“All I did was free a suffering bird from its impalement on a sacrificial carousel. I lifted it from the hook and released it. How is that so great a trespass that I must pay for it with my life? Or my death.”
“You wronged me, man. The bird was mine, both its life and its death. Who were you to say it should not suffer? Who were you to pick it free and put life back into it and let it fly away?”
“I put life back into it?”
“Hah!” His exclamation was a harsh croak. “There speaks a man! First you will pretend you did not know how grave a thing you did. Then you will deny you did it. Then you will say—”
“It’s not fair!”
“Of course. Exactly that. And then finally, each and every one will claim—”
If I had had lungs, I would have drawn a breath. I invoked the strength of the words with the full force of my fear. “I am a follower of the good god. I was dedicated to him as a soldier son when I was born, and I was raised in his teachings. You have no power over me!” The last I uttered with conviction. Or attempted to. My words were drowned in the caws of his laughter.
“Oh, yes, the final denial. I can’t be your god; you already have a god. You keep him in your pouch and let him out on occasions such as this. Calling on your good god is so much more effective than, say, pissing yourself in terror. Or at least it has a bit more dignity.” He spread his tail feathers and leaned back, rocking so hard with laughter that the big branch shook. I looked up at him, unable to avert my eyes. He took his time getting his hilarity under control. Finally, he stopped laughing, and wiped his feathered arm across his eyes. He leaned forward, turning his bird’s head sideways to look at me more closely. “Call him,” he suggested to me. “Shout for the good god to come and rescue you. I want to see what happens. Go ahead. Yell for help, man. It’s the only thing you haven’t done yet.”
I couldn’t do it. I wanted to. I wanted desperately to be able to cry out to some benign presence that would sweep in and rescue me. It wasn’t a lack of faith in the good god’s existence. I think I feared to call on my god lest he come to me, and find me lacking and unworthy. I knew in my heart, as most men do, that I’d never really given myself fully to his service. I do not speak of the way that a priest resigns his life to the service of a god, but rather to how a man suspends his own judgment and desires and relies on what he has been told the good god desires of him. Always, I had held back from that commitment. I had always believed, I discovered, that when I was an old man I could become devout and make up for my heedless youth. Age would be a good time to practice self-discipline and charity and patience. When I was old, I would give generous alms and spend hours in meditation while watching the sweet smoke of my daily offerings rise to the good god. When I was old, and my blood no longer bubbled with ambition and lust and wild curiosity, then I could settle down and be content in my good god.
Foolishly, I had believed that I would always have the opportunity to be a better man, later. Obviously, a man’s life could end at any time. A fall down the stairs, a chill or a fever, a stray bullet; youth was no armor against such fates. A man could lose his life by accident, at any moment. Some part of me, perhaps, had known that, but I’d never believed it at a gut level.
And I’d certainly never considered that at any moment, an old god could materialize and demand my life of me.
I didn’t merit the good god’s intervention and, worse, I feared his judgment. The old gods, I knew, had been able to plunge men into endless torment or perpetual labor, and often did solely for their own amusement. Such anguish on a whim suddenly seemed preferable to facing a just banishment.
My cry of supplication died in me unuttered. I looked up at Orandula, the old god of balances, and felt myself quiver with resignation and then grow still. The feathers on his head quirked up in surprise.
“What? No shrieks for rescue? No pleas for mercy? Eh. Not very amusing for me. You’re a bad bargain, Nevare. Looks like half of you is the most I can get, and it isn’t even the interesting half. Yet, being as I am the god of balances, something in that appeals to me.”
“Do what you will to me!” I hissed at him, weary already of teetering on that brink.
He fluttered his feathers up, gaining almost a third in size as he did so. “Oh, I shall,” he muttered as he eased them down. He leisurely groomed two wing plumes, pulling them through his beak and then settling them into order. For a moment, he seemed to have forgotten me. Then he pierced me with his stare again. “At my leisure. When I decide to take what you owe me, then I’ll come for it, and you’ll pay me.”