Sol's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Sol walked down from Slate's hillside and kept walking until the city was behind him. He did not know where the woman in the statue lived. He asked a goat herder. The goat herder pointed at a stand of trees with an odd shape on the horizon and would not say more. The trees were tall and tangled, with branches that forked in ways trees should not fork. Pink specks glowed in the dark leaves. Sol stopped at the edge. His white robe caught on a thorn. He pulled it free and heard cloth tear. A small black animal stepped out from the roots. It had too many tails. It sat on the path and watched him with pale blue eyes. "Move," Sol said. The animal did not move. It turned and trotted between the trunks. Sol followed because there was nothing else to follow. The path opened into a clearing. A huge woman knelt beside a low bush heavy with purple and blue berries. Antlers curved up from her head, wrapped in moss. Hooves showed under the hem of her torn dress. She was pinching dead leaves off the bush one by one. She did not look up. "You are the god of law," she said. "I am." "You came to my woods in gold sandals." She flicked a leaf away. "Say what you want and go." Sol had a speech ready. He had built it on the walk. He opened his mouth and none of it came out. "He carved you," he said instead. "I tried to stop him." "I know." Juno Brass stood. She was a full head taller than he was. The foxling curled around her hoof. "You brought him to your father's council. You sent a hound after his yard. My name is scraped out of every song your kind sings. And you came here to see if the statue looks like me." "Yes." She laughed once, short. "Look, then." He looked. The crooked finger on her left hand. The line at the corner of her mouth. Onyx had not invented her. He had copied her. "I am not here to judge you," Sol said. "Good. You could not." She picked up a basket of berries and turned toward a willow at the clearing's edge, its long fronds shifting though there was no wind. "You want something. Full gods always want something." "I want to know what you would have me do." She stopped. She looked back at him for a long moment. Her eyes were brown and tired. "Nothing," she said. "That is the only useful thing your kind has ever offered me. Go back to your council. Do nothing about the statue. Do nothing about me. Leave that sweet carver alone. If you can manage that, we have no quarrel." She walked into the willow's fronds and was gone. Sol stood in the clearing. He had not won her trust. He had been given a task instead: to leave it be. He turned back toward the city to face what that would cost him.