Dead Eye had been pacing back and forth across the God’s balcony since Dove awakened him just after dawn. She’d felt a shift in the air and detected a subtle scent of smoke. As always, he had been her eyes. As usual, she had been correct—something was happening.
Their world was changing forever.
The city in the clouds that held the Tribe of the Trees was ablaze.
Dead Eye wanted to call together the youngest, healthiest of the Harvesters and race for the burning city to claim it for himself and the People.
A portentous shiver skittered down his spine and Dead Eye looked behind him and up.
The enormous copper statue that was the Reaper God, She Whom the People worshipped, loomed over him. If She stood, the Reaper would tower fifty feet above the ground. Here on Her balcony, She knelt, one hand extended down, beckoning to Her People—the other was raised, holding Her skin-reaping tool, the triple-pointed trident.
She appeared to be everything a God should be: powerful, frightening, and able to mete out justice swiftly and terribly.
Dead Eye met Her lifeless gaze and the strange, portentous feeling subsided.
“Someday they will know the truth—that you are no God but are simply a statue created by people who have been dust for centuries. You are as dead as they are, as dead as this City.” He turned his back to the statue and continued gazing out at the distant ridge and the ominous clouds that undulated up from the forest as if lifting in time to the beat of sinister drums.
He remained there all day, watching the distant destruction of the city that had filled his dreams for as long as he could remember, listening to the thunder grow ever closer and planning … always planning for his future, Dove’s future, and the future of the People. In spite of their superstitious attachment to a statue, he and Dove would lead them from this spoiled and poisoned City to the beauty and safety of the untainted trees.
But first they must be rid of the Others.
The rain began to fall in earnest several hours before dusk, and as it pelted against the dead metal of the statue he knew that he could be patient no longer. As if Dove could read his mind, the moment Dead Eye made his decision her voice drifted from inside the God’s chamber to wash around him, as welcome and cleansing as the rain.
“Beloved, the God has spoken to me. She commands that I share Her words with Her Champion, so that you may speak them to the People.”
Dead Eye turned from the balcony to the entrance to the Temple and the Chamber of the God, to take in the lovely sight before him.
Dove stood in the center of the chamber, surrounded by the young women she called Attendants, the healthy girls she had recruited to take the place of the God’s Watchers—sick, selfish old women who had tainted the Temple and pretended for generations to be the voice of the God.
Dead Eye had culled the Watchers from the Temple, sparing only young Dove, who had lived her entire sixteen winters pretending to be the God’s Oracle. After the culling, he and Dove were the only People who knew the truth—that they controlled their own fate, because the Reaper God was as dead as the crones he had thrown from Her balcony.
Now Dove stood in the center of her Attendants looking radiant. Like them, she was dressed traditionally: her young, full breasts bared, her skin painted with ornate patterns, always grouped in threes, like the God’s trident. The decoration was both intimidating and pleasing, as Dove had intended. She wore only a long skirt trimmed with human hair of sacrificed Others. He noted with pleasure that Dove’s skirt was also intricately decorated with bright bits of shining things, making her stand out from the others who were more plainly dressed.
She deserves to be swathed in ritual decorations, but my Dove would stand out with or without such luxuries, Dead Eye thought, well satisfied at the sight of his lover.
“Beloved? What is it?” she asked, her smooth brow wrinkling in concern.
“All is well, my Oracle,” Dead Eye assured her. He motioned abruptly, freeing her Attendants from the deep, respectful curtseys they had knelt in the moment he’d appeared at the entrance to the chamber. “Though I would ask that you send Attendants to bring to me the best and strongest of our Hunters and Harvesters. I call for Iron Fist, Stalker, Thunder, Eagle Eye, Digger, Rebel, Steel Heart, Bones, Joker, and Midnight.” Dead Eye ticked off the list he had so carefully compiled during his sleepless night and watchful day.
“Lily, choose a helper and do as your Champion commands.” Dove spoke to the young Attendant who seemed the most eager to please. “Seek out the men and tell them that they are summoned to the Temple.” She clapped her hands together twice and the Attendants scurried from the chamber.
Dead Eye came to her then, taking her elbow in his hand and guiding her through the cavernous room to the section of the God’s chamber they had claimed as their own, using vines, braziers, and stretched hides to separate their living area from the rest of the Temple and to provide the young couple much-needed privacy.
More Attendants curtseyed low to them as they passed, showing Dove the respect she deserved as the God’s Oracle and Dead Eye the deference he required as the God’s Champion. But they straightened quickly, returning to their work restoring the God’s chamber to its former glory.
Dead Eye acknowledged the women with only a slight nod. They were of no importance to him, except that they made Dove’s life easier—and anything that brought Dove pleasure pleased him as well. But today he had little time even for that, which amused Dove.
“You’re going to the forest and the City in the Trees, aren’t you?”
Dove had turned to him the moment they’d reached the sanctuary of their bedroom, tilting her lovely face up to him. Dead Eye didn’t answer her for a moment. Instead, he drank in her beauty. She wore her nut-brown hair long and free, so that it fell past her slim waist in a soft, shining curtain that did nothing to hide her high, full breasts. Dove’s skin was miraculously smooth, free of pustules or the taint of cracking and shedding. Her full lips curved up in the familiar smile Dead Eye was coming to crave as much as the taste of those lips. Her only flaw was that her eyes were completely missing. Where they should have been there were only two dark, empty pits.
Dead Eye smiled, though she could not, of course, see him. There was nothing about Dove that he didn’t find pleasing, including her eyeless face. That accident of birth had allowed her to be claimed by the old Watchers and raised in the Temple as Oracle of their Reaper God. When Dead Eye proclaimed himself the God’s Champion, it was only logical that he also claimed Dove as his own.
And in return, Dove’s devotion to him was unconditional.
“Beloved? Is something wrong?”
He took her into his arms, holding her slight, soft body against his. “No, everything is completely right.”
“The rain has halted the forest fire?” she asked eagerly.
“I cannot tell if it is actually halted, but the smoke has definitely thinned.”
“And now you will go into the forest to the city of the Others.”
This time, she didn’t frame her words as a question, but Dead Eye answered her. “I will, but let us stop calling it the city of the Others. I believe soon it will be our city, my precious one.”
“We must be wise about how we present this to the People. They will be reluctant to go where the God cannot follow.”
Dead Eye snorted. “If only they knew the truth.”
“Patience, Champion. All will come in time.”
“You are right, though. They will be reluctant to leave our City, little matter that it is poisoned and has been killing the People for generations,” Dead Eye said as he stroked her hair, as always fascinated by it softness.
“So, begin by freeing them of the poison of the City so that they might see the truth, just as you and I have,” Dove said.
Dead Eye bent to kiss her. “Of course you are right! I won’t tell them we are entering the forest to begin claiming the territory we deserve.”
“What will you tell them, beloved?”
“That we hunt. And from the hunt I will make Harvest, so that the People may begin to heal.”
“And as the People heal, they will follow you from the City to the forest,” Dove said.
“To live in the trees, subjugating the Others to do our bidding, far from this place of death and poison,” Dead Eye said. “There, you and I will truly live like Gods!”
“Indeed,” Dove said, sliding her hands up his strong arms to his shoulders. She cocked her head to the side in a thinking motion that Dead Eye found endearing. “Beloved, I can feel differences in your body.”
“Yes, as can I. I wondered when you would speak of it to me.”
She caressed his body. “Your shoulders are wider. Your arms thicker.”
“There is more.” He bent down so that he could guide her hand from his shoulder to the back of his neck.
She gasped, stroking the strange fur that had begun to grow there, thick and soft as a stag’s. “What is it?”
“Follow my spine with your hand.”
Dove did so, tracing a path down his back. “It’s spreading down your back! What is it?” she repeated.
Dead Eye was pleased that she seemed excited rather than repulsed by the changes in him. Should Dove ever turn from him—no—Dead Eye could not even finish that thought.
“It is from the spirit of the stag whose flesh I joined with my body. It lives on in me, strengthening me—healing me from the City’s poisons—changing me. Don’t let it frighten you. Don’t ever let changes in me frighten you,” he told her, staring at her sightless face, trying to read every nuance of emotion she was feeling.
“Oh, my Champion! You could never frighten me!”
“Then you accept the stag?”
“Whatever it is that is happening to you I accept because you are my fate, you are my Champion—you will eternally be my hero. Whatever it is you are becoming, I will accept because it is you.”
Dead Eye’s legs went weak with relief, and he dropped to his knees, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in the curve of her waist. Her hands caressed him, moving from his back to his shoulders and then up to stroke the thick blond hair that he kept tied back with a leather cord.
Her hands suddenly stilled.
Dead Eye held his breath, knowing what she had discovered.
“Horns?” she whispered.
He nodded into her waist. “Yes, though I think it more accurate to call them antlers.”
She didn’t hesitate for one instant. Dove pressed her lips to him twice—once against each of the small, pointed antlers that had begun to grow from his scalp above his ears.
Dead Eye released a long breath in relief. Still she accepts me!
“My Champion, you are a mighty leader filled with the wisdom of man and the strength of a stag. Where you go, the People will follow,” Dove said, still stroking him. “Where you go, I will follow.”
“It truly begins today!” With a movement filled with the strength and agility of a stag, Dead Eye lifted her and carried her to their thick pallet. “But first, I must have your blessing, Oracle.”
Dove’s soft, clever hands moved lower on his body. “Gladly I give it, and myself, to you. The God is dead, but the future of our People lives on in you, my Champion.”
Dead Eye meant to tell her that she was beyond beautiful—that she was his life and his breath, that she made him want to be a true Champion of the People—but her greedy mouth was on his, stilling his words and causing the blood to pound so fiercely through his body that he moaned in pleasure and the only word he could speak was her name, which he shouted over and over.
* * *
It was still raining when Dead Eye led ten of the strongest and bravest of his People to the edge of the boundary of the City.
The small group hesitated, sending nervous glances into the verdant green before them. The Hunter called Stalker was the first to speak. “Champion, we enter the forest during a blaze? I do not wish to question your authority…” He paused there, bowing low, hands to the earth in supplication as if to show Dead Eye great respect, though when he glanced up Dead Eye noticed that the Hunter’s gaze skittered nervously away. “I only wish to know what type of Hunt you lead us on. Are we to capture the Others as they flee the fire?”
Dead Eye waited several breaths before allowing Stalker to rise. He noted that the demeanor of the rest of the men seemed more watchful. They were silent, waiting attentively for Dead Eye to speak.
Dead Eye understood Stalker’s fear of the forest. Hunters and Harvesters were comfortable within the confines of their City. It was there they knew every section of the ruined landscape, both above and below the crumbling buildings and the strange iron structures. But there was a marked difference in Stalker’s attitude and the calm, respectful way the rest of the group looked to him. Something to consider for the future.
“We do not hunt Others today,” Dead Eye explained, speaking in short, clipped sentences. “We hunt sacrificial animals. I have plans for the Others. Many, many plans. But not today. Today we enter the forest and climb.”
Without waiting to see whether Stalker had more questions, Dead Eye sprinted away, heading up to Forest Park, the name the People had given the highest part of the hilly area northwest of the City. Up and to the north Dead Eye climbed, and as he jogged farther and farther toward the peak of Forest Park and the gorge that separated their City and the mountain range on which the City in the Trees had been built, he rejoiced in his powerful body. He did not tire. Instead of climbing laboriously over fallen logs and rain-swollen ditches, Dead Eye leaped easily over them, pushing himself as he came to each obstacle to see if he could run faster and jump higher.
He could.
Dead Eye realized that he had just begun to test the surface of his newfound abilities.
He reached the peak well ahead of the other men, so he stood, breathing deeply but effortlessly, at the edge of the ridge, staring across the jagged gorge that divided Forest Park from the mountain ridge that held the Tribe of the Trees.
The fire was out, but the damage done to the City in the Trees was extensive. From his vantage on the ridge he could see that the city still smoldered. It appeared as if a giant, or perhaps a God, had taken a burning torch and dragged it through the forest, leaving a swath of blackened rubble and destruction in its wake.
“More than half,” he murmured to himself. “More than half of the city is gone. Perhaps more than half of the Tribe have perished as well.” He expression was feral. “That helps to even the odds against us.”
The Harvester called Iron Fist was the first to join him. Iron Fist staggered up the last of the ridge, wiping sweat from his brow as he made his way to Dead Eye. When Iron Fist reached him, the Harvester bowed low, pressing himself into the earth, before he spoke.
“I see the mighty stag in you, Champion!” Iron Fist spoke in excited bursts between heaving breaths, his face still bowed to the earth.
“You may rise,” Dead Eye said as the rest of the group staggered to them. “Iron Fist, tell me more of what you say you see in me.”
“I see your skin does not crack. I see you grow more powerful by the day. I see that you are much like a God yourself!”
Dead Eye had begun to smile at Iron Fist when Stalker limped through the group to them, clutching his side and gulping air. “It is blasphemous to name the Champion, or anyone except our Reaper, a God.”
“And yet we all see he has been touched by our Reaper! His skin is healed. He has become mighty, like a great forest stag,” insisted Iron Fist.
“But it is not the way of the People to have more than one God,” Stalker insisted.
“And yet the God has surely shown Her favor by healing him, making him Champion, and mating him with Her Oracle,” another Harvester called Thunder added.
“It is not the way of the People,” Stalker repeated stubbornly.
Dead Eye thought it interesting that Stalker only flicked occasional glances at him and was speaking to the rest of the men almost as if Dead Eye weren’t even there.
“But the Oracle has proclaimed change. The old, sickened Watchers have been replaced by young, nubile Attendants—just as our Champion’s cracked, putrid flesh has been replaced by new, unmarred skin,” said a Hunter named Eagle Eye, and he bowed respectfully to his Champion.
“Indeed!” the Hunter, Serpent, chimed in. “He has the God’s favor. And that is enough of the way of the People for me.”
“Truth!”
“Yes!” the remaining men murmured agreement, sending nervous glances to Stalker before bowing respectfully to their Champion. Then the group fell silent as they waited for their Champion to speak.
Instead of words, Dead Eye decided actions would be heard much louder and last much longer.
With the speed of a forest creature Dead Eye lowered his head and charged Stalker. In a movement so fast that his hand blurred, Dead Eye unsheathed the triple-pointed knife at his waist and thrust it into the softest part of Stalker’s belly with such ferocious strength that his hand was driven into the warm, wet flesh, creating a fist-sized cavern in the Hunter’s gut. As Stalker screamed his shock and agony, Dead Eye catapulted the man backward so that he flew over the edge of the ridge. At the last instant, while Stalker seemed to be suspended over the gorge, Dead Eye wrenched his fist from the Hunter’s body with a terrible sucking sound, setting Stalker free to fall down, down into the chasm and the death that waited below.
Dead Eye wiped his bloody hand across his bare chest, adding a scarlet slash through the bold three-pointed designs already painted there by Dove’s Attendants. Slowly, he turned to face the watching men.
As one, all nine dropped to their knees before Dead Eye, pressing their faces into the ground.
“Does anyone else wish to question my authority?” he bellowed, feeling the hot blood of a mighty stag surging through his body.
Iron Fist lifted his head. “Never, Champion! I follow you as I would follow the Reaper Herself should She rise from Her balcony and walk among us.”
“And the rest of you?”
The other eight men raised their heads more slowly, though none of them hesitated in their response. “Iron Fist speaks for me,” said Serpent. “I follow you as I would follow the God Herself.”
“And I! I, too!” the rest of the men chorused their agreement.
“Do all of you see the God in me?”
Iron Fist glanced at the other men, meeting each of their eyes before he answered his Champion. “We do. Tell your Harvesters and Hunters what it is you would command, and we will obey. We will always obey.”
Dead Eye almost corrected the Harvester. He meant to. His intention hadn’t been to be worshipped like a God, as he was all too aware of what it was to worship a false God. He had only wanted to bring health and a better life to his dying people. But as he opened his mouth to speak, to tell Iron Fist that there was no God within him, only the People’s Champion, the words would not come. Try as he might, Dead Eye found he could not speak them. Instead, something stirred and began to awaken within him as he stared down at Iron Fist and the rest of the men who remained on their knees, awaiting his command. The men’s supplication pleased Dead Eye as much as Stalker’s death had pleased him.
A thought, as elusive as fog, drifted through Dead Eye’s mind—Take that which is owed you.
“Harvesters and Hunters, what I command today is that you accept the gift I am going to give you, just as I accept your oath of loyalty. Come, rise and hunt with me.”
Iron Fist stood with the rest of the men. “But some of us are not Hunters. We are only Harvesters,” he said.
Dead Eye felt his chest swell with newfound strength as he replied, “Fear not—not your lack of abilities, not the forest. You were Harvesters or Hunters. I proclaim that by the end of this day you will all be known as Reapers in the company of their God!”
* * *
Making an effort to slow his pace so that he didn’t leave the nine men far, far behind, Dead Eye headed down into the gorge. Because today’s rain was the first in several weeks, the stream that ran through the bottom of the chasm was lower than usual, which made a crossing spot easy to find. As Dead Eye anticipated, they didn’t have to wait long before creatures, driven by the forest fire to find solace in water, began to make their way to the stream.
Mostly, the creatures were small. There were many rabbits and rats, squirrels and mice, that paraded past them after they drank deeply of the water. And that was as it should be. Large forest creatures were scarce, especially this close to the City.
From a makeshift blind he and the men hastily erected, Dead Eye sat in complete silence, waiting for a sign.
The sign came sooner than he had anticipated.
The boar was a red behemoth with a huge, wrinkled snout punctuated by two sets of pointed tusks—smaller, hooked uppers and long, sharp lowers. His chest was so wide and thickly muscled that he appeared to be wearing armor. He waded part of the way into the stream and buried his mighty head in the water, splashing and grunting in pleasure. Dead Eye was so close that he could smell the sharp tang of the virile male’s body. The boar snorted and shook himself, spraying droplets of water around him like an unfurling cloak. Then he started wading through the stream, picking his way around rocks and debris. It seemed as if he was going to pass almost within touching distance of where Dead Eye and his Reapers crouched, silent and hidden.
The boar stepped onto the bank. He stopped and lifted his massive head, turning so that his golden eye looked directly at Dead Eye. The boar froze and the dark center of his eye expanded so that within it Dead Eye saw his own reflection. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the boar’s muzzle dropped to touch the earth, and he bowed his head.
“Stay here until I call for you to come to me,” Dead Eye whispered to his men.
Then he stepped from the concealment of the blind.
The boar’s reaction was instantaneous. He went stiff legged, the bristles on his back fanned and lifted so high they were like spikes along his spine. He began swinging his mighty head from side to side, spewing spittle in an arch around him as he ground his lower tusks against his smaller, knife-sharp upper teeth. His intelligent eyes gleamed with malice as he stared at Dead Eye.
Dead Eye knew the signs of a boar about to charge, and he readied himself. But instead of drawing his deadly three-tipped spear, he shook out the length of tightly braided hemp he carried over his shoulder, flicking the end so that the noose he’d fashioned there opened lazily.
With a deep, angry grunt, the boar charged.
Dead Eye had planned to stand his ground until the last moment and then snag the boar with the noose as he sped past, jerk him off his feet, and tie him in a Hunter’s bind so that he was immobilized.
But the sight of the charging beast caused the stag within Dead Eye to awaken. Battle! Defeat it! Death! The words echoed through Dead Eye’s mind, filling his body with the hot, fierce blood of a forest creature.
The stag within him answered the boar’s challenge with a deep bellow. Dead Eye lowered his head and ran at the boar, his feet tearing hunks of moss from the stream bank.
Everything happened so quickly that later Dead Eye was glad for the songs the People sang in remembrance of his clash with the boar so that he could relive the event, savoring it, over and over.
He acted solely on instinct, allowing the mighty stag to fill him with preternatural strength and speed. He and the boar met, and Dead Eye leaped up, twisting his body so that he hooked one arm around the boar’s huge neck as he landed in the middle of the raging beast’s back. Dead Eye dug his heels into the mossy ground while the boar squealed and grunted in rage, bucking and thrashing his head around, trying to sink his teeth into Dead Eye’s legs. But the strength of beast and man joined was greater than the strength of the boar. Dead Eye pulled the enormous creature’s head back and back and back, bowing his spine into a crescent and causing the boar to collapse in defeat on his side.
“Iron Fist! Come to me!”
Iron Fist obeyed unhesitatingly, but Dead Eye could see the fear in the gaze he kept focused on the straining boar, a fear that was mirrored in the eight men who crowded nervously behind him.
“Take the rope! Tie his front and back legs together. I’ll keep his neck pulled back so that he cannot gore you.”
Again, Iron Fist obeyed with a swiftness that Dead Eye appreciated, immobilizing the boar quickly.
“Now, each of you harvest three strips of skin from his belly. Long, thin strips. As quickly as you can,” Dead Eye instructed the group. Iron Fist was the first to follow his command. The newly made Reaper drew his own triple-tipped dagger and lowered it to the boar’s exposed belly, and Dead Eye shifted so that he could look directly into the beast’s eye.
Dead Eye expected the creature to scream and thrash in pain, as they all did. Not this boar. The only outward sign of pain that this beast gave was to pant and show the whites of his eyes. He didn’t flinch as the razor-tipped dagger sliced strip after strip of flesh from his living body as the nine Reapers took turns with him. The boar’s gaze remained locked with Dead Eye’s, even as his body grew weaker and weaker from loss of blood. And in that dimming gaze Dead Eye was shown what he must do.
He’d allowed the stag to live after he’d infected him and sent him into the territory of the Tribe of the Trees. This time Dead Eye saw that he must be more merciful to this boar. The stag’s suffering had been necessary, and it had served its purpose of spreading poison to the Tribe. Dead Eye would always honor the stag’s sacrifice. But the poison had spread, and the Tribe—whether it understood it yet or not—was already falling victim to Dead Eye’s plot.
The boar was different.
“Enough, Reapers.” Dead Eye spoke formally to his men. “I will make the killing cut.”
Iron Fist and the others bowed and, carrying the bloody strips of boar skin, they backed several feet away. Dead Eye continued to stare into the boar’s eye as he used his free hand to take the triple-pointed dagger from his waist sheath. He pulled the boar’s neck back farther so that his throat was stretched completely out. Just before he slit the beast’s neck from ear to ear, Dead Eye spoke the words that lifted from deep within, so deep that he didn’t recognize his own voice, and for a moment it was as if Dead Eye’s body were separated from that which stirred within him and he had been relegated to the role of observer.
“Death has called you. I honor and accept your sacrifice, your strength, your spirit. Behold Death’s merciful blow!”
Dead Eye drew the dagger across the boar’s throat. He relaxed his grip on the creature so that his neck wasn’t stretched so awkwardly, but Dead Eye kept his gaze locked with the boar, watching his life drain away with the red river that poured from his neck.
When it was over, Dead Eye gently lowered the boar’s head to the moss and closed the creature’s sightless eyes. Dead Eye stood over the beast, head bowed in thanks as a maelstrom of emotions whirled within him. He felt triumphant and more powerful than he’d ever felt in his life. It was the boar’s death that had so moved Dead Eye. It had been glorious.
Glorious? Why would slitting a boar’s throat be glorious? The vaguely uncomfortable thought formed in Dead Eye’s mind, lifting briefly to his consciousness, but when he tried to hold the thought—tried to consider it, decipher it—his mind skittered away, returning instead to the glory of the boar’s death. Isn’t death just another part of life—perhaps the most important part?
“Champion, would you have us anoint you with the boar’s flesh?”
Iron Fist’s voice pulled Dead Eye from his reverie, and he turned to the Reaper and the men he stood before. Dead Eye’s original intent had been to go to the City in the Trees and catalogue the extent of their destruction so that he might decide the best path to follow for the People to claim their future, but Stalker’s rebellion and the boar’s sacrifice had changed everything. Dead Eye knew the City in the Trees would be his—that was inevitable. What was of the utmost importance now was preparing the People for their new life, their new Tribe, their new God.
“Your Champion will anoint each of you with the boar’s flesh, and then we are going to take the boar to the People so that we might feast in celebration.”
Iron Fist and the other men dropped to their knees in supplication before him, bowing their heads to the earth reverently. “Thank you, Champion. We gratefully accept your gift.”
Dead Eye went to his Reapers, taking the still-warm strips of bloody boar flesh from them, one at a time, trimming the strips, and then packing them into the terrible, puss-filled cracks that spidered across the creases in the men’s skin.
“Might I ask you a question, Champion?” Iron Fist asked.
“Of course.” Dead Eye spoke as he worked. “The group of you have given me your oaths of loyalty. As long as you hold to your oath, you need never fear asking anything of me.”
“You said tonight the People feast in celebration. What is it we celebrate?”
“An awakening.” Dead Eye spoke the words without willing himself to, as if they had escaped from a place so deep within him that he was no longer Dead Eye. But instead of being frightened by this strange, powerful force, Dead Eye embraced it, accepted it, and found he longed to join with it even more fully.
* * *
Bearing the hunks of butchered boar meat between them, Dead Eye and his Reapers returned to the Temple to the cheers of the grateful People. On the hike back, Dead Eye noted that the men’s bodies were already beginning to absorb the boar’s flesh and the group of men walked with stronger steps, showing little strain from carrying their allotments of the huge animal’s carcass.
Dead Eye dropped the meat in the courtyard. His attention had left the Reapers and even the excited, welcoming People surrounding him, celebrating him, worshipping him. His eyes were scanning the God’s balcony, looking for Dove.
Suddenly her Attendants appeared all along the balcony’s ledge. The People caught sight of them, and as one they turned to look up.
Like a gently rippling pool, the Attendants moved, lifted, and Dove was standing on the ledge. The firepots were lit all around her, and their orange and yellow flames threw strange, undulating shadows across her half-naked body, as if the dark caverns of her eyes were shifting from her face and moving along her skin.
“Does our Champion return?” she asked in a sweet, soft voice that somehow filled the world around them.
“I do, my Oracle!” Dead Eye called. “I return with an army newly reborn. Henceforth, they are not Harvesters or Hunters; they are all Reapers of the God—mighty and terrible to behold!”
“I celebrate with you!” Dove raised her arms and shouted with joy. “Come to your God and to me!”
Her call vibrated through his body. He did not try to resist it, even as he realized he could not resist her. The People parted, opening a pathway for him to the Temple. Dead Eye swaggered through them, feeling swollen with strength and need as he drew closer to her. Instead of entering through the Temple courtyard at ground level and taking the crumbling stairs, Dead Eye gathered himself and leaped, using the vines and broken tiles that covered the outside wall of the Temple to climb up and up and up, until he reached the God’s balcony, where he gathered Dove in his arms and kissed her passionately while the People cheered. Lost in the kiss, Dead Eye almost did not notice that behind them the arm of the Reaper God that beckoned down to the People changed, rippled, and with a delicacy that others might mistake for shadows cast over Her metal skin by the blazing firepots, the massive copper statue drew Dead Eye and Dove more intimately within Her embrace.
Dove gasped against his mouth, her lips hot on his.
“You feel it too, my precious one?” Dead Eye whispered. “The God moves!”
Dove’s eager lips kissed a path along his neck to his ear, where she whispered words that would alter their world forever.
“I do, but that is not why I gasp. What I feel more truly is the God moving within you.”
Dead Eye leaned back, so that he was pressed against the arm of the Reaper with Dove in his embrace. He lifted his face to the sky and bellowed a stag’s mighty roar of power and pleasure.