I lit three more candles and set them on the table, letting their happy glow warm the dark room.
What would my life have been like if my father had accepted the Holy First’s offer? I pictured swanning about in the Ivory Temple, in the diaphanous, shimmering robes of the First’s postulants. My lightbrown hair would be long, with lush curls, and my skin as perfect and freckle-free as a porcelain doll’s. I would be reverent and devout. It would be a peaceful life, a beautiful one. One without shame or regret.
A glance at the line of dirt beneath my nails—always there no matter how hard I scrubbed—was enough to curdle that daydream.
“The Holy First left, and the huntsman and his wife somehow went back to sleep,” Merrick continued. “Until…there was a crashing boom of thunder!” He clapped his hands together, creating the sound effect.
“ ‘Who’s there now?’ called the very pretty wife, anger coloring her tone. ‘We’re trying to sleep.’
“ ‘And we’re trying to help you,’ answered a sly and slippery voice. A long, thin figure stretched out from a shadow, slinking into the candlelight. ‘Give your child to us and we shall raise her into a woman of great power and wealth. She will know fortune beyond measure, beyond calculation, and—’ The god stopped.
“The wife leaned forward. ‘And? Yes? Fortune and?’ ”
Merrick chuckled darkly, now pantomiming the movements of each of the characters. He threw his hand over his forehead with trumped despair.
“ ‘No!’ cried the very foolish huntsman, for though he was very foolish, he still recognized the deity for who it was.”
“Whotheywere,” I corrected him.
“The Divided Ones stared down at the pair, regarding the husband and wife from one eye each, shared on the same face. And when they asked why the very foolish huntsman had declined their offer, they did it with two voices from one throat.
“ ‘You are the Divided Ones,’ the huntsman began. ‘You maypromise to give this child wealth and power and fortune, but fortunes can turn’—he snapped his fingers—‘in the split of a second, like the split of your face. What will happen to our child then?’
“The Divided Ones cocked their head, studying the very foolish huntsman with wary respect. ‘This is your final answer?’ they asked, and their voices were so many strong. So many, yet only one.
“The huntsman nodded, even as his wife struck him, and the Divided Ones disappeared in a flash of lightning and shadow and mischief.
“The couple did not return to sleep, wondering what dreadful thing might befall them next. They huddled together against the darkness until the wee hours of morning, just before sunrise, when the night is at its blackest. Only then were they visited by a third god.” Merrick’s smile turned indulgent, the sharp tips of his teeth winking in the firelight. “Me.”
Merrick paused, looking about the kitchen, then let out a noise of dismay. “The cake!”
He took out canisters of flour and sugar. Scooping up handfuls of each, he let the powders sort through his fingers. The white granules transformed as they fell, turning into layers of cake, dense and golden brown.
When Merrick blew the last of the sugar away, it turned into pale pink icing so delicate that tiers of the cake could still be seen underneath. A dusting of gold leaf shimmered across the top. From thin air, Merrick plucked a peony, frilly and fragrant and just about to burst into bloom. He laid it across the top of the cake, where tiny tapers had suddenly sprouted, an identical pink to the peony’s petals.
It was exquisite, over-the-top in its magnificence, and so terriblyMerrick.
“How’s that?” he asked, admiring his work before leaning over to kiss the top of my head with fatherly affection. He smelled superficially of warm cardamom and clove, vanilla, and molasses, but a darker, somewhat unpleasant scent lurked beneath. It was something no pomander, however strong, could completely mask. Iron, copper, and the funk of meat sat out too long and on the verge of turning.
“You know, I’ll never forget the first time I saw you, all those birthdays ago. So scrunched and squalling. Such a fragile, tiny creature. I hardly knew what to do when you were foisted into my arms.”
My smile faltered, dimming. I knew exactly what Merrick had done: he’d handed me right back to my mother and turned tail, disappearing for years. But I let him tell the story the way he remembered it. My birthday had always meant much more to him than it had to me.
“I had a mind to name you Joy, because your arrival brought such delight to my heart.” His forehead furrowed as he struggled to hold back a swell of emotion. “But then you opened your eyes and I was struck dumb, completely smitten. Such depth and intelligence pooling in those hazel wonders.” Merrick released a shaky breath. “I’m very proud to call you mine and am grateful to celebrate this day with you.”
As I watched my godfather, my heart panged with affection. He was not an attractive figure, not by half. Certainly not a being to whom most parents would willingly give their child.
Merrick had no nose, only a hollowed-out cavity shaped like an upside-down heart, and his deep obsidian skin rippled back painfully tight across his cheeks, causing his expression to read as a scowl of menace, no matter how happy he might be. He was extraordinarily gaunt and tall. Even with the high gabled peaks of mycottage, he had to stoop low under the rafters, forever ducking to avoid the bunches of flowers and herbs hung up to dry. And the fullness of his thick, dark robes couldn’t hide the skeletal ridges of his figure. The black wool hung in strange shapes from the bony angles of his spine and shoulder blades, nearly giving him the appearance of having wings, much like a bat.
No. Most parents would not hand their child over to someone like Merrick.
Then again, my parents weren’t like most.
And to me, his was not a face to be feared. His was the face of the Dreaded End, the god who loved me. Who’d saved me, eventually. A god who had raised me when my own flesh and blood cast me aside. This was the face of my salvation, however unearned, however unasked for.
Merrick raised his glass toward mine. “To this birthday and to all the many, many more to come.”
Our goblets clinked together, and I pushed aside his words with an uneasy smile.
