Chapter 2
Shattered Goddess
Warning: rough draft ahead : there will be typos, spelling errors and oh so much more.
Chapter 2
I had to grab the night lantern off the big main table in the dining room. The shard of jyoti inside swelled a brighter pink when I picked it up and quickly returned to its normal weak white as soon as my hand touched the case’s rusty handle. I ignored the reaction, even if I was glad no idiot was around to see it and say something cruel to me. I wasn’t in the mood to reminded that I was a virgin marked one yet again.
I took Chu’chu out the back, through the kitchen garden, into the dark morning damp. Two minutes after setting her down across from Cook’s latest attempt at growing food, I wished I had brought something warm to cover my shoulders with. Dressed in a short corset so old that I’d had to repurpose threads from kitchen rags to cover the exposed reed boing, my ten year old hand-me-down clothing was made for warm weather, not the Drench.
The yellow silk of my sari had lost its cheery gold color, along with any protection against the elements that it might have once had. Not only did cold mist quickly drench me to the skin, but so did it’s forbidding chill.
Winters in Deviraj now stretched into months and months. The last good days of sun came and went in weeks. Women like Lady Bea began wearing wool some time ago, but since I didn’t earn any wages, I had no money to afford something in such high demand. I held myself and shivered while Chu’chu sniffed through the greens looking for a place to squat.
“No, not there, you, not there.” I tried to redirect her.
She didn’t even twitch her ears, treating me like a ghost. The animal was more arrogant than her mistress by far.
I nudged her with my foot trying to redirect away from the edible garden plants but she did her business undeterred.
“You’re not very smart, are you?” I asked.
She stood, shook herself and back-kicked the mud as if it had offended her. Instead of happily heading back toward the warmth of the Inn she lifted her head, sniffed the air once, and shot off into the dark.
“Chu’chu!”
Headed toward some trees and the bank of a stream that was known to have some dangerously thick mud, the little brown dog disappeared. A child had been sludge trapped weeks ago, stuck for hours in the sucking muck that edged the river, while the town overseer and others tried to get him out. He’d barely survived. What would happen to Lady Bea’s precious dog?
Holding the lamp with its circle of white light, I ran in the direction Chu’chu had gone. Nothing. Only her bark gave me any direction at all. Was she was chasing a rabbit or a weasel? I followed the sound, my heart beating.
Damn my life, if I didn’t come back with furry little rat Lady Bea would kick me out. I’d be alone again. I couldn’t let that happen. There were no wages but there was food, there was shelter from the Drench, a closet where I could sleep. I’d spent ten days alone after my family died around me—that childhood nightmare left more than the scars that traced my skin. I couldn’t go through anything like that again.
“Chu’chu!” I called out, my voice barely breaking the heavy weight of the mist.
The dark closed in tight, squeezing at my light. The moss draped trees and tall reeds surrounded me in sharp shadows. My chapels slapped through the mud making more noise than my own voice. I could feel the splash through my thin stocking as I tried to watch for any predators that had come from the river as best I could. There were always vipers, and sometimes gharial, with their sharp teeth. But did it matter? I was a body for the mud myself if I didn’t find that dog.
Anxiety churned up bile in my throat, turning everything I breathed putrid. I couldn’t see where I was going. The danger of being out in the dark like this fought with the need to find Chu’chu. Breathing hard, I had to stop to listen for her.
A soft breeze moved through the reeds. Bugs hummed. No dog.
Had I lost her?
I turned in a circle. “Chu’chu! You idiot, come back.”
I heard a bark. Hurriedly I went in that direction all hope and faith because I really couldn’t tell if it was the right direction.
Another series of barking. I followed the sound blindly until there she was, a ball of muddy brown fluff, stumbling through the grass and circling a tree. Barking as like her worst enemy was up there, her whole body jumped with the sounds she made.
“Thank the goddess.” I swept a hand under the dog’s belly, lifting her my chest just as my toes hit something hard and oddly warm.
The first thing that came to mind was that I’d stepped in dog shit, but no, it wouldn’t be hard now, would it? A quick check down and I saw something glowing pink- a jyoti? I sat down the lamp and picked it up. Usually long and straight, prism edges fit perfectly to my palm. I tucked it in my bodice under the weight of my breast where I knew it would stay. That might be worth something if I found a way to sell it without Lady Bea finding out. If the avaricious women knew about it she’d take it for sure.
Even though the dog ignored me, I was still covered in the mud that had saturated her fur when I got back to the Inn. I washed her and myself, outside, as best I could by the light of one lamp.
As an Inn where people came to stay, and often coupled in in our rickety beds, we had a better supply of jyoti than most. Our crystals were the common milky white of locally mined rocks unless they were charged with energy. Being such a low grade, they didn’t do more than create light. Larger rocks from the area could create heat, Cook had several in her kitchen and Lady Bea used one in her room near her bed.
It was the bigger, finer colors, blue, green, red, from the west and the salt cliffs of the Azure that could be charged into a true power and offered to the goddess herself to keep Deviraj safe from the predators and infidels of the outside world.
After washing Chu’chu, who had gone from proud to deservedly pathetic, I set her in the basin Cook used for dirty pots and pans. Unwrapping my sari, I used the water from the rain barrel spigot to clean away last of the muck from my corset. Pulling the gaping bodice top down, I fished for the solid weight, but it was gone.
I’d hidden things like this before and not lost them on longer journeys. What had happened? I could remember it in my hand, how it had fit perfectly, strangely warm as if charged with magic. That wasn’t possible. Every rock had to be blessed by an acolyte of the goddess before it came alive to hold a charge. It had to be given its name, its purpose. Until then it was just stone. Stone did not grow warm.
Where had it gone?