Marsh Gods
By Ann Leckie
Published on Strange Horizons, 7 July 2008
Voud had escaped the house before dawn, climbing up the ladder and onto the roof, across the neighbors' roofs and down to the edge of the water, where she had caught three decent-sized frogs. She had tried but failed to catch a fourth, the bullfrog she'd heard honking hoarsely away somewhere on the bank; her sister-in-law Ytine would be dismayed at her muddy tunic, but there was no help for it. Now, her prey struggling in her bag, she went to ask the gods a question.
It was late enough in summer that she could go on foot, over the causeway. The shore of the gods' island was muddy and cypress-shaded, but as she climbed, the trees cleared. At the edge of the trees, she stopped and dropped her bag on the ground. "I have questions," she called. "Frogs for answers!" Insects trilled; the frustratingly elusive bullfrog honked. Voud sat on her heels—it didn't pay to be impatient with gods—and watched the sky lighten.
Eventually a brown crane came wading along the margin of the island and walked with careful, backwards-kneed steps to where Voud sat. It kr-kr-kr-kred and then said, "Good morning, little girl."
"I'm not a little girl! I'm ten!"
The crane took two steps backward, flapped its wings. "You have frogs?"
Voud picked up the bag. "Three."
"They're small, and weak. One question."
"They're perfectly good frogs! Three frogs, three questions."
"Well. Before you start, I'm going to warn you—not every god would, by the way—not to ask me any questions that are impossible to answer, or that are ambiguously phrased. You'll just be wasting your frogs if you do."
Voud sacrificed the frogs, and said the appropriate prayer. Then she asked her first question. "Is Ytine going to remarry?"
"She's free to do as she likes. Your brother Irris has been gone more than a year, and he was never a particularly good husband; no one would blame her."
"He was a drunk," said Voud. "He never did what he should."
"A fair description," said the crane. "Unfortunately, your question is the sort I warned you against; I don't know the answer. Ask Ytine herself."
"I thought gods knew the future."
"Gods with enough power to make unlikely things happen are free to make pronouncements about the future," the crane said, just the slightest bit pedantic. "If I happened to be wrong, I would have said something untrue, and that could be disastrous for me. Think hard about your next two questions. There's no hurry. You know I won't lie—I can't without injuring myself."
Voud frowned. "What god do I need to talk to, to get Ytine to marry the right person?"
"Is that really your second question? —Don't answer!" it trumpeted before she could speak. "Take my advice, and say no."
"Everything I think of is wrong!" she cried, frustrated.
"Why don't you explain what your problem is?" The crane flapped its wings. "I can't promise to help you directly, but we'll have a better idea of what questions would be appropriate."
Voud sighed. "My father died last year."
"I am aware of it," said the crane.
"My other brother, Tas, died last month."
The crane tilted its head. "True."
"Now it's just me and Ytine and the baby, because Irris went off six months before the baby was born and never came back. And there's too much work for the two of us, and we're going to have to ask the neighbors for help. And Anghat—he's a neighbor of ours . . ."
"I know Anghat."
"Anghat told Ytine that he'll come live with us and do the work if he can marry me."
The crane turned first one eye on her, and then the other. "Why doesn't he offer to marry Ytine?"
"He wants our fishing rights! That stretch of water belongs to our house. Ytine's only married in." And she could marry out and take the baby. If she did, Voud would be all by herself. Ytine had said she wouldn't leave. But.
"Anghat is the youngest of ten," the crane remarked. "There's precious little to go around in his own house. Granted, you're too young right now, but he's not ugly, or ill-tempered so far as I know.
"What's more, this is the sort of thing I can't get involved in. The terms of the agreement are very clear. We protect you from the marsh fever, and keep the babies from getting sick or drowning. We help manage the wildlife in the swamp. In return, you give us regular sacrifices and prayers, which we gods divide equally among ourselves. You're allowed to petition us on an individual basis for things like cures, or fertility." The crane dipped its head towards the dead frogs. "Or information. But hurting one household to help another is absolutely forbidden. We don't get involved in village politics, let alone questions of who should marry who. Besides, you have only to refuse if you don't want him."
"He killed Tas," Voud said. "He killed Irris."
"I didn't see it myself, but I'm told Tas tripped and hit his head on the edge of his boat. He was dead before anyone could pull him out of the water. These things happen sometimes. As for Irris, I don't know if he's alive or dead."
"I was going across the roofs yesterday and I heard Anghat talking. I stopped to listen." For a moment she considered what Ytine would say about that. "I heard him say, Well, is he dead? You've had plenty of time to make it happen, I'm tired of waiting. And I heard a scratchy, whispery voice say, Finding Irris was not a simple matter. He had traveled quite a distance. But he is dead. His throat was cut and he died, in a desert far away from here. And something else quieter that I couldn't hear. And Anghat laughed and said, Why would you want to be released? I have sacrificed and prayed to you daily, since I found you a year ago. And then Anghat must have heard something because he started coming up the ladder and I ran away and I don't think he saw me."
The crane was absolutely motionless for a few moments. Birds hooted and twittered, and somewhere down at the margin of the island something jumped into the water with a plopping splash. "If what you say is true," the crane said at last, with a ruffle of its feathers, "then Anghat has a god confined in his house. But there's nothing wrong with any of you worshipping other gods."
"And nothing to keep other gods from interfering with us!"
"Well, now." The crane raised one foot and put it down again, delicately. "That's a more complicated issue. We do have understandings with the gods of surrounding territories. The swamp would have been drained for farmland long ago otherwise. But I'm not sure what to do about this, frankly. I don't think the gods of the marsh association have any grounds for acting."
Ytine's voice echoed across the water. "Voud!"
"I have to go!"
"Go," said the crane. "And don't waste too much grief on Irris. When he was here he only drank beer and slept all day."
"Voud!" Ytine called again.
Voud turned and ran down to the water and across the cypress-shaded causeway, up the mound the village was built on, up the side ladder and across the roofs as fast as she could, to where Ytine stood, ten years older than Voud, with a naked toddler on her hip. "Voud! Where have you . . . oh, look at your tunic!"
"I was hunting frogs." Not a lie, not exactly. She thought furiously for a plausible story, hating to have nothing to show for all the mud, not wanting to say any frog had escaped her, even as a lie.
But Ytine seemed too distracted to ask for details. "Get inside." She blinked, and took a breath as though to speak, but stopped, and then, "Get inside," she said again. Something was wrong.
"What is it?" Voud asked.
The ladder shook, someone climbing up. In a moment a man appeared—her brother Irris. And because his beard was trimmed close, she could see the thin red line that ran from one side of his neck to the other, as though his throat had been cut.