Goddess Rising

Achi remained in the water for hours while she remained in her thoughts. She grumbled often about the lack of a body and even promised to behave if he returned it. He gave her no quarter. She would remain without a body until his death. If she behaved properly till then, he said, he might return it to her. She protested the notion of spending two weeks bodiless, but he simply hinted that she could also spend the two weeks unconscious.

Night fell soon after, but he did not return to the house. He spent the night on the beach attended by waved and the occasional sand crab. Aria monitored him out of both kindness and fear of Tivelo. His fever came and went in cycles, but he did not seem bothered by that.

While he slept, she explored the house. There was little to see. Boxes in the bedroom held childhood treasures: toys, drawings, and childrens’ books. There was a touching ‘papa and me’ portrait done in crayon and stuck into a wooden frame. Aria looked away from it quickly. Thinking of Tivelo roused the memories she was struggling to keep at bay.

The books in the library were no more interesting. Their subjects ran the range from literature through geography to history and agriculture. She hoped for information on Eri, but, apparently, Achi had more esoteric interests. She chose one of the books anyway - one titled, The Plants and Geography of East Reomer - and read it for as long as she could.

By morning, she was thoroughly bored and perfectly ready to pick a fight with Achi.

“Imagine being locked in a cage,” she said, “with nothing to do. Further imagine that you have no body, so you can’t even do anything about your boredom.”

“There’s a library.” He seemed groggy but less tired than the previous day.

She almost snapped at that, but a different thought occurred to her. “Did your father not want you home in 24 hours?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And unless he considers you sufficiently punished, I’ll be here until he can make me leave.”

She remained silent for a long moment, trying to decide if she wanted an answer to the next question. “Did you mean everything you said to him or was it an act for my sake?”

Achi shrugged, now rising from the sand that had partially buried him during the night. “My father is not unreasonable. You wronged me and he has never forgiven such an act. But his anger is making him difficult to reason with. I have never before failed to negotiate a lighter sentence for anyone and he won’t give an inch over this. I don’t think he wants justice for me. I think he wants it for himself and does not realize that. Make no mistake. You are the one in the wrong here. You knew you were poisoning an Eri and you knew what the consequences would be. That you can’t bear them afterward is entirely your problem.”

She did not argue. There was no point treading that ground again. “So, it was an act. So You simply want him to kill me instead of torturing me. Why not do so, then? I’m here. I’m defenseless. However much I might resemble Ovi, you’re confident that I am not her.”

Achi hesitated for too long.

“Maybe you don’t want to,” she said. “Maybe you still think I’m her. But then, you should protect me. You know that after you die, your father will spend whatever is left of his strength to capture me -”

“Stop talking,” Achi said. “The longer you speak, the less correct you are.”

“You enjoy sounding mysterious, but you’re either willfully blind or twice as ignorant as me.”

He gave no response to that. His attention was on his resolute trek back to the house.

The world was a mess. She wished that she had a cure for him. She wished that she could change Tivelo’s mind; wished that they would tell her the secrets that they kept from her.

“I’m bored,” she said. “And your books make me want to die.”

“Try making something,” he said. “There’s paint on one of the shelves; and lots of paper.”

What a ridiculous idea.

“Do you have something actually enjoyable to do?”

He chuckled. “I forgot that you can’t draw.” He pushed open the house’s rear door and washed the sand off himself with a wave of his hand. “It’s not difficult. Just dip the brush in paint and make any patterns you like.”

He marched back toward the stairs and she, bound as she was to him, followed.

“If I want to die of boredom, I won’t work so hard at it. What do you have for other people to do, not yourself?”

“Papa likes to read or stare off into the distance. He’s the only other person who uses this place. If you mean something for your ilk, you can fish.” He shrugged. “Or hunt, I suppose. There are only small animals in the forest but we can sacrifice them for your amusement. If none of that interests you, bother me some more and I’ll put you to sleep.”

She sighed.

He had made it back to his bedroom and, to her shock and annoyance, proceeded to climb into bed.

“You’re going back to sleep?”

He took two plums from a bowl by his bedside and ate them with disturbing speed. He finished the entire meal and licked his fingers clean before responding to her. “I’m bored too but I can be silent about it.”

“Achi,” she had found that calling his name guaranteed his attention, “if you go to sleep without giving me a body or something to do, you will wake to find this place burned to the ground. Now, I know that you are a powerful being and can think of many ways to prevent that, but I am tenacious, I am bored and I have weeks of time.”

To her annoyance, his response was amusement. “You understand that such destruction will be difficult to explain to my father?”

“You understand that I am bored? In fact, try it. Destroy your own body and chain yourself to a smart talking clown. Then, see how long it takes until you’re suicidal.”

“I think you have a particularly low tolerance, but fine. This is a beach house. The attractions are what you see. There is boating - if you make your own boat - , fishing - likewise -, swimming, reading, and all the beach and forest activities you can conjure. Without a body you can still read and play with sand. If none of those activities suit you, then you have to invent something.” He cast about the room for inspiration. “Why don’t we play cards?”

Aria wanted to reject the suggestion. It was partly to be contrary and partly because she found the idea uninteresting. But she was mindful of his previous threats and, far from putting on a show, she truly was bored enough to enjoy something so basic.

“Where are they?” She asked.

He climbed out of the bed, snagged one more plum, and led her back to the library. There, he scanned the shelves until he found a book with blank pages and tore a sheet from it. It was a hand-written tome titled, “A survey of colors in nature with a focus on Reds and Greens.” The mere thought of reading it made her nauseous - a feat given her lack of a body. Dull though it sounded, seeing someone tear a page from a book was disconcerting. Achi repeated the crime with several more books until he had a collection of thick, glossy sheets.

Then, the sheets tore themselves into 52 even rectangles. Achi positioned the end table between both reading chairs and placed the sheets on it.

“What are we playing?” he asked.

“What kinds do you know?”

“I don’t play cards.”

“Too much reading to do?”

Rather than respond to her, he found a pen and began to draw on the sheets. It was a slow, mesmerizing process. The itchy contrarian in her wanted to interrupt him, but the bored part was glad to have something entertaining to watch. Within fifteen minutes, he had transformed the blank sheets into a serviceable set of playing cards. Then, he put them on the table and gestured for her to shuffle them.

“My father used to say that art is like silver.” She tested the cards, learning how to shuffle them without hands. The technique was gratifyingly easy to learn. Being a ghost was fascinating.

“How so?” Achi asked, seemingly out of obligation.

“You can’t eat it, sleep on it or fight with it. But you can cover the handle of your spear with it and feel fancy.”

“My father says mortals are like sheep,” Achi replied, “too stupid to survive and yet too stupid to realize that.”

She kept her next insult to herself. She would think really hard and find one he had no response to.

Achi had done something to the cards. She should have been able to see drawings even when they were turned over, but she could not. She inspected the books he had torn pages from and found them similarly opaque. She could read their covers, but the pages inside were impenetrable until she opened them. That explained why he had torn the books instead of finding an unused sheet of paper.

“What is this paper made of?” she asked.

“I don’t recall the name.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

It mattered to her curiosity, but she let it drop.

She dealt him ten cards and another ten on her side of the table. “We’re playing Rodan’s Circle,” she said. “Do you know it?”

“In passing. Standard rules?”

“What does in passing mean?”

He had picked up his cards and was now peering at them as if they held deep secrets. “That means I’ve seen it played. Gods don’t play cards.”

She retrieved her own cards. “Why not?”

“Why would we? We have better amusements.”

“Like attending feasts and watching mortals dance?”

He re-ordered his cards, quietly.

“Part of playing cards is the conversation,” she said. “If I get bored again, I might do something stupid.”

“You need to learn to make fewer threats. How does that work for conversation?”

“Well enough. You need to be less arrogant.”

“There’s no need. I die in a few days. Who starts?”

That ruined the mood.

Aria put down a card. “Youngest first.”

Though she was not sitting across from him, she had her cards facing the empty chair, anyway. She worried that one of his abilities allowed him to see her cards even though she could not see his, but he gave no sign of that.

Rodan’s circle had a simple goal. The first person to run out of cards was the winner. Most of the cards consequently had functions that disrupted the other person’s hand or protected your own.

Achi began by putting down a weak card. It bore the number 1 in stylized font and an image of a tuft of grass.

Aria began to put down her card and paused as if a thought had just occurred to her. “We didn’t make a bet,” she said. “No one plays without a bet.” She returned the card to her hand. “What do you suggest?”

Achi appeared unimpressed. “I’m sure you have something in mind.”

“If I win, you give me back the body. If you win, I’ll stop complaining about being bored.” She was frozen in anticipation, but Achi still looked bored.

“Are you certain?” He asked in a flat tone. “I wouldn’t ask so much of you.”

More taunting, but he hadn’t rejected the idea. “Worry about yourself. Deal?”

There was a subtle smile on his face. He felt certain of his victory; he was a god after all.

“It’s a deal,” he said.