bungakertas (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bungakertas) wrote2018-01-16 09:44 pm
bungakertas) wrote2018-01-16 09:44 pm
Entry tags:
The Truth Spirit
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): attempted murder
Pairing(s):
Summary: The flat Earth society has started a cult that sacrifices people by throwing them off the edge of the Earth. This is what happened to their first victim.
Author's Notes: To give a little set-up. I did some spit-balling with a friend of mine on what sort of a state the world would have to be in for a Flat Earth Society to gain the kind of traction they would need to do this sort of thing. And our conclusion was that not only was modern society toast, but most of the connection to previous knowledge would also have to be toast. Not only no internet, but no library, either. And considering ancient people were well-aware the world was round, the government system our Flat Earth Society runs would have be basically Communism, and they would have to heavily suppress anyone who got out of line. The animism is more speculative, but it suits the world. So, there you are.
Please forgive the super dumb title. I'm trying to write every week, plus work full time and titles are hard even when you do have time to, like, not be dumb.
*~*~*
Sera did her best to twist free of the arms holding her tightly and forcing her uphill. “Please! You don’t have to do this! It won’t help!”
“The World Spirit called you,” said one of the men. “We dare not refuse its choice.”
Sera struggled, uselessly, seeing the edge coming closer. She knew it was hopeless, but she couldn’t bear not to fight.
The End Of The World was not far from the village where she lived. Had lived. Only a few minutes’ walk up the hill. But no one ever came here, because no one wanted to look off the End Of The World. It was only fog. Fog as far as the eye could see. The world was apparently surrounded by fog. Some people said that the fog was the World Spirit. The true form of the vaguely malevolent thing that only barely tolerated their presence on its skin. Certainly the constant thunderstorms and earthshakes meant the World Spirit could hardly be friendly.
Sera wasn’t sure anymore. Probably it didn’t matter.
They were right up on the Edge, now.
One of the priests stood forward and said, “The World Spirit has demanded a sacrifice. From among us, the World Spirit has revealed, by sacred lottery, that Sera Jackson is the object of its wrath. We cast her from us to the Spirit, begging its tolerance and forbearance.”
Sera was scrambling madly now, hoping at least to take one of these evil men with her, but it was no good. They overpowered her and threw her over the edge.
She fell for one breath, two. Then she hit something. Hard. The wind was knocked from her in a painful rush, and then she was falling again.
She hit the ground almost immediately this time, sound muffled by a soft covering of moss. It didn’t make it less painful, however, and she lay there without moving, trying to force her unusually reluctant lungs to actually function.
She didn’t realize it then, but it was the fact that she was so quiet and still that probably saved her life. She could hear the voices of the men above her, singing a mourning song, but it didn’t occur to her to do anything but try to breathe. It didn’t occur to her to do anything that might contradict their belief that she was dead. But she did remain quiet, too shocked by the fact that she wasn’t dead to do anything else.
Eventually the men moved away, slowly, singing their dirge for the woman they had just tried to murder.
It was a long time later when Sera sat up. Painfully. Slowly. And totally unsurprised to find bruises blossoming all over her body. She had little doubt there were bruises along her ribs, hidden by the white linen gown she’d been dressed in for her sacrifice. Certainly she could see them all along her arms and over her legs when she tugged the skirt upwards.
She was not human anymore. She was bruise.
The bruise raised her head and gazed upwards to see a giant web of tree limbs spreading above her. The branches were thick enough that she hadn’t broken them, but on a branch long enough that they had some give to them. Enough to slow her fall before she’d reached the ground.
Enough to keep her alive.
She could see, too, that the cliff she’d been thrown from wasn’t a true cliff. A very, very, very steep incline, but not properly a cliff. And the fog that had seemed endless from at the top of the face of the incline was now above her head. It didn’t fully settle to the ground.
Sera gazed around herself, finding a forest full of beautiful, green plants, growing strong from thick, loamy soil. The ground sloped away from the incline, so she decided to get away from where she was.
Two failed attempts at rising later, and Sera decided she was going to get away from where she was at a much slower rate than she had originally thought.
It took some undignified crawling, and the unfortunate discovery of a very pointy root system underneath the moss, but Sera managed to drag herself over to a shorter sapling with enough sturdiness to it to pull herself upright.
Every inch of her hurt. Unsurprising, since she was bruise now. The bruise began to limp her way down the incline.
The forest was quiet as she made her way through it. She was used to hearing bird calls off in the distance as it got closer to evening, but she heard no animals beneath this fog. Here and there she saw trees bearing fruit with obvious evidence of having been eaten at, but the animals that had done it had taken heed of her presence and fled.
The slope of the ground led her to a stream that flowed out from underneath the cover of some rocks straight into a small pond. On the opposite end, the pond flowed back outwards and…away. Sera was in no mood to go exploring right then, which was odd for her.
She retained just enough sense to observe the animal tracks around the pond that marked it as probably safe to drink before ducking her face to the water and filling herself up with the cold and slightly unpleasant-tasting water.
After drinking, she managed to get up on her own and hobbled back to one of those fruit trees she’d seen. She gathered several of the fruits up and retreated beneath a bush to gorge herself before falling asleep.
Sera passed the next several days in much the same manner, moving only a little as she allowed her body to heal. It was boring, becoming human again after turning into bruise. She amused herself by trying to tempt the wild rabbits she finally caught sight of to come close enough to pet, but they were cautious creatures and kept their distance.
It wasn’t until she caught sight of one rabbit with a torn ear that she remembered what her brother told her about a hunt several months ago. They’d caught a rabbit on a spear, about to deliver the killing blow, when the terrorized animal had torn free, ripping right through its ear.
It had fled over the End Of The World. The hunting party had not dared to follow.
The priest had sworn it was an omen. The World Spirit had called the rabbit away, taking food from the village, making them hungry in its anger. Sera’s brother had just called it bad luck. Neither he nor Sera believed in the World Spirit. Mostly they didn’t, anyway.
The priest had been Displeased. He had made a passionate statement about how the rabbit was an omen, devoured by the angry World Spirit to punish the village for disrespect. The World Spirit was growing angrier and they would all have to suffer in its wrath. Sera and Brynt had amused themselves in repeating his dramatic words in silly voices later that night over their dinner. Their vegetarian dinner, since the hunters had lost the rabbit.
But here it was. The rabbit with the torn ear. Not devoured by an angry spirit. Not devoured at all. Unless spirit devourings left you physically unharmed?
Who even knew? How would you even find that out? The priest swore the World Spirit was angry and vengeful, so it was unlikely Sera could find it to ask. And the priest would, almost certainly, declare the question Disrespectful and Unnecessary.
Disrespect and Unnecessariness were the two worst sins in the village. Everyone had to do their duty or else they would all perish. Doing your Duty was right and good and honorable. Which, according to the priests, meant the men did the hunting and building and the women did the farming, making of clothing, and baby-wrangling. And the cooking. And the washing. And the sweeping.
Sera had always thought it was disgusting the way the priests had arranged it so the men managed not to have a Duty to do any chores in their own homes. Of course, her father and mother had cheerfully split up the chores in the house. As had, Sera noticed, all of the couples where the wives looked happiest. She and her brother had kept up the practice of helping each other, with the result that both knew how to build and repair each other’s tools. Sera had kept her brother appraised of any game movements she’d noticed. He had brought back interesting artifacts that he thought could be useful, and they’d managed to clean up and weave casings for two glass bottles with cork tops, so that they could both carry water with them while they worked.
This was a Disrespectful way to live. Offensive to the World Spirit. People who did Duties not their own were at risk of trying to do Unnecessary things. The village could not tolerate Unnecessary things. If work did not put food on tables, clothes on backs, or roofs over heads, it was Unnecessary.
Sera and Brynt had followed their parents example and kept quiet about their Disrespectful actions, but hadn’t stopped them. After all, what the priests didn’t know about couldn’t hurt anyone, right?
Sera gazed at the rabbit with the torn ear as it hopped away. She moved her arm, feeling the soreness of her bruises. It had hurt her.
Because Brynt had been Disrespectful, and taught her what he learned, Sera was able to build a shelter for herself with reasonable confidence that it wouldn’t fall on her head. From her own work farming, she knew which of the plants she could eat without poisoning herself to death. The animals slowly adjusted to her presence, growing bold enough that she was able to follow them and find the easy ways to travel. And her own natural curiosity eventually drove her to explore her surrounds more fully.
She was in a vast, bowl-shaped depression, ringed with sharp inclines on nearly all sides. Her little pond was one of many similar streams and ponds welling up from some underground source that all emptied into a large lake in the center of the bowl. All the water was a little bit cooler than the surrounding air, which produced a nearly constant fog that lay over the bowl, hiding what was underneath from view.
The lake had an outflow river on the far side that followed a stone bed to the one open side of the bowl, and that was where Sera made her discovery.
This was not the End Of The World.
The river cascaded down the side of a huge mountain. At the base, the mountain’s river fed into a much larger one, winding its way lazily through a deep valley. Vibrantly green trees covered everything as far as she could see, covered here and there by fog-coverings near the tops of several of the mountains. And, most exciting, there seemed to be some kind of building along the river a little way. It was broken and falling down, but people had built it. There had been people there.
Sera went back to her camp, excited and happy, ready to make a short trip to see about how to get to the fallen buildings tomorrow. After all, there was no reason for her to stay in the Bowl. She had been thrown from the End Of The World. She owed no allegiance to anyone.
That afternoon, the animals around her all went silent.
Sera had lived in the Bowl, alone, for about a month now. She had become accustomed to the little symphony of sounds the animals made while they went about their lives. The eerie quiet that suddenly descended was unnerving. It was a troubling reminder of the day she’d been thrown away as worthless.
Sera decided to follow the example of her guides and camouflaged her shelter as best she could before climbing up one of the trees near her pond to keep watch.
It was hours later when Stev, one of Brynt’s best friends, came stumbling through the woods to the pond, taking most of the same precautions that Sera had when she’d first been cast out. She was frankly shocked that the priests had accepted the word of the Sacred Lottery about Stev. He was…big. The men of his family were builders and they did not shy away from the heavy work. Stev’s sister, Anla was as tall as most men and one of the strongest women on the farms. Sera had always envied her slightly intimidating muscular arms. Stev was built along even bigger lines, and Sera was more than slightly amazed the priests had succeeded in throwing him anywhere he did not wish to be thrown.
“Stev!” Sera called out to him, climbing down from her tree as fast as she could manage.
His head jerked up, eyes narrowing as he caught sight of her.
“Sera?” he demanded in shock, taking her in as she approached. Sera wasn’t surprised that he looked half-terrified of her. He’d thought she was dead for at least a month, and she knew she’d gone a little feral living down here by herself. She’d used her—unimpressive—abilities as a seamstress to convert her sacrificial gown to some trousers and a shirt. It was stained with dirt now, and she’d had to patch it here and there with leaves or bark, which were…not ideal as textiles.
Frankly, it was a little surprising he’d recognized her at all.
But he was another human, and she had been starved for company of any sort for a month.
“Did you break anything when you fell?” Sera asked when she reached him.
Stev stared at her in shock. “Are you the World Spirit?”
Sera blinked. “What? No? Why would I be the World Spirit?”
“They told me I was Disrespectful. Made the World Spirit angry. Said it would take me. It’s rude for it to look like you. The World Spirit is Disrespectful,” Stev said, finishing with a naughty giggle. His eyes were oddly wide and unfocused.
Sera scowled at this blasphemy from the usually polite man. She felt like she had seen this behavior before somewhere. She couldn’t recall, but she knew it was important that Stev not be on his own for at least a little while.
“I have a safe place for you to sleep, Stev. Can you walk?”
“Not coming anywhere with a Disrespectful spirit,” he replied. “Killed my friend and stole her face. Rude.”
“I’m not dead, Stev!” Sera poked one of the less yellowish-looking spots on Stev’s arm and he yelped in pain. “There. Would a spirit do that?”
“Then I’m imagining you,” he sighed. “Maybe I’m dead.”
“Then how about you be dead somewhere safe?” Sera replied in exasperation. “So that it doesn’t rain on your face?”
He thought this over and then gave her an unfocused nod.
Stev slept for a full day, waking only long enough for Sera to stuff him with fruit and water here and there. When he truly woke up again, Sera was sitting near his feet wrangling with the bow and arrow she’d been trying to make.
“How do you feel?” Sera said, looking at him curiously.
“Confused,” he replied.
“I think you hit your head very hard,” Sera said. “You have a bad bruise over your ear.”
“Thought I would die,” he said.
“So did I,” Sera admitted.
“Why didn’t you?” he asked.
Sera set down her…stick and string. Calling the project a weapon at this point was far too generous. “I imagine the same reason as you. The tree branch slowed my fall.”
“Why didn’t the World Spirit kill us?” Stev asked.
“Because this isn’t the End Of The World.” She sighed. “We’re in a big space, but the priests are wrong. The world keeps going. The World Spirit doesn’t live here.”
Stev blinked. “Where does it live?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nowhere. I haven’t explored very far, but I saw some…old buildings that I want to visit when I can. For now, you should rest. I think you really hit your head very hard.”
Stev spent most of the rest of the week sleeping or eating or only walking a little, much as Sera had spent her first days. But when he recovered enough to be useful, the two of them agreed they needed to somehow rig up a way to stop anyone else the village tossed of the edge of that mountain from hitting the ground as hard as they had. Their first order of business was to build a net sturdy enough to catch anyone who fell into it. Sera had worked out how to make string by stripping some of the sturdier leaves into fibers and then rolling the fibers together to create a single strand, then rolling the strands into threes. It was time consuming and she hated doing it.
Making rope for the net was a more time-consuming, more annoying version of string-making, and both she and Stev were short-tempered and angry with one another by the end of it, both of them trying to hide their increasing certainty that they would not complete the net by the time the next month’s sacrifice was made.
Next month came and went with no new sacrifice, and both Sera and Stev worried that the village had moved to simply killing the sacrifices outright. But they continued making the net, finally stringing it up just under the tree branch that had caught them. They both knew from painful experience that a fall of that distance was not fatal.
Next was the puzzle of how to remove the branch that had saved them. Both of them felt a bit guilty to cut it off, but with the net in place, it would cause injuries. Neither of them were entirely sure how to remove it, though. It was sturdy enough to hold their weight, and even jumping up and down on the branch didn’t cause any apparent damage to the tree. Eventually they (Stev) hit on the idea of rubbing a piece of rope back and forth over the tree branch until they eventually cut through it. It took several days, they wore out more pieces of rope than either of them bothered to count, and both of them had bloodied palms by the time they finished, but eventually the branch came down.
Once they removed it from the net, Stev and Sera rigged up a rope with knots at steady intervals to work as a ladder to the ground. They (Sera) also came up with the idea to turn the branch into a set of boards that they hung as a sign that they wrote on with a red ink that Sera made from crushed flower petals. The sign told whoever fell into the net to remain silent and climb down the rope. So, as Sera put it, that branch could still be saving lives.
It took them two months to accomplish all this, and no further sacrifices came down during that time. Sera had a horrible feeling that no further sacrifices ever would, and Stev only pretended not to agree. He was more than ready to leave things at that and follow Sera out to that old, fallen building to investigate further.
Once they came to this decision, both of them were seized by an odd reluctance to actually carry it out. First Stev insisted that they should make more rope to take with them “just in case.” Then Sera became convinced it was essential to find some way to carry water with them. She overrode Stev’s protests that there was a river in the valley by simply refusing to accompany him. They wasted two days arguing about planning the trip and it ended in a shouting match with both of them storming to separate hidey holes they’d both discovered to get some sleep.
As it turned out, it was a good thing they’d spent time stalling. The next day, their new rescue net was tested by virtue of a child being thrown into it in the late afternoon.
The village wasn’t that big, so both Sera and Stev recognized the child, whose name was Jae. But it was big enough that neither had spent all that much time with him, so he was understandably terrified to see them both, especially after having been assured they were both dead and he was soon to follow.
Once they’d calmed his hysterics and convinced him they were both alive, Jae told them he was twelve years old and that the village was starting to accept the Sacred Lottery and semi-regular sacrifices to the World Spirit as ordinary and good. His parents had fought against it, of course, and his father had offered to take his place, but the priests had been adamant that Jae’s name had been chosen and Jae must be sacrificed.
He also clarified the way the sacrifices were being timed. Any time a thunderstorm and an earthshake occurred within less than three hours of one another, the priests said it meant the World Spirit was exceptionally angry and was demanding a sacrifice.
Sera and Stev had looked at each other in dismay at that. There were always shakes, and those tended to happen pretty frequently no matter what. The storms, on the other hand, were a little seasonal. There were always thunderstorms, but sometimes there were a lot of thunderstorms. And they were coming in on the worst season for them.
They didn’t make their exploration trip. Both Stev and Sera realized they’d soon be receiving more guests. So, with what help Jae could provide them, they went to the far end of the lake and set to building as many neat shelters as they could reasonably build. It turned out that Stev’s and Jae’s families had been Disrespectful ones as well, and both were fairly well versed in basic farming techniques. Meanwhile, the boys were pleased to discover Sera wasn’t a fool at simple construction, so the three of them were able to erect a small, but livable set of dwellings for them and two more people, which is the number that arrived before storm season set in.
The five of them built even more.
Over the course of the storm season, the village sacrificed fifty of its residents to the World Spirit, including Stev’s sister Anla. The residents of the tiny new village got very good at building new little shelters, and the path from the rescue net to the pond became a well-established route. Stev and Sera began to be leaders in their new surrounds, directing people to make rope to keep the net up, or build a farm for food next year, or find a way to make fabric for clothing, or determine just how many rabbits they could catch without depleting the population in the Bowl (always with the rule that the rabbit with the torn ear was not to be harmed).
And always with the intention that, sooner or later, there would be an expedition out of the Bowl and down to those old, fallen buildings. But there was inevitably something else to do. A field to clear out, or a new room to add to a shelter, or a repair to make to the net.
It was three years later, and the End Of The World, as the new villagers had come to jokingly refer to their settlement, had grown sporadically to a population of around three hundred. It had taken some time for everyone to come to realize it, but apparently all of the sacrifices had had tendencies towards Disrespect and Unnecessariness. Everyone had come from a family where Duty was shared, however Disrespectful the priests claimed the World Spirit thought it was.
Sera still had nightmares about being thrown over the End Of The World—the incline, not the village—but she couldn’t deny it was nicer to live where men could farm or women could hunt if they wanted without any self-righteous defenders of tradition coming up to tell them they weren’t supposed to do those things.
The number of sacrifices slowed. Apparently the village priests felt like they had made their point, for the most part. Things settled in to an equilibrium without too much more effort, and finally Sera and Stev were able to set out, with three others, on their expedition to the old buildings they’d seen three years prior.
Crossing the river was a fairly complicated endeavor that ended in a clumsily built raft that none of them were very proud of. Still, it carried five bodies from one side of the river to the other, which was all they had really needed it to do. No one had accounted very well for the river’s current, so they ended up well downstream of their target, and it was more dark than not by the time they reached that old, fallen thing that jutted into the bend of the river.
As it turned out, that structure grew off of a large flattened field that had been covered with a hard surface of level rocks. White lines were painted onto the surface in a pattern none of them understood the purpose for, broken up by where the grass and wildflowers had pushed their way through the surface to reclaim the field. Here and there, large arrows had been inscribed on the ground, leading to a pathway.
It was unlike any pathway they’d ever seen before. It was wide and flat, and covered with the same leveled rocks as the field, and even though plants were growing through it, they could tell it had moved in graceful curves and swoops through the mountainous landscape.
They followed the path a short distance to a cluster of buildings. These buildings were made along the same lines as the paths had been. Hard material that was still standing in relatively tolerable condition even after what must’ve been decades of disuse. A human skeleton stretched out to the side of the road, looking uncomfortably cheerful with little blue wildflowers growing from the rib cage.
When they stared too long, Stev finally broke the mood. “The priests would say it is an omen of life beyond death.”
They laughed. “The priests would say we are an omen of life beyond death,” Sera laughed.
Anla had been weaving a little flower crown as they traveled, so she placed it on the skeleton’s head. “For our cousin.”
It was full dark now, and no one much wanted to go smashing around into things at night, so they picked out a likely-looking building with a sturdy roof and camped in one of the rooms in it.
The next morning, they woke up to the welcome revelation that they could not have chosen a better building if they had intended it. Their campground was full of books.
Books were rare in the village and exclusively owned by the priests. They were hard to make, too, and the ink was constantly fading. But this building had thousands of books, bound with covers in brilliant inks—or at least, inks that had been brilliant when they were first etched on to the covers. Occasionally a book would have a cover in cloth of a plain blue or red green. And so many of them had fanciful titles and purported themselves to be works of fiction.
“The story is made up,” Stev said with a sigh.
“Unnecessary,” Anla agreed. “These people must’ve been very Disrespectful.”
“Maybe the World Spirit killed them for it,” Chael, a man who’d been sacrificed during the second storm season, suggested.
Sera shook her head. “These people had buildings and books like we can only dream about. I don’t think they were afraid of spirits.”
“Something killed them,” Chael said.
“Well, it looks like they wrote down everything they could think to write on any piece of paper that would stay still. Maybe they wrote down what killed them,” Stev said, stopping the discussion from going any further.
They hunted around some more until Eron, a man who’d only been sacrificed three weeks prior, gave a triumphant yell. They followed his joyful calls into a room full of books that were clearly less fanciful than the fictional ones. They discarded a large number of books that made no sense, talking about windows or apples in ways that made it clear literal windows or apples were not the items under consideration. Books that made mention of things called “cars” went a long way to explaining those odd paths, but were also mostly unhelpful.
It was Anla who made the most useful discovery. Something called a “virus” had swept through the population, and only those who had immunity had survived it.
“So, that’s it,” Sera said, a bit disappointed. “People lived here who could build these buildings and write these books and they all died because they got sick.”
“Not all of them. Some people lived,” Chael argued back, apparently being in a mood to disagree with anyone for any reason.
“Less than 5% of everyone in the world, though,” Anla told him. “The ones who lived…things would’ve changed.”
“They must’ve tried to teach their children about some things,” Chael protested.
“But there would be so few people. They would only have taught them what they needed.” Stev said it slowly, as if coming to a conclusion.
“Only what they…needed. Nothing that was Unnecessary, you mean?” Sera asked.
“Exactly.”
“And they would’ve had to be very strict about people doing their jobs. They could brook no Disrespect for doing your Duty.” Stev looked very disturbed.
“So...we’re them? They’re us?” Eron mused with a frown. He gazed around pointedly. “We’ve certainly forgotten a great deal.”
“I suppose if you catch a virus that can kill you in a week, you wouldn’t have a lot of time to pass down important knowledge,” Anla mused.
But Sera had caught sight of something on a nearby table and was approaching it with an expression midway between awe and fury.
It was a ball, covered in colored paints, with little bumps and carvings all over its face. As she drew closer, Sera could tell it was a map, but a map that had been drawn onto the ball. “They passed on this.”
All five of them gathered around the ball, watching as Sera moved it here and there, running her fingers over it.
“They knew. They knew and they covered it up. Or forgot. And then they tried to murder us for a lie,” she said.
Anla shook her head. “Sera, I will never pretend what they did was the right thing. But the priests really believe that ridge is the End Of The World. They really believe in the World Spirit. They really believe it. They really, really do.”
“Jae was twelve when they sacrificed him. They tried to murder a twelve year old. It was only because they want us all to stay stupid that they failed,” Stev replied.
“They really think the World Spirit will kill all the children in the village,” Anla said.
“Stop,” Eron broke in. “We don’t need to fight. You’re both right. The priests really do believe in everything they claim to, but that doesn’t actually make what they did any better. They’re murderers. Or as good as, anyway.”
A long silence descended over the five of them, until Sera said, “We should bring some of this back. To prove that our ancestors were smarter than the priests, and they didn’t fear any World Spirit. Because they knew the world better than we do.”
“We should also tell people that we can learn,” Anla said. “Our ancestors were human. They got sick and struggled like we do. If they could make these things, we can learn how to do it too.”
They took the map-ball and several books about farming, building, and “textiles” (which was apparently the ancestors’ word for fabric-making) when they left. None of them were terribly surprised that their raft had disintegrated over the course of their trip, so they built a new one and crossed the river again.
The rest of their tiny village received the news of the priests’ error with dismay and anger. To the point that a meeting was immediately called and everyone came to attend. They argued back and forth for hours, but in the end, the argument came down to two main sides. One side argued that they had to stop the priests sacrifices, by any means necessary, even if that meant open violence. Jae had been the first child to be sacrificed, but not the last, nor the youngest, and what the priests were doing was not only wrong morally, but factually as well.
The other side pointed out, quite sensibly, that the End Of The World was a better place to live. They were friendlier, they were kinder, they had better food, and their willingness to permit creative thinking had led to several farming and construction innovations that had improved their quality of life beyond their old village. People who were sacrificed ended up genuinely better off, and were out of the clutches of the priests. Therefore, the sacrifices should be allowed to continue
In the end, someone turned to Sera and said, “You were first. You and Stev and Jae are the leaders here. You should be the ones to decide.”
The three of them demanded that the others vote on that proposition, all hoping to escape the responsibility of it, but there was no help there. The vote unanimously elected the three of them to determine whether the End Of The World would act on their new knowledge or not.
The three of them moved off to sit under the rescue net and discuss their options. Which began as the three of them sitting in silence, saying nothing.
“I was terrified when they sacrificed me,” Jae finally said. He was fifteen now, and beginning to be a man. Which meant he was beginning to be old enough to understand both how he had been wronged and how grave an action attacking the village was. “I was…a child.”
“We were all scared. But we survived,” Stev said.
“But that doesn’t make it right,” Sera pointed out.
Jae sighed. “I feel as if we just had this argument.”
“We did,” Stev said.
Sera allowed herself to fall backwards onto the moss beneath the rescue net. “What can we do, then? We cannot allow these sacrifices to go on. But the priests will not stop unless they are made to stop, and that will require force. Which will expose us as alive, and possibly end with us murdered in truth.”
“We can neither permit them to continue, nor force them to stop,” Stev agreed. “An interesting puzzle.”
“It would simplify things if the priests would simply sacrifice everyone they wanted dead all at once,” Jae said.
“It would also simplify things if the World Spirit would simply appear out of a storm to tell the priests to stop sacrificing innocent people,” Stev replied. “There’s no point in wishing for what will not be.”
Sera, on the other hand, had a wicked expression. “Oh, I think those things might be precisely what will be."
It took Sera a long time to explain her plan, and it took much longer for them to get it all arranged so that they had a workable way to carry it out. It involved a lot of making things look more frightening than they actually were, and one outright blasphemy by several of their village members. But in the end, they were able to get their plan to work.
They waited until a thunderstorm began to build beyond the hills. They’d learned by now what the sound of it was. And as it rolled in, the people who’d been thrown over the End Of The World moved in on their old village.
They were dressed as outrageously as possible. They had spent a lot of time disguising themselves with various things. Animal skins, parts of trees, clothes painted outrageous colors. All with the intent of being mistaken for spirits. For one spirit in particular.
Three of their number they had disguised differently. Jery, an older man, who had been very frail when he was thrown into their net and had nearly died despite not falling very far. When he had recovered enough to wake up, though, they discovered his frailty came not from being old, but from having been starved. The village priests had grown cruel with power. Anla was also among the three. Luk, a boy of only eight years was the third.
These three they dressed in the finest white robes they could create, mirroring the sacrificial robes they had all been given to be thrown to their supposed deaths, but improved. Hemmed in threads of brilliant colors. They had to practice wearing the fantastically beautiful clothes, since their skins had been painted with streaky clay, also something they’d rehearsed, so that the three of them looked almost like they were made of the ground itself, come to life and dressed in unheard-of finery.
And, so the village that had rejected them was visited by a group of people who looked like spirits, led by three bodies that spoke with a single voice. The World Spirit itself, taken on form and come to their homes out of a storm.
The priests came out of their dwellings and threw themselves to the ground in fear. Jery, Anla, and Luk spoke in their rehearsed lines. “GIVE ME THE ONES WHO DISRESPECT THE WORLD SPIRIT! ALL OF THEM!”
The priests scrambled up and five whole families were brought forward, along with Brynt and a few other relatives of those who had been cast out. Sera tried not to be startled at the condition her brother was in. He looked like he hadn’t been eating as well as he should and that that been the case for far too long a time. To be honest, Sera wasn’t surprised. They had deprived him of his sister, and then frightened him away from farming for his own food.
“How will we make sacrifices now?” one of the priests asked in a fearful voice.
“I WILL TAKE THEM ALL TODAY! I WILL SEND MY SHAKES AND MY STORMS FROM NOW ON TO REMIND YOU OF MY WRATH!”
Sera was hoping there were no more questions. That was all the script that they had. The three had practiced speaking in a weird one-starts-another-breaks-in-the-third-finishes style for anything else, but that depended heavily on their ability to catch one another’s thought and they were not always very successful.
Still, the priests seemed sufficiently cowed, and they were able to take the other people most at risk of being murdered out of the village as the violent storm struck the village, washing everyone in rain and giving them cover for their escape.
They were drenched, but jubilant when they returned to the End Of The World, more than happy to show their new arrivals that the ones they had thought were dead were alive and well and prospering. Brynt was not the only one who was in dire need of food, and they were all very thankful for the farming techniques they had learned from their ancestors.
It was three weeks before the newly kidnapped members of the End Of The World shed their panic, though once things had been explained to them, they were all grateful for having been spared the danger of being “sacrificed” to the World Spirit.
And they felt the same anger when they were shown the map-ball Sera had discovered in the ancestors’ book building.
So a new meeting was called. A meeting to decide if there was any further action that needed to be taken. And after another long, drawn-out discussion, a decision was finally made.
*~*~*
The Village was experiencing a remarkably dry planting season and summer. The water that had seemed almost dangerously abundant sometimes was not so dependable this year. A few quiet suggestions that the World Spirit might wish for a sacrifice were quickly quashed by the priests. It had been two years since the World Spirit had come from the storm personally to tell them they were taking all who were Disrespectful away. They had a little less food, so they had to be more careful rationing, but there were fewer mouths to feed and no more dissenters. The Village had come through.
But this year, they were losing crops. The priests weren’t sure how to ration if they lost too many more. It was getting dangerously low.
Until Kyl, a boy who always wandered more than he should came running back from the End Of The World.
“Come! Come see! The End Of The World! It’s gone!”
With a pronouncement like that, half the Village turned out to look.
The fog that had always covered the End Of The World was gone, probably chased away by whatever had stolen the water from everything else. Instead of the usual blanket of clouds, they found themselves looking out over a large bowl with plants that were drooping, and thirsty, but not dead. On the far side of the bowl, there some odd breaks in the plants that might be farms, and beneath their feet, where they had thrown the sacrifices, there was an old net, unmaintained, with holes in it here and there.
The priests began to realize how they were fooled.
The Village led an expedition to discover a small settlement, obviously abandoned, with several farms that had grown wild, but would probably yield enough extra food to see them through the dry year they were having. Most of the buildings that had obviously held dwellings had been left behind with no thought given to them, but there was a structure that had been built from stone, carefully, designed to stand for a long time.
It was small, just one room and a roof. Inside was a small table with a ball on it. On the ball, a map was inscribed. Next to it was an enormous book, with faded gold letters stamped into it. ATLAS.
On the wall, there was a plaque.
THOSE YOU SACRIFICED DID NOT DIE. WE CANNOT FORGIVE YOU BUT WE WISH YOU NO HARM. WE ARE GONE TO FIND ANOTHER PLACE TO LIVE. WE WILL NOT RETURN.
THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT, OR SMALL. THIS IS NOT DISRESPECT. IT IS TRUTH.
Warning(s): attempted murder
Pairing(s):
Summary: The flat Earth society has started a cult that sacrifices people by throwing them off the edge of the Earth. This is what happened to their first victim.
Author's Notes: To give a little set-up. I did some spit-balling with a friend of mine on what sort of a state the world would have to be in for a Flat Earth Society to gain the kind of traction they would need to do this sort of thing. And our conclusion was that not only was modern society toast, but most of the connection to previous knowledge would also have to be toast. Not only no internet, but no library, either. And considering ancient people were well-aware the world was round, the government system our Flat Earth Society runs would have be basically Communism, and they would have to heavily suppress anyone who got out of line. The animism is more speculative, but it suits the world. So, there you are.
Please forgive the super dumb title. I'm trying to write every week, plus work full time and titles are hard even when you do have time to, like, not be dumb.
Sera did her best to twist free of the arms holding her tightly and forcing her uphill. “Please! You don’t have to do this! It won’t help!”
“The World Spirit called you,” said one of the men. “We dare not refuse its choice.”
Sera struggled, uselessly, seeing the edge coming closer. She knew it was hopeless, but she couldn’t bear not to fight.
The End Of The World was not far from the village where she lived. Had lived. Only a few minutes’ walk up the hill. But no one ever came here, because no one wanted to look off the End Of The World. It was only fog. Fog as far as the eye could see. The world was apparently surrounded by fog. Some people said that the fog was the World Spirit. The true form of the vaguely malevolent thing that only barely tolerated their presence on its skin. Certainly the constant thunderstorms and earthshakes meant the World Spirit could hardly be friendly.
Sera wasn’t sure anymore. Probably it didn’t matter.
They were right up on the Edge, now.
One of the priests stood forward and said, “The World Spirit has demanded a sacrifice. From among us, the World Spirit has revealed, by sacred lottery, that Sera Jackson is the object of its wrath. We cast her from us to the Spirit, begging its tolerance and forbearance.”
Sera was scrambling madly now, hoping at least to take one of these evil men with her, but it was no good. They overpowered her and threw her over the edge.
She fell for one breath, two. Then she hit something. Hard. The wind was knocked from her in a painful rush, and then she was falling again.
She hit the ground almost immediately this time, sound muffled by a soft covering of moss. It didn’t make it less painful, however, and she lay there without moving, trying to force her unusually reluctant lungs to actually function.
She didn’t realize it then, but it was the fact that she was so quiet and still that probably saved her life. She could hear the voices of the men above her, singing a mourning song, but it didn’t occur to her to do anything but try to breathe. It didn’t occur to her to do anything that might contradict their belief that she was dead. But she did remain quiet, too shocked by the fact that she wasn’t dead to do anything else.
Eventually the men moved away, slowly, singing their dirge for the woman they had just tried to murder.
It was a long time later when Sera sat up. Painfully. Slowly. And totally unsurprised to find bruises blossoming all over her body. She had little doubt there were bruises along her ribs, hidden by the white linen gown she’d been dressed in for her sacrifice. Certainly she could see them all along her arms and over her legs when she tugged the skirt upwards.
She was not human anymore. She was bruise.
The bruise raised her head and gazed upwards to see a giant web of tree limbs spreading above her. The branches were thick enough that she hadn’t broken them, but on a branch long enough that they had some give to them. Enough to slow her fall before she’d reached the ground.
Enough to keep her alive.
She could see, too, that the cliff she’d been thrown from wasn’t a true cliff. A very, very, very steep incline, but not properly a cliff. And the fog that had seemed endless from at the top of the face of the incline was now above her head. It didn’t fully settle to the ground.
Sera gazed around herself, finding a forest full of beautiful, green plants, growing strong from thick, loamy soil. The ground sloped away from the incline, so she decided to get away from where she was.
Two failed attempts at rising later, and Sera decided she was going to get away from where she was at a much slower rate than she had originally thought.
It took some undignified crawling, and the unfortunate discovery of a very pointy root system underneath the moss, but Sera managed to drag herself over to a shorter sapling with enough sturdiness to it to pull herself upright.
Every inch of her hurt. Unsurprising, since she was bruise now. The bruise began to limp her way down the incline.
The forest was quiet as she made her way through it. She was used to hearing bird calls off in the distance as it got closer to evening, but she heard no animals beneath this fog. Here and there she saw trees bearing fruit with obvious evidence of having been eaten at, but the animals that had done it had taken heed of her presence and fled.
The slope of the ground led her to a stream that flowed out from underneath the cover of some rocks straight into a small pond. On the opposite end, the pond flowed back outwards and…away. Sera was in no mood to go exploring right then, which was odd for her.
She retained just enough sense to observe the animal tracks around the pond that marked it as probably safe to drink before ducking her face to the water and filling herself up with the cold and slightly unpleasant-tasting water.
After drinking, she managed to get up on her own and hobbled back to one of those fruit trees she’d seen. She gathered several of the fruits up and retreated beneath a bush to gorge herself before falling asleep.
Sera passed the next several days in much the same manner, moving only a little as she allowed her body to heal. It was boring, becoming human again after turning into bruise. She amused herself by trying to tempt the wild rabbits she finally caught sight of to come close enough to pet, but they were cautious creatures and kept their distance.
It wasn’t until she caught sight of one rabbit with a torn ear that she remembered what her brother told her about a hunt several months ago. They’d caught a rabbit on a spear, about to deliver the killing blow, when the terrorized animal had torn free, ripping right through its ear.
It had fled over the End Of The World. The hunting party had not dared to follow.
The priest had sworn it was an omen. The World Spirit had called the rabbit away, taking food from the village, making them hungry in its anger. Sera’s brother had just called it bad luck. Neither he nor Sera believed in the World Spirit. Mostly they didn’t, anyway.
The priest had been Displeased. He had made a passionate statement about how the rabbit was an omen, devoured by the angry World Spirit to punish the village for disrespect. The World Spirit was growing angrier and they would all have to suffer in its wrath. Sera and Brynt had amused themselves in repeating his dramatic words in silly voices later that night over their dinner. Their vegetarian dinner, since the hunters had lost the rabbit.
But here it was. The rabbit with the torn ear. Not devoured by an angry spirit. Not devoured at all. Unless spirit devourings left you physically unharmed?
Who even knew? How would you even find that out? The priest swore the World Spirit was angry and vengeful, so it was unlikely Sera could find it to ask. And the priest would, almost certainly, declare the question Disrespectful and Unnecessary.
Disrespect and Unnecessariness were the two worst sins in the village. Everyone had to do their duty or else they would all perish. Doing your Duty was right and good and honorable. Which, according to the priests, meant the men did the hunting and building and the women did the farming, making of clothing, and baby-wrangling. And the cooking. And the washing. And the sweeping.
Sera had always thought it was disgusting the way the priests had arranged it so the men managed not to have a Duty to do any chores in their own homes. Of course, her father and mother had cheerfully split up the chores in the house. As had, Sera noticed, all of the couples where the wives looked happiest. She and her brother had kept up the practice of helping each other, with the result that both knew how to build and repair each other’s tools. Sera had kept her brother appraised of any game movements she’d noticed. He had brought back interesting artifacts that he thought could be useful, and they’d managed to clean up and weave casings for two glass bottles with cork tops, so that they could both carry water with them while they worked.
This was a Disrespectful way to live. Offensive to the World Spirit. People who did Duties not their own were at risk of trying to do Unnecessary things. The village could not tolerate Unnecessary things. If work did not put food on tables, clothes on backs, or roofs over heads, it was Unnecessary.
Sera and Brynt had followed their parents example and kept quiet about their Disrespectful actions, but hadn’t stopped them. After all, what the priests didn’t know about couldn’t hurt anyone, right?
Sera gazed at the rabbit with the torn ear as it hopped away. She moved her arm, feeling the soreness of her bruises. It had hurt her.
Because Brynt had been Disrespectful, and taught her what he learned, Sera was able to build a shelter for herself with reasonable confidence that it wouldn’t fall on her head. From her own work farming, she knew which of the plants she could eat without poisoning herself to death. The animals slowly adjusted to her presence, growing bold enough that she was able to follow them and find the easy ways to travel. And her own natural curiosity eventually drove her to explore her surrounds more fully.
She was in a vast, bowl-shaped depression, ringed with sharp inclines on nearly all sides. Her little pond was one of many similar streams and ponds welling up from some underground source that all emptied into a large lake in the center of the bowl. All the water was a little bit cooler than the surrounding air, which produced a nearly constant fog that lay over the bowl, hiding what was underneath from view.
The lake had an outflow river on the far side that followed a stone bed to the one open side of the bowl, and that was where Sera made her discovery.
This was not the End Of The World.
The river cascaded down the side of a huge mountain. At the base, the mountain’s river fed into a much larger one, winding its way lazily through a deep valley. Vibrantly green trees covered everything as far as she could see, covered here and there by fog-coverings near the tops of several of the mountains. And, most exciting, there seemed to be some kind of building along the river a little way. It was broken and falling down, but people had built it. There had been people there.
Sera went back to her camp, excited and happy, ready to make a short trip to see about how to get to the fallen buildings tomorrow. After all, there was no reason for her to stay in the Bowl. She had been thrown from the End Of The World. She owed no allegiance to anyone.
That afternoon, the animals around her all went silent.
Sera had lived in the Bowl, alone, for about a month now. She had become accustomed to the little symphony of sounds the animals made while they went about their lives. The eerie quiet that suddenly descended was unnerving. It was a troubling reminder of the day she’d been thrown away as worthless.
Sera decided to follow the example of her guides and camouflaged her shelter as best she could before climbing up one of the trees near her pond to keep watch.
It was hours later when Stev, one of Brynt’s best friends, came stumbling through the woods to the pond, taking most of the same precautions that Sera had when she’d first been cast out. She was frankly shocked that the priests had accepted the word of the Sacred Lottery about Stev. He was…big. The men of his family were builders and they did not shy away from the heavy work. Stev’s sister, Anla was as tall as most men and one of the strongest women on the farms. Sera had always envied her slightly intimidating muscular arms. Stev was built along even bigger lines, and Sera was more than slightly amazed the priests had succeeded in throwing him anywhere he did not wish to be thrown.
“Stev!” Sera called out to him, climbing down from her tree as fast as she could manage.
His head jerked up, eyes narrowing as he caught sight of her.
“Sera?” he demanded in shock, taking her in as she approached. Sera wasn’t surprised that he looked half-terrified of her. He’d thought she was dead for at least a month, and she knew she’d gone a little feral living down here by herself. She’d used her—unimpressive—abilities as a seamstress to convert her sacrificial gown to some trousers and a shirt. It was stained with dirt now, and she’d had to patch it here and there with leaves or bark, which were…not ideal as textiles.
Frankly, it was a little surprising he’d recognized her at all.
But he was another human, and she had been starved for company of any sort for a month.
“Did you break anything when you fell?” Sera asked when she reached him.
Stev stared at her in shock. “Are you the World Spirit?”
Sera blinked. “What? No? Why would I be the World Spirit?”
“They told me I was Disrespectful. Made the World Spirit angry. Said it would take me. It’s rude for it to look like you. The World Spirit is Disrespectful,” Stev said, finishing with a naughty giggle. His eyes were oddly wide and unfocused.
Sera scowled at this blasphemy from the usually polite man. She felt like she had seen this behavior before somewhere. She couldn’t recall, but she knew it was important that Stev not be on his own for at least a little while.
“I have a safe place for you to sleep, Stev. Can you walk?”
“Not coming anywhere with a Disrespectful spirit,” he replied. “Killed my friend and stole her face. Rude.”
“I’m not dead, Stev!” Sera poked one of the less yellowish-looking spots on Stev’s arm and he yelped in pain. “There. Would a spirit do that?”
“Then I’m imagining you,” he sighed. “Maybe I’m dead.”
“Then how about you be dead somewhere safe?” Sera replied in exasperation. “So that it doesn’t rain on your face?”
He thought this over and then gave her an unfocused nod.
Stev slept for a full day, waking only long enough for Sera to stuff him with fruit and water here and there. When he truly woke up again, Sera was sitting near his feet wrangling with the bow and arrow she’d been trying to make.
“How do you feel?” Sera said, looking at him curiously.
“Confused,” he replied.
“I think you hit your head very hard,” Sera said. “You have a bad bruise over your ear.”
“Thought I would die,” he said.
“So did I,” Sera admitted.
“Why didn’t you?” he asked.
Sera set down her…stick and string. Calling the project a weapon at this point was far too generous. “I imagine the same reason as you. The tree branch slowed my fall.”
“Why didn’t the World Spirit kill us?” Stev asked.
“Because this isn’t the End Of The World.” She sighed. “We’re in a big space, but the priests are wrong. The world keeps going. The World Spirit doesn’t live here.”
Stev blinked. “Where does it live?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nowhere. I haven’t explored very far, but I saw some…old buildings that I want to visit when I can. For now, you should rest. I think you really hit your head very hard.”
Stev spent most of the rest of the week sleeping or eating or only walking a little, much as Sera had spent her first days. But when he recovered enough to be useful, the two of them agreed they needed to somehow rig up a way to stop anyone else the village tossed of the edge of that mountain from hitting the ground as hard as they had. Their first order of business was to build a net sturdy enough to catch anyone who fell into it. Sera had worked out how to make string by stripping some of the sturdier leaves into fibers and then rolling the fibers together to create a single strand, then rolling the strands into threes. It was time consuming and she hated doing it.
Making rope for the net was a more time-consuming, more annoying version of string-making, and both she and Stev were short-tempered and angry with one another by the end of it, both of them trying to hide their increasing certainty that they would not complete the net by the time the next month’s sacrifice was made.
Next month came and went with no new sacrifice, and both Sera and Stev worried that the village had moved to simply killing the sacrifices outright. But they continued making the net, finally stringing it up just under the tree branch that had caught them. They both knew from painful experience that a fall of that distance was not fatal.
Next was the puzzle of how to remove the branch that had saved them. Both of them felt a bit guilty to cut it off, but with the net in place, it would cause injuries. Neither of them were entirely sure how to remove it, though. It was sturdy enough to hold their weight, and even jumping up and down on the branch didn’t cause any apparent damage to the tree. Eventually they (Stev) hit on the idea of rubbing a piece of rope back and forth over the tree branch until they eventually cut through it. It took several days, they wore out more pieces of rope than either of them bothered to count, and both of them had bloodied palms by the time they finished, but eventually the branch came down.
Once they removed it from the net, Stev and Sera rigged up a rope with knots at steady intervals to work as a ladder to the ground. They (Sera) also came up with the idea to turn the branch into a set of boards that they hung as a sign that they wrote on with a red ink that Sera made from crushed flower petals. The sign told whoever fell into the net to remain silent and climb down the rope. So, as Sera put it, that branch could still be saving lives.
It took them two months to accomplish all this, and no further sacrifices came down during that time. Sera had a horrible feeling that no further sacrifices ever would, and Stev only pretended not to agree. He was more than ready to leave things at that and follow Sera out to that old, fallen building to investigate further.
Once they came to this decision, both of them were seized by an odd reluctance to actually carry it out. First Stev insisted that they should make more rope to take with them “just in case.” Then Sera became convinced it was essential to find some way to carry water with them. She overrode Stev’s protests that there was a river in the valley by simply refusing to accompany him. They wasted two days arguing about planning the trip and it ended in a shouting match with both of them storming to separate hidey holes they’d both discovered to get some sleep.
As it turned out, it was a good thing they’d spent time stalling. The next day, their new rescue net was tested by virtue of a child being thrown into it in the late afternoon.
The village wasn’t that big, so both Sera and Stev recognized the child, whose name was Jae. But it was big enough that neither had spent all that much time with him, so he was understandably terrified to see them both, especially after having been assured they were both dead and he was soon to follow.
Once they’d calmed his hysterics and convinced him they were both alive, Jae told them he was twelve years old and that the village was starting to accept the Sacred Lottery and semi-regular sacrifices to the World Spirit as ordinary and good. His parents had fought against it, of course, and his father had offered to take his place, but the priests had been adamant that Jae’s name had been chosen and Jae must be sacrificed.
He also clarified the way the sacrifices were being timed. Any time a thunderstorm and an earthshake occurred within less than three hours of one another, the priests said it meant the World Spirit was exceptionally angry and was demanding a sacrifice.
Sera and Stev had looked at each other in dismay at that. There were always shakes, and those tended to happen pretty frequently no matter what. The storms, on the other hand, were a little seasonal. There were always thunderstorms, but sometimes there were a lot of thunderstorms. And they were coming in on the worst season for them.
They didn’t make their exploration trip. Both Stev and Sera realized they’d soon be receiving more guests. So, with what help Jae could provide them, they went to the far end of the lake and set to building as many neat shelters as they could reasonably build. It turned out that Stev’s and Jae’s families had been Disrespectful ones as well, and both were fairly well versed in basic farming techniques. Meanwhile, the boys were pleased to discover Sera wasn’t a fool at simple construction, so the three of them were able to erect a small, but livable set of dwellings for them and two more people, which is the number that arrived before storm season set in.
The five of them built even more.
Over the course of the storm season, the village sacrificed fifty of its residents to the World Spirit, including Stev’s sister Anla. The residents of the tiny new village got very good at building new little shelters, and the path from the rescue net to the pond became a well-established route. Stev and Sera began to be leaders in their new surrounds, directing people to make rope to keep the net up, or build a farm for food next year, or find a way to make fabric for clothing, or determine just how many rabbits they could catch without depleting the population in the Bowl (always with the rule that the rabbit with the torn ear was not to be harmed).
And always with the intention that, sooner or later, there would be an expedition out of the Bowl and down to those old, fallen buildings. But there was inevitably something else to do. A field to clear out, or a new room to add to a shelter, or a repair to make to the net.
It was three years later, and the End Of The World, as the new villagers had come to jokingly refer to their settlement, had grown sporadically to a population of around three hundred. It had taken some time for everyone to come to realize it, but apparently all of the sacrifices had had tendencies towards Disrespect and Unnecessariness. Everyone had come from a family where Duty was shared, however Disrespectful the priests claimed the World Spirit thought it was.
Sera still had nightmares about being thrown over the End Of The World—the incline, not the village—but she couldn’t deny it was nicer to live where men could farm or women could hunt if they wanted without any self-righteous defenders of tradition coming up to tell them they weren’t supposed to do those things.
The number of sacrifices slowed. Apparently the village priests felt like they had made their point, for the most part. Things settled in to an equilibrium without too much more effort, and finally Sera and Stev were able to set out, with three others, on their expedition to the old buildings they’d seen three years prior.
Crossing the river was a fairly complicated endeavor that ended in a clumsily built raft that none of them were very proud of. Still, it carried five bodies from one side of the river to the other, which was all they had really needed it to do. No one had accounted very well for the river’s current, so they ended up well downstream of their target, and it was more dark than not by the time they reached that old, fallen thing that jutted into the bend of the river.
As it turned out, that structure grew off of a large flattened field that had been covered with a hard surface of level rocks. White lines were painted onto the surface in a pattern none of them understood the purpose for, broken up by where the grass and wildflowers had pushed their way through the surface to reclaim the field. Here and there, large arrows had been inscribed on the ground, leading to a pathway.
It was unlike any pathway they’d ever seen before. It was wide and flat, and covered with the same leveled rocks as the field, and even though plants were growing through it, they could tell it had moved in graceful curves and swoops through the mountainous landscape.
They followed the path a short distance to a cluster of buildings. These buildings were made along the same lines as the paths had been. Hard material that was still standing in relatively tolerable condition even after what must’ve been decades of disuse. A human skeleton stretched out to the side of the road, looking uncomfortably cheerful with little blue wildflowers growing from the rib cage.
When they stared too long, Stev finally broke the mood. “The priests would say it is an omen of life beyond death.”
They laughed. “The priests would say we are an omen of life beyond death,” Sera laughed.
Anla had been weaving a little flower crown as they traveled, so she placed it on the skeleton’s head. “For our cousin.”
It was full dark now, and no one much wanted to go smashing around into things at night, so they picked out a likely-looking building with a sturdy roof and camped in one of the rooms in it.
The next morning, they woke up to the welcome revelation that they could not have chosen a better building if they had intended it. Their campground was full of books.
Books were rare in the village and exclusively owned by the priests. They were hard to make, too, and the ink was constantly fading. But this building had thousands of books, bound with covers in brilliant inks—or at least, inks that had been brilliant when they were first etched on to the covers. Occasionally a book would have a cover in cloth of a plain blue or red green. And so many of them had fanciful titles and purported themselves to be works of fiction.
“The story is made up,” Stev said with a sigh.
“Unnecessary,” Anla agreed. “These people must’ve been very Disrespectful.”
“Maybe the World Spirit killed them for it,” Chael, a man who’d been sacrificed during the second storm season, suggested.
Sera shook her head. “These people had buildings and books like we can only dream about. I don’t think they were afraid of spirits.”
“Something killed them,” Chael said.
“Well, it looks like they wrote down everything they could think to write on any piece of paper that would stay still. Maybe they wrote down what killed them,” Stev said, stopping the discussion from going any further.
They hunted around some more until Eron, a man who’d only been sacrificed three weeks prior, gave a triumphant yell. They followed his joyful calls into a room full of books that were clearly less fanciful than the fictional ones. They discarded a large number of books that made no sense, talking about windows or apples in ways that made it clear literal windows or apples were not the items under consideration. Books that made mention of things called “cars” went a long way to explaining those odd paths, but were also mostly unhelpful.
It was Anla who made the most useful discovery. Something called a “virus” had swept through the population, and only those who had immunity had survived it.
“So, that’s it,” Sera said, a bit disappointed. “People lived here who could build these buildings and write these books and they all died because they got sick.”
“Not all of them. Some people lived,” Chael argued back, apparently being in a mood to disagree with anyone for any reason.
“Less than 5% of everyone in the world, though,” Anla told him. “The ones who lived…things would’ve changed.”
“They must’ve tried to teach their children about some things,” Chael protested.
“But there would be so few people. They would only have taught them what they needed.” Stev said it slowly, as if coming to a conclusion.
“Only what they…needed. Nothing that was Unnecessary, you mean?” Sera asked.
“Exactly.”
“And they would’ve had to be very strict about people doing their jobs. They could brook no Disrespect for doing your Duty.” Stev looked very disturbed.
“So...we’re them? They’re us?” Eron mused with a frown. He gazed around pointedly. “We’ve certainly forgotten a great deal.”
“I suppose if you catch a virus that can kill you in a week, you wouldn’t have a lot of time to pass down important knowledge,” Anla mused.
But Sera had caught sight of something on a nearby table and was approaching it with an expression midway between awe and fury.
It was a ball, covered in colored paints, with little bumps and carvings all over its face. As she drew closer, Sera could tell it was a map, but a map that had been drawn onto the ball. “They passed on this.”
All five of them gathered around the ball, watching as Sera moved it here and there, running her fingers over it.
“They knew. They knew and they covered it up. Or forgot. And then they tried to murder us for a lie,” she said.
Anla shook her head. “Sera, I will never pretend what they did was the right thing. But the priests really believe that ridge is the End Of The World. They really believe in the World Spirit. They really believe it. They really, really do.”
“Jae was twelve when they sacrificed him. They tried to murder a twelve year old. It was only because they want us all to stay stupid that they failed,” Stev replied.
“They really think the World Spirit will kill all the children in the village,” Anla said.
“Stop,” Eron broke in. “We don’t need to fight. You’re both right. The priests really do believe in everything they claim to, but that doesn’t actually make what they did any better. They’re murderers. Or as good as, anyway.”
A long silence descended over the five of them, until Sera said, “We should bring some of this back. To prove that our ancestors were smarter than the priests, and they didn’t fear any World Spirit. Because they knew the world better than we do.”
“We should also tell people that we can learn,” Anla said. “Our ancestors were human. They got sick and struggled like we do. If they could make these things, we can learn how to do it too.”
They took the map-ball and several books about farming, building, and “textiles” (which was apparently the ancestors’ word for fabric-making) when they left. None of them were terribly surprised that their raft had disintegrated over the course of their trip, so they built a new one and crossed the river again.
The rest of their tiny village received the news of the priests’ error with dismay and anger. To the point that a meeting was immediately called and everyone came to attend. They argued back and forth for hours, but in the end, the argument came down to two main sides. One side argued that they had to stop the priests sacrifices, by any means necessary, even if that meant open violence. Jae had been the first child to be sacrificed, but not the last, nor the youngest, and what the priests were doing was not only wrong morally, but factually as well.
The other side pointed out, quite sensibly, that the End Of The World was a better place to live. They were friendlier, they were kinder, they had better food, and their willingness to permit creative thinking had led to several farming and construction innovations that had improved their quality of life beyond their old village. People who were sacrificed ended up genuinely better off, and were out of the clutches of the priests. Therefore, the sacrifices should be allowed to continue
In the end, someone turned to Sera and said, “You were first. You and Stev and Jae are the leaders here. You should be the ones to decide.”
The three of them demanded that the others vote on that proposition, all hoping to escape the responsibility of it, but there was no help there. The vote unanimously elected the three of them to determine whether the End Of The World would act on their new knowledge or not.
The three of them moved off to sit under the rescue net and discuss their options. Which began as the three of them sitting in silence, saying nothing.
“I was terrified when they sacrificed me,” Jae finally said. He was fifteen now, and beginning to be a man. Which meant he was beginning to be old enough to understand both how he had been wronged and how grave an action attacking the village was. “I was…a child.”
“We were all scared. But we survived,” Stev said.
“But that doesn’t make it right,” Sera pointed out.
Jae sighed. “I feel as if we just had this argument.”
“We did,” Stev said.
Sera allowed herself to fall backwards onto the moss beneath the rescue net. “What can we do, then? We cannot allow these sacrifices to go on. But the priests will not stop unless they are made to stop, and that will require force. Which will expose us as alive, and possibly end with us murdered in truth.”
“We can neither permit them to continue, nor force them to stop,” Stev agreed. “An interesting puzzle.”
“It would simplify things if the priests would simply sacrifice everyone they wanted dead all at once,” Jae said.
“It would also simplify things if the World Spirit would simply appear out of a storm to tell the priests to stop sacrificing innocent people,” Stev replied. “There’s no point in wishing for what will not be.”
Sera, on the other hand, had a wicked expression. “Oh, I think those things might be precisely what will be."
It took Sera a long time to explain her plan, and it took much longer for them to get it all arranged so that they had a workable way to carry it out. It involved a lot of making things look more frightening than they actually were, and one outright blasphemy by several of their village members. But in the end, they were able to get their plan to work.
They waited until a thunderstorm began to build beyond the hills. They’d learned by now what the sound of it was. And as it rolled in, the people who’d been thrown over the End Of The World moved in on their old village.
They were dressed as outrageously as possible. They had spent a lot of time disguising themselves with various things. Animal skins, parts of trees, clothes painted outrageous colors. All with the intent of being mistaken for spirits. For one spirit in particular.
Three of their number they had disguised differently. Jery, an older man, who had been very frail when he was thrown into their net and had nearly died despite not falling very far. When he had recovered enough to wake up, though, they discovered his frailty came not from being old, but from having been starved. The village priests had grown cruel with power. Anla was also among the three. Luk, a boy of only eight years was the third.
These three they dressed in the finest white robes they could create, mirroring the sacrificial robes they had all been given to be thrown to their supposed deaths, but improved. Hemmed in threads of brilliant colors. They had to practice wearing the fantastically beautiful clothes, since their skins had been painted with streaky clay, also something they’d rehearsed, so that the three of them looked almost like they were made of the ground itself, come to life and dressed in unheard-of finery.
And, so the village that had rejected them was visited by a group of people who looked like spirits, led by three bodies that spoke with a single voice. The World Spirit itself, taken on form and come to their homes out of a storm.
The priests came out of their dwellings and threw themselves to the ground in fear. Jery, Anla, and Luk spoke in their rehearsed lines. “GIVE ME THE ONES WHO DISRESPECT THE WORLD SPIRIT! ALL OF THEM!”
The priests scrambled up and five whole families were brought forward, along with Brynt and a few other relatives of those who had been cast out. Sera tried not to be startled at the condition her brother was in. He looked like he hadn’t been eating as well as he should and that that been the case for far too long a time. To be honest, Sera wasn’t surprised. They had deprived him of his sister, and then frightened him away from farming for his own food.
“How will we make sacrifices now?” one of the priests asked in a fearful voice.
“I WILL TAKE THEM ALL TODAY! I WILL SEND MY SHAKES AND MY STORMS FROM NOW ON TO REMIND YOU OF MY WRATH!”
Sera was hoping there were no more questions. That was all the script that they had. The three had practiced speaking in a weird one-starts-another-breaks-in-the-third-finishes style for anything else, but that depended heavily on their ability to catch one another’s thought and they were not always very successful.
Still, the priests seemed sufficiently cowed, and they were able to take the other people most at risk of being murdered out of the village as the violent storm struck the village, washing everyone in rain and giving them cover for their escape.
They were drenched, but jubilant when they returned to the End Of The World, more than happy to show their new arrivals that the ones they had thought were dead were alive and well and prospering. Brynt was not the only one who was in dire need of food, and they were all very thankful for the farming techniques they had learned from their ancestors.
It was three weeks before the newly kidnapped members of the End Of The World shed their panic, though once things had been explained to them, they were all grateful for having been spared the danger of being “sacrificed” to the World Spirit.
And they felt the same anger when they were shown the map-ball Sera had discovered in the ancestors’ book building.
So a new meeting was called. A meeting to decide if there was any further action that needed to be taken. And after another long, drawn-out discussion, a decision was finally made.
The Village was experiencing a remarkably dry planting season and summer. The water that had seemed almost dangerously abundant sometimes was not so dependable this year. A few quiet suggestions that the World Spirit might wish for a sacrifice were quickly quashed by the priests. It had been two years since the World Spirit had come from the storm personally to tell them they were taking all who were Disrespectful away. They had a little less food, so they had to be more careful rationing, but there were fewer mouths to feed and no more dissenters. The Village had come through.
But this year, they were losing crops. The priests weren’t sure how to ration if they lost too many more. It was getting dangerously low.
Until Kyl, a boy who always wandered more than he should came running back from the End Of The World.
“Come! Come see! The End Of The World! It’s gone!”
With a pronouncement like that, half the Village turned out to look.
The fog that had always covered the End Of The World was gone, probably chased away by whatever had stolen the water from everything else. Instead of the usual blanket of clouds, they found themselves looking out over a large bowl with plants that were drooping, and thirsty, but not dead. On the far side of the bowl, there some odd breaks in the plants that might be farms, and beneath their feet, where they had thrown the sacrifices, there was an old net, unmaintained, with holes in it here and there.
The priests began to realize how they were fooled.
The Village led an expedition to discover a small settlement, obviously abandoned, with several farms that had grown wild, but would probably yield enough extra food to see them through the dry year they were having. Most of the buildings that had obviously held dwellings had been left behind with no thought given to them, but there was a structure that had been built from stone, carefully, designed to stand for a long time.
It was small, just one room and a roof. Inside was a small table with a ball on it. On the ball, a map was inscribed. Next to it was an enormous book, with faded gold letters stamped into it. ATLAS.
On the wall, there was a plaque.
THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT, OR SMALL. THIS IS NOT DISRESPECT. IT IS TRUTH.