The Old Ones Return
The oceans held untold secrets, but the biggest and most well-known was that they held The Old Ones fast, imprisoned at the bottom. And they were receding for the first time since the war had ended. Some people took this as a sign that history would repeat itself; others used it as an excuse to live it up like The Great Gatsby.
My mother returned home from the market, bringing with her the scent of warm sunlight and exotic spices. Her brow was wrinkled, and her mouth was pursed, pressed into a thin line.
I left the table, my lessons forgotten. “Mother? What’s wrong?” I asked, as she put her groceries on the counter to be put away.
She didn’t answer for a moment, putting the food into the icebox. Her shoulders were tense, and one fist was clenched into the fine sapphire cloth of her day dress.
“The oceans are receding, Cassiopeia,” She said at last, each word breaking the silence like glass. I was thankful that my siblings were playing in the living room, none of them privy to our conversation.
She might as well have told me that the world was about to end. Everyone knew that it had been a close thing the first time; the gods who’d established our world had exhausted their divinity locking up their parents, and thus faded to mere legends.
But that was the thing about evil: defeating it was only temporary, just as this fragile peace had been.
“What does that mean?” I asked, even though I very well knew what it meant.
“It means that The Old Ones are on the verge of shattering their ocean beneath the waves. And if that happens…”
She didn’t need to finish. I hadn’t been alive to see the devastation wrought by them the first time, but the proof was everywhere: buildings decimated, people my mother’s age missing limbs, and the most brutal of all: the death of our own father, one of the countless causalities of the war.
“Of course, it isn’t for certain,” She added, smiling weakly. “But it never hurts to be prepared. Perhaps we could leave?”
I smiled, biting back a bitter laugh. She knew better to float that idea with me; it was too late anyway.
“I could ask some questions at the temple,” I said, trying not to touch the inside of my wrist.
I’d known what I’d gotten into, somewhat. But by the time I’d been branded in the gods’ name, in service to them should they ever need to fight their parents’ reign again, I couldn’t tell my mother what had happened. How could I, knowing what our father had gone to battle for?
I wasn’t exactly a soldier, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t learn. And I had to do something to save my family, to put gold and silver and jewelry in their pockets.
What was the price of my soul, in exchange for their protection and happiness, however temporary?
**
