Chapter 5
Shattered Goddess
Warning: rough draft ahead : there will be typos, spelling errors and oh so much more.
Chapter 5
The cleaning crew went up to the estate house and came back two days in a row. Laday Bea complained day and night, as if a house that had been shut up for years should only take a couple of hours to set to rights. I could have told her how much there was to be done, that all the fabrics and linens would need to be replaced and every stick of wood rubbed clean of scum, but she didn’t ask me.
The secondary I saw a crew of men. I was right. The windows couldn’t be opened at all. Removing the close-grown greenery required strong backs and sharp blades.
Two of the women who’d gone up the hill the first day refused to step foot inside the next, no matter how Lady Bea threatened. It had been a long time since I’d seen her so angry. It caused quite a stir in the dining room, with Lady Bea complaining and demanding Cook help her find a way to replace them.
I was sweeping the mud from the front porch of the inn on the third day of their cleaning as the group gathered for the wagon. There were only two women left, surrounded by four men.
“The dead walk there. Did you know that the Lord’s first wife died on the top floor?” said a woman who had wrapped herself up in her sari so tight I could only see the glare from her eyes.
“Yes. Yes, indeed I did. In childbirth. Cursed by the Goddess, can you believe?” Standing next to the first woman, this second one clutched at a broom handle as if she had to lean on it, too frightened to stand up straight. They were sisters, widows both. I knew they must be desperate for the coin Lady Bea was offering.
“Only an evil woman dies in such a way, everyone knows that,” one of the men said. He was the son of one of the widows, I didn’t know which, but his bulbous nose and narrow eyes gave him away.
“The old Lord died there too,” the man next to him added.
“Wasn’t he very old?” asked the woman in the tight sari.
“Could be, but I bet it was poison. That family didn’t know any peace,” one of the other men said.
They squawked like a bunch of old geese. It was true that the house had a history to it. People had died there. Built a couple of lifetimes ago—before the moody cloud of bad moved over our village, when the mine was just discovered promising a treasure trove of wealth—of course people had died there. It was the type of structure meant to hold generations and the magic they made under the gaze of the Goddess.
There were secrets there, yes. Every house had them. And I’d personally met that tall, proud specter in the shadows. Why didn’t he come to the inn and introduce himself? I’d not heard one word about the Shaikti Pujar announcing himself or anything about his arrival.
Why did he hide? As one of the last three living high priests touched by the goddess, he was a demi-god himself. Why didn’t he sit in state and allow his worshippers to kneel before his greatness and beg for his blessing?
On a search to recruit candidates for the temple, shouldn’t he come in a parade of acolytes and the usual dancing and celebrating? I remember the sounds of festivals: the music and laughter, and hope. His presence brought the eyes of the goddess to our little crossroads village; there should be a holiday held in his honor at the very least.
The gossiping cleaning crew climbed into the wagon, and beyond them, nothing but the mist and decay of the Drench. Maybe the Shaikti Pujar didn’t show his face because he was ashamed of how weak his magic and his goddess had become in the last years.
No one talked anymore about how there had once been seven priests, not three. I remembered those days as I remembered warm sunshine on my face. People talked behind their hands about old men who died naturally, but none of them talked about how the Virulence spread across our land, touching every family, every street corner with its poison. No one asked how, after centuries of prosperity, we lost half our population and doubled the export of charged crystals to the outside nations.
There were no moans that the goddess had withdrawn all the love in her hands for us, or outcries that we had lost the sunny weather of the growing and planting seasons to a rot that coated everything in mud.
The caked dirt I swept off the porch was never-ending. It seemed to me that each day there was more of it and less growing things. It stained my clothing, my shoes,* my spirit. I felt it, sucking at me all the time. But no one else seemed to notice.
Cook wanted the porch clean, so I took the broom inside to exchange it with the morning’s dishwater. When I came out with the first big pitcher of it, Dossa and one of the village sons were in my way.
He had her pressed up against a wall, sweet-talking her, but I felt his eyes turn to me and heard Dossa’s hand slap his bare face in correction. “You are talking to me, not to that marked one.”
“But her spots are so pretty,” he said with unconcealed admiration.
“Do you want your penis to shrivel into a dead worm? By the goddess, are you one of those boys that chases that group?”
“Group?” he sounded baffled. I was likely the only survivor of the Virulence he’d ever seen.
“You know what I mean.”
“Trin has a cunt. She can charge a jyoti. Maybe better than you, since I saw her glow pink. She’s holding all her energy. How long has it been since you cast pink, Dossa?”
I walked away at the sarcastic challenge in his voice.
There was a fight to come at that and I wanted no part of it. Dossa wouldn’t endure any insult to her Goddess given feminine energy, even if she wasted it on casual encounters to the point she had very little to give.
Her shriek of rage, her father’s answering yell of warning followed me out the door as I went to finish my task.
*
I was washing the dinner dishes when I heard the distinct sound of the wagon sloshing through the mud at that front of the inn as it returned with the workers at the end of the day. They had stayed up at the estate longer, I guessed, to finally get the job done.
Footsteps drummed on the wood of the dining room as more than one person left their table to go and see what the workers had to say for themselves. Out the front door, voices raised in curiosity. The sound changed, muted, then louder to the dining room, bringing someone crying and someone shouting in with them.
“You’ll pay us double!” boomed a male voice
“Am I cursed? Did that house curse me?” the woman cried.
“Sister. Oh, my sister. Don’t die,” wailed another.
I dropped the large bowl I was washing and went to see what was happening.
Although they were surrounded by people, I could see that one sister held the other as if they were both about to fall to the ground. The tension and fear in the room raised the fine hairs on my arm, and musty, sulfur mildew scent hit my nostrils when I inhaled. I rubbed at my nose. It was as if they brought the worst decay of the Drench into the inn with them.
Lady Bea sat at her favorite table, the village overseer beside her. He stood up before she did. “What is it? Here, here, what is it?”
“It hurts. It hurts. Is that poison in my blood?” The woman wailed. She cradled a bandaged wrapped arm against her chest. I could see where a little blood had soaked the cloth, but the severity of the injury couldn’t be judged. Her round face glowed, florid with emotion.
“Poison? What are you going on about woman?” The overseer came around the table toward the group, Lady Bea right behind him.
I didn’t see Chu’chu. Sometimes she kept the dog in her rooms.
“We were leaving the house, and it struck her!” The unbandaged woman cried out in accusation, making sure everyone of Lady Bea’s guests seated in the dining room eating Cook’s soup could hear her.
“What?” Lady Bea drew herself up.
“I can’t stand. I’m weak,” the bandaged woman said.
“You owe us a blood price.” The bulbous nosed son announced, pointing at Lady Bea.
“I do not! You owe me! You lazy beggars. I give you honest work out of the goodness of my heart and you dare come into my home with nonsense. You can’t manage to clean an old house?’
“I saw it. Overseer, I’m a witness! We were leaving the house, sister was coming down the stairs and the rail leapt at her arm as if to bite her.”
The crowd recoiled as if the story were true.
What was wrong with these people? Faces pale with fright, one of the inn guests started to whimper and cry, and a couple of the male guests picked up their dinner knives as if they were going to rush out the door to attack brigands.
“I have never heard of such a thing.” The overseer shook his hands, brushing the thought off lest it stick to his squat frame.
“It’s true. I she was coming down the stairs, as steady as you please, I saw her list to the side. Then the wood of the banister leaned toward her, biting her with a fresh splinter.”
“You mean the stair-step buckled? That’s an old house. The Drench gets it like it gets everything else.” One of the inn guests offered in explanation.
“Yes. It has been in my husbands family a very long time! Time does things to old empty houses. We know this. What about that shack you two live in. Your roof is falling down. Is it trying to eat you then?” Lady Bea pointed at the cleaning women.
The wounded one started to fall as if her knees were buckling. People rushed to help her.
“What are you saying? What are you saying? It’s poison. What if she dies?” The healthy sister yelled out to the room at large, pointing back at Lady Bea.
“I am saying you all are crazy.” Lady Bea lifted her nose in the air.
“You are just a greedy old—”
“Mother,” the elder boy’s bark stopped whatever the woman meant to say.
I almost smiled. I could guess what she was going to say.
“Lady Bea paid us a true wage, didn’t she?” the man said. “But now she just owes us the blood price of a day. If Auntie dies, then we shall talk to our good overseer, but I don’t think it will come to that.”
“She could die,” someone echoed.
“Blood price for what? Madness? Stupidity?” Lady Bea stamped her foot, trying to cover the outrageous noise of those words.
It was too late for Lady Bea to make them see sense. I wasn’t even sure she believed in her own conviction. Her eyes kept searching corners for the sins of her dead husband’s ancestors.
The whispers in the room licked my cheeks with the hiss of a viper. The empty house on a hill had been a tale to keep the children of the village in their beds for years. Most of those here, I knew, had heard or told their own embellished stories. The blood on the wounded woman’s arm somehow made all those shivers legitimate. She hadn’t been poisoned by the house, she was leaking it from her own being.
Finding me in the doorway to the kitchen, Lady Bea pointed in my direction. “You! You were there first. Did you take your blight into my esteemed husband’s home? Was it you?”
All eyes turned toward me.
“No.” A low toned male voice boomed.
Everyone froze.
“It wasn’t her.” The Shaikti Pujar walked into the room from the front doors, long strides flipping his black robe from his shoulders and shaking out the blooming silken male skirts of his mud-stained dhoti. His face and upper chest remained covered, but everyone could see his muscular arms, his armbands, and the white of his high station.
There were gasps of awe. A thump as the bleeding woman fell to the floor when her helpers dropped her. I don’t think I was the only one who caught her glare of reproach that they would dare.
“Oh, Mess’ure.” Lady Bea touched her hand to her forehead in reverence, barely able to say more.
I wanted to sink back into the kitchen as much as I wanted to stay and hear that sultry voice as the man explained himself. What was he doing here now?
My insides went soft with a will of their own, recognizing him as if that thing he’d done to me, that sharp, high, almost-orgasm, had made him and my femininity new friends.
“My servant, Cregin, bumped into the banister on the grand stairway while carrying my luggage up them. He is a foolish, half-blind old man who decided not to wait for my help. This both left a dent in the step and loosened one of the pillars. When the cleaners came today everything looked fine, but the good woman must have accidentally found the exact spot with her foot when she was going down them to leave.”
There was silence at his explanation. It sounded reasonable enough. I knew the house held a demon, yes, but it didn’t bite.
The crowd, who a moment ago had been thinking a house had a mind of its own, quieted with the presence of the priest.
“Yes, of course. As you say.” the overseer nodded in enthusiastic agreement.
“Please, Shaikti Pujar, give us your blessing,” a bold man from one of the back tables called out. I knew without looking that it was a farmer.
Others echoed him, as if awakened by the call.
The priest held up a closed fist.
Again, the room quieted.
At his waist, his param stones glowed in muted colors, alive with the magical force of life energy he’d used to charge them with. The image of writhing bodies filled my mind—a priest with his chosen. The women bent into the decadent pleasures of a trained high priest’s touch. If I tore my eyes away from him, would every woman in the room be imagining the same?
I’d felt that damn touch and he hadn’t laid a hand on me.
That man had fucked a goddess and lived. The ancient texts say that each Shaikti Pujar took a sequester* every five years to kneel at the base of the Param Mani in the high temple and be absorbed into the goddess for three days and nights of heaven.
“As I said, Cregin is old, but he is dear to me. However, for the sake of the search for new temple candidates, I need additional help in your beautiful home, Lady Bea. I’ve come to ask if you could help me find servants.”
Our village may have respected the Shaikti Pujar but not one of the acceptable people in Lady Bea’s dining room stepped forward.
Dossa fell to her knees in front of him almost before he finished speaking, but her father was right behind her, his hand in her hair, yanking her up and away. There were three others, two girls and a boy, who also tried the same, but the Shaikti Pujar shook his head. “Candidates cannot be servants. I need someone to cook, clean, change bedding, help Cregin with whatever he needs to be done. I will pay good coin.”
The able-bodied adults remained silent, their suspicious nature hooking their mouths shut.
“The girl can go. She’s lazy, so take your belt to her.” Lady Bea pointed at me.
“Yes. Marvelous idea, my lady. Send the girl.” The overseer sounded relieved.
“I’ll stay here and help Cook.” I took a step back. I didn’t want to go to that house again; I didn’t want to be in that vile man’s presence. I really didn’t want to serve him.
“Dossa will help her mother,” Cook’s husband said.
“You’ll go or you have no place to live.” Lady Bea smiled, satisfied with her decision.
“She will do since no one here wants the blessing of the goddess.” The Shaikti Pujar said, shaming everyone in the room with the quiet force of his words.
Several started at that, raising their hands and trying to step forward, but it was too late, the priest had already turned and started to walk away.
“Follow him,” the overseer gestured with his short arms, waving in the direction of the priest as if to shove me in the man’s wake.
I stumbled forward, pushed from behind. Turning, I saw Cook’s stern face, her lips in the same line they wore before she threatened to take a week of dinners from me.
“This is all your fault, so go with him and do as he says.” Lady Bea crossed her arms over her small chest.
There was nothing to do but follow the man out.