickly dipping it into the jar and hopping back into her fighting stance, bristles dripping with orange.

“Don’t test me, Daddy, I’ll do it!” Emer laughed, dribbling paint onto the cobblestone under their feet. “I swear I will!” 

“Alright, alright,” Breka raised his hands in surrender, but another man egged her on, the third whooping.

“Get him, Emmie!”

They unloaded a ladder for her to be able to reach the top of the statue when the time came. Eventually, she did get settled into her work. When there wasn’t much left to do on the bottom, she set up the ladder and worked her way up the statue until she was eye to eye with the goddess. She wiped the paint off of her brush on her arm, leaving streaks of yellow on her skin and dipped the brush into black. Carefully, she painted a thin line over the goddess’s eyelid. By now, it was well past noon and the sun made the statue’s golden eyes shine like molten glass. Her gaze hovered affectionately over her painted face. She took great pride in her work, spending hours blending and layering shades to capture the warmth and life of flesh. Amara’s amber glass colored skin seemed to glow. The closer that she got to finishing, the more Emer was almost sure that she would be able to reach out and touch her face and be met with something soft and supple, instead of the cold stone that the sculpture had been relieved from. 

“Emmie!” A familiar voice boomed behind Emer. Perched on top of the ladder, she had finished Amara’s statue with a few hours of sunlight left. She looked over her shoulder, waving a paint-covered arm at her grandfather. 

“Grandpa!” She called excitedly. She climbed down the ladder carefully, paying more attention to not dropping the jars of paint she had gathered in her skirt than the blond stranger Alder had brought with him. She set the jars and brushes down at the feet of the statue and rushed to greet him. 

She threw her arms around the old man’s shoulders, almost toppling him over. When she was a child, Emer had thought her grandfather to be larger than life. He was still broad and tall, with hair and a beard like clouds and bushy, expressive eyebrows, but Emer couldn’t deny that age had etched its way into his features.

“Easy, child, you’ll break these old bones,” the mountain of a man chuckled, pulling her head in to press a scruffy kiss to her forehead. At his side was a young man she’d never seen before, blond, older than her. He was short and spritely with a mess of curly hair. His mop flopped over a woven blue scarf tied around his head. He was dressed like a traveler, boots dusted with dried mud, rucksack on one shoulder and a light, gray cloak over his shoulders. 

“This is Lochlan Selenestone,” Alder clapped Lochlan’s shoulder hard enough to make the young man wheeze. “His father was a colleague of mine.”

Lochlan gave a friendly wave and readjusted the strap on his shoulder. “It’s nice to meet you.” 

Emer smiled and put her hand out for him to shake. He took it and she started to introduce herself. Lochlan smiled knowingly, green eyes glittering with mischief. “Your grandpa told me a lot about you.”

Alder nudged the young man in the side then gestured at his granddaughter. “You know, she’s quite involved with this year’s feast day, in fact-” he pointed at the statue behind them. “That’s all her work.”

“Oh, wow! I saw that on our way here. It’s stunning,” he said, getting a better look at it now that they were closer. “Actually- do you mind?” He looked between them, gesturing toward the statue. 

“The paint’s still wet, but go for it!” Emer said brightly, holding her arms out towards it with a flourish, which got a snicker out of him.

“So… Where’s Terano?” She asked her grandfather, clasping her hands in front of herself. 

“Oh, he just went off to see your sister, why don’t you take Lochlan to find him, show him around the village? He’s visiting for the solstice.” 

Emer vibrated with excitement internally. Surely, the son of the high priest of Tesser was about to whisk her off to Ereba to properly learn magic. She was already imagining the kinds of things she was going to learn, the people she was going to meet, the places she’d see! She’d never even left Soroyo without her family, and certainly not for very long. 

“How long did this take you?!” Lochlan called, whipping around from gawking up at the statue. “This is… it’s stunning!” He repeated the compliment, gobsmacked by the fine craftsmanship and attention to detail. As intended, he slid his hand into her stone one, after checking to see if the paint had been dried yet. A cool, gentle grip fashioned from something that felt softer than stone, but just as sturdy, and the effect was nothing short of uncanny.

“Thank you so much!” Emer called back, quickly giving her grandfather a peck on the cheek before jogging off towards him.  “Um, I started around this time last year. My brother helped me with getting the scaling right. My dad brought back this huge piece of softstone from Tiarna the last time he was up there, but her hands are casted and her face is clay. I had to let everything dry for, like… a month?” She looked off to the side in thought. “Yea, probably like a month, before I could paint it. That took…” she trailed off, blinking hard as she counted the days up in her head. “I think today made it nine days?” 

Lochlan’s eyebrows almost disappeared behind his headband. “Wow… that’s impressive. I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much time on one thing,” he said, feeling a little sheepish. It wasn’t entirely true, though he was known for being flighty with his projects. He had, however, spent most of his life studying magic, though it rarely felt like work to him. 

The pair walked around the square. Emer pointed out shops of family friends, as well as her mother’s storefront. The door was cherry red. Through the windows, Lochlan could see that the shop was decorated for the holiday. Yellow and orange streamers were hung from the ceiling with large bundles of flowers in the top corners. A fluffy cat walked along the windowsill. It was fat and orange, with white socks on all four of its feet and a bell tied around its neck with pink ribbon.

“Awwww, who is that?” Lochlan cooed, bending over to get a better look at the creature. 

“That’s Window Cat,” Emer said, standing on her tiptoes to see if her mother was in her shop, when she couldn’t see her, she assumed she was probably in the back with her kiln. “Well, technically, his name is Mouser, but I don’t think he’s ever killed anything in his life.” They waved goodbye to Window Cat, who was far more interested in the sun beam he just flopped into. 

They walked to the end of the block, where the road turned into a path. Lochlan looked around, taking in his surroundings. Even for the summer, the whole land seemed to be green and lush. Flowers grew wild in more colors than he had ever seen. It looked like someone had gone through and splattered paint in the grass.  As they got closer to the valley cliff, the sun started to come down. Fireflies blinked in the purple dusk as other insects buzzed in the trees . He couldn’t see the frogs, but he could certainly hear them, croaking and chirping, only coming to a stop when they sensed that there were people nearby. 

Bronwyn lived in a small house. It didn’t need to be any bigger than it was for just her and the occasional guest. It was wooden with a low stone wall around her garden. A hen coop was tucked away in the back, but Lochlan could hear the quiet clucking from inside like teenagers whispering to each other at a sleepover when they were supposed to be asleep. Emer opened the squeaky gate and closed it with a clatter once Lochlan was inside. She bounded up the few steps to her door and grabbed the pewter, rose-shaped knocker, and whacked it against the heavy wood. Warm, yellow light   emanated from the windows on either side of the door. She heard someone approach and was greeted by her brother as he opened the door. 

“Hey,” he stood aside, letting both of them pass him.

“Hey,” Lochlan said with a small smile. 

“Terry, this is-” Emer began, but Terano cut her off, blushing at the childhood nickname. 

“We met already. Grandpa introduced us earlier.” 

“Oh, sweet. Where’s Bronwyn?” 

Terano responded with his thumb pointed over his shoulder. In the back of the house, Browyn was fixing dinner. She tended to a pot over the stove, humming softly to herself. She looked up from her project and smiled at her sister. “Hi sweetheart,” she tapped her wooden spoon on the edge of the pot. “Who’s your friend?” She asked, looking Lochlan up and down. 

“This is Lochlan, his dad is a friend of Grandpa’s,” Emer said, stepping to the side and gesturing like she was showing him off. Lochlan offered her his hand, deigning not to tell her that his father and her grandfather hadn’t actually been on speaking terms in about a decade. “Sorry if I’m intruding, Alder told Emer to show me around.” 

“You’re ok,” Bronwyn said flatly, though there was a kind smile on her face. “I usually cook enough to feed an army anyway. I haven’t gotten used to it being just me, yet.” 

“Whatcha making?” Emer asked, setting her chin on her sister’s shoulder. 

“Oh, using up the rest of Maggie,” she said, referring to an elderly chicken she’d recently slaughtered. “Baby, would you chop the rest of that head of garlic for me?” Bronwyn asked. Emer hummed in agreement and nodded. She grabbed a small knife off the counter and set to work peeling and chopping the fragrant bulbs.

“Do you have to call them by name when we’re gonna eat them?” Terano asked. Lochlan stifled a laugh when Bronwyn pointed her spoon at him in a mock threat, telling him to zip it if he wanted any of the soup. Terano pathetically raised his hands in defense. “I’m just saying, it’s sad to think-” 

“It is sad when you think,” Bronwyn shot back, a smirk curling her mouth. She looked like their father, that is to say, she looked nothing like the twins. She had a heart-shaped face and blue eyes, built sturdily with thick legs and a heavy chest. Where their hair was dark and straight, hers was a light ginger. It didn’t curl, but it was unmanageable when long, so she kept it short like a boy’s. 

“It’s not nice to forget they had names,” she said. “I want you to say thank you to Miss Maggie before we eat.”

“I’m not thanking-”

“-You will thank the chicken!” Bronwyn threatened to bonk him with the spoon if he didn’t behave. 

“Alright, alright.” Terano conceded. “Thank you Miss Maggie for letting us turn you into soup.”

“That’s what I thought.” Bronwyn nodded triumphantly as Emer slid the chopped garlic into the pot, which Bronwyn promptly covered after three stirs. She laid the spoon down on the stove, then she turned to Lochlan. “Sweetheart, are you staying with the old man, these two, or am I putting you up? Do you know?” 

“Um,” Lochlan started, and then he realized he had no idea what his sleeping arrangements were supposed to be. Alder had spent most of the time talking at him, and most of it pertained to things back home. “...Actually, no, I don’t. Sorry.” 

Bronwyn made a disgruntled, but unsurprised noise. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of space. I have a guest room, and our parents have an extra bed too. I get it if you don’t want to make the trek for the festival tomorrow.”

“Are you not coming?” Emer asked, brows suddenly upturned, lips parted slightly as she looked for all the world like a sad puppy. 

“I’ll make it there for you,” Bronwyn assured her sister, which made Emer look visibly relieved. “I just can’t stay very long.”

“That’s ok, I was just hoping you’d see the show.”

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Lochlan asked, wondering what she couldn’t have scheduled around such a big holiday. 

“I don’t like crowds,” she said. “Or lots of noise, it hurts my ears. I wouldn’t go at all if it weren’t for Emmie. Grandpa gives the same speech each year about how proud he is to be our priest and how we should remember how important everyone is to the community. It’s super sweet, but once you’ve heard it, word for word, for like… twenty years?” Her voice went up at the end, indicating she couldn’t quite remember how old she was when she stopped going. “It gets a little… you know.” The corner of her mouth tugged to the side. Lochlan wasn’t sure if he did, in fact, know, but he nodded along anyway. “Really, it’s just the noise that bothers me the most. I’ve even tried going with wax in my ears, but it’s like I can feel the noise in my bones. I wouldn’t mind everything else if it weren’t for that.”

When they sat down for dinner, it was at a small, round table in the corner of the kitchen, just big enough for the four of them. Lochlan was sure that if a fifth person were added, everyone would be bumping elbows with each other. The Maggie soup was delicious, herbal and garlicky, with lemon and black pepper and a medley of summertime vegetables. Young carrots, new potatoes, and fennel had been stewing in bone broth all day and were so tender that they fell apart in the soup. Bronwyn had cut each of them a thick slice of bread, leaving the end for Terano, which was his favorite part. He wasted no time in pulling it apart, adding the chunks of bread to his soup, which absorbed enough liquid that he could have eaten it with a fork if he wanted to. 

“You know,” Bronwyn said to Lochlan, “when he was a kid-”

Terano’s eyes went wide with silent betrayal.

“-he used to hollow out the end of his bread and make a little pocket for his soup.”

“Why.” Terano dropped his spoon into the bowl. “Why would you tell him that?”

“Because it’s a funny tidbit and it’s my job to embarrass you.”

Lochlan furrowed his brow. “No, no, I think he was onto something, that sounds good. Why did you stop?”

“Thank you!”

“I’ve got an older sister, too. I know embarrassing each other is a bloodsport,” he turned to Terano. “I think you should tell me something embarrassing about Bronwyn next.”

Jumping at the opportunity, Terano blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “One time, we were playing charades, and Brownwyn thought that ‘beach’ had two syllables.” 

“OH IT WAS ONE TIME!” Bronwyn flopped back dramatically, hanging her head over the back of her chair. “Can a woman not make a single mistake?” she cried, throwing the back of her hand against her forehead. Emer laughed aloud. 

“Ohhh, I’ve got a good one too. When Terano and I were little-”

“Noooooo…” Terano whined, slumping forward onto crossed arms. 

“When we were little, Terano used to be naked all the time.” As she talked, her sentences were punctuated with Terano’s muffled pleading with her not to continue.

“This one time, actually during the solstice when we were five or something, he stripped down to nothing and started running around yelling ‘NAKED BABY! NAKED BABY!’”

“I’m going to jump off the cliff.” Terano threatened. “I’m going to be a smear at the bottom of the valley and it’s going to be your fault.”

“Oh shut up, no you won’t.” Bronwyn waved him off. “Besides, Emer’s got some good ones too.” 

Emer gasped. Oh how the tables had turned! “Traitor!”

“No, equal opportunity bully,” she said, affectionately patting her sister’s hand.

“Alright, I’ve gotta hear this one,” Lochlan said, his brow quirking up on one side. 

“Emer did magic when she was little,” Bronwyn said, rapping her knuckles against the table between them for emphasis. “She was a tiny little criminal.”

“Little?” Lochlan asked, looking at Emer across from him. He’d been made aware of her extracurricular talents, but Alder had made it sound like this had been a relatively recent development. “How old?”

Emer looked around shyly before answering. Terano lifted his head, gauging what reaction was needed from him by the way she replied. 

“Um, I was five. Maybe six, when it started. I could make sparks with my fingers. By the time I was eight, it was these full, rainbow fireballs,” she admitted. “Um, obviously I quit once I was old enough to realize how dangerous it was,” she added quickly, hoping that Lochlan wouldn’t be able to tell that she was lying. He nodded quietly and tore off a piece of his bread and dunked it in his soup.

“I think it’s a stupid law,” he said plainly. “If you look at older manuscripts, it says that Tesser gave magic to humans so that everyone could participate in divinity. I think making it so clandestine, putting it behind a mountain range and building a wall around it is pretty antithetical to the whole… thing.” He gestured vaguely with his spoon. “Even if it is to maintain a…” he looked up while searching his brain for the exact verbiage his father used whenever Lochlan had asked about it. “Legacial chain of succession.”

“What does that mean?” Emer asked, never having heard the formal rationale for why magic had been generally outlawed. 

Lochlan chose his next words carefully. “They… want to make sure that everyone who knows magic does it the same way, for the same reasons, with their oversight.” He wasn’t sure that he believed that this was the entirety of their reasoning, but he didn’t feel like slandering the religious institute that his father had founded. He didn’t claim to know the will of the Gods, but he couldn’t help the heavy feeling in his gut that they were unintentionally going down a dangerous path. 

“So… if you aren’t taught by them, or practice it like them, you’re arrested for witchcraft?” Terano asked to clarify that it was that cut and dry. Lochlan nodded curtly in response. “Yea. Basically.” 

Terano’s eyes widened for a second as his mouth pulled tight like he had something controversial to say, but decided to keep it to himself. 

“Alright, that’s enough politics,” Bronwyn made ‘shooing’ motions with her hands. “Lets get back to annoying my brother and sister.” 

Later that night, Lochlan and the twins entered the Trevino family home. It was dark, except for a few candles in the windows. Shoes were kicked off unceremoniously. In the dim light, Lochlan could see lots of wooden furnishings and brass grape vines mounted above the trim on the doors. Emer held his hand through the dark and guided him up a steep staircase, Terano following up behind him. The floorboards creaked under his weight; the twins knew where to step to avoid the squeaks. 

When Bronwyn moved out, Emer had moved into her room, but she gave it up for the night until they knew for sure what to do with Lochlan while he stayed. Confident that he wouldn’t object, Emer lit a candle with nothing but her fingertip and showed Lochlan to her room and said her goodnights, waving away any thanks he sent her way. While she was in there, she grabbed extra bedding from the closet and carried it to her brother’s room, releasing it in a fluffy dump on top of his mattress. 

Lochlan first noticed that the room was covered wall-to-wall in art he assumed Emer had done herself. Everything in the room had a smokey perfumed smell like she frequently burned incense, which he was sure she did. The candle, he noticed, occasionally flickered green instead of its natural orange. When she lit the candle in front of him, he couldn’t deny he felt a little fond of her. He appreciated a rebel, and he was convinced that no one’s hands would keep the responsibility of magic safer than hers. 

As he settled down into bed, he thought of his parents and all the things they’d both said to each other before he left home. With any luck, he thought, it wouldn’t be the last conversation they would have. He wondered how much his new friends knew about the world outside their valley. He thought of Terano, smart and witty and refreshingly secular after coming from the world he did. He blew out the candle Emer had left at his bedside, rolled over, and tried to get some rest.