A man carrying a wooden trencher heaped with smoking fish was walking the sea-wet sand fifty cubits or so in front of me. I followed him, and when we had gone twenty paces he reached a bower, dripping with sea spray yet draped in wildflowers. Here he set his trencher upon the sand, took two backward steps, and knelt.
Catching up, I asked in the speech of the Commonwealth who would eat his fish.
He looked around at me; I could see he was surprised to find me a stranger. “The Sleeper,” he said. “He who sleeps here and hungers.”
“Who is this Sleeper?” I asked.
“The lonely god. One feels him here, always sleeping, ever hungry. I bring the fish to show that we are his friends, so he will not devour us when he wakes.”
“Do you feel him now?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Sometimes it is stronger — so strong we see him by moonlight lying here, though he vanishes when we come near. Today I did not feel him at all.”
“Did not?”
“I do now,” he said. “Since you have come.”
I sat down on the sand and picked up a large piece of fish, motioning for him to join me. The fish was so hot it burned my fingers, so I knew it had been cooked close by. He sat too, but did not eat until I made a second gesture.
“Are you always the one?”
He nodded. “Each god has someone, a man for a man-god, a woman for a woman-god.”
“A priest or a priestess.”
He nodded again.
“There is no God but the Increate, all the rest being his creatures.” I was tempted to add, “Even Tzadkiel,” but I did not.
“Yes,” he said. And he turned his face away, not wishing, I think, to see my look if he offended me. “That is so for the gods, certainly. But for humble creatures like men, there are lesser gods, possibly. To poor, wretched men these lesser gods are very, very exalted. We strive to please them.”
I smiled to show I was not angry. “And what do such lesser gods do to help men?”
“Four gods there are.”
From his singsong, I knew he had recited the words many times, no doubt in the teaching of children.
“First and greatest is the Sleeper. He is a man-god. He is always hungry. Once he devoured the whole land, and he may do so again if he is not fed. Though the Sleeper has drowned, he cannot die — thus he sleeps here on the strand. Fish belong to the Sleeper — you must beg his leave before you fish. Silver fish I catch for him. Storms are his anger, calm his charity.”
I had become the Oannes of these people!
“The other man-god is Odilo. His are the lands beneath the sea. He loves learning and right conduct. Odilo taught men to speak and women to write. He is the judge of gods and men, but punishes no one who has not sinned thrice. Once he bore the cup of the Increate. Red wine is his. Wine his man brings him.”
It had taken a breath for me to recall just whom Odilo had been. Now I realized that the House Absolute and our court had become the frame for a vague picture of the Increate as Autarch. In retrospect, it seemed inevitable.
“There are two women-gods also. Pega is the day goddess. All beneath the sun is hers. Pega loves cleanness. She taught women to strike fire and to bake and weave. She mourns them in childbirth and comes to all at the moment of death. She is the comforter. Brown bread is the offering her woman brings her.”
I nodded approvingly.
“Thais is the night goddess. All below the moon is hers. She loves the words of lovers and lovers’ embraces. All who couple must beg her leave, speaking the words as one in the darkness. If they do not, Thais kindles a flame in a third heart and finds a knife for the hand. Aflame, she comes to children, announcing that they are to be children no longer. She is the seducer. Golden honey is the offering her woman brings her.”
I said, “It seems you have two good gods and two evil gods, and that the evil gods are Thais and the Sleeper.”
“Oh, no! All gods are very good, particularly the Sleeper! Without the Sleeper, so many would starve. The Sleeper is very, very great! And when Thais does not come, her place is taken by a demon.”
“So you have demons too.”
“Everyone has demons.”
“I suppose,” I said.
The trencher was nearly bare, and I had eaten my fill. The priest — my priest, I should write — had taken only a single small piece. I rose, picked up what was left, and tossed it into the sea, not knowing what else to do with it. “For Juturna,” I told him. “Do your people know Juturna?”
He had jumped to his feet as soon as I stood up. “No—” He hesitated, and I could see that he had almost spoken the name he had given me, but that he was afraid to do so.
“Then perhaps she is a demon to you. For most of my life I thought her a demon too; it may be that neither you nor I have made a great mistake.”
He bowed, and although he was a bit taller and by no means plump, I saw Odilo in that bow as clearly as if the man himself stood before me.
“Now you must take me to Odilo,” I said. “To the other man-god.”
We walked the beach together in the direction from which he had come. The hills, which had been barren mud when I had left, were covered with soft, green grass. Wildflowers bloomed there, and there were young trees.
I tried to estimate the time I had been gone, and to count the years I had lived among the autochthons in their stone town; and though I could not be sure of either figure, it seemed to me they must have been much the same. I marveled then to think of the green man, and how he had come for me in the jungles of the north at the very moment I required him. We both had walked the Corridors of Time, yet he had been a master while I was only an apprentice.
I asked my priest when it had been that the Sleeper had devoured the lands.
He was deeply tanned; even so, I saw the blood drain from his face. “Long ago,” he said. “Before men came to Ushas.”
“Then how do men know of it?”
“The god Odilo taught us. Are you angry?”
Odilo had overheard my conversation with Eata, then. I had supposed him sleeping. “No,” I said. “I only wish to hear what you know of it. Was it you who came to Ushas?”
He shook his head. “My father’s father and my mother’s mother. They fell from the sky, scattered like seeds by the hand of the God of all gods.”
I said, “Not knowing fire or anything else,” and as I spoke I recalled what the young officer had reported: that Hierodules had landed a man and woman on the grounds of the House Absolute. Remembering that, it was simple enough to guess who my priest’s forebears had been — the sailors routed by my memories had paid for their defeat with their pasts, just as I would have lost the future of my descendants had my own past been defeated.
It was not much farther to the village. A few unreliable — looking boats were beached there, unpainted boats built largely of gray driftwood, or so it seemed to me. On the shore, an eli or more above the high-tide mark, stood a square of huts formed by four perfectly straight lines. The square was Odilo’s doing, I felt sure; it exhibited the love of order for order’s sake so characteristic of an upper servant. Then I reflected that the ramshackle boats had probably been inspired by him as well; it was he, after all, who had built our raft.
Two women and a gaggle of children emerged from the square to watch us pass, and a man with a mallet stopped pounding dry grass into the seams of a boat to join them; my priest, walking half a step behind me, nodded toward me and made a gesture too swift for me to catch. The villagers fell to their knees.
Inspired by the sense of theater I have often been forced to cultivate, I raised my arms, spread my hands, and gave them my blessing, telling them to be kind to one another and as happy as they could. That is really all the blessing we godlings can ever give, though no doubt the Increate can do much more.