A Thousand Lost Boys

CW: mentions of blood

Too many people believe in the old gods. They give everything they have, just for the dream of a warm meal, a happy marriage. But the crops are too dry and the winters are too cold for such silly sacrifices of wine and cheese and firstborn sons. Mama says she can’t recall a time when there wasn’t fear of the old gods, their sensitivity and blood-soaked promises.

And yet, the other towns talk of a time when there was no sacrifice, no Valentine’s Day… A time when there were no fights or robberies; when no one paid attention to the group of war-bent girls in the forest. It was a time when everyone was happy—even those old, old gods—and everyone was safe.

As I watch my brother’s coffin lower into the ground, I’m not so sure we are anymore.

*

At our home, his incense hangs heavy in the air, and his plump oranges rot on the gold platter of his altar. I don’t touch them, or the warty candles, that my brother David so lovingly set up. Instead, I weave around the small temple of gold and second-hand jewels and cook home meals to try to defeat the smell. I try to recreate his favorite chocolates, hours and hours of pouring and molding the smooth sugary goodness. It works in the kitchen. But my room still reeks of him: spicy cinnamon and earthy frankincense.

The wolves howl at all hours now. In their cry is the echo of my brother’s voice, late at night singing low and melancholy. They were songs about the old gods, steely in spirit and pulsing with the love of a forgotten, broken kingdom. Sometimes during summer, he’d yell out the words: big gulps of air turning into prolonged, echoing notes, his chest heaving as he belted out each holy syllable. I loved to watch him sing. He was so free, dancing barefoot in the tall grass near our house.

David loved putting up the decorations: heart-shaped paper on the walls, heart-shaped candies after meals, heart-shaped patterns on clothing and table cloths. He’d encourage the little romances in town, coming home to tell Mama all the gossip. Sally loves Jack, but Jack loves Benny, but Benny’s Pa doesn’t like Jack… 

I get weird, lingering looks in town. The lady at the vegetable stand watches me carefully as I look over her produce, as if my callused hands and foul-smelling grief would drive me to steal one of her mediocre squashes. I just frown and keep walking, reminded of the evenings David and I would have as we chose which vegetable was the puniest. The memory of my brother’s ritual follows me wherever I go, whether to the library or the latrine, the stables, or the doors of the sanctum.

Actually. I don’t dare enter the church. I think it would be too much, to see the space where he once kneeled, to breathe the air he once breathed. It makes me want to vomit.

And I do, almost every night; I wake up with my fists in the sheets and snot on my nightgown, and within seconds of consciousness, the stone floor is covered in the contents of my stomach. That damn frankincense still permeates the air, though, hanging like a dark cloud over my quiet home.

My brother was eighteen when his name was drawn for the ritual. He didn’t even fight it, didn’t question the means behind his newfound fate. He was too in love with Them. With the holiday, the very spirit of Valentine’s. Soon Mama and I were huddled around him, lathering my brother in fine gold silks and heavy jewels. Soon his ankles and wrists clinked with the sound of thick, gold bands.

Soon his blood coated the steps of the church. Soon, my mother was screaming through the bars of an ink-black carriage. The coins were warm in my hand. Townsfolk kept their heads down as she was carried away. Now, looking back, regret eats me from the inside out. She was so far gone after the ritual; considering the weight of my own grief, I guess the rumors would have driven me crazy, too.

Each day the wolves get louder and louder, voices of the gods as they taunt the ghosts of a thousand lost boys.

It was not special, my brother’s fate, my brother’s circumstances, my brother’s situation. No boy chosen for the ritual had ever turned it down, or at least gotten away with doing so. There’d been only two in the past twenty years, both captured by girls in the woods and never seen again. Their shoes turned up, though, and the shiny gold earrings that marked them for their duties. Rumor has it, the girls use heart-shaped arrows for the occasion, pierced through lung or thigh or stomach….

Sometimes I wish it was me, splayed on the steps of our alabaster-white church. I wish it was me with jewels sitting on my sternum and gold filings sifted onto my shoulders. I wish I could take David’s place, become his brother. But it is not my place, I know, I grieve. It is not my place to take on such a burden of pleasing the gods.

Us girls are not worthy of such responsibility; the old gods do not revere our flesh and hunger for our souls like they do that of a tall, muscled, devoted teenage boy. We do not crave affection like boys do; therefore how could we fathom that of the gods?

Others have lost people, too. Mrs. Halfhill’s twin sons were chosen four summers ago. Our town nearly went broke paying for their ritual and the party after. Mr. Flint lost an older brother. (Flint himself was never up for the duty, not after the winter he crippled his right leg.) Mama’s cousin Anthony was reaped the old-fashioned way, burned alive for all who could see. Mama managed to salvage his anklet. Nearly everyone in our town has lost someone special, whether it is a husband or son or black-haired sweetheart. We all harbor this loss, this grief, in one form or the other.

*

The sun blinds me as I climb the hill to the church. My feet ache with remembrance, my heart pounds in my ears with hidden fear. Some wretched anxiety inside me laughs at my feeble attempt at revenge. It tells me to turn back, to drown myself in something else like bourbon or cherry-flavored pastry.

But before I can give myself time to turn back, the church comes into view… Its looming double doors swing open, and I feel fifty pairs of eyes on me.

The High Priest tries to smile at my chilling entrance, my bloodshot eyes and my long wolf-hide cloak. He’s young, but old enough to enjoy the fruit of age: a single strand of white graces his scalp. He looks pale against the decorations of the church: red and pink and shining ribbon. There are roses everywhere.

They're gearing up for another ritual.

My rage seeps into the thick walls of the church, down through the soles of my feet into the very floor that once ate up my brother’s blood.

My blade feels warm against my belly, hidden oh so perfectly inside my tunic.

The Priest comes forth to bless me.

In his eyes, I see David once again. In his eyes, I see a sea of angry gods, chanting the names of a thousand lost boys.